ShipSense
Essential sailing instruments for Valheim. Displays live ship health bar and nautical speedometer beneath the compass, hover HP on rudder, and optional Moder tailwind power (wind always at your back).
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ShipSense
ShipSense brings essential nautical instruments and tailwind control to Valheim. Keep track of your ship's hull integrity, monitor true sailing speed in knots, inspect docked ships from shore, and optionally harness Moder's tailwind power so the wind is always at your back.
A Valheim BepInEx 5 plugin built on Jotunn.
Features
- Ship Health (Hull Durability)
- Visual Health Bar: A clean Norse health bar anchored directly below the vanilla circular sailing compass in the bottom-right corner.
- Dynamic Color-Coding:
- > 60% HP: Vibrant Sea Green
- 30% – 60% HP: Warning Amber
- < 30% HP: Pulsing Crimson Red alert
- Customizable Format: Show Current / Max (Percentage), Current / Max HP, or Percentage only.
- Low Health Warning: Center-screen alert banner when your hull takes critical damage below 30% (configurable).
- Dock / Hover Tooltip: Hovering your crosshair over a ship's rudder or helm displays its current HP and percentage so you never set sail in a damaged vessel.
- Live Nautical Speedometer
- Engine Physics Speed: Measures real-time forward and total velocity calculated directly from the ship's physics Rigidbody.
- Selectable Units:
Knots (kts) (default)* — Authentic maritime speed ($1\text{ m/s} \approx 1.94\text{ kts}$)
- Kilometers per hour (km/h)
- Meters per second (m/s)
- Miles per hour (mph)
- Acceleration Tendency: Real-time tendency indicator (▲ Accelerating, ● Cruising, ▼ Decelerating) plus a [Reverse] badge when paddling backwards.
- Always Tailwind (Moder Power)
- Never Tack Again: Hooks Valheim's native Ship.IsWindControllActive and EnvMan system to steer the wind forward into your sails.
- On-the-Fly Hotkey: Press F8 (configurable) anytime while sailing to toggle tailwind ON or OFF with an on-screen prompt.
- Optional Wind Force Boost: Choose between preserving natural weather wind force or boosting to maximum gale intensity ($1.0$) for brisk travel.
- Steering vs. Aboard: Configure whether tailwind requires actively holding the rudder or applies anytime players are aboard.
- Passenger Friendly
- Stats remain active while riding on deck as a passenger.
- Option to keep the vanilla wind compass visible for passengers aboard the ship.
Controls
- F8: Toggle Tailwind ON / OFF (customizable in config).
Requirements
- BepInExPack Valheim (5.4.2333+)
- Jotunn (2.30.x)
- Valheim 1.0.16+
Installation
- Mod Manager (Recommended): Click Install with Mod Manager.
- Manual: Place ShipSense.dll into your BepInEx\plugins\ShipSense\ folder.
Configuration (com.dfg.shipsense.cfg)
| Section | Setting | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 - General | Enabled | true | Master toggle for the mod. |
| 1 - General | ShowWhenPassenger | true | Show ship instruments when aboard as a passenger. |
| 1 - General | ShowCompassForPassengers | true | Keep vanilla wind compass visible for passengers. |
| 1 - General | ShowHoverHealth | true | Show hull HP on the rudder hover tooltip. |
| 2 - Speedometer | ShowSpeed | true | Show live speedometer. |
| 2 - Speedometer | SpeedUnit | Knots | Knots, KilometersPerHour, MetersPerSecond, or MilesPerHour. |
| 2 - Speedometer | ShowTrendIndicator | true | Show ▲, ●, ▼ acceleration arrows. |
| 3 - Health | ShowHealth | true | Show ship health on HUD. |
| 3 - Health | HealthFormat | Both | Both, CurrentAndMax, or PercentageOnly. |
| 3 - Health | ShowHealthBar | true | Render visual health bar. |
| 3 - Health | LowHealthWarning | true | Warning banner and bar pulsing below threshold. |
| 3 - Health | LowHealthThreshold | 0.30 | Hull health percentage considered critical. |
| 4 - Tailwind | AlwaysTailwind | true | Enable Moder tailwind power. |
| 4 - Tailwind | TailwindHotkey | F8 | In-game hotkey to toggle tailwind. |
| 4 - Tailwind | RequireRudder | false | Require holding the rudder vs just being aboard. |
| 4 - Tailwind | BoostWindForce | false | Boost wind force to full gale intensity ($1.0$). |
|
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: