Damage is ridiculous

[Theishiopian]

Pigs can easily deal enough damage to kill you in 3-ish hits. A spear takes 15 hits to kill one, or 6 hits when thrown. This is frankly stupid as hell. A pig nuzzling you aggressively is not enough to kill you in 3 hits, and a spear is not just a poking stick. 

I get that this is probably to enforce progression, but its really stupid and makes hunting virtually impossible at early levels. Damage absolutely NEEDS some kind of rework so that having a weapon makes you at least on par with random animals.

As a suggestion, a weapon of a specific type should always deal a certain amount of damage, say 10 for spears, with better materials offering better durability. Additionally, as a further incentive to upgrade, weapons with any sort of blade can be sharpened somehow to boost damage, giving a better damage boost for better materials (+1 for flint +2 for copper etc).

IMO, this is really the only major thing preventing this game from being fun to play, the rest is really great. But wolves and pigs are not super soldiers, and spears are not toothpicks, even stone ones.

[Tyron]

To be fair, they are wild boars and these are also dangerous to hunt in real life. At full player health with no nutrition health bonus, I survived 4 hits, though after the third hit i was left with 0.1 hp. So if you were at a good nutrition level and max health you'd survive up to 6 hits, i think?

It's true that with the worst possible spear you need 15 hits. Since their AI is pretty basic right now, high health is the only thing that makes them dangerous. You can 100% avoid attacks if you pillar up 2 blocks and hit the boar from above. Once that is fixed, lowering their health would surely make sense.

Changing the boars health should take you about 5 minutes to mod in, so if that's the only thing that prevents the game from being fun for you, why not adjust the game to your needs? The relevant location for that is assets/entities/land/pig-wild-male.json, line 41, set curenthealth and maxhealth to a lower value. Same for pig-wild-female.json

That being said, I'd appreciate if you discuss game mechanics in a respectful and constructive manner. Calling a game mechanic that I created "stupid as hell" is not exactly respectful.

 

[Theishiopian]

I apologize for my tone, I did not intend to come off as rude. I was angry at being killed 5 times in 5 minutes to a pig, which while lame, is no excuse for rudeness.

To be clear, I don't disagree that a boar is dangerous, I just think its silly that a spear, even a stone one, is little more than a pinprick to a creature half your size. It sounds like high health is only a stop gap until AI is improved, which is good to hear.

This game is a lot of fun, and I really do enjoy it, I just feel its combat is too imbalanced toward the animals at the moment. I appreciate you being open to at least listening, and I also appreciate the modding tip, I might take you up on that. 

[DrTenabrae]

The animals are really dangerous. The common tactic is to pillar up 2 blocks so they cant hit you and kill them from there. If you don't want to pillar, thrown spears are quite effective. You can also throw rocks, which kill a wolf in about 9 throws (rams take forever with rocks).

Animals are also dumb so you can lead them into pits or other traps (think Ark trapping if you've played Ark)

 

[Rhyagelle]

I really appreciate how dangerous the animals are. I can get frustrated with it sometimes, especially if I just walked so far away from base or spawn, but I always remember that if they weren't hard to fight, there would be no reward in killing them and I'd get disinterested in going after them altogether. I do agree there seems to be something with the animals though, but I think it has to do with their hitboxes rather than what it takes to kill them. It is harder to register hitting them but much, much easier for them to register hitting you, so they are far more accurate in clobbering you to death or, in the case of the boar--running you through Robert Baratheon style.

What I've learned to do with rams, which group and attack together, is to carry at least three spears. Throw, run ahead, throw, run ahead throw, circle around (while being charged) recollect spears and keeping going until they are dead. Another way of fighting them is to pillar up and stab or throw, but for the later you'd need to go down and recollect if they don't die by the time you are out. You can apply this to boars as well.

For wolves, I would suggest pillaring for sure, especially if you get caught out at night, or try to run it into a hole someplace and then just pelt it with spears and rocks as DrTenabrae said. They hit hard but they go down really fast.

[Asgarus]

Adding wounds to the game would make hunting (and fighting in general) more realistic and allow players with good aim to target weak spots.

Ram a spear into a boar's neck and it won't be able to chase you for long before dying or at least getting unconscious.
Hitting it or throwing stuff at it blindly will not do you much good and only enrage the animal if you are unlucky.

Edited November 24, 2019 by Asgarus

[Tyron]

Yea, I would reaaaallly like to add some status effects that'll give you some serious debuffs unless treated

[TeacupAngel]

Animals being so brutal was one of the things that sold me on the game when I started playing. I got absolutely destroyed by wolves in the first ten or so hours (being a new player stuck in a forest is rough), and it felt very refreshing to realise that perhaps in this game you aren't meant to pick every fight and win. It was honestly scarier than Amnesia The Dark Descent for me, desperately foraging for mushrooms not to starve while hearing howling far too close for comfort.

Unfortunately all this difficulty drops off a cliff once you realise how slow animals are, and then you can just keep kiting them with impunity and their tankiness unfortunately makes hunting a bit of a chore. The proper fix is better AI, as seems to be the plan, but perhaps making the animals faster could allow for lowering their health? It would certainly make kiting less of an option, at least.

[Tyron]

Good suggestions. How about making them just plain faster for the wilderness survival mode? Are you referring to wolves alone or other animals too?

[Theishiopian]

Wow, my angry rant became something productive! I'm liking the discussion here, particularly about wounds and better ai. I think I'd be ok with dying to a pig if I got outplayed. This is actually fun to read!