Does combat get better?

[Lame Fox]

I put off doing it much at first, because I didn't have much in the way of gear. The few encounters I had felt bad, but I figured I just wasn't equipped for them. Now with leather armour and recurve bow with bronze arrows I've been going into caves with one other player (on LAN).

So far, I find it really tedious. The janky movement of mobs makes them really hard to hit unless they're still or barely moving. Often attacks that visually appear to hit don't. This is the same with both ranged and melee attacks as far as I can tell. The guys who run around like spiders are particularly bad, it feels like most of their body is not even solid and on top of that they bounce around like a rubber ball.

The incoming damage is insane and we resort to cheese to mitigate it. There's not apparently much in the way of light armour beyond the one I'm using, just gambesons. Anything else will worsen my ranged weapon which is basically the point of my class (I regret this class tbh). I did have a shield but it blinds me when I aim the recurve bow so I had to get rid of it. We've taken to just making the whole cave small sections with fences and gates because things spawn ceaselessly all around us. It looks silly and doesn't improve the feel of combat but it reduces how many we deal with at once. We could blanket the whole thing in torches I guess, but I'm not wholly sure that works. Our house is full of light and they still manage to spawn sometimes, plus, that would be SO MANY torches.

We also went with one ranged and one melee class but I don't feel like there is any synergy here. The horrific bouncy movement of enemies means I rarely get a clean shot at anything he is fighting in melee, so it's almost like we're each fighting solo despite being in the same place.

Is this just how it stays? Other than the gambeson all I really have to upgrade at this point are arrow types, since apparently this recurve is already the game's best bow. I've enjoyed the survival and crafting elements of this game but the combat feels so disappointing I genuinely don't know if I can stand to keep doing it.

[ifoz]

Combat updates are one of the community's most requested features for the exact reasons listed. 
It doesn't really get better, lategame combat is identical apart from enemies having more health and doing more damage.
The two boss fights the game currently has are okay, though I have not experienced the 2nd fight in a good few months and it has been improved since then.

Generally with caves my best advice is to just be fast on your feet. Get in, check any ruins/ore you find, get out. The less time spent down there, the less time there is for enemies to spawn.

[Lame Fox]

Ah, that's unfortunate. I hope it's something they get around to. As fun as the rest of the game is, preparing for combat has essentially been my motivation behind progressing in exploration/crafting. I have a feeling when I reach the end of those, and have just fighting left, I will probably have to walk away from it and just read patch notes now and then to see what's new.

[LadyWYT]

You might consider trying out Combat Overhaul. I've not used myself, but that seems to be the go-to for those who want a more combat oriented game.

2 hours ago, Lame Fox said:

I put off doing it much at first, because I didn't have much in the way of gear. The few encounters I had felt bad, but I figured I just wasn't equipped for them. Now with leather armour and recurve bow with bronze arrows I've been going into caves with one other player (on LAN).

One thing I will note about VS combat, that(in my opinion) is quite different from other games: getting into a fight is not always beneficial, and enemies can still be dangerous even if you have the appropriate gear equipped. It's not that you'll never have to fight, or that you shouldn't engage with the enemies when you run across them, but in general it's better to treat enemies like an environmental hazard rather than as targets to actively hunt. An example on that is saying indoors on a night with higher rift activity rather than running around outside.

As for equipment, having the appropriate tier for the monster tier that you're facing mitigates most of the incoming damage, but not all, so if you get complacent(or otherwise overwhelmed) it's still very possible to die. It tends to be most noticeable with early armor, since it breaks quickly and doesn't mitigate much damage. I'm thinking that may be what's happening in this scenario with the leather armor; it's better than nothing and will help keep you alive, but it doesn't make you anywhere near impervious. Bronze weapons are fine for caving(though I recommend a falx in addition to the bow, since melee is a bit easier to use in close quarters), and leather will work, but I do agree with @ifoz--you'll want to be fast about your exploration, grabbing what you need and getting out ASAP. If you want to take your time while caving and conduct more thorough searches, I recommend gambeson as the minimum armor requirement, or iron if you're venturing into the deepest caves(enemies get stronger the deeper you go).

2 hours ago, ifoz said:

The two boss fights the game currently has are okay, though I have not experienced the 2nd fight in a good few months and it has been improved since then.

The last time I played it(several weeks ago), it was still having issues actually showing up at the arena, though this may have been fixed since. I do know that the arena itself was modified to stop a specific cheese strategy though.

[Lame Fox]

Thanks, I'll look into it if I end up trying mods. Might depend how frequently updates break them as I've had some bad luck using mods on early access titles.

I did have a falx on me for emergencies, but as hunter it seems like I'm wasting the class—and risking immediate death—to melee on purpose. I mainly use it on enemies whom I can keep knocking back until they die without ever quite getting to hit me, otherwise I seem to be better off running and getting somewhere they can't follow.

tbh, I sort of get the impression this class is just not very good. Like, the resource bonuses are... ok I guess? A low % of extra resources, which I haven't really needed in the end (the game exaggerated its winter a bit I feel) plus a harvest speed buff for something that it turns out never took long to harvest to begin with. The ranged damage bonus is what I thought it would be good for and synergize with the blackguard, basically supporting the melee character and getting our food. However better armour than cloth gambesons appears to actively negate ranged DPS bonuses with the added charge time and effective ranged DPS with worse accuracy. And also lowers the walk speed which IME is the hunter's best trait. So I have one tier of armour to try from here before I'm starting to defeat the purpose of taking this class.

Then on top of that, the movement and hitboxes are what they are.

[Tom Cantine]

I tend to play hunter myself, so let me say a few words in the class's defence. The advantages really apply above ground, not so much in caving. You're HUNTING, taking down animals at range for food and other resources, and it's explicitly stated that you don't do well underground (claustrophobic). 

That said, I still run escort for people mining in multiplayer, mainly because by now I've acquired steel chain armour and can sort of tank most first hits, but even so, the key to security while mining (and anywhere else) is awareness: don't get surprised, so you don't need to tank those first hits in the first place. Hunter, or rather the play style that hunter attracts, is relatively good for this. It's more than just being alert, but being ACTIVELY alert, maintaining awareness of the terrain and where to focus attention, putting up temporary barriers (I carry a stack of hay bales at all times) to block approaches from unsecured areas, and so on. 

Many combat-focused games encourage bad habits. Or rather, the common emphasis of such games does. Vintage Story isn't a combat game, but a survival game, and the key is to pick the right tool for the job. Sometimes melee combat is the right tool for the job, but in my experience that job is usually cleaning up a mistake in preparing.

[LadyWYT]

35 minutes ago, Lame Fox said:

Might depend how frequently updates break them as I've had some bad luck using mods on early access titles.

It really depends on what the update does. In Vintage Story, a mod made for an older version of the game can still work on a newer version, though it's best to test first before adding to cherished worlds. Popular mods tend to be kept up to date though, so at worst you might end up waiting a few days for the mod to update before updating your game version.

 

37 minutes ago, Lame Fox said:

I did have a falx on me for emergencies, but as hunter it seems like I'm wasting the class—and risking immediate death—to melee on purpose. I mainly use it on enemies whom I can keep knocking back until they die without ever quite getting to hit me, otherwise I seem to be better off running and getting somewhere they can't follow.

Hunter can do just fine in melee--the class itself is just optimal for ranged combat. What the bonus and penalty to combat equates to is hunter takes one less shot to kill something at range, and one extra hit in melee to kill a target. So it's more ideal to fight at range when possible, but hunters can still hold their own in melee when needed.

 

41 minutes ago, Lame Fox said:

tbh, I sort of get the impression this class is just not very good. Like, the resource bonuses are... ok I guess? A low % of extra resources, which I haven't really needed in the end (the game exaggerated its winter a bit I feel) plus a harvest speed buff for something that it turns out never took long to harvest to begin with. The ranged damage bonus is what I thought it would be good for and synergize with the blackguard, basically supporting the melee character and getting our food. However better armour than cloth gambesons appears to actively negate ranged DPS bonuses with the added charge time and effective ranged DPS with worse accuracy. And also lowers the walk speed which IME is the hunter's best trait. So I have one tier of armour to try from here before I'm starting to defeat the purpose of taking this class.

@Tom Cantine provided a good summary of hunter: it's a class that's very strong on the surface(particularly in the early game), and weak underground. The opposite of hunter is Blackguard, which is perhaps the strongest class for the underground and late game, but really struggles in the early game.

As for the armor, gambeson is probably the best general purpose armor regardless of class, but it won't be sufficient for more dangerous work like the deep underground or certain story locations. For hunter, as Tom says, chain is best since it's very protective while not penalizing accuracy or speed that much. Bear in mind that as a hunter, you have an inherent boost to accuracy and speed, so the armor penalties aren't as bad as they're going to be for other classes, especially if you're using the recurve bow.

I can confirm though that hunter is one of the best pairings for Blackguard, since the classes cover each other's weaknesses. I play Blackguard a lot, and my friend plays hunter, and having that extra food in the early game is very nice. When it comes to caving, it's not unusual for him to switch to melee and use the bow as his secondary weapon. It's not optimal for hunter, but it does buy sufficient time for me to catch up to wherever he's at and deal with the rest of the monsters...and also keep me from getting shot in the rear by accident.

Aside from everything said above, you might try out some of the other classes, if you haven't already. While hunter is a strong class in general, it's also possible that it's just not quite your jam, and you might find one of the others more enjoyable to play. 

[Echo Weaver]

It seems to me that there are two categories of complaints about combat:

1. The current combat system doesn't work smoothly, in particular hitboxes are weird. This should just be fixed. 

2. The current combat system is unfun or leaves you at a disadvantage against foes. This isn't so clear-cut. A lot of folks do play VS as a combat-adventure game, but as @LadyWYT says, it's really a survival game. You're supposed to be at a disadvantage, and you're never going to be able to just walk into a cave and treat it like an RP dungeon. I really like the framing of foes as environmental hazards to be mitigated. 

(That's aside from the fact that apparently we ARE going to get procedurally-generated dungeons at some point. I'm not sure how threats in those will compare to caves.)

At any rate, I think #1 is about fixing the game, and it shouldn't be controversial. #2 is more existential -- it's about the expectations players bring to the game and what kind of game it's trying to be.

In the between-place is mods. I don't play with Combat Overhaul, but it's wildly popular. It's also reliably maintained. The thing about modding VS is that, while there ARE updates that break mods, the modding API is provided by Anego and actively supported. This is not like the other block game or many early-access games. When updates are required, they're usually small, and almost everything in regular use is updated within a week, most within a couple of days. 1.21 refactored some properties and file locations, which broke a lot of mods, but most updates took a few minutes of modder time. 

At any rate, folks who want a larger combat focus swear by Combat Overhaul, and I'd really recommend trying it.

[DUCATISLO]

no 

get combat overhaul

[LadyWYT]

3 hours ago, Echo Weaver said:

At any rate, I think #1 is about fixing the game, and it shouldn't be controversial. #2 is more existential -- it's about the expectations players bring to the game and what kind of game it's trying to be.

Personally, I don't think #1 is controversial at all. I've said it many times in various threads, but the hitboxes are wonky(particularly bears), and I daresay that's potentially what's frustrating many players about an otherwise fairly solid system. In melee, the hitboxes don't seem to pose quite as much issue as they do for ranged combat.

As for #2...I do agree that a lot of it is mismatch of player expectations, but I also wonder if #1 doesn't factor in here as well. By that I mean that some players are running into issues with the hitboxes in combat, getting frustrated, and just assuming the entire system is bad instead of just a specific part that needs work.

[Lame Fox]

My issue with treating it as pure survival is that once we are over the initial difficulty of starting with nothing and not knowing what to do, survival becomes routine. And to be fair this isn't a unique problem to VS, it's been true of every survival game I've ever played.

In this start we were new to the game and a bit more worried than we probably needed to be, over-produced sealed food containers, and continued hunting in winter such that we survived even though I got the month lengths mixed up with season lengths and thought it would be 9 days. At this point we have a defensible shelter, pine plantation, farms going, and are accumulating animals (tangentially, I think the wiki is wrong about goats being baited by grain—this only seems to get us bighorns and zero goat interaction of any kind, they won't even break a trap). So food isn't really an issue anymore. There are storms (up to "heavy" so far) but we deal with them the same way as caves: segmenting our building interior with fences and fighting segment by segment.

At this point we seek out combat because I'm just not sure what else there is to do. The environment isn't a threat anymore. We're steadily advancing up the tech tree, expanding our building and changing its materials. Caves seemed to contain some unique loot and lore related stuff, and the mobs do appear to have loot we're meant to collect (gears) so we go there and fight stuff for it. So I'm kind of wanting the combat experience to be more fun or this phase isn't going to be very replayable I think.

I actually wouldn't say it leaves us at a disadvantage against foes, because honestly, the toughest enemies we encounter are baffled by a gate made of small sticks. But it probably could stand to be a bit more engaging than it is, even aside from clearly jank stuff. I don't mean it necessarily needs like dodge rolling or whatever but a greater variety of weapons and enemies at least. It feels a bit weird that at this point my bow is already the best bow in the game and now I'm just upgrading arrow material for higher DPS for example.

Curiously the scrap kits despite being awful did contain an extra weapon type that I don't think is otherwise represented, some sort of mace. So maybe that's in the works?

[Echo Weaver]

I agree regarding survival games to a degree. In the next couple of game-years, you build up enough resilience that you can pack up a bunch of preserved food and go on an extended trip away from your base. You can explore further. In cave ruins, you'll find translocators, which you repair with metal parts and temporal gears, and they teleport you to some different unknown part of the world (bi-directionally, you can return). You can find resources unavailable at your spawn region and bring them home.

There's also a story. Find the treasure hunter trader and give them a tin bronze pickaxe, and they'll give you a map to the first story location. This is a mix of puzzles and combat challenges with that provide a lot more lore.

Even if I spend most of my time homesteading, I find it hard to stay interested in a survival game if I don't have some kind of over-arching goal. 

ETA: I believe now in 1.21, the story isn't quite such a big secret. You are supposed to be able to learn about the treasure hunter trader from other traders. I haven't actually tried to do this because I found the bastard right before upgrading to 1.21.

Edited October 10, 2025 by Echo Weaver

[ifoz]

51 minutes ago, Lame Fox said:

At this point we seek out combat because I'm just not sure what else there is to do.

I'd recommend finding a treasure hunter trader and doing the current story locations as Echo Weaver mentioned, they're generally recommended for bronze age (ch1) and iron/steel age (ch2).
That would give you a larger goal to work toward.

[Lame Fox]

Thanks, I'll have a look. I think I mapped out most nearby traders so it's probably one of them: I'd been meaning to do the story later as I didn't realize it'd start out easier than the random caves we've found.

[Broccoli Clock]

Here's a thought, while I agree the combat can be a bit minimal in terms of subtlety or nuance, won't Hytale rely on a far greater emphasis on combat? They will be both running on the same engine, and presumably sharing a lot of assets/code for similar tasks. It could be the case that Hytale is what "fashions" the combat in VS, on the flip side VS will influence Hytale's environments.

In terms of vanilla, and now, I think the hitboxes could do with some work, the AI could but I want more mobs in the game (passive mostly, but aggressive too) and I think the time to mess with the AI is when you've reached a point where you don't expect to be adding mobs for a while.

[LadyWYT]

5 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

Here's a thought, while I agree the combat can be a bit minimal in terms of subtlety or nuance, won't Hytale rely on a far greater emphasis on combat? They will be both running on the same engine, and presumably sharing a lot of assets/code for similar tasks. It could be the case that Hytale is what "fashions" the combat in VS, on the flip side VS will influence Hytale's environments.

Project Glint, actually, which is Anego's Hytale, and the actual Hytale belonging to Riot still(I think). But in any case I agree otherwise, Project Glint is likely to be focused more on action and typical RPG combat, and less on survival. Which, in theory, should satisfy a lot of complaints for the ones seeking more of an action game, but I'm skeptical the complaints will stop entirely.

 

10 hours ago, Lame Fox said:

My issue with treating it as pure survival is that once we are over the initial difficulty of starting with nothing and not knowing what to do, survival becomes routine. And to be fair this isn't a unique problem to VS, it's been true of every survival game I've ever played.

Honestly, I think it's just a drawback of the survival genre in general. Survival games will be very difficult up front, and get easier toward the end game, which really makes sense. The player is scratching out a comfortable existence from a hostile environment, so things should get easier as they make progress. If the game is constantly throwing challenge after challenge at the player and forcing them to always be scrambling to survive, then the player isn't actually making progress and is more likely to get frustrated.

Vintage Story survival does become much easier once the player has a base established, a food supply secured, and access to iron. However, that's also when the world starts to open up, since the player can focus less on establishing a homestead and more on exploring the world and tackling the main story.

10 hours ago, Lame Fox said:

At this point we seek out combat because I'm just not sure what else there is to do. The environment isn't a threat anymore. We're steadily advancing up the tech tree, expanding our building and changing its materials. Caves seemed to contain some unique loot and lore related stuff, and the mobs do appear to have loot we're meant to collect (gears) so we go there and fight stuff for it. So I'm kind of wanting the combat experience to be more fun or this phase isn't going to be very replayable I think.

I actually wouldn't say it leaves us at a disadvantage against foes, because honestly, the toughest enemies we encounter are baffled by a gate made of small sticks. But it probably could stand to be a bit more engaging than it is, even aside from clearly jank stuff. I don't mean it necessarily needs like dodge rolling or whatever but a greater variety of weapons and enemies at least. It feels a bit weird that at this point my bow is already the best bow in the game and now I'm just upgrading arrow material for higher DPS for example.

Honestly, I think part of the problem might also be from min-maxing and otherwise exploiting game mechanics/creature AI. I'm not saying that players shouldn't do that, because everyone has fun in different ways, but trying to optimize everything as much as possible will generally shoehorn a player into a very specific style of gameplay that can get rather old quickly. For example, using flimsy fences to mess with monster pathing might make them easier to deal with, but maybe instead of flimsy fences the player could chisel proper heavy fortifications to keep them out(which takes a lot of time and resources), or just skip the fortification entirely and deal with the monsters as they come. A proper small castle with a moat and well-lit courtyard is a lot more fun to live in and defend than a dirt box and maze of fencing.

[Echo Weaver]

5 hours ago, Broccoli Clock said:

the AI could but I want more mobs in the game (passive mostly, but aggressive too) and I think the time to mess with the AI is when you've reached a point where you don't expect to be adding mobs for a while.

I'm under the impression that AI options expanded significantly with 1.21. Tentharchitect says they are in the process of overhauling all the Fauna of the Stone Age mods to incorporate the new behaviors.

[Echo Weaver]

1 minute ago, LadyWYT said:

A proper small castle with a moat and well-lit courtyard is a lot more fun to live in and defend than a dirt box and maze of fencing.

Haha. This is basically the way I play temporal storms. A 2-wide, 3-deep pit trap is still a great way to deal with drifters and shivers to some degree. Put it along the side of the base with some trapdoors for access from the cellar, and you have a nice kill zone. When my teen joins me, she has a fortified balcony from which she can fire arrows into the pit trap. We're still refining where we place ourselves to maximize rotbeast aggro in the directions we want them to move. All-in-all very satisfying and feels immersive.

[Lame Fox]

17 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

For example, using flimsy fences to mess with monster pathing might make them easier to deal with, but maybe instead of flimsy fences the player could chisel proper heavy fortifications to keep them out(which takes a lot of time and resources), or just skip the fortification entirely and deal with the monsters as they come. A proper small castle with a moat and well-lit courtyard is a lot more fun to live in and defend than a dirt box and maze of fencing.

I mean I don't disagree with that, using fences on them isn't fun really. It's just that fighting them without fences wasn't fun either and the fences make them less annoying and let me use the bow more reliably. I've had things spawn in literally right behind me in a corner during storms, or in caves they appear in every shadow and will (apparently silently?) walk up behind from a dead end I had just cleared. When we control them with fences then at least the melee can go in ahead and I can fire at exposed enemies or target ranged ones that are firing at him, so it at least feels like we have some synergy going on instead of melee FFA.

Our base was originally meant to somewhat resemble a castle, with doors sunken into the building and flanked by hatches we can open and fight through. I considered also having hatches to shoot down at the doors from above at one point, but it turned out they don't attack doors, and often spawn inside during the storms anyway. Although less often now that we get heavy storms. Are those bugged? They seem to make way fewer enemies than medium.

Funny enough while we don't have a moat they like to fall into the charcoal-making pit.

[LadyWYT]

2 minutes ago, Lame Fox said:

It's just that fighting them without fences wasn't fun either and the fences make them less annoying and let me use the bow more reliably. I've had things spawn in literally right behind me in a corner during storms, or in caves they appear in every shadow and will (apparently silently?) walk up behind from a dead end I had just cleared

Yeah, I get that. For storms, the spawns could be tweaked to prevent them from spawning right on top of the player, but otherwise temporal storms are meant to have erratic monster spawns so I don't expect much change on that front. For caving, the close quarters and limited visibility is also why I recommend relying more on melee while underground, instead of ranged. It's very easy for the monsters to scuttle back into the dark, where they are hard to shoot. One thing to check before you go caving though is the rift weather, since that does affect underground spawns. On days with calm or low activity, there shouldn't be more than the occasional couple of monsters to deal with, but any higher rift activity than that and you may want to save the spelunking for another day in order to avoid dealing with too many monsters. If you're already caving, it's a good idea to keep an eye on rift activity, and head for the surface if it starts to increase.

 

7 minutes ago, Lame Fox said:

Our base was originally meant to somewhat resemble a castle, with doors sunken into the building and flanked by hatches we can open and fight through. I considered also having hatches to shoot down at the doors from above at one point, but it turned out they don't attack doors, and often spawn inside during the storms anyway. Although less often now that we get heavy storms. Are those bugged? They seem to make way fewer enemies than medium.

Like I said, temporal storms are quite erratic in regards to spawns--if there is space for a monster to fit it's possible for one to spawn, although smaller well-lit rooms are less susceptible than wide open spaces. As for storms being bugged regarding number of spawns...that I don't know. I don't think they are, but it's always possible. If you are using mods at all I would check to make sure there's not possible interference there, but otherwise I would suspect it could also be the particular pattern of enemies the storm brings, as it can vary. I believe one of the possible storm patterns spawns predominantly shivers and few, if any, drifters or bowtorn. Since shivers run around like crazy, it's possible they could be spawning and running off before they notice you, which makes it seem like the storm isn't spawning enemies.

[Echo Weaver]

14 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

I believe one of the possible storm patterns spawns predominantly shivers and few, if any, drifters or bowtorn.

One of them is also primarily bowtorns, which fight from a distance and thus won't charge at a fortified base.

[LadyWYT]

1 minute ago, Echo Weaver said:

One of them is also primarily bowtorns, which fight from a distance and thus won't charge at a fortified base.

This is true, but the bowtorn spawns are easily noticed since they like to have groovy parties on the front lawn.

[Echo Weaver]

2 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

This is true, but the bowtorn spawns are easily noticed since they like to have groovy parties on the front lawn.

Haha. Fair enough. I actually haven't dealt with them much because my kid want them modded out of my main game, and I've only had 2 light temporal storms on my stone age game. But I sifted through the temporal storm and devastation spawn data to be sure the mod wasn't breaking anything and saw the shiver and bowtorn focused storms there.

[cjc813]

A hunter in chainmail is pretty durable and accuracy doesn't suffer too badly. It's my preferred setup.

Keep a spear, a falx, and a bow on your hotbar.

If they run up on you, throw the spear at them for burst DPS and finish them off with the sword.

You'll still be mobile enough to pull back if you need to.

Edited October 10, 2025 by cjc813

[Teh Pizza Lady]

On 10/9/2025 at 10:44 AM, Lame Fox said:

tbh, I sort of get the impression this class is just not very good. Like, the resource bonuses are... ok I guess? A low % of extra resources, which I haven't really needed in the end (the game exaggerated its winter a bit I feel) plus a harvest speed buff for something that it turns out never took long to harvest to begin with. The ranged damage bonus is what I thought it would be good for and synergize with the blackguard, basically supporting the melee character and getting our food.

Funny you mention that... I also play hunter with a blackguard fiend (yes I know I misspelled that... she raids my pantry constantly)

Hunter and blackguard do synergize well and here's why: Blackguard can take point and do the majority of the damage. Hunter can shoot around the blackguard. Since most enemies will be focusing on the blackguard, they can hunker down, keep the shield up and use the higher health pool to absorb the brunt of the damage while attacking in melee in between the enemy's hits. This where the hunter comes in handy. If the blackguard is doing his/her job, then the hunter can safely stand at a distance and just plink away at the enemies with spears or a bow. The target usually dies *very* quickly. The blackguard can then hand the ammo back to the hunter in exchange for bandages or food. This is how I tamed my blackguard... by tempting her with slices of pizza to do my dirty work for me. Sometimes she'll even drag the carcass of a wild animal back to our home base looking very proud of herself for managing to run down whatever it was and kill it. I butcher it and stuff it in a cookpot for her. I think I've seen her wag her tail. Anyway, play into your strengths and let your friend cover for your weaknesses. The game will make a bit more sense if you do.