Huskarl

Blow a horn and a Viking huskarl comes to serve you. Raise a squad of up to five, arm them from their own bag and send them to fight, chop wood, mine ore, gather berries, hunt, clear and loot dungeons. They follow you through portals and into crypts, board your ship and go ashore after you. Orders come from the game's own radial wheel. Works in single player and in co-op.

See it in action: a squad of huskarls on YouTube

Getting a huskarl

Craft the Huskarl horn at the workbench: 1 deer trophy, 6 leather scraps and 10 wood. Use the horn from the inventory or the hotbar and a huskarl appears nearby with a random name and look.

Each player can have up to 5 huskarls. When the limit is reached, the horn isn't used up and instead calls all your huskarls to you, wherever they are.

Orders

Squad wheel: hold Shift and scroll the mouse wheel. All your huskarls within 40 m get the order. The wheel is the game's radial menu (the one used for emotes): move the mouse or the gamepad stick towards an entry, LMB gives the order or opens a submenu, RMB goes back, Esc closes.

One huskarl: aim at them and press E for their order menu (the same orders plus the bag, immortality and the name). Shift + E opens their bag like a chest.

Huskarls pick up what dropped during work and tell you when the bag is full.

Formation

The Formation entry on the wheel chooses how the squad walks with you in "Follow me" mode:

Spacing sets 2–6 m between neighbours (3 m by default; 1.5–8 m in the settings file). The formation turns with the way you walk, not with the camera, so you can look around without the squad running about. Places are handed out so that nobody runs across the squad; stragglers catch up at a run, and when you walk, they walk too. If a place is taken by a tree, a rock, a wall or water, the huskarl stands a step aside or walks in your footsteps. They don't keep formation in a fight. Each player chooses their own formation.

Equipment and combat

Put items into a huskarl's bag (48 slots) and they wear the best armor and take what the job needs: an axe, a pickaxe, the best weapon and a shield. Their gear doesn't wear out.

Give them a bow or crossbow and ammo: they shoot from 28 m with a lead and a correction for the arrow's drop, step closer when something blocks the shot, and switch to a melee weapon when an enemy comes within 4 m. Arrows pass through players and other huskarls.

Dungeons, doors and ships

• In crypts and caves they open and close doors, jump onto ledges, don't hit enemies through walls and don't get lost on the dungeon's roof. If you walk into a huskarl, they step aside.
• Ships: in "Follow me" mode they run or swim to your ship and jump aboard, sit on the benches, then on the deck, then stand. They shoot from their place under way and go ashore after you. Aim at a sitting huskarl and press E to take their seat (on a ship the order menu is Shift + E).

Death and revival

A fallen huskarl drops nothing: a grave with their name stays at the place of death and is marked on the map. Press E at the grave to revive them for 3 surtling cores, with their whole bag and gear. Any player can revive them.

Map and liveliness

Your huskarls are on the minimap and the large map with their names, even when they're far away. They look at you, sit with you and by a campfire at night, greet you when you come back, and sometimes say something fitting. Lines and behaviour can be turned off.

Works with

• Artisan Mastery 1.1.1 or newer (optional): with the "Cannons" upgrade on its galleon, huskarls with cannonballs in their bag man the cannons, aim with a lead and fire as a broadside, but never at friends. Without that mod nothing changes, and Huskarl doesn't depend on it.

Installation

With a mod manager: install the package, and BepInExPack Valheim comes with it.

By hand: install BepInExPack Valheim, then copy the plugins\Huskarl folder from this archive into Valheim\BepInEx\plugins\.

Co-op: all players need the same version of the mod. On a dedicated server, install it on the server too. If the host and a player have different versions, the player sees a warning.

Settings

Settings are in BepInEx\config\oldma.valheim.huskarl.cfg, created on first launch; mod managers have a config editor for it. Edits to the file apply after restarting the game.

In co-op, balance and world rules come from the world host, and the others' own files stay unchanged. Keys, map marks, liveliness and the formation (the Controls, Map, Life and Formation sections) are personal. On a dedicated server, the host's values are the settings file on the server.

Languages

The mod's texts follow the game language: English, Russian or Italian. Any other language gets English.

Testing

Tested on Valheim 1.0.21 with BepInExPack Valheim 5.4.2351: single player, dungeons, ships, formations, and co-op on a local dedicated server with two clients on one PC. The galleon cannons were tested in depth with Artisan Mastery 1.1.0 on Valheim 1.0.20; on 1.0.21 Artisan Mastery needs its version 1.1.1, with which huskarls man the cannons and fire. A real co-op session between two PCs and gamepad control have not been tested yet.

AI disclosure

The code, documentation and translations were written with generative AI: Claude by Anthropic, through Claude Code. The author designed the mod, decided how the huskarls should behave and checked it in the game. The mod uses the game's own models and icons; there are no AI-generated assets.

Unofficial fan mod, not made or supported by Iron Gate. Free, with no paid content.