SpiritAnimism

Valheim mod by Brruid. Changes how the animals summoned by the Spirit Caller staff look.

Status

Pre-release. Client-side; nothing to install on the server. Per summon type (bear, moose, boar, wolf): a Spirit or Natural look, a tint colour and a glow, reloaded live when the config file changes. A picker chooses what the staff summons next, a panel lists your summons, and a hotkey dismisses them.

Your chosen look travels with each summon you call: other players running the mod see your look on your animals and theirs on their own. Summons called by players without the mod stay vanilla. Players without the mod see everything as vanilla.

Config

BepInEx/config/Brruid.SpiritAnimism.cfg. Edits are picked up while the game runs, including on summons already out. The file starts with one section per animal: [Bear], [Boar], [Moose], [Wolf], followed by [Dismiss], [Pick] and [Panel].

• Look - Spirit (vanilla translucent ghost in your tint) or Natural (the wild animal's own opaque body, borrowed from the wild creature at runtime, with a glow in your tint).
• Tint - hex colour. Spirit look: the body colour, vanilla brightness and transparency kept. Natural look: the glow colour. Default 40C8FFFF (ice blue).
• Glow - body glow strength for the Natural look, 0 to 5. 0 is a plain wild animal. Default 0.3.
• EyeGlow (moose only) - eye glow strength for the Natural look, 0 to 5, from the moose's own eye mask in your tint. Combine with Glow for body only, eyes only, or both at their own strengths. Default 0. The other animals have no usable eye mask; see Known limitations.

The remaining sections:

• [Pick] - with the Spirit Caller in hand, the secondary attack (middle mouse by default) cycles which animal the next cast summons; a centre message names it. Order is the cycle (default Random, Bear, Moose, Boar, Wolf) and SkipFull skips kinds already at your staff's limit, both when cycling and in the Random roll. The current pick is saved with your character. If PickYourSpirit is also installed, this picker switches itself off.
• [Panel] - a top-left list of your standing summons: header with the count and the current pick, then each summon's name, what it is doing, and a health bar. Shown while the Spirit Caller is in hand or a summon is out. Show, OffsetX (20), OffsetY (220) and Scale (1).
• [Dismiss] Key - hotkey that dismisses every spirit summon you called, with the vanilla despawn effect, including ones left standing far away that the game itself can no longer unsummon. Default LeftAlt + X. Ignored while the console, chat or menu is open.

Known limitations

• Eye glow is only controllable on the moose. Measured from the game's own masks: the moose mask lights a tiny patch at full strength (the eyes); the bear mask lights a small patch at half strength that is not visible on the model; the boar has no mask; the wolf's eye glow is baked into its texture and always on.

• Opacity is not adjustable. The vanilla spirit shader (Custom/Fallen Warrior) exposes no alpha or blend settings; its _Cutoff behaves as a hard visible/invisible threshold (measured: unchanged up to 0.62, gone from 0.63). Making summons more solid needs a different body material.

Building

Requires the .NET SDK, a Valheim install, and a BepInEx 5 install (a Gale profile). Paths default to the author's machine; override with -p:ValheimManaged=..., -p:GaleProfile=... or -p:PluginDeployDir=....

dotnet build -c Release

The build copies the DLL into the Gale profile's plugins folder. Pass -p:NoDeploy=true to skip. A Debug build (dotnet build) adds a [Debug] config section: DumpLiveSummons writes every standing summon's visual setup to the log, and DumpKey (default LeftAlt + D) writes every summon's network state, loaded or not.

dotnet build -c Release -t:Package

Builds the Thunderstore zip into dist/. Needs package/icon.png (256x256).

License

MIT. See LICENSE.

Changelog

0.5.0

• Formations: your summons follow in an arrangement around you instead of crowding your position. Built-in Leader (arc behind you), Defense (rings) and Bubble (one widening ring), plus your own formations in Brruid.SpiritAnimism.Formations.cfg, with slots that can be reserved for a kind. Stand still for a moment and the formation settles so you can walk up to an animal; a summon you face from close by holds still.
• Summons steer around other animals, players and mounts instead of walking into them, by the Buffer width.
• Config: new [Formations] section with Formation, Distance and Buffer. The formation's name travels with your summons to other players' machines; an unknown name there means Leader.
• A saddle no longer vanishes with a dismissed or unsummoned animal. It returns to the player who fitted it, failing that to the summoner, failing that it drops where the animal stood. Both players need the mod for a saddle to cross between them.
• DismissWhileRiding (default on) decides whether Dismiss also removes the animal you are riding.

0.4.1

• README rewritten for the Thunderstore page. Build notes moved to BUILDING.md. No gameplay changes.

0.4.0

• Natural look: the wild animal's own body with a glow in your tint; the moose's body and eyes glow at their own strengths.
• Picker: secondary attack with the Spirit Caller cycles what it summons next; cap-aware; remembered.
• Panel: top-left list of your summons with the current pick, activity and health.
• Your look travels with your summons to other players running the mod.
• Config: one section per animal; the EyeGlow strength exists only on the moose, the one animal it affects.
• Config file keeps the animals first, then Dismiss, Pick and Panel, instead of BepInEx's alphabetical order.
• Dismiss also reaches summons left standing far away that nobody owns, which the game's own unsummon cannot remove.

0.3.0

• Dismiss hotkey (default LeftAlt + X) for your own summons.

0.2.0

• A tint per summon type.

0.1.0

• Configurable spirit tint with live reload.