SwimGear

Keep your weapons and tools in your hands while swimming. Fight serpents from the water with a spear, swim to a shipwreck with your pickaxe out, cross a river with your shield up — the game no longer puts everything away the moment you start swimming, and you can equip in the water.

No cost to your FPS. The usual way to do this asks the call stack, as text, every time the game checks whether anyone is swimming — thousands of times a second for every creature in the water, measured at ~24 ms of every second of play plus the garbage it leaves for the collector. SwimGear marks the two moments the game takes your gear away and answers there only: one reference compared per check.

• Only your gear changes. Movement, stamina, attacks and dodging in the water, and every creature, stay as in vanilla.
• Choose what stays vanilla in the water: item kinds (Bow, Shield, Torch, Tool, TwoHandedWeapon...) or single items by prefab name.
• Client-side. Install it if you want it; other players, the host and the server need nothing.
• Replaces UseEquipmentInWater and WieldEquipmentWhileSwimming: do not run it together with them.

Settings

BepInEx/config/j1ga.swimgear.cfg, or in-game with ConfigurationManager (F1):

• Enabled — on / off.
• ItemTypes — kinds of items that stay vanilla in the water, comma separated: OneHandedWeapon, TwoHandedWeapon, TwoHandedWeaponLeft, Bow, Shield, Torch, Tool.
• Items — single items that stay vanilla, by prefab name, e.g. FishingRod.

Compatibility

Built against Valheim 1.0.20, BepInEx 5.4.23.5 (BepInExPack_Valheim 5.4.2351).

Bugs and feedback

GitHub issues - please include BepInEx/LogOutput.log.

More mods by j1gA

	Mod
	LivingMap — Your buildings, roads and cleared forest on the map and the minimap — and a detailed map when you zoom in.
	StationSpeed — Faster smelters, kilns, fermenters and crops — consistent even for players without the mod.
	WeaponArts — One key, one active ability per weapon: stagger, taunt, heals, berserk, crits.
	ExtendedBosses — Raid-style boss fights: phases, adds, nests, shields, marks — built from vanilla parts.
	HostOwner — The host takes ownership of stations and bosses near it, so its mods work for everyone.
	HudLayout — Move, resize and restyle your HUD with the mouse: bars, food, hotbar, minimap, even other mods' HUD.
	HealthPulse — Low health warning: the screen edges pulse red like a heartbeat, faster as your health drops.
	ChestReach — Craft, build, refuel and cook from the chests around you — no lag, players without the mod can join.

Source, full documentation and the changelog: https://github.com/tbsj1ga/SwimGearValheim

The idea comes from UseEquipmentInWater (LVH-IT); SwimGear is written from scratch. Developed with the help of an AI assistant (Claude by Anthropic); the design decisions, verification against the game code and in-game testing are the author's.