Beastwhispering — tame the wild animals of Aurai

Tame wild creatures and keep them as real, persistent companions. A tamed pet follows you, fights beside you, and survives zone changes and save/reload — it's not a summon, it's a character in your game the same way you are.

⚠ Updating from a build made before 2026-07-30? Your save loses every Beastwhispering item (chow, recipe scrolls, blankets, sigils, feathers), every Beastwhispering skill you have learned, and the fletching enchantment on arrows you already fletched — the mod moved onto its community-allocated item-id range and the old numbers no longer resolve. Your pets are not affected: bonds, loyalty, names and stats are stored by name, not by item id. A fresh character avoids the loss entirely. Full detail in CHANGELOG.md.

⚠ Known issue — taming works in single-player only. Right now the taming itself (using chow on a wild creature to bond it) only succeeds in a single-player session. Once a creature is tamed, it is fully playable in multiplayer: your pet comes with you into co-op, follows, fights, feeds, bonds and persists exactly as it does solo. So the workaround is simply to tame your companion in single-player first, then take it into your co-op session. This is a bug, not a design decision, and we are working diligently to resolve it.

This is actively-developed software. It is playable and it is being tested, but you will find rough edges. Back up your saves before you install. See the release notes for known issues.

Currently tamable: Hyena, Armored Hyena, Veaber, Pearlbird — each with their own diet, combat style, and species-specific bonuses.

• Taming & bonding — win a wild animal over with the right food, then build loyalty over time through feeding, care, and fighting alongside it.
• Combat — Hunt as One and For the Kill give your pet (and you) real combat presence, not a passive follower.
• Care — feed, manage temperature/comfort, and keep your companion alive through the world's hazards. Heating and cooling blankets are crafted; their recipes are also meant to turn up in world loot containers — chests, and the odd containers like broken tents, hollowed trunks and junk piles. (The drop path is new and hasn't been confirmed in a real game yet — craft from a known recipe if you don't see one.)
• Persistence — your pet remembers you. Loyalty, stats, and bond state survive quitting, reloading, and traveling between regions.
• Co-op — play with your companion in a multiplayer session. (Taming itself is single-player only for now — see the known issue above.)

Roadmap

The tameable roster is small right now, and that's deliberate, not a shortcut. Every release keeps adding more of Aurai's creatures — but each one is built as a deep, lore-accurate companion in its own right, not a reskin with a different portrait. We'd rather ship fewer pets that each feel like a real reason to pick that species — a distinct playstyle niche, abilities and stats grounded in how the creature actually behaves in Outward's world — than a long list of interchangeable ones. If your favorite creature isn't tameable yet, it's very likely on the list; it just hasn't gotten its due care yet.

Requires: SkillKit, CompanionKit, ForgeKit, StoryKit and AggroKit — all five declared [BepInDependency] hard dependencies, installed automatically by a mod manager. Those in turn pull in NetKit and DonorKit. SideLoader must also be present at runtime. BepInEx refuses to load a plugin whose hard dependency is missing, so a partial hand-install means Beastwhispering never starts at all — check BepInEx/LogOutput.log, which names the missing GUID.

Settings

BepInEx/config/cobalt.beastwhispering.cfg, created on first launch. It is a large file; these are the keys most people want:

[Keys]
## F7 tame · F8 feed · F9 recall · F10 self-test · F12 diagnostics.
TameKey = F7
FeedKey = F8
RecallKey = F9

[Taming]
## Chance a tamable creature drops its taming-food recipe scroll on death (0-1).
RecipeDropChance = 0.33

[Temperature]
## Chance each blanket recipe scroll drops from a placed world loot container (0-1).
BlanketRecipeDropChance = 0.05

Every generated entry carries its own # Default value: comment and a full description. ⚠ BepInEx never migrates a changed default into an existing cfg, so an install made before a value changed keeps whatever number is already written in the file — compare against those comments before reporting a bug. The values above are illustrative of the shape; the file itself is authoritative.

Dev/diagnostic commands are read from BepInEx/config/bw_cmd.txt (write a verb on its own line; help lists the full set). They exist for debugging, not for play.

Note on Pearlbirds: Pearlbirds live only in Chersonese. If you tame or keep a Pearlbird companion, the game will briefly load into Chersonese and back on its own to fetch their body — a short, automatic loading screen, not a bug.

Credits

Artwork by Proboina — the skill and passive icons, the item icons, and the paw-shaped companion status badges.

Beastwhispering requires SideLoader by sinai-dev at runtime, and runs on BepInEx.