Make gigantic boats with this new 'Valheim' mod

A new mod for the game Valheim will allow you to make really, really big boats (h/t Eurogamer). The open-world Viking survival game sees players working their way up from nothing, foraging for basic items before working their way towards building entire civilizations. But the game remains in open beta and its crafting tools are still a bit simplistic, so modders have taken it upon themselves to unlock new possibilities.

The ValheimRAFT mod, as it’s called, allows users to craft their own ships from scratch rather than using pre-made ones.

You can already build large ships without a mod, but ValheimRAFT gives you a modified version of a raft that you can start with, including a platform on which you can add more structures. The mod also turns off structural integrity so you can build something massive and not worry about it falling apart. You’ll probably have to build your ship in Valheim’s debug mode, however, as the water moves naturally in the standard creative mode, making it difficult to snap pieces together with precision.

Sandbox titles — Valheim has been dominating the Steam charts since launching earlier this year in open beta, selling more than one million copies in its first eight days on the market. The game is similar to something like Runescape or (to a lesser extent) The Sims: A world-building title where players don’t follow a linear storyline but rather set their own goals and objectives. Up to 2-10 players can host their own servers and work together to support each other, too.

Especially during the past year of tumult and uncertainty in the real world, these types of games provide an escape by giving players a digital world that’s completely under their control... and where the boats can be as big as they want them to be without ever having tow worry about them blocking a canal for a week and affecting global trade in the process.