SmoothServer

SmoothServer

Actively maintained for Valheim 1.0. Rebuilt for 1.0.7 on launch day and kept current as patches land;

version 1.x of the mod is in the works. Bugs and ideas: GitHub issues.

Designed and thought up by Nosferatu from real pain points hit running a co-op server.

Coded using Claude, tested by humans.

Networking and performance tuning for Valheim dedicated servers — and, since 0.3.0, an optional

client half in the same DLL.

The server half is the point of the mod and it still needs zero client installs:

[General] EnforceClientMod defaults to false, so vanilla players can always join. Install the

same package on players' machines as well and you additionally get packet compression, a client

send budget and a server-wide shared map.

Installing

Server admins — install into the server's profile

(BepInEx/plugins/SmoothServer). Everything under "Server modules" below starts working

immediately; nobody has to install anything. Config file: Nosferatu.SmoothServer.cfg in the

server's BepInEx/config.

Players — install into your own profile only if the server also runs SmoothServer 0.3.0+.

[General] Mode is Auto: a dedicated server runs the server half, your game runs the client

half. You get compression, the client send budget and the shared map; server-owned settings are

pushed to you by the server.

The package contains six DLLs, not one: SmoothServer.dll plus ZstdSharp.dll,

System.Memory.dll, System.Buffers.dll, System.Numerics.Vectors.dll and

System.Runtime.CompilerServices.Unsafe.dll (the zstd codec and its dependencies — none ship

with Valheim or BepInEx). A mod manager handles this; hand-installers must copy all six.

Mods this replaces — uninstall them first

| Uninstall | Replaced by | Where |

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

| CW_Jesse / BetterNetworking | Compression + SteamRates + SendQueueGuard | server and clients |

| Mydayyy / ServerSideMap | SharedMap | server and clients |

Both must go from every machine. If BetterNetworking is still installed, Compression refuses

to patch (FAILED(...) in the module summary) and the rest of SmoothServer loads normally — it

will not break your server, it just will not compress. SharedMap imports an existing.mod.serversidemap.explored file once on first start, so no exploration is lost.

Server modules

Each module has its own Enabled toggle in its config section.

• Telemetry [Telemetry] — periodic fps / frame-time / ZDO-rate log line. No gameplay effect.
• FrameRate [FrameRate] — raises the dedicated server's Unity frame cap. 60 is a good

default on modern hardware: roughly +4pp of one CPU core for half the tick latency.

• SendCadence [SendCadence] — sends ZDO updates to every peer on a fixed interval

(SendHz, default 20) instead of vanilla's one-peer-per-frame round robin. Scales with player count.

• SendBudget [SendBudget] — the ZDO send-queue high-water mark and minimum chunk size,

exposed as config: HighWaterBytes defaults to 65536 (vanilla 10240), MinChunkBytes to 2048

(same as vanilla). Acts as the fallback when AdaptiveBudget is off.

• CreateBudget [CreateBudget] — objects created per frame, exposed as config (default

matches vanilla, i.e. a no-op until raised).

• PeerTelemetry [PeerTelemetry] — per-peer ping, throughput and Steam send-queue sampling.

No patches; feeds AdaptiveBudget.

• AdaptiveBudget [AdaptiveBudget] — a per-peer send budget from each peer's measured

bandwidth-delay product, clamped, EMA-smoothed, and backed off while Steam's pending byte count

says the pipe is congested. A player on fibre next door and one on satellite no longer share

one number.

• SteamRates [SteamRates] — raises Steam's SendRateMax (default 1 MB/s).

SendRateMin stays at vanilla on purpose: it is a floor on Steam's own bandwidth estimate,

and raising it stops the congestion controller backing off for weak connections.

• SendQueueGuard [SendQueueGuard] — defers, never drops, while a peer's Steam send queue is

backed up, and survives the Steamworks throws that can occur mid-handsha