TheFloods

The Floods: The Broken Cycle

Watch the horizon. Prepare the coast. Survive what comes ashore.

New in v0.10.1 — Lightning, Wildfire & Strong Winds Update

This update turns The Floods into a broader coastal-disaster system rather than only a water-level mod.

• Storm visuals reworked: the old black horizon/storm-front overlays are disabled by default to prevent hard horizontal black bands across the screen. Storm pressure now leans on Valheim weather, a soft sky tint, and distant flashes instead.
• Readable procedural lightning: storms can produce blue, violet, and white forked bolts with a configurable visible hold, a short-range flash light, and distance-delayed thunder.
• Real lightning danger: exposed players can be struck during severe storms. Strikes can deal lightning damage, knock players back, and can be made non-lethal in the config.
• Wildfire system: drought and dry weather can lead to a connected moving fire-front, with embers, flames, smoke, heat-haze particles, scorch marks, and controlled local fire damage. Rain, wetness, floodwater, and exhaustion of fuel suppress it.
• Strong Winds disaster: severe gales add windblown debris and can topple a limited number of eligible trees. Base-protection checks are enabled by default, and direct structure damage remains disabled.
• Expanded disaster cycle: Storm Tides, Flash Surges, Great Floods, Droughts, Wildfires, and Strong Winds all use the same saved, host-controlled event framework.

Important upgrade note

Older configs may still have the retired screen-space storm overlays switched on. If you ever see a dark horizontal strip or black band across the display, open BepInEx/config/marc.thefloods.cfg and set both settings below to false:

[Storm Visuals]

EnableBlackHorizonStormBank = false

EnableApproachingStormFront = false

What is The Floods?

The Floods: The Broken Cycle is a rare extreme-weather and coastal-disaster mod for Valheim. The sea can rise, retreat, become violent, and transform how safe a familiar shoreline feels. A dry coast can become a fire risk. A calm forest can turn dangerous under a gale.

The mod is designed around long quiet periods punctuated by memorable events. The host rolls and saves event strength, timing, and state, then synchronises the result to connected players.

Main features

Dynamic coastal events

• Storm Tide — a variable coastal rise, normally between +1.5 m and +5 m by default.
• Flash Surge — a fast and dangerous surge, normally between +6 m and +12 m. It can begin with an unnatural sea drawdown.
• The Great Flood — a rare major event, normally between +8 m and +16 m.
• Drought — the sea retreats, normally by 3–5 m. Rare severe droughts can expose even more shoreline.
• Wildfire — can emerge from extreme dryness or dry lightning.
• Strong Winds — an independent gale disaster with debris and controlled treefall.

Every water event moves through an omen, rising, peak, and receding phase. The exact severity is rolled once, stored with the world state, and does not change when the world reloads.

Storms and lightning

• Valheim’s native thunderstorm environment is used during active coastal storms.
• Soft storm darkening and distant flashes build pressure without relying on a cropped black screen overlay.
• Ambient bolts add atmosphere around active storms.
• Dangerous ground strikes can target exposed players once a storm becomes severe enough.
• Lightning can ignite dry, flammable ground.
• Thunder can arrive after a realistic delay based on strike distance.

Wildfires

• Fire begins as a staggered connected front, rather than isolated tiny fire spots.
• Fire prefers dry, flammable biomes and moves with the wind.
• Effects include bright flame particles, smoke, embers, ground glow, local light, rising heat-haze particles, and temporary scorch marks.
• Rain, floodwater, wet ground, and fuel burnout extinguish the fire.
• Wildfire node counts, light counts, detail distance, spread speed, and damage are configurable for performance.
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