Ships are a delightful way to get around in Valheim, either by peacefully navigating the world’s many waterways or by launching yourself into space by turning a raft into the world’s biggest (and most dangerous) wooden luge.
As fun as Valheim’s vessels are, they’re also somewhat limiting. There are no customization options for your boats, so once you make the longship you’re basically done as far as creating your Viking navy is concerned.
Unless, of course, you download the new VaheimRAFT mod from NexusMods. Inspired by the survival game Raft, where you basically create ships out of bits of garbage in order to escape a murderous island, ValheimRAFT lets you create much larger-scale vessels than the base game allows.
Better yet, you can also place objects on the deck of your longer longboat, meaning you can finally live on the open ocean just as your Viking ancestors did centuries ago
The existence of construction tiles lets you “attach as much as you want to it,” according to mod creator Sarcen, although they note that adding too many items to your boat will eventually cause Unity to struggle. Sales are also placeable objects, so you can make your longboat look more like the ocean-going vessels of old if you want, but it’s not a requirement. As noted by Eurogamer’s Emma Kent, the mod doesn’t actually require sales for locomotion. Simply placing the helm and interacting with it will cause your boat to move, meaning you can make your longboat look like virtually anything.
Emma also recommends activating debug mode during construction. Waves tend to make placing objects with any degree of precision an impossibility, with the best solution being to simply float around your vessel like some sort of boat-building god.
As with many Valheim mods, you’ll need BepInEx to get ValheimRAFT to work. You’ll also need the Jotunn Library and MMHOOK Hook Gen Patcher. Download all those in the links provided before you install.
