🪤 Quad's Bird Trap

A buildable bird trap: bait it with berries or seeds, leave it under the open sky, and come back to a gull to pluck for feathers.

Source code · Report a bug · Discord

✨ Features

• Build it with the hammer at a workbench (8 Wood, 2 Leather Scraps). It is a slatted box with a drop-door propped up by a stick tied to the bait pedal.
• Use it to put bait in: raspberries, blueberries, cloudberries, barley, or beech, birch, carrot, turnip or onion seeds. Hold the alternate-place key (Shift) and use it to fill it at once. It holds five.
• Baited and with open sky above it, a bird comes in 8 to 14 minutes (game time, so it keeps going while you are away). It eats one bait, the prop falls and the door drops.
• Birds roost at night, and come at first light: sleep through the night and every trap you baited the day before has its bird in the morning. Under a roof none come, and the trap tells you why.
• Use it again to pluck the gull (2 or 3 feathers) and let it go. The door goes back up, and with bait left the next bird is on its way.
• Look at it to see how much bait is left and about how long until a bird. Build a few for a steady supply of feathers for arrows.
• It has its own hand-made look: wicker slats, a drop-door on a forked prop stick, berries on a leaf, and a grey-and-white gull that hops about and pecks once it's caught.

📸 Screenshots

The Bird Trap

A row of traps along the fence

🎮 How to use

🧩 Other mods

Known clashes: none known.

Found a clash with another mod? Tell us which one and what happened.

👥 Multiplayer

Who needs it: Everyone, and the host above all: a game without the mod deletes the pieces when their area loads. Restart after installing or updating them.

A trap's bait, bird and timer are saved on the trap, so everyone sees the same trap, and two players can't both take one bird.

The host decides: catch times, bait, open sky, roosting at night and feathers per bird. While you play on their world their values replace yours (your file isn't changed); a host without the mod leaves everyone their own.

🌍 Languages

English, Русский (Russian), Deutsch (German), 简体中文 (Chinese), Português do Brasil (Portuguese), Español (Spanish), Français (French), Polski (Polish), Türkçe (Turkish). It follows the game's own language setting.

The translations were made with AI, so a few words may be off. To correct one, or to add your language, put a file in BepInEx/config/translations/com.quad.birdtrap/ named after the game's name for the language (German.json, Italian.json, Japanese.json...) with only the lines you change, copied from English.json (it wins over the built-in one). Or tell us the better words and we'll put them in for everyone.

⚙️ Settings

In BepInEx/config/com.quad.birdtrap.cfg, made the first time the game runs with the mod. r2modman and Thunderstore Mod Manager edit it under Config editor.

Catching

Plucking

🤖 Made with AI

Made with the help of Claude (Anthropic), with Claude Code: designed, written and checked together, and tried in the game.

🧪 About Quads Lab

Quads Lab is where Quad H (HardHeadHackerHead) builds software with AI, of every kind: these Valheim mods are one of its projects. Each mod is designed by a player, written with Claude Code and tested in our own world, with bobisme as our tester.

• 🌐 quadslab.io
• 🧰 All Quads Lab mods on Thunderstore
• 💻 Source code on GitHub
• 💬 Discord
• 🐞 Found a bug? Open an issue on GitHub

📜 Recent changes

• 1.2.0 Now in your language: English, Russian, German, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, French, Polish and Turkish, following the game's own Language setting. The game's own names are used for its things (items, creatures, lands, stations). The translations were made with AI: to correct a line, or add a language, put a file in BepInEx/config/translations/com.quad.birdtrap/ named after the game's name for the language (German.json...) with only the lines you change, copied from translations/English.json on GitHub. The bait's name keeps its capital letters (German nouns need them).
• 1.1.2 A clearer page: what it does, who needs it in multiplayer, how it gets on with other mods, and where to report a bug. The game itself is unchanged.
• 1.1.1 A new id, com.quad.birdtrap (it was com.dhack.birdtrap): your settings move over by themselves the first time it starts, and the old settings file is kept as a backup. Restart the game after this update. If an old copy is still installed beside it, this one stands down and says which file to delete, so the two never both run. The DLL now says it was made with AI, as Thunderstore asks.

Every change is on the Changelog tab.

1.2.3

• On a server without Bird Trap, the bird trap is gone from the hammer, and a message says why: the server would delete a trap built there. Server owners can change what a bird trap costs ("Building", Cost; today's cost, 8 wood and 2 leather scraps, is the default); in multiplayer the server's cost applies, and a cost with a mistake in it keeps the last good one. Settings: edits to the config file now apply while the game runs (a server owner no longer has to restart), and a server's admins can change the server's settings from their own game with Configuration Manager, where other players see them greyed out. Your config file always keeps your own values while you play on a server (saving it there could write the server's in). Players on an older version still get the server's settings. It's no longer counted as storage in the game's own building records (it was copied from a chest).

1.2.2

• Fix: after reloading the mod at the main menu (the mod manager's reload, or F6), its old build piece stayed in the hammer's list after it was gone, and every change to your bag threw an error half-way: crafting gave the item without taking the cost, and picking things up could go wrong, until the game was restarted. Its piece now comes off the list it was put on, and destroyed pieces left there by any mod are cleared when it registers.

1.2.1

• Fix: bait you put in a trap whose owner didn't answer (they left, or the trap went out of range) was lost: it now comes back to your bag after a few seconds. Fix: the bait still in a trap that is broken or removed now drops beside it, as a smelter's ore does (bait put in before this version isn't known by kind and doesn't drop).

1.2.0

• Now in your language: English, Russian, German, Chinese (Simplified), Portuguese (Brazil), Spanish, French, Polish and Turkish, following the game's own Language setting. The game's own names are used for its things (items, creatures, lands, stations). The translations were made with AI: to correct a line, or add a language, put a file in BepInEx/config/translations/com.quad.birdtrap/ named after the game's name for the language (German.json...) with only the lines you change, copied from translations/English.json on GitHub. The bait's name keeps its capital letters (German nouns need them).

1.1.2

• A clearer page: what it does, who needs it in multiplayer, how it gets on with other mods, and where to report a bug. The game itself is unchanged.

1.1.1

• A new id, com.quad.birdtrap (it was com.dhack.birdtrap): your settings move over by themselves the first time it starts, and the old settings file is kept as a backup. Restart the game after this update. If an old copy is still installed beside it, this one stands down and says which file to delete, so the two never both run. The DLL now says it was made with AI, as Thunderstore asks.

1.1.0

• Fix: two players plucking the same bird could both get its feathers, and bait could be lost. Whoever presses E now asks the trap's owner, which plucks the bird or takes the bait and answers: the feathers come only on its yes ("The bird is already gone" otherwise), and bait that doesn't fit comes back to you. In multiplayer the server decides the catching and plucking settings. A problem with the trap's look can no longer stop it being registered.

Earlier

• Fix: no more stutter every 5 seconds. Looking for Claude Tools searched everything the game had loaded; it now asks BepInEx's list of mods.

• First version: the Bird Trap. Bait it with berries or seeds under the open sky, and pluck the gull it catches for feathers.