OttoLens
Hover a chest, fire, smelter, plant or build piece and see what is inside, how long is left, and how it is holding up.
Screenshots 1 screenshots
About this mod Author’s original text
OttoLens
For Valheim 1.0.17
Version 1.0.7, built and Harmony-checked against Valheim 1.0.17.
Look at a chest and see what is in it. Look at a smelter and see how much ore is
queued, how much fuel is left, and how long until the next bar drops. Look at a
plant and see when it is ready. OttoLens puts a small ledger next to the vanilla
hover text with the numbers the game already has but does not show you.
Maintainer: Paul Otto
What it shows
Every target gets the same panel: a title, one main meter, up to two smaller
meters, and then item rows with the icon, the name and the count.
- Chests, carts and ship holds. Every item stack inside, sorted by count, with
a slot meter and a Free N footer. Rows past the cap collapse to and N more.
- Fires, torches, braziers and hearths. Fuel left and how long it burns, in
game days when it runs long.
- Smelters, kilns and blast furnaces. Fuel, the ore queue, time to the next
bar, time to the last one, and finished bars waiting to be picked up. A
windmill smelter with no wind says so instead of showing a countdown that
would never move.
- Cooking stations and ovens. What is cooking, what is done, time until the
next piece is done, and time until the first one burns.
- Fermenters, beehives and sap collectors. What is brewing and the time to
ready, or the honey or sap level and the time to the next unit.
- Plants and pickables. Grow progress on a crop, or the reason it stopped
growing, and the item and yield on a live bush. Respawn timers on picked bushes
are opt in (ShowRespawn).
- Build pieces. Health and support, with the hammer out by default so the
panel stays out of the way during normal play.
- Mineable rocks, trees, stumps and logs. Health as a percent, and the tool
tier you need when yours is too low. Trees, stumps, logs and small rocks are
off by default because a plain tree is a hover target and the panel would
follow you through every forest.
- Item stands, armor stands, tombstones, tamed creatures, wisp spawners, shield
generators, feasts, ground items and crafting stations.
What it does not do
OttoLens only reads. It never writes to the world, so burn rates, cook times,
fuel limits and everything else about how the game plays are exactly what the
game set. It does not patch the hover text itself, so it sits alongside other
hover mods instead of fighting them. It is client only and needs nothing on the
server.
If a reader throws on some modded object, the panel hides for that target and
the error is logged once. The HUD keeps running.
A world-placed chest you have not opened yet shows its title and `Contents
unknown`. Open it once and the panel fills in. That is on by default because
the surprise is part of the game.
Lens dirt is off by default, because the Eye of Odin makes all things clear.
Bloom still glows. Only the smudges on the camera lens are gone. Set
RemoveLensDirt to false to bring them back.
The game writes BepInEx/config/potto007.OttoLens.cfg the first time it runs
with the mod loaded.
Change it in a text editor or in game with Configuration Manager. Layout knobs
apply the next time the panel builds for a new target. MaxRows, ShowNames
and SortRows rebuild the panel at once, and any change under Targets takes
effect on the target you are already looking at.
| Section | Key | Default | What it does |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| OttoLens | Enabled | true | Master switch. Off hides the panel and skips every reader. |
| OttoLens | ToggleKey | None | Key that flips the master switch in game. Unbound by default; set a key to enable it. It is ignored while chat, a sign, the console or any other text field has the keyboard. |
| OttoLens | OffsetX | 150 | Left edge of the panel, pixels right of screen centre. 96 to 600. |
| OttoLens | OffsetY | -32 | Top edge of the panel, pixels below screen centre. -400 to -16. |
| OttoLens | PanelWidth | 300 | Panel width in pixels. 240 to 420. |
| OttoLens | GuiScale | 1.0 | Scale of the whole panel. 0.75 to 1.6. Try
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: