My Valheim Mod

I wrote a Valheim mod some time ago.

It adds a new type of sign to the game. Originally, you could place signs and write text on them. With the IconSign, guess what — you can place signs that show an icon instead! There are so many in-game icons for resources, weapons, and more, so it made perfect sense to me to have a visual sign that helps you, for example, organize your chests.

Of course, there are automatic sorting mods out there, but having a visual representation of what’s in a chest felt more natural to me.

So, with my Unity skills and some research, I created the mod — twice. The first version was made during the pandemic, when my group and I used to play a lot of Valheim.

That first version worked fine, but it was a bit cumbersome to use: Just like with the original sign, you had to type a text, but it had to be the internal icon name. Basically, I copied the original sign class and dynamically replaced the text field with an image UI element. Loading the sprite from the SpriteAtlas was pretty straightforward.

Time passed, and after some Valheim updates, we decided to play again. The old mod was no longer compatible, so I decided to start over from scratch — with the vision of adding a proper UI for a better user experience.

Luckily, I found JotunnLib, a great helper library for creating Valheim mods. And yes, it supports UI elements too! With this, and again my basic Unity skills, I rewrote the mod. A member of my group helped with UI design, and we played around with some ideas.

Finally, I’m happy with the result and still update the mod from time to time — since Valheim updates often break compatibility with Jotunn or the mod code itself.

But since I keep getting issue reports on the Nexus Mods page, I know people are using it — so I keep supporting it.

Now, I’ve also added it to my itch.io portfolio, since it’s a cool project to showcase.

Cheers — and to all Valheim players out there: have fun with the mod! 😉