Hunters Instinct

Hunter's Instinct

Track animal footprints and reveal nearby creatures with a spectral hunting instinct, powered by a dedicated Tracker skill. Follow your prey after releasing the activation key, improve your detection abilities, and customize progression for your Valheim world.

Features

• Animal Tracking

Passive creatures leave footprints after being detected. Also compatible with creatures from mods.

• Hunting Instinct

Reveal hostile and passive creatures through a soft spectral halo. A pulse repeats every second, with smooth fade-in and fade-out transitions.

• Player Detection

Optionally detect other players after completing the localization, shown with their own aura color. Disabled by default and fully configurable.

• Hold to Locate

Hold the action key, Left ALT by default, to fill a golden charge bar. Complete the bar to detect creatures. Releasing the key before completion or running out of stamina cancels the charge.

• Skill Progression

Improve detection range, footprint lifetime, tracking duration, and instinct mark duration while reducing localization time and stamina consumption.

• Custom Skill Icon

The Tracker skill has its own icon in the skills panel.

• Posture-Based Localization

Crouching, walking, and running have configurable charge time multipliers. Changing posture adjusts the fill speed without losing bar progress.

• Persistent Tracking

Detected animals continue generating footprints after you release the action key. Each footprint fades individually according to its own lifetime.

• Local Visuals in Multiplayer

Your footprints, auras, and localization bar are visible only to you. Each player has independent tracking; visual effects and trail history are not shared.

• Server-Synced Gameplay

Gameplay settings are synchronized through ServerSync. Only the activation key, the footprint color and format, and the instinct and player aura colors remain local preferences.

Configuration

• Configuration file

Generated after the first launch: BepInEx/config/radamanto.HuntersInstinct.cfg

• Skill-based settings

Set values for level 0 and level 100. Intermediate levels are interpolated linearly between these two values.

• Separate timers

Footprint lifetime controls each individual ground mark. Tracking duration controls how long a detected animal continues generating footprints without renewal. Instinct mark duration controls how long its aura remains visible after the last successful detection.

• Tracking renewal

A tracked animal renews its timer while within the valid detection range, through a successful detection with the action key, or when the passive creature enters a new alert/flee state. Remaining in a continuous fleeing state does not repeatedly renew the timer. After it expires, the charge must be completed again to detect the animal.

• Detection range

Passive creatures can be detected within footprint range or the enabled instinct range. Previously tracked animals can continue leaving footprints outside the range until their timer expires. Only creatures currently loaded by the game can be tracked.

• Stamina consumption

Stamina is consumed while the action key is held. Releasing the key immediately stops consumption. Persistent footprints and auras do not consume additional stamina.

• Tamed creature tracking

Controls footprints and auras for tamed creatures. Disabled by default. Footprints remain restricted to passive creatures.

• Tamed creature experience

Allows XP to be earned from these creatures. Disabled by default and requires tamed creature tracking to be enabled as well.

• Excluded prefabs

Enter internal names separated by commas, for example: 05 - Excluded Prefabs = Deer,Boar,Neck These creatures do not generate footprints, instinct marks, or XP. Matching is exact and case-insensitive. Exclusions also apply to existing marks.

• Player tracking

Settings under 07 - Player Tracking:

• Enabled: turns player detection on. Disabled by default.
• Minimum Tracking Level: Tracker level required to detect players. Default 25.
• Detection Range: maximum detection distance in meters. Hard limit of 100 meters.
• Aura Color: player aura color, gold by default. Local setting.
• Only PvP Players: detect only players with PvP enabled.

Only players loaded on your client can be detected. Players never grant experience.

Experience Gain

• Active localization

XP is awarded with the charge completed and the action key still held, by following nearby visible footprints or detecting marked creatures on screen and within range.

• Movement and interval

You must travel at least 2 meters since the last gain and wait 5 seconds between rewards.

• Footprints and creatures

A footprint must be within 3 meters, with no obstacle blocking your view, and can only grant XP once. For instinct detection, the same creature has a 60-second interval between rewards.

• Configurable amount

Experience Per Use controls the amount of experience per reward.

Translation Support

Hunter's Instinct supports custom translations through an external YAML file. A sample YAML file is included in the mod package as a template for creating additional language translations.

Console Commands

First enable the vanilla cheat commands with devcommands:

devcommands
raiseskill Tracking 10
resetskill Tracking

Manual Installation

• Install BepInExPack for Valheim.
• Place HuntersInstinct.dll inside BepInEx/plugins/.
• Launch the game to generate the configuration file.