Live View Mod Setup — Valheim Map

1What you need first

If you use a mod manager: nothing at all — go to step 2, which is the route this page recommends. The rest of this list is for installing by hand.

A mod manager, ideally — and r2modman is the best one. It fetches the mod and everything it depends on, keeps each set of mods in its own profile, and updates them later without you opening a folder. That is why step 2 is four clicks and step 3 is five careful ones.
BepInEx, only if you are installing by hand. A mod manager installs this for you, so skip the rest of this bullet if you took step 2. Doing it yourself, the mod is built against denikson-BepInExPack_Valheim version 5.4.2202. If you already have BepInEx and it is older than that, update it first — an out-of-date BepInEx is the most common reason a plugin loads and then does nothing. If you have never used a Valheim mod before, install that pack first; it is the standard one, and every other Valheim mod you may later want uses it too.
Valheim on PC. The paths on this page are Windows ones. The layout inside the Valheim folder is the same on Linux, so the steps still apply — only the way you get to the folder differs.
Nothing on the map side. Watching a session needs no install and no account: whoever you send the link to just opens it.

Only players running the mod appear on the map. If three of you are playing and one has it installed, the map draws that one player. Everyone who wants to show up needs it.

2Install with a mod manager

The recommended route, and the one to take unless you have a reason not to. r2modman is the best of the managers; Thunderstore Mod Manager and Gale work the same way and these steps fit all three.

Get r2modman if you have not already — it is on Thunderstore and in Overwolf. Start it, choose Valheim, and pick a profile (Default is fine).
Open the mod's page and press Install with Mod Manager:
```
https://thunderstore.io/c/valheim/p/BobMitch/ValheimRelay/
```
Your manager takes over and asks which profile to put it in. If you would rather stay inside the manager, search its Online tab for ValheimRelay and download it there — the same thing by a different door.
Say yes to the dependencies. The manager offers to install BepInEx alongside the mod. That is the whole of step 1 handled for you, at the version the mod expects rather than whichever one you happen to have.
Press Start modded in the manager and load into a world. Not Play in Steam — that runs the unmodded game.

Updating later is one button. The manager tells you when a new version is out and swaps it in place, and it keeps this mod in a profile rather than loose in your game install. That is the real argument for this route over the one below, and it is why the folders and paths in step 3 are worth skipping if you can.

3Installing it by hand

For advanced users, and only if you installed BepInEx yourself and launch Valheim straight from Steam. If you use r2modman, Thunderstore Mod Manager, Gale or Vortex, the game folder is the wrong one for you: each keeps its own copy of your mods, and the game you start from the manager never looks there. Use step 2.

Unblock the zip before you extract it. Right-click ValheimRelayPlugin.zip → Properties → tick Unblock at the bottom of the General tab → OK. Windows tags files that came from the internet, and the tag is inherited by everything you extract out of them. It is quicker to tick the box than to work out later that this was the problem.
Open your Valheim folder. In Steam: right-click Valheim in your library → Manage → Browse local files. It is usually here:
```
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Valheim
```
You should see a BepInEx folder inside it. If you do not, BepInEx is not installed — go back to step 1.

Make a folder for the mod at BepInEx\plugins\ValheimRelay\, so the full path is:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Valheim\BepInEx\plugins\ValheimRelay\

Put both .dll files in it. Download the zip, extract it, and copy both files across. Both are needed — one on its own will not work.
Start Valheim and load into a world.

Not sure which route is yours? If you start Valheim by pressing Start modded in some other program, you use a mod manager — go back to step 2. If you press Play in Steam, this section is the right one.

The ValheimRelay folder is optional. BepInEx looks through plugins\ and everything inside it, so the DLLs work loose in plugins\ too. The folder is worth making anyway: it turns uninstalling into deleting one thing, instead of remembering which two files out of thirty were this mod.

Placing the files inside a manager profile. If you use a manager but want to do this by hand anyway, the profile folder is the one to use, not the Steam folder above. In r2modman: Settings → Browse profile folder, then BepInEx\plugins\. Or paste this and replace <Profile> with the profile you actually play (Default, unless you made others):

%APPDATA%\r2modmanPlus-local\Valheim\profiles\<Profile>\BepInEx\plugins\ValheimRelay\

Most managers also have an Import local mod button that takes the zip directly and saves you finding the folder at all. Either way, launch through the manager afterwards.

4Checking it worked

There is one test, and it takes a second.

Load into your world and press SHIFT-F8.
The mod copies a link to your clipboard. Paste it into a browser — on the same PC, on your phone, or into the chat of whoever you want watching.
The map opens on your world and starts drawing you as an arrowhead with your name on it, moving as you move.

The link carries your world's seed as well as the session, so the map has the terrain drawn before it has even finished connecting. What the map does with a session covers the rest — following a player, dropping markers they can see in game, and what happens when someone dies or goes quiet.

5If nothing happens

In rough order of how often it turns out to be the answer.

SHIFT-F8 does nothing at all: Check BepInEx is running before you suspect the mod. Look for BepInEx\LogOutput.log in your Valheim folder (or your profile folder) and check it was written the last time you played. That file lists every plugin loaded at startup, so searching it for ValheimRelay answers the question outright: either it loaded or it is not there.
The log has no ValheimRelay line: The mod is somewhere the game is not looking. Overwhelmingly this is the mismatch step 3 opens with — files dropped in the Steam folder while the game is launched from a mod manager's profile. If you installed by hand and would rather not, step 2 replaces the whole problem. Otherwise confirm that both DLLs made it across, and that you copied the files out of the zip rather than the zip itself.
The manager says it is installed, but the game does not: Two things, in this order. You must launch with Start modded from the manager rather than Play in Steam; and the mod has to be in the profile you launched, which is easy to get wrong once you have more than one. Check the mod is enabled there and not just downloaded — most managers let you toggle a mod off while keeping it.
The log has a ValheimRelay line, but SHIFT-F8 still does nothing: Check your BepInEx version against step 1. A plugin built against a newer pack can load and then fail quietly on the first thing it calls. The log will normally have said something about it a few lines further down.
The DLLs vanished after extracting: Antivirus. Unsigned DLLs from the internet get quarantined sometimes; restore them and add the folder as an exception, or fetch the zip again and unblock it before extracting.
The map opens but nobody is on it: If the map says the session is for a different world, that is the map refusing to draw players onto terrain that is not theirs — every coordinate would be right and the picture would still be a fiction. Use the switch button it offers. If it says it is connected and the list is empty, the game side has dropped out: alt-tab back in and press SHIFT-F8 again.
Still stuck: Ask in the community Discord — bring the last twenty lines of LogOutput.log and it is usually a one-message answer.

6Removing it

Whichever way you installed it, the uninstall is one action and there is nothing to clean up afterwards.

Installed with a manager: find ValheimRelay in its installed list and uninstall it, or just untick it if you only want it off for a while.
Installed by hand: delete the ValheimRelay folder you made and start the game again. If you put the DLLs loose in plugins\ rather than in a folder, delete those two files instead.
Nothing else is touched — the mod does not change your world, your character or your save files, so removing it leaves no trace to clean up.

7Sharing the link safely

Worth thirty seconds before you paste it somewhere public.

The code in the link is a key, not a room name. Anyone who has it can watch every player's live position for as long as the session lasts. Share it the way you would share a key — with the people you are playing with, not in a public channel.
You can be in a session without being tracked. A player who turns position sharing off still appears in the list, marked, and nowhere on the map.
An open tab keeps the session alive for everyone, so close the map when you are done rather than leaving it open on a phone in your pocket.
Nothing leaves your browser except through the session itself, and nothing about a session is stored by this map unless you press Record — a recording keeps the names and paths of everyone who is sharing their position, in this browser only, until you export it to a file yourself. Anyone with sharing turned off is not recorded.

Set up the live view mod