Runebourne

Summon rune spirits that farm, plant, fell trees, haul, mine and craft for you, and tame sea serpents that carry cargo between your harbours.

Runebourne is in Early Access. You can play it from start to finish, but it is still being tested, so back up your world before you install it (see Before you install).

Workers

You build a shrine, summon its spirits with a summoning stone, and link them to your chests with the command wand. Each shrine has upgrades in the build menu that add workers, speed or cargo space.

Seedsower

Plants, harvests and replants crops and berry bushes around its shrine, two workers per shrine to start.

Herdwarden

Culls your spare boars, deer, wolves and lox. In the shrine's window you set, for each animal, the herd size at which it starts culling and how many it keeps alive. Named animals and young are left alone.

Grovetender

Plants saplings and fells grown trees inside the green range line, two per shrine to start.

Haulwright

Carries items along routes you set, from a pick-up chest to a drop-off chest. Relay stones stretch its reach to bases far away.

Orebringer

Mines ore deposits and sunken crypts in range and delivers the ore to your chests. Fit a pickaxe to the shrine. A Rune of Renewal refills a crypt it has mined out.

Runekeeper

Lives at a crafting station and crafts, smelts and cooks at up to three stations near it.

Getting started

1. Build Skald's lectern from the Hammer (Misc tab). Read it to see what each biome opens and what to do next.
2. Craft the command wand at a workbench (Wood 5, Resin 2, Flint 2). Right-click with it to open the Runebourne build menu, which holds every shrine and structure.
3. Build a worker's shrine, then craft that worker's summoning stone. Look at the shrine and press the stone's hotbar key to summon the worker.
4. Press E on a shrine to set it up. With the command wand, left-click a worker and then click chests to link them.

Workers, upgrades and recipes unlock as your world progresses: beat a biome's boss and enter the next biome. The lectern shows what is open now.

Sea serpents

Craft a Lightning rune at the forge. Wear a wild sea serpent down below 10% health, equip the command wand and use the rune, with a 50% chance to tame it. You can ride it (E), or build two Serpent depots on the water, ride from one to the other with Record route, and switch the serpent to carry cargo. It then sails the route on its own, taking items from each depot's pick-up chests to the other depot's drop-off chests.

Also in the build menu and at the forge

• Deephold: a chest that stores one kind of stackable item in bulk (75 stacks, more with upgrades). Workers use it like any chest.
• Field rune: clears, levels and tills the ground around you for a farm.
• Rune of Renewal: refills a mined-out sunken crypt near an Orebringer shrine.
• Feeding trough: hungry animals nearby eat from it, and Haulwrights can stock it.
• Chest names and filters: name any chest and choose which items workers may put in it.

Compatibility

• Built for Valheim 1.0.20. A later game update may break the mod until it is patched.
• Needs BepInExPack Valheim, Jotunn and YamlDotNet. Gale and other mod managers install them for you.
• Install Runebourne on every player's game and on the server. Everyone must run the exact same version, or the server turns the player away when they join.
• Multiplayer and dedicated servers are not tested yet. The mod is built for them, but expect more bugs there than in single player.
• No conflicts with other mods are known yet. It has not been tested next to other large mods, so please report any you find.

Configuration

Settings are in BepInEx/config/com.yohanb.runebourne.cfg, created the first time you start the game with the mod.

The [Dev] settings are for testing and are off by default. Leave them off.

Before you install

• Back up your world. Steam keeps worlds in AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local (or in Steam Cloud).
• Removing the mod deletes its things. Without Runebourne, the game removes its shrines, workers, structures and items from your world as you visit each area, along with anything they hold: worker cargo and everything in a Deephold. Reinstalling does not bring them back. Items in ordinary chests are kept.

Known issues

• Multiplayer and dedicated servers are not tested yet (see Compatibility).
• Reeve's board uses a placeholder model for now.

Reporting a bug

Report bugs at bugs.yohanb.tech. Reports and attached logs are private.

Include your Runebourne version, what you were doing, what you expected and what happened instead, and attach your log: BepInEx\LogOutput.log in the game's folder (or your mod manager's profile folder). Send it right after the bug, before restarting the game, because each start overwrites the log.

License

Copyright © 2026 yohanbh. All rights reserved. You may download Runebourne and play with it, alone or on a server. Please don't re-upload, modify or reuse it, in whole or in part, without permission.

Changelog

0.8.5

Workers move with less wasted travel, and Runekeepers get stronger upgrades.

All workers

• Workers no longer turn back toward their shrine between jobs. Each one stays where it finished for a few seconds and starts the next job from there; only a worker with nothing to do goes home.
• What a full chest could not take goes straight on to the next linked chest.

Runekeeper

• Stations take turns. After a job at one station the Runekeeper looks at the next one on its list first, so a busy kiln no longer keeps it from the smelters. What it already carries is still delivered first.
• A Runekeeper refills a smelter, kiln or other machine once it has room for at least half a load, instead of walking to the source chest for a few items each time.
• The Runekeeper sigil now also doubles machines: a smelter, blast furnace, charcoal kiln, eitr refinery, spinning wheel or windmill that a Runekeeper with the sigil works processes two at once. Each item still uses its usual fuel.
• The Runekeeper chime no longer makes Runekeepers fly faster. Instead each Runekeeper in range can work up to 6 stations instead of 3. If the chime is destroyed, stations 4 to 6 pause until you build one again.
• A kiln can send its Coal to up to three destinations: several smelters or blast furnaces, and a chest for what is left. The station with the least fuel gets Coal first, and the kiln starts a new batch as soon as any destination has room.
• Stations that burn fuel (smelter, blast furnace, eitr refinery, stone oven) show a Fuel panel: the fuel, how much is in, and what keeps it fed, or how to set that up.
• Food about to burn on a cooking station is saved before anything else. Every finished slot of a cooking station is emptied in one visit, and all of a station's output is picked up in one trip.

Seedsower

• The two Seedsowers no longer wait for each other. Each one picks its next job as soon as it is free, and they never plant the same spot or use each other's seeds.
• No more stopping to "share ground between crop types". Seedsowers plant straight away on the nearest free cultivated spots, each batch as one patch, crop types taking turns. When ground is short, it is split evenly between crops.
• Newly cultivated ground inside the crop area is noticed within about 10 seconds.
• Clearer words when a Seedsower can't plant: "No free spots to plant" or "No cultivated ground — use the cultivator inside the crop area". With every chest full it rests at the shrine with "Chests full".
• A Seedsower no longer flies back and forth to a full starter chest with leftover seeds.

Herdwarden

• Two Herdwardens no longer take strict turns: one that has finished its animal picks the next one at once.
• A Herdwarden keeps harvesting while you have its chest open, as long as its own cargo has room.
• A Seedsower or Herdwarden carrying a harvest when you make the area smaller flies back in and delivers it.

Haulwright

• Haulwrights take only what the drop-off chest, fuel station or Orebringer shrine has room for.
• A Haulwright waits at a drop-off chest that is open or busy, instead of flying the load back.
• A Haulwright checks every route in turn before resting, so no route is skipped.
• A Haulwright fuelling a station puts in every stack it carries.
• Cargo whose route was removed goes back into its pick-up chest.

Orebringer

• Orebringers that were flying to a job when work was turned off pick a fresh job when work comes back on, instead of marking that spot blocked for ten minutes.
• An Orebringer carrying items no linked chest accepts says so, for example "No chest takes Stone — link one that does", and the Reeve's board lists it as needing you.

Sea serpents

• Serpents no longer sail back and forth empty when neither depot has anything to carry, and set off to fetch freight waiting at the other depot.
• Serpents load only what the far depot's chests have room for, and load and unload faster at depots nobody is near.

0.8.1 – 0.8.4

• Seedsower lag fixes on large farms.
• New models for the Svelgr Frame (Deephold upgrade III), the Reeve's board and Skald's lectern.

0.8.0

• First Early Access release.