HarpoonLongboat
A buildable longship with a self-operating deck ballista that reels in floating drops and sea creatures, cosmetic hull options, and a rideable deck catapult.
About this mod Author’s original text
Harpoon Longboat
A buildable Harpoon Longboat — a longship variant that does the boring sea work for you. It carries a self-operating deck ballista that harpoons floating dropped items and reels them into the boat's cargo hold, can hook and pull sea creatures toward the ship, and mounts a rideable, manually-aimed deck catapult for when you want to launch things yourself.
A Valheim BepInEx 5 plugin built on Jotunn.
Features
- Harpoon Longboat build piece (Hammer > Misc), 40x FineWood / 40x AncientBark / 20x Iron / 10x DeerHide.
- Item harpooning: auto-targets floating dropped items within CollectionRange, fires a bolt, and reels them straight into the ship's vanilla cargo hold.
- Creature reeling: hooks one sea creature at a time (range/faction configurable) and pulls it toward the boat.
- Deck catapult: a rideable catapult that fires items from the cargo hold, with angle/aim/power controls and an ejector seat.
- Cosmetic options: hull/sail recolour, extra shields, glowing lanterns, a prow harpoon, a scaled hearth (warmth), and a canvas roof that grants Sheltered to players aboard.
- Live placement web GUI at to position the turret, catapult, hearth, roof, and lanterns.
Requirements
- BepInEx 5 (denikson-BepInExPack_Valheim)
- Jotunn 2.30.x (ValheimModding-Jotunn)
Installation
- Install through your mod manager (recommended) — BepInEx and Jotunn are installed automatically.
- Manual: drop HarpoonLongboat.dll into BepInEx\plugins\.
How to use
The harpoon ballista
- Build the Harpoon Longboat from the Hammer under Misc and place it in deep water near your sailing lane.
- Sit at the rudder. The ballista auto-aims at targets.
- H toggles the harpoon on/off, J cycles its mode (Items / Creatures / Both).
- While aboard: T starts/stops reeling a hooked creature, G releases it.
- Collected items are deposited automatically into the ship's cargo hold.
The deck catapult
- Walk to the chair on the catapult and press E to sit (hover prompt "Boat Catapult").
- While seated: W/S or Up/Down = arm angle, A/D or Left/Right = aim yaw, Shift+Up/Down = power, Shift+F = fire (consumes one item from the hold), V = deploy legs, T = eject yourself (no fall damage by default), E = stand up.
Tuning visuals
Open while the game runs to move/rescale the turret, catapult, hearth, roof, and lanterns on the boat. Changes apply live and persist to harpoonlongboat_placement.json.
Configuration
Generated on first launch at BepInEx\config\com.harpoonlongboat.harpoonlongboat.cfg (select keys; most start as true):
| Section | Key | Default | Description |
|---------|-----|---------|-------------|
| General | Enabled | true | Master toggle. |
| General | AddBuildPiece | true | Add the piece to the Hammer menu (restart). |
| General | WebPort | 8779 | Placement GUI port. |
| General | ShowTether / ShowBolt | true | Harpoon rope / bolt visuals. |
| Collection | CollectionRange | 25 | Item pickup range (m). |
| Collection | ReelSpeed | 10 | Reel speed to the hold (m/s). |
| Collection | MaxTargets | 2 | Items reeled at once (1-8). |
| Collection | IgnoredItems | (empty) | Comma list of never-collected items. |
| Creatures | ReelCreatures | true | Pull sea creatures. |
| Creatures | CreatureRange | 30 | Creature hook range. |
| Creatures | TargetMonsters / TargetAnimals / TargetTamed | true / false / false | Which creatures to hook (tamed pulls livestock!). |
| Controls | ToggleKey / ModeKey / ReleaseKey / ReelToggleKey | H / J / G / T | Steering hotkeys. |
| Appearance | Recolor, AddLanterns, AddHearth, AddRoof, RemoveSail | true | Cosmetic toggles (mostly restart-gated). |
| Catapult | Enabled / AddCatapult | true | Enable and mount the catapult (restart). |
| Catapult | Scale | 0.5 | Catapult model scale. |
| Catapult | FireCooldown | 2.5 | Seconds between shots. |
| Catapult | EjectNoFallDamage | true | No fall damage when ejecting (T). |
Most Appearance/Visual keys need a game restart. Recolor tints
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: