ValheimServerGuide

ValheimServerGuide

Turn your Valheim server into a guided experience. Write a YAML file on your server and players receive quest objectives, NPC dialogues, lore popups, and rewards — triggered automatically as they play, using only Valheim's own UI.

No custom assets. No custom UI skins. Just your words, delivered through Hugin, the chat, and dramatic cinematic screens.

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What it does

Guides players through your content. When a player crafts their first weapon, enters a dangerous biome, discovers the trader, or kills a boss — show them a message. Give them a quest. Give them a reward.

Runs entirely from the server. You write one YAML file. Every player connected to your server receives it automatically. Update it and save — all players get the new version instantly without restarting.

Uses vanilla Valheim UI. Messages appear as Hugin (the raven) popups, system toasts, chat lines, rune-tablet screens, or the dramatic intro cinematic style. Nothing looks out of place.

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Quick setup

1. Install this mod on your server (and on every player's game via r2modman).
2. Start the server. It creates BepInEx/config/ValheimServerGuide/guidance.yaml automatically.
3. Edit that file to add your guidance entries. You can split guidance across as many *.yaml / *.yml files as you like — including in nested subfolders — and they are all merged.
4. Save. All players receive the update without a restart.

The mod works in single-player and host & play as well — the host acts as the server.

Your server also keeps each character's quest progress in BepInEx/config/ValheimServerGuide/PlayerProgress/, one file per character. Include that folder in your backups — it is your players' quest progress, not config you can regenerate.

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What you can create

Triggered messages — Show a Hugin raven popup, a toast, or a dramatic full-screen text when a player does something specific:

• Crafts an item for the first time
• Enters a biome
• Kills a creature
• Reaches a skill milestone
• Discovers the trader
• Opens a chest
• And many more...

Multi-step quests — Chain triggers into a quest with steps. "Gather 10 wood → craft a workbench → build a wall." Each step has its own trigger. Players pin the quests they care about from the in-game Codex (the Quests button on the inventory screen, or F3 → Pin to Tracker) and follow their progress on a draggable on-screen panel (F10). The Codex list scrolls, and finished guides can be hidden to keep it short.

NPC conversations — Shift + E on Haldor, Hildir, or BogWitch to open a dialogue panel. Give them choices. Fire quests. Grant rewards.

Item turn-ins — Have players bring a specific item to a trader NPC to complete a quest step.

Rewards — Grant items, skill experience, or status-effect buffs when an entry or quest completes.

World events — Mark an entry as scope: global and the first player to trigger it fires the display for every connected player simultaneously. Perfect for boss kills and world milestones.

Discord announcements — Post to a Discord channel when something happens (server-side only; your webhook URL is never exposed to players).

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Example

A raven popup when a player crafts their first bronze sword:

- id: first_bronze_sword
  trigger:
    type: craft
    item: SwordBronze
  display:
    mode: raven
    topic: "Bronze Edge"
    text: "Forged in fire, this blade cleaves the Black Forest's beasts."
  once: true

A world event when the first boss falls:

- id: world_eikthyr_fell
  scope: global
  trigger:
    type: kill
    creature: Eikthyr
  display:
    mode: intro
    topic: "The Stag-King Falls"
    text: "Eikthyr is slain. The realm trembles. Your trial begins, traveler."
  once: true
  announce:
    discord: "⚔️ **{playerName}** has slain **Eikthyr** — the first boss has fallen!"

Text tokens such as {playerName} (or {player_name} — the two are aliases), {creatureName}, {itemName}, and {biome} are substituted when the entry fires.

_New in 0.16.1:_ guidance now reaches your players no matter how big your config gets. The server used to send the whole config as one network message, and Steam refuses any message over 512 KiB — so once a config crossed that line (197 entries was enough) it was rejected and retried every frame, forever. Players got no guidance at all, the server console filled with send errors, and because everything else to that player queued behind the stuck message, the game appeared to pause whenever anyone opened a chest or a crafting station. The config is now compressed and sent in chunks. Update your server and your players together for this one — older clients cannot read the new format. Also: entries are indexed by trigger type, so an interaction only checks the quests that could actually match it instead of all of them.

_New in 0.16.0:_ Valheim 1.0 (Unity 6) support. This release and everything after it require Valheim 1.0 and cannot run against an older game — update your dedicated server before your players. Reward granting was corrected for a changed game function that would otherwise have flagged earned rewards as cheated, and the BepInEx/Jötunn dependency pins were moved to their Unity 6 builds.