TameMate — Companion & Riding Overhaul

TameMate turns domesticated creatures into persistent companions that can be commanded, trained, grouped and ridden. It works from creature capabilities instead of a fixed species list, allowing compatible creatures from other mods to participate.

Current test build

Version 0.2.2 is an integrated test build. It includes performance and bareback movement corrections and is intended for local and multiplayer validation before the public 1.0 release. Back up important worlds before testing any new gameplay mod.

Commands and behavior

Press U to open or close the companion whistle wheel. The wheel can be controlled in either of these ways:

• Move the mouse toward an option and press right click.
• Use the arrow keys to change the highlighted option and press Enter.
• Press number keys 1–8 to choose the matching position directly.
• Press Escape or U to close the wheel.

Every wheel position now displays its number from 1 through 8, so keyboard selection never requires counting hidden slots.

U is recognized even when an older TameMate configuration still contains the previous shortcut.

• Look at one companion to command it individually.
• Look away to command nearby companions.
• Use Group and scope inside the wheel to choose one companion, nearby companions or a selected group.
• Assign the selected creature to groups 1–8 from the wheel. Group 0 removes it from a numbered group.
• Use the wheel's internal pages for orders, behavior, formations, attributes and riding. No modifier keys are required.

Movement page:

• Follow me
• Stay
• Move there
• Attack the marked target
• Guard this position
• Return home
• Patrol between home and the marked point
• Mount

Behavior page:

• Passive
• Flee
• Defensive
• Neutral
• Aggressive
• Cycle formation
• Cycle follow distance
• Regroup

Available formations are free, wedge, line and circle.

ARK-style whistles

Issuing a wheel command produces an audible whistle. Follow, stay, move, attack and regroup use distinct whistle patterns so players can recognize the order by sound. The whistle and command are synchronized in multiplayer and only play for players within hearing distance.

Progression

Companions earn experience from combat, mounted travel and reduced group sharing. TameMate levels are separate from Valheim stars.

Each level awards one point for:

• Health: +5% per point
• Mount stamina: +5%
• Damage: +3%
• Defense: +2%, capped
• Speed: +1%, capped at +10%
• Food duration: +4%

The radial Attributes page keeps the selected companion locked while navigating. It displays companion level, total XP, available points and the current value of Health, Mount Stamina, Damage, Defense, Speed and Food Duration. Spending a point keeps the page open for additional upgrades. Looking directly at a companion adds health, level, XP progress, available points, behavior, order, group, all six attributes and environmental exposure to Valheim's normal creature text.

Riding

Eligible companions receive a functional invisible mount controller. Existing saddle controllers are retained while their separate visual renderers can be hidden for bareback riding. Creatures with a growth component are accepted once they are actually tamed and active.

The system uses Valheim's real riding controller for movement, network ownership and stamina. Primary and secondary mounted attacks use the attacks already present on the creature. Jumping and attacking consume mount stamina, camera distance adapts to creature size, and agile, standard and heavy mounts receive different acceleration and turning behavior. Press Z while mounted to toggle camera-directed aim. Compatible creatures already capable of flight use Space to ascend and Left Control to descend.

When RideOnTroll is installed, TameMate detects its troll controller. Choosing Mount from TameMate's wheel hands control to RideOnTroll's native mount system, preserving its troll movement, combat and platform behavior. TameMate recognizes the resulting rider state for mounted travel XP and automatic loot pickup without sending duplicate combat inputs. This was matched against RideOnTroll 1.0.3 from the supplied profile. RideOnTroll remains required for its special troll implementation.

Monstrum companions are handled through their real Tameable, MonsterAI and saddle capabilities. Its current documented rideable creatures include Razorback, Grizzly Bear, Prowler and Pridetusk Mammoth. Exact seat placement and animation quality still depend on the creature prefab and should be checked in game.

Mounted auto pickup

While riding, TameMate automatically collects nearby ground loot such as wood, stone, ores and creature drops. It uses the player's normal inventory and respects item pickup delay, available slots and items marked as non-auto-pickup. The default radius is 6 meters and can be configured between 2 and 10 meters.

Care

• Universal commandability for tamed creatures
• Taming and growth tuning
• Wild tameable creatures eat valid food from nearby player-built chests when no food is on the ground, advancing Valheim's real taming process
• Hungry domesticated creatures use the same chest system for healing and breeding
• Separate synchronized switches for wild and domesticated chest feeding, 2–30 meter range, and an optional food-only chest rule
• Companion recovery instead of permanent death
• Followers return through player teleports and portals
• Hover information compatible with other hover-text mods
• Persistent owner, home, order, group, formation, level and attributes

WorldCataclysms

WorldCataclysms is optional. When installed, companions show exposure in their normal hover text and receive event-specific movement, riding stamina and recovery penalties. Damage remains under WorldCataclysms authority to prevent duplicate hits.

• Hurricane: heavy movement and mount-control penalty
• Blizzard: cold movement and recovery penalty
• Toxic fog: health regeneration disabled while exposed
• Meteor shower: recovery and stamina penalty
• Tsunami: movement and exhaustion penalty
• Thunderstorm: wet movement penalty and normal lightning risk
• Magical aurora: calm and gradual recovery

Interiors protect companions. Natural damage resistances remain handled by Valheim and WorldCataclysms.

My Little UI

My Little UI is optional. TameMate adds companion details to Valheim's normal creature hover text and creates no separate screen panel, so it does not cover My Little UI, inventory or hotbars. It does not modify My Little UI's DLL or assets.

Better Tames and Better Riding

TameMate implements its own systems. During transition it detects Better Tames and Better Riding and logs a warning. Disable their overlapping functionality when testing TameMate to avoid duplicate commands, feeding, protection or mount controls.

Creature content mods remain installed because they provide their own models, prefabs, sounds and attacks.

Test console commands

Look at a tamed companion before using these commands:

tm status
tm claim
tm mount
tm group 1
tm order follow
tm order stay
tm stance passive
tm stance aggressive
tm xp 500

tm xp requires the server or an administrator.

Multiplayer

Every player must install the same patch version. Gameplay configuration is synchronized through Jötunn. Orders, ownership, progression and attributes are persisted in the creature's network data.

Changelog

0.2.5

• Forced combat targets are restored immediately after Valheim's native target validation, before the same AI tick reaches its attack logic.
• Defensive and aggressive targets now remain committed while Follow, Stay or another movement order is active.
• Attack now falls back to valid untamed AI creatures when a content mod's custom faction prevents Valheim's native enemy lookup from finding them.
• Direct Attack searches around both the marked point and the companion, then keeps the acquired moving target.
• Aggressive uses the same mod-compatible target selection with a shared one-second candidate cache.
• Defensive receives the real attacker directly from the damage event instead of waiting for custom AI to select it.
• Follow recovery now measures progress toward the player, so movement against an obstacle no longer resets the stuck timer.
• Emergency distance was reduced to 45 meters so recovery occurs before Valheim can unload the creature's active zone.
• Combat hover text reports "en combate" instead of the misleading native "asustado" label while fear is being suppressed.
• Added gold paw map markers for locally owned TameMate companions, showing name and group.
• Map markers update every two seconds, keep the last known position while a companion is unloaded, and are not duplicated for trolls already tracked by RideOnTroll.

0.2.4

• Followers using Follow automatically teleport near their owner after exceeding 55 meters.
• Followers farther than their allowed follow distance also recover after remaining effectively stuck for eight seconds.
• Recovery checks run once per second per follower and use no world-wide creature search.
• Teleported companions are distributed around the owner to reduce stacking and immediately resume Follow.
• Direct Attack and Aggressive companions ignore native fire fear while committed to combat.
• Defensive companions ignore fire fear while they have a valid hostile target.
• Native fear settings are restored when combat ends, the behavior changes, the creature is mounted, or the component is removed.

0.2.3

• Fixed the Attributes button opening the second Groups page instead of the real attribute-allocation page.
• Attribute options now show their current value and can spend available points without closing the page.
• Removed Valheim's creature hover text while the radial wheel is open and moved the selected companion's level, stance and order into the wheel center.
• Fixed Follow continuously erasing combat targets, which prevented defensive and aggressive companions from fighting.
• Attack now acquires an enemy around the marked location and keeps that moving target until it dies or stops being hostile.
• Aggressive companions actively search for nearby hostile creatures instead of only entering the alert animation.
• Cancel attack now clears combat without silently changing the companion to Passive or replacing its current movement order.
• Explicit TameMate movement orders are reasserted after native AI updates, so fear and distant food no longer override Stay, Follow, Move, Home, Guard or Patrol.
• Nearby food at the companion's commanded position can still be consumed.
• Command-priority enforcement is throttled to ten checks per second per commanded companion and formation member lists remain shared and cached.

0.2.2

• Fixed virtual bareback mounts accepting a rider but remaining unable to move.
• Companion Stay, Follow, formation and combat orders pause while the creature has a rider, allowing the vanilla saddle controller to drive its MonsterAI.
• Companion orders resume automatically after dismounting.
• Fixed RideOnTroll detection in the radial menu by using RideOnTroll's public IsTroll(Character) check before its ride controller exists.
• Fixed successful asynchronous virtual-saddle requests being reported as unsupported by the radial menu.
• Fixed Stay being overridden by Valheim's idle wandering: companions now hold the exact position where the order was issued and return there after displacement.
• Move, Home, Guard, Patrol and formation destinations now use persistent AI anchors instead of momentary movement calls.
• Removed the separate lower-left companion panel so it can no longer overlap My Little UI, inventory, hotbars or crafting interfaces.
• Creature hover text now contains health, level, XP progress, available points, group, behavior, active order, all six attribute values, recovery and WorldCataclysms exposure.
• Reduced per-creature work by updating movement modifiers four times per second instead of every rendered frame.
• Reduced whistle registration checks and repeated RideOnTroll checks without delaying commands or mounted controls.
• Persistent order anchors are assigned once and then moved, avoiding repeated AI follow-target writes while preserving every issued order.

0.2.1

• Fixed severe frame loss on creature-heavy worlds introduced by the 0.2.0 riding update.
• Virtual saddles are now created only when the player chooses Mount instead of for every tame during world loading.
• Shared and throttled mounted-creature detection replaces repeated full character scans from combat, camera, HUD and pickup systems.
• RideOnTroll reflection metadata is resolved once and reused.
• Size-based mount state checks are throttled without changing riding behavior.

0.2.0

• Added visible position numbers 1–8 to every page of the radial command wheel.
• The wheel now locks onto the companion that was selected when it opened, preventing mouse movement from losing the target.
• Rebuilt the Attributes page to show level, XP, available points and the current value of all six attributes.
• Attribute allocation now claims an unowned companion correctly and stays on the page for consecutive upgrades.
• Added native RideOnTroll integration: selecting Mount in TameMate calls RideOnTroll's own troll riding controller.
• TameMate now recognizes RideOnTroll's active rider state for its companion HUD, mounted travel XP and automatic loot pickup without duplicating troll combat inputs.
• Removed the growth-component exclusion from generic virtual mounts and prevented existing root-level saddle components from hiding the creature.
• Added size-based mount handling, expanded mounted camera, stamina costs for jump and attacks, and camera-directed aim mode.
• Added vertical controls for already-flying compatible creatures while retaining their network controller.
• Added mount ownership protection and mounted-state details to the companion HUD.

0.1.5

• Fixed chest feeding so it works for wild creatures currently being tamed, not only existing companions.
• Wild creatures consume their normal valid food and continue Valheim's native taming progress.
• Restricted automatic feeding to player-built chests; dungeon and world-loot containers are ignored.
• Added separate synchronized settings for wild-creature feeding and tame feeding.
• Added a configurable 2–30 meter chest range and an optional food-only chest rule.
• Claims network ownership before removing one item to prevent unsynchronized chest consumption.

0.1.4

• Added reliable keyboard navigation to every command-wheel page.
• Arrow keys move the highlighted option; Enter confirms it.
• Number keys 1–8 select the matching wheel position directly.
• U now always opens the wheel even when an older configuration retained the previous shortcut.
• Keeps the cursor unlocked and visible while the wheel is open.
• Mouse direction and right-click selection remain available.

0.1.3

• Rebuilt the command wheel around a single U key.
• Added mouse-direction highlighting and right-click selection.
• Added nested pages for orders, behavior, formations, groups, command scope, attributes and riding.
• Removed the need for Shift, Control and left-click combinations during normal wheel use.
• Added distinct procedural whistles for follow, stay, move, attack and regroup commands.
• Synchronized whistle position and type in multiplayer with a limited hearing range.

0.1.2

• Added automatic ground-loot collection while riding.
• Added configurable mounted pickup radius from 2 to 10 meters.
• Pickup respects normal inventory capacity, pickup delay and item auto-pickup rules.
• Uses a fixed non-allocating collider buffer and a per-tick collection limit to protect performance.

0.1.1

• Added persistent companion ownership, home, groups, orders and behavior.
• Added radial command interface with individual, nearby and group scopes.
• Added follow, stay, move, attack, guard, home and patrol orders.
• Added passive, flee, defensive, neutral and aggressive behavior.
• Added free, wedge, line and circle formations with follow-distance control.
• Added separate experience, levels, points and six upgradeable attributes.
• Added companion and mount HUD compatible with My Little UI placement.
• Added virtual bareback mounting, mounted stamina scaling and mounted attacks.
• Added taming and growth tuning, chest feeding, recovery and portal following.
• Added synchronized gameplay configuration and persistent ZDO data.
• Added optional WorldCataclysms exposure and penalties without duplicate damage.
• Added diagnostic and testing console commands.