A BepInEx mod for Valheim that lets players row their ship by hand. Craft an oar, equip it, sit on a bench: your character grabs it over the side and paddles the ship forward. W/S shift gears just like the helm's rudder, and the more of the crew rows, the faster you go.

How to craft the oars

Two oars, two workbenches. Equip the oar like a weapon, climb aboard and sit on a bench.

Oar	Drakkar Oar
Workbench level 1 6 Fine Wood Rows the raft, karve and longship	Workbench level 2 16 Yggdrasil Wood, 8 Resin The only oar that rows the Drakkar, and it rows every other ship too

Getting started in 4 steps

1. Craft and equip. Make the oar at the workbench and equip it like a weapon.
2. Sit on a bench. Board a ship and press E on a bench. Rowing starts automatically, in neutral.
3. Shift gears. W/S (or the gamepad's left stick up/down, or whatever keys you mapped to move forward and back) step through the gears, same controls as the ship's own rudder, minus steering. While rowing, they never stand you up.
4. Get up. Leave the bench with E or Jump, same as the helm. Getting up, dying or switching away from the oar stops rowing immediately.

Gear	Reverse	Neutral	Gear 1	Gear 2	Gear 3
Indicator	▼	●	▲	▲▲	▲▲▲
How to get there	S from neutral	start here	W from neutral	W again	W again

If you sit on a bench without the right oar, pressing W/S tells you which one to equip.

You can row with the sail up. The two forces add together. Only the crew on the benches row: whoever is at the helm steers, and holding on to the mast or the prow doesn't row either. The raft has no bench of its own, so the mod adds one, at the front of its left side ahead of the mast, for one rower (only players with the mod see it).

Which oar for which ship?

	Raft	Karve	Longship	Drakkar
Oar	yes (one bench added by the mod)	yes	yes	no
Drakkar Oar	yes	yes	yes	yes

Features

Rowing

• Oar required: craft the oar at a tier-1 workbench (6 Fine Wood) and equip it like a weapon. Off the ship it works as one: a slow two-handed club with the battleaxe's wide sweeping swings, using the Clubs skill.
• Drakkar Oar: the Drakkar's benches sit too high for the oar, so it takes a longer one, painted after the Drakkar: craft it at a level-2 workbench (16 Yggdrasil Wood, 8 Resin). It is the only oar that rows the Drakkar, and it rows any other ship too. As a weapon it hits harder than the oar.
• Gear shifting: sitting on a bench with the oar equipped puts you in neutral automatically. W/S step through reverse, neutral and gears 1–3, exactly like steering a ship, except it never turns.
• Crew-powered speed: each rower adds thrust based on their gear (reverse and gears 1–3), and the crew's thrust adds up: by default a rower in gear 1 adds 8% of the push of a full sail in a strong tailwind, and one in gear 3 about 14%, up to 1.5 times that sail in total. Thrust is scaled per ship type (raft, karve, longship, drakkar), and it eases in and out over a second and a half.
• A bench on the raft: one crew member can sit at the front of the raft and row while another steers.
• Helm keeps control: by default rowing only pushes along the bow and never turns the ship. The helmsman steers with the vanilla rudder and can't row; only the crew on the benches can.
• Optional rowing turn: set SteeringMultiplier above 0 and the ship swings away from the side the rowers sit on, the way a real boat does (starboard rowers turn it to port), and the other way in reverse. Rowers on both sides cancel out, so the crew has to coordinate. Negative values turn it towards the rowing side instead.
• Speed limit and crew falloff: two optional settings, off by default. MaxRowingSpeed stops the oars adding thrust above a speed, so oars and sail can't stack without limit. CrewFalloff makes each extra rower add a little less than the one before, so a full Drakkar crew doesn't scale in a straight line.
• Stamina cost: each stroke costs stamina, on a per-gear cadence (gears 2 and 3 stroke faster, so they drain faster). Running out withholds that gear's thrust — you keep your selected gear, and it resumes on its own once stamina refills, like swinging a weapon without enough stamina.

Visuals

• Rowing animation: the oar is a custom model held in both hands, and the rower sits facing the stern. The stroke is a real animation: the blade enters the water at the catch, the body pulls back through the drive, then the oar lifts out and swings forward. Stroke pace follows the gear, and StrokeSpeed scales it. Rowers on either side of the ship row over their own gunwale, and on the Longship and the Drakkar they sit closer to it and lean out, so the blade reaches the water. The oar returns to a normal weapon grip when you get up.
• Splash: the blade splashes, with sound, as it hits the water, using the game's own arrow-in-water effect.
• Gear indicator: the selected gear is shown with the helm's own arrows (one, two or three up for gears 1–3, one down for reverse) around the steering-wheel icon, on the gunwale beside your bench.
• Crew panel: (picture below) while you row, a carved wooden panel counts how many aboard are rowing and shows your ship from above, turned to match your view and labeled bow and stern, with each rower at their seat, colored by gear, with an oar swinging in time with their stroke; passengers show in grey. ShowCrewHud turns it off.

Audio

• Rowing sound: the oars sound on every stroke, in step with the animation, faster in higher gears and silent in neutral. A lone rower's strokes vary between two recordings; with two or more rowers the ship plays one crew stroke, also varying between two recordings, following the gear most of them row in. It follows the game's sound effects volume.

Multiplayer

• Crew in time: everyone aboard rows to the same beat, and every player sees the same strokes.
• Multiplayer-aware: everyone sees each other's oars, and thrust is applied by the ship's owner, so rowing works for passengers too.
• The host sets the rules: the physics and stamina settings follow the host's values when the host has the mod, so everyone aboard rows by the same rules. Look and sound settings stay your own.

Requirements

• Valheim (PC)
• BepInExPack Valheim
• Jötunn, the Valheim Library

Installation

With a mod manager (r2modman / Thunderstore Mod Manager): download the VikingOarsmen-<version>.zip from the Releases page and choose Import local mod in the manager.

Manually:

1. Download VikingOarsmen.dll from the Releases page.
2. Copy it into <Valheim>/BepInEx/plugins/.
3. Launch the game. BepInEx/LogOutput.log should contain Viking Oarsmen vX.Y.Z loaded.

Quick test in single player

Open the console with F5 and run devcommands, god and spawn VikingShip (or spawn Karve, spawn Raft, or spawn VikingShip_Ashlands for the Drakkar) while facing the water. Close the console, climb aboard, craft and equip the oar, then sit on a bench.

Configuration

The settings file is created on first launch at BepInEx/config/com.fabenejr.vikingoarsmen.cfg:

Section	Key	Default	Description
Physics	PowerPerRower	0.08	Share of the maximum thrust a rower in gear 1 adds
Physics	Gear2Multiplier	1.4	Thrust in gear 2, as a multiple of PowerPerRower
Physics	Gear3Multiplier	1.8	Thrust in gear 3, as a multiple of PowerPerRower
Physics	ReverseMultiplier	-1.0	Thrust in reverse, as a multiple of PowerPerRower
Physics	MaxRowingPower	1.5	Maximum total thrust, ahead or astern (1.0 = full sail with a strong tailwind)
Physics	MaxRowingSpeed	0	Speed in m/s above which rowing stops adding thrust, so oars and sail can't stack without limit. 0 = no limit
Physics	CrewFalloff	0	How much each extra rower adds less than the one before (0 to 0.5). 0.1 = the second rower adds 90%, the third 81%. 0 = every rower adds the same
Physics	SteeringMultiplier	0	How strongly rowing turns the ship. 0 = off. Above 0 it turns away from the rowers' side (reversed when rowing in reverse); negative turns it towards that side
Physics	RampUpTime	1.5	Seconds to reach a new thrust target (crew changes, gear shifts, stopping)
Gameplay	StaminaDrainAmount	6	Stamina per stroke, any gear but neutral (0 disables the cost)
Gameplay	StaminaDrainIntervalSlow	2	Seconds between strokes in gear 1 and reverse
Gameplay	StaminaDrainIntervalHalf	1.5	Seconds between strokes in gear 2
Gameplay	StaminaDrainIntervalFull	1	Seconds between strokes in gear 3
Gameplay	ShowOarHint	true	Show the "Equip the oar to row." message when you sit on a bench without the right oar and press W or S
Visual	StrokeSpeed	1.0	Speed of the rowing animation in every gear (1.0 = the animation's own pace in Half gear)
Visual	Splash	true	Splash and play a sound when the blade hits the water
Visual	ShowCrewHud	true	While you row, show a panel with how many aboard are rowing and a drawing of the ship with where each sits
Audio	RowingSound	true	Play the sound of the oars on every stroke (a lone rower's, or the crew's)
Audio	RowingSoundVolume	1.0	Volume of the rowing sound, relative to the game's sound effects volume (0 to 1)
Debug	DebugSkipFaceStern	false	Do not turn the rower to face the stern, to track down cape or head jitter
Debug	DebugSkipLean	false	Do not lean the rower over the gunwale, to track down cape or head jitter
Debug	DebugRowingSync	false	Log each rower's stroke phase against the crew's beat to BepInEx/LogOutput.log, to debug multiplayer sync

Multiplayer

Every player who wants to row, see oars or own a rowed ship needs the mod installed. Dedicated servers don't need it.

The host decides how the ship rows. The Physics settings and the stamina settings under Gameplay are admin-only: a player joining a game whose host has the mod (a player's game, or a dedicated server that also has the mod and Jötunn) rows by the host's values, so the ship's owner and every rower play by the same rules. A server without the mod sends nothing, so your own values apply. Your own config file is untouched. Only the look and sound settings stay yours.

How it works: each rower writes the ID of the ship they are rowing to their own player data, which Valheim syncs to everyone. The client that owns the ship (usually the helmsman) applies the thrust, and every client draws the oars and plays the rowing sound.

Building from source

Prerequisites: Visual Studio 2022+ with .NET desktop development, or the .NET SDK, plus Valheim with BepInExPack and Jötunn installed.

1. Clone the repository.
2. Copy Local.props.example to Local.props and set ValheimDir to your Valheim folder. This file is git-ignored.
3. Build:
   • Visual Studio: open VikingOarsmen.sln, select Release, then run Build Solution.
   • CLI:

     dotnet build VikingOarsmen.sln -c Release
     

4. The output is VikingOarsmen/bin/Release/VikingOarsmen.dll. Set DeployToPlugins to true in Local.props to copy it into BepInEx/plugins on every build.

See CONTRIBUTING.md for the project layout, coding guidelines and the in-game test checklist.

Roadmap ideas

• The ship surging forward with each stroke instead of a steady push
• Water dripping from the blade on the way back, and a small wake while it pulls
• An oar icon for the gear indicator, in place of the steering wheel

Contributing

Issues and pull requests are welcome! Start with CONTRIBUTING.md. Changes are listed in CHANGELOG.md, and maintainers publish versions following RELEASING.md.

License

MIT © 2026 Paulo Fabene

This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by Iron Gate Studio or Coffee Stain Publishing. Valheim is a trademark of its respective owners.