Companions

A companion is a Dverger who follows you, fights for you, carries a bag, and wears whatever you put in it. They arrive badly equipped on purpose, so kitting one out is something you do rather than something you are handed.

Making the horn

Craft the Companion Horn at a level 2 Workbench:

It is a bronze-age cost on purpose. By the time you can build it you have a Black Forest base, and a second pair of hands is help rather than a way to skip the early game.

Calling one

Equip the horn and use it. A companion appears beside you with a name of their own, already tamed and already following. The name lives in the creature's ZDO, so everyone on the server sees the same one.

The number you can have out at once is Companions per player (default 1, up to 10).

Commands

Companions use the same controls as a tamed wolf:

Hold, do not tap, for the bag. A tap still does follow and stay, so nothing you already know changed.

The bag

Every companion carries a 5x3 bag. It is real storage: put anything in it you like, and they will haul it for you.

It is also how you gear them.

Gearing them

Drop a weapon, shield, helmet, chest piece, legs, gloves, cape, utility item or torch into the bag. Within a few seconds they put it on, and whatever they were using comes back into the bag so you can take it away or leave it as a spare.

Two rules worth knowing:

• They will not swap down. If they are already wearing something better, a worse item left in the bag is ignored. This means you can use the bag to haul spare gear without them stripping their own kit to wear your junk.
• Nothing moves while the bag is open. Items are only shuffled on a slow tick, and that tick is skipped while you have the window open, so nothing changes underneath a drag.

Feeding them

Leave food in the bag. When a companion is hurt they eat one item and heal for its food value. Better food heals more. They will not eat while at full health, so a stocked bag lasts.

When they die

Everything they were carrying and everything they were wearing drops on the ground where they fell. Losing a companion should cost you the companion, not the silver armour you spent a night mining for.

Starting gear

Companion gear decides what they arrive with. Default is Starter.

This applies to the next companion you call, not to ones already standing beside you.

Strength scaling

By default a companion scales to your best weapon skill, so an early character gets help rather than something that clears the Black Forest without them.

• Scale companion to player skill (default on) turns this on and off.
• Companion minimum strength (default 0.35) is how strong they are at skill 0, as a fraction of full strength.
• Companion health multiplier scales their health on top of that.
• Companion star level (1 to 3) sets their stars. With scaling on, stars are earned: a beginner does not get a two-star companion.

Turn scaling off if you want one that is always at full strength.

They follow you through portals

Companion recall distance (default 40 metres) pulls a following companion back to you when they fall further behind than that. This is what stops them being left on the wrong side of a portal. Set it to 0 to switch recall off and let them find their own way.

A companion told to stay has no follow target and is left exactly where you put them.

They stay when you log out

m_unsummonOnOwnerLogoutSeconds is zero, so a companion remains in the world after you leave. Come back and they are where you left them.