Installation

1. Install Heartwood from the mod database

All Heartwood ecosystem mods are published on the Vintage Story mod database.

Search for and install:

1. Heartwood — install this first (required dependency)
2. Wingspan — optional, for birds and birdwatching
3. Fauna — optional, for land animal ecosystems
4. Settlement — optional, for NPC villages

You can install any combination of Wingspan, Fauna, and Settlement — they are independent of each other.

2. Install the Heartwood server

The ecosystem server is a standalone Go binary that runs on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Download it from the mod database and place it anywhere on your system.

On Linux and Mac, mark it executable first:

chmod +x heartwood-server

3. Start the server

See Server Setup for startup options and configuration.

4. Launch Vintage Story

Start your world normally. Heartwood will connect to the server automatically on startup. Check the server console — you should see a handshake message when VS connects.

If the server is unreachable, VS will log a warning and run normally without ecosystem features. You can start the server at any time and Heartwood will reconnect on the next heartbeat.