for some context, i run a valheim server and have since hearth and home, its vanilla+, with a handful of mods i have made myself in my free time.
like many of you, ive struggled with inventory space, ive tried a number of things, paper dolls ranging from just your armor and cape, ones that have slots for your food, your utilities trinkets and potions, adding a new column, adding a new rowpaper dolls dont entirely solve the issue, only alleviate it, an extra column does next to nothing and even an entire extra row still results in your inventory being clogged
so i spoke to people who play on my server, and i got them to record their next play session for me.
what i found wasnt an issue with players grabbing everything they see, hunting deer when they were heading to the swamps to farm iron- no.
what hours of different people at different points in the game showed me was a problem with mobs dropping 2-3 things, all of which you need at pretty much every state in the game, and those same mobs are constantly aggressive.
-
you walk to the swamps with the intention to farm iron, a clean inventory, and youre charged by a neck, something youve been able to one shot for 50 hours.
predictably, you kill it, it drops a neck tail which you need for your meads, and so you see no reason to leave it behind, whether you have auto pick-up on or off.
you venture further, and youre charged by a boar, which is yet another mob youve been able to one hit for 50 hours.
then greylings, which again, you have been able to one shot for around 50 hours.
by time you reach your destination, youve lost 6 of your 32(total) inventory slots. if you were running there with absolutely nothing in your inventory, youd still be missing around 19% of your inventory space, just because of overly aggressive mobs.
and so, thats what i changed.
based on your biome progression, certain mobs become passive. (passive meaning, they do not attack you unless provoked.)
**upon bonemass' defeat**
- necks become passive unless they are alterted to you attacking another neck
-boars dont attack unless they are alerted to you attacking another boar
- greylings and greydwarfs are passive unless drawn to you breaking bushes or trees
- all forest faction members remain aggressive when in proximity to a shaman
- bears, trolls and skeletons remain aggressive
let me be clear, as of right now those are the ONLY changes made, and they are player based
they have been in place since around may 2024, since then we have hosted 7 new players, none of which have had a complaint about inventory post bonemass defeat
from our veteran players, the majority of which who have been playing since hearth and home / pre mistlands, this change has heard nothing but the highest of praise
i had worried that this would make the biomes feel a little dead, regardless of my confidence that it would solve the inventory issue
thankfully, greydwarfs being drawn to all forms of deforestation and being aggressive as a result does keep that magic alive, you cant cut trees or remove bushes in peace, you cant mine in peace, it (thankfully) does not infringe on those aspects of the game
though i have no plans of meddling with it until deep north drops, i have also considered editing loot pools for dungeons and certain mobs.
for example early in my consideration, i thought about making only greydwarfs drop greydwarf eyes, smaller less broad tweaks of that nature but
what i did is broadly the easiest and most accessible way to solve the inventory issue.
its easily configurable to your personal preferences and you could probably do it in less time than i did, since i was entirely unfamiliar with modding
to my knowledge this is the only "inventory fix" that truly does fix the problem, rather than delay the inevitable, because it nips right at the bud of the problem