Hearth Folk

Created by LanternWarden.

Build a hearth. Welcome a little crew. Give them a place to call home.

Hearth Folk adds five small animal companions who work around your Bondstone, carry supplies home, gain experience and sit down together when it is time to rest.

Meet your crew

• Rivet, the rat: gathers exposed ore, digs three-high spiral staircases and cuts straight strip tunnels.
• Chipper, the beaver: harvests suitable natural trees and carries the wood home.
• Clover, the rabbit: plants, harvests and tends crops with her watering bucket. She will not trample your farmland.
• Fern, the fennec: protects you with his bow and bee jar, or follows a patrol route you mark out.
• Brook, the otter: fishes from reachable dry banks. His talents can unlock sealed river bundles with supplies inside.

A little guild of your own

Choose Work, Follow or Stay. Each companion has simple everyday job controls, with detailed settings under More options. Their overview shows energy, current activity and a helpful next step when something is missing or blocked.

Companions gain levels through work and learn talents that shape their role. Jobs spend energy. Feed a favorite snack for a top-up, or let the crew return home to recover. Optional woven resting mats craft from one matching wool block and give them a cozy place to sit.

The Bondstone welcomes companions, holds planting supplies and receives deliveries. Awake companions can also lend a paw with nearby manual doors and gates left open, waiting until the passage is clear before closing them.

Getting started

1. Obtain a crafting table to receive the Field Guide. A book and any sapling craft a replacement.
2. Follow its illustrated crafting recipe to make a Bondstone, then place it with clear space around it.
3. Open Companions, gather the displayed offerings and choose Summon.
4. Give your companion reachable work and leave room in the Bondstone for deliveries. Clover needs planting supplies too.

You can welcome one of each companion per player. The Bondstone's ? button opens the guide whenever you need it.

Requirements

Minecraft Java Edition 26.2 · Fabric · Java 25

• Fabric Loader 0.19.5 or newer.
• Fabric API for Minecraft 26.2; tested with 0.161.0+26.2.
• Install Hearth Folk and Fabric API on both the server and every client for multiplayer.
• LambDynamicLights is optional for Rivet's moving headlamp illumination. No animation library is required.

Public beta — feedback welcome

This is an early public testing build. Please leave feedback and bug reports in the project comments. Unusual terrain, tight entrances, crowded rooms and other mods can still reveal rough edges. Back up worlds you care about before testing this beta. If something gets stuck, include the mod version, companion, order, current activity, energy and a screenshot of the work site or route.

The game code and artwork in this build passed a local two-player dedicated-server check covering ownership, door/gate synchronization, reconnects and saved progress through a server restart. Internet latency, large servers and every modpack are not covered by that local check.

Credits

Code and custom assets use the MIT license. Included CC0 sounds are credited to Kenney and Zabuhailo. Minecraft resources and platform dependencies retain their respective terms. The download includes detailed credits and asset-source notes, including AI-assisted artwork history.