Runic Production 1.0.0

Runic Production adds explicit chest automation for Valheim smelters, cooking stations, supported recipe stations, fermenters, refillable fires, and fuel-burning lamps. It keeps Valheim's normal station state and container inventories as the gameplay owners of that data.

The mod is independently installable. Its only runtime requirement is BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2333. It does not require another Runic mod or a shared Runic library.

Supported links

Input supplies exact accepted ingredients while preserving configured reserves. Fuel Input is a separate role selected at the station's native fuel control and supplies only the station's native fuel prefab while keeping Fuel.ProtectedReserve in the chest. Existing Input links continue to supply fuel until that station receives its first explicit Fuel Input link. Output is a throughput destination. Replenishment keeps approved output types stocked from physical exemplars in its linked chests.

Fireplace-family objects use their own native fuel definition. A wood fire therefore draws Wood from its Fuel Input chest, while a resin lamp draws Resin, without maintaining a separate Runic fuel list.

Every role accepts multiple chests. Cooking and fermenting prefer an eligible below-reserve Replenishment destination and may also retain ordinary Output links. Recipe stations can use linked Input chests or eligible nearby ingredient chests. Smelter output interception suppresses Valheim's normal spawn only after the complete output batch is deposited successfully; otherwise the ordinary vanilla output path runs.

A physical chest may be the Output of one station and the Input of another, including a mead ketill-to-chest-to-fermenter line. Roles are scoped independently to each station, and a chest may also hold more than one explicit role for the same station. Exact conversion tables and configured reserves still decide which item types a station is allowed to consume; the relay relation itself does not copy, rename, or guess an item.

Linking controls

Start a link while pointing anywhere at the station. Hold Alt and click the role's mouse button, then point at the desired chest and repeat that exact Alt+mouse gesture within 30 seconds. Either Alt key works; Ctrl is deliberately excluded. The accepted click is consumed so it cannot also attack, block, open the build menu, remove a piece, or perform a secondary attack.

To remove a link, perform the same two steps with Shift also held at both the station and the linked chest. Link and unlink modes cannot be mixed during the 30-second selection.

The station hover always lists Input, Fuel Input, Output, and Replenishment, showing empty, 1 chest, or the exact linked-chest count. Output selection is station-level; it no longer requires aiming at a front bay, food slot, tap, or spout. Successful commits report Linked as input/output/replenishment for <station name>. Successful removals report the corresponding Link removed message.

Loaded linked chests are visually identified whenever the player points at their station: Input (including migrated legacy Fuel links) has bright green rings, Output has bright yellow rings, and every Replenishment destination has turquoise rings. A successfully linked chest keeps its ring for 12 seconds immediately after the commit; contextual station aiming renews the rings while the station remains pointed. Fuel Input uses the same green input ring. Every role is additive and shows every linked destination, up to the configured bounded limit. Each of the three animated rings has its own child renderer; if any visual object becomes invalid, that chest's marker tears itself down once instead of throwing repeatedly or affecting automation. A later display lease can then create a fresh marker.

A Replenishment chest may be linked while empty. It remains inert until a physical exemplar is placed inside; scheduler polling then derives the exact uniquely supported target and producer signature. Removing every exemplar disables that target without guessing. A positive exemplar count below Replenishment Stock.DefaultReserve triggers production; exact-prefab overrides are available in PrefabReserves. The single default soft limit is eight chests per station role and the hard limit is sixteen, with at most thirty-two authorized target types.

A link is accepted only when the station and chest are loaded and currently owned by the same local process, the player can reach the chest, both endpoints are inside the configured link range, Valheim chest and ward access allow the player, and the target is a static non-wagon container. The same checks are repeated before use.

Replenishment behavior

Cooking stations and fermenters select only an input that corresponds to an accessible, current Replenishment target. If the catalog is invalid or no target is currently eligible, the station does not pull an unrelated ingredient. Completed output is routed only to a destination whose physical exemplar and signed producer definition still match.

Allowed recipe stations can produce a complete recipe batch from one or more eligible linked Input or nearby chests directly into a Replenishment destination. The recipe must be enabled and unique for the exemplar, must not use Valheim's choose-one-ingredient rule, and must still match its recorded output, requirements, DLC, station, level, roof, fire, and producer signature. The destination must retain at least one matching exemplar.

Recipe Nearby Ingredients.Enabled=true is the default. Recipe, cooking, and fermenter replenishment may draw from bounded loaded nearby static chests; direct recipes combine split ingredients into one exact atomic source plan. Setting it false confines ingredients to linked Input chests. Every donor must be locally owned, accessible, ward-allowed, outside the station's Output, Replenishment, and legacy Fuel destination sets (unless explicitly linked as Input), and inside the link range. Search is bounded to 64 candidates and aborts rather than using a truncated result. Reserves are enforced independently in every donor.

For food or mead-base production, place one desired output exemplar in a Replenishment chest and link it to the recipe station; the station uses eligible Input and nearby ingredient chests to make that exact recipe into the exemplar chest. A fermenter pulls a compatible mead base from its Input and routes finished mead only to Replenishment chests already containing that exact mead. Repeat Alt+Middle Mouse on the station and then the chest for multiple exemplar chests; the bounded catalog chooses a matching destination fairly.

The stock scheduler services each loaded station at most once per quantum and applies the global operation cap. Unloaded time never creates catch-up recipe batches or fuel service.

Ownership and failure behavior

Production acts only while the exact loaded station and every participating chest are native local owners. It never claims or transfers ownership and has no custom network RPC. This works in solo, on a listen host, and on a dedicated-server client or server whenever Valheim has colocated current ownership of the required objects. If ownership is split, a chest is open or unsynchronized, an endpoint is unloaded, access changes, or a proof no longer matches, that station simply pauses.

Ordinary transfers have no persistent operation journal, global inventory lock, account state, or recovery loop. A multi-object mutation uses exact before/after snapshots, publishes each chest's native persisted inventory, and proves either the full committed state or an exact rollback before trying anything else. If Valheim cannot prove either result, automation pauses only that station for the current session and suppresses a duplicate retry or vanilla output; reload to resume from Valheim's persisted chest state. No unrelated inventory, tool, station, player, or mod is blocked.

For Replenishment, the exact authorized player identity is stored in an inert plan before the role link becomes authoritative, including when the chest is empty. A failed plan or role publication does not report a successful link. Signed plan bodies without an exact current Replenishment role link remain inert and are neither displayed nor consumed by automation.

Actual feature data remains persistent: explicit links, the bounded Replenishment catalog, signed target definitions, and fairness cursors stay in the established runic.production.* world keys. Existing stable container token keys are preserved. Valid earlier singleton links and plans migrate to the catalog when their records agree exactly. A tokenless singleton target may be upgraded only when its one exact legacy chest is loaded and locally owned; old tokenless catalog destinations require an explicit player refresh. Invalid or ambiguous records pause without guessing or deleting the relation.

Multiplayer, configuration, and installation

There is no Runic protocol handshake. Install this DLL on each process expected to automate objects, and keep gameplay configuration consistent across the server and participating clients. A peer without Runic Production does not prevent other Runic gameplay mods from loading; it simply does not run Production logic for objects that peer owns.

Configuration is generated at BepInEx/config/chazman.RunicProduction.cfg. The example file documents link distance, moved-target tolerance, reserves, exact prefab allow/deny lists, optional nearby discovery, the single per-role chest limit, scheduler bounds, UI hints, and diagnostics. Deny entries override allow entries. Lowering a bound does not erase existing links.

Install BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2333, then place RunicProduction.dll under BepInEx/plugins/RunicProduction/. Version 1.0.0 is audited against Valheim 0.221.12.

Community: https://discord.gg/7HKHTCdFqY

Runic Production is an independent mod and is not affiliated with Iron Gate Studio.

Changelog

1.0.0 - 2026-08-29

• Made the plugin independently installable with BepInEx as its only runtime dependency while keeping version 1.0.0 and the established package identity.
• Removed the shared registry, capability negotiation, permissions service, transaction composites, remote-owner handoff, custom Production RPC transport, persistent operation records, recovery, claims, global inventory guards, and account/global quarantine paths.
• Rebuilt smelter, cooking, recipe-station, and fermenter automation around Valheim's exact loaded native owner. No path claims or transfers ZDO ownership.
• Kept persistent explicit links, stable endpoint tokens, bounded multi-destination catalogs, physical exemplar plans, target signatures, and fairness cursors in their existing world-data formats.
• Kept valid singleton-link migration. Tokenless singleton links upgrade only from one exact loaded local-owner chest, while tokenless catalog destinations require an explicit refresh.
• Added bounded, expiring local link selections with fresh range, chest, ward, access, identity, creator, ownership, and synchronization checks at commit and use.
• Preserved throughput Input, Fuel, and Output links, complete-batch smelter fallback, exact reserves, direct recipe replenishment, cooking/fermenting replenishment, and optional bounded nearby ingredient sourcing.
• Added exact persisted-state compensation for multi-object mutations without leaving restart-time work or locking unrelated inventory. A proven rollback retains vanilla smelter fallback; an indeterminate publication suppresses duplicate fallback and pauses only that station until reload.
• Replaced obsolete transport and crash-recovery coverage with focused standalone, native-owner, persistence-format, boundedness, rollback, and vanilla-fallback tests.
• Added exact native Fireplace fuel service, so explicitly linked fires draw Wood and lamps draw Resin from player-facing Input chests with the existing reserve and rollback rules.
• Added station-specific hover guidance for Input, throughput Output, and exemplar-backed Replenishment setup; enabled bounded nearby recipe ingredients by default.
• Verified exemplar-driven food and mead-base recipes plus fermenter input and matching multi-chest mead output in the focused workflow regressions.
• Added exact station-level Alt mouse links: Left selects Input, Right selects Output, and Middle selects Replenishment. Repeating the same gesture on a chest within 30 seconds commits it; Shift+Alt at both steps removes that exact role link.
• Reserved accepted mouse gestures through release so combat and build actions cannot leak through, and added vivid green Input, yellow Output, and turquoise multi-Replenishment chest rings on successful links and while their station is pointed.
• Made role selection independent of a station's physical sub-control: aiming anywhere on the station uses the mouse button alone to select Input, Output, or Replenishment.
• Added multiple persistent chests per role, station hover counts for all three roles, one unified per-role link limit, reserve-driven dynamic exemplar refresh, and server-side reconciliation.
• Added exact composite nearby recipe sourcing across accessible shared chests, protected linked destinations, in-flight reserve admission, completed-output routing, and rollback readback guards.
• Made empty Replenishment links crash-safe by publishing their signed principal plan while inert before the authoritative role link. Orphan plan bodies remain inert, and no link success is shown unless both publications complete.
• Fixed linked-chest rendering by placing each LineRenderer on its own child GameObject. An invalid root or ring now tears that marker down once, preventing repeated UpdateVisuals exceptions without affecting Production links or transfers; a later lease may create a fresh marker.
• Separated Fuel Input from ingredient Input when the player aims Alt+Left Mouse at a native fuel control, with distinct selection, link, removal, and hover text while retaining legacy Input-fuel compatibility until an explicit Fuel Input link is made.
• Enabled Output links for allowed cauldron, mead-kettle, and preparation-table recipe stations.
• Expanded ordinary cooking-station and oven ingredient sourcing from an explicit Input link to the same bounded eligible nearby-chest pool used by recipe automation, and exposed exact validation failures through the station status and verbose log instead of silently doing nothing.
• Allowed one physical chest to carry independent roles, including serving as one station's Output and another station's Input for true chained production lines such as mead ketill to fermenter.
• Kept finite native oven fuel states above the display capacity operational; automation stops adding fuel at capacity without disabling food input, cooking, or cooked-output routing.