Ok the bears

[shadou66]

I love this game. Unlike many of the folks here I'm not looking for a "knife in my teeth" Rambo style adventure.  I have zero interest in seeing how hard I can make the game.  I just want enough challenge to make things interesting as I explore my world and build my haven. And the dev's gave me exactly what I wanted.  There's so many custom options now that most people can tailor their experience right in the game plus fully developed modding tools and a truly superior modding community. Things were great, and then, there were bears.

I get it, bears are big and dangerous but come on.  I live in a rural area in the mountains.  We have brown bears, cougars, wolves, and coyotes all over the place here.  I've encountered a few bears and unless you're dumb enough to provoke one of them, they generally leave humans alone.  They might raid your garbage or go after your pets if they're really hungry. And, yes, they can climb pretty well but they're not scaling 12 foot fences, they're not up on the roof(although I did have a cougar on my roof once), not stamping around in farms, or camping anyone's front door.  

So, I'm fed up with the bears. I looked for a mod.  There's a mod for everything, for every block, creature, and mechanic there's a mod.  For bears there's 2.  One that unbelievably makes the bears harder (???serious adrenaline addiction there) and one, just one, that removes the bears from the game and it doesn't work.  Okay, I'll just bite the bullet and set the animals to non-aggressive, fine, not what I wanted but okay.  Just loaded into that new game and wham five minutes into the play-through dead by bear in the middle of a plain, at least 50 blocks from the nearest forest.  I'm done with these demonic bears.  So, where does that leave me.  Map settings don't work and there are no mods.  I'd have to go explorer and that's a little too casual even for me. 

So, I need some help.  I know nothing about coding but I so hate these obnoxious creatures that I'm willing to learn how to code just so I can deal with them.  Seriously, can someone tell me how to alter the code to divest me of these hell-spawn disguised as bears.  And to the kind folks who are going to explain how to avoid, trap, or kill the bears, I'm aware but I'm way past that now.  No, now it's genocide.  

[CalciferAtlas]

Best thing to do is to increase animal diversity and make bears much more rare. I don't see that happening any time soon unless the community asks for it more often.

[shadou66]

No way to just remove the spawners or just delete bears as an entity?

[dakko]

A long time ago, Tyron posted this in discord (I hope it helps): 

The line he references is now something like 392 (of the bear.json) if using Notepad++.

eta: There used to be easy ways to edit the animal .json to set maximum number generated to zero. It may still be there, but I didn't see it in a quick glance. Someone else may know.

 

Edited April 24, 2023 by dakko

[shadou66]

Oh, thanks.  This gives me good information on where to look and what to look for as well as explaining some of what can and can't be changed in animal behavior.

[Belrindor]

Maybe set seekingRange to 1 or something so you'd have to trip over it for it to come after you. This is in /assets/survival/entities/land/bear.json

[Belrindor]

Another option is to change the damage to something laughable, like from 15 to 0.025, and change the damage tier to 0. That way you can beat it to death with a granite spear, whilst it ineffectually tries to rawr and nom you. That might be a bit more fun if you really want to genocide the bears.

[Jon Coates]

While not necessarily getting rid of them, one simple solution I usually implement in general for various reasons is to buff player walk speed in world creation settings.  Setting it to either 1 or 2 settings above default (can't remember which at the moment) allows you to just barely be able to sprint away from hostile animals without them gaining on you.  If they are pathfinding around uneven terrain you can actually put additional distance between them and you. 

 

It still requires you to pay attention as they can easily catch up if you get caught on the terrain yourself.  Also, wolf lunges can still be dangerous so it isnt a full easy mode setting if you still want to retain some danger.  The biggest thing for me is it lets me NOPE! out of situations when I am not prepared for them.

 

This setting also lets me just travel faster in general which is half the reason I adjust it to begin with. Can't be limited to slow walk/run speeds when you are searching across several thousand blocks of distance because RNG hates you when it comes to stuff like limestone or bauxite lol (at least not when you have relatively limited playtime like I do).

[BearWrestler]

Oh gods, this again? When playing with my group of friends, I remember being incredibly frustrated by wolves spawning practically on top of us, inside the little cave we dug out to sleep in. We ended up never playing survival mode again. Now it seems bears are just making the problem worse.

Hope something is done with animal AI and spawn mechanics soon. Catching butterflies is cool and all and the latest update added some stuff I'm genuinely excited about, but I feel like major issues of this game get ignored for way too long.

Hope the devs think it fits within the "dejanking" category.

[Thorfinn]

According to a comment in @Rhonen 's excellent Medieval mod, things other than drifters spawning in your den is likely poor luck -- there was a spawn point that met the criteria for wolves somewhere in your den, and you drew the short straw. I've personally not experienced that, but I don't tend to leave a lot of empty space in my dwellings. What space there is is not likely spawnable surfaces -- cobblestone, path, etc.

Bears are more of a problem for livestreamers, I think. If you always run (suggestion: set run to toggle) you can pretty easily outrun bears, though you may have to bob and weave if you don't notice him until he is close enough to tag you once to start with. But far more disorienting to viewers is the habit of constantly jumping so you can see a little better over and through the bushes. Between those and the constantly moving "mouse look", my wife refuses to watch over my shoulder, as it makes her motion sick. But it does pretty much bear- and wolf- proof your game.

As a side-benefit, most of the copper I find I would not have noticed had I not been jumping at the time...

[Rhonen]

@Thorfinn
i think you mean this post of @Robert Milligan ?

Ye he confirmed, that there is a problem of spawning animals in closed rooms.

[Belrindor]

In editing mob attributes, I've noticed something I found kind of odd. Does anyone know whether or not a creature somehow retains the information it has 'at the time of spawning'?

In other words, say you change a bear's health to 10 and it's damage to 3 and it's damage tier to 0. And it spawned prior to your changes. Do mobs update when the world restarts, or do they keep their original attributes? Cuz that's what happened with a bear the other day when I tested this. On a brand new spawned world, all the mobs had the correct health, damage, etc. But on my existing (1.18.1) world, it seemed like some animals would be correctly updated and some would not, which led me to believe that creatures seem to not update from when they are spawned. (Dunno for sure, that's why I'm asking.)

In a separate but possibly connected thing, I've edited out the 'poison' part from mushrooms, and they work fine... raw, but when I cook them, they revert back to poisonous! lol!

This seems to also be tied into things that are pre-existing 'not updating.'

Does anyone know offhand how the updating (or lack thereof) with existing spawns and items work?

 

[Thorfinn]

I would guess they do not "update". That the current/max HP are stored in the creature entity record. No good reason to think that other than it would run faster and be easier to code. One wouldn't have to constantly look up how much the critter should heal up.

Poison, same thing. You have to find the object that is "cooked mushroom", whatever it is called, and change its character, too.

[Owktree]

Another option in the bear json file is remove "player" as one of their food sources.  If you get close they will still attack you, but they don't see you as something to chase and try to eat.  (Your livestock might still be out of luck.)

[shadou66]

Wow,

I go to work for a few days and I come back to a plethora of useful information.  Thanks to everyone for the input.  And, I'm glad to know I'm not the only one with bear woes.  Makes me feel a little less like a complete wimp.  Well, I guess its time to get to get busy.