Animal Leash

Animal Leash – lead your animals by rope

In Valheim only wolves, boars, lox and asksvin can follow you, and they do it loosely: they stop three metres away, lag behind, turn off after anything they want to fight, and stay behind at every portal. This mod adds a leash: a hemp lead with a leather collar, and chains of bronze, iron and black metal. Put one on a tame animal and it walks right behind you, held by a real rope or chain. A hen goes to her new coop, a boar crosses the river, a wolf comes aboard your ship. Chain it to the wall of your keep and it guards the yard.

| | Where | Cost | Tied fast | |---|---|---|---| | Leash (hemp) | Workbench | 2 Leather scraps, 1 Deer hide | 4 m | | Bronze chain leash | Forge | 2 Bronze, 2 Leather scraps | 10 m | | Iron chain leash | Forge, level 2 | 2 Iron, 1 Chain | 20 m | | Black metal chain leash | Forge, level 3 | 3 Black metal, 1 Lox pelt | 30 m | | Hitching rail | Hammer → Misc, near a workbench | 6 Wood, 2 Leather scraps | short |

Leading an animal

1. Put the leash or a chain in your hotbar.
2. Look at a tame animal and use it, the same way you put a saddle on a lox. A collar goes round its neck, and the rope or chain runs from it to your hand.
3. Walk. The animal walks behind you, and runs when you run.

• Every tame creature: wolves, boars, lox, hens, asksvin, and tame creatures of other mods. What counts is the game's own tame state, not the kind of creature: a creature a later game update brings, or one another mod tames in its own way, takes the leash as soon as it is tame. Hens follow too, though the game never let them.
• Rope or chain: you hold a chain as short as the rope, so all four lead alike. They differ in their look and in how far they reach when the animal is tied fast. The collar matches: leather with an iron ring for the rope, a band of the chain's own metal for a chain.
• Their young too: cubs, piglets, calves and chicks. A young animal on the leash keeps it when it grows up, and a hen keeps it when she becomes a Cluck Fighter.
• Up to three at once, each on its own leash. They walk side by side behind you.
• The rope holds. It never lets an animal fall further behind than its length. If you run faster than a hen can, you drag her along. The rope does not pull an animal through walls. Behind a fence or a low wall it looks for a way round. If it is stuck, it hops over to you.
• Not distracted. On the leash an animal does not wander, chase or flee.
• E on your animal takes the leash off. You get the leash back and the animal stays where it is. It grazes around that spot from now on, the way it does after the game's own stay.
• Wild animals take no leash. Tame them first.

Tying up anywhere

Lead your animals to a wall, a post, a fence, a tree or a rock and look at it. The crosshair shows both choices. Each animal is tied fast at the spot you look at, with the whole length of its own rope or chain, and a ring of the same metal sits on the wall there.

• E: free within reach (Tie up here, free within reach: Wolf (20 m)). The animal lives as it does at home, only bound to its chain. A wolf on 20 m of iron chain at the wall of your keep roams the yard, eats, rests, and goes for a foe that comes within reach: a guard dog. A foe beyond the chain it lets go. A boar grazes round its post.
• Shift+E: keeping still (Tie up here, keeping still). The animal stands where it is. It does not wander, chase or flee, and only fetches food within reach of its rope, so it does not go hungry.
• The hover text of a tied animal says which it is. To change it, take the lead with E and tie it up again the other way.
• It wanders only to spots within reach, and eats only food within reach, so it never stands straining at the end of the chain. If it ends up beyond it (round a corner, after a chase), it walks back.
• Anything solid and fixed will do. Not the bare ground, and not anything with a use of its own (a door, a chest, a bed, the hitching rail): those keep their E.
• E on a tied animal takes the lead again. In someone else's ward you can only tie up where you could build.
• If the wall is torn down or the tree is felled, the chain hangs loose.
• The lengths are in the configuration.

The hitching rail

Two posts and a bar with four rope rings, made of the game's own wood pole.

• Lead your animals to it and press E on the rail. Each is tied short to a free ring and waits there, whatever its rope or chain.
• A tied animal eats what lies within reach of its rope, so a rail beside a feeding trough or a drop of food keeps it fed. Food further off it leaves alone and does not strain at the rope. The same goes for an animal on your leash while you stand still, and one tied on deck.
• Riding an animal unties it.
• E on the rail again unties all of them onto your leash. E on a single animal takes only that one.
• If the rail is torn down, the ropes hang loose.

Portals and ships

• Portals: animals on your leash come through with you. They arrive beside and behind you, on firm ground.
• Boarding: stand on a ship's deck, and an animal on your leash jumps aboard after you. Step ashore and it jumps after you again.
• Sailing: on deck, E on your animal ties it to the ship. It stands still at its place and sails with it, even in a swell. If it is washed overboard, it climbs back to its knot. E takes the lead again.
• Animals wider than 2 m or taller than 4.5 m, such as a grown dragon, stay ashore.

Carts

An animal hitched to a cart (the game's own cart, or a LoxCarts wagon) pulls the cart. The rope does not drag it, and it does not hop, so the hitch holds. It cannot go through a portal with the cart: the leash slips from your hand there.

A loose leash

Sometimes the leash slips from your hand, and then it hangs from the animal's collar and trails on the ground: