Bear Riding – tame the Bjørn, raise cubs, ride into battle

The Bjørn of the Black Forest can be tamed. Feed it berries, honey, fish or meat until it trusts you, let two tame bears have cubs, and put a saddle on a grown bear to ride it: it trots, runs, leaps, claws and slams the ground on your command. Light or heavy barding sends it into a fight, saddlebags make it your pack bear, and a war harness binds all three. Every piece starts in the Black Forest and gets better with the materials of each biome after that. One wild bear in ten is a Bearborn: a rare bear with a frost, night or honey pelt that grows bigger and stronger with every level it gains at your side.

No other mod is needed.

Piece	What it does	Crafted at	Cost (quality 1)
Bear Saddle	lets you ride the bear	Forge	4 bear hide, 4 deer hide, 8 leather scraps, 4 bronze
Light Bear Barding	armour and health, no slowdown	Forge	6 bear hide, 4 deer hide, 4 bronze
Heavy Bear Barding	much more armour and health, slower	Forge	16 bronze, 4 bear hide, 8 leather scraps, 20 bronze nails
Bear Saddlebags	8 to 24 slots of storage	Forge	4 bear hide, 4 deer hide, 6 leather scraps, 2 bronze
Light / Heavy Bear War Harness	saddle, barding and bags in one	Black forge	a saddle, a barding and saddlebags of quality 4 or better, 10 linen thread, 4 blue jute, 4 black metal

Taming

1. Find a Bjørn (the game calls it simply Bear) in the Black Forest. It is rare: one bear roams an area at a time, and it fights back.
2. Lay food where it can reach it: blueberries, raspberries, honey, raw fish, raw meat or deer meat.
3. A fed bear that is not alarmed grows tame in 30 minutes, like a wolf. Stay out of its sight, or it will come for you instead of the food.

A tame bear follows you or stays on command (E), like a tame wolf. It still needs food to stay content and to breed.

Cubs

Two fed, tame bears close to each other court and have a cub after two minutes. A cub is a small bear that runs from danger and grows into a tame bear in 75 minutes. No more cubs are born once four bears and cubs live within 10 m.

The Bearborn

One wild bear in ten is a Bearborn. You know it by its pelt (frost grey, night black or honey amber) and its name. It takes half as long again to tame, and then:

• It levels up beside you. It gains 2 experience for every 25 m it walks with you (following or ridden) and 15 for every killing blow. Level 2 needs 50 experience, level 5 needs 500, level 10 needs 2250.
• It grows. Every level makes it a little bigger, up to 30 % at level 10, on top of its stars. Saddle and barding grow with it.
• It gets stronger. It starts with 25 % more health and gains 10 % more health and 5 % more damage per level.
• It sleeps instead of dying. A tame Bearborn that falls lies down and sleeps off its wounds for 60 seconds, unharmed by anything, and wakes with 30 % health. A player's blow (the butcher knife) still kills it.
• Its cubs may carry the blood. A cub of a Bearborn grows into a Bearborn itself one time in four.

The hover shows its level and experience:

Bearborn · level 4 · 312/500 XP

Five qualities, five biomes

Each piece is upgraded like any vanilla item, but every quality is made at the station of its biome and asks for that biome's materials.

Quality	Biome	Station	Materials (saddle)
1	Black Forest	Forge	bear hide, deer hide, leather scraps, bronze
2	Mountains	Forge, level 2	wolf pelt, troll hide, iron, silver
3	Plains	Artisan table	lox pelt, linen thread, black metal
4	Mistlands	Black forge	scale hide, carapace, blue jute
5	Ashlands	Black forge, level 3	asksvin hide, flametal, Morgen sinew

The look changes with the quality: bear leather, bronze and moss-green wool in the Black Forest; deer leather, iron and red wool in the Mountains; black leather, black metal and linen in the Plains; scale hide, carapace and blue jute in the Mistlands; asksvin hide and flametal in the Ashlands.

Putting tack on

1. Tame a bear.
2. Use the piece on it: point at the bear and press its hotbar key.
3. To take it off, point at the piece (saddle, bags or barding) and press Shift + E. It drops beside the bear with its quality.

A bear wears one piece at a time. To ride, fight and carry at once, bind a war harness. Bags must be empty before they come off. A bear that dies drops its tack and everything in its bags.

Riding

1. Point at the saddle and press E to mount.
2. Steer with the mouse: W walks, Shift runs, S stops.
3. E gets you off.

Key	On the bear
Attack	a claw strike or a bite, in turn (10 mount stamina)
Secondary attack	the slam: both paws down, hitting everything around (25 stamina)
Jump	a leap forward (15 stamina)

• Running, striking and leaping use the bear's stamina, shown next to its health like on the lox. Your riding skill halves the cost of running, as on the lox.
• Out of breath: without stamina the bear will not strike or leap until it has rested.
• A ridden bear does what you say. Standing still, it waits instead of running after enemies (config MountFightsOnItsOwn).

Barding

Quality	Light: armour / health	Heavy: armour / health / speed
1	8 / +10 %	16 / +20 % / −15 %
2	14 / +15 %	28 / +30 % / −14 %
3	20 / +20 %	40 / +40 % / −13 %
4	26 / +25 %	52 / +50 % / −12 %
5	32 / +30 %, fire resistant	64 / +60 % / −10 %, fire resistant

• Light barding is a padded coat with studs: it never slows the bear.
• Heavy barding adds overlapping plates over hump, back and neck and a brow plate. Better smithing makes them lighter, so the heavy barding slows less at higher quality.

Saddlebags

Point at the bags and press E: they open like a chest. Quality 1 holds 8 slots, then 12, 16, 20 and 24 at quality 5. While someone rides the bear, nobody else can open its bags.

War harness

The light and the heavy war harness bind a saddle, a barding of that weight and saddlebags into one piece. Binding needs all three parts at quality 4 or better. The harness takes the quality all three reach, and the black forge uses the cheapest parts that get there. A harness can then be upgraded to quality 5.

The real thing

• A bear is a big animal. The Bjørn stands 2.3 m at the back and 2.6 m at the hump, so the saddle sits behind the hump, where the rider's legs can reach round the body, and the bags hang over the rump. Every piece is draped over the bear's real body, and the fur under a blanket is trimmed so it does not poke through.
• Armour works like yours. A hit of more than twice the armour loses the armour value; a smaller hit is cut to damage² / (4 × armour). 100 slash against heavy barding of quality 1 (armour 16) leaves 84.
• Health is a share of the bear's own, after its stars and its Bearborn level. A wounded bear keeps its health fraction when tack goes on or off or when it levels up.
• Mount stamina: the saddle gives 140, 170, 200, 230 or 260 stamina. A running bear uses 1 per second, like the lox.
• Size: the game already makes a one-star bear 30 % and a two-star bear 50 % bigger. A Bearborn grows by up to another 30 %.
• What the mod does not change: how long tame animals stay fed and how a bear fights on its own.

Configuration

BepInEx/config/zap.bearriding.cfg

Gameplay (server-synced, admin only)

• Bears: bears that can be tamed and wear tack (default Bjorn,Bjorn_sleeping; the spirit caller's bear is never included).
• MountFightsOnItsOwn: a ridden bear may chase enemies while standing (default off).
• TamingMinutes, BearFood: how long taming takes and what a bear eats.
• Breeding, MaxBearsNearby, PregnancySeconds, CubGrowMinutes: cubs.
• BearbornChance, BearbornInheritChance, MaxGrowth, HealthPerLevel, DamagePerLevel, ExperienceScale, Hibernation, HibernationSeconds: the Bearborn.
• RunStaminaDrain, ClawStamina, SlamStamina, LeapStamina, LeapUp, LeapForward: riding costs and the leap.
• ArmorScale, HealthScale: scale all barding.
• Quality1 … Quality5: station per quality as prefab:level.
• SaddleQ1 … SaddlebagsQ5, WarHarnessQ4, WarHarnessQ5: recipes as Item:amount,Item:amount.

Client

• ShowRidingHints: shows the riding keys when you mount.

Multiplayer and compatibility

• Everyone on a server needs the mod. Tack, level and pelt are stored in the bear's own data, so all players see the same.
• Better Riding: on a bear, Bear Riding's strikes and leap replace Better Riding's mount attack and jump, so nothing fires twice.
• Wolf Riding: both mods work side by side; wolf tack only fits wolves and bear tack only bears.
• Starborn Breeding: bear cubs can have a lucky birth like any other animal.
• Feeding Troughs: bears and cubs belong to its bear herd.

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Deutsch

Bear Riding – zähme den Bjørn, zieh Junge auf, reite in die Schlacht. Der Bjørn aus dem Schwarzwald lässt sich zähmen: Blaubeeren, Himbeeren, Honig, Fisch oder Fleisch hinlegen und warten, bis er dir traut (30 Minuten). Zwei satte, zahme Bären bekommen ein Junges, das in 75 Minuten zum zahmen Bären heranwächst. Mit Sattel reitest du ihn: Er geht, rennt, springt, schlägt mit der Pranke und schmettert beide Pranken auf den Boden.

Bärenborn: Einer von zehn wilden Bären ist ein Bärenborn, mit Frost-, Nacht- oder Honigfell. Er sammelt an deiner Seite Erfahrung (2 je 25 m gemeinsamen Weges, 15 je Todesstoß), steigt bis Stufe 10, wird dabei bis zu 30 % größer, gewinnt Leben und Schaden und fällt im Kampf nicht tot um, sondern schläft seine Wunden 60 Sekunden aus. Nur der Schlag eines Spielers (das Metzgermesser) tötet ihn. Jedes vierte seiner Jungen wird selbst ein Bärenborn.

Fünf Stufen: ★1 an der Schmiede aus Bärenfell, Hirschfell und Bronze. ★2 an der Schmiede (Stufe 2) aus Wolfspelz, Trollleder, Eisen und Silber. ★3 am Handwerkstisch aus Lox-Pelz, Leinenzwirn und Schwarzmetall. ★4 an der Schwarzschmiede aus Schuppenhaut, Chitinpanzer und blauer Jute. ★5 an der Schwarzschmiede (Stufe 3) aus Asksvin-Haut, Flammenkern und Morgensehne. Das Aussehen wechselt mit der Stufe.

Anlegen: Das Teil auf den gezähmten Bären anwenden. Abnehmen mit Shift + E auf das Teil. Ein Bär trägt immer nur ein Stück. Wer reiten, kämpfen und tragen will, bindet an der Schwarzschmiede ein Kriegsgeschirr aus Sattel, Harnisch und Satteltaschen, alle mindestens ★4.

Reiten: E auf den Sattel. W geht, Shift rennt, E steigt ab. Angriff ist abwechselnd Prankenhieb und Biss, Zweitangriff das Schmettern, Springen ein Satz nach vorn. Alles kostet Ausdauer des Bären.

Harnisch und Taschen: Der leichte Harnisch gibt Rüstung und Leben ohne Tempoverlust, der schwere viel mehr davon, macht aber 10–15 % langsamer. Ab ★5 halten beide Feuer ab. Satteltaschen fassen 8 bis 24 Plätze und öffnen sich mit E wie eine Truhe.

Mehrspieler: Alle brauchen den Mod. Läuft neben Wolf Riding, Better Riding, Starborn Breeding und Feeding Troughs.