FloatingItems

Valheim Floating Items

BepInEx mod for Valheim that makes dropped

items float on water instead of sinking to the bottom - lose your ore or your

sword over the side of the boat and you can still fish it out.

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.

What it does

• Every dropped item floats on water (and on tar), bobbing on the surface the

same way wood does in the vanilla game.

• Items that already float in the game keep their own behaviour, and fish are

left alone - they still swim away when released.

• Works for items added by other mods too.

Built on the game's own buoyancy

The mod has no physics of its own. Valheim already has a buoyancy component

(Floating) - it is what keeps wood on the surface. The mod adds that

component to every item as it appears in the world and copies its settings

(float height, force, damping, splash effect) from Wood, so everything floats

exactly like wood does.

Items that are already lying on the bottom come up after the world is loaded

again, because the game creates them anew.

Configuration

BepInEx\config\com.ab5olutezer0.valheim.floatingitems.cfg:

| Setting | Default | Description |

|---|---|---|

| ExcludedItems | (empty) | Comma-separated prefab names of items that should keep sinking, e.g. Coins, IronScrap. Applies to items dropped after the change. |

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 FloatingItems.dll from the

latest release.

• Drop it into \BepInEx\plugins\FloatingItems\.
• Launch the game and throw something into the sea.

In multiplayer, buoyancy is applied by whoever owns the item (usually the

player closest to it), so everyone who wants floating items should have the

mod installed.

Building from source

Requires the.NET 8 SDK (or newer)

and a local Valheim install with BepInEx installed.

git clone

cd valheim-floating-items

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\FloatingItems\ for quick in-game testing.

Notes on how it works (and a few gotchas found along the way)

• The component is added in a prefix to ItemDrop.Awake: the game caches it

there (it is also used to tell whether an item is stuck in tar), so it has

to exist before Awake runs. Patching instances instead of prefabs also

covers items registered by other mods at any time.

• Water finds the object to push through its rigidbody and takes a single

IWaterInteractable from it. Objects that already have one (floating items,

fish) are skipped - adding a second would break them.

• The template's surface ripple (m_surfaceEffects) is not copied: it is a

child object of the Wood prefab, shared by all copies, and switching it on

and off from many items would toggle the template itself. The splash effect

is just a list of prefabs to spawn, so it is shared safely.

Support

All my mods are free and will stay free. If you enjoy them and want to say

thanks, you can leave a voluntary tip via PayPal - it doesn't

unlock anything, it just helps me keep making mods.

License

MIT - see LICENSE.