StoryKit — add an NPC, trainer, and skill tree

📖 Full documentation: StoryKit wiki page

A BepInEx library plugin for Outward (Definitive Edition, Mono branch) that lets a mod add an NPC: a standing character in the world with a dialogue graph and, if it's a trainer, a full in-game skill tree the vanilla Trainer window sells from. A consuming mod describes the NPC as plain data; StoryKit builds the character, spawns it at a fixed spot, wires its conversation, and compiles its skill tree — no custom UI, no NodeCanvas hand-editing.

StoryKit covers NPCs, trainers, and dialogue. A quest/story-event engine is not part of the kit — there is no quest-authoring API. (It does ship read-only recon tooling over the vanilla QuestEventManager — the qevent* dev verbs below — but that is diagnostics, not an authoring surface, and it's off unless [Recon] EnableStoryRecon is turned on.)

Requires: BepInEx 5 (Outward's Mono branch — see Compatibility), ForgeKit, and SideLoader present at runtime.

Installing (for players)

You don't install or interact with StoryKit directly. It arrives as a dependency of a mod that adds an NPC — for example Beastwhispering, whose animal-taming trainer is a StoryKit NPC that sells the mod's pet-skill tree. The NPC and its dialogue are what you actually meet in-game; StoryKit is the plumbing behind it. A mod manager installs it automatically alongside whatever mod declares it as a dependency.

Consuming the kit

A consumer calls NpcRegistry.Register(NpcSpec) in Awake, describing the NPC's placement, appearance, dialogue tree, and (if it's a trainer) the skills it sells. NpcDirector spawns the registered NPC at player-ready on every scene load (built to be master-only in co-op and duplicate-safe — that guard has not been live-verified on a two-machine session), and DialogueBuilder compiles the described conversation into a real NodeCanvas graph reusing SideLoader's own trainer dialogue nodes. See the wiki page for the full NpcSpec/SkillTreeDef shape and worked examples.

Compatibility

Outward must be on its Mono Steam branch, not the default IL2CPP build. If your game runs but nothing looks modded, check that first.

Config

BepInEx/config/cobalt.storykit.cfg, created on first launch. Three keys, shown at their shipped defaults:

[Story]
## Master kill-switch. false = no NPC is built or spawned by this kit.
EnableStory = true

[Recon]
## Read-only taps over the vanilla QuestEventManager, for the qevent* verbs below.
EnableStoryRecon = false

[Diag]
## The Harmony patches StoryRecon installs. Only meaningful with recon enabled.
StoryReconPatches = false

Each generated entry carries a # Default value: comment; BepInEx never migrates a changed default into an existing cfg, so compare against those before assuming a bug.

Dev verbs

BepInEx/config/StoryKit_cmd.txt — write a line, it runs on the next poll (works while paused).

Verb	What it does
storynpclist	Every registered NPC and its placement
storynpcstatus	Whether each NPC is spawned, and where
storynpcspawn <id> [here]	Spawn one NPC — here uses your current position
storynpcdespawn	Despawn the spawned NPCs
storyreload	Re-read registrations and rebuild
selftest	[SELFTEST] PASS/FAIL … DONE
storyrecon	Recon summary (needs [Recon] EnableStoryRecon)
qeventdump / qeventlisten	Dump quest-event state / watch events as they fire
qeventadd / qeventset / qeventdel / qeventage	Read-write pokes at a quest event, for diagnosis only

⚠ The qevent* verbs write to real quest state. They exist for investigation on a throwaway save, not for play.