ValheimPerformanceOverhaul

Valheim Performance Overhaul — 8.3.0

VPO adds configurable optimizations for large bases, world streaming, dungeon generation, rendering and distant creatures. It includes an in-game settings menu, optimization presets and a compatibility guard for overlapping mod patches.

Performance depends on the scene, hardware and other mods. This release does not promise a fixed FPS increase or the removal of every loading freeze. Rendering options can trade visual quality for performance.

Installation and controls

Install with dependencies through Gale, r2modman or Thunderstore Mod Manager. For manual installation, install denikson-BepInExPack_Valheim and copy BepInEx/plugins/ValheimPerformanceOverhaul.dll from the package into your Valheim installation.

When updating, remove older copies of VPO, including a manually installed ValheimEngineOptimizer.dll. Keep one VPO plugin DLL. Restart the game after replacing the DLL.

Control — Function

F6 — Open the built-in settings menu.

F7 — Toggle a batching anchor at the player's position.

F1 — Edit settings if a separate Configuration Manager is installed.

vpo_perf — Print optimization counters and GPU timing availability to the game console.

What's new in 8.3.0

• Sector Scene Cache: skips repeated full scene scans while sectors are unchanged. New objects, sector changes and pending loads keep the normal processing path; a periodic audit covers changes without known events.
• Structure Dependency Cache: reuses support results only while observed neighbors, collider geometry, transforms and ownership remain unchanged. Construction, destruction and terrain support invalidation reset the cache. The game's support formula remains in control.
• Dungeon collision broad phase: rejects clearly separated room boxes before the exact physics test. Room ordering and random seeds remain unchanged. Dungeon generation still runs synchronously and can still cause a loading hitch.
• Base renderer batching: batches eligible stationary building renderers in small spatial groups, while retaining their original objects, colliders, active states and individual material overrides. Moving, animated and interactive parts are excluded. A vertex budget limits additional geometry memory.
• Shadow budget: optionally limits shadow distance and the number of point-light shadows through the native lighting system. This reduces shadow quality; it does not turn on cold furnaces or their effects.
• GPU adaptive resolution: uses the native scaled framebuffer when valid GPU timings are available. The default internal scale is 75–100%, with slow adjustments and CPU-bound-frame protection. The UI stays at display resolution. If GPU timings are unavailable, the controller does not reduce resolution.

Fixes and changes

• Fixed incomplete Ukrainian configuration caused by apostrophes in translated BepInEx section names. Persisted identifiers are now English, while the F6 interface and descriptions remain localized. Legacy localized settings are migrated.
• Protected kilns, smelters, blast furnaces, cooking stations and fireplaces from generic particle/LOD optimization. Their production scripts retain control of active effects. Furnace lights are excluded from generic light culling.
• Added a targeted guard for water _MainTex_ST reads in MaterialFader and a readable-geometry fallback for NavMesh sources. Unsupported mesh formats or unavailable GPU readback retain the vanilla source and produce a diagnostic.
• Fixed the AI optimizer registry ID, generated LOD activation/transforms and LOD cache versioning.
• Removed the second ZDO sort that overwrote the game's per-peer ordering and forced-send priorities.
• Removed global interception of GC.Collect and Resources.UnloadUnusedAssets, global PhysX solver changes, and skipping of complete character physics or liquid-depth updates.
• Deferred vegetation spawning is disabled. The game completes zone generation atomically to avoid recording partially generated vegetation as finished. This release does not contain the old terrain RAM/LRU cache.

Presets and configuration

Preset — Intended behavior

Potato — Stronger quality/performance compromises for low-end systems.

Normal — Balanced optimizations, ordinary terrain distances, shadow limits and GPU adaptive resolution.

High — More visual detail; the new shadow cap and adaptive resolution are disabled by the preset.

Configuration: BepInEx/config/com.Skarif.ValheimPerformanceOverhaul_WATER.cfg.

The new options are in 11. Large Scene Optimizations. On the first upgrade, matching previous Normal defaults are migrated to the revised distances and frame-budget settings. Non-default numeric values and High are preserved. The previous config is backed up with the suffix .pre-8.1.0.bak; that suffix identifies the migration introduced during development.

Most switches apply during gameplay. Changes to already modified prefabs, generated LODs or completed static batches can require a world reload or game restart. Disabling a batching switch stops new batches; it does not rebuild existing ones immediately.

Other modules

VPO also includes configurable GPU upload settings, texture mip streaming, compatible-material instancing, camera caching, distant non-combat AI throttling, path-request limits, visual creature LOD, tamed-animal idle behavior, smoke/torch options, pooling for selected hit effects, minimap throttling and Steam send-rate settings.

The save module respects Valheim's existing background save implementation and preser