PenPosts
Breeding caps per pen instead of per radius. Write "Pen" on a sign and animals inside only count their own pen when the game checks if it's too crowded. A full pen stops eating, and Q at the sign shows the pen's area.PenPosts
Breeding caps per pen instead of per radius, so neighbouring pens stop blocking each other.
In the base game, an animal stops breeding ("too crowded") when there are too many of its kind within a radius around it, wherever they are: the next pen, the barn behind the wall, even wild ones. With PenPosts you mark a pen with a sign. Animals inside it only count the animals in that same pen.
How to use
Write a sign whose text starts with Pen:
| Sign text | Pen |
|---|---|
Pen |
10 m radius around the sign (default) |
Pen 12 |
12 m radius |
Pen 15 Boars |
15 m radius, named "Boars" |
Pen 12 Lox cap 6 |
12 m radius with its own breeding cap of 6 (max 6 works too) |
- The radius is measured flat from the sign. If an animal is inside several pens, the nearest sign wins.
- Animals of the same kind and their young inside the pen count towards the cap.
- The cap is each animal's own (from the game or your taming mod) unless the sign or the config sets one.
- A full pen doesn't eat. When a pen is at its cap, its animals leave food alone, so no feed is wasted on animals that can't breed. They eat again as soon as there's room.
- Finding a mate works exactly as before, and animals outside every pen behave exactly as before.
Look at a pen sign to see its radius, its cap and the tamed animals inside. Press Q at the sign to see the pen itself: a glowing ring on the ground at its edge and a see-through ball around it (it shows through the ground too), for 20 seconds (Q again hides it). Shift+E at the sign does the same; plain E still edits the sign. Q is also the game's auto-run key; at a pen sign, PenPosts keeps you from running off.
Settings (anwo.PenPosts.cfg)
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Default radius | 10 | Radius for a sign without a number (m) |
| Max radius | 40 | Largest radius a sign may set (m) |
| Pen cap | 0 | Breeding cap inside pens. 0 = each animal's own |
| No food when full | true | Animals in a pen at its cap don't eat |
| Show pen info on sign | true | Show radius, cap and animals in the sign's hover text |
| Show pen area key | Q | Shows the pen's ring and ball while you look at its sign |
| Show pen area for | 20 | Seconds the ring and ball stay |
Compatibility
- Works with the base game's breeding and any mod that uses it.
- With LetMeTameYou, its "Too Crowded / Ready to Procreate" hover text uses the pen too.
- With Herd Bell, animals that a bell can still collect from keep eating in a full pen, so the bell keeps working.
- Feeding troughs from other mods (such as Valharvest's) are left alone by a full pen too.
- With Zen mods (Zen.ModLib, used by ZenRedecorate and others),
Qis also their alternate-use key. At a pen sign it shows the pen's area and doesn't open the sign's text box.
Multiplayer
Everyone needs the mod. Breeding is decided by whichever player's game is running the animals at the time, so mixed installs give inconsistent results.
Removing the mod
Nothing new is added to the world. Without the mod, a pen sign is just a sign.
About
Made with Claude (Anthropic's AI model) and tagged AI Generated, as Thunderstore's rules ask. Built for Valheim 1.0.17 (Deep North; also 1.0.16) with BepInEx 5.4.2351.