Mods / Taxidermy
- Tags:
- Author:
- Calminaion
- Side:
- Both
- Created:
- Sep 21st at 8:51 PM
- Last modified:
- 3 days ago
- Downloads:
- 993
-
Recommended download (for Vintage Story 1.22.0 - 1.22.7):
taxidermy_1.0.3.zip 1-click install
Taxidermy
Mount the animals you hunt - the whole animal in a pose of your choosing, or the head on the wall
Game version
1.22 or later
Other mods needed
None
Install on
Server + every client
Fauna of the Stone Age: for their animals - every module - add the companion mod Taxidermy Patches.
Butchering: works alongside it - a head or an animal's own pelt comes from field harvesting only, not from butchering. See Server settings below.
Before you take Taxidermy out of a world: pick your placed mounts up first. Heads come back when you put the mod back in - while it is out, a head on the ground or on an antler mount is invisible but still there. Placed mounts do not: they show as the game's question-mark block, and when Taxidermy returns the animal is gone - the same as any modded block with its own data. Mounts kept as items come back with everything.
Part 1
For Players
Hunt it, preserve it, stuff it, display it - plus the server settings for admins.
What It Does
Every animal you can harvest can end up on display: a hare on the mantelpiece, a rearing bear on a stand you chiselled yourself, a stag's head over the door. The mounts are the game's own animal models frozen in one of their own animations, so a mounted wolf looks exactly like the living one did - same coat, same antlers, same everything.
Every harvestable land animal
Hare, fox, raccoon, wolf, hyena, all five bears, the pigs, sheep, all the goats, gazelle, every deer including the elk, moose, chickens - and the drifter, shiver and bowtorn.
Hare, fox, raccoon, wolf, hyena, all five bears, the pigs, sheep, all the goats, gazelle, every deer including the elk, moose, chickens - and the drifter, shiver and bowtorn.
Poses from the animals' own animations
Standing, sitting, lying, sleeping, and a signature pose or two for each: a bear rears up, a wolf howls, a stag calls, a fox sniffs, a rooster crows.
Standing, sitting, lying, sleeping, and a signature pose or two for each: a bear rears up, a wolf howls, a stag calls, a fox sniffs, a rooster crows.
It keeps what made that animal that animal
Species, type and gender, its coat (a pale wolf stays pale, a polar bear white), and the antlers, horns or tusks it was wearing when it died.
Species, type and gender, its coat (a pale wolf stays pale, a polar bear white), and the antlers, horns or tusks it was wearing when it died.
A pelt of its own for every animal
By default an animal's hide comes as its own pelt (server settings can switch this off), cut from its own coat: a whitetail's, a wolf's in that wolf's colours, a drifter's grey skin, a hen's feathers. It oils, salts, soaks and cures like any hide, showing each stage the way the game's own hides do, works in the game's own hide recipes by its size, and turns back into a plain hide in the crafting grid whenever you want one. Foxes, raccoons and bears keep the game's own pelts.
By default an animal's hide comes as its own pelt (server settings can switch this off), cut from its own coat: a whitetail's, a wolf's in that wolf's colours, a drifter's grey skin, a hen's feathers. It oils, salts, soaks and cures like any hide, showing each stage the way the game's own hides do, works in the game's own hide recipes by its size, and turns back into a plain hide in the crafting grid whenever you want one. Foxes, raccoons and bears keep the game's own pelts.
Sew it together where it will stand
Lay the preserved head on the ground, add its pelt and dry grass, and sew it with a bone needle and thread you make yourself - the mount is finished right where it lies. Or put it all together in the crafting grid.
Lay the preserved head on the ground, add its pelt and dry grass, and sew it with a bone needle and thread you make yourself - the mount is finished right where it lies. Or put it all together in the crafting grid.
Heads on the wall
A preserved head hangs on the game's own antler mounts, any style, any wood.
A preserved head hangs on the game's own antler mounts, any style, any wood.
A head you do not want to mount
Skin a raw head on the ground with a knife: what you manage to cut from it - a small raw hide, bushmeat, fat and bones, each with an even chance of a slip ruining it - drops where the head was, and a stag's antlers, a goat's horns or a boar's tusks come off whole. A drifter, shiver or bowtorn head gives flax fibres instead of meat and fat.
Skin a raw head on the ground with a knife: what you manage to cut from it - a small raw hide, bushmeat, fat and bones, each with an even chance of a slip ruining it - drops where the head was, and a stag's antlers, a goat's horns or a boar's tusks come off whole. A drifter, shiver or bowtorn head gives flax fibres instead of meat and fat.
Stands you build yourself
A mount sits on whatever is under it: put it on a chiselled block or a slab and it stands on the cut surface, at that height.
A mount sits on whatever is under it: put it on a chiselled block or a slab and it stands on the cut surface, at that height.
An adjust window for every mount and hung head
Pose, position, rotation and tilt, each one separately, so three bears in a row can all be different - and whether its selection box moves with the animal, handy for packed dioramas.
Pose, position, rotation and tilt, each one separately, so three bears in a row can all be different - and whether its selection box moves with the animal, handy for packed dioramas.
Fauna of the Stone Age
Every module, with the companion mod Taxidermy Patches: their heads and mounts, each stuffed with that module's own pelt, in their own creative tab.
Every module, with the companion mod Taxidermy Patches: their heads and mounts, each stuffed with that module's own pelt, in their own creative tab.
Other animal mods can join in
With one JSON file - see the For Modders section below.
With one JSON file - see the For Modders section below.
The Process
1
Harvest the carcassUse a knife as you always do. Along with the meat, half the time there is the animal's head - or every time, with a setting. By default its hide is its own pelt, cut from its coat: one per animal, the drifter, shiver, bowtorn and chickens included. Server settings can change this - see Server Settings below.
2
Preserve it in a barrel1 litre of diluted borax for 18 hours, or zinc sulfate for 12. The same treatment the game gives a fish.
3
Hang it - or stuff it
Hang it
A preserved head goes straight onto an antler mount.
A preserved head goes straight onto an antler mount.
Stuff it
Sew the preserved head + a pelt + dry grass together with a needle and thread. This makes a mount of the whole animal - in the crafting grid, or on the ground where it will stand.
Sew the preserved head + a pelt + dry grass together with a needle and thread. This makes a mount of the whole animal - in the crafting grid, or on the ground where it will stand.
Which pelt and how much grass
- Which pelt a head takes depends on the server's settings. Check the preserved head's tooltip - it lists exactly what that head needs, sex included: "Mount pelt: Wolf pelt (male)".
- Default (AnimalOwnPelts and MobOwnPelts on): a head is stuffed with a pelt of its own kind, sex and coat - a whitetail buck's head takes a whitetail buck's pelt, a pale wolf's head a pale wolf's, a drifter's a drifter's. Every pelt is cut from the animal's own colours, so you can see which pelt goes with which head.
- If the server turns them off: the head is stuffed with a plain pelt of its size instead - the game's own hide-pelt, not the animal's own. A head follows the setting, switching the next time it is picked up or put in the crafting grid. Pelts you already made still work.
- Foxes, raccoons and bears always take the game's own pelt of their kind, whatever the settings (a polar bear's whole, or with the head cut off).
- The pelt is the size that animal drops, and the size sets the grass - and the stitches it takes from the needle:
| Small 2 grass, 2 stitches |
Medium 4 grass, 4 stitches |
Large 6 grass, 6 stitches |
Huge 8 grass, 8 stitches |
- Only the right pelt is accepted, in the grid or on the ground, and the preserved head's tooltip tells you which.
- A pelt is cured the game's way: its raw hide with rendered fat, left 48 hours.
Two ways to sew it
In the crafting grid
The preserved head, the pelt, the dry grass and the needle and thread. You get the mount as an item, to place where you like.
The preserved head, the pelt, the dry grass and the needle and thread. You get the mount as an item, to place where you like.
In the world
Put the preserved head on the ground and right-click it with its pelt, then right-click with dry grass until it has enough. Hold right-click with the needle and thread to sew it into the finished mount, right where it lies. Until it is sewn, breaking it gives every part back.
Put the preserved head on the ground and right-click it with its pelt, then right-click with dry grass until it has enough. Hold right-click with the needle and thread to sew it into the finished mount, right where it lies. Until it is sewn, breaking it gives every part back.
The needle and thread
- In the crafting grid, a knife, a bone and flax twine make a threaded bone needle in one go. A knife and a bone alone still make the game's flute.
- On the ground: put a bone down and hold right-click on it with a knife, then put the bare needle down and hold right-click on it with flax twine. Sneak + knife on a bone still carves the game's flute.
- A needle holds 60 stitches. When the thread runs out you get the bare needle back - thread it again with flax twine, in the grid or on the ground.
4
Place the mountRight-click to place it. It faces you. A mount sewn on the ground is already in place, facing the way its pile lay. From there it is all in the adjust window, below.
Recipes are in the handbook's "Taxidermy: User Guide" page. Every step is there. Heads and hides have one general page each - "Animal head", "Preserved animal head", "Animal pelt" and the other hide stages - rather than one for every animal. Each animal's mount has its own page, with its recipe and a note on which pelt it needs. A recipe can only show the pelt by its kind, so match it by look: the same animal, sex and coat as the head. The preserved head's tooltip names it.
Poses, Turning And Adjusting
| Sneak + right-click empty hand, on a mount |
Opens the adjust window: pick the pose from the list, nudge it left/right, up/down and back/forward, turn it, tilt it. Changes apply as you make them and everyone sees them. |
| Right-click empty hand, on a mount |
Picks the mount up, with everything remembered. |
| Box follows animal switch in the window |
Off: the mount's selection box stays on its block, so animals packed close together each keep their own. On: it moves with the animal as you nudge it. |
| Claimed land | Adjusting or picking up a mount needs build permission there - anyone else gets the game's usual claim message and no window. |
Available poses - every animal has standing, sitting, lying and sleeping. Then:
Bears
rear up, graze
rear up, graze
Wolves
howl, snarl, eat
howl, snarl, eat
Deer, moose, goats, sheep, pigs
call, graze
call, graze
Hares, foxes, hyenas
sniff
sniff
Raccoons
gather, eat
gather, eat
Hens and roosters
peck, crow
peck, crow
Drifters
crawl, attack, despair, cry
crawl, attack, despair, cry
Shivers
bite, headbutt, grapple
bite, headbutt, grapple
Bowtorns
turret stance, load, stab, contort
turret stance, load, stab, contort
Heads On The Wall
Craft any of the game's antler mounts - square, diamond or shield, in any wood - put it on a wall and right-click it with a preserved head. The head hangs facing out into the room, neck buried in the plaque, antlers and all.
- Sneak + right-click the mount with an empty hand to open the same adjust window (position, rotation, tilt).
- Right-click with an empty hand to take the head down.
- The adjustment is kept on the head itself, so a head you have set just right stays right wherever you hang it next.
- Set down on the ground instead, a head rests the way it would settle, its neck going into the ground - which is also where a raw head is skinned.
Setting a mount up in the window - every change lands as you make it
The same window on a hung head - position, rotation and tilt
Stands
There is deliberately no base under a mount. It stands on the block beneath it, whatever that is: a full block, a slab, or a chiselled block cut to any height - the mount sinks to the cut surface. Chisel the stand after placing the mount and it follows. Build plinths, shelves and pedestals the way you want them.
Screenshots
Different poses and auto height detection for slabs/chiseled blocks
Heads hung on the game's own antler mounts
Horns come with the head - whatever the animal was wearing when it died
Coats carry through the whole process, so each animal stays the one you hunted
In world crafting
Handbook guide
Server Settings For admins
Edit ModConfig/TaxidermyConfig.json on the server, or change it in game through Integrated Mod Manager, ConfigKit or ConfigLib. Every setting belongs to the server, so only an admin can change it, and a change takes effect at once. There are eight switches.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
AlwaysHeadAndHide"Always drop the head and a hide" |
false | On: every animal you harvest gives its head and at least one hide, whatever else is installed - use this if you are after a particular trophy rather than hunting for one. Off: a carcass gives its head half the time - never more than one; drifters, shivers and bowtorns by tier, from 10% for a normal one to 50% for nightmares and the special kinds. This is lowered the same way the game lowers its own hides: a player with the Kind trait gets a little less, a Resourceful one a little more, and Butchering's field harvest halves it. |
AnimalHeads"Animals drop heads" |
true | Off: animals never give a head - AlwaysHeadAndHide included. |
MobHeads"Mobs drop heads" |
true | Off: mobs never give a head - AlwaysHeadAndHide included. Mobs are the drifter, shiver and bowtorn, and anything another mod tags as a mob. Together with AnimalHeads, a server can keep animal trophies and leave the drifters' heads out, or the other way round. |
OnePeltPerAnimal"Exactly one hide per animal" |
true | On: every animal gives exactly one hide - a wolf that would drop two gives one, and a drifter, shiver, bowtorn or chicken, which drop none in the game, gives one too (for the mobs, only if the mob switches below allow a hide), as does a carcass Butchering left without. Off: the game's own amount - two or three for some animals - and the mobs and chickens, which have none in the game, give one at the same chance as their head (half the time for chickens), lowered the same way. |
AntlersOnHead"Antlers stay on the head" |
true | On: when a carcass gives its head, the antlers, horns or tusks the game would have put in the harvest stay on the head instead, and come off whole when you skin it - no head, and the carcass gives them as usual. Off: the carcass always gives them, the game's way, and skinning a head gives none. Either way you never get them twice. |
AnimalOwnPelts"Animals drop their own pelts" |
true | On: every plain hide an animal gives is its own pelt instead, cut from its own coat - so its pelts come at exactly the rate its hides would. Off: the game's own hides, and every head is stuffed with a plain pelt of its size instead - a head follows this setting, switching the next time it is picked up or put in the grid, and its tooltip lists what it needs. Pelts already made stay and still work. Foxes, raccoons and bears always give the game's own pelt of their kind. |
MobOwnPelts"Mobs drop their own pelts" |
true | The same as AnimalOwnPelts, for the drifter, shiver and bowtorn - and any creature another mod tags as a mob. Off: they give no hide at all, as in the game - unless MobVanillaHides is on. |
MobVanillaHides"Mobs drop the game's plain hides" |
false | On: a mob can give the game's plain hide of its size - used when its own pelt is off. With both mob switches off, mobs never give a hide, whatever the two switches above say. |
Compatibility & Good To Know
If you run Butchering
The two work together, with one thing to know: a head only comes from field harvesting, the normal knife harvest where the animal falls. Carrying the carcass home and butchering it there gives you that mod's meat and offal but no head, because it pays out of its own tables, which this mod has no part in.
- Use whichever you want for each animal: field harvest the ones you want a trophy from, butcher the rest.
- Butchering gives a field harvest half the game's usual drops, and this mod follows it: the head's chance is halved too. The hide is not - with OnePeltPerAnimal on, as it is out of the box, every animal still gives one.
- The simplest setup is AlwaysHeadAndHide on - then a field harvest always gives the head and a hide, and it is your choice which animals you take home to butcher instead.
- The animals' own pelts come from field harvesting too, and Butchering's skinning gives its usual plain hide. That is a deliberate choice, for compatibility and for clear gameplay - one route gives the trophy and the pelt, the other gives Butchering's meat and offal, and neither mod has to reach into the other's rewards.
If an animal's mod is removed
A mount of an animal the game no longer knows cannot be drawn, so it shows a marked block instead of empty air, and breaking it destroys it rather than giving you an item that could never be used again. Put that mod back and the mounts return exactly as they were - nothing about them is lost while they stand there. So if you are only testing, leave the marked blocks alone.
If you run Window Display
The bone needle and the needle and thread sit on its windows, lying along the sill.
If you run Smithing Plus
That mod treats any item whose code contains "head" as a metal tool head, so it used to give a head a "Workable Temperature" line and let it go in a forge. Taxidermy takes those tags back off its heads, so they behave as heads again.
Performance
A placed mount or a hung head is static geometry like any block - nothing runs per frame. The first time your game draws a given animal, coat and pose it builds the mesh once and copies that animal's texture into the block texture atlas; both are then reused. That copy is the only cost worth knowing about: each texture used takes a little atlas space on your own client, only for what you have actually seen, and the game adds atlas pages as needed. The whole vanilla roster in every coat is a fraction of one page.
Part 2
For Modders
Add your own animals with one JSON file - no patches, no code, and no dependency entry.
Heads, mounts, poses, pelts of their own, skinning drops and mount recipes are all set in that one file.
The guide for modders
Everything is in the Taxidermy modder guide on GitHub - a quick start with a copy-and-edit example, every field, what skinning a head gives, the three ways to give your animal its pelt, and how to ship it all with your mod.
View My Other Mods
Recommended Mods
A note on how this was made. AI was used in the creation of this mod - in the code, the JSON, and the text on this page (images were made by me). The design, the decisions and every test in game are mine, and the only game source it was ever pointed at is Vintage Story's public GitHub repositories. If something is wrong, it is mine to fix - report it and I will.
| Mod Version | Mod Identifier | For Game version | Downloads | Released | Changelog | Download | 1-click mod install* |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.0.3 | taxidermy | 192 | 3 days ago | taxidermy_1.0.3.zip | 1-click install | ||
|
Changelog
Version 1.0.3Make the mount where it will stand with a needle and thread of your own - plus mob settings, a handbook guide and hides that stack Changed
Added
Fixed
| |||||||
| 1.0.2 | taxidermy | 425 | Sep 27th at 11:25 AM | taxidermy_1.0.2.zip | 1-click install | ||
Version 1.0.2The mobs by tier Changed
| |||||||
| 1.0.1 | taxidermy | 110 | Sep 26th at 1:30 PM | taxidermy_1.0.1.zip | 1-click install | ||
Version 1.0.1Every animal gets a pelt of its own Added
Changed
Fixed
| |||||||
| 1.0.0 | taxidermy | 266 | Sep 22nd at 4:52 PM | taxidermy_1.0.0.zip | 1-click install | ||
|
Initial Release | |||||||
Exactly what i was looking for few days ago and it was nowhere to be found. This mod is great. Sadly, it lowers my fps noticably, so i dont want to use it.
Can you give me more details? is it having a lot of the mounts/heads placed or is it just having the mod in general? In my testing I haven't noticed any drops and I have a lot of mounts and heads dotted about in a creative world for testing.
I dont have very good PC and on mid settings without shadows i get around 40 fps. And with this mod or with Wooden fortification mod or similiar mods, i launch the game and i notice it instantly, the fps is 10 down and it just runs worse overall. Might be my weak pc tho. If you dont see problem i wouldnt stress it too much
S-tier mod, very thought-through and fun!
Thank you, that is very kind of you
Great mod!
Though a bug I notice is placed heads sometimes turn into pelts visually when on the ground.
Thanks. The bug is fixed in the latest version
Since installing the patch, all head models were missing and now there are no heads dropping or even in the handbook.
Did you update the main mod aswell? Send client main and server main logs so I can see clearer
Sorry, when I say patch, I meant updating this mod from 1.0 to 1.0.1.
Same problems though.
Thanks for letting me know, I tested it and updating doesn't cause any loss or issues. If you send the log files then I will be able to see what the issue is and also check incase you have the old version in there aswell
Found this in the log:
26.9.2026 21:10:49 [Error] [taxidermy] An exception was thrown when trying to load assembly:
26.9.2026 21:10:49 [Error] [taxidermy] Exception: Could not load file or assembly 'taxidermy, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=null'. Assembly with same name is already loaded
at System.Runtime.Loader.AssemblyLoadContext.<LoadFromPath>g____PInvoke|5_0(IntPtr __ptrNativeAssemblyBinder_native, UInt16* __ilPath_native, UInt16* __niPath_native, ObjectHandleOnStack __retAssembly_native)
at System.Runtime.Loader.AssemblyLoadContext.<LoadFromPath>g____PInvoke|5_0(IntPtr __ptrNativeAssemblyBinder_native, UInt16* __ilPath_native, UInt16* __niPath_native, ObjectHandleOnStack __retAssembly_native)
at System.Reflection.Assembly.LoadFrom(String assemblyFile)
at System.Linq.Enumerable.ListSelectIterator`2.MoveNext()
at System.Linq.Enumerable.IEnumerableWhereIterator`1.ToList()
at Vintagestory.Common.ModContainer.LoadAssembly(ModCompilationContext compilationContext, ModAssemblyLoader loader) in VintagestoryLib\Common\API\ModContainer.cs:line 606
FIXED!!!
I had to go in VintagestoryData\Cache\unpack and delete the first version of the mod!
Glad to hear you got it sorted out now :)
Hi! Will this give me a head if I use Butchering mod? I will follow, hopefully there will be comparability and then I will absolutely add it on my server :3
It will work along side Butchering but heads can only be obtained by field harvesting.
Hi! So, I'm wondering if this would conflict with the Butchering mod.
It partially works, you can only get the head from field harvesting so would be best to change the HeadChance in Modconfig/TaxidermyConfig.json to 1 to guarantee a head.
Then you can field harvest when you want a head or the butchering when you want that stuff.
Oh, I'd say this is good enough. Thank you <3