NavCompass
Game-styled HUD compass strip showing directions and the bearing and distance to map pins you mark.
Screenshots 2 screenshots
About this mod Author’s original text
Valheim Nav Compass
BepInEx mod for Valheim that adds a
scrolling compass strip to the top of the HUD, showing cardinal directions
and the bearing/distance to map pins you've manually marked - like the
navigation compass in many other open-world games. This is not
auto-pathfinding, just a visual direction indicator.
Unofficial mod. This is a fan-made mod, not affiliated with or endorsed by
Iron Gate. It marks your game as modded (the game shows this in the main menu),
as Iron Gate asks mod authors to do.
Screenshots
How to use
Open the map and click a pin to cycle its state:
- Unmarked (default)
- Strikethrough (the game's own built-in "checked" mark)
- Circled (a thin light-blue ring, added by this mod) - this pin now
shows up on the compass strip
- Click again -> back to unmarked
Works on any pin, including ones the game places automatically (bosses,
trader/shop markers, etc.) - not just ones you placed yourself. You can
track multiple pins at once. Map pins belong to a character, so marks are
saved per world and character (tracked__.json in
BepInEx\config\NavCompass\) and survive a game restart and mod updates.
Before 1.0.3 they were shared by all characters in a world - the first
character that enters the world after the update takes them over.
A mark stays even while its pin is temporarily off the map (e.g. a category
hidden in Auto Waypoints) and comes back with it; it is removed only when you
delete the pin yourself.
Under each tracked pin's icon the compass shows the distance, and the pin's
name when it has one (translated like on the map). With
Auto Waypoints
installed, the name follows its label settings: if a pin's label is hidden on
the map, the compass shows just the distance. Nav Compass works on its own
too - Auto Waypoints is optional.
Look
The compass strip is styled to match the game's own UI: it sits in the same
wooden frame as the in-game windows, and the main directions (N, E, S, W)
are carved-wood letters in Valheim's Norse font (north is tinted red so it
stands out). All of these graphics are taken from your installed game at
runtime - the mod itself ships no game assets. If any of them can't be
found, the compass falls back to a plain look instead of failing.
Requirements
- Valheim (tested on 1.0.15)
- BepInEx 5.4.x
Installation (players)
- Install BepInEx for Valheim if you haven't already (see link above, or
use r2modman).
- Download NavCompass.dll from the
latest release.
- Drop it into \BepInEx\plugins\NavCompass\.
- Launch the game, mark a pin on the map, close the map.
Upgrading from 0.1.x: the DLL used to be called Mod6-NavCompass.dll.
Delete the old BepInEx\plugins\Mod6-NavCompass\ folder after installing
the new version - your marked pins are copied over automatically the first
time you load each world.
Building from source
Requires the.NET 8 SDK (or newer)
and a local Valheim install with BepInEx installed.
git clone
cd valheim-nav-compass
dotnet build -c Release -p:ValheimPath="C:\Path\To\Valheim"
If you don't pass -p:ValheimPath, the build looks for a VALHEIM_PATH
environment variable, then falls back to the default Steam location
(C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Valheim).
The build automatically copies the built DLL into
\BepInEx\plugins\NavCompass\ for quick in-game testing.
Notes on how it works (and a few gotchas found along the way)
- Pin marking does not reuse Minimap.GetClosestPin - that method
requires pin.m_save == true, which excludes non-saveable pins like
shop/trader markers. This mod re-implements the closest-pin lookup without
that restriction.
- PinData.m_checked is the game's own field for the red "strikethrough"
look (not a checkmark, despite the name) and is toggled automatically on
every map click - this mod explicitly overwrites it after each click to
fit its own 3-state cycle.
- Deleting a marked pin from the map (right-click -> remove) is detected
every frame and clea
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: