New Horizons Treelines

New Horizons: Treelines

New Horizons: Treelines is a visual-only BepInEx mod for Valheim that extends forests and distant terrain far beyond the game’s normal render distance.

In vanilla Valheim, trees and land eventually stop rendering, which can make forests, mountains, and coastlines appear to end suddenly. New Horizons fills those empty areas with lightweight distant tree cards and extended terrain, creating a fuller and more natural-looking horizon.

As you move closer, the mod hands the scenery back over to Valheim’s native trees and terrain.

The mod does not edit your world, save file, buildings, enemies, loot, or gameplay. It only adds extra visual geometry on top of the world Valheim has already generated.

All config options affect visuals and performance only. Changing them cannot damage your world or save.

SUPPORTED BIOMES

Distant tree cards are currently supported in:

• Meadows
• Black Forest
• Mountains

All other biomes are currently unsupported.

FEATURES

Distant forests

Lightweight billboard-style tree cards extend Meadows, Black Forest, and Mountain forests several kilometres into the distance.

This prevents forests from visibly ending in the middle of the landscape.

Extended distant terrain

A matching distant terrain mesh extends the visible ground, helping prevent faraway land from suddenly disappearing into fog or empty space.

Native tree handoff

Distant tree cards begin around the distance where Valheim’s native trees stop rendering.

This distance is known as the native treeline radius, or H.

A small overlap can be used so the distant tree cards and Valheim’s native trees meet without leaving a visible empty gap.

Biome-specific controls

Meadows, Black Forest, and Mountains have separate controls for tree density, size, coverage, and appearance.

Performance-friendly generation

Distant forests and terrain are generated gradually using a limited amount of work each frame.

The mod can reduce its workload when the game is under heavy load, helping prevent large frame drops while new distant areas are being created.

REQUIREMENTS

• Valheim
• BepInEx 5.4.x for Valheim

OPTIONAL COMPATIBILITY

render_limits

When installed, New Horizons can read the extended view-distance settings used by render_limits.

This allows the native handoff radius to match your actual tree render distance automatically.

BetterContinents

BetterContinents is detected for compatibility but is not required.

INSTALLATION

• Install BepInEx 5.4.x for Valheim.

• Place DonegalHorizonLift.dll inside your BepInEx plugins folder:

BepInEx/plugins/

• The following four atlas files must be placed directly beside DonegalHorizonLift.dll in the same folder:

• nh_mixed_treeatlas.png
• nh_mixed_canopyatlas.png
• nh_mountain_biome_atlas.png
• nh_swamp_biome_atlas.png

Your plugins folder should look like this:

BepInEx/

└── plugins/

├── DonegalHorizonLift.dll

├── nh_mixed_treeatlas.png

├── nh_mixed_canopyatlas.png

├── nh_mountain_biome_atlas.png

└── nh_swamp_biome_atlas.png

• Use the marc.donegalhorizonlift.cfg file provided with the mod.

• Place the provided config file inside:

BepInEx/config/

Your config folder should contain:

BepInEx/

└── config/

└── marc.donegalhorizonlift.cfg

The provided config has already been set up for the mod and should be installed before launching Valheim.

Do not place the atlas PNG files inside the config folder. All four atlas files must remain beside the DLL inside the plugins folder.

IMPORTANT SETTINGS

Quality Preset

Controls the overall render distance and the performance budget used by the mod.

Named presets apply a matching extension distance, forest tile limit, tree-card budget, canopy-card budget, and mesh upload limit.

Select Custom to control those settings manually.

New Horizons Extension Distance

Controls how far the distant forests and terrain continue beyond Valheim’s native tree render distance.

This setting only takes effect when:

Quality Preset = Custom