BetterUI
QoL HUD overhaul + Party system: repositionable bars, quality stars, durability colors, enhanced enemy HP bar, hover text, XP bar, stat tooltip, invite/party HP-stamina panel. Inspired by matias-kover
Screenshots 2 screenshots
About this mod Author’s original text
BetterUI & Party
Quality-of-life UI improvements for Valheim: repositionable/scalable HUD bars, item quality
stars, colored durability bars, an enhanced enemy health bar, extra hover-text info, a combined
character level/XP bar, character-select stats, a combined weapon/armor stat tooltip, and a
built-in Party system - invite nearby players with a keypress and see everyone's HP/stamina live
in a movable HUD panel.
Features
- HUD editor: press F7 to toggle edit mode. While active, drag a HUD bar (health, stamina,
food, eitr, adrenaline) with the left mouse button to move it, or scroll while hovering it to
resize it. Positions/sizes persist in the config.
- Item quality stars: item quality shown as gold star icons directly on the icon (inventory
and hotbar), instead of vanilla's plain number. HotbarEnabled lets you turn the hotbar ones off
independently (leaving it exactly as vanilla, which never showed a quality indicator there) while
keeping the inventory grid ones.
- Durability color: the durability bar is colored green/yellow/orange/red by remaining
percentage.
- Enemy HUD: configurable level display (vanilla stars, text prefix, or both), a live HP
number on the health bar, name color by alert state, a bigger/thicker bar, and enemies can be
set to always show their HUD within a configurable distance instead of only while aimed at.
- Hover text extras: containers show free slot count, fermenters and cooking stations show
remaining time - all with selectable display styles.
- Character level bar: a combined level (summed across all skills) shown as an XP bar at the
bottom of the HUD, with a level-up message.
- Character-select stats: kills/deaths/crafts/builds shown under the character name on the
character-select screen.
- Combined stats tooltip: hovering the armor value in the character panel shows a combined
weapon damage/block/armor/movement summary.
- Party: /invite or look at a nearby player and press the party key (Party.InviteKey, default J,
rebindable - deliberately not E, so it never clashes with doors) to invite them
to a party (same key leaves it once you're grouped), accepted via a popup on their side. A
movable/scalable HUD panel (F7 edit mode, like every other bar) then shows each online member's
name, HP and stamina, kept live via a direct sync between clients. ShowHpBar/ShowStaminaBar
toggle each bar independently. A small icon of each member's selected Forsaken power is shown next
to their name (ShowGuardianPower, on by default; only for members running a version that has it).
The party survives deaths and portals: a member who died shows a skull-and-crossbones icon, one who is
far away (e.g. portalled) shows an arrow, both greyed out, and they return to normal when back in range.
TogglePanelKey (unbound by default) shows/hides the panel. The party also survives logging out and server
restarts: the party id is stored with your character, and members find each other again when they log in
(no leader needed - anyone can invite, anyone can leave).
Notes
- Uses vanilla's own HUD bar objects directly (repositioned/rescaled), not custom-built bars.
- Report bugs/suggestions on Discord:
Credits
Inspired by matias-kovero/BetterUI, which hasn't
been updated in several years. This mod aims for the same goals (a more informative, more
configurable HUD) but is an independent, original implementation written from scratch against the
current Valheim 1.0 API, not a port or copy of that mod's code - the old codebase predates the 1.0
update and no longer builds against it. The icon is reused from the original project (public on
GitHub, BSD 2-Clause licensed) so returning players recognize it. All credit for the original idea,
feature set, and icon artwork goes to its author, Matias Kovero.
Install & use Install: BepInEx plugin
- The archive from playbuff is the mod itself — usually a BepInEx plugin (a .dll or a plugin folder once unzipped).
- Recommended: use a community mod manager (such as r2modman) — pick this game, import the mod, and the manager sets up BepInEx and its dependencies for you.
- Manual route: install the BepInEx loader in the game folder, then drop the unzipped .dll or plugin folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
- Launch the game — the BepInEx console logs every plugin it loads; seeing this mod in the log means it is installed.
Mods with listed dependencies need those installed too, or they will not load. Options are usually changed in-game or in the plugin's config file. In multiplayer, the host and every client need the same mods installed.
Install these first, or the mod will not work: