PlantEverything on a Valheim server: install and config

PlantEverything, by Advize, lets players plant things vanilla Valheim only lets you find: berry bushes, mushrooms, thistle, dandelion and other pickables, plus saplings for trees the game never gives you seeds for. On a dedicated server it goes in BepInEx/plugins on the server and on every client, its settings are pushed from the server through ServerSync, and with LockConfiguration on only admins can change them. The decision that matters is not the install, which takes two minutes, but how much foraging your group wants to keep - because a server where every player has a raspberry hedge outside the door plays very differently from the game's intended scarcity.

What PlantEverything lets players plant#

Vanilla farming is narrow. The cultivator plants a fixed set of crops and tree seeds, and crops are tied to biomes: barley and flax only grow in the Plains, the Mistlands crops only in the Mistlands, and so on. Everything else you eat or brew - berries, mushrooms, thistle, dandelion - has to be found in the wild and walked back to.

PlantEverything adds the missing pieces. As listed on the mod page for the current 1.21 line:

It also lets crops be grown in any biome, and it can apply its growth and placement settings to crops and saplings added by other mods. That last part is easy to miss: if your group already runs a farming or food mod, PlantEverything may change its crops' behaviour too.

The list changes between versions as Iron Gate adds plants and Advize follows. Check the mod page for your version before promising the group a particular plant - lingonberries and the Ashlands entries, for example, exist only in versions released after the biomes that contain them.

Installing it on the server and the clients#

PlantEverything is a both-sides mod. Placement happens on the player's machine, but the settings that decide costs, growth and where things may be placed come from the server, so the server needs it to sync them and to keep everyone on the same rules.

1. Make sure BepInEx is installed on the server and working - a BepInEx folder in the server root and the BepInEx start script in use. Valheim mods with BepInEx on a server covers that step.
2. Download the package from Thunderstore (it lists one required dependency on its page; install that too).
3. Stop the server, then put Advize_PlantEverything.dll in BepInEx/plugins.
4. Start the server once so it writes BepInEx/config/advize.PlantEverything.cfg and the BepInEx/config/PlantEverything/ folder, then stop it again before editing.
5. Add the same version to every player's mod manager profile. The simplest way is one shared r2modman profile, as described in Thunderstore and r2modman for groups.

The files you end up with:

BepInEx/  plugins/Advize_PlantEverything.dll  config/advize.PlantEverything.cfg  config/PlantEverything/PlantEverything_ExtraResources.cfg  config/PlantEverything/  (localisation JSON files)

One behaviour from the mod page is worth knowing when you plan a rollout: clients that have the mod can still place the extra resources even if the server does not. That means the server is not a gatekeeper. If one player installs PlantEverything on their own and joins a server without it, they can plant berry bushes and nobody else's game will stop them. If that matters to your group, the honest answer is a group agreement plus the server's allow list, not a technical block. The admin, ban and permitted lists cover the second half.

Xbox players cannot install mods, so a crossplay server with PlantEverything has a split: PC players can plant, console players can harvest what is planted but cannot place anything new. That is workable for a mixed group as long as everyone knows it.

The config file and the settings that matter#

Everything lives in advize.PlantEverything.cfg. The file is long and well commented, and it is the authority on defaults - the mod page points to its Nexus listing for the full default configuration rather than repeating it, so read the comments in your own file after the first start rather than trusting a list copied from an older version. The settings a server owner actually touches:

Beyond those named keys, the file carries per-resource values for cost, yield, respawn or growth time, the grow radius saplings need around them, and size scaling. Setting a resource's cost to 0 disables many of them, which is the other way of trimming the menu.

A starting point for a group that wants the convenience without flattening the game might look like this - but check the exact key names and sections against your own file, because they are the version's, not ours:

## Illustrative values - copy names from your own file's comments[General]LockConfiguration = trueEnableMiscFlora = falseEnableExtraResources = falseDisabledResourceNames = Pickable_Mushroom_blue,Pickable_Mushroom_yellow[Difficulty]PlaceAnywhere = false

The prefab names in DisabledResourceNames must match the game's internal names exactly, including capitals. If a name is wrong, nothing errors; the plant simply stays in the menu. Take the names from the mod's own config comments or from a prefab list, and check the menu after restarting.

How ServerSync handles the settings#

PlantEverything uses ServerSync, the library many Valheim mods bundle to push configuration from the server to clients. The rules on its page are specific, and they explain most of the "my change did nothing" reports:

• Synced settings come from the server. When a player connects, the server's values replace theirs for that session.
• The client's file is not changed. Synced values live in memory. A player who opens their own .cfg sees their old numbers, which looks like a bug and is not one.
• The General section does not sync, except EnableMiscFlora. LockConfiguration, EnableExtraResources and DisabledResourceNames stay per machine. In practice that means the extra-resources file and the disabled list need to be the same on every client as well as on the server, so ship them in the shared profile.
• With `LockConfiguration = true`, only admins can change synced settings in game (through the Configuration Manager menu, for example). Without the lock, anyone with the mod could change values for everyone connected.

Keep the lock on. There is no good reason to leave a server's planting rules editable by every player, and turning it off is the sort of change nobody remembers making when growth times suddenly go to zero. If you want to understand how locked configs and admin-only settings work across all your mods, ServerSync and config enforcement goes through it.

Edit the server's file with the server stopped, or use the in-game menu as an admin. If you edit the file on a running server, some mods pick up the change through a file watcher and some only on restart; a restart is the predictable option.

Balance on a shared world#

PlantEverything removes a whole layer of the game: the trip to the wild for each ingredient. For a group, that changes more than food.

• Foraging disappears. Raspberry and blueberry runs are part of the early game's pacing, and cloudberries are a reason to visit the Plains early. With bushes at home, nobody leaves the base for food again.
• Mead ingredients become trivial. Thistle, dandelion and the cave and crypt mushrooms are what limit mead brewing. Plantable versions make resistance meads a matter of a garden, not an expedition.
• Rare finds stop being rare. Yellow mushrooms, normally from the swamp crypts, and blue mushrooms, normally from caves, are the ones most groups disable to keep a reason to go below ground.
• Trees change the landscape. Ancient and Ygga saplings let players grow swamp and Mistlands trees anywhere, which changes how much wood is worth hauling home.

There is no right setting, only an agreed one. Groups that play casually, or that already use the world modifiers to raise resource rates, often turn everything on. Groups that like the expedition structure keep berries and dandelions plantable and disable the mushrooms and the Mistlands and Ashlands entries. Decide before the first person builds a farm, not after - removing something players already planted feels like a punishment.

PlaceAnywhere deserves special care. It removes the biome and ground restrictions that otherwise apply, so everything can be planted in any biome. On a casual server that is fine. On a world where the group cares about progression, it undoes one of the main reasons to settle near the Plains or the Mistlands.

Performance and the shared-world cost#

Each planted bush or sapling is an object in the world, saved in the world file and loaded for whoever is in that zone. A small kitchen garden costs nothing. The trouble starts when one player plants a field of three hundred bushes beside the main base, because every visit to that zone loads and simulates all of them on the machine that owns the zone, and the world file grows with every one. The same applies to a grove of saplings that grows into a forest of large trees.

The effect is the same one described in Valheim performance by biome: the cost lands on the player who owns the zone and on everyone standing near them, and dense object fields are among the most common causes of stutter in an old base. Two habits keep it under control:

1. Agree a size. "One garden per base, no fields over a few dozen bushes" is a perfectly normal rule on a group server.
2. Keep farms away from the main hub. Put large plantings in their own zone rather than next to the portal hub and crafting area where everybody gathers.

The grow radius setting also matters. Saplings need clear space to grow, and making that radius tiny so players can plant dense forests is a quick way to add thousands of large trees to one area.

Updating and removing the mod#

PlantEverything is updated regularly to follow game patches. Treat it like any other both-sides mod on patch day: hold the server update until the mod has been updated, and update server and clients together. If one side is newer, ServerSync's version check can refuse the connection; mod version mismatch kicks has the messages.

Removing it is gentler than removing most content mods, because most of what it places are the game's own prefabs - a raspberry bush planted with PlantEverything is a raspberry bush. Those generally stay in the world after the mod is gone. Anything the mod defines itself, such as the custom ashvine, does not exist without it and will not load. Before removing, back up the world, remove the mod from the server and every client together, and check the main farms on a copy of the world first. On RE:NODE, a backup from the Backups tab before the change is the simplest insurance, and the file manager is enough to take the .dll out of BepInEx/plugins - the file manager guide covers it.

Troubleshooting#

New plants do not appear in the menu. Confirm the mod loaded: search BepInEx/LogOutput.log for PlantEverything and for Could not load. If it loaded, check whether the plant is in DisabledResourceNames or has a cost of 0, and whether the entry needs EnableMiscFlora.

Settings changed on the server, players see the old values. Most likely the setting is in the General section, which does not sync, or the server was not restarted after the file was edited. Remember that clients' files never change; test in game, not by reading their .cfg.

Players can still plant something you disabled. DisabledResourceNames is in the General section and is per machine. The players' configs need the same list, so update the shared profile.

A player without the mod sees nothing odd but cannot plant. Expected. They can harvest everything; only placement needs the mod.

The base got slow after a farming spree. Count what was planted. A large field in a busy zone is the usual cause; moving it or thinning it is the fix.

FAQ#

Does PlantEverything need to be on the server?

Yes, for a dedicated server. It needs to be on the server and on every client so the server's settings sync to players. Clients with the mod can place resources even without it on the server, but then nothing syncs and every player follows their own config.

Can Xbox players use PlantEverything on a crossplay server?

They cannot install it, so they cannot place the new plants. They can still harvest bushes and pick items other players planted, because those are ordinary objects in the world.

How do I stop players changing the settings?

Set LockConfiguration = true in the server's advize.PlantEverything.cfg. With the lock on, only server admins can change synced settings. Admins are the players listed in adminlist.txt.

Can PlantEverything plant ore or other resources?

With EnableExtraResources on, you can list any prefab in PlantEverything_ExtraResources.cfg, and the mod page gives tin and meteorite pickables as examples. That is a powerful switch on a progression server, so most groups leave it off.

Will my farms vanish if we remove the mod?

Most will stay, because the mod places the game's own bushes, mushrooms and saplings. Pieces the mod defines itself will not load. Back up the world and test the removal on a copy before doing it on the live server.