Hunters Instinct
Track animal footprints and reveal creatures with a skill-based hunting instinct and persistent trails.
About this mod Author’s original text
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
Install & use Install: BepInEx plugin
- The archive from playbuff is the mod itself — usually a BepInEx plugin (a .dll or a plugin folder once unzipped).
- Recommended: use a community mod manager (such as r2modman) — pick this game, import the mod, and the manager sets up BepInEx and its dependencies for you.
- Manual route: install the BepInEx loader in the game folder, then drop the unzipped .dll or plugin folder into BepInEx/plugins/.
- Launch the game — the BepInEx console logs every plugin it loads; seeing this mod in the log means it is installed.
Mods with listed dependencies need those installed too, or they will not load. Options are usually changed in-game or in the plugin's config file. In multiplayer, the host and every client need the same mods installed.
Install these first, or the mod will not work: