Tameable Deer

Makes Valheim's vanilla Deer tameable and breedable while keeping the mod lightweight and focused.

Features

• Vanilla Deer can be tamed.
• Tamed deer can breed and produce deer fawns.
• Fawns use the vanilla deer model at a smaller scale and grow into normal adult deer.
• Fawns are persistent and remain in the world after saving, leaving, and reloading the world.
• Deer fawns are protected from the Butcher knife, preventing accidental culling; adult tamed deer can still be butchered normally.
• Approximate taming time: 25 minutes.
• Fawn growth time: 2000 seconds (33 minutes 20 seconds) while the area is loaded.
• Uses natural vanilla deer audio:
  • normal deer call when petted,
  • normal deer call during mating,
  • alerted deer call during birth.
• Supports Follow / Stay behavior after taming.
• Lightweight: no Jotunn dependency.

Food

Deer can eat the following foods for taming and breeding:

• Raspberries
• Blueberries
• Carrots
• Turnips
• Mushrooms
• Cloudberries
• Onions
• Apples from Valharvest, when that prefab is present

Valharvest is not required.

Compatibility

• Tested on Valheim 1.0.x.
• Tested with BepInExPack for Valheim 5.4.2350.
• Existing tamed deer keep their breeding functionality after world reloads.
• The custom fawn prefab is registered early so newborn fawns persist correctly across world reloads.
• Tested alongside TameableNeck.
• When TameableNeck is detected, TameableDeer includes a small compatibility fix that restores the normal vanilla Boar petting, mating and birth effects if they were replaced by Neck effects.
• Without TameableNeck installed, the Boar compatibility fix is inactive.
• Tested with CustomCreatureCarry; tamed deer can be carried by that mod. CustomCreatureCarry is not required.
• Other mods that directly replace or heavily modify the vanilla Deer, Tameable, Procreation, or deer AI may conflict.
• Multiplayer / dedicated-server behavior has not been formally tested.

Installation

Thunderstore Mod Manager / r2modman

Install the package normally. BepInExPack for Valheim is declared as a dependency and will be installed automatically if needed.

Manual installation

1. Install BepInExPack for Valheim.
2. Copy nick008tameabledeer.dll into Valheim/BepInEx/plugins/.
3. Start the game.

If you previously used the separate private nick008tameablenecksoundfix.dll, remove it before using version 1.0.7 or newer because its compatibility behavior is now built into TameableDeer.

Notes

This mod is intentionally small: it adds deer taming, breeding, fawns, persistence and appropriate deer sounds without turning into a general taming overhaul.

The original full-width in-game screenshot used for this release is also included in the package as TameableDeer_screenshot.jpg.