Runebourne
Summon rune spirits that farm, plant, fell trees, haul, mine and craft for you, and tame sea serpents that carry cargo between your harbours.
Runebourne is in Early Access. You can play it from start to finish, but it is still being tested, so back up your world before you install it (see Before you install).
Workers
You build a shrine, summon its spirits with a summoning stone, and link them to your chests with the command wand. Each shrine has upgrades in the build menu that add workers, speed or cargo space.
Seedsower
Plants, harvests and replants crops and berry bushes around its shrine, two workers per shrine to start.

Herdwarden
Culls your spare boars, deer, wolves and lox. In the shrine's window you set, for each animal, the herd size at which it starts culling and how many it keeps alive. Named animals and young are left alone.

Grovetender
Plants saplings and fells grown trees inside the green range line, two per shrine to start.

Haulwright
Carries items along routes you set, from a pick-up chest to a drop-off chest. Relay stones stretch its reach to bases far away.

Orebringer
Mines ore deposits and sunken crypts in range and delivers the ore to your chests. Fit a pickaxe to the shrine. A Rune of Renewal refills a crypt it has mined out.

Runekeeper
Lives at a crafting station and crafts, smelts and cooks at up to three stations near it.

Getting started
- Build Skald's lectern from the Hammer (Misc tab). Read it to see what each biome opens and what to do next.
- Craft the command wand at a workbench (Wood 5, Resin 2, Flint 2). Right-click with it to open the Runebourne build menu, which holds every shrine and structure.
- Build a worker's shrine, then craft that worker's summoning stone. Look at the shrine and press the stone's hotbar key to summon the worker.
- Press E on a shrine to set it up. With the command wand, left-click a worker and then click chests to link them.
Workers, upgrades and recipes unlock as your world progresses: beat a biome's boss and enter the next biome. The lectern shows what is open now.

Sea serpents
Craft a Lightning rune at the forge. Wear a wild sea serpent down below 10% health, equip the command wand and use the rune, with a 50% chance to tame it. You can ride it (E), or build two Serpent depots on the water, ride from one to the other with Record route, and switch the serpent to carry cargo. It then sails the route on its own, taking items from each depot's pick-up chests to the other depot's drop-off chests.
Also in the build menu and at the forge
- Deephold: a chest that stores one kind of stackable item in bulk (75 stacks, more with upgrades). Workers use it like any chest.
- Field rune: clears, levels and tills the ground around you for a farm.
- Rune of Renewal: refills a mined-out sunken crypt near an Orebringer shrine.
- Feeding trough: hungry animals nearby eat from it, and Haulwrights can stock it.
- Chest names and filters: name any chest and choose which items workers may put in it.
Compatibility
- Built for Valheim 1.0.20. A later game update may break the mod until it is patched.
- Needs BepInExPack Valheim, Jotunn and YamlDotNet. Gale and other mod managers install them for you.
- Install Runebourne on every player's game and on the server. Everyone must run the exact same version, or the server turns the player away when they join.
- Multiplayer and dedicated servers are not tested yet. The mod is built for them, but expect more bugs there than in single player.
- No conflicts with other mods are known yet. It has not been tested next to other large mods, so please report any you find.
Configuration
Settings are in BepInEx/config/com.yohanb.runebourne.cfg, created the first time you start the game with the mod.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
[Away work] KeepFarmsCropsTreesAndGeneralsWorking |
true |
Herdwarden, Seedsower and Grovetender shrines and Runekeepers keep working while no player is near. The host loads each one's area (its buildings, plants, animals and spirits, never wild creatures or spawners) and runs it as if a player stood there. Turn it off if a server with many bases lags. Only the host's setting counts: your own game in single player, the server's file otherwise. |
The [Dev] settings are for testing and are off by default. Leave them off.
Before you install
- Back up your world. Steam keeps worlds in
AppData\LocalLow\IronGate\Valheim\worlds_local(or in Steam Cloud). - Removing the mod deletes its things. Without Runebourne, the game removes its shrines, workers, structures and items from your world as you visit each area, along with anything they hold: worker cargo and everything in a Deephold. Reinstalling does not bring them back. Items in ordinary chests are kept.
Known issues
- Multiplayer and dedicated servers are not tested yet (see Compatibility).
- Reeve's board uses a placeholder model for now.
Reporting a bug
Report bugs at bugs.yohanb.tech. Reports and attached logs are private.
Include your Runebourne version, what you were doing, what you expected and what happened instead, and attach your
log: BepInEx\LogOutput.log in the game's folder (or your mod manager's profile folder). Send it right after the
bug, before restarting the game, because each start overwrites the log.
License
Copyright © 2026 yohanbh. All rights reserved. You may download Runebourne and play with it, alone or on a server. Please don't re-upload, modify or reuse it, in whole or in part, without permission.