Njord
A mythic overhaul of Valheim’s ship handling, steering and sea‑faring — now with a Harbourmaster who gives every new Viking their first hull and refits the rest. HUD and OdinShipPlus support.
About this mod Author’s original text
⚓ NJORD: Master of the Sea 🌊
A mythic overhaul of Valheim’s ship handling, steering, acceleration, and sea-faring experience.
Njord makes boats feel powerful, responsive, and alive — without breaking Valheim’s soul. It introduces modernized helm control, configurable sail and acceleration forces, dynamic wind blending mechanics, a custom HUD, and an optional multiplayer-safe runic wake VFX.
🆕 New in v2.0.0 — The Shipwright Update
| | What's new |
|:--- |:--- |
| ⚓ The Harbourmaster | A shipwright takes her post on the shoreline nearest your world spawn. Buy a hull, claim your first one, or have the vessel you're stood on refitted. |
| 🎁 Your First Hull, Free | Every player is given one boat, once, for as long as that world exists — named 's Pride before she touches the water. |
| 🪵 Paid For In Timber | Hull prices are lists of materials, per hull, set by the server. No coins involved, and no other trader on your server is touched. |
| ⭐ Refits | Stand aboard a hull at the harbour and pay 2×, 3×, then 4× her price to raise her. What a star is worth is entirely the server's business. |
| 🪟 The VikingOS Frame | The Harbourmaster's shop wears the same gilt window chrome as the rest of the suite, shared rather than reproduced. |
| ⚠️ Everyone Updates Together | 2.0.0 raises the ServerSync floor to 2.0.0, so a 1.x client cannot join a 2.0.0 server. The shipyard's RPCs are new. |
✨ Core Features
⚡ Responsive Steering
- Modernized helm control: Smooth, intuitive turning.
- Adjustable steering multiplier: Your longship finally answers the helm.
- Steering gate: Prevents jitter upon helm acquisition.
💨 Acceleration, Sail Forces & Max Speeds
- Overhauled default physics: Provides a smoother, more realistic sailing curve.
- Configurable forces: Adjust forward/reverse and Base/Half/Full sail behavior to your liking.
- Reverse-kick: Optional quick burst of reverse speed for tight maneuvering out of rocky harbors.
- Custom Max Speeds: Per-boat max speed configuration (Njord vs Vanilla).
🌬️ Dynamic Wind Systems
- Instant Snap HUD: When grabbing the rudder, the Njord HUD instantly displays the true natural wind angle.
- Toggleable Full Wind: Enable "Full Wind Always" if you want to skip the sailing struggle.
- [EXPERIMENTAL] Wind Assists: Advanced opt-in mechanics like Wind_NoDeadZone (nudge out of dead zones) and Wind_BlendToFull (blend toward tailwinds) give you a mythic edge against the sea.
- Grace Period Mechanics: Natural winds are punishing. When the wind shifts against you, Njord enforces a realistic grace period (default 2.5s). You will feel the dead zone before any magical assists kick in to save you.
🪶 Named Vessels
- Alt + Use at the helm opens the christening dialog.
- Stored on the ship's own record — persists across sessions and syncs to every player.
- Appears in the helm hover panel, the crosshair hover label, and the Njord HUD.
- Up to 24 characters.
🧭 Njord HUD
- Clean, minimal, and mythic.
- Displays your vessel's given name alongside her hull type.
- Fully multiplayer-safe.
- Shows steering, speed, waterline, hull integrity, wind blend, and readiness.
- Drag to reposition freely on your screen.
- Toggle visibility instantly with F7.
⭐ Runic Wake VFX
- Optional glowing wake effect behind ships.
- Color-tinted based on your configuration.
- Scales with speed and sail state.
- Fully multiplayer-safe: Zero performance impact on servers and properly displays across all connected clients.
⚓ The Harbourmaster
A shipwright is placed automatically on the shoreline nearest your world spawn, the first
time anyone loads that zone. She keeps her post across restarts, and admins can move her.
[!IMPORTANT]
On an established world she may never appear on her own. A dedicated server loads a zone
only while somebody is standing in it, and on a world where everyone spawns straight into
their own base, nobody has any reason to go back to the world spawn — so the placement never
triggers. This is not a failure and the log will say so pla
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: