i had this issue and after the 2nd boat i spent 2 hours digging a trench in my boat basin in the sea making sure there was no flooring when i docked my boat to the point where i floated in an area and waited for the tide to lower just to pickaxe one time and then doing it when the sea lowered me enough to swing my axe once and my boats are fine now, havent lost one since, knock on wood*

The nice thing about mods for things like this is devs can collect objective metrics about what mods are being used, if they're interested. Gives you a pretty clear top ten of desired QoL fixes.

I totally agree with OP. Sailing vessels should be invincible to all very low-impact collisions so they can survive being parked in a player-made dock and also not taking scrape damage while sailing slowly through a player-made canal that's lined with stone or wood pieces.

I even posted this as a suggestion in the discord channel and got a large amount of upvotes for it. But that's as good as making a wish after throwing a coin in the wishing well.

Boats damage needs to be fixed. Necks attack my boat, as if they know the difference between a boat and a log. Both floating wood. No way they should be able to destroy a new karve.

For the damage while "parked", it's possible to avoid.

As mentioned, make sure your boat isn't near rocks, or rocks that get exposed during storms as wave heights change.

I built my boathouses with stone typically, and put core wood posts/beams on the water/stone edges as 'guides', kind of like you would see in a real-life wharf where tides are a thing.

Even in storms, where the parked boat is travelling up/down a lot, no damage occurs.

The other option is building your boathouse 'inland' a bit where the storm waves won't reach.

Sadly the only functional boathouse rn is a chest. :/

Possible fixes here https://valheim.thunderstore.io/package/1010101110/multiplayerboatdamage and here https://www.nexusmods.com/valheim/mods/119

Im having the same issue

Yup, doesn't do it when anyone else uses the boat but as soon as I am standing on it the damage begins occurring. Almost killed my twice already, I'm basically stuck walking everywhere while everyone else gets to sail :(

it takes damage only if it hits the sandbed or rocks with huge waves. Make your port in a creek, ot leave your boat furter at sea.

Mine will get destroyed during storms when it gets smashed against the shore. So far 100% of the materials dropped every time it was destroyed, so I just picked it up and rebuilt it.

I suffer these too. But only when Im playing with my friends. I guess its some sort of sync problem. Even the waves starts to lag and that moment the ship drops meters down and get damage.

We found that it helped if we were sailing on a different ships. Dunno if its the method that really solve the whole problem.

Yes i has one desync where the boat fell some distance on the open sea and took some damage, so its possibly a network bug but not a game mechanics problem. I play on an open server -almost 40 hours - and only had this happen once, but in p2p this might be much more frequent.

On dedicated servers this is most obvious this most recent patch. A Karve cannot survive...... existing. Just being built, it constantly takes damage if no one is at the tiller.

Depends on how much damage you're talking about and the context of damage..

damage from weather? damage from monters? damage from waves?

pretty calm seas, no monsters and no weather it still takes damage. not a lot, maybe like 10 or so.

That's not normal, they do take damage when hitting the ground or rocks of course. But if you are out in the open sea's and just riding the wave than i think its a bug in your particular game.

there can be rocks or land just under the surface, even in the ocean there can be reefs just below the surface. so keep a look out, hope it helps

When sailing close to shore, watch out for rocks above and below the surface.
Be wary of shallows near to swamp and plains shorelines as mobs can reach you from the shoreline by swimming, wading or flying out to you.
When sailing on the ocean, watch out for sea serpents.
As for the weather... when it's stormy, trim the sails to level 2 and avoid wave breaking.
Try to avoid sailing at night in unknown waters or when visibility is negligible.
Don't use a raft to sail across ocean ;)

10 damage is negligible prob some hidden weathering damage like rain, or you simply bumped something and not notice.

Sometimes it seem to happen at speed where the boat just jumps off the waves and takes 10 damage. That is pretty negligible, and I always ignored that. Underwater rocks are much more dangerous.

Also having this issue. Normal, calm conditions. Nothing apparently colliding with boat then you'll get a random smash sound effect and 10 exact damage. Makes crossing large parts of water impossible.

Its maybe a bug, saw a post on dev forum

I've noticed this 'bug' the last few days. If I'm using the boat then there's no damage, but as soon as I leave there is an intermittent 10 damage and crashing sound, even though it's not near any rocks, and in deep enough water. The sea/waves seem to make it rise and crash down taking 10 damage every few seconds, even though the sea is calm. Admittedly I had traveled through a storm, and it's almost as if the boat still thinks it's in a storm by it's behavior.

Any floating pieces of wood? tree logs? That sound of waves lifting and smashing back down is something underneath.
I've noticed there seems to be tides now so it can drop down lower rise up.
Is it dorectly near the beach or you have done soem work to place it in a dock?
I simply made a few side loge and added the straw mats like a V have now also added the Viking longship
Neither takes any damage at all
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2440394281
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2440395888

I've had the same issue, mostly in multiplayer.
The damage comes from no source at all (objects or mobs), and occurs every few minutes repeatedly, whether moving or not.

This has become more common, im getting it too. Check the forums, there are plenty of posts where people have had their boats taking 10 ticks of damage no matter the weather, in the middle of the ocean, and at regular intervals.

It happens on the server im hosting and makes it almost impossible to travel more than a small distance, it ticks down like a bomb.. its a latency issue of some kind but i have no idea how to fix it. You can be in the middle of the ocean on calm water and hardly moving and it literally bounces.

I believe this was answered before as fall damage, either waves falling underneath boat or rising again to hit boat. So yeah it's a bug but not sure how is if they can fix that anytime soon.

Originally posted by Fzanco:

I believe this was answered before as fall damage, either waves falling underneath boat or rising again to hit boat. So yeah it's a bug but not sure how is if they can fix that anytime soon.

Any idea why its exactly 10 damage each time?