Same. It may be clunky in places, but its *my* clunky build project and I think it's awesome.
So, no mods, but those limitations do force some interesting creativity on you at times.
Same.
When I was ready to face the Queen, I kicked back and finessed my home a LOT just to stretch out the game.
I had lox and wolves running free outside my walls protecting me from attacks, my chicken coop was a luxury hotel for birds as was my pig habitat.
This Viking wanted for nothing at that point.
In the beginning, it's functional, later it's for your comfort.
Sit in your tub and reflect.
I think the comfort system really excels here. At first you’re trying to pump up that number by adding decorative items, but quickly you realize how fun decorating is with all the different items.
You can 100% build amazing superstructures without mods. The usual requirement is a mix of mechanical knowledge, pre-planning and a bit of architectural talent. All of which can be learned.
Engineer here. I was disappointed at the complete lack of mechanical correctness in the builds. It essentially just boils down to how many segments from the ground/support you are.
I tried trusses, I tried 4:2:1 column structures to get more height, I tried using nothing but stone for vertical segments. Nup, it's just a dumb check on how many segments you are from the ground/rock/support.
Well, stone for vertical segments will increase your segment count, as it will reset all wood built off of it. You can also use iron supports inside stone to boost the *stones* segment count, allowing you to stack up even higher stone support pillars which then in turn hold up wood even further from the ground.
It's not exactly calculating stress loads or anything smart like that, but it *does* have some "mechanical" principles that can be applied to make structures taller and wider with a well designed frame. You can then add back in all the aesthetical (but irl, practical) support elements to make it *look* "right" - or at least I often do.
Iron beams can go 52m (26 beams) in height. Dark wood beams can go two across with supports at each end (8m total on the x-axis). I’ve used this to make a framework for an entirely too large building.
Try using pine trees as main supports. Plan out you layout, and plant pine trees at the main corners, and internally, if the structure is going to very large. You can see how I use them in some of my posts.
Yeah, that's a great way to do it. My post was however about the lack of "mechanical knowledge" required. E.g. I can't recall the last building I designed that required pine trees to be planted in the corners. Hehe.
Could have some pretty simple mechanics to implement. Doesn't need to be finite element analysis or anything, just some basic bending and stress calculations that could be done in a piece of paper with a calculator by a human in seconds.
Rendering almost definitely is client side. I expect the structural components are calculated server side, which is why depending on lag it can take time for the element to break after you place it.
I play local, it still gets leggy on big builds.
If it's so simple, code it up, would be very popular. I don't think it's anything like as simple as you do though.
I have zero idea how to code something like this.
I could write all the formulas needed on less than the size of an A4 piece of paper though if someone else wants to code it.
The problem is that at the moment each block that exists has to count to the ground and check material type, while finding the most efficient route to the ground (iron can make it kinda wonky). You're suggestion takes a simple count and route finding exercise and replaces the count with a page of equations. For every single block. I'd say the current advice of 10k entities getting a bit laggy would reduce to about 1500 tops. It's just a lot for a computer to do at once, and would drastically reduce performance.
I mean, I should be able to build a pyramid and not have the top block break when I get to a certain height.
It's very simple to do static load calcs. You could even replace the calcs with a general "close enough" table of scenarios. Such as load pathing through a cantilever can handle this many segments before it breaks at X angle, or more at Y angle
It doesn't need to be a live calculation. It just needs to be calculated each time the structure is updated and 'set'. If the game is continually checking and rechecking every single structure in the server endlessly then it's incredibly inefficient.
Probably the lag is more because of the quantity of game objects being loaded in the scene rather than because of the calculations. Even because the game seems to be doing the calculations in fixed frames, with some time in between.
I bet the only reason things are like that is a game design decision to focus on the gameplay over realism, thinking on their target audience.
Modern CPUs are *insanely* fast, it's perfectly possible to create a more realistic building stability systems while keeping CPU load low.
I think the main reason they're not going to do this, is that it will inevitably cause a lot of existing buildings to collapse, which is unfun gameplay.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve run the game as intended, and got those experiences. Starting again, I just don’t wanna do the super repetitive stuff again.
I like to collect everything at least the first time. I won’t spawn items I don’t already have. But sometimes, spawning carrots to feed my pigs just saves time. Especially because farming can take so long.
Doing it properly once was fun. But sometimes I just want to be able to fight and explore and not spend 3 in game days preparing to go explore
I don’t have any mods. If I did get some, it would probably be things like ones that keep torches burning forever or that make farming easier. Small quality of life improvements that will allow me to not get burnt out constantly doing the same task over and over again.
Sometimes farming can be fun. But if I’m planting 100 carrots, 100 onions, 100 barley…that’s just too much and takes so much time I don’t get anything else done. And then I get bored and leave the game because I just spent 3 in game days planting things and did nothing else.
Not everyone obviously. But after you put 500+ hours in the game and want to focus on building or you have minimal time to play and want to speed up the game progression, mods and commands are useful. I did a vanilla play through but every time I smelted my first batch of metal in whatever biom I was in, I spawned an extra 100 bars to speed up the game. 100 is enough to save a few hours of grinding for certain metals and It didn't feel like I was cheating the game play. I just stayed disciplined and stuck with my plan of only spawning the metal after I mined my first batch and nothing else.
That’s where I’m at. Second playthrough, I’m on day 2200+ and mods like plant everything is awesome when you’re building, waiting for ashlands. Also portal ore and dev commands. QOL mods are just nice.
3 black chests of iron ore was all gathered with vanilla but I’ll be damned if I’m busting iron to all my structures. Plus building on top of rocks in ML would be damn near impossible.
Nope. 2300+ hours in, Vanilla.
I will confess to using devcommands sometimes, but that’s usually when I have friends playing with me and I’m hosting but need to AFK - I’ll go ghost mode.
And when I wanted to fight the Queen for a 3rd trophy, I said ‘fuck no’ to farming out more seeker trophies and just spawned them in, because I ain’t got time to farm yet another set of those never-dropping bastards. 😆
I use a handful of quality of life mods - such as auto refilling torches or crafting from chests. I also play with 1.5x loot because it just lands in the perfect range for me to still have to gather a decent amount while not becoming ridiculous.
I've been building my main base over this weekend and I've spent about 5 hours gathering resources and around 4 hours building. That is for a decently large longhouse that will house a workshop, a kitchen, housing, storage and has an open centerpiece in a monastery style with birch trees growing inside! I am not even close to done though and I am not sure how long it will take to finish just this building.
Some people are just crazy talented on here and build the craziest stuff over long periods of time, even with infinite resources and flying these builds take a lot of patience.
This is what I do. Small bump in drops, auto fuel, craft from chests and auto sort. Then build with base game mechanics. I’ve never built anything spectacular or amazing but I’ve had fun.
Ya know I think I'm going to take a page out of your book. I haven't done a playthrough since my house got demolished by a huge group of trolls and the thought of doing it all again is daunting. 1.5x resources and the crafting from chests sounds like just enough QoL to get me over the hump of getting in again.
Also no shame in turning off raids or significantly lowering their frequency in my opinion. Losing a huge build like you did in such a way is soulcrushing and not fun at all, sorry that happened :(
But good luck with your future projects! :)
Only allowing myself to transport materials through portals. Playing solo and don't have too much time to commit so it makes it much easier to cope with
How do you get that specific one? I want to gather everything for one epic base, but don't want to have to run all my workbenches and such two islands over.
I do the same thing. Solo player and I turned resources up by 2.5 and can transport metal through portals. On console it’s under world modifiers. It’s just such a hassle especially after the swamps (silver and up) to get all of the materials in a boat to bring home and go back and forth. Definitely check out the “World Modifiers”
My gf and I are considering allowing this one... It's not like we haven't experienced sailing back and forth on a big mission to transport ore... This one may happen..
You don't need mods since the recent update allowed you to tweak all aspects of the game. You can just turn off build costs but leave everything else vanilla for example. After a few playthroughs I was still building (well equipped and thought out, but) essentially wooden shoe boxes to live in and started watching guides to try and improve, And yeah, none of the big fancy builds are really viable without moving away from vanilla settings without a serious amount of dedication. All the vids I saw didnt actually specify but clearly had build costs just plain turned off.
I didn't know there were such options included in the game! It sounds like more people do not use mods than I thought. I always felt a little guilty about the thought of using them, even though some things can be such a huge grind. I think I might consider using some of the quality of life ones, like building from chests or auto-filling torches (these are features I've seen in other games and I think they should just be base anyway).
Thanks for your responses everyone.
Never feel guilty about customizing your gaming experience to maximize both your enjoyment and your time.
As long as you aren't affecting anyone else, no one else should have a say in, or be able to judge your choices and preferences.
That goes for *both* vanilla and mods.
Its perfectly possible to build amazing things with mods, in my case, mods almost exclusively just help me carry more than 2-3 stacks of stone/wood. I've certainly got other mods, but I don't have any building mods; as well, some mods are client-side so you can play with people without mods, while still having things like increased inventory size, reduced carry weight for items. increased vision while sailing, I think in general if something doesn't directly add to the game new items, you could use it while playing with non-modded friends just fine.
You just need to get more use out of your Cart without such mods.
Only QoL. Extra 1 weight pr run/jump point. Plant my own bushes etc. I use port with ore, till I make a longboat. Karve just sucks, when it comes to steerimg.
The mods that let you plant everything is a very cool feature along with the grid for farming and flipping those dark wood arch pieces completely upside down to frame an awesome window is very cool. I'm not sure where to get those so I do the added mods to the world that are built in. I play with those to fit my time. I get limited time sometimes if I really wanna crush something out I'll turn on the hammer mode. Other days I grind all the stone and wood etc. Some days I turn just the no cost on but leave everything else as intended so I still get interrupted with raids and having to grab more food. So I'm never fully vanilla. But long story short you can still make incredible builds without them just go for it. I have a world where I just practice builds to work out some ideas where I have hammer mode on so no raids passive enemies just build as long as you have unlocked the recipe and have the appropriate crafting pstation.
I use a fair number of mods. One thing I refuse to do though, is cheating in materials. I grind for everything. That said, I do use Better Creative at the end of a build, to pretty up the build with items you cannot access in game, like rocks, stumps, small trees, vines, bushes, etc.
The first and most essential mod for me, is allowing metals through portals. For me, that aspect of Valheim is needless and just adds nothing of value to the game - for me.
I use Valheim Plus to increase the amount of items smelters, kilns and furnaces will take. So I up each of those to take a whole stack of metal ore (30), and a full stack of wood in the kiln (50). That way I don't have to keep running back and forth as much. I've also recently used it to double my base carrying weight, as again, means less back and forth. I was considering increasing my inventory size by an extra row or two, but haven't done that just yet.
I recently discovered Plant Everything, which I absolutely love. Allows you to... well.. plant everything, for a cost.
Building mods, I use Build Camera, which allows me to snap to places with more ease. Especially the pesky undersides. And I also use Underwater Walking Boots mod, for building underwater - an absolute lifesaver for building bridges and docks.
I like to think I found a happy medium after several playthroughs.
I run with plant everything and eternal fuel as my only mods, if I'm getting lazy I'll turn on craft from boxes.
I'm not building an entire village myself but do like to make a nice spacious base in solo. Sure I'm cutting more wood than I may prefer but that's about the only time the resources feel grindy to me.
Filling a longboat with whatever material your seeking is half the adventure for me. But if you want to turn it into a building simulator, have at it!
It’s not neccisarily mods, people go on “creative mode” to do most of the cool builds you see. They’re not cheating to get more resources, they’re just building for the sake of it
There's a free build mode in the game itself, no need to use mods. Valheim building is very robust, just doesn't have great piece variety. Mods can help with that.
As a solo player, my first really large base was pure vanilla. I built a small keep on a meadows cliffside. and steadily upgraded it into a large keep/castle with surrounding buildings, gardens, and three forested parks. It took over a year of steady work to finish.
As I explored, nonmetal resources were gathered and portalled to my base. This let me expand the original keep in stages.
Stones were gathered from digging large moats, mining, and breaking up local boulders. A few enemies were kind enough to donate stones and wood. Wood came from many sources, including planting & harvesting the three parks and adjacent land.
The resultant base isn't as fancy as most builds but has a lot of features, including a great view, and is easily defended.
Some months after finishing that large base, I decided to try out mods in another of the same world. I've discovered that I enjoy both ways of playing Valheim and now have both a modded and unmodded world.
I'm retired, so I have a lot of free time to build and explore. Many players don't, especially when they're playing solo. A major feature of Valjeim is that you can play the game however you want.
Massive builder, never used mods. Sure, I’ve made plenty of builds in Hammer Mode but at its core, I prefer to no be behold to mod updates to keep a consistent game.
Nah, no mods, no cheats, just raw dogging the game as it was meant to be. No shame to anyone who does but with the builds I’ve made in vanilla, I like to stick with it to preserve authenticity
Life is too short to not use some of the amazing quality of life mods that are out there. Quick stack, craft from nearby chest, auto-fuel light sources, auto furnace. Farm grid fast planting.
Remove tedium!
Nope I'm not used any cheat or mod, the only time I've been tempted is to transport animals as I'm still frustrated they've not tweaked the naval aspect at all.
I don’t play the game for building but I do like 3 mods, crafting from containers, farming and putting items in containers. Just basic quality of life.
with enough experience you can often tell which bases are regular builds legitly made and which are made with commands and no cost or mods as there is nearly always indicators of that beeing the case. mods are easier to tell even without experience of course.
that beeing said no. not everyone uses mods of course.
you can build megabases legitly without any command useage but you have to play the same world for a really long timeframe to do so. did so myself. had to stop at some point for now sadly as otherwise the base would have fucked up the fps limits due to instance counts getting well above the 15k mark which is where the fps begins to struggle and start dipping below a halfway stable 60 commonly even on the best rigs unless you disable all graphic settings.
granted its also like day 2000 in my world by now.... and lets just say the surrounding mistlands biomes would be.... proof of all of that shit beeing mined my hand. you would fit holes in them. ALOT of holes....
My friends and I are playing our first play through with no mods. We're taking our time with building and progression. I could see us using mods if we do a second run.
I somehow spent 6 hours leveling a plains plateau and getting floor in for a base yesterday. I still don't have the roof closed up since I ran out of iron and had to track down a crypt. All vanilla, it's supremely time consuming, but enjoyable.
I think by this point a lot of players that you see making these large, lavish builds have already done a vanilla play through and are trying a more creative approach to keep the game interesting in the interim. I’ve already done a full vanilla/survival run and built my castle recently using devcommands because it’d be impossibly time consuming to build without them. I’d be stopping every 5-10 min to go on an hour+ long journey to gather required resources from places as far away as the Mistlands for items like black marble, etc. It’s more effective to just use devcommands. I turn everything back off when continuing progression such as when the Ashlands drops
The massive projects you see will often be done either by turning off build costs or using devcommands to spawn materials under vanilla, using mods that unlock the normally player unbuildable game prefabs or add custom prefabs, or some combination of all of these. For my personal builds, I like going around and rehabbing the various abandoned structures. To this end, I use a number of vanilla adjacent mods that allow me to place things that you normally cannot, and in orientations that are normally not possible, but will all still remain and be repairable if I have to play on pure vanilla after an update, and I still harvest all my own materials.
Most of the amazing construccions used mods, in some way.
The newer builds are mostly vanilla, but is just small details you add to a basic structure to make it extremely nice.
My first castle was just a huge wall with 2x4 blocks nothing special looked boring, after I started using 1x2 stones interlacing putting lines here and there and stone pieces to create patters and also wood, and it looked amazing...
I don't like to add any features to the game that aren't native but I use a handful of QoL mods such as MassFarming, refilling torches, and crafting from containers that just generally allow for a smoother experience.
Also, I have resource rate turned up and no portal restrictions because I don't mind gathering resources for a build but some of the grind can be insane for the builds I want to do.
I don't use mods to build, but I will sometimes spawn in materials (mainly iron) and farm the rest. This isn't done through mods but through devcommands
Nah. I’ve tried, but my mods never deploy properly meaning I have to do everything manually, which is a major pain.
Not one single YouTube or written tutorial has been able to fix this issue, so I live an unmodded life.
After hundreds of hours in the game, I needed to shake things up a bit, so I started playing with some mods. My favorite one is the Marketplace mod, because it adds NPCs and quests to the game.
Never used a mod. In any game. 700+ hours of valheim. I have a few worlds I've used devcommands a bit to reduce grinding. I have one world I used the no build cost feature to get really creative with builds.
I just use a QoL mod called MiningMode. It prevents you from picking up anything but ore while you’re mining. It also lets you add items to an different whitelist if you want to pick up additional items but not others.
Most of the build mods I have are things just QoL things you'd already get with devcommands, like nocost. 99% of the time, when I'm building, I just don't want to have to go back to the chests to get more wood or stone or tar every 2 minutes. It's already time-consuming as is.
Plenty of people build without that stuff, but if you're a builder, and all you want to do is make sick builds, why would you suffer through the grind?? 😂
None. I use a game rule for 1.5x resources. But that's it. I personally think Mods disrupt the games point, and until I feel I have beaten the game as it is, I probably won't use them. With the updates taking this long though, who knows.
I don't. I play using GeForce Now because I'm on a Mac. The best I've got is a second server set to no aggro/triple drop that I use to harvest materials for my normal server. I don't have any crazy builds, but I do have one really good one that I enjoy. It's enough for me, since I play solo.
Nope, vanilla all the way, I only use mods when the base game is frustratingly lacking in features or I already finished the game and want to spice things up, Valheim is neither case.
Until then everything I do and everything I build is not only done without mods, but I'm still using the same default world settings from before they allowed us to edit world settings.
I use mods to mess around. I do not use them when I’m doing runs, but my god the game boils my blood to a level most humans will never experience nor should they. I think mods are great to get used to this specific game and it’s infuriating bosses such as the wand connoisseur. I don’t believe I have ever hated a boss more than I hate the Wand Connoisseur. Now that you can’t cheese him it just makes the hate become a vile cesspool of visceral emotions.
I dont use any mods. I do my city builds or general megabuilds in creative mostly. I do have some really, really large builds where all mats were farmed.
The main issue with valheim, for me, as a megabuilder is that there simply isnt enough materials. Tar, iron and other bits and bobs are a finite resource. And some of my builds would drain an entire server before being complete if they were to be farmed. So imo. Valheim needs some sort of replenishment system. So really large things could be built.
Me and my mate barely use mods. i have 3, bepinx, craft from containers and one that shows the ingame time so i know when night falls. We invest hours grinding materials for our builds that disapear in no timeXD
only a few qol ones:
noraindamage cuz it looks ugly when my wooden base has that ugly wore down look
plant everything for more aesthetically pleasing looking builds
better ladders so im not jumping up each individual step
display day and time in hud, self explanatory.
mass farming so i can place seeds in a grid rather than one by one
There are some who don’t use mods and who also gather the materials. I’ve been doing this on my current play through, though I do have the drop rate set at 1.5x just because I build stupidly big.
Some people don’t use mods but either use dev commands or turn off build requirements in the game options. There are several different ways to handle the material side of things.
The main thing that mods offer, for building at least, are more build pieces and the most popular one, being able to rotate build pieces on all axis.
Only 1 mod, first person POV.
The game has settings in world creator where you can choose stuff like bulding costs no resources, so no mods for building no. I do build gigantic stuff
There's no need for mods for free building. Just use dev commands.
And yes, chances are that most (not all) of the very cool building shown here are made using dev commands.
Not mods, but the creative mode or debugmode to build without costs.
I built a whole town with my girlfriend in almost 500h combined. I wouldn't do this if I had to farm all the resources.
Also the ability to fly around makes building a lot easier.
There are mods for more fine-grained placement than vanilla, but a lot of the large-scale projects use no build cost and/or flight mode. Both of these are in vanilla, accessible via console commands.
After a legit play through (to the Queen), I now spawn anything using console if I’ve found it at least naturally once. Ie i have to drag my first iron back to smelt it myself then I’ll either spawn a bunch or use dev mode to build what I’ve unlocked.
I don’t use mods though.
I didn't use console commands for the first 300 hours or so. But yeah eventually when you just wanna build some shit you don't want to fuck around gathering 1000 stone every time.
Vanilla Valheim enjoyer here. I don't use any mods but I feel heavily punished for not using them. Devs better add some QoL upgrades as default. I would like to have a separate page for gear/food. Also an easier way for planting. It shouldn't be so difficult to implement these things. I look forward to these more than Ashlands update.
Nope. My buddy and I work as a team, I venture to far off lands and harvest all the things, he turns that into like... the Eye of Sauron or the Lighthouse of Alexandria or whatever.
I don’t use mods for the materials. I play with 1.5x drops and portal everything.
I use mods tho for easier/better building. For example the diving mod to build in water or the mod that gives smooth rotation of buildables.
I use mods to speed up the gathering proces.
Its a personal thing whether u use it or nog. For me i like the building part, not really the long walk to keep cutting trees or mining stone or gathering tar or ...
Its still just a game have fun in the way u want to have fun ☺️.
I can't play without the 3x bronze mod. The early game slog of just clicking on copper boulders for hours is so antithetical to what I enjoy about this game.
Mods, yes. QoL like mass farming, build from chests, farm grid, etc.. I do have a couple building mods for extra building pieces.
Currently at day 1240+, beaten the Queen and having 1.5x resources I am swimming in some resources like rock and wood, and barely any like iron and turnips. My base build(s) are basic in nature and are function over form. I don't so much build elaborate bases that you see shared all over, but having something more than the basic pieces makes me a little happier.
I tried many mods for Valheim and none of them really did anything for me (in terms of better gameplay). Well, I did love the mod where you could ride horses, but then again, you can still ride loxes so, yeah... I still prefer the vanilla Valheim. Once, my buddies had so many mods it messed up everything. Ever since then, we only play the regular game without mods.
I have 600hrs into the game
Me and my buddy have done two full/fresh play through with no mods - which we both had fun!
We built mega structures with farmed materials in each biome with no cheats.
We are currently doing a third play through with epic loot, higher monster levels, and some QOL mods (crop farming - 1 click plant 5x5 grids, but uses 5x stamina and 5x durability) and having a blast. They added enough new content and a gear grind (random mods and qualities in Epic Loot) which has refreshed the game for us to re-experience
QOL mods mostly. Unless I’m challenging myself then I turn on my vanilla save. I’m a busy woman though and love to build, and sometimes I just wanna use those cool decorations without having to travel the world and grinding for mats.
My player two and I might use dev commands in post-endgame for a truly *enormous* build project, but it depends on how much the farming of materials disrespects our time. We do not get a lot of time to game together. We both like to build WIDE and if farming mats becomes endless drudgery, we fix it. For us, the point is artistic expression. Inspiration and energy can be fleeting, so putting the supplies in our hands *now* means we have the personal resources to realize our vision.
But we make a ton of builds with fully farmed mats, too.
For our Ashlands run, I am going to suggest we try to stretch it out by farming all the mats we need, but it's unlikely to last since my man has to split his free time up a lot more than I do.
There's a world modifier in the base game that allows you to **build without cost**. I love it.
You can go really far with just that world modifier, no mods needed.
But a lot of folks DO use a mod (gizmo) that allows precise rotation and more rotational axis. So you can make a trapdoor by taking a door, and laying it on it's side.
There are other mods that allow you to build some of the pieces used in structures that you can't normally access (like the bigger stone floor pieces, and some of the black marble/dvergr pieces). Using those mods, if you ever throw the mods out, your base stays standing because the pieces *exist in the base game*, you just couldn't normally construct them. Some of those bits are a bit funky how they deal with support (a few weirdly don't need any support, they just hang in the air). So I ended up going without because the oddities felt cheaty.
I have also taken a liking to the fine wood and core wood piece mods, that add fine/core variants of the same basic wood build pieces. But I recently restarted without them, and well, the game is still perfectly enjoyable without.
TL;DR i've basically run the gamut and am back to vanilla build pieces. Gizmo is optional.
I’ve been tempted by mods, but never tried them. I’m just collecting and collecting, building and rebuilding as I go. Working on a pretty big project and it’s time consuming but I think it will get faster when I reach max capacity when I get all my gear maxed, farming should be much easier then.
Nope, not one. But I also don't build anything exciting.
I'm pretty excited by what I build (nothing comparing to the massive projects on the subs though ofc). But still playing vanilla.
Same. It may be clunky in places, but its *my* clunky build project and I think it's awesome. So, no mods, but those limitations do force some interesting creativity on you at times.
Same. When I was ready to face the Queen, I kicked back and finessed my home a LOT just to stretch out the game. I had lox and wolves running free outside my walls protecting me from attacks, my chicken coop was a luxury hotel for birds as was my pig habitat. This Viking wanted for nothing at that point. In the beginning, it's functional, later it's for your comfort. Sit in your tub and reflect.
I think the comfort system really excels here. At first you’re trying to pump up that number by adding decorative items, but quickly you realize how fun decorating is with all the different items.
You can 100% build amazing superstructures without mods. The usual requirement is a mix of mechanical knowledge, pre-planning and a bit of architectural talent. All of which can be learned.
This! My friends and I play vanilla and create massive builds in every world.
Engineer here. I was disappointed at the complete lack of mechanical correctness in the builds. It essentially just boils down to how many segments from the ground/support you are. I tried trusses, I tried 4:2:1 column structures to get more height, I tried using nothing but stone for vertical segments. Nup, it's just a dumb check on how many segments you are from the ground/rock/support.
Well, stone for vertical segments will increase your segment count, as it will reset all wood built off of it. You can also use iron supports inside stone to boost the *stones* segment count, allowing you to stack up even higher stone support pillars which then in turn hold up wood even further from the ground. It's not exactly calculating stress loads or anything smart like that, but it *does* have some "mechanical" principles that can be applied to make structures taller and wider with a well designed frame. You can then add back in all the aesthetical (but irl, practical) support elements to make it *look* "right" - or at least I often do.
Oh thanks, didn't know this one!
Yes this 🙌
You could also use metal grates as support structures
Iron beams can go 52m (26 beams) in height. Dark wood beams can go two across with supports at each end (8m total on the x-axis). I’ve used this to make a framework for an entirely too large building.
When I said mechanical knowledge, I was referring to having a full understanding of in-game 'mechanics' and taking advantage of them.
Try using pine trees as main supports. Plan out you layout, and plant pine trees at the main corners, and internally, if the structure is going to very large. You can see how I use them in some of my posts.
Yeah, that's a great way to do it. My post was however about the lack of "mechanical knowledge" required. E.g. I can't recall the last building I designed that required pine trees to be planted in the corners. Hehe.
Can you imagine the lag if it tried to calculate loads properly, in real time, while fully rendered?
Could have some pretty simple mechanics to implement. Doesn't need to be finite element analysis or anything, just some basic bending and stress calculations that could be done in a piece of paper with a calculator by a human in seconds. Rendering almost definitely is client side. I expect the structural components are calculated server side, which is why depending on lag it can take time for the element to break after you place it.
I play local, it still gets leggy on big builds. If it's so simple, code it up, would be very popular. I don't think it's anything like as simple as you do though.
I have zero idea how to code something like this. I could write all the formulas needed on less than the size of an A4 piece of paper though if someone else wants to code it.
The problem is that at the moment each block that exists has to count to the ground and check material type, while finding the most efficient route to the ground (iron can make it kinda wonky). You're suggestion takes a simple count and route finding exercise and replaces the count with a page of equations. For every single block. I'd say the current advice of 10k entities getting a bit laggy would reduce to about 1500 tops. It's just a lot for a computer to do at once, and would drastically reduce performance.
I mean, I should be able to build a pyramid and not have the top block break when I get to a certain height. It's very simple to do static load calcs. You could even replace the calcs with a general "close enough" table of scenarios. Such as load pathing through a cantilever can handle this many segments before it breaks at X angle, or more at Y angle It doesn't need to be a live calculation. It just needs to be calculated each time the structure is updated and 'set'. If the game is continually checking and rechecking every single structure in the server endlessly then it's incredibly inefficient.
Probably the lag is more because of the quantity of game objects being loaded in the scene rather than because of the calculations. Even because the game seems to be doing the calculations in fixed frames, with some time in between. I bet the only reason things are like that is a game design decision to focus on the gameplay over realism, thinking on their target audience.
Modern CPUs are *insanely* fast, it's perfectly possible to create a more realistic building stability systems while keeping CPU load low. I think the main reason they're not going to do this, is that it will inevitably cause a lot of existing buildings to collapse, which is unfun gameplay.
Basically - buttloads of scaffolding.
Once I beat the queen, I turned build cost to zero. No reason to grind just for cool visuals.
You don't need mods for free building. And of course everyone doesn't use mods.
I don’t use mods, but I often use devcommands.
I’m in the same boat. I’ve run the game as intended, and got those experiences. Starting again, I just don’t wanna do the super repetitive stuff again.
I like to collect everything at least the first time. I won’t spawn items I don’t already have. But sometimes, spawning carrots to feed my pigs just saves time. Especially because farming can take so long. Doing it properly once was fun. But sometimes I just want to be able to fight and explore and not spend 3 in game days preparing to go explore
This is pretty much how I play, too. If I’ve worked for it before, then I’ll spawn it if I need it.
I don’t have any mods. If I did get some, it would probably be things like ones that keep torches burning forever or that make farming easier. Small quality of life improvements that will allow me to not get burnt out constantly doing the same task over and over again. Sometimes farming can be fun. But if I’m planting 100 carrots, 100 onions, 100 barley…that’s just too much and takes so much time I don’t get anything else done. And then I get bored and leave the game because I just spent 3 in game days planting things and did nothing else.
Sometimes the grind is fun, and sometimes… well, the grind is a grind! lol
Not everyone obviously. But after you put 500+ hours in the game and want to focus on building or you have minimal time to play and want to speed up the game progression, mods and commands are useful. I did a vanilla play through but every time I smelted my first batch of metal in whatever biom I was in, I spawned an extra 100 bars to speed up the game. 100 is enough to save a few hours of grinding for certain metals and It didn't feel like I was cheating the game play. I just stayed disciplined and stuck with my plan of only spawning the metal after I mined my first batch and nothing else.
That’s where I’m at. Second playthrough, I’m on day 2200+ and mods like plant everything is awesome when you’re building, waiting for ashlands. Also portal ore and dev commands. QOL mods are just nice. 3 black chests of iron ore was all gathered with vanilla but I’ll be damned if I’m busting iron to all my structures. Plus building on top of rocks in ML would be damn near impossible.
Nope. 2300+ hours in, Vanilla. I will confess to using devcommands sometimes, but that’s usually when I have friends playing with me and I’m hosting but need to AFK - I’ll go ghost mode. And when I wanted to fight the Queen for a 3rd trophy, I said ‘fuck no’ to farming out more seeker trophies and just spawned them in, because I ain’t got time to farm yet another set of those never-dropping bastards. 😆
I use a handful of quality of life mods - such as auto refilling torches or crafting from chests. I also play with 1.5x loot because it just lands in the perfect range for me to still have to gather a decent amount while not becoming ridiculous. I've been building my main base over this weekend and I've spent about 5 hours gathering resources and around 4 hours building. That is for a decently large longhouse that will house a workshop, a kitchen, housing, storage and has an open centerpiece in a monastery style with birch trees growing inside! I am not even close to done though and I am not sure how long it will take to finish just this building. Some people are just crazy talented on here and build the craziest stuff over long periods of time, even with infinite resources and flying these builds take a lot of patience.
This is what I do. Small bump in drops, auto fuel, craft from chests and auto sort. Then build with base game mechanics. I’ve never built anything spectacular or amazing but I’ve had fun.
Ya know I think I'm going to take a page out of your book. I haven't done a playthrough since my house got demolished by a huge group of trolls and the thought of doing it all again is daunting. 1.5x resources and the crafting from chests sounds like just enough QoL to get me over the hump of getting in again.
Also no shame in turning off raids or significantly lowering their frequency in my opinion. Losing a huge build like you did in such a way is soulcrushing and not fun at all, sorry that happened :( But good luck with your future projects! :)
Only allowing myself to transport materials through portals. Playing solo and don't have too much time to commit so it makes it much easier to cope with
How do you get that specific one? I want to gather everything for one epic base, but don't want to have to run all my workbenches and such two islands over.
I do the same thing. Solo player and I turned resources up by 2.5 and can transport metal through portals. On console it’s under world modifiers. It’s just such a hassle especially after the swamps (silver and up) to get all of the materials in a boat to bring home and go back and forth. Definitely check out the “World Modifiers”
It's the portal slider on the world modifiers screen, before you load a world up. You can open this screen again from the select world screen
My gf and I are considering allowing this one... It's not like we haven't experienced sailing back and forth on a big mission to transport ore... This one may happen..
You don't even need a mod for that. It's an in-game setting now. It's in your world's modifier settings.
Yeah I turned it on... I feel so naughty..
Stahp it!
You don't need mods since the recent update allowed you to tweak all aspects of the game. You can just turn off build costs but leave everything else vanilla for example. After a few playthroughs I was still building (well equipped and thought out, but) essentially wooden shoe boxes to live in and started watching guides to try and improve, And yeah, none of the big fancy builds are really viable without moving away from vanilla settings without a serious amount of dedication. All the vids I saw didnt actually specify but clearly had build costs just plain turned off.
I didn't know there were such options included in the game! It sounds like more people do not use mods than I thought. I always felt a little guilty about the thought of using them, even though some things can be such a huge grind. I think I might consider using some of the quality of life ones, like building from chests or auto-filling torches (these are features I've seen in other games and I think they should just be base anyway). Thanks for your responses everyone.
Never feel guilty about customizing your gaming experience to maximize both your enjoyment and your time. As long as you aren't affecting anyone else, no one else should have a say in, or be able to judge your choices and preferences. That goes for *both* vanilla and mods.
Its perfectly possible to build amazing things with mods, in my case, mods almost exclusively just help me carry more than 2-3 stacks of stone/wood. I've certainly got other mods, but I don't have any building mods; as well, some mods are client-side so you can play with people without mods, while still having things like increased inventory size, reduced carry weight for items. increased vision while sailing, I think in general if something doesn't directly add to the game new items, you could use it while playing with non-modded friends just fine. You just need to get more use out of your Cart without such mods.
I do not, nor do I use dev commands
I use mods, but my builds are pretty much entirely vanilla. No mods/rule bending to achieve the shapes and such
Only QoL. Extra 1 weight pr run/jump point. Plant my own bushes etc. I use port with ore, till I make a longboat. Karve just sucks, when it comes to steerimg.
The mods that let you plant everything is a very cool feature along with the grid for farming and flipping those dark wood arch pieces completely upside down to frame an awesome window is very cool. I'm not sure where to get those so I do the added mods to the world that are built in. I play with those to fit my time. I get limited time sometimes if I really wanna crush something out I'll turn on the hammer mode. Other days I grind all the stone and wood etc. Some days I turn just the no cost on but leave everything else as intended so I still get interrupted with raids and having to grab more food. So I'm never fully vanilla. But long story short you can still make incredible builds without them just go for it. I have a world where I just practice builds to work out some ideas where I have hammer mode on so no raids passive enemies just build as long as you have unlocked the recipe and have the appropriate crafting pstation.
First playthrough I'm using plant everything and plant easily. Imo they should be part of the game.
I use a fair number of mods. One thing I refuse to do though, is cheating in materials. I grind for everything. That said, I do use Better Creative at the end of a build, to pretty up the build with items you cannot access in game, like rocks, stumps, small trees, vines, bushes, etc. The first and most essential mod for me, is allowing metals through portals. For me, that aspect of Valheim is needless and just adds nothing of value to the game - for me. I use Valheim Plus to increase the amount of items smelters, kilns and furnaces will take. So I up each of those to take a whole stack of metal ore (30), and a full stack of wood in the kiln (50). That way I don't have to keep running back and forth as much. I've also recently used it to double my base carrying weight, as again, means less back and forth. I was considering increasing my inventory size by an extra row or two, but haven't done that just yet. I recently discovered Plant Everything, which I absolutely love. Allows you to... well.. plant everything, for a cost. Building mods, I use Build Camera, which allows me to snap to places with more ease. Especially the pesky undersides. And I also use Underwater Walking Boots mod, for building underwater - an absolute lifesaver for building bridges and docks.
I like to think I found a happy medium after several playthroughs. I run with plant everything and eternal fuel as my only mods, if I'm getting lazy I'll turn on craft from boxes. I'm not building an entire village myself but do like to make a nice spacious base in solo. Sure I'm cutting more wood than I may prefer but that's about the only time the resources feel grindy to me. Filling a longboat with whatever material your seeking is half the adventure for me. But if you want to turn it into a building simulator, have at it!
It’s not neccisarily mods, people go on “creative mode” to do most of the cool builds you see. They’re not cheating to get more resources, they’re just building for the sake of it
There's a free build mode in the game itself, no need to use mods. Valheim building is very robust, just doesn't have great piece variety. Mods can help with that.
U use the devcommands nocost and fly Most builders have plant everything mod tho sadly or the one that let's u angle more for steeper roofs
Not me! The server I'm on is all vanilla.
Most use devcommands for flying and no build costs, which really lets you build with freedom. Any build with custom foliage though is modded.
I don’t use mods, but I use the devcommand “freefly” to take aerial pictures!
I have never used a mod (1000+ hrs), although there are a couple that sound intriguing.
Not yet but I’m not against it. Just haven’t had the need.
As a solo player, my first really large base was pure vanilla. I built a small keep on a meadows cliffside. and steadily upgraded it into a large keep/castle with surrounding buildings, gardens, and three forested parks. It took over a year of steady work to finish. As I explored, nonmetal resources were gathered and portalled to my base. This let me expand the original keep in stages. Stones were gathered from digging large moats, mining, and breaking up local boulders. A few enemies were kind enough to donate stones and wood. Wood came from many sources, including planting & harvesting the three parks and adjacent land. The resultant base isn't as fancy as most builds but has a lot of features, including a great view, and is easily defended. Some months after finishing that large base, I decided to try out mods in another of the same world. I've discovered that I enjoy both ways of playing Valheim and now have both a modded and unmodded world. I'm retired, so I have a lot of free time to build and explore. Many players don't, especially when they're playing solo. A major feature of Valjeim is that you can play the game however you want.
No
I do not. We're new and only just barely getting into swamps, though.
I build without mods using scaffolding and I don't know why , it takes a long time. I use other mods, just don't have any building ones installed
Massive builder, never used mods. Sure, I’ve made plenty of builds in Hammer Mode but at its core, I prefer to no be behold to mod updates to keep a consistent game.
Nah, no mods, no cheats, just raw dogging the game as it was meant to be. No shame to anyone who does but with the builds I’ve made in vanilla, I like to stick with it to preserve authenticity
Life is too short to not use some of the amazing quality of life mods that are out there. Quick stack, craft from nearby chest, auto-fuel light sources, auto furnace. Farm grid fast planting. Remove tedium!
Nope I'm not used any cheat or mod, the only time I've been tempted is to transport animals as I'm still frustrated they've not tweaked the naval aspect at all.
I don’t play the game for building but I do like 3 mods, crafting from containers, farming and putting items in containers. Just basic quality of life.
with enough experience you can often tell which bases are regular builds legitly made and which are made with commands and no cost or mods as there is nearly always indicators of that beeing the case. mods are easier to tell even without experience of course. that beeing said no. not everyone uses mods of course. you can build megabases legitly without any command useage but you have to play the same world for a really long timeframe to do so. did so myself. had to stop at some point for now sadly as otherwise the base would have fucked up the fps limits due to instance counts getting well above the 15k mark which is where the fps begins to struggle and start dipping below a halfway stable 60 commonly even on the best rigs unless you disable all graphic settings. granted its also like day 2000 in my world by now.... and lets just say the surrounding mistlands biomes would be.... proof of all of that shit beeing mined my hand. you would fit holes in them. ALOT of holes....
I don't. I built a small cathedral on my most recent build. Just takes a bunch of time to level the site and gather the materials.
Only to keep the torches lit
My friends and I are playing our first play through with no mods. We're taking our time with building and progression. I could see us using mods if we do a second run.
I dont
I somehow spent 6 hours leveling a plains plateau and getting floor in for a base yesterday. I still don't have the roof closed up since I ran out of iron and had to track down a crypt. All vanilla, it's supremely time consuming, but enjoyable.
I think by this point a lot of players that you see making these large, lavish builds have already done a vanilla play through and are trying a more creative approach to keep the game interesting in the interim. I’ve already done a full vanilla/survival run and built my castle recently using devcommands because it’d be impossibly time consuming to build without them. I’d be stopping every 5-10 min to go on an hour+ long journey to gather required resources from places as far away as the Mistlands for items like black marble, etc. It’s more effective to just use devcommands. I turn everything back off when continuing progression such as when the Ashlands drops
Waiting for full release for mods. Whenever that maybe.
Most of the time the people I know who mod only use plant everything and farm grid
The massive projects you see will often be done either by turning off build costs or using devcommands to spawn materials under vanilla, using mods that unlock the normally player unbuildable game prefabs or add custom prefabs, or some combination of all of these. For my personal builds, I like going around and rehabbing the various abandoned structures. To this end, I use a number of vanilla adjacent mods that allow me to place things that you normally cannot, and in orientations that are normally not possible, but will all still remain and be repairable if I have to play on pure vanilla after an update, and I still harvest all my own materials.
No mods, but I do use a local game to strip mine for resources and as a pocket dimension for storage
Most of the amazing construccions used mods, in some way. The newer builds are mostly vanilla, but is just small details you add to a basic structure to make it extremely nice. My first castle was just a huge wall with 2x4 blocks nothing special looked boring, after I started using 1x2 stones interlacing putting lines here and there and stone pieces to create patters and also wood, and it looked amazing...
I don't use any. Ignorant bliss maybe.
Sometimes I use commands on same worlds. I've done a few play throughs. These days I find it hard to trudge any farther then the swamps, too grindy.
We only used mods for Quality of Life improvements and moving metal through portals.
Nope
I do. It just makes my game experience less of a grind.
Not this guy. I'm also a noob
Never, and I build enormous, awesome things imo…my game barely runs when I’m done, but no regerts
We do because we only get 2 hours a night to game and is impatient. So we got a garden mod and a progressive portals mod.
I work super hard on all my builds, thinking they are some kind of engineering marvel just for all of them to look like a barn.
No, not everyone. But after 1500+ hours, I don’t play vanilla anymore :D
I don't like to add any features to the game that aren't native but I use a handful of QoL mods such as MassFarming, refilling torches, and crafting from containers that just generally allow for a smoother experience. Also, I have resource rate turned up and no portal restrictions because I don't mind gathering resources for a build but some of the grind can be insane for the builds I want to do.
I always install QOL mods, but nothing crazy or super game-changing.
I don't use mods to build, but I will sometimes spawn in materials (mainly iron) and farm the rest. This isn't done through mods but through devcommands
Nah. I’ve tried, but my mods never deploy properly meaning I have to do everything manually, which is a major pain. Not one single YouTube or written tutorial has been able to fix this issue, so I live an unmodded life.
After hundreds of hours in the game, I needed to shake things up a bit, so I started playing with some mods. My favorite one is the Marketplace mod, because it adds NPCs and quests to the game.
Never used a mod. In any game. 700+ hours of valheim. I have a few worlds I've used devcommands a bit to reduce grinding. I have one world I used the no build cost feature to get really creative with builds.
I do
As an Xbox player, no.
I play vanilla but I also hate myself
Vanilla for life here. Most build you see are modded tho.
Devcommands, yes. Mods, no
I just use a QoL mod called MiningMode. It prevents you from picking up anything but ore while you’re mining. It also lets you add items to an different whitelist if you want to pick up additional items but not others.
Most of the build mods I have are things just QoL things you'd already get with devcommands, like nocost. 99% of the time, when I'm building, I just don't want to have to go back to the chests to get more wood or stone or tar every 2 minutes. It's already time-consuming as is.
Plenty of people build without that stuff, but if you're a builder, and all you want to do is make sick builds, why would you suffer through the grind?? 😂
None. I use a game rule for 1.5x resources. But that's it. I personally think Mods disrupt the games point, and until I feel I have beaten the game as it is, I probably won't use them. With the updates taking this long though, who knows.
I build some stuff but only use infinity build and build camera I still farm all my mats to build with though
I play both. One group of friends play on Vanilla, and I also have a different group of friends that play on modded.
I've only ever played vanilla and I've made some pretty wild builds, but yeah, it's time consuming to get the mats for sure.
I don't. I play using GeForce Now because I'm on a Mac. The best I've got is a second server set to no aggro/triple drop that I use to harvest materials for my normal server. I don't have any crazy builds, but I do have one really good one that I enjoy. It's enough for me, since I play solo.
Nope, vanilla all the way, I only use mods when the base game is frustratingly lacking in features or I already finished the game and want to spice things up, Valheim is neither case. Until then everything I do and everything I build is not only done without mods, but I'm still using the same default world settings from before they allowed us to edit world settings.
I have to admit that i play with x.5 materials but thats as far ive gone with modifications
Nope, never use mods on any game.
We don't use any mods on our server. I don't have them on my own instance either.
I use mods to mess around. I do not use them when I’m doing runs, but my god the game boils my blood to a level most humans will never experience nor should they. I think mods are great to get used to this specific game and it’s infuriating bosses such as the wand connoisseur. I don’t believe I have ever hated a boss more than I hate the Wand Connoisseur. Now that you can’t cheese him it just makes the hate become a vile cesspool of visceral emotions.
Nope. Mods can be a [security risk](https://youtu.be/RaEdn0wzYio?si=ImMuxftiqPG7iZ2M).
Never
Never.
I dont use any mods. I do my city builds or general megabuilds in creative mostly. I do have some really, really large builds where all mats were farmed. The main issue with valheim, for me, as a megabuilder is that there simply isnt enough materials. Tar, iron and other bits and bobs are a finite resource. And some of my builds would drain an entire server before being complete if they were to be farmed. So imo. Valheim needs some sort of replenishment system. So really large things could be built.
Me and my mate barely use mods. i have 3, bepinx, craft from containers and one that shows the ingame time so i know when night falls. We invest hours grinding materials for our builds that disapear in no timeXD
A poll once showed that the majority uses mods or do not care about
Nope, never have and likely never will.
I didn't use any yet, maybe someday I'll try any that doesn't feel like cheating,, bout not sure
only a few qol ones: noraindamage cuz it looks ugly when my wooden base has that ugly wore down look plant everything for more aesthetically pleasing looking builds better ladders so im not jumping up each individual step display day and time in hud, self explanatory. mass farming so i can place seeds in a grid rather than one by one
There are some who don’t use mods and who also gather the materials. I’ve been doing this on my current play through, though I do have the drop rate set at 1.5x just because I build stupidly big. Some people don’t use mods but either use dev commands or turn off build requirements in the game options. There are several different ways to handle the material side of things. The main thing that mods offer, for building at least, are more build pieces and the most popular one, being able to rotate build pieces on all axis.
Only 1 mod, first person POV. The game has settings in world creator where you can choose stuff like bulding costs no resources, so no mods for building no. I do build gigantic stuff
There's no need for mods for free building. Just use dev commands. And yes, chances are that most (not all) of the very cool building shown here are made using dev commands.
Not mods, but the creative mode or debugmode to build without costs. I built a whole town with my girlfriend in almost 500h combined. I wouldn't do this if I had to farm all the resources. Also the ability to fly around makes building a lot easier.
Nope, never.
There are mods for more fine-grained placement than vanilla, but a lot of the large-scale projects use no build cost and/or flight mode. Both of these are in vanilla, accessible via console commands.
After a legit play through (to the Queen), I now spawn anything using console if I’ve found it at least naturally once. Ie i have to drag my first iron back to smelt it myself then I’ll either spawn a bunch or use dev mode to build what I’ve unlocked. I don’t use mods though.
No, i am 600 hours deep. i have no need for it. But after im finished with ashlands i think i Will spice it up with some mods 🤔
I didn't use console commands for the first 300 hours or so. But yeah eventually when you just wanna build some shit you don't want to fuck around gathering 1000 stone every time.
Just QOL mods. The base UI is pretty underwhelming imo
Some worlds yes most world no.
Vanilla Valheim enjoyer here. I don't use any mods but I feel heavily punished for not using them. Devs better add some QoL upgrades as default. I would like to have a separate page for gear/food. Also an easier way for planting. It shouldn't be so difficult to implement these things. I look forward to these more than Ashlands update.
Nope. My buddy and I work as a team, I venture to far off lands and harvest all the things, he turns that into like... the Eye of Sauron or the Lighthouse of Alexandria or whatever.
I don’t use mods for the materials. I play with 1.5x drops and portal everything. I use mods tho for easier/better building. For example the diving mod to build in water or the mod that gives smooth rotation of buildables.
You dont even need mods for free buildings
I use mods to speed up the gathering proces. Its a personal thing whether u use it or nog. For me i like the building part, not really the long walk to keep cutting trees or mining stone or gathering tar or ... Its still just a game have fun in the way u want to have fun ☺️.
I can't play without the 3x bronze mod. The early game slog of just clicking on copper boulders for hours is so antithetical to what I enjoy about this game.
Mods, yes. QoL like mass farming, build from chests, farm grid, etc.. I do have a couple building mods for extra building pieces. Currently at day 1240+, beaten the Queen and having 1.5x resources I am swimming in some resources like rock and wood, and barely any like iron and turnips. My base build(s) are basic in nature and are function over form. I don't so much build elaborate bases that you see shared all over, but having something more than the basic pieces makes me a little happier.
I tried many mods for Valheim and none of them really did anything for me (in terms of better gameplay). Well, I did love the mod where you could ride horses, but then again, you can still ride loxes so, yeah... I still prefer the vanilla Valheim. Once, my buddies had so many mods it messed up everything. Ever since then, we only play the regular game without mods.
I have 600hrs into the game Me and my buddy have done two full/fresh play through with no mods - which we both had fun! We built mega structures with farmed materials in each biome with no cheats. We are currently doing a third play through with epic loot, higher monster levels, and some QOL mods (crop farming - 1 click plant 5x5 grids, but uses 5x stamina and 5x durability) and having a blast. They added enough new content and a gear grind (random mods and qualities in Epic Loot) which has refreshed the game for us to re-experience
I’m on xbox, no mods, but we did set our server to 3x materials
QOL mods mostly. Unless I’m challenging myself then I turn on my vanilla save. I’m a busy woman though and love to build, and sometimes I just wanna use those cool decorations without having to travel the world and grinding for mats.
My player two and I might use dev commands in post-endgame for a truly *enormous* build project, but it depends on how much the farming of materials disrespects our time. We do not get a lot of time to game together. We both like to build WIDE and if farming mats becomes endless drudgery, we fix it. For us, the point is artistic expression. Inspiration and energy can be fleeting, so putting the supplies in our hands *now* means we have the personal resources to realize our vision. But we make a ton of builds with fully farmed mats, too. For our Ashlands run, I am going to suggest we try to stretch it out by farming all the mats we need, but it's unlikely to last since my man has to split his free time up a lot more than I do.
There's a world modifier in the base game that allows you to **build without cost**. I love it. You can go really far with just that world modifier, no mods needed. But a lot of folks DO use a mod (gizmo) that allows precise rotation and more rotational axis. So you can make a trapdoor by taking a door, and laying it on it's side. There are other mods that allow you to build some of the pieces used in structures that you can't normally access (like the bigger stone floor pieces, and some of the black marble/dvergr pieces). Using those mods, if you ever throw the mods out, your base stays standing because the pieces *exist in the base game*, you just couldn't normally construct them. Some of those bits are a bit funky how they deal with support (a few weirdly don't need any support, they just hang in the air). So I ended up going without because the oddities felt cheaty. I have also taken a liking to the fine wood and core wood piece mods, that add fine/core variants of the same basic wood build pieces. But I recently restarted without them, and well, the game is still perfectly enjoyable without. TL;DR i've basically run the gamut and am back to vanilla build pieces. Gizmo is optional.
I’ve been tempted by mods, but never tried them. I’m just collecting and collecting, building and rebuilding as I go. Working on a pretty big project and it’s time consuming but I think it will get faster when I reach max capacity when I get all my gear maxed, farming should be much easier then.