Metabolism

A Valheim mod that turns gradual food digestion into a gameplay loop of its own.

Features

• Each fully digested food item produces 25 waste units. The bowel meter fills gradually as the food timer counts down.
• You can relieve yourself once the bowel meter reaches 85%. At 100%, an Overfull debuff prevents running and jumping, while normal walking no longer drains stamina.
• A location is private enough when a bush is nearby, or when walls or other solid surfaces block at least five of eight directions.
• The process takes 10 seconds. Your character crouches, movement and other actions are locked, and the meter gradually empties.
• Each completed cycle increases bowel capacity by 2 units, up to 200, and awards Metabolism skill experience.
• Each Metabolism level grants +0.5% maximum health, +0.5% maximum stamina, and +0.3% Rested-effect duration.

All numeric values can be customized in BepInEx/config/com.igentuman.valheim.metabolism.cfg.

Controls

The action is bound to N and the gamepad's right-stick button by default. Both bindings appear in Valheim's standard Controls settings and can be reassigned.

Installation

Requires BepInExPack for Valheim 5.4.2333 or later and Jötunn 2.29.2 or later. Copy Metabolism.dll to BepInEx/plugins/Metabolism/ on both the client and server.

Building

The project targets net462. Create a git-ignored Environment.props file in the repository root:

<Project>
  <PropertyGroup>
    <VALHEIM_INSTALL>path/to/Valheim</VALHEIM_INSTALL>
    <MOD_DEPLOYPATH>path/to/Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/Metabolism</MOD_DEPLOYPATH>
    <ExecutePrebuild>true</ExecutePrebuild>
  </PropertyGroup>
</Project>

Then run dotnet build Metabolism.sln -c Release. Jötunn generates the publicized reference assemblies automatically, and the build creates dist/Metabolism-<version_number>.zip, ready for distribution. The version is read from manifest.json.

The resulting Metabolism.dll is also copied to MOD_DEPLOYPATH. If MOD_DEPLOYPATH is not set, the build uses VALHEIM_INSTALL/BepInEx/plugins/Metabolism.