The Studio is not a mod file. It is the Studio folder of this package: your mod manager puts it in the mod's own folder, BepInEx/plugins/RavenIronStudios-BetterWorlds/Studio in your profile. It needs Python 3. Open that folder and run betterworlds (Linux, macOS) or betterworlds.bat (Windows). It opens in your browser and only answers your own computer. Python 3 is all it needs.

One project, every page. The overview, the painter, the studios and the 3D view share one design, so an edit on one page shows on all of them.

Send to Game finds your profiles in r2modman, Gale and the Thunderstore Mod Manager, your Steam install and a dedicated server, and lists the worlds each one already has. Pick Templates for new worlds to start new worlds from your design, or one world to change that world. It writes only BetterWorlds' own files, inside BetterWorlds' folder, backs up whatever it replaces, and warns you when BetterWorlds is not installed there or the game is running.

Trust the preview where it is real. On an imported heightmap the preview is the game's own ground, and mountains, lakes, layers and the poles are drawn with the game's own maths. Without a heightmap the Studio sketches its own land, which is a sketch, not Valheim's.

Moving from Better Continents? The launcher's migrate option takes a Better Continents or VALtima world folder and sets up its heightmap, maps, settings and size for you.

The size is a decision you make once. Set it in the Studio's New World, send it to the templates, then create the world. After that nothing changes it: not design mode, not an admin, not a new design. To change the size, make a new world and load your design into it.

Two layouts. Normally the whole of Valheim's layout stretches with the radius, so a world twice as wide is the vanilla world twice as wide. Worlds upgraded from the oldest Better Continents keep the layout they were made with, and only their edge moves.

The limits are plain. Far from the centre the game's numbers lose precision, to about 8 mm past 65 km, which may show as roughness in movement and building. Big worlds need more memory on every machine, the server included, and take longer to start. A world bigger than about 16 km is saved in a layout of its own: never open it without BetterWorlds. The Studio draws its own picture of a huge world coarsely, so bring a full-resolution heightmap for fine ground. None of this has been tried in play yet: make your first big world a throwaway.

Other mods. If Expand World Size is installed it lays the world out, and BetterWorlds' stretching stays off. Expand World Data is told the world's size.

Every edit rebuilds the ground, then regrows it. The 64 m zones an edit touches are reset, and their trees, rocks, spawners and locations grow back on the new ground. A boss altar that no longer fits moves to the nearest spot in its zone where it does, and the report says which one and how far.

Your builds are never regrown. Zones with player builds, wards, beds, portals, tombstones or baked buildings are skipped, and so are the zones beside them. If an edit reaches one, a card asks you first, because a building there will not move with the ground.

Big changes ask before regrowing. A whole-world change, such as a new heightmap or the elevation sliders, rebuilds the terrain and then asks whether to regrow the objects. The answer starts at no.

New worlds start in design mode; worlds you already had start finished. While design mode is on and other players are connected, a banner reminds you that every edit changes their world too. On a dedicated server an admin joins and presses Finish design when the world is ready.

The ground is built in order: your heightmap, then the elevation profile, then the mountain ranges, then your brush strokes, then the poles. The brush strokes live in a layer of their own, in steps of one centimetre, so they never touch your heightmap. The Studio can load that layer, show it, edit it and bake it in.

Mountains have a real ceiling. A peak stops at the height you set, and the ground above a range is brought down to it, so ridges stay sharp instead of piling up.

A colour heightmap is read as brightness, the way Better Continents reads it. Greyscale maps read exactly as they always did.

An alt biome is a region inside a base biome. It changes the trees, the creatures, the weather and the music of the zones that are not made yet. Four of them (Mushroom, Lantern, Bones and Menhir) live on several base biomes, so the painter has a swatch per base biome for them.

Planted regions are regions of their own. The game's size and distance rules do not apply to them, but they still count toward the game's quota: plant one Dark Meadows and the game may still add another. Choose Only what I paint in the Studio's Alt biomes panel to keep exactly your own. Keep patches wider than a couple of map pixels, or they can vanish.

Not yet tested in the game. The engine is Better Continents' own, checked many ways on a test bench, but no one has played it here. The bw_altbiomes console command shows what was placed and why.

A lake takes the shape of the ground. Its water fills the real basin up to the level you set, so a natural hollow shows even before anyone digs. The Studio's Lakes page and the Rivers page, and the F7 > Lakes and Rivers tabs, draw and fit them. A river is a line of points from source to mouth; a stream may start at a lake.

Rivers carve the ground, so they go into a new world or a design-mode world. Lakes can change at any time. Trees that already stand where a lake will be are cleared with the console command bw_water clearbeds.

This water comes from the Tarn mod, with its authors' permission. If you install Tarn itself, BetterWorlds leaves lake and stream water to it. Not yet tested in the game: start with a boat on a lake.

Pins are placed when a world is made. The pin map and its legend stay on the server and are never sent to players. A placed pin ignores counts, biome and height. On a world that is running, the console command bw_pins apply puts a changed map into zones nobody has visited yet.

A big map is read in pieces. Over 8,192 pixels the map is kept as tiles and decoded when needed, so a 16k heightmap needs a fraction of the memory it would flat. Each player's machine decides how much it may use, in the Maps settings below. The in-game biome brush does not work on a tiled map: edit it in the Studio.

Not yet tested in the game: every map size, and the pins.

Roads in the world belong to the world's ground, so they go into a new world, or a design-mode world. Carved routes are the older kind: you carve a route into the ground you have loaded, by hand or as you travel, and a dedicated server does not do it on its own because it needs a player nearby.

Trees already standing on a road are removed only when you ask: the Routes tab can count them, then remove them. The console command bw_roads sweep shows a preview first. Not yet tested in the game; the earthwork is the riskiest part.

Put the town's placements.bcp file in your templates (VALtima's compiler makes it), then create a new world: the new world takes the town with it. A world that already exists never takes it from the templates; use bw_bake load on that world instead, and bw_bake undo if you change your mind. On a dedicated server the file must be in place before its first start.

It is the same format Better Continents uses, so towns made for Better Continents load as they are. Baking your own buildings in the game is not here yet: Better Continents still does that in its own worlds. Not yet tested in the game.

Towns level the ground under every building and clear the trees in its way. A stronghold's garrison fights back; clear it and the town is liberated and stays monster-free. With TerroritySmellatory installed, a town can register as a territory.

Seeds apply when a world's locations are made, which means a new world. A seed counts toward that location's usual number, so to place every copy of an altar, seed as many as the game would make.

Storm cells roam by default, two in a standard-size world and more in a bigger one. Turn them off in the Weather tab, or draw your own. Every player works out the same storms from the world clock, so they line up without any extra network traffic.

Devastating Storms come from Ragnarok's Wrath, with its authors' permission, and every player needs BetterWorlds to see one. If you install Ragnarok's Wrath itself, BetterWorlds schedules none and leaves them to it. Seasons are read from Seasonality, Seasons by shudnal or Ragnarok's Wrath when you have one, and counted by BetterWorlds otherwise. A season changes the sea, not your stats.

A pole is chosen when a world is made. Tick the removal boxes before you create the world, or change them live in design mode. A removed pole takes its boss altar and its locations with it. Boss arenas, caves and events keep their own weather: a forced weather never overrides them. Not yet tested in the game.

How it works. Better Continents' own exporter captures the world's heightmap and biome map, and the upgrade finishes the next time you start the world. The Better Continents settings file is copied and checked, then kept outside the save folder. The new terrain follows the old closely, but not to the metre, so a building on steep ground can sit a little higher or lower.

What it keeps. The world's size and its save, wide worlds included. It also carries the fine heights, the forest and heat maps, the alt biomes as they were planted, and the baked town (with BetterBakes installed).

What it cannot carry. Better Continents' random alt-biome rules, its game-terrain mode and its in-game bake undo folder. The upgrade warns you, and for a world that leans on those, staying on Better Continents is still safe.

Before you start: back up the save, and move a world stored in Steam Cloud to local storage. Only the host (single player) or the dedicated server itself can upgrade a world: on a dedicated server, run bw_bcupgrade in the server's own console, not through an admin connected as a client — a remote admin's console is refused. The same restriction applies to bw_bcupgrade revert.

Without the Better Continents plugin, such a world shows a message instead of quietly making the wrong terrain.

The clock is world time, so on a dedicated server it runs while somebody is online. A dungeon nobody has entered since its last build is skipped, because the reset would give back the same dungeon. If the rebuilt rooms would come out different while a tombstone is inside, the reset is cancelled and the old dungeon stays.

A table is one file, betterdungeons.json, in the world's folder: the settings and a list of dungeons, each a vanilla dungeon under a new name. bw_dungeon place puts a vanilla dungeon at a spot, in ground nobody has visited yet or in a zone with no base in it. A zone with a base is refused, with the reason. Which vanilla dungeons a world has at all is still the Locations tab's decision.

Not here: caves that have no dungeon generator (TrollCave02 and BearCave) are left alone, and a dungeon you place does not get a cleared approach. Not yet tested in the game.

Install Python 3 first (python.org). Open the mod's Studio folder (in your profile: BepInEx/plugins/RavenIronStudios-BetterWorlds/Studio; Gale and r2modman can open the profile folder for you) and run betterworlds (Linux, macOS), double-click betterworlds.bat (Windows), or run python3 betterworlds.py. Your browser opens on the Studio. Keep the launcher window open while you work, and always open the Studio from the address it prints, so your project is there next time.

Press Send to Game on any Studio page. Pick your profile, then Templates for new worlds and Send to game. Create a new world from that profile and it starts from your design, in design mode. To change a world you already have, pick that world instead of the templates. A world appears in the list once it has been loaded in the game.

A dedicated server makes a new world from your templates by itself, the first time it starts a world name that has no save. So put every file in place before that first start: the size, roads, rivers, the baked town, the maps and the module files, all in the server's BepInEx/config/BetterWorlds/ folder. If the server runs on your computer, Send to Game lists it. Otherwise press Download .zip instead and copy the files across.

The new world starts in design mode. When it is ready, an admin joins from a game and presses F7 > Utilities & Layers > Finish design to lock it for play. Players get the world's maps from the server when they join; they only need BetterWorlds installed.

Copy the town's placements.bcp into BepInEx/config/BetterWorlds/ (or send it with the launcher's --install), then create a new world. In the game, bw_bake info shows that the town is there. Everyone who joins needs the BetterBakes plugin at the same version.

BetterWorlds-source.zip carries the User Guide & How-To and the AI Agent Skill in its docs folder, as PDFs and as Markdown. The AI Agent Skill is a ready-made skill for Claude Code and other AI assistants that help you build worlds.