🪤 Quad's Bird Trap

A buildable bird trap: bait it with berries or seeds, leave it under the open sky, and come back to a gull to pluck for feathers.

Source code · Report a bug · Discord

✨ Features

Build it with the hammer at a workbench (8 Wood, 2 Leather Scraps). It is a slatted box with a drop-door propped up by a stick tied to the bait pedal.
Use it to put bait in: raspberries, blueberries, cloudberries, barley, or beech, birch, carrot, turnip or onion seeds. Hold the alternate-place key (Shift) and use it to fill it at once. It holds five.
Baited and with open sky above it, a bird comes in 8 to 14 minutes (game time, so it keeps going while you are away). It eats one bait, the prop falls and the door drops.
Birds roost at night, and come at first light: sleep through the night and every trap you baited the day before has its bird in the morning. Under a roof none come, and the trap tells you why.
Use it again to pluck the gull (2 or 3 feathers) and let it go. The door goes back up, and with bait left the next bird is on its way.
Look at it to see how much bait is left and about how long until a bird. Build a few for a steady supply of feathers for arrows.
It has its own hand-made look: wicker slats, a drop-door on a forked prop stick, berries on a leaf, and a grey-and-white gull that hops about and pecks once it's caught.

📸 Screenshots

The Bird Trap

A row of traps along the fence

🎮 How to use

Key	What it does
E / Shift + E at a bird trap	Add bait (or pluck the bird) / fill it with bait

🧩 Other mods

Known clashes: none known.

Found a clash with another mod? Tell us which one and what happened.

👥 Multiplayer

Who needs it: Everyone, and the host above all: a game without the mod deletes the pieces when their area loads. Restart after installing or updating them.

A trap's bait, bird and timer are saved on the trap, so everyone sees the same trap, and two players can't both take one bird.

The host decides: catch times, bait, open sky, roosting at night and feathers per bird. While you play on their world their values replace yours (your file isn't changed); a host without the mod leaves everyone their own.

⚙️ Settings

In BepInEx/config/com.quad.birdtrap.cfg, made the first time the game runs with the mod. r2modman and Thunderstore Mod Manager edit it under Config editor.

Catching

Setting	Default	What it does
`MinutesMin`	`8`	Shortest wait (real minutes, in game time) from baiting to a bird. In multiplayer the server's value applies.
`MinutesMax`	`14`	Longest wait (real minutes, in game time) from baiting to a bird. In multiplayer the server's value applies.
`BaitHeld`	`5`	How many pieces of bait a trap holds (each bird eats one). In multiplayer the server's value applies.
`NeedsOpenSky`	`true`	Birds only come to a trap with open sky above it (not under a roof). In multiplayer the server's value applies.
`BirdsRoostAtNight`	`true`	No birds come at night: one due then comes in the morning. In multiplayer the server's value applies.

Plucking

Setting	Default	What it does
`FeathersMin`	`2`	Fewest feathers a bird gives. In multiplayer the server's value applies.
`FeathersMax`	`3`	Most feathers a bird gives. In multiplayer the server's value applies.

🤖 Made with AI

Made with the help of Claude (Anthropic), with Claude Code: designed, written and checked together, and tried in the game.

🧪 About Quads Lab

Quads Lab is where Quad H (HardHeadHackerHead) builds software with AI, of every kind: these Valheim mods are one of its projects. Each mod is designed by a player, written with Claude Code and tested in our own world, with bobisme as our tester.

📜 Recent changes

1.1.2 A clearer page: what it does, who needs it in multiplayer, how it gets on with other mods, and where to report a bug. The game itself is unchanged.
1.1.1 A new id, com.quad.birdtrap (it was com.dhack.birdtrap): your settings move over by themselves the first time it starts, and the old settings file is kept as a backup. Restart the game after this update. If an old copy is still installed beside it, this one stands down and says which file to delete, so the two never both run. The DLL now says it was made with AI, as Thunderstore asks.
1.1.0 Fix: two players plucking the same bird could both get its feathers, and bait could be lost. Whoever presses E now asks the trap's owner, which plucks the bird or takes the bait and answers: the feathers come only on its yes ("The bird is already gone" otherwise), and bait that doesn't fit comes back to you. In multiplayer the server decides the catching and plucking settings. A problem with the trap's look can no longer stop it being registered.

Every change is on the Changelog tab.