Tootsalot's Valhalla Overhaul
A 76-mod 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. All gameplay configs are server-synced so the host's settings apply to all connected players.
What This Pack Does
Expanded Skill System — 16 new and reworked skills via the Smoothbrain suite (Vitality, Tenacity, Evasion, PackHorse, Cooking, Farming, Foraging, Ranching, Mining, Lumberjacking, Building, Blacksmithing, Exploration, Sailing, Backpacks, Endurance). SmartSkills ties them together with catch-up mechanics and death recovery. TargetPortal lets you teleport to any portal by name instead of needing matched tags.
Server Characters — ServerCharacters stores character saves server-side, preventing item duplication, gear transfers between servers, and providing automatic backups. Includes AFK kick timer, maintenance mode, and Discord webhook support.
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.
Archery & Combat — BowsBeforeHoes overhauls bow mechanics with quiver support, arrow recovery, and improved aiming. SaveCrossbowState remembers your crossbow's loaded state when swapping weapons. ReliableBlock fixes vanilla's inconsistent parry/block behavior so blocks always register when you have stamina. WieldEquipmentWhileSwimming lets you keep your gear out in the water.
New Creatures & Raids — Monstrum and MonstrumDeepNorth populate the world with new enemies and tameable wildlife including bears (with bear steak, jerky, saddles, rugs, and trophies) and foxes. Custom Raids with Monstrum and Wizardry raid packs add event variety throughout progression.
Expanded World — More World Locations adds dozens of new points of interest across all biomes including shrines, waystones, taverns, blacksmiths, material vendors, and skill trainers. RtDBiomes and RtDOcean rework biome generation. Foglands tweaks the Foglands biome.
Swimming & Diving — VikingsDoSwim adds underwater diving, swim speed scaling by skill level, and configurable stamina mechanics for a complete aquatic experience.
Cooking & Food — CookingAdditions adds 23 new foods, tomatoes, chili peppers, salt deposits, new cooking stations (griller, curing rack, crusher), and a food preparation table. Pairs with Smoothbrain Cooking skill for enhanced food crafting progression.
Mounts & Animals — Magical Mounts adds 29 rideable creatures including horses, unicorns, pegasus (with flying), undead mounts, deer, and wolves. Comes with saddles, a summoning system, mount inventory, statues, and cosmic items. Majestic Chickens roam meadows at deer-like frequency. Wagon adds a pull cart for transport.
Ships — OdinShip adds new ship types and naval content for ocean exploration and travel.
Lighting — GammaOfNightLights makes nights meaningfully darker. CircletExtended turns the dverger circlet into an upgradeable helmet with configurable light properties, built-in demister at higher tiers, and the ability to stun enemies with overloaded light.
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. FineWoodPieces adds fine wood building options and harvestable reeds. GlassPieces adds glass windows, doors, and a glass collector. PlantEverything expands plantable items. CraftyBoxes lets you craft from nearby containers. Quick Stack handles inventory sorting.
Storage — Smoothbrain Backpacks adds a craftable backpack with a dedicated equipment slot, auto-fill, and upgrade progression. Balanced with weight reduction and slot caps.
Quality of Life — Extended inventory, speedy paths, recycling, multi-user chests, map pins, return scrolls, loading screen art, and more.
Server Sync
All gameplay-affecting configs use ServerSync with Lock Configuration = On. When playing multiplayer, the host/server's config values override client settings. This means you only need to configure the server and all players will use the same balance settings automatically. Client-only settings (keybinds, UI preferences, camera controls) remain local.
ServerCharacters enforces server-side character saves so players can't transfer items between servers or duplicate gear.
Balanced Config Changes
All configs have been hand-tuned from their defaults.
Standardized Death Penalties
All skills lose 2-3% on death. Gathering skills lose 2%, combat and utility skills lose 3%. Swimming is exempt.
Toned-Down Scaling
- Resource yield multipliers (mining, farming, lumberjacking, foraging): 2x → 1.75x
- Mining/lumberjacking damage multipliers: 3x → 2.5x
- 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 for co-op)
- Exploration treasure multiplication: skill 50 → 60
- Cooking skill interval: 5 → 10 (prevents food inventory bloat)
SmartSkills Tuning
- Skill recovery bonus: 100% → 75%
- Weapon catch-up bonus: 50% → 30%
- Sneak bonus damage: 50% → 35%
Backpack Balancing (Smoothbrain Backpacks)
- Slot rows: 3,3,4,4,4 → 3,3,3,4,4 (slower early scaling)
- Slot columns: 5,6,5,6,7 → 4,5,5,5,6 (cap at 24 slots instead of 28)
- Item weight inside backpack: 100% → 75%
Creature Spawn Balancing
Majestic Chickens — Tuned to deer-like frequency:
- Spawn chance: → 50% | Max per area: → 3 | Group size: → 1-2 | Interval: 600s
- Rare variants remain at 1%
Bears — Handled entirely by Monstrum with their full content chain (steaks, jerky, saddles, rugs, trophies).
Horses & Mounts — Handled entirely by Magical Mounts with 29 rideable creatures, saddles, summoning system, and flying mechanics. Wild attacks stripped via Remove Wild Attacks = All.
Mount Stamina
All mounts drain stamina when jumping and attacking.
Portal System (TargetPortal)
- Portal name length: 10 → 25 | Default mode: Private → Public
Container & Crafting Range
- CraftyBoxes range: 20m → 15m
- PetPantry feed cooldown: 10s → 30s
- Basement max nesting: 5 → 3
Recycling
- Recycle return rate: 100% → 50%
QoL Buffs
- LazyVikings automation radius: 5m → 8m
- LazyVikings kiln threshold: 0 → 100
- Mining explosion chance: 1% → 3%
- Cooking bonus craft chance: 0% → 15%
- Farming random rotation: Off → On
Biome Identity
- SpeedyPaths stone/marble/iron speed: 1.4x → 1.3x
- Swamp: 0.9x speed, 1.15x stamina drain
- Mistlands: 0.95x speed, 1.1x stamina drain
Load Order
Mods are ordered in the manifest by boot priority. Key ordering rules:
- BepInEx → Jotunn → YamlDotNet → JsonDotNET load first as frameworks/libraries
- UI and inventory mods load before content mods
- Vitality loads immediately before VitalityFix
- All Smoothbrain skills load before SmartSkills
- Smoothbrain Backpacks, TargetPortal, and ServerCharacters load after SmartSkills
- Therzie Warfare before WarfareFireAndIce, Monstrum before MonstrumDeepNorth
- Custom_Raids before raid content packs
- More World Locations loads before RtDBiomes (POIs register before biome gen)
- RtDBiomes before RtDOcean
- MajesticChickens before MagicalMounts
- CookingAdditions loads near Endurance (both by blacks7ar)
- BowsBeforeHoes before SaveCrossbowState
- VikingsDoSwim near WieldEquipmentWhileSwimming (same author)
- CircletExtended before GammaOfNightLights
- Building mods load together (OdinPlus + blacks7ar pieces)
- PlantEverything loads late (modifies many prefabs)
- Intermission before OfficialArtLoadingScreens
Installation
- Install r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager
- Create a new Valheim profile
- Import the modpack or install mods in the order listed in
manifest.json
- Extract
config.zip into your profile's BepInEx/ folder, overwriting existing configs
- Launch the game through the mod manager
- For servers: Install the same mods and extract
config.zip on the server. All ServerSync configs will push to clients automatically. ServerCharacters will begin storing character saves server-side on first login.
Known Conflicts & Notes
SmarterContainers vs AzuCraftyBoxes vs Quick_Stack — All three touch container interactions. If you get double-deposits, disable SmarterContainers first.
Smoothbrain Cooking + CookingAdditions — Complementary. Smoothbrain Cooking handles skill-based food scaling; CookingAdditions adds new items and stations.
Farming (Smoothbrain) vs PlantEverything — They coexist but check PlantEverything's grid settings if spacing looks off.
BowsBeforeHoes + Warfare — Both add ranged content. If you see duplicate quiver slots, check BowsBeforeHoes' quiver settings.
VikingsDoSwim + WieldEquipmentWhileSwimming — Both by blacks7ar, designed to coexist.
CircletExtended + GammaOfNightLights — Companion mods by shudnal. Load CircletExtended first.
More World Locations + RtDBiomes — Both modify world generation. They're compatible but require a new world to see the full effect of both.
ServerCharacters — Stores characters server-side. Players cannot use local characters on the server. Backups are kept automatically (25 by default).
PackHorse + Smoothbrain Backpacks — Both increase carry capacity. Backpack weight is 75% specifically to account for PackHorse stacking.
Config Regeneration Note — Some configs get regenerated to defaults when the game boots with new mod versions. Always re-extract the config.zip after updating mods.
Changelog
v1.3.2
- Removed CookieMilk WildBears (redundant with Monstrum bears which provide drops, food, saddles, rugs, trophies)
- Removed CookieMilk WildHorses (redundant with Magical Mounts which provides horses plus unicorns, pegasus, wolves, deer, undead mounts, saddles, summoning, and flying)
- Removed FactionAssigner (no longer needed without standalone animal mods)
- Bears now handled entirely by Monstrum, horses/mounts handled entirely by Magical Mounts
v1.3.1
- Added FactionAssigner to override wild horse factions to AnimalsVeg
v1.3.0
- Added More World Locations AIO, ServerCharacters, JsonDotNET
- Removed RichDiscordPresence
- Cleaned orphaned configs
v1.2.1
- Chickens rebalanced to deer-like spawn frequency
- Bears and horses made rarer
v1.2.0
- Added BowsBeforeHoes, SaveCrossbowState, ReliableBlock, VikingsDoSwim, TargetPortal, CircletExtended, GammaOfNightLights
- Added Smoothbrain Backpacks, CookingAdditions, FineWoodPieces, GlassPieces
- Removed BetterArchery, UnderTheSea, Adventure Backpacks, LongshipUpgrades
- Full config rebalance audit
v1.1.0
- Added WieldEquipmentWhileSwimming, OdinArchitect, OdinTrainingPlace, OdinBanners, OdinCampsite, OdinShip
v1.0.0
- Initial release with 61 mods and full Smoothbrain skill balancing
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, JewelHeim, ASharpPen, Soloredis, shudnal, MSchmoecker, Goldenrevolver, Roses, Nextek, OdinPlus, VitByr, Marlthon, KGvalheim, TheOllix, ComfyMods, baxhax, JereKuusela, do_the_dew, Korppis, warpalicious, and the Valheim modding community.
