Huskarl

Place named, interactive NPCs in your world. Pick a body, customize it, stand it exactly where you want it, and give it a job.

A húskarl is a free retainer of a household: a person you keep who does a job for you.

Install this on the server and on every client. An NPC is an ordinary creature with its AI switched off. A player who does not have the mod sees a live, hostile Draugr standing in your marketplace.

Making One

Press F6 as an admin.

• Name it. That is what players see when they look at it.
• Pick a body. Every creature in the game is on the list, including ones from other mods. Drag the preview to turn it.
• Make a person. Choose the player character as the body and you get the full character creation options: build, hair, beard, hair colour and skin colour.
• Stand it up. Place mode points the NPC wherever you look. Scroll to turn, shift-scroll to raise and lower, arrow keys to nudge, and G holds it still so you can adjust it without the mouse dragging it around.

Once placed it stays put. It does not wander, does not despawn, is ignored by other creatures, cannot be killed, and is still there after a restart.

Jobs

Trader

Opens the game's own store with a ware list you choose. Players buy with gold exactly as they do with Haldor, and can sell anything valuable back at the item's own worth.

Guise

Changes how your gear looks and nothing else about it. Free, as often as you like, and always reversible.

Pick any piece of gear you are carrying and choose a look. Stats, name and inventory icon are untouched; a guised item just gets a small "Guised" mark in the corner of its tooltip.

• You can only choose looks you have found. The list is everything of that kind that has ever been in your pack.
• Armour can be set to Hidden instead of a look. The piece still protects you, it just is not shown. Helmets, capes, chest, legs and utility.
• A look has to be the same kind of thing, held the same way. A one-handed sword can look like any other one-handed sword, but not like a mace, a greatsword or a bow.
• Anything you hold can also carry an effect - five made for the mod, plus dozens taken from weapons in the game that have their own flame, frost or glow. A plain iron sword can wear Frostfire, Flametal or Thunderblood.
• If the item already has a Runemark enchant glow, your effect replaces it, and the enchant glow returns when you clear it.

Everyone can see your guise, including players without the mod.

Gambler

Pick which of three games the NPC runs.

Slots

Three reels and a lever you pull. Stake gold at one, five or ten times.

The symbols are the real items - gold, Ochre and the five runes - and the symbol you line up is what you win. Three of a kind pays properly, three Sowilo is the jackpot, two of a kind pays one of it, and everything else pays a small consolation. Every spin pays something.

The paytable is printed on the cabinet. It is a slot machine, so over time it pays out less than it takes in.

Marbles

Ten marbles race a course of corners, swinging axes and spinning tumblers, built fresh every time. Back a colour and stake gold, Ochre or any rune.

First pays five times the stake, second pays twice, third hands your stake back. Winnings come back in whatever was staked, so three Ansuz on the winner is fifteen Ansuz.

Every marble has the same one in ten chance. They start side by side on one line and the lanes are drawn fresh each race, so no starting position is worth more than another.

Plinko

Buy five balls for one stake, pick a chute and drop them. Double-click a chute to drop into it.

Drop them as fast as you like - all five can be in the air at once, and they knock each other about on the way down.

The nine buckets keep changing what they hold, and a ball takes whatever is under it when it lands. Buckets come up Common, Fine, Rare or Fabled, and the rarity multiplies the prize - a Fabled bucket is worth fifteen of a Common one.

A bucket that catches a ball freezes on what it paid for the rest of the round, so a good bucket is worth aiming your remaining balls at.

Every ball pays something. The worst bucket is two gold.

Car Keys

Every wager at any of the three games has a small chance of paying out a Skeid car key or a lowrider key - one in twenty thousand each at the standard stake, about as likely as the slot machine's jackpot.

Each key is rolled on its own, and a bigger wager is proportionally likelier. A key comes alongside the normal prize rather than instead of it.

Requires Skeid. Without it, keys are never given.

How the Games Compare

A thousand gold buys about the same reward whichever of the three games it goes into, so the choice is down to which one you prefer to play.

The Gambling Skill

All three games level a Gambling skill. Every wager teaches you a little, win or lose, and at a hundred it turns one losing wager in ten into a win. It never makes a win bigger, only more frequent.

The size of the wager is what counts. An ordinary slot pull teaches a full step, about seventy-five pulls to reach level 10. A minimum bet teaches very little, so repeating the cheapest wager is a slow way to level the skill.

What the Games Pay Out

By default the prizes are gold, Ochre and the five runes from Runemark. A thousand gold is worth roughly ten Sowilo once fused and enough Ochre for sixteen Inscribes, while about a third of the gold comes back.

Runemark is not required. If those items are not installed the machine pays in ordinary ones instead - wood, stone, flint, coal, bronze and iron - so it still works on a plain install.

Either way the server decides. Every symbol's prize is listed in gbv.valheim.huskarl.slots.cfg under item, alongside the odds, and can be pointed at any item in the game:

item ochre  Wood
item sowilo BlackMetal

Settings

Setting	What it does
Enabled	Master switch. Closes the panel and makes NPCs inert.
PanelHotkey	Opens the panel. F6 by default.
VerboseLog	Logs every NPC as it is created and loaded.
Slots.Sounds	Play the slot machine's ticks, clunks and win chimes.
Slots.Volume	How loud, on top of the game's own interface volume.
Marbles.MaxBetGold	The biggest bet allowed. Ochre and runes are capped at about the same worth.
Games.CarKeyOneIn	How rare each key is, as one in this many standard wagers. 0 turns them off.
Window.X, Y, W, H	Where you left the panel. Set automatically.

Credits

Built for the Guys Being Vikings server. Part of the GBV suite alongside Highseat, Runemark, Byrding, Idavoll, Hermod and Skald.