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.

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|spawn|resolve|help|despawn], roadscard stranger [at=here count=<1|2> mobs=<n>]. Log tag [STRANGER] (the save write logs [SAVEHANDOFF]).

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.

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.
	AmbushWhen / MerchantWhen / PatrolWhen / StrangerWhen / SlumbushWhen	(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.
[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.
	HarvestLoadingPriority	(empty)	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).
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=. 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.
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 UID>	you hold that quest event (story progression)
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)

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

• Mods index
• Installing
• SpawnKit — the spawning engine underneath
• DonorKit — where the creature bodies come from
• Beastwhispering — works alongside it