Tootsalot's Valhalla Overhaul
A 67-mod (67)(67)(67) Valheim overhaul focused on expanded progression, new content, and quality of life — with hand-tuned configs for balanced gameplay that rewards skill investment without trivializing the experience.
What This Pack Does
Expanded Skill System — 15 new and reworked skills via the Smoothbrain suite (Vitality, Tenacity, Evasion, PackHorse, Cooking, Farming, Foraging, Ranching, Mining, Lumberjacking, Building, Blacksmithing, Exploration, Sailing, Endurance). SmartSkills ties them together with catch-up mechanics and death recovery.
New Weapons & Armor — The full Therzie suite (Warfare, Armory, Wizardry, WarfareFireAndIce) adds hundreds of new craftable weapons, shields, armor sets, and a magic system with crossbows, throwing axes, war pikes, bastard swords, and more across every tier from flint to flametal.
Improved Archery & Combat — BetterArchery overhauls bow mechanics with quiver support and improved aiming. WieldEquipmentWhileSwimming lets you keep your gear out in the water instead of being defenseless.
New Creatures & Raids — Monstrum and MonstrumDeepNorth populate the world with new enemies. Custom Raids with Monstrum and Wizardry raid packs add event variety throughout progression.
Expanded World — RtDBiomes and RtDOcean rework biome generation. UnderTheSea adds underwater content. Foglands tweaks the Foglands biome.
Mounts & Animals — Wild Bears, Wild Horses, Majestic Chickens, Magical Mounts, and Wagon add tameable animals and mounted combat/travel.
Ships — OdinShip adds new ship types and naval content for ocean exploration and travel.
Base Building & Automation — LazyVikings automates smelters, kilns, cooking stations, and more. Basements adds underground building. OdinArchitect expands building pieces. OdinBanners adds decorative banners. OdinCampsite adds portable camp structures. OdinTrainingPlace adds skill training dummies. PlantEverything expands plantable items. CraftyBoxes lets you craft from nearby containers. Quick Stack handles inventory sorting.
Quality of Life — Extended inventory, backpacks, speedy paths, recycling, multi-user chests, map pins, return scrolls, loading screen art, and more.
Balanced Config Changes
All configs have been tuned from their defaults. The philosophy:
Standardized Death Penalties
All skills now lose 2-3% on death instead of the inconsistent mix of 0% and 5% from defaults. Gathering skills lose 2%, utility and combat skills lose 3%.
Toned-Down Scaling
- Resource yield multipliers (mining, farming, lumberjacking, foraging): 2x → 1.75x
- Cooking food bonuses (health, stamina): 1.3x → 1.2x
- Cooking eitr bonus: 1.3x → 1.15x
- Vitality base HP multiplier: 2x → 1.5x
- Endurance max stamina bonus: 75 → 50
- Endurance stamina regen: 10 → 7
- Exploration movement speed: 15% → 10%
- Sailing exploration radius: 5x → 3x
- Sailing ship HP: 2x → 1.5x
Progression Gates Adjusted
- Blacksmithing extra upgrade level: skill 80 → 90
- Building free materials: skill 50 → 70
- Farming ignore biome: skill 50 → 65
- Exploration cartography read: skill 40 → 25 (lowered to encourage co-op)
SmartSkills Tuning
- Skill recovery bonus: 100% → 75%
- Weapon catch-up bonus: 50% → 30%
- Sneak bonus damage: 50% → 35%
Creature Spawn Balancing
Bears and chickens were spawning way too frequently at defaults, flooding biomes with tamed animal candidates and cluttering the world.
Wild Bears — Spawn chances reduced across all biomes and intervals increased from 600s to 1200s:
- Panda (Meadows): 20% → 5%
- Black Bear (Meadows): 100% → 10%
- Brown Bear (Black Forest): 100% → 15%
- Grizzly (Plains): 100% → 15%
- Spirit Bear (Mistlands): 100% → 15%
- Polar Bear (Deep North): 100% → 20%
Majestic Chickens — Spawn chance reduced from 8% → 3%, intervals increased from 900s → 1500s, group size capped to 1, and max creature count set to 1 per area. Rare variants (1% chance) left untouched.
Wild Horses — Spawn chance reduced from 100% → 8%, max per area from 3 → 1, and intervals from 600s → 1200s. Horses should feel like a rare find.
Mount Stamina
All mounts (bears, horses, magical mounts) now drain stamina when jumping and attacking. Previously both were free, making mounted combat have zero resource cost.
Recycling
- Recycle return rate: 80% → 50% (0.8 was nearly lossless, removing any commitment to crafting decisions)
QoL Buffs
- LazyVikings automation radius: 5m → 8m (covers typical rooms)
- LazyVikings kiln product threshold: 0 → 100 (prevents infinite coal)
- Mining explosion chance: 1% → 3% (actually noticeable now)
- Cooking bonus craft chance: 0% → 15% (rewards the skill)
- Farming random rotation: Off → On (looks more natural)
Biome Identity
- SpeedyPaths stone/marble/iron structure speed: 1.4x → 1.3x
- Swamp movement speed: 1.0x → 0.9x (swamp should feel hostile)
- Swamp stamina drain: 1.0x → 1.15x
Load Order
Mods are ordered in the manifest by boot priority. Key ordering rules:
- BepInEx → Jotunn → YamlDotNet load first as frameworks
- UI and inventory mods load before content mods that add items
- Vitality loads immediately before VitalityFix (the fix patches Vitality bugs)
- All Smoothbrain skills load before SmartSkills (SmartSkills references them)
- Therzie Warfare loads before WarfareFireAndIce (dependency)
- Therzie Monstrum loads before MonstrumDeepNorth (dependency)
- Custom_Raids loads before Monstrum_Raids and Wizardry_Raids (framework before content)
- RtDBiomes loads before RtDOcean (biomes before ocean generation)
- Animal mods load before MagicalMounts (animals before mount system)
- OdinPlus building mods load together after automation and before visual mods
- PlantEverything loads late (modifies many prefabs, should run after most content is registered)
- Intermission loads before OfficialArtLoadingScreens (framework before content)
Known Conflicts & Notes
SmarterContainers vs AzuCraftyBoxes vs Quick_Stack — All three touch container interactions. If you get double-deposits or pull issues, disable SmarterContainers first since the other two cover most of the same functionality.
Farming (Smoothbrain) vs PlantEverything — Both modify plant behavior. Farming handles yield/growth speed, PlantEverything handles grid spacing and decorative planting. They coexist, but check PlantEverything's grid settings if spacing looks off.
Adventure Backpacks + Extended Player Inventory — Extended Player Inventory must load before Adventure Backpacks so equipment slots register before backpack slots are added. The load order handles this.
BetterArchery + Warfare — Both add ranged weapon content. BetterArchery modifies bow mechanics while Warfare adds new bow/crossbow items. They work together but if you see duplicate quiver slots or odd bow behavior, check BetterArchery's quiver settings first.
Usage & Sharing
This modpack and all its configs are public on purpose. I want people to have access to a balanced, well-ordered Valheim setup without having to spend hours tweaking everything themselves. Feel free to use, modify, or build on any of the configs and load order here. All I ask is that you credit Tootsalot as the original source if you redistribute or reference the configs in your own pack.
Credits
Built with mods by Azumatt, Smoothbrain, Therzie, CookieMilk, blacks7ar, Advize, Vapok, JewelHeim, ASharpPen, Soloredis, Jacobo, shudnal, MSchmoecker, Goldenrevolver, Roses, Nextek, OdinPlus, VitByr, Marlthon, KGvalheim, TheOllix, ComfyMods, baxhax, JereKuusela, do_the_dew, ishid4, and the Valheim modding community.
