Tides
Bring Valheim's oceans to life with realistic tides.Tides
Bring Valheim's oceans to life with realistic tides.
Adds a tidal system to Valheim. The sea rises and falls nearly twice per day, transforming shorelines and introducing new gameplay opportunities and challenges for exploration, sailing, building and survival.
Features
- Simulation of periodic tidal cycle based on a real-world frequency.
- Nearly two high tides and two low tides per day, with a full cycle lasting approximately 12 hours and 25 minutes of Valheim daytime.
- As in real life, the tides shift slightly each day, creating a dynamic and ever-changing environment.
- Naturally emerging gameplay opportunities, such as building ports and docks, deciding when to sail rivers, where to leave boats, and how to traverse swamps.
- Swamp movement system restores vanilla movement behavior and balancing during low tide.
- Fully multiplayer compatible, with tides synchronized across all clients.
- Easily added or removed from existing worlds, no need to start a new game.
- Patch 1.1 - Added tide interaction for water lilies and cattails, bringing more life and natural variation to shorelines, creeks, and waterways.
- Patch 1.2 - Added server-synchronized configuration options with support for both manual editing and in-game configuration through Configuration Manager.
Screenshots
Gameplay
Sailing & Exploration
Landing on an unfamiliar shore now requires planning.
A beach that is deep enough to dock at high tide may become dry land by the time you want to leave, leaving your ship stranded until the water returns.
Likewise, shallow rivers or narrow channels may only be safely navigable during favorable tides, encouraging players to plan voyages around the changing sea level.
Building
Waterfront settlements become more interesting to design.
Ports, docks and boathouses should be built with changing water levels in mind. A harbor that works perfectly at high tide may become unusable at low tide with insufficient depth.
Swamps
Swamps are the biome affected the most. This creates two distinct gameplay experiences depending on the time of the tidal cycle.
High tide floods the swamp, making traversal on foot challenging, but - this also opens up a new and exciting opportunity for brave vikings to try and navigate the swamp by raft or boat.
Low tide exposes more terrain, which on its own would trivialize the swamp, but the ground that is frequently submerged in water is peaty and muddy, making movement through swamps just like in the vanilla game.
Installation
Install with your preferred mod manager or manually place the mod into your BepInEx/plugins folder.
Configuration
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Configuration settings can be changed either in-game using Official BepInEx ConfigurationManager (press F1) or manually by editing BepInEx/config/com.naexn.Tides.cfg.
| Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Tide Amplitude | 1.4 |
Maximum tide height in meters. |
| Base Ocean Level | 30.0 |
Average ocean water level. Increasing or decreasing this affects the overall sea level. |
| Tide Speed Multiplier | 1.0 |
Controls how quickly the tide cycle progresses. Values above 1.0 make tides change faster, while values below 1.0 slow them down. |
- Multiplayer: These settings are synchronized from the server to all connected clients (even during runtime). Client-side values are ignored while connected to a multiplayer server.
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Good to know: Setting low tide below 28.6m (1.4m from 30m base) has some gameplay balance consequences. (spoiler)
(leeches in swamps, dried out rivers, etc.)
Compatibility
Tides should be compatible with any mod that doesn't directly modify ocean water levels and even with mods that modify ocean waves.
If you encounter any issue, let me know!
Changelog
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- v1.2.1 - Added full distant water LOD support; distant ocean surfaces now follow tide levels.
- v1.2.0 - Added synchronized multiplayer configuration and configurable tide settings.
- v1.1.0 - Added dynamic shoreline vegetation support, including tide-responsive water lilies and cattails.
Contact, Feedback & Support
For bug reports, feature requests, and general feedback, the easiest way to reach me is through the mod page on Nexus Mods.
If you enjoy my work and would like to support future updates, you can do so with donate option or here:
