Thanks to a simple Valheim mod, players can create fully customizable ships of any shape and size, taming the game’s oceans in style. This is a great way to improve Valheim’s experience, but it's far from the first mod to introduce new features to the indie survival game.
As an Early Access title, Valheim still lacks many of its planned features, some of which can be only partially experienced in the game right now. There are currently three unfinished biomes, two of which, Ashlands and Deep North, have been addressed and improved by player-developed mods. The mod called Forgotten Biomes adds minable ores, new environmental decorations, and randomly generated points of interest to the aforementioned areas. The second mod, Monsternomicon, introduces several new hostile mobs and a mini-boss to the Ashlands biome.
Inspired by the popular survival game Raft, the recent Valheim mod adds customizable ships to the game, allowing players to build floating constructions of any desired shape and size. Available on NexusMods (via Eurogamer), the mod is straightforwardly called ValheimRAFT. As the name suggests, it adds a new type of customizable raft that is basically a flat platform with building tiles. The simple idea is to place various assets and designs on top of it, giving every player-made boat a unique look. To make the structures appear like actual ships, the mod adds a handful of useful naval accessories including sails from vanilla boats as buildable objects. Basically, Vikings can make themselves properly floating houses, taking their homes wherever they go.
According to the author, players can attach however many building assets to their custom Valheim ships as they desire. It makes one wonder if gigantic projects like the recent Bismarck battleship replica can be turned into interactive means of transportation with the help of the mod. The legendary German WW2 battleship was meticulously remade in Valheim by a naval history fan. The build was executed in stunning detail, brilliantly capturing the massive scale of the original war vessel. Obviously, it couldn’t move, but the addition of mods like ValheimRAFT might solve this slight inconvenience.
Although in its current iteration, the ValheimRAFT mod is quite simple, its very existence is proof that Valheim players will soon be able to create incredible interactive builds. While the game’s building mechanics have seemingly been tamed by the community, the time has come to push the boundaries further. With the help of elaborate mods, proper movable vessels and even aircraft might become possible, greatly enriching Valheim’s experience.
Valheim is available on PC.