ValheimCommunityPatch

Valheim Community Patch

Vanilla bug fixes and performance fixes. No gameplay changes.

This mod exists to fix things that are broken or pathologically slow in Valheim itself — crashes, exceptions that silently kill a system, item loss, quadratic hot paths, per-frame allocations, log spam. It deliberately ships no quality-of-life features, no balance changes, and no content, so you can install it on a server without anyone having to agree about how the game should play.

Performance fixes are always on; the config holds only their tuning values and the admin-only Verify diagnostics. Correctness and terrain fixes each have their own toggle, on by default apart from Repair Saved Rotations. Server memory fixes are the exception: they are off by default and opt-in, see Server memory. The dedicated-server garbage collector settings moved to a separate plugin, see Server garbage collector. Config values are admin-only and server-synced.

Each fix is tagged with the side it is worth installing on. (server) fixes only do something on the machine hosting the world — a dedicated server or a listen host. (client) fixes need a local player, and are not even applied on a dedicated server, which is why the startup log there reports a smaller number. (both) fixes do work wherever they are installed. A one-sided install is safe; it just gets you a subset. See Installation.

Why so many fixes are client-side

A Valheim dedicated server is not a simulation host. It only creates game objects inside its own active area, and a dedicated server never has a player to anchor that area to, so the game parks it far outside the world for the whole run. Creatures, fires, chests, tar pits and everything else near a player are created, owned and simulated on that player's client; the server holds the data and relays it.

So the fixes a server gains from are the data-and-network ones — ZDO handling, world load, packet allocation, socket logging — and almost everything else is worth having on the client.

Performance Side by Side

Terrain Fix comparison

Terrain Tears — Terrain Fixed

Shore Shade Tears — Shore Shade Fixed

Shore tears are much more subtle as it is a shading issue. On the right side of the first image directly above the head you can see the shading issue.

Fixes in this release

Where a fix was sourced from, or corroborated against, another modder's work, that is recorded per fix under Credit and sources.

Performance

• Fix Portal Connection Scan (server) — pairs portals through a tag index instead of rescanning

every portal for each unconnected one every five seconds.

• Fix World Load Connection Scan (server) — indexes the world-load pairing of portals, spawners

and sync transforms with their targets instead of comparing every pair.

• Fix Disconnect ZDO Sweep (server) — indexes non-persistent objects by owner, so a disconnect

sweeps only the departing player's objects instead of every ZDO in the world.

• Fix Tar Pit Buffer Disposal (client) — disposes tar pit raycast buffers only when they were

allocated, so a tar pit whose load failed cannot throw out of scene teardown.

• Fix ZDO Packet Allocation (both) — writes one network package into another straight from its

buffer instead of copying the whole payload onto the heap first.

• Fix Mist Query Overhead (client) — answers mist volume queries from a zone-bucketed snapshot

and heightmap data instead of scanning every mist volume with native reads and physics rays per particle.

• Fix Heightmap Lookup Scan (both) — finds the terrain tile under a point with a zone-keyed

lookup instead of scanning every loaded tile.

• Fix Static Object Ground Checks (both) — reads a tree or rock's position once per ground check

instead of about six times.

• Fix Grass Rebuild Burst (client) — spreads a whole-area grass rebuild over a few frames,

nearest patches first, instead of regenerating every patch in one frame.

• Fix Terrain Builder Throughput (both) — makes the terrain build thread sleep only when idle

and hold more finished results.

• Fix Zone Collider Stall (client) — bakes the terrain collider of an already-generated zone on

a background thread instead of the main thread.

• Fix Prefab Query Scan (both) — answers "every object of this prefab" from an index instead of

scanning every ZDO in the world.

• Fix Grass Ground Raycasts (client) — reads the ground height, slope and biome for grass

placement from terrain data instead of casting a physics ray per blade.

• Fix Background Zone Pacing (server) — defers background zone pre-generation by a tick when the

previous frame ran long or the last generation was expensive (both configurable).

• Fix Water Material Lookup (client) — caches each water tile's surface material instead of

fetching it from the engine every frame, and picks up a material another mod swaps in (Seasonality's frozen water) within half a second, set up with the tile's depth and wind as a reload would.

• Fix Distant Terrain Hitch (client) — rebuilds the far-terrain ring a few tiles per frame

(configurable; 9 is vanilla) instead of all nine at once.

• Fix Idle Scene Sweep (both) — skips the 30 Hz