PenPosts

Breeding caps per pen instead of per radius, so neighbouring pens stop blocking each other.

In the base game, an animal stops breeding ("too crowded") when there are too many of its kind within a radius around it, wherever they are: the next pen, the barn behind the wall, even wild ones. With PenPosts you mark a pen with a sign. Animals inside it only count the animals in that same pen.

How to use

Write a sign whose text starts with Pen, on or inside the pen's fence:

• The pen is what's inside its fence. PenPosts walks out from the sign the way an animal would and stops at fences, walls, rocks and steps too high to climb. Gates count as shut even when they're open, and cracks or gaps narrower than about 0.75 m are ignored. The sign can hang on the fence itself; the side with the animals is the pen.
• A wider gap, or a fence around more than 1600 m², makes the pen a circle around the sign instead (or a square, with the Fallback shape setting). The sign's hover text says why, and for a gap how wide it is and where ("1.2 m gap 6 m north-east of the sign"); an orange ring marks the gap on the ground.
• The fence is measured again now and then, so moving a fence or the sign updates the pen. If an animal is inside several pens, the nearest sign wins.
• Animals of the same kind and their young inside the pen count towards the cap.
• The cap is each animal's own (from the game or your taming mod) unless the sign or the config sets one. A cap for a kind of animal ("Hare 10") wins over the sign's cap for the whole pen, which wins over the config's. Names work in the singular or plural (hare, hares, wolves).
• A full pen doesn't eat. When a pen is at its cap, its animals leave food alone, so no feed is wasted on animals that can't breed. They eat again as soon as there's room.
• Finding a mate works exactly as before, and animals outside every pen behave exactly as before.

Look at a pen sign to see its area, its cap and the tamed animals inside. Keep looking for a moment and the pen itself appears: faint grey-blue marks on the ground along its fence or square (a round pen gets a ring and a see-through dome). It stays while you look and for 20 seconds after. No key is needed, so E still edits the sign.

Settings (anwo.PenPosts.cfg)

Multiplayer

Everyone needs the mod. Breeding is decided by whichever player's game is running the animals at the time, so mixed installs give inconsistent results.

Compatibility

• Works with the base game's breeding and any mod that uses it.
• With LetMeTameYou, its "Too Crowded / Ready to Procreate" hover text uses the pen too.
• With Herd Bell, animals that a bell can still collect from keep eating in a full pen, so the bell keeps working.
• Feeding troughs from other mods (such as Valharvest's) work as usual: animals with room in their pen eat from them, and animals in a full pen leave them alone, like any other food.
• With Zen mods (Zen.ModLib, used by ZenRedecorate and others), their Q key works on pen signs as on any sign; PenPosts uses no key.

Removing the mod

Nothing new is added to the world. Without the mod, a pen sign is just a sign.

About

Made with Claude (Anthropic's AI model) and tagged AI Generated, as Thunderstore's rules ask. Built for Valheim 1.0.17 (Deep North; also 1.0.16) with BepInEx 5.4.2351.

Changelog

1.3.14

• Pen signs understand two-word animal names and the names of their young.
• Several animal names on a sign can share one number (new setting).
• A name on a sign caps only that animal, not others whose names start the same.
• The sign shows each cap by the animals' own names.
• Ridden, led and tied-up animals are left alone by pens.
• An animal that keeps being pulled straight back out is left alone for a while.

1.3.13

• Young of flying animals are born on the floor, not on top of their mother.
• Flying animals in cave pens are no longer pushed up through the roof (new setting).
• Animals that get out go back onto the pen's floor, not onto a ledge above it.
• Fewer warnings in the log.

1.3.12

• Cave pens have a roof: animals that get up through the rock are put back.
• Flying animals in cave pens are caught as soon as they get over the roof.
• Optional roof for pens dug into the ground (off by default).

1.3.11

• Names with a space can be written without it on a sign.
• The sign shows which animals each cap is for.

1.3.10

• Clearer pen edges, drakes stay in cave pens, smaller fixes.

1.3.9

• Link for bug reports and ideas.

1.3.8

• Fixed the mod not starting.
• Fewer false escapes from cave pens.

1.3.7

• Young are born on their mother's side of walls and fences.

1.3.6

• Rewritten description page.

1.3.5

• Bigger pen marks that no longer hide in rocks.
• Bigger default pen size.

1.3.4

• Size changes apply to pens right away.
• More settings to turn features off.
• Shorter setting texts.

1.3.3

• Young count towards a pen's cap; eggs don't.

1.3.2

• Pens work in caves dug with Hearth Below.
• Animals that keep getting out are left alone for a while.

1.3.1

• Tamed animals only eat when it does them some good.

1.3.0

• The butcher knife kills any tamed animal in one hit.

1.2.3

• Fixed animals in Hearth Below caves being moved around.

1.2.2

• Fixed animals in caves being lifted to the surface.
• Fallen animals go back where they stood.
• Flying animals are leashed to their pen.

1.2.1

• Faster.

1.2.0

• Animals stay in their fenced pen.
• Young born outside the fence are put inside.
• Clearer setting texts.

1.1.4

• Pen marks show whether the pen is fine.
• Small gaps and real openings are marked differently.

1.1.3

• Breeding caps per kind of animal.

1.1.2

• Setting text changes.

1.1.1

• Fixed gates reading as open.
• Square pens.

1.1.0

• A pen is the area inside its fence.

1.0.5

• Dimmer pen area.

1.0.4

• Look at a pen sign to see its area.

1.0.3

• Text fixes.

1.0.2

• Animals in a full pen stop eating.

1.0.1

• The pen's area shows as a ball.

1.0.0

• First release.