qualicabyss Posted January 6 Report Posted January 6 Bears are the most dangerous creature currently in the game, which is ridiculous for how common they are. Bears are the fastest hostile creature in the game. Polar bears are tied for third highest health in the game with a rare variant of the shiver, after the games only boss and a bell. Grizzly bears have the fourth highest and barely less. While they aren't the hardest hitting enemy in the game, they're damage is still extremely high, at 12 for grizzly's and 16 (enough to ohko) for polar bears. please nerf bears, they make surface exploration practically impossible and shouldn't be more threatening than a small horde of eldritch horrors. 1 1
LadyWYT Posted January 6 Report Posted January 6 Welcome to the forums(and the game)! 1 minute ago, qualicabyss said: Polar bears are tied for third highest health in the game with a rare variant of the shiver, after the games only boss and a bell. The only place that players should be encountering polar bears is the arctic or maybe a mountaintop glacier. 2 minutes ago, qualicabyss said: While they aren't the hardest hitting enemy in the game, they're damage is still extremely high, at 12 for grizzly's and 16 (enough to ohko) for polar bears. Whether they kill in one hit or not depends highly on the settings a player chose for their game. On Standard settings, the player will have 15 base HP(20 if they pick Blackguard), which is easily further enhanced by filling the nutrition bars. If creature hostility is set to passive then bears will never attack the player unless the player attacks them first(Exploration difficulty sets creature hostility to "passive" by default). Additionally, enemy damage can be turned down and player health can be increased in the settings. 6 minutes ago, qualicabyss said: Bears are the most dangerous creature currently in the game, which is ridiculous for how common they are. Not really. Bears are very strong creatures, and Vintage Story is a game that does not pull its punches. They're also quite easy to avoid in general, provided the player is paying attention to their surroundings and taking certain precautions when navigating terrain like forest or shrubland. It's also relatively easy to trap them in a pit, or kill them at range with spears. A better adjustment would be to simply decrease the spawn rates a bit(though I think current rates are just fine) or make their behavior a bit more complex so that some species can be scared away(like black bears) while others will be more aggressive(like polar bears). Some louder growls would also help alert the player to their presence and thus help the player avoid the bears, much like the player is able to use wolf howls to avoid areas inhabited by wolves. 4
qualicabyss Posted January 6 Author Report Posted January 6 Polar bears were mentioned mostly for completeness, grizzly bears barely have less health, and still have plenty of damage. Also the issue isn't when you notice they're there or have a trap or a ton of spears prepared. It's when you aren't paying attention and the bear notices you, basically guaranteeing a death. The literal monsters don't do that, and bears are more common most of the time! And while you can weaken them with settings, or make them passive, this effects all the other enemies too, which are still weaker than the bear! I don't want combat to be easier, I want a creature that commonly spawns on the surface to not be the strongest in the game.
LadyWYT Posted January 6 Report Posted January 6 11 minutes ago, qualicabyss said: It's when you aren't paying attention and the bear notices you, basically guaranteeing a death. Well, yes, the key here is for the player to pay attention to their surroundings. A lot of mistakes can be avoided by developing good situational awareness. 12 minutes ago, qualicabyss said: The literal monsters don't do that Last I checked, monsters will quite happily rip a player to shreds, provided that creature hostility is set to "aggressive". The only monster that can't directly harm the player is the bell, but that is a special case. Overall, I would say that players tend to have an easier time dealing with monsters since surface monsters are relatively weak opponents, and monsters in general make a lot more noise to announce their presence. Drifters moan and groan, bowtorn shriek and hiss, and shivers click and growl. Bears don't have any particularly loud noises save for the roar they make while attacking. 16 minutes ago, qualicabyss said: I don't want combat to be easier, I want a creature that commonly spawns on the surface to not be the strongest in the game. You might be interested in a mod like this one: https://mods.vintagestory.at/unbearables I'm not sure how well it works, but there are several options on the database that modify bears in various ways. One of them will likely accomplish the results you're looking for.
qualicabyss Posted January 6 Author Report Posted January 6 Its far more punishing than the actual monsters is what i mean, you can run way from those, running from the bear is much harder. Also already grabbed that mod. But I shouldn't have had to, just because a mod or world setting can fix a problem doesn't justify it remaining in the base game.
PoisonedPawn777 Posted January 6 Report Posted January 6 Might be an outlier here but I'd rather see bears buffed than nerfed. It makes perfect sense that I would get 2 shot by a bear running around naked in the wild. I do agree that there should be more of a warning of an incoming attack, I know animal footstep sounds are supposedly in the works which would solve a fair bit of the problem. I'd also agree that a rework to the ai behavior would be welcome, however bears and wolves are intentionally more aggressive in VS than seen in real life and I wouldn't want to see that go. Overall, you learn to deal with bears with experience, and once you have armor bears become relatively easy kills, even in melee combat. Far more worried about bears going after my livestock than I am getting killed by one. 3
das-ding Posted January 7 Report Posted January 7 3 hours ago, qualicabyss said: Bears are the most dangerous creature currently in the game, which is ridiculous for how common they are. Bears are the fastest hostile creature in the game. Polar bears are tied for third highest health in the game with a rare variant of the shiver, after the games only boss and a bell. Grizzly bears have the fourth highest and barely less. While they aren't the hardest hitting enemy in the game, they're damage is still extremely high, at 12 for grizzly's and 16 (enough to ohko) for polar bears. please nerf bears, they make surface exploration practically impossible and shouldn't be more threatening than a small horde of eldritch horrors. I mean, in all fairness, while many video games delegate them to being low tier overworld enemies that get outshined by whatever supernatural business is going on alongside them, bears in real life are absolute juggernauts that, one on one, with primitive technology and no preparation, meant certain death to our ancestors. As such, I'm pretty happy with VS' handling, and frankly I could do with bears even being buffed to better reflect this. I can get the frustration, since if you're not a fast class that can mean being killed if you wander too close to one, but I don't think fixing that should mean nerfing them and making them trivial. According to the VS roadmap, more complex animal AI and behaviours are down the pipeline, and I think that's the key, here. In real life, predator animals do not attack on sight when you enter their radius and launch themselves at you until you're able to spook them away, right? While bears ARE dangerous, simply entering the vicinity of a real bear doesn't guarantee it's going to maul you to bits (and that unpredictability sort of makes things scarier, in practice, speaking from experience). The same, I think, will probably go for VS bears in future updates. Once AI is refined, actually, I think it would be great to see more dangerous animals added, and see all of them decently threatening by default, since you're not going to be walking through a minefield anymore with them while exploring. 5
ArgentLuna Posted January 7 Report Posted January 7 Bears are on a scale of lethal when not prepeared for them to just mildly dangerous when you are.
Dilan Rona Posted January 7 Report Posted January 7 what @ArgentLuna said. bears are just fine the way they are right now. 1
marmarmar34 Posted January 7 Report Posted January 7 They exist for you to have at least brass chain armor. What I've been doing is wearing leather armor as it doesn't come with any downsides, then keeping better armor on my hotbar so I can hotswap when needed. That way, you get all of the benefits of metal armor without the speed, hunger, and healing drawbacks. T3 armor makes their attacks a joke.
BlackCDown Posted January 17 Report Posted January 17 I think the bears' punchiness and sturdiness is fine, but their frequency feels like a difficulty crutch and they could really be a lot more interesting. I saw a suggestion in the 1.20 spawn rate complaint about visible dens and bears sticking near them which would be neat. What I really would like to see is a buff to the prey species though, obviously we don't need all of them to have a bear's aggro but it'd be nice to see a moose body a bear for being too angsty all the time. 1
Zane Mordien Posted January 17 Report Posted January 17 On 1/6/2026 at 4:42 PM, LadyWYT said: The only place that players should be encountering polar bears is the arctic or maybe a mountaintop glacier. Or when they dive off the mountain to hunt you down! 1
Zane Mordien Posted January 17 Report Posted January 17 7 hours ago, BlackCDown said: I think the bears' punchiness and sturdiness is fine, but their frequency feels like a difficulty crutch and they could really be a lot more interesting. I saw a suggestion in the 1.20 spawn rate complaint about visible dens and bears sticking near them which would be neat. They have adjusted the bears spawns many times as well, but I still find 2-3 bears on top of each other all the time. I'm joking when I say, the visible queue that bears are nearby is that you are in the game and not in the ocean. Otherwise assume a bear is hiding around every bush. 1
Tabbot95 Posted January 18 Report Posted January 18 (edited) animals such as predators would be better handled if they along with worldgen were handled (holistically) to be more like Dwarf Fortress and less like MC. such as "world is generated all at once" and thus "animals migrate and chase other animal packs/ wild herds" what does this mean for bears? this means that bears at the very least do not spawn randomly, and do not necessarily respawn randomly in order to keep up the bear population; bears are instead tracked in a more abstract fashion as part of world/climate/etc. systems. (broadly this might benefit from having a pause at the start/end of each in-game month where the process for these things can be handled without the rest of the game lagging out as part of ordinary play..) Edited January 18 by Tabbot95
Thorfinn Posted January 19 Report Posted January 19 Interesting idea, @Tabbot95, but I disagree. It's simple to lure a bear into a pit trap. You could easily contain all the bears around your homestead within a few hours of game time. The reason they added the feature to despawn after a while (14 days, I think?) is because people were abusing the system. This way, from time to time they go *poof* and respawn somewhere outside the cage. Might still be worth it if bears bother you overmuch, but probably a better approach is to either get better at fighting them or avoiding them. Or both.
marmarmar34 Posted January 19 Report Posted January 19 13 hours ago, Thorfinn said: Interesting idea, @Tabbot95, but I disagree. It's simple to lure a bear into a pit trap. You could easily contain all the bears around your homestead within a few hours of game time. The reason they added the feature to despawn after a while (14 days, I think?) is because people were abusing the system. This way, from time to time they go *poof* and respawn somewhere outside the cage. Might still be worth it if bears bother you overmuch, but probably a better approach is to either get better at fighting them or avoiding them. Or both. I don't think animals just despawn on their own. There's been a bear trapped on a spire for over a year now in my world.
Shpick Posted January 19 Report Posted January 19 i die to them if i meet em, but i think they must be EVEN MORE STRONGER, maybe like they could grapple the player and NOT let YOU ESCAPE! OR BLACK BEARS COULD CLIMB!! And to balance it out, they could have a somewhat more realistic behaviour, like they would slowly walk away from you, they should make noise like leaves rustling, or their paws slamming the ground, and they would only attack you if you walk towards them.
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