Too Many Spawns of the New Ranged Hostile Mob

[Thorfinn]

45 minutes ago, gomodo said:

an item that temporarily makes monsters flee (for example, something to eat)

Just damage does this. Get him down around a quarter of his HP ad he will flee. There's also a chance he will flee any time he takes damage. Bowtorn are ludicrously easy to herd into containment pits, and with a little thought and observation of the path their projectiles take, you can design something that lets you stab them without being hit by arrows. 

[gomodo]

38 minutes ago, Thorfinn said:

Just damage does this.

Yes I know, but we are talking about gameplay here to fight 20 Bowtorn.

Attack one, and the other 19 will kill you.

[Thorfinn]

Don't wait until there are 20. Or spend the time to figure out what kind of defenses foil their missiles but not yours. Or just run to get far enough away to despawn them. There's no more reason to kill surface bowtorn than there is to kill surface drifters.

And they are still ridiculously easy to herd -- they will strive to maintain effective missile range, so if you crowd them they will flee into whatever preps you have for them.

If anything bowtorn are too easy to deal with already. It's just that the old ways of dealing with drifters don't work. In many ways, they are the opposite of drifters -- dangerous at range, but pushovers if you can force them to melee. You have to expand your tactics.

[Zippy Wonderdust]

On 1/25/2025 at 4:18 AM, Kevin Eric Snell said:

At this point any time I see a bowtorn outside, I just switch on creative mode, with no guilt. By the way, as I was creative-moding away from my last bowtorn storm (because they never despawn unless move far away), I flew up north to explore a little, and when I switched back to survival mode to collect some wild plants, I started taking damage and hearing bowtorn noises.

It was from a bowtorn that had spawned below me in a cave. It was shooting me through several blocks of dirt and rock.

*This* concerns me greatly, if it can be confirmed.  I'll be none too pleased if the game's projectile physics allows mob projectiles to glitch through solid blocks! Hey @Kevin Eric Snell have you (or anyone else) experienced this more than once? Is it possible for arrows in VS to glitch through the corners of blocks like they do in that other block game (where you can hide a pressure plate behind two diagonally adjacent blocks and then activate it by shooting it *through* the corners)?

[Kevin Eric Snell]

Fortunately, haven't experienced it since then. The one that spawned in daylight was shooting normally.

I've also noticed surface caves that are sealed off with a thin layer of dirt will still have sunlight shining through. Maybe that's related?

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, Thorfinn said:

Don't wait until there are 20. Or spend the time to figure out what kind of defenses foil their missiles but not yours. Or just run to get far enough away to despawn them. There's no more reason to kill surface bowtorn than there is to kill surface drifters.

And they are still ridiculously easy to herd -- they will strive to maintain effective missile range, so if you crowd them they will flee into whatever preps you have for them.

If anything bowtorn are too easy to deal with already. It's just that the old ways of dealing with drifters don't work. In many ways, they are the opposite of drifters -- dangerous at range, but pushovers if you can force them to melee. You have to expand your tactics.

This, ever so much this! The addition of the new monsters means that a shift in combat tactics is required if one wants to remain alive, since the old drifter-only tactics either no longer work, or are much less effective than they once were. And perhaps the foremost factor in staying alive is avoiding situations where the odds are not in your favor, whenever possible.

I'd also note that not every fight is winnable either, and sometimes your best option when getting overwhelmed is to retreat. In the event you get pinned down in your base, you may consider stocking extra healing items or including extra doors and passageways in your design to allow multiple escape routes should you need to run. If it's multiplayer, you also have the option of calling for help, assuming that other players are online and willing to come to your rescue. Singleplayer doesn't have that option, but you can switch your gamemode to creative temporarily if you need to fix a problem(like scuffed spawns).

[Thorfinn]

3 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I'd also note that not every fight is winnable either, and sometimes your best option when getting overwhelmed is to retreat.

Absolutely. Further, most fights aren't even worth it.

"Hey, I got 3 fiber and one 4usty gear out of this battle!"

"Yes, and how many twine is it going to take to repair your armor?"

[Zippy Wonderdust]

3 hours ago, Kevin Eric Snell said:

Fortunately, haven't experienced it since then. The one that spawned in daylight was shooting normally.

I've also noticed surface caves that are sealed off with a thin layer of dirt will still have sunlight shining through. Maybe that's related?

I’m tempted to think so. I’ve also noticed that, in 1.19, you can’t make a greenhouse roof from diagonally adjacent glass half slabs; the game refuses to consider it an enclosed space. Also in 1.19, diagonally adjacent thatch still lets snow particles through in the winter. I have to put a second layer of straw bales beneath to prevent that. 
 

I may need to pay more attention to the design of the corners of my temporal storm panic-room/murder-fortress to avoid becoming potential target practice for bowtorns!

[Yowie]

make your storm farm only 2 blocks high and bowtorns wont spawn

 

[Yowie]

also a trick to bowtorns is cross a river or lake, get them to follow you and they will despawn at the waters edge

[cjc813]

agreed.

love that they added bowtorn, and they're actually pretty fun to fight, but fiddyleven of them spawning during a temporal storm is excessive.

[cjc813]

On 1/27/2025 at 1:08 PM, Thorfinn said:

Don't wait until there are 20.

Bruh, sometimes a crap ton spawn within like a minute.

They're easy enough to work around, even without pre-made defenses, because as long as you stay moving, they're not going to hit you, but it's still not super great.

Found myself in a situation where I decided to just wait out a storm.

Was blackguard in full iron chain. Offhand shield. Temp storm was coming at night so I laid out a ton of torches. As soon as the storm hit, it started raining and put out most of the torches. I had a lantern in front of and behind my base, and a trader to the side. That was all my light. Within the first minute or two, there were at least a dozen bowtorn behind my base. Tried to go after them. Each one I chased managed to get far enough into the darkness that I didn't follow. Probably could have dropped my shield for a lantern, but I didn't want to risk it. I just chased 2 or 3 and then decided to camp in my base. Nothing else seemed to be spawning.

I'm all for new tactics and stuff, and honestly think individual bowtorn are really too easy (they warn you before firing and as long as you move, you're fine). But, even so... having *that* many spawn isn't super fun? 

[LadyWYT]

One thing I've begun to notice about the bowtorn...while they're very good at spotting you and locking you in their sights...they're terrible at judging whether they can actually hit you or not. I've been happily running through the meadows many times only to hear a bowtorn screech before firing a shot that never hit me, because there were several feet of stone and soil between me and the bowtorn. So evidently, if they're in a cave close enough to surface to spot you, but no actual opening to the surface, they'll fire anyway.

[Thorfinn]

@cjc813 I've just never seen that many other than associated with a temporal storm. And I've come to the conclusion bowtorn storms aren't worth bothering with. I'm convinced there are no gearfoots. At least I've never seen any. Why bother with a piddly 5% (or whatever it is) chance of a temporal gear?

The reason they group so much is the 50% greater aggro range than drifters. This means they will be drawn to you from more than twice the tiles as drifters.

[Asurea Skie]

I love the whole, "Just don't let them build up! Also, don't engage them!"

The problem is the bulk spawning and complete lack of despawning, especially related to temporal storms but also outside of them.

Meanwhile, there are acknowledgments of both the different AI and the fact that they pursue you from ridiculous ranges.

Yes, I know how to adapt, make an escape tunnel, etc. It doesn't change that they're an actively un-fun mechanic that completely violates the rules all other drifters establish. They've made it especially hard to get my friends to play with me when they're just ganked by an enemy they can't see half the time, or swarmed with an execution squad. Sure, you can chase one or two around and dodge their shots, but when there are 20?

[Maelstrom]

On 1/28/2025 at 6:40 PM, Thorfinn said:

@cjc813 I've just never seen that many other than associated with a temporal storm. And I've come to the conclusion bowtorn storms aren't worth bothering with. I'm convinced there are no gearfoots. At least I've never seen any. Why bother with a piddly 5% (or whatever it is) chance of a temporal gear?

The reason they group so much is the 50% greater aggro range than drifters. This means they will be drawn to you from more than twice the tiles as drifters.

Remember that picture I took from 1,000 feet showing a good 2 dozen bowtorns or more?  That was from a single night of mining with maybe medium rift activity.  And I was like 30+ blocks deep.  Additionally those were deep bowtorns.  By the time I typed "/gm 2" I was down to less than one hit to death sporting 22+ HP in tailored gambeson armor.  I poked my head above out of the ground and was hit like 5 times before I finished climbing out of my mining hole.

I love the combined arms of grunts, ranged and fast melee attack mobs changing combat strategy and tactics, adding different types of storms as well; but the bowtorn spawn/despawn behavior seems to be seriously scuffed and in serious need of balancing.

[Thorfinn]

Was there a cave somewhere? Deep don't spawn on the surface other than during storms, do they? Yeah, I've seen them on the surface, but I've always been able to track it down to a cave I had missed.

[Maelstrom]

I didn't think there was a cave close by, but I'm sure there is.  Should I need more bismuth or slate, I'm going to imprison any spawnage behind fencing so I can maliciously gawk at them.

/edit - even still, there should not be such a large unruly mob hanging about all hours of the day.

Edited January 30, 2025 by Maelstrom

[nukularshades]

Bit of a dead thread, so not sure if there's much use posting this:

Same issue, ~50 after a heavy temporal storm, towered up with wood before storm because I'm migrating south from an old base, is my hardcore world just cooked?

[Thorfinn]

How many ladders do you have? Stacks of packed/rammed earth? I think the magic number is once you get 64 blocks away, they despawn. Alternatively, you could sideways build over to that slope and escape that way. I don't know what you are carrying in your packs. If you have a dozen hay bales, (and if you don't, shame on you  ) you could easily dig out enough dirt to make cob. 4 dirt gives 10 cob, 28 dirt gives you enough to despawn them. How wide is the ridge next to you? Could you tunnel through to the other side? Or at least partway and tunnel up? Which is going to depend on how many ladders you have...

Edited February 28, 2025 by Thorfinn

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 1/30/2025 at 1:19 PM, Maelstrom said:

bowtorn spawn/despawn behavior seems to be seriously scuffed and in serious need of balancing.

I had two chasing me down the other day on a new 1.20.4 server... idk why. I didn't do anything to them.... I had to get into a sniping match with them with nothing but a simple bow and crude arrows because we had literally JUST started out and nobody had the means to make better weapons.

[Thorfinn]

18 hours ago, nukularshades said:

Same issue, ~50 after a heavy temporal storm, towered up with wood before storm because I'm migrating south from an old base, is my hardcore world just cooked?

A little additional info. I think they try to maintain a range between 15 and 25, and based on what I'm seeing, you are already drawing them in because of how far away they are when you are at the top of your little tower. That means you are probably only a dozen or so vertical blocks before they can't target you, so you only need to block up the four cardinal directions for that far before you can nerdpole yourself to worldheight, if need be. 

However, I think I would try to bridge the first dozen blocks after you deem yourself high enough to not be a valid target with ladders or at least hay, so you are quicker to get back to cover if you misjudged.

Be sure to take a look around while up there. You should at least be able to identify bears or wolves in your intended path, plus probably traders and most likely, the easiest path to take that avoids crazy mountain ranges.

[Zippy Wonderdust]

On 2/27/2025 at 10:55 PM, nukularshades said:

Same issue, ~50 after a heavy temporal storm, towered up with wood before storm because I'm migrating south from an old base, is my hardcore world just cooked?

Hey @nukularshades, I just made a mod you might like, considering your recent problems... I'd love feedback from anyone who is interested.

[Amadeo4444]

It's been two days since the end of the temporal storm, I'm still killing mobs that won't go away

Edited April 17, 2025 by Kacper Tuszyński

[Tom Cantine]

I see how it's difficult, but frankly it never even occurred to me to see this as game-breaking. It's just... well, I hesitate to use the word but realistic. That is, it's tactically realistic, and a legitimate problem to be confronted with and have to figure out a solution for. And like many problems in VS and elsewhere, some problems are way, WAY harder to deal with if you haven't prepared for them in advance. 

A seige is a real thing. It can be really tough to deal with a bunch of skilled archers surrounding your house, but that's why the castle was invented. (Okay, I'm oversimplifying.) And I've found that, with even a moderately well-designed modest shelter (and a decent amount of spears/arrows) it's entirely possible to pick off bowtorn from cover, one by one. They take a little while to reload and aim, and you can hear their projectiles hit your wall, so you can have your bow drawn and step just into your firing loop to let fly an arrow and duck back into cover right away. 

Personally, though I'm not really a big combat player, I think the occasional swarm of missile-weapon opponents is an entirely legitimate challenge.