Constructive thoughts for the Elk

[Discipline Before Dishonor]

The main issue with the elk is that it gets heavily impeded when running through forests, because it has a tendency to get stuck on branchy leaves and such. This can leave you in a bind, because if the elk gets stuck, you could get attacked by a wolf or a bear. My suggestion is, add a "follow player" option to the elk. This way, players can dismount and walk through forests without riding the elk, and the elk can follow the player, teleporting beside the player to catch up, if need be. My initial observation toward the elk is that it's a real pain to use. The game requires traveling, and in playing on Wilderness Survival, I don't have a map. So, I have to rely on constructed waypoints to prevent myself from getting lost. But while riding my elk through a forest, it's REALLY easy to get turned around because every 2 seconds I have to turn 90 degrees to get around leaves and such. The elk, in order to be a net improvement from player traversal over terrain, needs this "follow player" feature. And it needs a safeguard in the form of teleportation, to catch up to a player if it gets stuck somewhere. A setting like this would also help greatly regarding mountainous terrain, you could dismount and navigate the steep mountains yourself, then the elk would keep up with you, teleporting beside you in any instance in which it got stuck, meeting up with you on the other side of the mountains. Simple truth is, too much realism comes at the cost of gameplay fun. It's not exactly realistic to have a teleporting elk to keep up with you, but then again, it isn't realistic to have floating dirt blocks either, nor transporting water source blocks, yet those are arguably necessary, as is this change to the elk. This is one area of the game where I feel like it's absolutely necessary to forgo realism for the sake of the player's convenience. This mount needs to feel like a reward for hard work, not a punishment for fools. I know the bone flute is in the game, but that doesn't help regarding a mountain range that's 500 blocks wide. A good alternative would be removing the range limit from the bone flute, that would make me REALLY excited. Though, maybe we could just make a mod for this very feature too, now that I ponder it. Still, would be a great vanilla addition.

Edited January 11 by Discipline Before Dishonor

[marmarmar34]

I believe there's a mod that breaks branchy leaves if you go a certain speed.

The change I would like to see is smoother terrain traversal. Currently, it feels like the elk just gets stuck on any little bump in the terrain.

[williams_482]

The bone flute essentially already does this, teleportation and all. It has a range limit, but it's pretty far; if you give it a toot every minute or so while sprinting through the undergrowth your elk will keep up with you well enough. 

[Discipline Before Dishonor]

On 1/13/2026 at 11:15 PM, williams_482 said:

The bone flute essentially already does this, teleportation and all. It has a range limit, but it's pretty far; if you give it a toot every minute or so while sprinting through the undergrowth your elk will keep up with you well enough. 

Technically the bone flute only teleports it if it's within the same chunk, so it can be a few blocks beside you but the bone flute won't work because you're in one chunk and your elk is in another

Edited Saturday at 05:07 PM by Discipline Before Dishonor

[williams_482]

57 minutes ago, Discipline Before Dishonor said:

Technically the bone flute only teleports it if it's within the same chunk, so it can be a few blocks beside you but the bone flute won't work because you're in one chunk and your elk is in another

This is definitely not true. The flute will teleport the elk at a considerable distance, well beyond one chunk. Of course if you're too close (within a couple blocks) the elk will do nothing, because as far is it's concerned it's already right next to you.

It is somewhat inconsistent because the elk will first try to path to the player normally, and only teleport once it decides the player cannot be reached on a relatively direct path. The elk will usually teleport within a few seconds if you are moving through dense forest, but will spend much longer trying to chase you down if the intervening terrain is open ground, or there happens to be a convenient path between you. 

[Discipline Before Dishonor]

 

21 minutes ago, williams_482 said:

This is definitely not true. The flute will teleport the elk at a considerable distance, well beyond one chunk. Of course if you're too close (within a couple blocks) the elk will do nothing, because as far is it's concerned it's already right next to you.

It is somewhat inconsistent because the elk will first try to path to the player normally, and only teleport once it decides the player cannot be reached on a relatively direct path. The elk will usually teleport within a few seconds if you are moving through dense forest, but will spend much longer trying to chase you down if the intervening terrain is open ground, or there happens to be a convenient path between you. 

Okay I read the handbook wrong, it says "as long as it's in a loaded chunk" and I took that to mean as long as it's in the same chunk. If it's a maximum distance of at least 100 blocks away then I could see it being used to get around the issues I was having. But I've recently generated an oceanic world with continents and islands, and that experience was much better. It almost made the elk completely irrelevant because I was able to use the sailboat to get to various quest locations, and it didn't require much on-foot travel. I was also able to sail and explore for bauxite, lime, etc. I definitely feel like random world generation would benefit from being tweaked to have more ocean access and islands in it, maybe just with much larger islands requiring the elk to explore thoroughly, a sailboat/elk combo.

Edited Saturday at 06:31 PM by Discipline Before Dishonor