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DangerousRoads — the wilds are not empty anymore

DangerousRoads is a mod for Outward that repopulates the overworld with wandering hostile creatures, so a stretch of country you have already cleared is country you have to watch again.

At a glance - Type: gameplay mod - Requires: BepInEx 5 (Mono branch) · ForgeKit, SpawnKit and CompanionKit directly — and, underneath those, DonorKit, AggroKit and NetKit - Config: BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg - Commands: BepInEx/config/DangerousRoads_cmd.txt

Alpha, and single-player only for now. Co-op is unsupported and there is a known problem with one creature family — see Known issues. Back up saves you care about.

Contents

For players

Aurai's overworld is hand-placed and finite. Once you have cleared the road between two points it stays cleared, and the walk back is a walk through an empty map.

DangerousRoads fills it back in. While you are travelling out in the wilds, hostile creatures can turn up anywhere — out of sight, off the road, behind you. They are ordinary wild creatures native to the region you are in: Enmerkar sends beast golems and bandits, Abrassar sends bugs and bandits. They wander, they notice you, they fight, and they drop their normal loot.

There is nothing to switch on and no key to press. Install it, walk out of town, and give it a minute.

What it deliberately does not do

  • Never in towns or villages. Settlements stay safe.
  • Never in dungeons, caves or interiors. Only out in the open.
  • Never touches your save. Its creatures are temporary — they are gone when you leave the area, and nothing about them is written to your save file. Uninstalling is deleting the folder.
  • No bosses, no story characters, no custom content. Everything it puts in the world is vanilla.

How it works

  • A region watcher notices which area you are in and arms an ambush timer. Only the six open-world regions — Chersonese, Hallowed Marsh, Abrassar, Antique Plateau, Enmerkar Forest and Caldera — are on the list, and it fails closed: an area the mod does not recognise (a DLC area, a modded scene, a menu, mid-transition) is never treated as overworld. The game's own town/city classifier can also veto an area on the list, so settlements stay safe even if a future patch renumbers something.
  • The timer fires on a randomised interval measured in seconds of actual play — it freezes while the game is paused or loading, so an ambush cannot bank up while you sit in the inventory.
  • A placement pass looks for a spot 40–200 m away that the player cannot see, that is genuinely walkable from where you stand, and that is flat ground rather than a ledge or a roof. It tries several anchor sources in order (live AI, gathering spots, the game's own wandering-squad spawn points, world interactables, then a procedural fallback) and gives up quietly if none of them produce a verified spot.
  • A wave of 1–3 creatures is then spawned through SpawnKit as real vanilla hostiles. Every member of a wave is the same species — that is structural, not a setting: same species means the same faction, which is what stops an "ambush" from fighting itself.
  • Creatures are only drawn from species whose body is already loaded and resident. A small background prewarm keeps a few of the region's species ready. This is what keeps an ambush from costing you a stall mid-play.
  • Arrivals are announced by an on-screen toast naming the compass direction, and marked on the HUD compass while they are in range.

In co-op

The "already resident" test above is now a party test, not a per-machine one. If the host picks a species a guest has no body for, that guest has to load a donor scene mid-fight — measured at 3.6 s to 14.7 s in the field, which is long enough to drop them from the room. So DangerousRoads asks SpawnKit whether the whole room can mint a species, not just this box:

  • The roster predicate is room-wide. A species is a candidate only if it can be minted here and by every peer that has published a warm set. Unmodded and still-loading players never veto, and solo play behaves exactly as before.
  • Prewarming is party-aware. The region's warm order puts first the species the party lacks but the host already holds — one request and they become room-wide spawnable at no cost to the host — then the ones nobody holds, then the rest.
  • Arming a region pushes a warm request. When the ambush director arms for a new region it hands SpawnKit its top prewarm targets, so every guest starts warming the same short list and the shared roster fills instead of each machine warming a different half of it.

  • When peers cost you species, it says so. The log names the species that were warm here but cold in the room and who was cold, reprinting only when the situation changes, and one on-screen toast per region arm tells the player the ambush pool is temporarily smaller. roadsroster carries a room column: ● room-wide warm · ◐ warm here, cold on a peer · ○ cold here.

  • A refused encounter says why, once. The wave, the merchant raid, the far-cache restore, the stranger's mobs and the patrol's troglodytes all check the same room-wide answer and refuse before spawning rather than showing a guest a ghost — so in co-op you will sometimes see fewer encounters than you would solo. That is the gate working, not a bug. The host log carries one dense line naming every species currently being refused and the actor number of each cold peer (co-op encounters refused in '<region>': …), reprinted only when the situation changes or once a minute; skwarmdump on the host prints each peer's row. A far-parked creature is held, never dropped, while a peer is cold.

How strict the gate is is still SpawnKit's knob; DR adds only the announcement. The one setting DangerousRoads owns here is [Coop] AnnounceQuietRoads (default false), which shows the player one toast per region — "The roads are quiet — a companion's world is still warming (N species)" — when an encounter is refused for a cold peer. It is host-side only, testers are the audience, and with it off the host log line above still records the fact. How strict the party gate itself is lives in SpawnKit's own [Coop] RoomWarmMode (BepInEx/config/cobalt.spawnkit.cfg, default RoomDegraded — spawn anyway and ask the guests to warm; RoomStrict refuses instead), so one knob governs every consumer of the spawner rather than the ambush director and the spawn menu disagreeing about the same room. DR's own [Species] WarmOnly keeps its original meaning and still governs only the local half.

Built 2026-08-20, not live-verified — see docs/guest-mirror-harvest-testplan.md (GM10–GM19).

The wandering merchant

Not every event is hostile. Sometimes the toast reads "A merchant is on the road to the east": a Travelling Merchant with a trade backpack has appeared out of sight and is walking the road to one of this region's exits, where he leaves the map. Catch him and talk: you can open his shop (stocked like the region's roaming caravan trader) or let him go. He is friendly, hard to kill and nearly harmless — and if something attacks him and you drive it off, he says so the next time you talk. He is never saved and carries no loot.

He stops for you. Walk up to him and he halts and turns to face you so you can talk; once you step away he waits a few seconds and walks on ([Merchant] GreetRadius, GreetResumeSeconds).

You cannot hurt him. Your weapons, lock-on, your pet and any ally on your side ignore him ([Merchant] Protected) — so a pet that picks fights will not drag him into one. Bandits can.

He follows the roads. His route is chained through the game's own roadside points (the spots the vanilla roaming caravanner uses), so he walks the road even where it curves away from the straight line to his exit, and falls back to a direct route where a stretch has no road data ([Merchant] PreferRoads, RoadHopMeters — set PreferRoads = false for the old straight-corridor routing). Config file: BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg.

Bandits. Most merchants (RaidChance, default 75%) get raided: as you come within RaidTriggerMeters of him — or after RaidDelaySeconds if you never do — two or three bandits from this region appear nearby and go for him ("Bandits are closing on the merchant!"). He is tough enough to last until you get there; drive them off and his greeting changes.

[Merchant]
WalkSpeed = 0.5
PreferRoads = true
RoadHopMeters = 120
GreetRadius = 4
GreetResumeSeconds = 3
Protected = true
RaidChance = 0.75
RaidMin = 2
RaidMax = 3
RaidTriggerMeters = 90
RaidDelaySeconds = 120

[Events] MerchantWeight is how often he comes up relative to an ambush (0 = never); MerchantCooldownSeconds is the shortest gap between two merchants. Only one is on the road at a time.

The town-guard patrol

Another peaceful-ish card: "A town patrol is fighting troglodytes to the east." Two or three guards in the nearest town's colours — Cierzo plate, Berg's wolf plate, Levant's elite plate, Monsoon silver, Harmattan's antique plate, New Sirocco militia — are holding the road against four to six troglodytes, and they are genuinely losing people. You can walk past.

If you help — any damage to any of the trogs, yours or your pet's or an arrow's — the guard who is left standing offers you the town's bounty afterwards: five or six silver for each troglodyte that fell, paid once. If you only watched, you get thanks and a warning. Either way they then form up and walk off toward the far end of the road, and are gone once you can no longer see them.

You cannot hurt the guards ([Patrol] GuardProtected), so a pet that picks fights will not turn the rescue into a brawl. The troglodytes can, and do.

[Patrol]
GuardMin = 2
GuardMax = 3
TrogMin = 4
TrogMax = 6
GuardHealth = 450
GuardProtection = 12
GuardDamageMult = 0.9
GuardChanceToAttack = 85
GuardProtected = true
WardOwnSpawns = true
DefendPlayer = false
DefendRadiusMeters = 18
DefendLeashMeters = 35
RewardSilverMin = 5
RewardSilverMax = 6
TrogRingMin = 12
TrogRingMax = 18
GuardRingMeters = 4
StalemateSeconds = 90
LingerSeconds = 20
LeaveSpeed = 1.4
LeaveTimeoutSeconds = 300
RemoveRadiusMeters = 120

The tuning half of that stanza (all in BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg, every key live-tunable with reloadcfg unless marked next spawn):

Key Default Effect
GuardChanceToAttack 85 AISCombatMelee.ChanceToAttack for a guard, in percent — a detail that circles and blocks instead of swinging reads as broken. Next spawn.
WardOwnSpawns true With GuardProtected on, every live DangerousRoads hostile is pair-re-allowed onto the shielded guards so it can fight back (the Marsh-Archer-at-38/300-hp bug). false stops installing those pairs without dropping the shields — the safe lever if the ward misbehaves. The player is never re-allowed either way.
DefendPlayer false Let the guards step in against a hostile already fighting you (or your pet) close by. They never start a fight: the candidate must be locked onto a Player-faction body, be in a hostile faction, and not be on the [Species] blocklist. Ships off.
DefendRadiusMeters 18 How close to a player a hostile must be before the guards mind it (measured to the nearest player, not the guard).
DefendLeashMeters 35 How far from the patrol's centre a defended fight may travel before the guards let it go. 0 = no leash (not recommended).
TrogRingMin / TrogRingMax 12 / 18 The ring the troglodytes are placed on, in metres from the guards. Too close and they spawn inside the party; past ~20 m they can lose the guards on the navmesh and every fight ends in the stalemate window.
GuardRingMeters 4 Radius of the small ring the guards stand on — three bodies on one point get shoved apart by physics.
LeaveSpeed 1.4 Walk speed for the guards' exit (the merchant's is 0.5 — soldiers going off duty, not a mule train). Read when the walk starts.
LeaveTimeoutSeconds 300 Give up on the walk-off after this long and remove the guards anyway — but only once they are past RemoveRadiusMeters from every player, so a guard never blinks out in front of anyone.

[Events] PatrolWeight is how often a patrol comes up relative to an ambush (0 = never); PatrolCooldownSeconds is the shortest gap between two of them. One patrol is on the road at a time, and the troglodytes count against the same [Wave] MaxOwnActive cap as any other spawn — which is why RemoveRadiusMeters matters: the guards give their slots back only once nobody can see them.

Built 2026-08-26, not live-verified — see docs/road-patrol-testplan.md (PT0–PT21).

The familiar stranger

"A traveller is under attack to the east." One or two of your other saved characters — the ones on this machine's character-select screen, built into look-alikes from their saves (face, hair, armour, weapon, backpack) — are on the road fighting two to four of the region's own creatures. They are not invincible. Walk past and they may die.

Save them (any damage from you, your pet or an arrow, and every mob dead with at least one of them standing) and the survivor says: "Thank you stranger. You seem familiar. I don't have much to offer but my life is worth more than any of the trinkets in my backpack. If you see anything you like it is yours." Pick Look in the backpack and that character's real backpack and pouch open in the ordinary container window. Take one item or stack: it goes into your inventory, the window closes, and it is permanently removed from the other character's save (written as a new save snapshot — the next time you play that character, the item is gone). One pick per stranger per encounter; afterwards they just say "Take care, stranger."

The character you are currently playing is never one of them, nor is a retired one. With no other saved character on the machine the card simply never comes up (one warning in the log at boot).

[Events]
StrangerWeight = 0.25
StrangerCooldownSeconds = 900

[Stranger]
MobsMin = 2
MobsMax = 4
MaxStrangers = 2
StalemateSeconds = 90
RewardEnabled = true

RewardEnabled = false keeps the rescue line but never opens the backpack and never touches any save. Commands: roadsstranger [status|saves|savescreen|spawn|resolve|help|despawn], roadscard stranger [at=here count=<1|2> mobs=<n>]. Log tag [STRANGER] (the save write logs [SAVEHANDOFF]).

roadsstranger savescreen [<name prefix|uid>|all] answers "why is my other character never on the road" in full: per candidate it prints the exclusion reason if the save never reached the screen (backup folder / retired / being played), then the one-line [SAVESCREEN] verdict …, then which worn, knowledge and quickslot ids were kept or dropped and why — an id that resolves to nothing here (a removed mod's) reads differently from one that resolves to the wrong kind of thing, or that collided with a slot another kept piece took, plus the save's provenance diff — what moved between the install that wrote the save and this one (missing, new or version-changed content packs). That is the only signal for an id that resolves here but to the wrong prefab; it is a warning, never a reason the stranger is excluded. It spawns nothing and changes nothing. With [SaveScreen] ScreenSavedCharacters=false in BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg it says so and shows the verdict anyway. Example excerpt:

[SaveScreen]
ScreenSavedCharacters = true
MaxUnresolvedWornFraction = 0.34
StripForeignEnchants = false

Built 2026-08-29, not live-verified — see docs/stranger-testplan.md (ST0–ST10). Single-player first; in co-op the card is host-only and a guest clicking the row is refused.

Finding him. Besides the toast's bearing, the HUD compass shows a green dot for the merchant from the moment he appears until he leaves — at any distance, slightly larger than the red hostile blips, so it reads as a place to walk toward rather than a threat. [Compass] ShowMerchantBlip turns it off and MerchantBlipColor recolours it (an unparseable colour falls back to green, never to hostile red):

[Compass]
ShowMerchantBlip = true
MerchantBlipColor = #34C759

Every other event friendly gets a green dot too. Patrol guards and the familiar strangers (the traveller-under-attack rescue) are marked with the same green dot (MerchantBlipColor, 1.4× size, any distance) while they are alive and on your side — concretely, while they are enrolled in the mod's own protective shield roster, which only ever holds player-side bodies. The dot vanishes on death, despawn, or region change; roadsblips explains every body's verdict. Config in BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg:

[Compass]
ShowFriendlyBlips = true

Host-only in co-op, like the events themselves: the cards run on the host and a guest's compass shows no DangerousRoads dots of either colour.

In co-op you may see another compass marker: that one is the base game's own other-player element, pointing at your partner, and is not drawn by DangerousRoads.

If the road is blocked on the way — a roadside point the navmesh cannot reach — he skips past it and keeps walking rather than standing there; only a stall at the very gate, or several in a row, ends the walk early (he despawns, and the log says why).

The Levant shakedown ("Slumbush")

The first card that is dealt in a city, and the first with a rule of its own: it only ever joins the deck in Levant. About 3% of city draws there (the rest are blanks — see below): a shaking voice behind you says "Don't turn around. Leave 200 silver on the ground and you get to walk away." You cannot move while the voice speaks (the game's own bed-lock, released the moment the box closes; while it is up, advance the text with the mouse — the halt also swallows the "continue" key). Two answers:

  • "This place seems like trouble, I better not start any." — 200 silver leaves your inventory (bag first, then pouch) and the thugs melt away. If you cannot cover it, they attack anyway.
  • "Thugs like this are worse than the scourge." — 1–3 thugs in tattered clothes with iron weapons, standing ~7 m behind you, turn hostile. One of them carries 60 silver; loot his corpse. Closing the box without answering counts as refusing.

Log tag [SLUM]. Force it anywhere with roadscard slumbush [count=1..3 demand=<silver> loot=<silver> radius=<m>] (the log notes when you forced it somewhere it would have sat out). Tuning lives in [Slumbush] (DemandSilver, LootSilver, SpawnRadius, DecisionSeconds, LeaveSeconds, StalemateSeconds, ReplySeconds, ThugHealth, ThugDamageMult, ThugChanceToAttack) and [Events] SlumbushWeight / SlumbushCooldownSeconds / SlumbushWhen.

Co-op scope, documented: the shakedown is host-only (the deck itself is host-only) and only ever halts and charges the MASTER's own local player — a guest walking Levant is never shaken down and can never be the one who pays or fights the thugs. This is the same "host's-own-only" scope the deck carries everywhere else, not a bug.

The alpha

About one road event in ten is an alpha: a single creature native to the region, but bigger than the rest of its kind — 30% larger, hitting 15% harder, with 40% more health — and worth the fight. You are told it is coming, but never what it is:

You hear heavy footsteps to the north.

(The toast never names the species, on purpose: the game already ships creatures literally called Alpha Tuanosaur and Alpha Coralhorn, and a name in the message would be read as one of those. No bearing to give — you are practically on top of it — and it reads "heavy footsteps nearby".)

Its corpse pays out two rolls of its own drop tables instead of one, and if it was a beast it also carries one Raw Alpha Meat. Three honest caveats. Two rolls is not "twice the items" — an entry whose chance drops each time it is gathered rolls slightly worse on the second pass, and a table that would have given you nothing can give you nothing twice. Only the random drop tables are rolled again: a creature's guaranteed drops are handed out once, exactly as they would be normally, so an alpha never duplicates a unique or a quest item. And "beast" here means non-humanoid (the only such distinction the game itself makes), so an animated skeleton counts as one. Bandits and other humanoids get the double loot but no meat.

Log tag [ALPHA] (the card and its loot) plus [MOBSCALE] (the scaling itself, which is CompanionKit's, shared with anything else that wants to grow or shrink a creature). Force one with roadscard alpha [species=<key> size=<percent> damage=<percent> health=<percent>] — the three numbers are percentages, and a negative one scales down, which is how you get a runt.

Everything is tunable in BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg:

[Events]
## Draw weight of the ALPHA card. Weights are relative; the other overworld cards sum to 1.85,
## so 0.205 is about 10% of road events. 0 disables the card.
AlphaWeight = 0.205

## Shortest gap between two alpha draws, in seconds of actual play.
AlphaCooldownSeconds = 1200

[Alpha]
## How much bigger the alpha is, percent. Negative scales DOWN.
SizePercent = 30

## How much more damage it deals, percent.
DamagePercent = 15

## How much more max health it has, percent.
HealthPercent = 40

## How many times its random drop tables are rolled into the corpse (the game rolls them once).
## Guaranteed drops are never duplicated.
LootRolls = 2

## Which species may be an alpha — family names matched as substrings of the species name.
## An alpha is a bigger beast or scourge, never a bigger bandit. Empty = any spawnable species.
Pool = Hyena, Pearlbird, Horror, Immaculate, Coralhorn, Tuanosaur, Mantis

## Item added to a BEAST alpha's corpse, by display name. A name that matches nothing drops nothing.
BeastMeat = Raw Alpha Meat
MeatCount = 1

When a change takes effect. The three scaling keys are captured when the alpha is dealt, so reloadcfg reaches the next one and leaves anything already standing exactly as it was. The three payout keys — LootRolls, BeastMeat, MeatCount — are read when the creature dies, so changing them mid-session also changes what an alpha that is already wandering around will drop.

Co-op scope, documented: the alpha is dealt and scaled by the host, and its loot is generated by the host (which is where the game generates every creature's loot). A guest sees the larger body and the larger health bar, and can loot the corpse like any other. If the message carrying the size ever arrives without it, the creature is simply drawn at its normal size — the encounter still happens rather than being refused. One number to expect: in co-op the game applies its own party health multiplier to the same stat as ours, and the two add rather than compound, so an alpha's health bar in a full party is not exactly 40% longer than its ordinary cousin's. None of this has been verified in a live co-op session yet.

Burac at the gates

Near Cierzo's gate — and only near Cierzo's gate — you may find Burac Carillon holding a knot of Vendavel bandits off the road.

Steel rings at the Cierzo gate to the north.

How many of them, and whether Burac is there at all, follows the Vendavel questline, so the encounter tells you where your own story stands:

The quest What you find What he says
Not yet resolved Burac against 4–6 bandits "The warlords of Vendavel now press to our gates. If Rissa keeps pulling more of our guard to Berg some day soon these excursions will reach past the gates into the square."
The fortress cleared Burac against 1–3 dregs "The dregs of the Vendavel clan curse your name and I see why. May your waterskin always be full, <your name>."
Cierzo destroyed 6 bandits and no Burac — ("Vendavel's bandits are at the Cierzo gate to the north.")

He does not die. That is the point of him: he is a townsman with a sword and a name, not a spawn. He has 800 health, strong resistances and 90% impact resistance, so he holds ground — and below 10% of his health he stops taking damage altogether, breaks off, and runs for the gate, where he disappears. You cannot lose him, and you cannot kill him yourself either; hit him and he will not even hit back.

Take your leave — "Take care, Burac." — and he presses a single coin into your hand. One silver, which is the joke. The bandits are ordinary bandits: whatever is still standing when he goes is yours to deal with, and their loot is vanilla.

Everything is tunable in BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg:

[Events]
## Draw weight of the BURAC card. It only ever joins a Chersonese overworld deck within
## [Burac] NearMetres of the gate, so this weight only competes there. 0 disables the card.
BuracWeight = 0.15

## Shortest gap between two Burac draws, in seconds of actual play.
BuracCooldownSeconds = 3600

[Burac]
## How close to the Cierzo gate the card may be drawn, in flat metres. The gate is found from the
## scene's own exits, so a region without one is infinitely far away and the card sits out.
NearMetres = 150

## His stat block. Resists are percentages in the game's order:
## Physical, Ethereal, Decay, Electric, Frost, Fire. 100 would be true immunity.
Health = 800
Protection = 10
Resists = 60,40,40,40,40,40

## Impact (knockback) resistance, percent. 90 = he takes a tenth of it; 100 = none at all.
ImpactResist = 90

## Percent of max health at which he breaks off and runs for the gate. He cannot die regardless —
## this only decides where the retreat happens.
FloorPercent = 10

## Longest he is watched walking to the gate before he is removed anyway. Extended while you talk.
FleeTimeoutSeconds = 45

## Bandits per state: quest unresolved / fortress cleared / Cierzo razed. "MIN-MAX" or one number.
BanditsA = 4-6
BanditsB = 1-3
BanditsC = 6

## What he gives you when you take your leave, by item name (a gold bar = 100 silver), plus optional extra silver.
RewardItem = Gold Ingot
RewardCount = 1
RewardSilver = 0

## His look: gender,skin,head,hair,hairColor. Empty = the default face.
Visuals =

When a change takes effect. Every [Burac] key is read when the encounter is staged, so reloadcfg reaches the next one and leaves a fight already in progress exactly as it is. The two [Events] keys are read on every draw.

Co-op scope, documented: the host deals the card, mints Burac and owns the fight. A guest sees him at his full health, sees the retreat and sees him go. One honest gap: a guest's own blows reach the host by a path that skips the retreat threshold, so a guest who keeps hitting him past 10% can push him down to a sliver, where he is knocked out on the spot instead of walking away. He still cannot die — that guarantee holds on every path — but the exit looks different. Talking to him as a guest has the same limitation every mod-made NPC has in co-op. None of this has been verified in a live co-op session yet.

Decks per kind of place, and the blank card

Every mapped area is now dealt a deck — the overworld deck (ambush, merchant, patrol, stranger), a city deck and a dungeon deck. The road cards carry zone:overworld in their own rule, so they never turn up in town or underground. What makes the other decks work is the blank card: an event that does nothing, counts as fired, and re-arms the clock. Its weight is the one per-zone number in the deck:

[Events]
BlankWeightOverworld = 0      # the road deck exactly as before; raise it to thin out road events
BlankWeightCity = 0.97        # + SlumbushWeight 0.03 → ~3% shakedowns in Levant, all blanks elsewhere
BlankWeightDungeon = 1.0      # no dungeon card yet: every dungeon draw is a blank

[Events] DeckEnabled = false still means "the road mod exactly as before": ambushes on the road, and nothing at all in a city or dungeon.

roadsdeck shows the deck for the zone you are standing in (world zone=City …), with the road cards listed as SITS OUT — needs zone:overworld.

Known issues

  • A Wolfgang can turn up on the wrong side. The Wolfgang family's allegiance is driven by your plot and relationship progression in the base game, not by a fixed table value — so a wave that draws one can spawn it in an allegiance the mod did not intend, including friendly. The fix is to drop the whole family from the encounter roster (hard-coding a faction for them would only be wrong at a different point in the story), and that is not in 0.1.0. To stop it now, add the names to [Species] ExtraBlocklist and relaunch: Wolfgang Captain is blocked by default, Wolfgang Veteran and Wolfgang Mercenary are not.
  • A few other species report an unstable faction. The Mantis family (Rock Mantis, Mana Mantis, Mantis Shrimp), Veaber, and Caldera's Boreo have each been seen reporting different factions on different spawns. Under investigation; the symptom is the same as above — an encounter that does not fight you.
  • Multiplayer is unsupported. Only the host ever runs encounters, which is the right shape, but no real two-machine session has been played. Treat co-op as untested.
  • Encounter frequency varies by region. Some parts of the map offer far more good places to put a creature than others, so the wilds are livelier in some regions than in others.

Ambushes stop at a number I didn't set

Two caps apply, in two different files, and the one you probably found is the one that isn't stopping you. Dangerous Roads checks its own [Wave] MaxOwnActive before it ever asks SpawnKit to spawn, so raising SpawnKit's [Spawner] MaxActiveSpawns on its own changes nothing.

Cap File Scope
[Wave] MaxOwnActive BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg Just this mod's creatures. Checked first — usually the one stopping you.
[Spawner] MaxActiveSpawns BepInEx/config/cobalt.spawnkit.cfg Every mod that spawns through SpawnKit, added together.

Raise MaxOwnActive, and keep it at or below MaxActiveSpawns — going over just means SpawnKit refuses the spawn and toasts you on every attempt:

[Wave]
## Cap on creatures this mod may have alive at once.
# Setting type: Int32
# Default value: 8
MaxOwnActive = 12

[Spawner]
## Refuse spawns that would push the live count (incl. pending) past this cap.
# Setting type: Int32
# Default value: 8
MaxActiveSpawns = 12

Both are live-tunable — edit and run reloadcfg, no relaunch. When the cap is what's holding waves back, the log says so and names both keys:

[AMBUSH] soft block: own cap reached — 8/8 alive. To raise it, edit [Wave] MaxOwnActive in
cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg — NOT [Spawner] MaxActiveSpawns (=8) in cobalt.spawnkit.cfg, which
this check never consults. Retrying in 15s.

roadsstatus reports the same thing as active N / M. Note that MaxOwnActive defaulted to 6 before 0.1.2, below SpawnKit's default of 8 — and BepInEx never rewrites a value that already exists in your config file, so an install created before then still has 6 and must be edited by hand to pick up the new default.

Roads feel too persistent

A creature that is fighting is never parked by the far cache, however far you run — outrunning an ambush no longer ends it, and it keeps holding one of your [Wave] MaxOwnActive slots until it gives up and disengages. That is deliberate: a pursuer vanishing mid-swing read as a bug. It is also a recent change (2026-08-30). Before it, the exemption was asking the wrong thing about an AI body and so never once fired — every far fight was parked mid-swing, which is why a town patrol could report itself resolved with nobody alive and nobody dead.

If you preferred the old, quieter roads, [FarCache] ParkMidFightBeyond gives a bounded version of it back: a hard distance past which even an active fight is parked. 0 (the default) means never.

[FarCache]
## The one way to park a creature that is FIGHTING: a hard distance (meters, 3D) past which even an
## active fight is parked. 0 = never.
# Setting type: Single
# Default value: 0
ParkMidFightBeyond = 300

Live-tunable — edit BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg and run reloadcfg. A value below [FarCache] DespawnRadius is raised to it (a fighting creature is never parked closer than a peaceful one); roadscache and the mod's config summary line both report the effective figure.

Settings

All settings live in BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg, created on first launch. Every key is live-tunable without a relaunch: edit the file and run the reloadcfg command (BepInEx 5 has no config file-watcher of its own, so an edit alone does nothing until then).

Section Key Default Effect
[General] Enabled true Master switch. false + reloadcfg disarms instantly.
[Schedule] MinIntervalSeconds 20 Shortest gap between ambushes.
MaxIntervalSeconds 60 Longest gap. Raise both for a quieter world.
FirstArmDelaySeconds 60 Grace period after entering a region before the first ambush can fire.
CooldownAfterWaveSeconds 45 Hard floor after a wave places, whatever the interval rolls.
RetrySeconds 15 Re-check delay after a blocked attempt (loading, in combat, cap reached).
[Wave] MinCount 1 Fewest creatures in a wave.
MaxCount 3 Most creatures in a wave.
MaxOwnActive 8 Cap on creatures this mod may have alive at once. If ambushes stop below SpawnKit's cap, this is the key to raise — see Ambushes stop at a number I didn't set.
MemberSpacingMeters 4 Minimum spacing between members of one wave.
SkipWhileInCombat true Hold a wave back while you are already fighting.
CombatDeferMaxSeconds 120 Longest continuous stretch that hold may last before the wave fires anyway. 0 = unbounded, which can silence the mod entirely.
ClusterRadiusMeters 12 How tightly a wave's members group around the lead spot.
[Events] DeckEnabled true Draw each event from the deck (ambush or merchant). false = every event is an ambush, exactly as before the deck.
AmbushWeight 1.0 Relative draw weight of the hostile wave.
MerchantWeight 0.35 Relative draw weight of the wandering merchant (0 = never).
MerchantCooldownSeconds 600 Shortest gap between two merchants, stamped when drawn.
BlankWeightOverworld / BlankWeightCity / BlankWeightDungeon 0 / 0.97 / 1.0 Weight of the do-nothing blank card in each kind of place (see Decks per kind of place).
SlumbushWeight / SlumbushCooldownSeconds 0.03 / 1800 The Levant shakedown card's weight (city deck only) and cooldown.
AlphaWeight / AlphaCooldownSeconds 0.205 / 1200 The alpha card's weight — ~10% of road events against the other shipped weights — and the shortest gap between two of them.
AmbushWhen / MerchantWhen / PatrolWhen / StrangerWhen / SlumbushWhen / AlphaWhen (empty) When that card may join the deck — a world rule checked before every draw (see When a card may join the deck). Empty = always.
[Alpha] Pool beast + scourge families Which species may be an alpha: comma-separated family names matched as substrings of the species name (Hyena covers Armored Hyena, Horror every horror, Immaculate the Raider and Warlock). The region roster is narrowed to it before the card composes — an alpha is a bigger beast or scourge, never a bigger bandit. Empty = any spawnable species; roadscard alpha species= bypasses it.
[Alpha] SizePercent 30 How much bigger the alpha is, percent. Negative scales down. Applies to the next alpha.
DamagePercent 15 How much more damage it deals, percent. Next alpha.
HealthPercent 40 How much more max health it has, percent. Next alpha.
LootRolls 2 How many times its random drop tables are rolled into the corpse (the game rolls them once); guaranteed drops are never duplicated. 1 = ordinary loot. Read at DEATH — see below.
BeastMeat / MeatCount Raw Alpha Meat / 1 Item added to a beast alpha's corpse, by display name, and how many. A name that matches nothing is warned about once and drops nothing.
[Merchant] Health 900 The merchant's max health. Applies to the next merchant.
Protection 20 Flat damage protection. Next merchant.
DamageMult 0.25 Multiplier on the damage he deals (1 = unchanged). Next merchant.
WalkSpeed 0.5 His walking speed: a multiplier on the body's run speed (vanilla wanderers 0.3, 1.1 is a jog). Live.
ExitRadius 6 How close to the exit counts as arrived (he despawns there). Live.
StuckSeconds 90 Despawn after this long with no progress outside combat (0 = never). Live.
DespawnDeferSeconds 180 He never leaves while his shop panel or his dialogue is open — arriving at the exit and giving up as stuck both wait (he stands still) until it closes, because destroying him mid-trade leaves the shopper's UI stuck on a transaction that can never finish. This is the ceiling on that wait: past it he goes anyway with a warning. 0 or less = wait for as long as the shop is open. Live.
MinRouteMeters 150 Prefer an exit at least this far from where he appears. Next merchant.
PreferRoads true Route the walk along the roadside points (the vanilla caravanner's spots) so he follows a curving road instead of striking off cross-country; where the chain finds nothing he uses the old straight-corridor route. false = corridor-only. Next merchant.
RoadHopMeters 120 PreferRoads: the longest hop between consecutive roadside points in the chained route. Too small and a sparse stretch breaks the chain; too large and it can jump between parallel roads. Next merchant.
DefendsHimself true Fights back against bandits (never you). false = fully passive. Next merchant.
GreetRadius 4 Stops and faces a player this close (metres); 0 = never stops (dialogue still holds him). Live.
GreetResumeSeconds 3 Walks on this long after the last player leaves. Live.
Protected true The player side (weapons, lock-on, pets, allies) cannot hurt or target him; bandits can. Next merchant.
RaidChance 0.75 Chance (0–1) that bandits raid him during the walk. Next merchant.
RaidMin / RaidMax 2 / 3 How many raiders; each counts against [Wave] MaxOwnActive. Next merchant.
RaidTriggerMeters 90 The raid springs when a player is this close (0 = by delay only). Live.
RaidDelaySeconds 120 The raid springs this long after his spawn regardless (0 = by proximity only). Live.
[Placement] MinDistanceMeters 40 Closest a creature may appear.
MaxDistanceMeters 200 Farthest a creature may appear.
PathLengthRatioMax 1.8 Reject a spot whose walking distance exceeds this multiple of its straight-line distance.
RequireOutOfSight true Only place where geometry blocks your view.
SightCheckAllPlayers true In co-op, require the spot to be hidden from every player.
SourceOrder liveai,gatherpoints,squadpoints,interactables,procedural Anchor sources to try, in order.
EnableInteractableAnchors true Use world interactables (gatherables, chests) as anchors.
MaxCandidatesPerWave 24 Ceiling on candidate spots verified per wave (a frame-cost guard).
PlateauProbeRadius 1.0 Half-width of the flat-ground check. Bigger = stricter.
[Species] WarmOnly true Only spawn species already resident. Turning this off makes ambushes hitch.
PrewarmCount 3 How many of the region's species to warm in the background.
PrewarmIntervalSeconds 20 Gap between background prewarms.
PrewarmHoldInCombat true Hold a background prewarm harvest while the player is in combat. Bounded by PrewarmHoldMaxSeconds.
PrewarmHoldWorstFrameMs 500 Hold a prewarm while ForgeKit's [ALIVE] heartbeat has seen a frame longer than this in the current or last 10 s window — usually the previous harvest's own stall, so harvests are spaced by measured cost. 0 disables.
PrewarmHoldMaxSeconds 120 Longest CONTINUOUS stretch the two holds may delay a prewarm; past it the harvest goes anyway (a pet keeps InCombat true, and WarmOnly makes a cold roster a silent region). 0 = hold forever.
HarvestLoadingPriority (empty); the shared overlay pins Low since 2026-09-13 EXPERIMENTAL. Empty leaves Unity's Application.backgroundLoadingPriority alone (the shipped behaviour). Low/BelowNormal/Normal/High set it for the width of ONE background prewarm harvest and restore it immediately — a smaller worst frame in exchange for a longer harvest, if the engine cooperates.
ExtraBlocklist (empty) Comma-separated species never to spawn, appended to the built-in list of named story NPCs and set-piece bosses. Case-insensitive substring match.
[Coop] AnnounceQuietRoads false Host-only. Show the player one toast per region when a co-op encounter is refused because a peer cannot show the species yet ("The roads are quiet — a companion's world is still warming"). Off by default: the host log line names the species and the cold peers either way. How strict the gate itself is lives in SpawnKit's [Coop] RoomWarmMode.
[FarCache] Enabled true Park a creature nobody is near (silent despawn, position/facing/health remembered) and put it back when a player returns, so an abandoned wave stops holding a [Wave] MaxOwnActive slot for the rest of the zone visit.
DespawnRadius 120 Park when every player is farther than this (metres).
RestoreRadius 80 Put it back when any player comes within this of the parked spot. Clamped in code to at most 0.8 × DespawnRadius (the hysteresis that stops park/restore flapping).
MaxEntries 24 Ledger cap; past it the oldest parked creature is forgotten.
MaxAgeMinutes 20 Forget a parked creature after this long (0 = never).
ParkMidFightBeyond 0 The only way to park a creature that is fighting: a hard distance past which even an active fight parks. 0 = never. See Roads feel too persistent — this knob exists because until 2026-08-30 the "never park a fight" rule silently never worked. Values below DespawnRadius are raised to it.
[Notify] ShowToast true On-screen message when a wave arrives.
ToastMinGapSeconds 30 Minimum gap between toasts.
ToastBearing true Name the compass direction in the toast.
[Compass] ShowBlips true Mark this mod's live spawns on the HUD compass.
BlipRangeMeters 250 Stop marking a creature past this distance.
BlipColor #FF3B30 Blip colour, #RRGGBB or #RRGGBBAA.
ShowMerchantBlip true The wandering merchant's green compass dot, any distance, independent of ShowBlips. Live.
MerchantBlipColor #34C759 The merchant dot's colour; drawn 1.4× a hostile blip. Unparseable = green. Live. Also colours the other friendly dots.
ShowFriendlyBlips true Green dots for every other event friendly (patrol guards, rescue strangers), any distance, while alive and shield-enrolled. Live.
[Diag] LogVerbose false One log line per placement candidate with its full verdict chain.
LedgerAutoDumpSeconds 300 Auto-print the anchor-source measurement table this often (0 = never).
[Keys] ForceWaveKey (unbound) Force a wave immediately. Ships unbound on purpose — keys are a cross-mod resource.

Example configuration

[General]
Enabled = true

[Schedule]
MinIntervalSeconds = 20
MaxIntervalSeconds = 60
FirstArmDelaySeconds = 60

[Wave]
MinCount = 1
MaxCount = 3
SkipWhileInCombat = true

[Events]
DeckEnabled = true
AmbushWeight = 1.0
MerchantWeight = 0.35
MerchantCooldownSeconds = 600
# Merchants keep to daylight; the stranger only turns up once you've joined a faction.
MerchantWhen = day
StrangerWhen = faction:BlueChamber | faction:HeroicKingdom | faction:HolyMission

[Merchant]
Health = 900
WalkSpeed = 0.5
StuckSeconds = 90
# Never vanish out from under an open shop panel; give up waiting after three minutes.
DespawnDeferSeconds = 180
RaidChance = 0.75

[Placement]
MinDistanceMeters = 40
MaxDistanceMeters = 200

[Species]
ExtraBlocklist = Wolfgang Veteran,Wolfgang Mercenary

[Coop]
# Testers: announce a co-op encounter refused because a guest is still warming (one toast per region).
AnnounceQuietRoads = false

[FarCache]
DespawnRadius = 120
RestoreRadius = 80
# 0 = a creature that is fighting is never parked, however far you run. Set a distance (try 2-3x
# DespawnRadius) if you would rather a fight you have left behind quietly ends.
ParkMidFightBeyond = 0

[Notify]
ShowToast = true

[Compass]
ShowBlips = true
ShowMerchantBlip = true
MerchantBlipColor = #34C759

Commands

Write a verb into BepInEx/config/DangerousRoads_cmd.txt and it runs on the next poll, even while the game is paused. Results go to BepInEx/LogOutput.log. An unknown verb — or help — lists them all.

Verb What it does
roadsstatus Director state: region, gate verdict, time to next wave, roster and warm counts, last wave.
roadsroster Every species considered for this region: source, faction, blocked, expedition-only, warm.
roadsfactions Harvest species→faction from the loaded scene and its reserve squads, then print anything new. Spawns nothing.
roadsledger Per-region, per-source candidate counts, accept rates and reject histogram. roadsledger reset clears it.
roadsanchors [n] Run the whole anchor chain now and print every candidate with its verdict chain. Spawns nothing.
roadssquadpoints Raw census of the game's own wandering-squad spawn points in this scene.
roadsprobe [x y z] Run the verification pipeline on one point and print every stage. No arguments = where you stand.
roadsmark Pick the best anchor right now, log it and draw a marker ray. Spawns nothing.
roadsnow [count] [species…] Force a wave immediately, through the real pipeline.
roadscard slumbush [count= demand= loot= radius=] Force the Levant shakedown here and now (any zone).
roadscard alpha [species= size= damage= health=] Force an alpha here and now. The three numbers are percentages and a negative one scales down; absent keys use [Alpha].
roadsdeck [draw\|<id> [key=value…]] The event deck: the world it was last built for, which cards joined (ok) or sat out (SITS OUT — needs …), live weights, cooldowns, last draw. draw forces a draw; <id> (ambush, merchant, …) forces that card even if it would have sat out (the log says so), with the same optional keys as roadscard.
roadscard [id] [key=value…] Force one card with optional overrides; every key is optional, so roadscard merchant is a plain draw of the merchant and roadscard alone is a real deck draw. Merchant: exit=<n from roadsexits> dest=<exit-name substring> health= protection= damage=<mult> speed= defends=true\|false at=here (spawn in front of you) name= raid=0\|1 (forbid/force the bandit raid) raiders=<n> raidspecies=<key> outfit=<n> (pin an outfit from the pool) protected=true\|false. Ambush: count= species=. Alpha: species=<key> size=<percent> damage=<percent> health=<percent>. An unknown key is warned and ignored; an exit/dest that names nothing is refused.
roadsmerchant [status\|spawn [key=value…]\|despawn\|rescue\|raid\|goto <exit>] The wandering merchant: where he is (walk, greet pause, raid state) / put one on the road now (same keys as roadscard merchant) / remove him / fake the rescue so the thanks greeting shows / spring the bandit raid now / re-route him to an exit index from roadsexits.
roadscard burac [state= bandits= at= health= floor=] Force Burac at the gates. state=A\|B\|C (or Unresolved\|Saved\|Razed) stages a questline state without writing anything to your save; at=here puts it in front of you instead of at the gate.
roadsburac [status\|spawn [key=value…]\|flee\|pay\|despawn] Burac: where he stands, his health and retreat threshold, how many bandits are left and who has been paid / stage one now / force the retreat by hand / fire the farewell row for yourself / remove him (the bandits are ordinary spawns — roadssweep).
roadsexits Census of this scene's zone exits: index, destination, distance and bearing from you.
roadsstock Which live merchant in the scene carries the caravan stock table the road merchant copies.
roadsarm Arm the director so the next wave is due immediately.
roadsdisarm Stop the ambush timer until the next region change.
roadswarm <species> Queue a species for background prewarm now.
roadssweep [kill] Despawn every creature this mod spawned. kill kills them instead (death animation and loot). The panic button.
roadsui [depth] Dump the live HUD hierarchy and report whether a compass was found.
roadsblips Compass blip status: compass found, HUDs hooked, blips live (hostile and merchant counted separately).
selftest Run the built-in checks and log a pass/fail report.

The shared ForgeKit command pack answers on this channel too, so reloadcfg, teleport, pos, settime, scenedump and the rest are available here as well.

When a card may join the deck

Drawing a card is two steps. First the mod takes one snapshot of the world — game hour, night or day, rain, the region you are in, your story faction (Blue Chamber / Heroic Kingdom / Holy Mission / none) and the quest flags you hold — and asks every card whether it wants to be in the deck right now. Only the cards that said yes are shuffled; the rest sit out, take no share of the roll and burn no cooldown. A card that sits out can leave the ambush alone in the deck, in which case no roll is pulled at all — a night-time deck with a daytime-only merchant is byte-identical to the mod before the deck existed.

Each card's rule is the [Events] <Card>When line in BepInEx/config/cobalt.dangerousroads.cfg. Empty means always. The grammar is small enough to fit on one line:

Term Holds when
always always (the same as leaving the line empty)
night / day the game says it is night (22:00–05:00 in vanilla) / is not
hour=20-6 the game clock is in the window — start inclusive, end exclusive, wraps midnight
rain>0.5 / rain<0.2 rain intensity (0–1) at least / below the number
flag:<quest event> you hold that quest event (story progression). A name — flag:Vendavel_Succeeded — or a raw UID
near:<landmark>@<metres> you are within that many metres of a named landmark. cierzo-gate is the only one so far; a region that has no such landmark counts as infinitely far, so the card sits out
flagage:<flag>>H / flagage:<flag><H more / fewer than H game hours since that quest event was activated. Only the game's timed events carry an activation time; every other flag fails this term in both directions
flagstack:<flag>>=N that quest event's counter is at least N
faction:<name> your story faction contains the text: BlueChamber, HeroicKingdom, HolyMission, None
region:<text> the current area's name contains the text
zone:overworld / zone:city / zone:dungeon the kind of place you are in (the game's town/city flag; every other mapped non-overworld area counts as a dungeon)
roomwarm:<name>[,<name>…] co-op only, no-op solo: at least one of the named species is warm on EVERY peer in the room (ANY not ALL — a card names every species it could spawn) — lets a body-spawning card sit the draw out on a cold room instead of winning the roll and refusing at spawn time. !roomwarm:X negates it

Join terms with & (all must hold) and | (any may hold); ! in front of a term negates it. & binds looser than |, so night & rain>0.3 | flag:X reads as night, and either rain or the flag. Whitespace is free.

[Events]
MerchantWhen = day & rain<0.5
PatrolWhen = !night | faction:HeroicKingdom
StrangerWhen = flag:SomeQuestEventUID & region:Chersonese

A line that does not parse is logged once ([EVENT] [Events] merchantWhen '…' does not parse: …) and the card is treated as always eligible — a typo never makes a card silently vanish. roadsdeck prints the world the deck was last built for and, per card, the rule and why it sat out; reloadcfg picks up an edited rule without a relaunch.

For modders

DangerousRoads is a thin director on top of SpawnKit — it decides when and where, and SpawnKit does the spawning. Two pieces are worth knowing if you build something similar:

  • It does its own placement and passes an explicit world position to SpawnKit, rather than using SpawnKit's spawn-beside-the-player ring, which is a near-field tool.
  • It owns its spawns by tag, so roadssweep cleans up exactly its own creatures and never another consumer's. A mod must never call SpawnKit's operator-wide despawn.

Its species roster is derived from DonorKit's donor-scene table, the same roster SpawnKit uses.

The event deck is built in two objects, on purpose. WorldSnapshot (an immutable value the director captures once per draw through WorldProbe) is handed to every card's ICardCondition (Specification pattern — leaves like HourWindow, QuestFlagCondition; composites AllOf / AnyOf / Not; Always as the null object; CardCondition.Parse is the config interpreter). EligibleDeck.Build(cards, world) is the builder that asks each card and keeps the refusals with their reason; EventDeck.Draw then rolls over what joined and knows nothing about the world. A card gets a code-level rule through IEventCard.Condition (ANDed with the operator's When text), so a story card can insist on its own plot flag without a config line. All of it except WorldProbe is in core/DangerousRoads.Core/ and unit-tested.

See also