Wandering Companions

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.