Heel

Heel

Looks after your tames — both halves of them.

Following you? They catch up on their own after a delay. Parked? They stop walking

into things that kill them.

The ones following you

If something tamed is following you and it falls a long way behind — or gets stuck

somewhere it will never climb out of — it waits 25 seconds and then turns up behind you.

Through portals. Out of pits. Off the wrong side of a river.

They arrive in an arc behind your back, one at a time, so a dozen wolves never land on

top of you and wall you into a portal.

What it will and will not touch

It only ever moves a creature that is tamed, alive, and following you specifically.

That is three separate safety rules and each one is doing a job:

• Tamed — a wild wolf is never brought to a player by this mod, under any setting. That

would make it a way to drop a two-star troll on somebody.

• Following you — your friend's boars are their client's business. Two clients both

moving the same animal would fight over it, and it would flicker between two places until

one gave up.

• Following — a penned or parked animal is tamed and near you and going nowhere, which

is every trigger this mod has. If "following" were not required, walking past your own

barn would empty it into the field behind you. Told to stay means stays.

Where it will not put them

A spot has to earn it, and when nothing earns it nothing happens — the follower stays

where it is and it tries again shortly. Doing nothing is always safe and always available.

• Never in water, never on ground that has not loaded, never in mid-air.
• Never inside a ward you are not admitted to. A convenience mod that can push livestock

into a stranger's base is a griefing tool wearing a convenience mod's coat.

• Never on top of another arrival.

Two ways to fall behind

Adrift — you are more than 40 metres away. The clock runs no matter what they are doing,

because a wolf three hundred metres back is running towards you at full speed and will still

be running in an hour. This is the portal case.

Stalled — you are near enough that they ought to be with you, and the gap is not closing.

Pit, fence, roof, a rock they cannot path around. *This is the one a distance check cannot

see*: a wolf eight metres below you at the bottom of a hole is not far away by any measure

worth having, and it is never getting out.

If they are simply behind and gaining, they are left alone to arrive under their own

steam — which is what happens almost every time you jog across a field. The delay is the

point.

The ones you parked

Anything tamed that is not following anybody stops wandering into open flames, lava, deep

water, smoke and spike traps.

Most of this is not new code — it is a switch the game turns off for tames. BaseAI.AvoidFire

literally opens with if (m_character.IsTamed()) return false;, and the wander validator

already checks fire, lava and water behind three public flags that are simply never set on a

tamed creature. Presumably so a follower walks past your hearth instead of bolting; the price

is a boar standing in a firepit until it dies. Heel turns them back on for the animals you

parked, and leaves followers exactly as the game intends.

Two hazards the game has no switch for, because it has no concept of them as places:

• Smoke — the same CheckSphere on the "smoke" layer the game runs on your own head.
• Traps — derived, not listed: anything that hits characters, hits friendly ones, and

deals damage. Sharp stakes, dvergr spikes, modded traps. A trap already set to spare

friendly targets is left alone, since it was never going to hurt them.

Already standing in something? It walks out. Nothing is teleported or shoved — the AI is

just told to pick a new destination now, and the validator refuses to send it back in. That

fixes a pen built around a firepit without you rebuilding it.

One to know about: AvoidSmoke will also keep tames out of a working smokehouse. Turn it

off if you cure meat around your animals.

C