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

Put a sign inside the pen (or on its fence) and write:

Pen 10 Boar 8

• Pen makes it a pen. The pen is whatever the fence around the sign encloses.
• 10 is the pen's size in metres, only used if there's no closed fence around the sign (then the pen is a 10 m circle). You can leave it out.
• Boar 8: boars in this pen stop breeding when there are 8.

That's all. Look at the sign to check it: green marks on the ground mean the fence closes the pen, and the sign's text lists the cap and the animals inside.

Other things you can write

Animal names work in the singular or plural (boar, boars, wolves). A kind you don't name uses the sign's cap for every kind, if it has one, else the Pen cap setting, else its own cap.

Young count towards the cap: piglets, cubs and calves as always, and the chicks (or asksvin hatchlings) that hatch from eggs. Eggs lying in the pen don't count.

How the pen is found

• 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 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 says why, and for a gap how wide it is and where ("1.2 m gap 6 m north-east of the sign").
• 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.
• In a cave dug with Hearth Below, the pen is measured on the cave's floor, and the rock walls count as a fence: only the way out of the cave needs a fence or a gate. The marks and the ball show on the cave's floor. A round or square pen in a cave only counts the animals in that cave, not the ones on the ground above it (and a pen up there doesn't count the ones in a cave below).
• Animals stay in. A tame animal that gets out of a fenced pen anyway (through a gap small enough to count as closed, a gate left open, or by slipping through a wall, a rock or the side of a cave) is put back where it last stood inside. One that sinks into the pen's floor is lifted back onto it, and a young one born on the wrong side of the fence is put inside. To take an animal out, tell it to follow you or ride it. Flying animals (drakes) are on a leash instead: they fly over the pen and up to 10 m past its edge, then turn back. A tame animal that falls through the ground or a floor into nothing is put back where it last stood. Animals in caves dug with Hearth Below, or on any floor under the ground, stay where they are. An animal that has to be put back more than 4 times in 2 minutes is left alone for 10 minutes instead (its fence probably has an opening the check can't see; the log says which animal and where).
• No food is wasted. Tamed animals only eat when it does them some good: when they can still breed, when a herd bell can still collect from them (Herd Bell mod), or when they wear a saddle or riding handle (food refills a mount's stamina). Animals in a full pen or crowded together, young ones still growing and kinds that can't breed leave food alone, and so does an animal whose yield store is full. They eat again as soon as that changes.
• Finding a mate works exactly as before, and animals outside every pen behave exactly as before.
• The Butcher knife kills in one hit. The game's knife does 1000 damage, too little for big or starred animals (a 2-star lox has 3000 health). PenPosts raises it to 100000, so any tamed animal goes down in one hit. The knife still only hurts tamed animals (setting: Butcher knife damage).

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 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.

• Green: the pen is fine, a closed fence or the round or square shape the sign asks for.
• Grey-blue: the fence couldn't be used (an opening, too big, none found), so the pen is the fallback circle or square for now.
• Orange ring: the opening that keeps the fence from closing. Yellow ring: a gap narrow enough to ignore.

The marks change as soon as the pen does, so closing a gap turns them green while you watch.

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.