SealsAtHome

Tame the Deep North's seals like any vanilla tameable: feed them raw fish, call them to follow or stay with E, breed them at home, and keep their pups as babies if you like. Client-side, and everything other players see is vanilla: no new creatures, items or effects.

Quick Start

1. Install with a mod manager (r2modman, Thunderstore Mod Manager, Gale): BepInEx comes along automatically.
2. Find seals in the Deep North. Drop raw fish near one without scaring it off: it waddles over and eats it.
3. Keep it fed and calm. After 30 minutes it's tame. Press E to make it follow you or stay.

Features

• Taming like vanilla: raw fish, the usual hearts and messages.
• Follow, stay and rename just like vanilla tamed animals, with their own seal sounds.
• Breeding like vanilla: two happy, fed seals make a pup that's born tame (they have to stand really close, see How Things Behave).
• Pups grow up like vanilla cubs. Prefer the cute baby seal? Give it a name and it stays a baby forever. Clear the name and it grows up again.
• Wild pups can be tamed too: bring one home with the Abyssal Harpoon.

Screenshots

Taming a wild seal: drop raw fish, keep your distance, and its tameness rises.

Wild pups can be tamed too.

Tamed seals at home.

Two fed, tamed seals close together fall in love.

A pup is born.

Give a pup a name and it stays a baby forever.

Welcome to Seals @ Home.

How Things Behave

• Tamed seals never fight: when something hurts them they run off for a while, then come back.
• Wild seals behave like before: lazy, they scoot away when you get very close and run when hit.
• A scared seal won't eat. If you spooked it, back off and give it half a minute.
• Wild seals are afraid of fire: near a campfire or hearth they get frightened and won't tame, so tame them away from fires. Tamed seals don't mind.
• Taming only progresses while the seal is fed and not frightened (see its hover text).
• Breeding seals need to cuddle up. Really close. The two have to be within 3 m of each other, counted from their middles. That's the game's own breeding rule, the same as for boars, not something this mod made up. But a seal is about 4 m long, and 3 m is only three 1x1 floor tiles: lying nose to tail never works, and two 2x2 floor tiles (4 m) apart is already too far. Put them side by side, touching. Starred seals only look bigger: their real body is the same size, so put them just as close, even if they seem to overlap.
• Too many seals stop breeding: with 5 or more seals and pups within about 10 m (wild ones count too), none of them breed. That's the game's rule too. Split a big herd up.
• With PvP off, only the butcher knife hurts tamed seals, as with any tamed animal. One catch: players without the mod can hurt tamed adult seals with any weapon (see Multiplayer).
• Pups keep aging while you're away, as long as the world (or server) is running.
• Starred pups: Valheim never spawns wild seal pups with stars (the game's vanilla code, which this mod doesn't touch), but you can get one by breeding: a pup gets the stars of the seal that gives birth to it.

Multiplayer

SealsAtHome makes changes to the game's own seals instead of adding new mod-only ones, so friends without the mod still see your pets, and uninstalling keeps them. The flip side: in their game, seals work the way the unmodded game made them. A tamed seal stays tamed (green health bar, its name), but their game can't feed it, command it or make it breed.

SealsAtHome only runs in players' games: dedicated servers don't need it and don't run it. Valheim lets one player's game control each creature at a time, usually whoever got there first. If that's a friend without the mod, your game takes the seals near you over, so everything works: taming, feeding, follow / stay, names, breeding, pups growing up, and anyone with the mod can command them. The first time that can take up to half a minute; after that it's at once. Friends who have the mod keep control of their seals. Tested in a few sessions with friends so far: please report how it goes.

Only when nobody with the mod is near does a seal behave like the unmodded game's seal for the moment. It stays tamed, with its green health bar and name, but it doesn't eat, tame, breed or grow, and it wanders instead of following. Nothing is lost: it all picks up again when someone with the mod comes by.

Players without the mod still see your tamed seals with green health bars, pet names, hearts and sounds. Their weapons can still hurt tamed adult seals: the game lets anyone attack adult seals, like the Dvergr (pups are safe). Best: everyone in your group has the mod, same version.

Compatibility

• Built and tested for Valheim 1.0 (Deep North). Tested on Linux; there's no OS-specific code.
• If another mod already changed the seals when a world loads (gave them taming or a different AI, like "tame everything" mods), SealsAtHome leaves them alone and says why in BepInEx/LogOutput.log.
• Other mods that change creatures as they spawn (taming, AI or creature-overhaul mods) can clash with SealsAtHome without it noticing. If seals act strangely next to another mod, please open an issue.
• Mods that don't touch seals aren't affected: no game code is patched, nothing else changes, and there's no config file.
• Every language the game has: all texts are the game's own.

Uninstalling

Nothing is stored in your characters. Tamed seals stay tamed in your world (green health bar, pet names, they don't run from players), but they stop following and wander where they are, so tell them to stay at home first. Without the mod they don't breed or grow up, and any weapon can hurt tamed adults again (the unmodded game lets anyone attack adult seals). Reinstalling picks up where you left off.

Thanks

SealsAtHome started from TameableSeals by pseudopulse: thanks for the idea of tameable seals! TameableSeals has no public source to contribute to, so SealsAtHome was built separately. It's a fresh take on the idea, built on the game's own taming, AI and breeding, so seals act like any vanilla tameable, with their own sounds, breeding, and pups that grow up (or stay babies), and friends without the mod still see your pets.

Links

• Source and bug reports: https://github.com/algo7/SealsAtHome (issues welcome)
• Changes: the Changelog tab
• Made with AI assistance.
• Built with BepInEx. MIT license.