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

Put a sign inside the pen (or on its fence) and write:

Pen 10 Boar 8

• Pen makes it a pen. The pen is whatever the fence around the sign encloses.
• 10 is the pen's size in metres, only used if there's no closed fence around the sign (then the pen is a 10 m circle). You can leave it out.
• Boar 8: boars in this pen stop breeding when there are 8.

That's all. Look at the sign to check it: green marks on the ground mean the fence closes the pen, and the sign's text lists the cap and the animals inside.

Other things you can write

Sign text	What it does
Pen	a pen where every animal uses its own breeding cap
Pen 10 Boar 8 Lox 4	a cap for each kind you name
Pen 10 cap 8	one cap of 8 for every kind in the pen (max 8 or Pen 10 8 work too)
Pen 10 Boars	a word without a number is just the pen's name
Pen 10 round	always a 10 m circle, whatever is built around it (circle works too)
Pen 10 square	always a 20 m square, turned the way the sign faces (box works too)

Animal names work in the singular or plural (boar, boars, wolves). A kind you don't name uses the sign's cap for every kind, if it has one, else the Pen cap setting, else its own cap.

Young count towards the cap: piglets, cubs and calves as always, and the chicks (or asksvin hatchlings) that hatch from eggs. Eggs lying in the pen don't count.

How the pen is found

• The pen is what's inside its fence. PenPosts walks out from the sign the way an animal would and stops at fences, walls, rocks and steps too high to climb. Gates count as shut even when they're open, and gaps narrower than about 0.75 m are ignored. The sign can hang on the fence itself; the side with the animals is the pen.
• A wider gap, or a fence around more than 1600 m², makes the pen a circle around the sign instead (or a square, with the Fallback shape setting). The sign says why, and for a gap how wide it is and where ("1.2 m gap 6 m north-east of the sign").
• The fence is measured again now and then, so moving a fence or the sign updates the pen. 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.
• In a cave dug with Hearth Below, the pen is measured on the cave's floor, and the rock walls count as a fence: only the way out of the cave needs a fence or a gate. The marks and the ball show on the cave's floor. A round or square pen in a cave only counts the animals in that cave, not the ones on the ground above it (and a pen up there doesn't count the ones in a cave below).
• Animals stay in. A tame animal that gets out of a fenced pen anyway (through a gap small enough to count as closed, a gate left open, or by slipping through a wall, a rock or the side of a cave) is put back where it last stood inside. One that sinks into the pen's floor is lifted back onto it, and a young one born or hatched on the wrong side of the fence is put inside. To take an animal out, tell it to follow you or ride it. Flying animals (drakes) are on a leash instead: they fly over the pen and up to 10 m past its edge, then turn back; only one that ends up far away (40 m past the leash) and isn't fighting is brought back over the pen. A round or square pen without a closed fence has nothing to hold its animals in, so they're not held. An animal that has to be put back more than 4 times in 2 minutes is left alone for 10 minutes instead (its fence probably has an opening the check can't see; the log says which animal and where). The first times it happens in a game are written to the log (setting: Keep animals in).
• Falling animals are caught. A tame animal that falls through the ground or a floor into nothing, in or out of a pen, is put back where it last stood, as the game already does for players. Animals in caves dug with Hearth Below, or on any floor under the ground, stay where they are (setting: Catch falling animals).
• No food is wasted. Tamed animals only eat when it does them some good: when they can still breed, when a herd bell can still collect from them (Herd Bell mod), or when they wear a saddle or riding handle (food refills a mount's stamina). Animals in a full pen leave food alone, and so do animals outside pens that the game finds too crowded to breed, young ones still growing (in pens too) and tame kinds that never breed; an animal whose yield store is full stops too. They eat again as soon as that changes. With Also outside pens off, only animals that breed and stand in a full pen leave food alone, as before 1.3.1. Wild animals you're taming eat as usual.
• Finding a mate works exactly as before, and animals outside every pen breed exactly as before.
• The Butcher knife kills in one hit. The game's knife does 1000 damage, too little for big or starred animals (a 2-star lox has 3000 health). PenPosts raises it to 100000, so any tamed animal goes down in one hit. The knife still only hurts tamed animals (setting: Butcher knife damage).

Look at a pen sign to see its area, its cap and the tamed animals inside. Keep looking for a moment and the pen itself appears: faint marks on the ground along its fence or square (a round pen gets a ring and a see-through dome). It stays while you look and for 20 seconds after. No key is needed, so E still edits the sign.

• Green: the pen is fine, a closed fence or the round or square shape the sign asks for.
• Grey-blue: the fence couldn't be used (an opening, too big, none found), so the pen is the fallback circle or square for now.
• Orange ring: the opening that keeps the fence from closing. Yellow ring: a gap narrow enough to ignore.

The marks change as soon as the pen does, so closing a gap turns them green while you watch.

Settings (anwo.PenPosts.cfg)

Setting	Default	What it does
1 - Pens (set the same on every PC)
Smart area	true	The pen is the area inside its fence (in a cave, inside its rock walls and fence); off = always the sign's radius
Max area	1600	Largest fenced area taken as one pen (m²); bigger falls back to the circle
Fallback shape	Round	Shape of a pen without a closed fence: Round or Square
Default radius	10	Size for a sign without a number: the circle's radius or half the square's side (m)
Max radius	40	Largest radius a sign may set (m); also how far out a fence is looked for
Pen cap	0	Breeding cap for pens whose sign doesn't set one. 0 = each animal's own
Count young, not eggs	true	In a pen, chicks and other young hatched from eggs count towards the cap, the eggs don't. Off: eggs count and chicks don't, as in the game
No food when full	true	Tamed animals in a full pen leave food alone, unless a herd bell can collect from them or they're a saddled mount
Also outside pens	true	With No food when full: crowded animals outside pens, young ones (in pens too) and kinds that never breed leave food alone too. Off: only animals in a full pen, as before 1.3.1
Keep animals in	true	Animals that get out of a fenced pen, or sink into its floor, are put back; ones following you or ridden are free to go. One put back more than 4 times in 2 minutes is left alone for 10 minutes
Catch falling animals	true	A tame animal that falls through the ground or a floor, in or out of a pen, is put back where it last stood
Flying leash	10	How far (m) past a pen's edge a tame flying animal may fly before it turns back; 0 = no leash
2 - Display (each player)
Show pen info on sign	true	Show area, cap and animals in the sign's hover text
Show pen area	true	Show the pen's edge while you look at a pen sign: green when the pen is fine, grey-blue when it fell back to the circle or square
Show pen area for	20	Seconds the pen's edge stays after you look away
3 - Butcher knife (each player, for their own hits)
Butcher knife damage	100000	Damage of one Butcher knife hit; it only hurts tamed animals (the game's own is 1000; 0 = leave it as the game has it)

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.

Use the same pen settings on every PC. PenPosts doesn't send the host's settings to the players, so caps, pen shapes, feeding and keeping animals in follow the settings of whichever player's game runs the animals at the time. The Display settings are each player's own.

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) work as usual: animals with room in their pen eat from them, and animals in a full pen leave them alone, like any other food.
• With Zen mods (Zen.ModLib, used by ZenRedecorate and others), their Q key works on pen signs as on any sign; PenPosts uses no key.

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.