The Dead Remain

What it does: kills stay where they fall. In vanilla Valheim a body vanishes a few seconds after it drops; with The Dead Remain it stays, and over about three in-game days nature takes it back. Crows circle and land to feed, wolves and boars come to eat it (and fight over it), and the carcass goes from Fresh to Picked to Bones and then it is gone. You butcher a carcass for its loot, and the longer you wait, the less is left.

The wild takes back what you leave behind.

Version 0.2.1. Carcasses, decay, loot, caps, birds and scavengers are all in; you can drag a carcass (P) and butcher it with a key of its own (B), both ready for Controller Chords. New: the birds over a carcass can be killed for their feathers, a dragged carcass leaves a blood trail (with Crimson Blood), and bodies no longer stretch when you drag them. Not yet tried in multiplayer.

Features

• The body stays. Most creatures leave a carcass. It settles, freezes where it lies and comes back in exactly the same pose when you walk away and return, or save and reload. Nothing drifts, sinks or launches across the map.
• Birds find it. By day crows circle high over a fresh kill (ash crows in the Ashlands, gulls on the coast), drop down to feed and scatter the moment anything comes near. Circling birds do not mean the carcass is safe: something may still be on it.
• Shoot the birds. An arrow or a thrown spear brings one down; crouch and they only notice you within 3 m of the carcass, close enough to strike the ones on the ground. Each drops Feathers, the rest scatter, and a bird killed over a carcass never comes back to it (for any player).
• Scavengers come. Wolves, boars, bears, necks, ulvs and asksvin walk to a carcass and feed, and a carcass they feed on is stripped far faster. A feeding animal is distracted, but walk up on it and it attacks at once. When too many arrive, a bigger animal drives a smaller one off and equals fight for it. Not every animal comes: each has a chance per biome to go to a given carcass (40% in the Meadows, 50% in the Black Forest, none in the Ashlands...), set in ScavengerVisitChance.
• Three days, three stages. Fresh, then Picked (the body darkens and dries), then Bones (a few bone piles where it lay, no physics), then gone. The length is a config value.
• Things keep in the cold. Carcasses in the Mountains and the Deep North last longer; in the Ashlands and the Swamp they go faster. Every biome is a config line.
• Time passes while you are away. A carcass you leave keeps decaying, and sleeping through the night moves it on too.
• Butcher it (default). The loot stays in the carcass until you press E on it: full loot when Fresh, about half when Picked, nothing once it is bones. Set LootMode = Vanilla to get the loot dropped beside the body as usual instead.
• Drag it away. Look at a carcass and press P (or Shift+E) to grab it by the part you look at and drag it; P or E again lets go and it settles where you leave it. The bigger the animal, the slower you walk; no running, jumping or crouching while dragging, and trolls are too heavy. Set DragMode = Hold to drag only while the key is held. With Crimson Blood a dragged body leaves a blood trail on the ground, heavy on a fresh kill and fading as it dries.
• Keys of their own. ButcherKey (B) butchers like E and PickUpKey (P) grabs and lets go, in the "8 - Keys" section. In Controller Chords pick "The Dead Remain" and either key, or type mod:marc.valheim.thedeadremain|8 - Keys|PickUpKey (or ...|ButcherKey).
• No charnel houses. A creature that dies inside an active ward leaves a normal vanilla ragdoll. Bodies that end up in deep water or on a ship are given back to vanilla too (no floating corpses).
• Hard caps. At most 8 carcasses per 64 m zone and 200 in the world. A raid or a flood can never pile up bodies: past the cap the oldest one goes first, and its loot drops before it goes if someone is near it.
• Skipped: players, bosses, skeletons, ghosts, wraiths, blobs, leeches, serpents, the Charred, summoned creatures, hares and a few others. Everything is a config list.

Works with

• Dismemberment: a severed limb stays beside its carcass until the carcass is down to bones, while you are within 150 m of it.
• Crimson Blood: its blood and The Dead Remain's carcasses work side by side, and it draws the blood trail a dragged carcass leaves.

Both are optional; The Dead Remain runs on its own.

Console (F5)

Command	What it does
tdr_status	Version, carcass counts, caps, patches
tdr_list	Carcasses within 60 m: species, stage, progress, distance
tdr_stage <0-3>	Sets the nearest carcass to Fresh / Picked / Bones / Gone (you must own it)
tdr_age <days>	Ages the nearest carcass by that many days
tdr_spawn <creature>	Makes a carcass 4 m in front of you, e.g. tdr_spawn Boar (host only)
tdr_clear	Removes every loaded carcass you own (host only)
tdr_reload	Re-reads the creature, rank and biome lists
tdr_drag	Grabs the nearest carcass within 3 m, as P would
tdr_drop	Lets go of the carcass you drag
tdr_joints	How far the joints of the nearest carcass are pulled apart (a stretched body shows here)

Config

BepInEx/config/marc.valheim.thedeadremain.cfg, also live in Configuration Manager (F1). The main ones: LifespanDays (3), LootMode (Harvest), MaxPerZone (8), MaxWorld (200), BiomeDecayMultipliers, CarcassCreatures / NeverCarcass, LogCarcassCounts to log the counts every few minutes, and in "4 - Birds": BirdsKillable (true), MinFeathersPerBird (1), SneakFlushRange (3 m), and in "7 - Dragging" / "8 - Keys": DragMode (Toggle), DragMaxSize (5), DragSpeedSmall / DragSpeedLarge (2.4 / 0.8 m/s), DragBloodTrail (true), DragBloodMaxDrops (40), ButcherKey (B), PickUpKey (P).

Multiplayer

Install on every client and on the server. Clients keep the per-zone cap on their own, but the world-wide cap and the decay of carcasses nobody is near are run by the server.

For other mods

A public API (TheDeadRemain.DeadRemainApi) lets other mods register carcasses, find them, read their stage and scent strength, claim feeding slots and tie their own objects (blood pools, severed limbs) to a carcass's lifetime.

Install

Install with r2modman / Thunderstore Mod Manager, or drop TheDeadRemain.dll into BepInEx/plugins/TheDeadRemain/. For multiplayer, put it on the server too.