Runebourne

Summon rune spirits that farm, plant, fell trees, haul, mine, fish, repair and craft for you, and tame sea serpents that carry cargo between your harbours.

Early Access. Runebourne is playable from start to finish, but it is still being tested. Back up your world before you install it (see Before you install).

Getting started

Build Skald's lectern from the Hammer (Misc tab). Read it to see what each biome opens and what to do next.
Craft the command wand at a workbench (Wood 5, Resin 2, Flint 2). Right-click with it to open the Runebourne build menu, where every shrine and structure is.
Build a worker's shrine, then craft that worker's summoning stone. Look at the shrine and press the stone's hotbar key to summon the worker.
Press E on a shrine to set it up. With the command wand, left-click a worker and then click chests to link them.

Workers, upgrades and recipes unlock as your world progresses: beat a biome's boss and enter the next biome. The lectern shows what is open now.

Workers

Worker	Shrine	What it does
Herdwarden	Herdwarden shrine	Harvests your spare boars, deer, wolves and lox and keeps the number you set alive. Named animals and young are safe.
Seedsower	Seedsower shrine	Plants, harvests and replants crops and berry bushes. Two per shrine.
Grovetender	Grovetender shrine	Plants saplings and fells grown trees. Two per shrine.
Haulwright	Haulwright shrine	Carries items along routes you set, from a pick-up chest to a drop-off. Relays stretch its reach to far bases.
Orebringer	Orebringer shrine	Mines ore deposits and sunken crypts in range and delivers to your chests. Fit a pickaxe to the shrine.
Netcaster	Netcaster shrine, on a shore or a dock	Fishes the water near its shrine with the bait you put in a linked chest. The bait decides the fish, as in the base game. The catch goes into your chests.
Hallmender	Hallmender shrine	Repairs what you built within 50 m, boats and carts too, for free, and keeps your fires lit with fuel from linked chests. Up to four per shrine. They only work while a player has the area loaded.
Runekeeper	Any crafting station	Crafts, smelts and cooks at up to three stations near its home station (six with a Runekeeper chime).

Each shrine has upgrades in the build menu that add workers, speed or cargo space.

Sea serpents

Craft a Lightning rune at the forge. Wear down a wild sea serpent below 10% health, equip the command wand and use the rune: there is a 50% chance to tame it. Ride it (E), or build two Serpent depots on the water, ride from one to the other with Record route, and switch it to carry cargo. It then sails the route on its own, taking items from the first depot's pick-up chests to the second depot's drop-off chests. Reverse route swaps the two.

Also in the build menu and at the forge

Deephold: a chest that stores one kind of stackable item in bulk (75 stacks, more with upgrades). Workers use it like any chest.
Field rune: clears, levels and tills the ground within 30 m of you for a farm. It asks before it clears anything.
Rune of Renewal: refills a mined-out sunken crypt near an Orebringer shrine.
Feeding trough: hungry animals nearby eat from it; Haulwrights can stock it.
Chest names and filters: name any chest, and choose which items workers may put in it.

Requirements

Valheim 1.0.20. A later game update may break the mod until it is patched.
BepInExPack Valheim
Jotunn and YamlDotNet

Install Runebourne on every player's game and on the server. Everyone must have the same version.

Before you install

Back up your world. Steam keeps worlds in AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local (or in Steam Cloud).
Removing the mod deletes its things. Without Runebourne, the game removes its shrines, workers, structures and items from your world as you visit each area, along with anything they hold: worker cargo and everything in a Deephold. Reinstalling does not bring them back. Items in ordinary chests are kept.

Known issues

Multiplayer and dedicated servers are not tested yet. The mod is built for them, but expect more bugs there than in single player.
The mod looks plainer on Vulkan, Mac and native Linux. Its shaders only run on DirectX. With other renderers, including the -force-vulkan launch option, spirits and buildings use plain materials without glow, selection outlines don't show, and leaves may look solid. On Windows, remove -force-vulkan to get the full look.

Reporting a bug

Report bugs at bugs.yohanb.tech. Reports and attached logs are private.

Include your Runebourne version, what you were doing, what you expected and what happened instead, and attach your log: BepInEx\LogOutput.log in the game's folder (or your mod manager's profile folder). Send it right after the bug, before restarting the game, because each start overwrites the log.

Details