Wandering Companions
Hostile Hostile NPC's that roam every biome with full gear sets and advanced combat AI. Defeat them to earn a loyal companion that follows you across Valheim.
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Wandering Companions
Hostile NPC wanderers roam every biome equipped with full gear sets and advanced combat AI featuring blocking, parrying, and stance-based weapon selection. Defeat them to earn a loyal companion.
Wandering Companions adds hostile NPC enemies to every biome in Valheim. These wanderers spawn with full gear sets one tier above the current biome, advanced combat AI with blocking, parrying, and counter-attacks, and randomized combat stances. They're 50% larger than the player and have 50% bonus health, making them a serious challenge at any stage of the game.
When you defeat a wanderer, they convert into a friendly companion from Offline Companions that automatically follows the player who killed them. The friendly companion spawns with no gear — a blank slate ready to be equipped.
Each wanderer has a randomized appearance (gender, hair, beard, skin tone) and one of three combat stances:
| Stance | Behavior |
|:---|:---|
| Balanced | Auto-switches between melee and ranged weapons based on distance |
| Melee | Forces sword, mace, or atgeir — stays in close range |
| Ranged | Forces bow — maintains distance from the target |
All stances feature reactive blocking (raises shield when enemy swings), perfect parry timing (resets block timer for guaranteed parry), and parry counter-attacks (queues 2 fast attacks after a successful parry).
Wanderers spawn with gear one tier above the biome they appear in. This means you'll always face an enemy slightly ahead of your current progression.
| Biome | Gear Tier | Weapon | Armor | Health |
|:---|:---|:---|:---|:---|
| Meadows | Black Forest | MaceBronze, BowHuntsman | Iron Set | 225 |
| Black Forest | Swamp | SwordIron, BowHuntsman | Iron Set | 300 |
| Swamp | Mountain | SwordSilver, BowDraugrFang | Wolf Set | 450 |
| Mountain | Plains | AtgeirBlackmetal, BowDraugrFang | Padded Set | 600 |
| Plains | Mistlands | SwordMistwalker, BowSpineSnap | Carapace Set | 750 |
| Mistlands | Ashlands | SwordFlametal, BowSpineSnap | Flametal Set | 900 |
| Ashlands | Ashlands | SwordFlametal, BowSpineSnap | Flametal Set | 900 |
Health values include the 50% bonus. All wanderers carry infinite arrows and a shield.
Configuration file: BepInEx/config/com.wandering.companions.cfg
| Setting | Default | Description |
|:---|:---|:---|
| Enabled | true | Master toggle for wandering companion spawns |
| SpawnInterval | 1500 | Seconds between spawn attempts per biome (25 min) |
| SpawnChance | 24 | Percent chance a spawn attempt succeeds (0-100) |
| HealthMultiplier | 1.0 | Multiplier applied to base health values |
- Install BepInEx for Valheim
- Install Offline Companions (required dependency)
- Download the latest release from Releases
- Extract to BepInEx/plugins/WanderingCompanions/
- Launch the game
| Dependency | Version | Required | Link |
|:---|:---|:---|:---|
| Valheim | 0.219+ | Yes | |
| BepInEx | 5.4.2200+ | Yes | Download |
| Offline Companions | 1.2.2+ | Yes | GitHub |
- Offline Companions is a hard dependency. Defeated wanderers convert into HC companions
- Uses a custom WC_Wanderer prefab registered at startup via Harmony patches on ZNetScene and SpawnSystem
- Patches MonsterAI.UpdateAI only for wandering companion instances (other monsters unaffected)
- Multiplayer: wanderers spawn per the server's SpawnSystem. The killing player becomes the friendly companion's owner
| Command | Description |
|:---|:---|
| spawnwanderer | Spawns a wandering companion 10m in front of the player |
Built on BepInEx and Harmony
Requires Offline Companions for friendly companion conversion
Forged for the Valheim community. Skol, Vikings.
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: