SealsAtHome

Tame the Deep North's seals like any vanilla tameable: feed them raw fish, call them to follow or stay with E, breed them at home, and keep their pups as babies if you like. Client-side, and everything other players see is vanilla: no new creatures, items or effects.

Quick Start

1. Install with a mod manager (r2modman, Thunderstore Mod Manager, Gale): BepInEx comes along automatically.
2. Find seals in the Deep North. Drop raw fish near one without scaring it off: it waddles over and eats it.
3. Keep it fed and calm. After 30 minutes it's tame. Press E to make it follow you or stay.

Features

• Taming like vanilla: raw fish, the usual hearts and messages.
• Follow, stay and rename just like vanilla tamed animals, with their own seal sounds.
• Breeding like vanilla: two happy, fed seals make a pup that's born tame.
• Pups grow up like vanilla cubs. Prefer the cute baby seal? Give it a name and it stays a baby forever. Clear the name and it grows up again.
• Wild pups can be tamed too: bring one home with the Abyssal Harpoon.

Screenshots

Taming a wild seal: drop raw fish, keep your distance, and its tameness rises.

Wild pups can be tamed too.

Tamed seals at home.

Two fed, tamed seals close together fall in love.

A pup is born.

Give a pup a name and it stays a baby forever.

How Things Behave

• Tamed seals never fight: when something hurts them they run off for a while, then come back.
• Wild seals behave like before: lazy, they scoot away when you get very close and run when hit.
• A scared seal won't eat. If you spooked it, back off and give it half a minute.
• Wild seals are afraid of fire: near a campfire or hearth they get frightened and won't tame, so tame them away from fires. Tamed seals don't mind.
• Taming only progresses while the seal is fed and not frightened (see its hover text).
• With PvP off, only the butcher knife hurts tamed seals, as with any tamed animal. One catch: players without the mod can hurt tamed adult seals with any weapon (see Multiplayer).
• Pups keep aging while you're away, as long as the world (or server) is running.
• Starred pups: Valheim never spawns wild seal pups with stars (the game's vanilla code, which this mod doesn't touch), but you can get one by breeding: a pup gets the stars of the seal that gives birth to it.

Multiplayer

SealsAtHome makes changes to the game's own seals, instead of adding a separate mod-only seal that only players with the mod could see. That's why friends without the mod still see your pets and why uninstalling keeps them. The flip side: whatever the mod doesn't change stays vanilla for those players, like their weapons hurting tamed adult seals.

SealsAtHome only runs in players' games: dedicated servers don't need it and don't run it. Valheim lets one player's game run each creature at a time. When you're near seals, your game takes them over from friends without the mod (it can take up to half a minute after you arrive), so everything works: taming, feeding, follow / stay, names, breeding, pups growing up, and anyone with the mod can command them. That's how it's built and checked against the game's code, but it hasn't been fully tested with friends yet: please report how it goes.

Only when nobody with the mod is around does a seal act like a vanilla seal for the moment: it doesn't eat, tame, breed or grow, and it wanders instead of following. Nothing is lost: it all picks up again when someone with the mod comes by.

Players without the mod still see your tamed seals with green health bars, pet names, hearts and sounds. Their weapons can still hurt tamed adult seals (vanilla seals are "provokable" like the Dvergr; pups aren't). Best: everyone in your group has the mod, same version.

Compatibility

• Built and tested for Valheim 1.0 (Deep North). Tested on Linux; there's no OS-specific code.
• If another mod already changed the seals when a world loads (gave them taming or a different AI, like "tame everything" mods), SealsAtHome leaves them alone and says why in BepInEx/LogOutput.log.
• Other mods that change creatures as they spawn (taming, AI or creature-overhaul mods) can clash with SealsAtHome without it noticing. If seals act strangely next to another mod, please open an issue.
• Mods that don't touch seals aren't affected: no game code is patched, nothing else changes, and there's no config file.
• Every language the game has: all texts are the game's own.

Uninstalling

Nothing is stored in your characters. Tamed seals stay tamed in your world (green health bar, pet names, they don't run from players), but they stop following and wander where they are, so tell them to stay at home first. Without the mod they don't breed or grow up, and any weapon can hurt tamed adults again (a vanilla seal quirk). Reinstalling picks up where you left off.

Thanks

SealsAtHome started from TameableSeals by pseudopulse: thanks for the idea of tameable seals! TameableSeals has no public source to contribute to, so SealsAtHome was built separately. It's a fresh take on the idea, built on the game's own taming, AI and breeding, so seals act like any vanilla tameable, with their own sounds, breeding, and pups that grow up (or stay babies), and friends without the mod still see your pets.

Links

• Source and bug reports: https://github.com/algo7/SealsAtHome (issues welcome)
• Changes: the Changelog tab
• Made with AI assistance.
• Built with BepInEx. MIT license.