Taum

Alt+E on a tamed boar or hen and it follows you. Alt+E again and it stays. It is the same follow/stay command wolves and lox already have, opened up for the animals that never got it.

Features

• Alt+E toggles follow/stay on any tamed creature Valheim does not let you command. In vanilla that is boars and hens.
• The animal's hover text gains a [Alt + E] Follow / stay line, using whichever key you have bound to Use and whichever modifier is set in the config.
• E still pets and Shift+E still renames. All three gestures keep their own key.
• Follow state is stored by the game on the animal, so it survives a relog and other players see it.
• No new items, recipes or prefabs. One DLL, no assets, no asset bundle.

How it works

Valheim's follow/stay command already exists for every tamed creature. It is gated behind a flag (m_commandable) that boars and hens do not have set, so there has simply never been a way to ask them. Taum calls the game's own Tameable.Command on those animals when you press Use with the modifier held. The follow AI, the "follows you" and "stays" messages and the ownership handling on a server are all vanilla's.

It does not flip m_commandable itself. That flag also makes petting command the animal, the way it does on a wolf, and petting your way down a row of boars would then march the whole pen after you.

A modded tamed creature that is not commandable gets the gesture for free, with no patch or config entry needed.

The first version of this mod was a crafted halter item with a lead. That design was cut before release and lives on the halter branch.

Installation

Requires BepInEx 5.4.2350. BepInEx 5 only; this is not compatible with BepInEx 6.

Through a mod manager, install Taum and you are done. By hand, put Taum.dll in BepInEx/plugins/Taum/.

Start the game once and quit after installing. That first run writes the config file, which does not exist before the mod has loaded.

Longhouse Core is an optional soft dependency. With it installed, Taum joins the version check and the host's config values apply to clients. Without it, Taum runs on its own and only the version check is lost.

Configuration

The file is BepInEx/config/ezomic.valheim.taum.cfg, section [Taum].

FollowKey takes one Unity KeyCode name and matches it exactly, so LeftAlt is the left key only. Set RightAlt if that is the one you use. Keys are read through the legacy input path, so use a keyboard key; mouse and gamepad buttons are not reliable here.

BepInEx writes every setting to disk on first run and the saved value beats a new default in a later version. If a setting looks like it is being ignored, read the cfg before anything else, and make sure you are editing the profile you actually launch.

Multiplayer

The command itself is vanilla's, including the ownership handling, so following works on a dedicated server. Each player who wants the gesture installs Taum; an animal set to follow by one player behaves the same for everyone.

Taum registers with Longhouse Core as required on both ends. If a server runs Core and Taum, clients without Taum, or on a different version or build, are rejected when they connect. On a server without Core, mixed installs are fine: players without Taum just cannot issue the command.

With Core present, the host's Enabled and Verbose values are applied on connected clients in memory, without touching their config files. FollowKey is a key and is never taken over by the host.

Compatibility

Taum patches Tameable.Interact (prefix) and Tameable.GetHoverText (postfix), and nothing else. Conflicts to expect:

• A mod that makes farm animals commandable outright. Taum only acts on creatures the game marks non-commandable, so on those animals it becomes inert and the other mod's behaviour stands.
• A mod that binds the same modifier plus Use on a tamed creature. Taum's prefix takes the interaction and returns, so whichever patch runs first wins.

Wolves, lox and anything else already commandable are untouched and keep their vanilla gesture.

Troubleshooting

No hover line on the animal. Either the mod is not loaded or Enabled is false. Check BepInEx/LogOutput.log for Taum 1.0.0 by Robbin Thijssen - ready.

Hover line is there, Alt+E does nothing. The animal has to be tamed, and the modifier has to be held when you press Use rather than after. If you changed FollowKey, check the cfg in the profile you launched.

It pets instead. You pressed Use without the modifier down. If it opened the rename box, you held Shift, which is vanilla's own gesture on a tamed creature.

Bug reports

Report in the Discord or on the issue tracker. Useful to attach:

• BepInEx/LogOutput.log
• BepInEx/config/ezomic.valheim.taum.cfg
• Whether you were on a server or in single player
• Which animal it was, and whether it was tamed by you or by someone else
• AppData/LocalLow/IronGate/Valheim/Player.log if a vanilla mechanic broke, since exceptions thrown mid-frame land there and not in the BepInEx log

Discord

The Discord is used for mod information, updates, support, bug reports and compatibility questions.

Server

There is also a small EU server running the pack if you want somewhere to play. Details are in the Discord.

Building

Open Taum.csproj and build. It targets net462, references the game's managed DLLs and BepInEx's directly by path, and needs no NuGet restore. The build deploys to testprofile/ unless ProfileDir is overridden.

Part of Longhouse

Taum is included in the Longhouse modpack, which pins an exact version of it. It behaves the same installed on its own.

Credits

By Robbin Thijssen (Thijssen Software). Licensed MIT, see LICENSE. Version history is in CHANGELOG.md.

Changelog

Notable changes to Taum. Format follows Keep a Changelog, and the mod uses semantic versioning.

[1.0.1] - 2026-09-12

Changed

• Rewritten README. Same mod, clearer documentation: what it does and how to install it come first, then configuration, multiplayer behaviour, compatibility and troubleshooting. Every config table was checked against the plugin's own Config.Bind calls, so the settings, sections and defaults listed are the ones actually bound. No code changed in this release.

[1.0.0] - 2026-08-27

The first published version, and a different mod from the one 0.1.0 sketched. The halter - a crafted item, a worn model, a lead - was cut whole to the halter branch on his call, and what ships is one gesture: Alt+E on a tamed boar or hen toggles follow/stay, through vanilla's own Tameable.Command - the same follow the wolves have, gated only by a flag the farm animals lack. E still pets, Shift+E still renames; all three gestures keep their own key, and the modifier is config (FollowKey).

Confirmed in play: the follow, the hover line, and follow surviving a relog - which is vanilla's own ZDO behaviour, kept.

[0.1.0] - unreleased

First version. Built, and not yet run in game - everything below compiles and deploys, and nothing here has been stood next to a boar.

The halter

Craft one at a workbench for two leather scraps. Press Use with it in hand at a tamed adult boar or hen and it goes on and the animal follows; hold Use to take it back. A full pack means it lands on the ground rather than being destroyed, and an animal that dies wearing one leaves it where it fell, the way a lox leaves its saddle.

How many animals you can lead is how many halters you are carrying. That is the whole limit and there is no config entry for it, because a halter is on exactly one animal and getting it back means walking to that animal - the cap is an object you can count rather than a number somebody has to agree with.

What made it small

Two facts out of the decompiled source, both of which would have been expensive to guess wrong:

• Tameable.Command does not check m_commandable. The flag only decides whether petting toggles following. So a boar has always been able to follow a player and has simply never had anything to ask it - and this mod needs no AI of its own, no waypoint, and no patch on movement.
• Tameable.Interact returns false the instant hold is true, so hold-Use on a tamed animal is an unclaimed gesture. Shift-Use is not: it opens the rename box. Taking that would have cost a feature to add one.

The state lives in the animal's ZDO next to where vanilla keeps s_haveSaddleHash, so it survives a relog, shows up for other players, and needs no file of its own.

Four shapes, all shipped

halter_a straps, halter_b rope, halter_c a heavy bridle, halter_d a neck collar. Item.Model picks one and swapping is a config line rather than a rebuild.

They ship as four because the question they answer cannot be settled from a render. A boar's muzzle is about 16cm across where a noseband sits and a hen's whole skull is about 5cm, and whether one model scaled per species survives that is something you find out standing in a pen. halter_d is the hedge: a collar has no face piece to fit wrong.

Placement came off devkit rips of Boar and Hen rather than being eyeballed, which is also how the bone names were found - Boar spells it Head and Hen spells it head, so the search is a case-insensitive list rather than a name.

Known limits

• Nothing has been run in game. The scales in Creatures.Scales are measured guesses and the offsets are all zero, so the first session is likely to be a round of nudging numbers.
• No portal message, no straggler catch-up, no whole-pen gesture. Each was considered and declined; the mod is meant to be narrower than the problem.