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Portal Modes and Colors

Taeguk edited this page Jul 6, 2026 · 1 revision

Portal Modes & Colours

Every portal is in one of three modes. The mode decides what happens when you walk through, and each mode has a distinct glow colour so you can tell at a glance what a portal does — and whether it's actually wired up.

The three modes

Mode Walk-through does… Set it via
Vanilla tag-pair Normal 1:1 teleport to the portal with the same tag Default (use E to set a tag)
Same-world Network Opens a menu of your other network portals, teleports in-world Config panel → Link mode: Network
Inter-server Switches you to your own local world Config panel → inter-server flag

Precedence: if a portal is flagged both inter-server and network, inter-server wins.

Colours

Mode Glow colour
Vanilla tag-pair Blue (the normal Valheim portal colour)
Network Violet
Inter-server Cyan

The colour applies to the portal's frame glow and its inner swirl vortex.

Note: the outward radiating flame burst stays orange in every mode — its shader bakes that colour into a texture and can't be recoloured. The frame glow, inner vortex, sparks, and light carry the mode colour.

Active vs. inactive (dark)

Just like a vanilla portal only glows when it has a partner, a modded portal only lights up when it's actually usable. An unwired portal sits dark.

Mode Glows (active) when… Sits dark (inactive) when…
Vanilla it has a 1:1 tag partner no partner
Network your mesh has another network portal to hop to it's the only network portal you own
Inter-server it has a usable travel option — a configured destination, or (in a local world) a Return to origin server path no destination / no return path

So a lone network portal, or an inter-server portal with no destinations, will be its colour but dark — a quick visual reminder that there's nothing to travel to yet.

Hover text

Looking at a portal shows its status in the hover tooltip:

  • InterServerPortal: ON (cyan) — inter-server
  • InterServerPortal: NETWORK (violet) — network
  • InterServerPortal: off (grey) — vanilla
  • [locked] — the portal has an entry code (see Entry Codes & Locks)

…plus a reminder of the use hints (walk through to travel, L.Shift + Use to configure).

See also: Inter-Server Travel · Same-World Networks.

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