Bears are far too powerful and need nerfed

[cjameshuff]

37 minutes ago, Emeal said:

I have never seen a bear in this game I cant outrun.

Because you can't see the ones you encounter in dense forest/rough terrain before they kill you?

If I can run, I can usually spot the bear from a distance and don't need to.

[Emeal]

On 4/29/2026 at 5:05 PM, cjameshuff said:

Because you can't see the ones you encounter in dense forest/rough terrain before they kill you?

If I can run, I can usually spot the bear from a distance and don't need to.

This is why we cut down the brush and dig bear traps so we can lure them in.

[cjameshuff]

9 hours ago, Emeal said:

This is why we cut down the brush and dig bear traps so we can lure them in.

And do you just never go outside the area you've cleared?

[BavarianViking]

On 1/7/2026 at 6:42 PM, Dilan Rona said:

what @ArgentLuna said. bears are just fine the way they are right now.

yes and no. 

Yes, they should be deadly. No, they are much less aggressive as the ingame ones. 

[Emeal]

1 hour ago, cjameshuff said:

And do you just never go outside the area you've cleared?

I do but if I get chased I run away. But I also keep Bear pits in all directions from my base so I just run them there if chased.

Like today, trivial task.

[Asatar]

I just want to say, they had "tweaked" bear spawns to occur less often. However, on a server that I am playing on, bears spawns are so common and bears are such a nuisance, we've rounded every single bear into a pit all year round and turned August 1st into a holiday where we throw stones at the bears in the pit until they die, while drinking/eating pears. So bear spawn rates are dubious at best. I think bears are stupidly aggressive and should run away reaching half health threshold or a chance to abandon a pursuit after a certain amount of time. I've learned that early game armor doesn't even help against a bear's 2H-KO, you are better off facing a bear without armor until you get gambeson/metal armor. Which makes me think "what is the purpose of early game armor?" Interesting thoughts indeed

[DeanF]

30 minutes ago, Asatar said:

 I think bears are stupidly aggressive and should run away reaching half health threshold or a chance to abandon a pursuit after a certain amount of time.

Yes, bears aren't really endurance hunters.  Wolves are, though- they should pursue you relentlessly.  They swim slowly, though- a human should out-pace them in water, unlike bears (well, brown and polar varieties) who can swim as fast as Michael Phelps.

On that subject, boar can indeed be aggressive, but they generally don't make long pursuits.  They should have the lowest pursuit times.

And is it just me or are the goats OP?  They're relentless, faster than you can run, and a butt damned nears knocks off half of your health in the early game.

Edited May 4 by DeanF

[Teh Pizza Lady]

4 minutes ago, DeanF said:

And is it just me or are the goats OP?  They're relentless, faster than you can run, and a butt damned nears knocks off half of your health in the early game.

only just a bit. XD

They can ram you pretty hard, but they don't typically commit to prolonged attacks. It's going to be hard to model it properly but their damage shouldn't be that high unless you're just standing there waggling your hiney in their faces. Check their damage tier. if it's tier 2 or higher, it's gonna pack a wallop no matter in the early game.

[Dark Thoughts]

On 5/4/2026 at 5:01 PM, Asatar said:

I think bears are stupidly aggressive and should run away reaching half health threshold or a chance to abandon a pursuit after a certain amount of time.

They do run away if they get low on health, all animals do afaik.
I am definitely in support of a AI behavior change for predators though. Neither bears nor wolves are hyper aggressive like in VS. Especially black bears are even rather skittish and wolf attacks on grown humans are incredibly rare. On that note, I also feel the black bears should not even exist. The game world is playing in Europe and kinda excludes new world stuff like crops too. And the black bear in the game does not seem to be modeled after the Asian black bear, with its distinct white mark on the chest - it would also be more of a fruit & nuts scavenger than a hunter, and even less aggressive as the US variant.

On 5/4/2026 at 5:31 PM, DeanF said:

Wolves are, though- they should pursue you relentlessly.

They shouldn't. Wolves don't really target humans. It's super rare and typically the boogeyman propaganda of farmers who saw them as a nuisance. And in the setting of VS there should be plenty of wild animals to keep them well fed too.

[Asatar]

1 hour ago, Dark Thoughts said:

They do run away if they get low on health, all animals do afaik.

Bears (according to the wiki) have a chance of running
 

Quote

https://wiki.vintagestory.at/index.php/Bear#Behaviors

When a bear's health gets below 30%, it might turn and flee the player. The chance for panda bears to flee is 30%, while the chance for black bears to flee is 10%; the chance for polar, brown, and sun bears to flee is only 5%.

I can only assume that the chance is calculated each tick. But if I were taken to half health, by anything, and I was a big dumb bear, I would probably try and run away for my life. And it makes dealing with bears much easier for the early game and keeps them as a nuisance into the midgame

Edited May 6 by Asatar

[Dark Thoughts]

30 minutes ago, Asatar said:

I can only assume that the chance is calculated each tick.

Must be, because in my experience they almost always run when they get low.

31 minutes ago, Asatar said:

But if I were taken to half health

"Half health" is just an arbitrary metric of a gamified system. Realistically the game should use a proper system with injuries, body parts, bleed outs, etc. An animal that gets wounded will almost certainly flee, unless they're starving. Predators, despite their common media portrayal, are generally very risk averse, as an injury could mean that they potentially cannot hunt anymore and consequently end up starving to death.

Early game I would suggest to just run, preferably through thickets, since bears are large and like to get stuck on slopes and trees. If they're near your base, dig out a pit for them (legit cavemen hunting technique). If you prefer combat, craft a bunch of stone spears and throw them. Increases the damage a lot and might even be enough to scare them off.

[Discipline Before Dishonor]

Brown bears did get nerfed, I'm killing them with backwards circle strafe sprinting regularly now with spears. It wasn't doable before, but it is now, and God bless the devs for that. Mind you, I'm using the Orphan class I made in a mod which gives me +15% movespeed, but still. A hunter might be able to do it now too, I'm just not sure as I only play as the Orphan.

Edited May 14 by Discipline Before Dishonor

[The Lerf]

The biggest thing that bothers me is that bears take center stage as "toughest enemy" for such a long time, and really overshadow the rust monsters, which makes them feel really weak and kind of inconsequential. I'm getting worse jump scares from bears than the Lovecraftian horrors. They're the fastest, most damaging, and highest health enemy on the surface, until the first heavy temporal storm. It wouldn't be so much an issue if the aggression was tuned down, or if they were super visible, or if they could be mitigated in some way.

Now, bears are dangerous IRL. Not surprising. They should still be dangerous in game, and this is clearly reflected in their stats. But just for comparison's sake, the default starting health for a commoner class PC is 15. 

All bears do tier 2 damage.
A Black bear does 10 damage, 2-shotting an early game player.
A Brown bear does 12 damage, 2-shotting an early game player.
A Polar bear does 16 damage, 1-shotting an early game player.
(These are the bears I've most commonly seen, I've never actually come across pandas or sun bears, but their stats are slightly weaker. A Panda still 2-shots, and a sun bear will need 4 hits before it kills a player.)

A surface drifter does 2.5 damage at Tier 0, killing a player after 6 hits. They can be outran by just walking, and they have to stand still in order to attack.
A brown bear runs slightly faster than a commoner, and can attack at while at full speed. The only way to outrun them is by taking advantage of their terrain climbing quirks.

Holy ****, writing it down makes it seem wild. Now I'm not saying that a drifter should outperform a bear, but I don't think a common bear should be stronger than the first official boss of the game. The Eidolon's strongest attack is 8 damage at tier 2. (Or maybe it's 2 damage at tier 3? The damage calcs are confusing.) 

Now it doesn't help that bears spawn on day 1. Devs can say otherwise, but the fact of the matter is that they absolutely do. They can potentially spawn multiple, depending on the environment. Hell, one of my 1.22.2 games has started with 6 bears in my surroundings, and it's not even heavily forested. They can perform a double attack, giving two consecutive instances of damage.

I think bears are overtuned, compared to actual enemies.

Wearing improvised armor lets you take a single extra hit, which won't matter since you're now slower. There is very little you can do in the early game if you unexpectedly get chased by a bear. Which might be realistic? But is it fun?

What can we do to improve this?

Initially, I think lowering the damage tier down from 2 to 1, and decreasing the value of damage is the easy fix. The player should have a fighting chance to get away, especially in the early game, and it allows the improvised armor set be worth something, even if it's just a little. Increasing the bear's visibility is another easy fix, we can up the frequency of growls and roars when the player gets within 20 blocks or so, before the bear is able to aggro the player. The most recent update has added footstep sounds for the bear, but unfortunately they are only audible when within your field of view, so they are functionally useless if a bear is behind you. This should be fixed. Personally I'd like to see a limit on the amount of bears per square kilometer or something similar too.
A more complicated option that I think would be the best, is making animal run speed directly related to the amount of health it has. A bear, or wolf, or ram may aggro you, but if you can get a couple hits in, you could outrun it. (This benefits hunting too, which has recently seen a lot of community attempts at reworks). Predators really, really do not want to sustain injuries as mentioned earlier in the thread, but the lore of VS has established wildly increased animal aggression. I think this change would suggest the appearance of both realities, allowing animals to still be aggressive but with injuries actually mattering.

Regardless of all this, the code on bears needs to be tightened up. Changelogs of past updates have stated that bears shouldn't spawn for the first 4 days of a world, but the amount of bear pelts and wounds I've gotten in my first hours of a 1.22.2 world state differently. The double instances of damage I witness may be because of a lack of synchronization of attack rate and animation length. Bears can reach through fences to kill livestock. Aggro feels inconsistent with distance.

We should also remember that this is a video game, and not a 1:1 simulation of reality. 

[LadyWYT]

47 minutes ago, The Lerf said:

Now I'm not saying that a drifter should outperform a bear, but I don't think a common bear should be stronger than the first official boss of the game. The Eidolon's strongest attack is 8 damage at tier 2. (Or maybe it's 2 damage at tier 3? The damage calcs are confusing.) 

Actually, I disagree. Bears do hit harder than the eidolon, yes, but they don't have nearly as much health, and have a single basic attack in addition to limited interest in the player. Both also serve very different roles.

The eidolon is a proper boss, and meant to put up a decent fight for a few minutes before the player can reach the "treasure"; the player has no chance to escape and must either kill or be killed. The eidolon also has three different attacks, two of which count as ranged, and can summon locusts, meaning that the player will need to vary their strategy a little throughout the fight.

Bears can be avoided, or escaped from, or put down in a matter of seconds with decent equipment, so players have a variety of options on how to deal with this threat. Bears, wolves, and other dangerous wildlife also serve to teach newer players something very important: the world of Vintage Story is dangerous, and reckless planning can easily have serious consequences. Since the players learn this so early, they can make better plans for the really dangerous activities as a result(like story content and underground expeditions).

[The Lerf]

2 hours ago, LadyWYT said:

Actually, I disagree. Bears do hit harder than the eidolon, yes, but they don't have nearly as much health, and have a single basic attack in addition to limited interest in the player. Both also serve very different roles.

The eidolon is a proper boss, and meant to put up a decent fight for a few minutes before the player can reach the "treasure"; the player has no chance to escape and must either kill or be killed. The eidolon also has three different attacks, two of which count as ranged, and can summon locusts, meaning that the player will need to vary their strategy a little throughout the fight.

Bears can be avoided, or escaped from, or put down in a matter of seconds with decent equipment, so players have a variety of options on how to deal with this threat. Bears, wolves, and other dangerous wildlife also serve to teach newer players something very important: the world of Vintage Story is dangerous, and reckless planning can easily have serious consequences. Since the players learn this so early, they can make better plans for the really dangerous activities as a result(like story content and underground expeditions).

My counterpoint is that bears aren't a boss. They're a semi-rare mob that can be encountered on day 1 and leave someone with very few options besides 'die'. Yes, you can put bears on your DNI list and never enter a forest without iron plate armor, but before that, most encounters, even accidental ones, will most likely end in death.

I think the big point I'm making here is that the best counterplay to bears is to never encounter one or be stacked with armor and weapons, with little in between other than luck. The player can be taught that the world is dangerous without sending them into a death loop, or starting them from zero again. 

I also think it's a little strange that the game makes the natural animals into significantly larger threats than the apocalyptic horror corpses.

Corrupt Sawblade Locusts can 1-shot a default player with no armor, same damage as a Polar bear, barely more than a brown bear. But the difference is, Sawblade locusts only spawn deep underground, can be easily outran, have a cooldown for their attack, have less health... do you see where I'm going with this? That just seems wrong to me, that the enemy that spawns in the tougher end-game locations are still less of a threat than average ursine neighbor.

[Asatar]

16 hours ago, The Lerf said:

A more complicated option that I think would be the best, is making animal run speed directly related to the amount of health it has. A bear, or wolf, or ram may aggro you, but if you can get a couple hits in, you could outrun it. (This benefits hunting too, which has recently seen a lot of community attempts at reworks). Predators really, really do not want to sustain injuries as mentioned earlier in the thread, but the lore of VS has established wildly increased animal aggression. I think this change would suggest the appearance of both realities, allowing animals to still be aggressive but with injuries actually mattering.

Honestly I am a huge advocate for run speed correlating to health, for both player and animal. As it stands right now, there are no limb hp locations that have their own debuffs when sustaining damage. And as it stands, the current hp system is a simple abstraction of overall injuries. So it reasons to stand, that lower HP means lower combat efficiency meaning lower chances of escaping with your life. Perhaps predators run away at <60% HP? Off topic but relevant to the current conversation, but lowering the HP of animals would make hunting animals SOOOO much easier. 

Back on topic. Perhaps, the current hyper-aggressive bear AI should be limited to female bears, with cubs present (give me cubs so I can take my fury out on them too like the pups) while normal bear behavior will attempt to signal the player by roaring and standing on their hind legs, giving you a warning. KIND OF LIKE like how wolves howl kind of often, letting the players know at the very least that wolves are in the area

Edited May 15 by Asatar