v0.9.47 — The Unbroken Veil

Fixed

• Atlas: fog of war now fully obfuscates the world's edge. The fog veil used to thin to transparency near the 10.5 km rim, letting the outer ring of the map show through in unexplored areas. The veil now darkens smoothly into the atlas backdrop toward the rim instead — unexplored land stays hidden all the way to the edge, while areas your crew has charted (shared at a cartography table) remain fully visible, right up to the rim.

v0.9.46 — crash-loop fix

Crash fix: server start killed the app on some machines

Fixes the crash-loop reported in the issue tracker: on some machines, the moment the Valheim server printed its first line of output, BakaLoader died — and because the server auto-starts on launch, the app then crashed instantly on every restart.

Root cause

Server console output arrives on a background thread. The internal PostJson bridge checked WebView.CoreWebView2 for null before marshaling to the UI thread — and WebView2 forbids touching CoreWebView2 from any other thread. On many machines the cross-thread COM call happens to survive; on others it fails with E_NOINTERFACE → unhandled exception → process terminated. That's the "CoreWebView2 can only be accessed from the UI thread" error visible in Event Viewer.

The fix

• PostJson now marshals to the UI thread first and only dereferences the WebView there.
• Guards for window teardown races, and the UI-side post can never take the process down (and can never recurse through the logger).

If you were stuck in the crash loop: just replace your install with this version and launch — your saved profile will be picked up and the server will start normally.

Gates: build 0 errors · 76/76 tests.

v0.9.45 — The Vellum

The Vellum — Saga log overhaul

The Saga hall gets a full quality pass, and the app's logging grows up.

In the Saga terminal

• Level highlighting — warnings glow amber, errors burn red, debug lines dim. Tagged app lines ([WRN]/[ERR]/[FAT]) are parsed exactly; raw server output gets smart heuristics (exceptions, stack traces, network chatter). The Net filter pill now actually catches network lines.
• Search the saga — a search box in the terminal header narrows the stream live, within whatever filter pill is active.
• Pause on scroll — scroll up to read and the stream holds your place; a "↓ N new" ember chip counts what arrived. Click it (or scroll back down) to resume streaming.
• Copy — one click copies the currently visible lines to the clipboard.
• Bigger scrollback — 1,200 lines kept (was 160).
• Session dividers — a bronze rule marks each server session start, profile switch ("helm turned"), and the boot-time replay of earlier lines.
• Server buffer replay — switching servers (or reopening the app mid-session) replays the active server's recent log tail instead of showing an empty terminal.

The Vellum (log settings)

• New Vellum button in the Saga hall (also in the Ctrl+K palette): choose where the scrolls are kept — a custom logs folder for both app and server logs — and toggle app-log writing. Paths are validated at save time; a bad folder can never kill logging (falls back to in-memory).
• Per-session server log files — each server session writes its own scroll (ServerLogs-<name>-<timestamp>.txt) instead of one ever-growing daily file. Old session scrolls are pruned after 30 days.
• Bugfix: the "Logs folder" button no longer fails when the default path contains %USERPROFILE% — the path is expanded and created before opening.

Gates: build 0 errors · 76/76 tests · UI probes green.

v0.9.44 — The Skald

The Skald — local server analytics

A new hall that chronicles your realm's story in numbers — all counted on your machine only, nothing ever leaves it.

• Hearth burned — total server uptime across the last 180 days, plus a live "alight" pill while the server runs
• Playtime per viking — every player's total playtime, visits, deaths, and last-seen (with live online dots)
• Happenings feed — joins, leaves, deaths, starts, stops, and crashes as they occur
• Mod chronicle — every mod update and install, with version trails
• Journal self-prunes (180 days / 20,000 events) so it can run for years
• Reachable from the sidebar (ᛏ Skald) or the command palette ("Server analytics")
• Full plain-terminology support — flips to "Analytics" with everyday wording

Install: unzip anywhere and run ValheimBakaLoader.exe. Self-updates from previous versions via the Upkeep card.

v0.9.43 — The Barrow

The Barrow — layered backup & restore manager

Every world's backup history, in one place. Open it from the command palette (World backups) or the The Barrow button in the world saves view.

What it shows

• Per-world drill-down — each world on disk (shared save folder and every isolated server copy) groups its full layer stack under it.
• Layer kinds: automatic snapshots (_backup_auto-), the game's last-known-good .old pair, and pre-restore safety copies BakaLoader lays down itself.
• Rich info per layer: size, in-game world day (read straight from the .db header), and delta-plus-time stamps like "3d ago at 1945".
• Owner profile, running state, and save-folder location for every world.

Safe, reversible restores

• Restoring a layer first snapshots the current live files as a _backup_restore-<timestamp> layer — every restore is reversible from the Barrow itself.
• Refuses to restore while a server is running that world (the live game would clobber the files).
• Warns when a layer has no paired .db (metadata-only restore).
• Delete unwanted layers with confirmation.

Under the hood

• Three new bridge RPCs (backups.overview / backups.restore / backups.delete) with multi-layer path validation — backups can only be targeted inside known save folders, and the live world pair can never be selected as a "backup".
• World day decoded from the save's netTime (day ≈ netTime / 1800).
• Full plain-terminology coverage (Barrow/layers/unearth → Backups/backups/restore).

Gates: build 0 errors · 76/76 tests · UI probe suite all-pass.

v0.9.42 — The Waystone

ᛦ The Waystone — join by name, not by number

Give your server a proper name. Once a Waystone is raised, every join surface — the Network card, the Sail Forth join prompt, the command palette copy, and the Discord Herald post — shares valheim.your-domain.com:2456 instead of a raw IP.

What's new

• Waystone wizard (WAYSTONE chip on the Network card, or Ctrl+K → Custom domain): four guided steps —
  1. Welcome — what you need (a domain you own, or a free dynamic-DNS name like DuckDNS / No-IP)
  2. Name — pick the name; pasted URLs are cleaned up automatically (scheme, path, port, trailing dot all stripped)
  3. Point — per-step DNS instructions: A-record setup (type/name/value/TTL), Cloudflare "DNS only" grey-cloud warning, dynamic-DNS updater paths, and a port-forwarding reminder
  4. Prove — live check: BakaLoader resolves the name and compares it against your server's public IP (match / stale-record / not-yet-propagated verdicts)
• Network card shows the Waystone address with its own COPY chip; the address drill-down lists it above the raw public IP.
• Discord Herald status posts prefer the domain once set.
• Remove it any time — everything falls back to the raw IP.

Honest limit

Valheim clients resolve A/AAAA records but have no SRV support — the port always travels with the name. The wizard says so up front.

Plain-terminology mode renders the whole feature as "Custom domain" throughout.

v0.9.41 — The Herald

The Herald — Discord sharing

BakaLoader can now keep your Discord community in the loop with one status post that edits itself — it never floods the channel with new messages.

What the post carries

• Server name, online/offline state, players online
• Join address (IP:port) — toggleable
• Password — off by default, opt-in with a clear warning
• Mod count + last mod update time
• Next scheduled restart as a live Discord countdown

How it works

• New HERALD hall in the sidebar (ᚺ) with a guided 4-step setup wizard: what the Herald does → forge the webhook (step-by-step Discord instructions) → choose the tidings → publish the first post
• Paste a Discord webhook URL and it validates live against Discord before saving
• The post updates automatically on server start/stop/crash, player join/leave, mod updates, and restart scheduling — debounced so Discord is never spammed
• Optional short event posts (server up/down, restarts) alongside the status post
• Optional thread ID for forum/thread channels
• Remove the post any time with one click

Safety

• Strict webhook URL validation (discord.com / ptb / canary only)
• @mentions suppressed in every post
• Password sharing is opt-in and clearly warned

v0.9.40 — The Rolling Mist

The fog-of-war toggle no longer snaps. The veil now rolls in (and out) as a slow concentric wave from the world's center — about three seconds of drifting mist with a soft, feathered edge instead of a hard line. Map markers appear and vanish as the wave passes over them.

v0.9.39 — The Rim of the World

The atlas cloud veil now sits only over the world itself: the fog of war is clipped to the realm's 10.5 km circle with a soft feathered edge, so the clouds thin away to nothing past the world's rim instead of filling the whole pane.

v0.9.38 — Cloud Veil

Atlas fog of war gets new art: a soft Japanese kumo-cloud painting in waterbrush style now veils the unexplored world (replaces the sea-chart texture). Warm gold and cream cloud swirls, gently blurred so the washes blend like wet watercolor.