Valheim took the gaming world by storm when it was released in Steam Early Access back in 2021, and slowly but certainly, the developer Iron Gate Studio has been building it up to its inevitable 1.0 release. That didn’t stop people from making some really great mods, though.
So, if you jumped back into Valheim‘s Ashlands update but want to spice things up a tad bit more, you’re at just the right place. We’ve assembled a shortlist of community mods that are essentially must-haves if enjoy the idea of modding Valheim: from huge quality-of-life improvements to all-new features you likely never saw coming, there’s a whole heaping spoonful of goodness to be found here, and all you need to do is to scroll on ahead.
The best mods for Valheim in 2024
As Valheim doesn’t have an official modding system in place, unlike games such as Fallout 4, the vast majority of the game’s mods rely on third-party tools and external modding kits. This means, in practice, that it can be somewhat challenging to get some of these mods up and running in your copy of the game. Even more so, if you keep a dedicated server running at all times. Be sure to carefully read each mod’s own specific installation procedure before attempting to complete the process, as that reduces the odds of something going the way of the dodo along the way.
#10: Hip Lantern
Why not kick things off with a delightful little quality-of-life upgrade? Enter the Hip Lantern mod: a simple and fairly obvious-in-hindsight addition that lets your Valheim avatar equip a belt lantern to illuminate their immediate surroundings. Every aspect of the lantern itself is configurable, too, from its crafting recipe to the color of its light, allowing you to make it incredibly useful or just really neat to look at, depending on what you want.
#9: First Person View
This one’s not particularly useful, but it sure as heck can be totally transformative if that’s what you’re after. The First Person View mod for Valheim does precisely what it says on the tin: allows you to zoom in all the way into an FPS perspective that’s quite similar to what you get in other genre examples, such as Sons of the Forest. Another BepInEx mod, FPV, is tweakable through and through, and you should have no trouble finding the setting sweet spot with a bit of elbow grease.
#8: Plant Easily
Plant Easily is a delightfully simple and simply delightful mod in that it allows you to plant evenly spaced crops. This is either entirely irrelevant to you, or exceedingly important. If it’s the latter, then Plant Easily is a must-have no matter what. This mod integrates very well with a few other mods on this list, too, so even if you’re not keen on it right off the bat, we recommend giving it a second thought after you’ve caught up with the rest of our shortlist.
#7: Clock
As simple as it gets, this one. Clock by Aedenthorn is a fully configurable in-game widget that tells the time in your Valheim world. That’s it: that’s all it does. However, the value of knowing the time in a world as dangerous at nighttime as Valheim is immense, and you’re bound to find need for this mod sooner or later. So, why wouldn’t you get it into your game sooner, then?
#6: TorchesEternal
This one borders on being a slight cheat, but it’s a huge QoL improvement so we’ve let it slide: TorchesEternal by BillWerth2 automatically keeps your fireplaces and torches topped up with wood and resin, respectively, to keep them burning – you’ve guessed it – eternally. It’s not a game-breaking cheat, though, as it simply does away with some of the minutiae of base maintenance, so most players are going to find it a hoot in the long run.
#5: Craft Build Smelt Cook Fuel Pull From Containers
The long-winded title of this mod tells you basically all you need to know about it: instead of having to manually pull items from containers to do stuff with them, this mod lets you use them directly from their containers. The usefulness of this feature cannot be overstated. Better yet, it comes with a dedicated BepInEx configurator that allows you to tweak its behaviour until it feels just right for your use case. What more could you possibly ask for?
#4: MassFarming
Not overly fond of clicking 568 times just to collect two sticks and a shrub’s worth of grass? Fret not! The MassFarming mod is here to help. It’s a delightfully simple mod, too: by holding the designated hotkey (Left Shift/Left Bumper by default), your Valheim avatar will pick up any and all pick-uppable items within a given radius. Further, when planting crops, the hotkey will allow you to simultaneously plop down multiple crops in one go. The default designated size of the planting grid is 5×5, but this can be changed via the integrated BepInEx menu.
#3: Plant Everything
Continuing with the farming vibe, Advize’s Plant Everything mod is an extremely useful tool that sensibly expands upon the base game’s farming systems in every possible way. Its function is in the title, of course: with this mod, you can plant virtually any of Valheim‘s flora wherever you see fit, allowing you to cultivate berry bushes, mushrooms, trees, and heaps more: whether for decorative or utilitarian purposes. Combine with Plant Easily and MassFarming for an optimum Valheim farming experience!
#2: Equipment and Quick Slots
Inventory space comes at a premium in Valheim, and the odds are good that you’ve been annoyed, time and again, with how the game handles its armor. The Equipment and Quick Slots mod is a foil to this issue, as it gives you dedicated slots for all five armor pieces and up to three bonus quick access slots. This sounds simple to the point of being unnecessary, but in practice, it’s almost transformative in how you explore and deal with threats in Valheim. To that end, it’s a must-have.
#1: BetterUI (ForeverMaintained)
Choosing the “best” mod for a given game is always tricky business, but it wasn’t that big of a deal this time around. Basically, very few of Valheim‘s mods are quite as ubiquitous as BetterUI in how useful and transformative they are in moment-to-moment gameplay. Of course, BetterUI doesn’t change how the game plays: it’s just far more informative, useful, and pretty to look at than the base Valheim UI. This is one of those mods you’ll find the game hard to play without in the end. Note that you’ll want to grab the “ForeverMaintain” version of BetterUI via the ThunderStore, specifically (just use the link featured above), as the Nexus version is woefully out of date, having been abandoned a while back.
