Living Companion (beta)

One autonomous companion for single-player Valheim. It follows you, fights (it dodges, and has tactics for 163 creatures and for the bosses), gathers and mines, crafts from zero, smelts, hunts, farms, swims, survives its own death and goes back for its things. Since 0.3 it also keeps your base running: it refuels the fires, tends the smelters and the charcoal kiln, empties the hives, feeds penned animals by hand, repairs the base and plants trees back. You talk to it with short typed phrases (Russian or English) or with buttons. There is no microphone input and no multiplayer.

This is a beta. Read "Honest status" below before you trust it with a world you care about, and back up your worlds and characters first.

60 seconds to a companion

1. Start Valheim with the launch option -console (Steam: Properties, Launch options) and load a single-player world.
2. Press F5 and type lc_spawn. One companion appears with an empty pack; a second one is never created.
3. Walk up to it (within 3 m, clear line of sight) and press E. The window has seven tabs: Talk, Inventory, Tasks, Map, Rules, Rights, Notes (Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+7). Esc closes it.
4. Inventory tab: give it real food, a weapon, armor and tools. The mod never creates gear from a command.
5. Talk tab: type one short phrase and send it, for example follow me, gather 10 flint, chop 10 wood, go home. The Tasks tab has Quick commands, one button per common order, no typing.
6. Far away? F7 opens a limited remote window and H sends a one-line message. New rights, item transfers and work orders still need you within 3 m.
7. If it stands still, type why did you stop. It tells the reason: a missing right, tool, food, or an unsafe route.

How phrases work:

• One order per message, up to 240 characters. Case, a final . ? ! and a leading or trailing "please" are ignored.
• Numbers are digits or English words (gather ten flint). "A few" and "several" are not numbers.
• Item names are singular and match what your game shows: craft hammer, not craft hammers.
• Chain up to three orders with then (chop 20 wood then go home), or two with a plain and.
• Russian works everywhere, English works in most places. The mod language follows the game language ([Localization] Language = auto); set Valheim itself to English for English item names.

The 15 phrases you will use most

Each phrase has a Russian twin that gives the same order. Every pair was run through the mod's real phrase parser (English and Russian) and reads as the same kind of order.

Say	Or in Russian	What happens
follow me	иди за мной	Follows you
stay	стой	Waits where it stands
go home	возвращайся домой	Walks to the home you set
this is our home	это наш дом	Saves the place where it stands as home (the base work is measured from it)
what are you doing	что ты делаешь	Says what it does now
why did you stop	почему остановился	Says why it stopped or refused
chop 10 wood	сруби 10 древесины	Fells trees with its own axe
gather 10 flint	собери 10 кремня	Picks up what lies around
mine 5 copper ore	добудь 5 медной руды	Mines with its own pickaxe
collect 100 wood and deliver it to the chest	собери 100 дерева и доставь в сундук	A long delivery goal into a chest it may use
smelt 10 copper ore	расплавь 10 медной руды	Walks to a smelter, loads it, takes the bars
take anything from this chest	бери всё из этого сундука	Look at a chest: it may take from it
put everything in this chest	складывай всё в этот сундук	Look at a chest: it may put things into it
this chest is for ore	этот сундук для руды	Labels the chest for sorting
bring me 20 wood from the chest	принеси мне 20 дерева из сундука	Fetches it from the chests it may take from and hands it to you

Also useful: sort the chests (отсортируй сундуки), this is the sort chest (этот сундук для разбора), feed the animals yourself (корми животных сам), allow repairs (разрешаю ремонт), cancel the task (отмени задачу), repair your gear (почини снаряжение), go to sleep (иди спать), and for the long goals allow campaigns (разрешаю кампании) and then defeat Eikthyr (победи Эйктюра; boss fights: see "Honest status").

Base life (new in 0.3)

A companion that stands idle at home now looks after the base without being told. It starts after it has stood quietly for 2 minutes ([Autonomy] IdleSeconds) at home, in Stay, Guard or beside you. Danger, a conversation, an order or a command of yours ends the job at once.

• Fires. Refuels the campfires, hearths, torches and braziers at home that went out or will not last two game days.
• Smelters and coal. Starts idle smelters and furnaces with ore and fuel from your chests, brings fuel to a smelter that holds ore but has none, and burns wood in the charcoal kiln when a smelter has ore and there is no coal. Only wood above a reserve you set is burnt (CoalWoodReserve, 100). What the stations make goes to a chest.
• Mill and hot tub. Loads barley into the windmill and comes back for the flour. Keeps a hot tub you built burning. Barley and flax above MillSeedReserve (20) only: the rest is your seed.
• Hives, eggs, feathers. Empties the beehives and sap collectors you built (never a stranger's), picks up feathers and the spare chicken eggs once the flock is full, and puts everything into a chest.
• Hand feeding. Hungry tame animals are fed from its hands, over the fence if need be, instead of dropping the food where a penned animal never finds it. The seeds your garden needs are kept back.
• Repairs. Walks round the damaged buildings you made inside your base and mends them with the hammer (from its pack or a chest). Load-bearing pieces first, never during a raid or while it is being hit.
• Replanting. After felling trees near home it picks up the seeds and cones and plants young trees of the same kind back, by day and while you are near (needs the Cultivator in its pack).
• Chests. Look at a chest and press L to label it (Shift+L goes back). A sort chest is a drop box: put things in and it sorts them into the labelled chests. A chest right can cover named goods (coal, honey, sap, feathers, eggs, bars, feed) or any item.
• Bring me. bring me 20 wood from the chest is a one-off errand from the chests it may take from.
• Idle life. With nothing to do it sits on a bench or by a fire, looks over a station or the garden, and now and then says a short line, instead of standing like a post.

It keeps the base running only with rights you give. Nothing starts by itself without them, and a companion with none chooses nothing:

1. Supply work. Talk to it (E), Rules tab, "Chest access and crafting", button "Enable supply work within granted rights". No phrase does this. Then say stay.
2. A home. Bring it to the base and say this is our home: it saves the place where it stands (the Rules tab has the same as "Make your current place home").
3. Chests. At a stock chest: take anything from this chest. At an output chest: put everything in this chest. Both can be one chest. The Rules tab has the same switches ("any item" boxes and goods groups).
4. Repairs and feeding. allow repairs is the standing repair permission. feed the animals yourself lets it hand-feed (stop feeding the animals takes it back).
5. Replanting needs no right: it needs the saved home, the Cultivator and spare seeds.

You can take any of it back: stop feeding the animals (не корми животных), forbid repairs (запрещаю ремонт), the button "Disable autonomous supply work" in the same Rules panel, or in the config [Autonomy] BaseRounds = false (stops only the base work) and [Autonomy] WorkChooser = false (stops all self-chosen work).

Why isn't it working?

Three read-only places say it, with numbers:

• Status line under its name when you look at it: what it does now and, when it stands idle, the main reason ("no chest to put it in", "fires need fuel and I have none to spend", "idle 40 s of 120 s").
• What is wrong card at the top of the Notes tab: every problem found at the base (no chest, no tool, a smelter with no fuel, fires out, hungry animals), since when, and what to do about it. It looks again every 30 seconds.
• Console command lc_why (lc_why rescan looks again at once). lc_autowork status shows the rights and the last decision; lc_collect status what a collect round would bring.

Requirements and install

• Valheim 1.0.20 (Steam build 25909357). It also runs on 1.0.17. On any other game build the mod disables itself and writes an error to the log.
• BepInEx 5.4.23 (x64). This package depends on denikson-BepInExPack_Valheim, which a mod manager installs for you.
• Single-player only. In a multiplayer session the companion cannot be created and the network commands are closed.
• Valheim 1.0.20 changed the game's own save format: a 1.0.20 world cannot be opened by 1.0.17. If you may go back, keep a backup.

With r2modman or the Thunderstore Mod Manager (recommended): install "LivingCompanion" and start the game from the manager. Manually: install BepInEx 5.4.23, close the game, put Gtorens.LivingCompanion.dll into Valheim\BepInEx\plugins\LivingCompanion\. The settings file BepInEx\config\gtorens.valheim.livingcompanion.cfg appears after the first start.

Upgrading from 0.2.x: the work chooser ([Autonomy] WorkChooser) was off by default in 0.2.x. The first start of 0.3 switches it on once (the log gets one line). Nothing starts without a saved right. To keep it off, close the game, set WorkChooser = false and leave DefaultsApplied030 alone.

Honest status

Tested in the game (Valheim 1.0.20, scripted test worlds, runs 122 to 124 on the 0.3.0 build): 86 of 89 non-boss test scenes pass. The test builds each scene, saves the rights a player would give and discloses every preparation in its report.

• Base life, no order spoken: fires refuelled (BaseRefuel), the smelter chain wood to coal to bars in a chest (BaseSmelt), hives, feathers and eggs collected into a chest (BaseCollect), the hot tub kept burning and a cold one left alone (BaseHotTub), the windmill fed and the flour put away (BaseMill), damaged walls repaired with a hammer from a chest (BaseRepair), a penned boar fed by hand over the fence (HandFeed), the sort chest emptied into labelled chests (ChestSortMe), saplings planted for felled trees (ForestryReplant).
• Errands and orders: "bring me 20 wood from the chest" (BringMe), wood hauling and delivery goals (WoodHaul, GoalLoop, Soak), crafting from zero, camps, resting by a fire, chest sorting, farming, hunting.
• Trips and fights: exploring on foot and biome trips (Exploration, ExploreBiome), water crossings, far routes, fights incl. a pack of three and self-defense, swimming after you in a lake and refusing to follow into the open sea.
• Death: it dies, respawns with its skills, walks to the grave and takes everything back (SoulReturn, DeathCorpseRun).

Fixed in 0.3.1 and passed in the game (run 125): boarding and leaving a ship (ShipPassenger), entering a crypt and walking back out (DungeonEnter), climbing out of a lake beside you (SwimFollow).

Bosses: Eikthyr and the Elder passed again on 0.3.2 (run 127); Bonemass, Moder, Yagluth, the Queen and Fader were never confirmed in the game. Multiplayer is not supported. House building is NOT reliable.

Offline: the project's test suites and the verification run pass against Valheim 1.0.20. That checks that phrases are understood and the rules hold; it does not play the game.

Config highlights

File: BepInEx\config\gtorens.valheim.livingcompanion.cfg (game closed). The defaults:

Setting	Default	What it does
[Autonomy] WorkChooser	true	All self-chosen work. false = nothing starts by itself.
[Autonomy] BaseRounds	true	The fire, smelter, mill, tub and collect rounds.
[Autonomy] BaseRepair	true	The base repair round (also needs allow repairs).
[Autonomy] IdleSeconds	120	How long it must stand quietly before it picks a job.
[Autonomy] CoalWoodReserve	100	Wood in your chests that is never burnt into coal.
[Autonomy] CoalTarget	50	Coal stock the kiln keeps up.
[Autonomy] MillSeedReserve	20	Barley and flax that are never ground or spun.
[Autonomy] HotTub	true	Keep a hot tub you built burning.
[Husbandry] DirectFeed	true	Hand feeding. false = the old drop of food.
[Husbandry] FlockHens	4	Hens (chicks counted) before spare eggs are picked up.
[Forestry] Replant	true	Plant trees back after felling near home.
[Forestry] SaplingsPerTree	2	Saplings planted per felled tree.
[Idle] Enabled	true	Sitting, looking around and short lines at home.
[BringMe] Enabled	true	The "bring me" errand.
[Storage] ChestLabelKey	L	The key that cycles a chest's label.
[Diagnostics] WhyAdvisor	true	Status line, "What is wrong" card, lc_why.
[UI] HudOverlay	false	A small status block over the companion's head.
[Localization] Language	auto	auto follows the game; en or ru forces one.

Cheats are ON by default and disclosed: these are the mod's own functions, not stock Valheim mechanics. Switch one off in section [Companion] (false; for CarryMultiplier set 1) and restart.

Key	Default	What it does
SilentAim	true	Its own bow and crossbow shots are perfectly aimed.
MagicBullets	true	Its arrows and bolts steer onto the target in flight.
CarryMultiplier	2.5	Multiplies its carry weight (1 to 3, 1 = stock). Yours is untouched.
FastCraft	true	Its own crafting and repair at a station take about a quarter of the time.
WorkWithoutStamina	true	Outside a fight, work and running cost no stamina.
EternalOwnFire	true	Fires it built itself never run out. Your fires are untouched.
NoWetCold	true	It ignores Wet and Cold (not Freezing).
ArrowsWithCap	true	Shot arrows are given back so a stack does not drop below 20 (100 per day at most).
StationNoRoof	true	It may use a crafting station that has no roof.

Hand feeding and replanting are also the mod's own functions (stock Valheim has neither for a companion). The full list of settings is in docs/CONFIG_REFERENCE.md of the project.

Known limits

• Single-player only. House building is not reliable. The collect round is unproven (see above).
• Supply work is switched on in the Rules tab, not by a phrase. The base rounds run while it is in Stay or Guard, or following you while you stand next to it, with the companion within 60 m of home and you within 40 m.
• A chest that accepts "any item" does not make it empty its backpack: the rounds choose what to move. Cooked food, tin ore and silver ore have no word of their own in chest rights; use "any item".
• A partial chest ban cannot be said (do not touch this chest closes the whole chest).
• Phrases it cannot read are refused and nothing is done. A Russian line while the mod is in English was missed: please report it.
• It can still get stuck, give up, or die. Back up the world.

How to report a bug

Contact the author on Discord: baixundi

Send Valheim\BepInEx\LogOutput.log from the session (with a mod manager: the profile's BepInEx\LogOutput.log) and, in a few lines: the exact phrase or button, where you were, what you expected, what happened and what the companion said. A screenshot of the window helps. If it is stuck, say what why did you stop answered, and attach the "What is wrong" card.

See CHANGELOG.md for what is in this release.