Three mods cover nearly everything Valheim builders ask for, and they sit in three different places. Gizmo (the ComfyMods version) gives you free rotation on all three axes and is purely client-side - the server never knows it exists. PlanBuild adds planned ghost pieces, a Plan Totem and a Blueprint Rune that copies, saves and pastes whole buildings; it uses Jotunn and belongs on the server as well as on every PC that wants to use it, because the server enforces its rules. Infinity Hammer is an admin tool: copy any object, build without cost or restriction, undo and redo, load blueprints from files. It goes on the admin's PC with Server Devcommands and World Edit Commands, and ordinary players need nothing. Get those placements right and the rest is configuration.
This guide goes through what each mod does, where it is installed, how blueprints move between them, the server settings worth deciding on before your group finds them, and what building mods cost a shared world.
Which mod does what#
Building in vanilla Valheim has three frustrations: pieces only turn around one axis, in fixed steps; everything has to be paid for before you can see what it looks like; and nothing can be copied. Each mod attacks a different one.
| Mod | Thunderstore package | What it solves | Install on |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gizmo | ComfyMods-Gizmo | Rotation on X, Y and Z, finer snap angles | Each builder's PC only |
| PlanBuild | MathiasDecrock-PlanBuild | Plans, copy and paste, blueprint files, terrain tools | Server and builders' PCs |
| Infinity Hammer | JereKuusela-Infinity_Hammer | Cost-free, restriction-free admin building, copying any object | Admin PCs (with its two dependencies) |
The package names matter because each mod has history. The original Gizmo by Rolo is deprecated on Thunderstore; the maintained one is the ComfyMods version, still often called ComfyGizmo. PlanBuild's code lives in the sirskunkalot/PlanBuild repository and its config file is still named after one of its original authors, but the package you install is published as MathiasDecrock-PlanBuild. Older forks and translation packs sit beside it, and some of them are deprecated, so check that you have the main one.
All three are BepInEx plugins. If the server does not run BepInEx yet, Valheim mods with BepInEx on a server covers the pack, the start_server_bepinex.sh start script and the first start that creates BepInEx/plugins.
Gizmo: free rotation on the client#
Vanilla building turns a piece only around its vertical axis, in 22.5-degree steps. Gizmo adds a small three-ring gizmo to the placement ghost and lets you tilt the piece around the other two axes as well. According to its README, holding LeftShift while scrolling rotates around X, holding LeftAlt rotates around Z, and V resets the selected axis; a reset-all key exists but is unbound by default. Later versions added hotkeys to halve and double the number of snap divisions (PageUp and PageDown by default), a local-frame rotation mode toggled with the back-quote key, and the option to copy the rotation of a piece you are looking at. Key defaults have moved between versions, so open its file in BepInEx/config after the first launch rather than trusting a video.
The snap setting is the one to know. Gizmo describes snap angles per 180 degrees, configurable from 2 up to 256 in recent versions. A high number gives you near-free rotation; a low one keeps pieces lined up the way vanilla does. Builders who want curved walls and angled roof beams raise it; most people leave it near the default and change it with the hotkeys when they need to.
Why it needs nothing on the server: rotation is decided on the client at the moment you place a piece. What reaches the server is an ordinary building piece with a position and a rotation, exactly the same kind of object vanilla creates. Players without Gizmo see the tilted beam exactly as it was placed. That also means a server owner cannot enforce or forbid it - and has no reason to.
PlanBuild: plans, the Plan Totem and the Blueprint Rune#
PlanBuild adds two tools and a few pieces. The Plan Hammer, crafted from one wood, places planned pieces: transparent ghosts of any building piece you know, which cost nothing to place and need no support. Anyone can later add the materials to a plan, at which point it becomes the real piece - you still need a normal Hammer and the right crafting station to finish it. Plans that would be unsupported as real pieces show more transparent, and cannot be finished until something holds them up. Real pieces snap to planned ones, which makes plans handy as rulers and spacers.
The Plan Totem (built with the vanilla Hammer from 1 wood and 1 Greydwarf eye) is a central chest for a plan. Put materials in it and it finishes supported plans within its radius, 30 metres by default. It also protects what it watches: a piece destroyed by an enemy (not removed with the hammer) is replaced with a plan of itself, so a raid leaves a template to repair instead of a hole.
The Blueprint Rune, crafted from one stone, is the copy-and-paste half. Its tools select pieces in a radius or by flood fill, copy or cut a selection to a clipboard that lasts until you log out, and save it as a .blueprint file with a name, category and description. Placing a blueprint puts it down as planned pieces, so a copied longhouse arrives as a ghost waiting for materials. It also reads .vbuild files from the older BuildShare mod. The rune carries terrain tools too: flatten in a circle or rectangle, create slopes, remove terrain edits, repaint ground, and delete vegetation or objects in a radius.
Most rune actions can be reversed with bp.undo and replayed with bp.redo. The README suggests binding them:
bind mouse3 bp.undobind mouse4 bp.redoBlueprints are stored as files on each player's own PC. The default save directory is BepInEx/config/PlanBuild/blueprints, relative to the game folder, and the mod scans the game folder recursively for .blueprint and .vbuild files. A blueprint downloaded from a sharing site goes into that folder and appears in the rune after a restart or a rescan.
Installing PlanBuild on the server and clients#
PlanBuild depends on BepInExPack and Jotunn; since version 0.19.0 it no longer needs HookGenPatcher. On the server:
- Stop the server and take a backup of the world.
- Upload Jotunn into
BepInEx/plugins, then extract the whole PlanBuild archive intoBepInEx/plugins/PlanBuild- all of it, not only the.dll, because the mod ships asset bundles alongside it. - Start the server once so
BepInEx/config/marcopogo.PlanBuild.cfgis created, stop it, edit the server settings (next section), and start again. - Install the same PlanBuild and Jotunn versions on every builder's PC, ideally through a shared mod manager profile - r2modman profiles for a group shows how.
The connection rules are asymmetric. A player without PlanBuild can join a server that runs it; they just cannot see planned pieces, which is confusing when a friend is "building" something invisible next to them. A player with PlanBuild cannot join a server without it - the mod blocks that on purpose, so nobody can use its free-build tools on a server that cannot police them. If the versions differ, Jotunn's version check stops the connection with a message naming the mod; Jotunn explained and mod version mismatch kicks cover reading that message.
On RE:NODE the server side of this is file work: upload the archive through the file manager (archives unpack in place) or SFTP, then edit marcopogo.PlanBuild.cfg in the in-browser editor. There is no one-click mod installer and no list of allowed mods - what you upload is what runs.
PlanBuild settings to lock down on a server#
The settings under Server Settings in marcopogo.PlanBuild.cfg are enforced on every client that connects, and admins (IDs in adminlist.txt) are always exempt. These are the defaults from the README:
| Setting | Default | What it decides |
|---|---|---|
| Allow blueprint rune | true | Whether non-admins may use the Blueprint Rune at all |
| Allow direct build | false | Whether blueprints can be placed as real pieces with no materials |
| Allow terrain tools | false | Whether non-admins may use the rune's terrain tools |
| Allow serverside blueprints | false | Whether players can upload and download blueprints on this server |
| Allow clients to use the GUI toggle key | true | Whether the marketplace hotkey works for non-admins |
| Excluded plan prefabs | empty | Pieces nobody but admins may plan |
The two that change a survival server are direct build and terrain tools. Direct build turns a saved blueprint into finished pieces at no cost - fine on a creative server, the end of resource gathering on a survival one. Leave it off unless the group has agreed otherwise; creative servers with no build cost covers the servers where it belongs. Terrain tools are off by default for a good reason: flattening a large area in one click is the fastest way to grow a world's terrain data and make a base zone heavy to load, as terraforming on servers explains.
PlanBuild also respects the vanilla world switches that relax building. With nobuildcost set, plans build instantly and the Plan Totem finishes every supported plan in range with an empty chest; noworkbench removes the crafting-station requirement. Those come from world modifiers or setkey, covered in global keys and setkey.
Turning on Allow serverside blueprints enables the marketplace (the End key by default, or the rune-themed marketplace pieces). Players upload with bp.push <id>, list with bp.server and download with bp.pull <id>; bp.local lists their own. Admins can keep particular pieces out of everyone's plan table with plan.blacklist.add <prefab_name> and inspect the list with plan.blacklist.print. Note that a shared blueprint is a set of instructions, not a licence: anyone who pulls one can still only build it with materials unless direct build is allowed.
Infinity Hammer: the admin's building tool#
Infinity Hammer, by JereKuusela, describes itself as bending the rules of building, and it does. It lets you select and copy any object (hammer on what you are looking at, hammer connect for a whole building, hammer circle=<radius> for an area), build with no resource, stamina or durability cost, ignore wards and no-build zones, remove objects that are normally indestructible, make pieces unbreakable, place with exact offsets and free rotation, and undo or redo with NumPad7 and NumPad9. It can also give you a custom hammer with hammer_menu that lists any piece, location or room in the build menu.
Its Thunderstore package requires two more of the same author's mods: Server Devcommands and World Edit Commands. That explains how it fits a dedicated server. Vanilla blocks cheat commands on dedicated servers for everyone; Server Devcommands lifts that for admins only, and Infinity Hammer works through that permission. The README tells you to install it on the admin client. Ordinary players need nothing, because the objects it creates are ordinary objects - with one exception: scaled objects. Its blueprint scaling only applies to objects that can be scaled, and the README points to the Structure Tweaks mod, installed for all clients, to unlock scaling for everything else.
Server Devcommands also provides a permission system, and Infinity Hammer plugs into it under the section name infinityhammer. Settings include no_resource_cost, ignore_wards, ignore_no_build, remove_anything, disable_loot and tools_enabled. That lets you give a trusted builder cost-free building without giving them the ability to remove anything in the world. Server Devcommands on a dedicated server covers where that config lives and what installing the mod on the server adds.
Infinity Hammer's settings can be toggled with hammer_config, which binds well:
bind u hammer_config tools_enabledbind i hammer_config set_invulnerability On/OffBlueprints between PlanBuild and Infinity Hammer#
The two mods share a file format. Infinity Hammer loads PlanBuild .blueprint files and BuildShare .vbuild files, and saves new PlanBuild-format blueprints:
hammer_blueprint longhouse selects a blueprint file to place with the hammerhammer_restore longhouse places it at its originally saved positionhammer_save longhouse saves the current selection as a .blueprinthammer_menu blueprints opens the blueprint list in the custom hammerhammer_blueprint takes optional center=, data=, scale= and snap= parameters. Two compatibility notes from its documentation are worth knowing before you hand files to PlanBuild users. Infinity Hammer saves object data with each piece by default (chest contents, sign text and so on), which makes files larger and can upset future PlanBuild versions; turn off "Save blueprint data" in its config if the file is meant for PlanBuild. It can also save terrain height and paint snapshots in extra sections of the file, which current PlanBuild versions do not understand, so do not load terrain-enabled files in PlanBuild.
A common split on group servers: admins use Infinity Hammer to place large community builds and to fix griefing quickly; players use PlanBuild to plan and copy their own houses and pay for them through the Plan Totem; everyone uses Gizmo.
What building mods cost the server#
None of these mods adds CPU work on the server by itself; the cost is in what they make easy. Valheim stores every piece and every terrain edit in the world, and the player who owns a zone has to load and simulate all of it. Copy-paste turns one house into ten in an evening. A hundred-piece blueprint pasted in a dozen places is the same load as building it by hand a dozen times, just faster. The general picture is in Valheim server performance and lag.
Practical rules that keep a building server healthy:
- Plans are objects too. Unfinished plans sit in the world as pieces until someone completes or removes them. Ask players to clear abandoned plans with the rune's remove tool, which refunds materials already added.
- Keep terrain tools admin-only unless you trust everyone with them, and level ground before building rather than flattening a whole hillside.
- Watch the base zone. If one base starts causing long loads when people arrive, count its pieces before blaming the plan.
- Back up before big pastes. A world is one
.dbfile; a misplaced paste is undone more cleanly from a backup than piece by piece.
On RE:NODE, backup slots are included with every Valheim plan, a backup is on demand or scheduled, and restoring is one button, which makes "back up before the paste" a habit that costs ten seconds. If a heavily built world reaches the plan's memory limit, the server is stopped and restarted clean rather than swapping, so leave headroom on a large building server.
Troubleshooting#
"Cannot connect" with PlanBuild installed. The server does not have PlanBuild, or has a different version. Install the same version on both sides, or remove it from your client for that server.
A friend sees nothing where you built. You placed plans and they do not have PlanBuild. Either they install it, or the plans need materials to become real.
Plans will not finish. They are unsupported, you lack the crafting station in range, or you are not carrying the Plan Hammer when finishing by hand.
Direct build does nothing for players. That is the server default. Only admins can direct-build until Allow direct build is set to true in the server's config.
Infinity Hammer commands are refused. You are not recognised as an admin, or Server Devcommands is missing on your client. Check your ID in adminlist.txt and type devcommands to see whether it is accepted.
Rotation hotkeys do nothing. Another mod bound the same keys, or the Gizmo defaults changed in an update. Check its config file for the current bindings.
FAQ#
Do players need Gizmo installed to see rotated pieces?
No. The rotation is applied when the piece is placed, and the world stores it like any other piece. Only the person placing it needs Gizmo.
Can Xbox players join a server running PlanBuild?
Yes, as clients without the mod, since a server with PlanBuild accepts players without it. They will not see planned pieces or be able to use the rune, so on a crossplay server keep plans short-lived and finish them.
Is Infinity Hammer safe to give to every player?
Not on a survival server. It is designed for admins and depends on devcommands permission. If you want players to have some of it, use the Server Devcommands permission settings to grant specific features rather than full access.
Where do I put blueprints I downloaded?
On your own PC, in PlanBuild's save directory (BepInEx/config/PlanBuild/blueprints by default) or anywhere under the game folder it scans. They are not uploaded to the server unless the server allows shared blueprints and you push them.
Will these mods survive a Valheim update?
Usually after their authors update them, not on patch day. Keep the server on the last working version until PlanBuild and Jotunn are updated, and test on a copy of the world first.
