Valheim Farmer NPC

Put your farm on autopilot. Place a homestead, mark your field, assign a few chests — then let goblin farmers plant, harvest, and store your crops while you get on with raiding, building, and exploring.

Highlights

• Hands-off farming — farmers harvest mature crops and replant empty plots automatically.
• You decide the mix — set planting ratios and seed reserves per crop, filtered to what actually grows in your biome.
• Storage handled — farmers pull seeds from your chests and deposit the harvest back.
• Multiplayer-safe — works on local worlds, player-hosted games, and dedicated servers.
• Simple in-game menu — everything is driven from one panel on the Homestead piece.

Install

With r2modman / Thunderstore Mod Manager (recommended)

1. Install BepInExPack Valheim and Jötunn.
2. Install Valheim Farmer NPC.
3. Use the same mods on the dedicated server and every client.

Manual

1. Install BepInEx for Valheim and Jötunn.
2. Copy ValheimFarmerNPC.dll into BepInEx/plugins/ValheimFarmerNPC/ on the server and every client.
3. Launch once so the config file is created under BepInEx/config/.

The mod adds two hammer build pieces: Farmer Homestead and Farm Boundary Post.

By default only server admins can place farm pieces and open the panel. To let any player manage farms, set AdminOnlyPlacement and AdminOnlyAccess to false (see Configuration).

Quick start

Everything runs from the Farmer Homestead panel — interact with the placed homestead to open it.

1. Prepare a field. Till the soil and plant the plots you want farmed (saplings or grown crops both work).
2. Place the Homestead near the field. It spawns your first farmer automatically.
3. Set the boundary. Place two Farm Boundary Posts at opposite corners of the field, then click Assign Boundary Posts.
4. Scan the field. Click Scan Field — the homestead remembers every crop inside the boundary as a work slot.
5. Add storage. Place chests nearby and click Add chest for each.

That's it — as long as a player keeps the area loaded, farmers will harvest, replant, restock seeds, and deposit the surplus. Tune what they grow under Crop settings whenever you like.

Farmers vanishing when you leave is normal. They are temporary workers, not permanent creatures. Your homestead, field, and chest contents are saved. When you return, open the panel and click Add Farmer if none are present.

How it works

• The Homestead piece stores all persistent farm data (crop slots, chests, pause state, crop settings) in the world save.
• Farmers only work while a player keeps the farm's area loaded — they are summoned workers, not wandering monsters.
• On multiplayer, the game keeps the farm in sync across everyone; the dedicated server keeps field progress consistent even when several players share one farm.
• Talking to a farmer toggles pause/resume for that homestead.

Full setup walkthrough

1. Plant the initial field (required)

Till the soil and plant every plot you want farmers to work. Scan Field discovers slots from existing crops inside the boundary — it does not create slots from bare tilled ground. After the first scan, farmers harvest and replant those remembered slots on their own.

2. Place the Farmer Homestead

Open the hammer, pick Farmer Homestead, and place it near your farm (exact facing doesn't matter). Interact with it to open the panel. The status line at the top shows pause state, farmer count, crop-slot count, chest count, and whether a boundary is set.

3. Place & assign Boundary Posts

1. Place two Farm Boundary Posts at opposite corners of the rectangle covering your farm — just outside the outermost plots so every tile is inside the box.
2. Keep each half-width within MaxFarmRadius (default 64 m), or scanning will fail.
3. On the panel, click Assign Boundary Posts. Status should then read Boundary: set. If it fails, move closer, confirm both posts exist, and retry.

4. Scan the field

Click Scan Field. The homestead inventories every crop inside the boundary and remembers those positions as farm slots; the Crops count should rise above zero.

Use Clear Field only to wipe the remembered slot list (for a clean rescan after a big layout change). It does not destroy plants in the world — rescan afterward if you still want that field worked.

5. Assign chests (storage)

1. Place normal Valheim chests (or compatible containers) near the homestead.
2. Click Add chest to assign the nearest free chest within ChestAssignRange (default 20 m). Repeat for more storage.
3. Clear chests unassigns all chests (their contents are never deleted).
4. Chest inventory shows the combined contents of all assigned chests.

6. Configure crop settings

Open Crop settings. Only crops that grow in the homestead's biome (shown top-right) appear; others are skipped automatically. Vegetables are listed first, followed by their seed crops (Carrot seeds, Turnip seeds, Onion seeds); the list scrolls if there are more crops than fit.

• Weights (left) — relative planting ratios. Higher weight = planted more often when filling empty slots. Vegetables and their seed crops each have their own weight, so you can favor seeds (e.g. for chicken feed) or food independently. Set a crop to 0 to never plant it (existing plants are still harvested).
• Reserves (right) — keep at least this many of what the row produces: a Carrot reserve keeps carrots, a "Carrot seeds" reserve keeps carrot seeds, and Barley/Flax/Jotun Puffs/Magecap keep the crop item itself. When stock dips below the reserve, farmers prioritize rebuilding it.
• Always sustainable — even if you set a vegetable's weight to 0, farmers still grow just enough of it to keep its seed crop supplied, so a seeds-focused setup never starves itself.

Click Back when done.

Which crops grow where

The homestead's position decides the biome. For fields straddling a border, place the homestead on the side you want to farm.

7. Add farmers and go

1. Stay near the homestead so the area stays loaded (placing the Homestead already spawned one farmer).
2. Use Add Farmer for more workers, or to recover one that vanished after you left.
3. Make sure the status is Working (use Toggle Pause if needed).
4. Remove Farmer despawns one worker; Deposit all empties carried goods into chests. The world-wide farmer cap is MaxFarmers (default 16).

The Homestead panel

Main menu

The hub for everything: pause/resume, manage farmers, scan the field, assign storage, and open crop settings.

Farmer inventory & Chest inventory

Quick read-outs of what your farmers are holding and what's in the assigned chests — each with a live item list, a total-items footer, and a Refresh button.

Farmer inventory	Chest inventory

Configuration

After first launch, edit BepInEx/config/com.farmerjohn.valheimfarmernpc.cfg. On dedicated servers these values are server-authoritative; reconnect after changing them.

Per-homestead crop weights and reserves are not in this file — they live on each Homestead and are edited in Crop settings.

General

Farming

Inventory

Networking

AI

Debug / UI

Multiplayer notes

• Install the same mod version on the server and all clients.
• Homestead data is saved in the world via the piece.
• Multiple farmers can share one homestead; they coordinate so two won't fight over the same plot.
• Farmers only work while someone keeps the area loaded.

Troubleshooting

Development

Repository: github.com/nico8034/FarmerNPC

# Local Debug build → r2modman Default profile plugins
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File ValheimFarmerNPC/scripts/deploy-local.ps1

# Thunderstore zip → ValheimFarmerNPC/dist/
# (bump Plugin.PluginVersion first; update Package/CHANGELOG.md)
powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File ValheimFarmerNPC/scripts/package-thunderstore.ps1

Also copy Environment.props.example → Environment.props and set VALHEIM_INSTALL for the IDE/Jötunn post-build deploy. Version source of truth: Plugin.PluginVersion in Plugin.cs (semantic versioning).

License

Licensed under the MIT License. Valheim is © Iron Gate AB — this mod requires a legitimate copy of the game.

Changelog

1.1.1

• Chest assignment uses full 3D position matching so vertically stacked chests can each be added.

1.1.0

Seeds & crops rework plus a reliability fix. Everyone on a server should update to this version.

• Seeds and vegetables can now be balanced independently. Each vegetable (Carrot, Turnip, Onion) has its own row in Crop settings, and so does its seed crop ("Carrot seeds", "Turnip seeds", "Onion seeds"). Give seeds a higher weight than food if you want a steady seed supply (great for feeding chickens), or the other way around for more food on the table.
• Reserves now mean "keep at least this many of what the row makes." A Carrot reserve keeps that many carrots; a "Carrot seeds" reserve keeps that many carrot seeds — so you can stockpile exactly what you care about.
• Farmers automatically keep the cycle going. Even if you set a vegetable's weight to 0, they'll still grow just enough of it to feed seed production, so a "seeds only" setup never runs itself dry.
• Crop settings now lists all vegetables first and their seed crops after, and the page scrolls if a biome has more crops than fit.
• Your existing settings carry over automatically: any "keep N seeds" amount you had set moves onto the matching seed row on first load.
• Fixed farmers gradually leaving plots unworked over time — a fully grown crop could sit on the field forever while empty plots were never replanted (most visible with multiple farmers that occasionally block each other). Abandoned plots are now automatically reclaimed, and a farmer that re-plans always releases its previous claim.

1.0.18

• Revamped the mod page: a clearer intro, a short quick-start, and in-game screenshots of the farmers and each Homestead menu, so it's easier to see what the mod does and how to get going. No gameplay changes from 1.0.17.

1.0.17

• Field progress on dedicated servers is now reliable when you are not the player who "owns" the farm's area. Previously, if another player was controlling the zone, a farmer's harvest/plant progress could fail to save. Farmers now hand that progress to the server, which is the single source of truth for the farm, so what gets harvested and planted always sticks — including when two players share the same farm.
• No change for solo or single-player-hosted games; those already worked and keep using the fast direct save.

1.0.16

• Fixes several problems on dedicated servers introduced in 1.0.15: farmers walking back and forth without working, the field scan not sticking, and only some seeds showing up. Local/solo worlds were unaffected.
• The farm-plot coordination added in 1.0.15 no longer writes to shared farm data on servers (that write was fighting with the server and wiping scan results). Farmers still avoid working the same plot, and the game itself still prevents lost or duplicated crops between players.
• The "save crops on world save" safety net no longer disturbs who controls each farmer on a server, so farmers keep working normally through autosaves.

1.0.15

• On shared servers, two players standing at the same farm no longer send their farmers to fight over the same plot. Farmers now coordinate which plots are claimed with everyone nearby, so they spread out and stop double-planting the same spot.
• Extra safety net against losing crops: every farmer's harvest is now saved to disk whenever the game saves the world (autosave or on exit), closing a small window where a crash could have dropped recent pickups.
• More reliable crediting of harvested crops (carrots, onions, etc.), so odd naming quirks can't cause a just-harvested crop to be miscounted.
• General tidy-up and performance polish under the hood (fewer expensive world scans, updated to current engine APIs, lighter post-harvest pickup checks). No change to how you use the mod.

1.0.14

• Crops no longer go missing when farmers disappear. Harvested crops used to be lost when you left the area, logged out, or when farmers unloaded on a server — especially with more than one farmer. Each farmer now safely keeps its own harvest, so crops survive leaving and coming back.
• Fixed crops occasionally being duplicated right after harvesting (mostly on servers or laggy connections).
• Removing a farmer no longer loses whatever it was carrying — its crops are handed to a remaining farmer first.
• Planting no longer wastes a seed if the plant fails to appear; the seed (or crop) is returned to the farmer.
• Smoother performance while farmers scoop up harvested crops.
• Automatic upgrade for existing farms: the first time you load in after updating, any crops your farmers were still holding are moved into your assigned chests (or kept on a farmer if the chests are full). No action needed.

1.0.13

• Fixed farmers shuttling between field and homestead while harvest/plant work remained (slot refresh no longer mis-marks mature crops as empty or moves slot anchors)
• Plantable-slot checks cover more of the field so a few blocked near plots don't skip the rest

1.0.12

• Sidestep only when crowded by another farmer and not making progress (no more random sidesteps while working)

1.0.11

• Packed chests next to the homestead can all be assigned (match radius was merging neighbors as duplicates)

1.0.10

• Chest assign uses full Container scan again (OverlapSphere was picking a distant chest and skipping nearby ones)

1.0.9

• Dedicated: chest assigns persist on the client-owned homestead ZDO (can assign multiple chests again)
• Only assign real farm chests (piece_chest*) / carts — ignore dungeon containers
• Server homestead saves claim ZDO ownership so fj_chests/slots replicate

1.0.8

• Dedicated field scan runs on the zone client (Physics) and syncs slots to the server
• Restored AABB full-ZDO fallback when iterative prefab lookup misses crops

1.0.7

• Dedicated server field scan finds crops again (ZDO lookup uses Pickable_* world prefabs)
• Dedicated unpause no longer falsely reports "no farmer" on the server
• Farmers rematerialize with FarmerNpc after zone reload; no longer spawn as vanilla Goblin fallback

1.0.6

• Stuck farmers briefly sidestep left/right to clear collisions before failing a task

1.0.5

• Fixed deposit/reserve restock loop (stale bag totals + only restock when still short)
• Chest resolve: OverlapSphere with FindObjectsOfType fallback so assigned chests are not missed

1.0.4

• Newly added farmers start working immediately (no pause/unpause needed)
• Preserve working state across Add Farmer reload; kick AI evaluate on spawn/unpause

1.0.3

• Homestead placement reliably spawns the starter farmer (retries until ready; ignores distant neighbors)
• Unpausing with no farmer nearby shows an on-screen message to use Add Farmer

1.0.2

Performance and AI cleanup.

1.0.1

• Homestead placement spawns one starter farmer; fixed Add/Remove farmer count messages

1.0.0

First public Thunderstore release.