HideWater
Client-side F9 toggle for water surface rendering. Preserves water physics, supports configurable hotkeys and StartHidden. No server installation required.
About this mod Author’s original text
HideWater
Press F9 to hide water surfaces; press it again to restore them. Client-side only: the server does not need this mod. F8 remains available for Fish Tracker.
Installation
Install Mod Manager or r2modman, with BepInExPack Valheim enabled. To test the ZIP locally, use your manager's local mod import feature.
For manual installation, install BepInEx for Valheim and copy plugins/HideWater/HideWater.dll from this archive into your game's BepInEx/plugins/HideWater/ folder. Remove the DLL while the game is closed to uninstall.
Configuration
After the first launch, edit BepInEx/config/com.local.valheim.hidewater.cfg in your game installation or mod manager profile while the game is closed:
[General]
ToggleKey = F9
StartHidden = false
- ToggleKey: BepInEx KeyboardShortcut. Modifier combinations such as F9 + LeftControl are supported.
- StartHidden: hide water automatically on every world entry. Hotkey toggles are not saved between sessions.
How it works
Inspected against the locally installed Valheim 1.0.16 assembly. The mod disables only Renderer.enabled on WaterVolume.m_waterSurface and the MeshRenderer attached to Water objects. It discovers surfaces through WaterVolume.Instances and Water.Instances every two seconds, including newly loaded areas, and restores each renderer's previous state when water is shown or the plugin is disabled.
WaterVolume physics, colliders, buoyancy, water depth, swimming, terrain, networking and world saves are not modified. No Harmony patches, Jotunn or ServerSync are required.
Limitations and testing status
- Built and statically verified against Valheim 1.0.16; in-game testing is still pending. Swimming, stamina, Wet, drowning, boats, fish, teleporting, world re-entry and server connections have not yet been verified in a live game.
- Newly loaded surfaces may remain visible for up to two seconds.
- Underwater fog removal is not implemented. Fog, mist, splashes and other effects can remain and may limit seabed visibility.
- Custom water from other mods without the standard Water/WaterVolume components is not detected. Mods controlling the same renderer may conflict.
- The hotkey works while a local player exists, including with in-game windows open.
- Compatibility with other Valheim versions is unverified.
BepInEx logs state changes and the first nonempty water renderer count per world entry.
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: