Tootsalots Valhalla Overhaul Lite
Lightweight QoL overhaul with Smoothbrain skills, balanced configs, automation, combat fixes, portals, diving, and visual tweaks. No new content, creatures, or weapons.
About this mod Author’s original text
Tootsalot's Valhalla Overhaul -- LITE
A 48-mod lightweight Valheim enhancement pack focused purely on quality of life, bug fixes, skill depth, and system improvements. No new weapons, creatures, biomes, or items. Just a better vanilla experience with hand-tuned balanced configs. All gameplay configs are server-synced.
Based on Tootsalot's Valhalla Overhaul with all content mods stripped out.
What This Pack Does
Expanded Skill System -- 16 new skills via the Smoothbrain suite that add depth to every activity: Vitality, Tenacity, Evasion, PackHorse, Cooking, Farming, Foraging, Ranching, Mining, Lumberjacking, Building, Blacksmithing, Exploration, Sailing, Backpacks, and Endurance. SmartSkills adds catch-up mechanics and death recovery so switching playstyles doesn't punish you.
Portal Overhaul -- TargetPortal lets you teleport to any portal by name from a map interface instead of needing matched tags.
Combat Fixes -- ReliableBlock fixes vanilla's broken parry/block detection so blocks always register when you have stamina. SaveCrossbowState remembers your crossbow's loaded state when swapping weapons.
Swimming & Diving -- VikingsDoSwim adds underwater diving, swim speed scaling by skill level, and stamina mechanics. WieldEquipmentWhileSwimming lets you keep gear out in the water.
Lighting -- GammaOfNightLights makes nights meaningfully darker. CircletExtended turns the circlet into an upgradeable helmet with configurable light, demister, and enemy stun at higher tiers.
Inventory & Containers -- Extended inventory with equipment slots and quick slots. Quick Stack for sorting, CraftyBoxes for crafting from nearby containers, MultiUserChest for multiplayer access, SmarterContainers for organization, and Recycle_N_Reclaim for scrapping items.
Automation -- LazyVikings auto-fuels smelters, kilns, cooking stations, and more from nearby containers. PetPantry auto-feeds tamed animals.
Building -- Basements adds underground rooms. MyPitsDontLeak fixes rain leaking into pits. PlantEverything expands what you can plant.
Map & UI -- MyLittleUI improves hover text and UI elements. Pinnacle enhances map pins with quick-pin keyboard shortcuts, icon customization, coloring, and resizing. SpeedyPaths gives speed bonuses on built paths.
Backpacks -- Smoothbrain Backpacks adds a craftable backpack with a dedicated equipment slot, auto-fill, and tiered upgrades.
Visual -- Foglands tweaks the Foglands biome visuals. Loading screen art via Intermission.
Performance -- StartupAccelerator speeds up game boot by deferring Harmony patches. ValhallaPerformance is a custom all-in-one optimization plugin that replaces ValheimPerformanceOverhaul, Smoke_Collision, and VBNetTweaks. It covers smoke physics with simple collision, light culling and flicker freeze, AI throttling, creature sleep distance, WearNTear support caching, dirty-region piece updates, network sync prioritization and adaptive throttling, memory management and object pooling, VFX budgeting, terrain/zone prefetching, tar pit leak fixes, log deduplication, minimap throttling, and adaptive frame scaling. Five built-in performance profiles (Potato, Low, Medium, High, Max) let you tune everything from a single config entry.
What This Pack Does NOT Include
This is what separates Lite from the full Valhalla Overhaul:
- No Therzie weapon/armor/magic suite (Warfare, Armory, Wizardry, Fire&Ice)
- No new creatures or mounts (Monstrum, MonstrumDeepNorth, MajesticChickens, OdinHorse, SeaAnimals)
- No custom raids (Custom_Raids, Monstrum_Raids, Wizardry_Raids)
- No biome generation overhaul (RtDBiomes)
- No new ships or vehicles (OdinShip, Wagon)
- No new food system (CookingAdditions)
- No new building pieces (OdinArchitect, OdinBanners, MissingPieces, FineWoodPieces, GlassPieces)
- No archery overhaul (BowsBeforeHoes)
- No passive boss powers (PassivePowers)
- No server characters or server-side map (ServerCharacters, ServerSideMap, SmoothSave)
- No new craftable items (ReturnScroll)
If
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: