balrond IdleActors

Balrond Idle Actors

Balrond Idle Actors brings life to Valheim settlements with placeable, stationary NPCs. Build villagers, workers, guards, priests, merchants and other characters that look alive, use randomized appearances and equipment, speak to nearby players, and—in Trader variants—sell themed items.

Idle Actors are designed for settlements, roleplay servers and world-building. They are intentionally stationary NPCs: they do not pathfind, follow players or act as combat companions.

Features

• Place NPCs with the special Balrond Hammer (Npcmancer_bal).
• Talker NPCs provide ambient dialogue and reactions.
• Trader NPCs provide configurable themed shops.
• Human and Dverger variants with randomized names, appearance and equipment.
• NPCs react to nearby players and world events while remaining stationary.
• Shared configurable building cost for all NPCs.
• Optional Trader building restriction for servers that want shops to remain admin-controlled.
• Fully configurable Trader inventories, prices, purchase amounts and progression requirements.
• Multiplayer configuration synchronization: the server/host can control the gameplay settings used by connected players.

Installing

• Install BepInExPack for Valheim.
• Install BalrondIdleActors.dll in your Valheim BepInEx/plugins folder.
• Start the game once to generate the configuration file.

Important: remove the old IdleActorsShaderFix 0.2.0 patch if you installed it previously. It is no longer needed and is incompatible with the rebuilt Idle Actors version.

No separate LitJson or ServerSync installation is required for the released mod.

Using the mod

Craft the Balrond Hammer (Npcmancer_bal) at a level 1 Forge:

• 4 Fine Wood
• 4 Bloodbag
• 4 Iron

Equip the hammer, open its build menu and place an available Talker or Trader like a normal build piece.

Talkers

Talkers are passive settlement NPCs. They use ambient dialogue and randomized visual presets but do not open a shop.

Traders

Traders use the same NPC concept but open a shop when interacted with. Their stock, prices, purchase amounts and progression requirements can be configured by the server/host.

Available archetypes include Farmer, Villager, Hunter, Guard, Defender, Priest, Blacksmith, Beggar, Merchant, Lumberjack, Miner, Forager, Fisherman, Butcher, Innkeeper/Bartender and Patron. Availability varies between Human/Dverger and male/female variants.

Configuration

The configuration file is generated at:

BepInEx/config/balrond.astafaraios.BalrondIdleActors.cfg

On multiplayer servers, edit the server/host configuration when Lock Configuration = true. Synchronized settings from the server take priority over client values. Restarting the server after manual file edits is recommended so every player receives the same configuration.

Lock Configuration

Default: true

When enabled, synchronized Idle Actors settings are controlled by the server/host. This is recommended for multiplayer servers.

Restrict Traders

Default: true

• true — Trader NPCs use the normal NPC building cost plus SwordCheat:1. Regular players therefore cannot normally build Trader pieces, while admins using debug/free-build can still place them.
• false — Trader and Talker versions use exactly the same building cost.

This setting does not change what a Trader sells. It only controls whether normal players can build Trader NPCs.

NPC Build Cost

Default:

TrophySkeleton:1,LeatherScraps:1,BoneFragments:1,Entrails:1

This is the shared base building cost for all Talkers and Traders.

Format:

Prefab:Amount,Prefab:Amount,Prefab:Amount

Example:

Wood:10,Stone:5,Coins:25

Use exact prefab IDs, not translated/display names. Each amount must be greater than zero. If Restrict Traders = true, SwordCheat:1 is added automatically only to Trader pieces; do not add it manually to the shared build cost unless you want to restrict Talkers as well.

Configuring Trader inventories

Each archetype has its own entry under 3 - Trader Inventories. All NPCs using the