ChestHelper

v2.0.2·Updated 2026-09-23

Atmospheric 3D mirage chest preview, item search bar, live 3D chest locator, direct drag-and-drop chest deposit, and one-click container sorting.

About this mod Author’s original text

ChestHelper

Client-side mod for Valheim that adds a live 3D chest locator, an item search bar, and one-click container sorting.

Features

Item Search Bar

  • Adds a search input field directly above the player inventory window.
  • Typing any item or material name (supports English and Russian) highlights all matching chests around your base and dims non-matching items in your inventory.
  • Character movement (WASD, sprinting, jumping) and hotbar slots are paused while typing to prevent accidental inputs. Pressing Enter restores full movement while keeping the found chests highlighted.
  • Clear the search at any time by pressing Escape or clicking the clear button.

Chest Locator & Lore-Friendly Highlighting (Overhauled in v2.0.0)

  • Hovering your cursor over any item in your inventory highlights all nearby chests containing that item.
  • Mesh-Conforming Misty Shroud: Replaced harsh flat highlights with a procedural, double-layer volumetric mist extruded directly along the container's surface normals (+1.8cm and +3.8cm), with organic breathing and counter-scrolling smoke animation.
  • Nordic Wisp Beacon: Marked with a gentle glowing wisp and three orbiting harmonic embers in 3D tilted orbits, hovering compactly (+22cm) above the lid.
  • Transport Anchored: Wisps and shrouds are attached to container transforms, smoothly following moving ships (Karve, Longship, Drakkar) and carts.
  • Smart Line-of-Sight Filtering: Zero GC memory allocations (Physics.RaycastNonAlloc) with intelligent collider filtering so adjacent chests on shelves or stacks never occlude each other.
  • Configurable MaxWallObstacles (default 2) illuminates chests through partitions and shelf frames while occluding multiple thick stone walls.

3D Mirage Chest Preview

  • Look at any chest or storage container within interaction distance to project an ethereal 3D mirage tooltip displaying its items without opening it.
  • Organic Smoky Aesthetic: Semi-transparent dark mist plate with blurred, uneven edges and a subtle breathing ripple animation.
  • Adaptive 3D Billboarding: Projecting in front of the container's closest face, softly tilting towards your camera for an authentic holographic feel.
  • Universal Storage Support: Works for wooden/iron/blackmetal chests, carts, longships, karves, obliterators, and modded containers.
  • Security & Privacy: Automatically respects ward and key protections (silently hides if access is denied).
  • Empty Storage Handling: Displays a faint, wispy smoke cloud with localized text ("Storage is empty" / "Хранилище пусто").
  • Ergonomic Hotkey: Press H (free by default in Valheim) to toggle preview mode On/Off. Configurable to Hold key or Always on.

Direct 3D Chest Deposit & Multiplayer Safety (Enhanced in v2.0.0)

  • Drag any item stack from your inventory and hover directly over a nearby chest in the 3D world (within reach distance, default 4.5m).
  • The dragged item icon smoothly scales down (perspective depth effect) and displays a deposit prompt.
  • Multiplayer In-Use Protection: Integrated with Valheim's native ZDOVars.s_inUse network variable. If another player has the chest, cart, or ship open, the prompt turns red ("Chest in use" / "Cart in use" / "Ship in use") and deposit is safely blocked without kicking the other player.
  • Atomic Transaction Safety: Items are only deducted from the player's inventory after the container confirms successful addition. Never lose an item!
  • Releasing the mouse button deposits the stack directly into the chest with a wooden lid sound and floating feedback (+X ItemName), without opening the chest UI.
  • If the chest is full, a warning appears and the item remains held under your cursor (never dropped on the ground).

Container Sorting

  • Adds a "Sort" button directly below the vanilla "Take All" and "Stack All" buttons in the chest UI.
  • Merges incomplete stacks automatically.
  • Groups items by category: Weapons & Tools -> Armor & Ammo -> Food & Potions -> Crafting Materials -> Trophies -> Misc.
  • Secondary sorting order

Install & use Install: BepInEx plugin

  1. The archive from playbuff is the mod itself — usually a BepInEx plugin (a .dll or a plugin folder once unzipped).
  2. 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.
  3. Manual route: install the BepInEx loader in the game folder, then drop the unzipped .dll or plugin folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
  4. 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.

Dependencies

Install these first, or the mod will not work:

denikson-BepInExPack_Valheim

File & checksum

Filename
ChestHelper-2.0.2.zip
File size
158.7 KiB