AggroKit

Reusable aggro/threat-control tooling for people writing BepInEx 5 mods for Outward: Definitive Edition. It doesn't add anything a player sees on its own — it's a library dependency other mods (CompanionKit, and anything built on top of it) pull in, and other modders are welcome to build on it too.

Requires: BepInEx 5 (Outward's Mono branch — see Compatibility below) + ForgeKit (hard dependency, installed automatically).

What's in it

Piece	What it gives you
AggroTools	Patch-free primitives for reading/adjusting engine aggro state without a Harmony patch of your own.
TargetableOverrides	A per-pair targetability gate — make one specific character untargetable to one specific other character, without touching the game's global targeting rules.
AggroEvents	Observability hooks (opt-in, off by default) plus one always-on engine bugfix: a squad-self-target guard.

Installing (for players)

Drop the AggroKit folder into BepInEx/plugins/. It has no effect by itself — install it because another mod you're using declares it as a dependency.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/cobalt.aggrokit.cfg (generated on first launch):

[Dev]
## Poll BepInEx/config/ak_cmd.txt for dev commands (aggrodump/forcetarget/taunt/calm/...).
EnableCommandFile = true

## Whether DumpKey logs an aggro dump of all AI characters near the player.
EnableDumpKey = true

## Key that logs an aggro dump of all AI characters near the player (needs EnableDumpKey=true).
# Default value: F3
DumpKey = F3

[Research]
## Re-arm AggroEvents' purely-observational Harmony taps that record the event buffer. OFF by
## default so these hot AI-tick paths stay un-patched. Detection-side control patches and the
## targetability override gate stay applied regardless — they're inert until a verb activates them.
EnableObservation = false

[Fixes]
## Kill-switch for the always-on engine bugfix in AISCombat.SetPreferredTarget: blocks a
## squad-contagion self-target assignment. Unreachable in vanilla, so default ON is safe.
BlockSquadSelfTarget = true

Using it (for modders)

<!-- your .csproj -->
<ProjectReference Include="path\to\AggroKit\AggroKit.csproj" Private="false" />

[BepInPlugin(GUID, NAME, VERSION)]
[BepInDependency(AggroKit.Plugin.GUID)]
public class Plugin : BaseUnityPlugin
{
    // AggroTools / TargetableOverrides / AggroEvents are static entry points —
    // call them directly once AggroKit has loaded (declare it as a dependency above).
}

Private="false" matters — it stops MSBuild from copying a second AggroKit.dll into your mod's own output folder. The kit ships from its own BepInEx/plugins/AggroKit/ folder; your mod just references it and declares the dependency so BepInEx loads it first.

Compatibility

Outward must be on its Mono Steam beta branch, not the default IL2CPP build — like every BepInEx 5 mod for this game. If your game runs but no BepInEx mods load and there's no crash log, this is almost always why (Properties → Betas → select mono in Steam).

License

Apache License 2.0 — see LICENSE in the repository root. You may use, modify, and redistribute this kit (including in commercial mods) provided you keep the copyright/license notice; see the license text for the full terms.