Wolves: What's Wrong, and What Can Be Done

[Professor Dragon]

On 5/20/2022 at 2:15 PM, Mentha said:

So uh, I just installed this game in the last few hours, and actually went to look up tips on dealing with wolves. And I find this thread. With people defending The Iconic Vintage Story Wolves That Will Kill You™.

I know where you're coming from, because I'm still living that journey.

First some perspective - if you've only been playing for a few hours, then give it a bit longer. If you've only just started, then you don't have decent armour, weapons, gamesense or tactical skills, and these things will come with longer play time. Oh, and of course, don't build your house near a wolf spawn point.

Second, some Real World Advice. Even after many "in game" years, wolves (and drifters) are still killing me in annoying, "unfair" (or is that "unfun"?) ways.
I haven't yet got to the point of entirely knobbling the game, but at this point I've got to say "Options are your friend." Look at any or all of these:

• Increase your character health. (I'm a Malefactor - probably a bad choice)
• Use creative mode to give yourself some healing, linen armour and a copper sword or whatever you can rationalise
• Set respawn option to keep inventory and put you close to where you died
• On death, switch to creative mode, swoop up your stuff, get somewhere safe and go back into Survival mode

In short, cheat as much as you feel is justified. I rationalise it as "If the wolves cheat, then I'm allowed to cheat." And I'm the type of player who really, really, really likes to play a game "straight." But in a game where you can die from picking a flower, you reach a breaking point . . .

 

 

 

 

[Professor Dragon]

On 6/12/2022 at 12:38 AM, Stroam said:

If you know of any AI specialist out there that don't cost 140,000 USD per year let us know.

Ha ha.
Very droll, VS Team.

 

Although, have you looked closely at your existing developers - are you sure that one of them isn't a wolf in a coat and hat?

[Hal13]

Haven't been looking through this for some time...

On 4/1/2022 at 1:01 AM, Machaeus said:

I don't have half this much trouble in Minecraft with Creepers of all fucking things.

Other than in Minecraft in VS I pretty much died to every mob at least once, in MC I pretty much only died to players or my own mistakes (i suck at parkour) over the last two years (I think a ravager got me once and my bee farm another time but other than that i usually go hundreds of hours [my record was around 650 hours between deaths] online without death) and got constantly annoyed by phantoms...

Additionally Minecraft does make spawn proofing everything way easier.

On 4/1/2022 at 1:01 AM, Machaeus said:

It's not survival horror

Speaking of missing the point, VS is no survival horror, but survival sandbox, inspired by a horror genre (at least that's how it's advertised on the front page). Horror is only mentioned as inspirational for the world's lore, why should the everyday (or better everynight) monster be more dangerous than the apex predator of the wilderness? The tainted drifters are the same tier as wolves (and are only the medium tier drifters as nightmare drifters are tier 4) and can kill you only slightly slower than those in melee, but unlike wolves drifters now have a ranged attack.

On 4/1/2022 at 1:01 AM, Machaeus said:

Also, "You don't need to be lucky"?  MY FAT ASS.  You have to be lucky to not find them.  And if you do find them, you don't have time to figure anything out to save your hide because you're too busy panicking and trying to find your way out of your current location back to your base.  Don't spew blatant horseshit at me, I don't appreciate being lied to.

I wouldn't call you fat, I've never seen you, but I stand by my words, you don't need to be lucky (at least after worldgen, in the newer versions wolves can be generated at the point of your spawn, which shouldn't be that way) and I did not lie either, why should I there's nothing I'd gain from it. At the point I wrote it I was still in 1.15.9 and even though I really had some surprising wolf infestation (several dozen spawned at over night) herding a dozen or two into a pit did prevent new spawns in a radius of several dozen blocks. I don't know the exact number needed, but in earlier versions a handful were sufficient and there were base show cases on Youtube mentioning the mechanic too. Wasn't able to confirm it for 1.16.5 yet, as I didn't run into any wolves when travelling from my starter area to the equator and back, though I saw some to the west, but those are too far away to bother, strangely I found tin and silver in surplus for the first time in dozens of worlds, so maybe I just was more or less lucky. But for until 1.15.9 I did confirm it several times, even though I had some strange behaviour in 1.15.9 with unusually many wolves spawning all at once.

As long as spawn isn't in a dense forest with wolves you can very much prepare for running into them. And as long as you are able to prepare, being unprepared isn't bad luck, it's not being prepared. You need 3 ladders and 1-2 flint spears to deal (get them to flee or kill them) with wolves.

On 4/1/2022 at 1:01 AM, Machaeus said:

And I'm pretty sure the computer I'm using to play is high-end with 16 GB of RAM.

On 5/1/2022 at 1:03 AM, Machaeus said:

I think it might be the fact that I'm running Linux on the desktop.  It's the only thing that makes sense.

It could be the drivers, that are unable to fully utilize the proprietary features of some of your desktop components, too. I can say that even my old pc with components state of the art a decade ago (i5-3570, 16GB DDR3 RAM, GPU end of support years ago) was able to run VS without lag (since then I updated the GPU to a Radeon RX580 in early 2021, it was only slightly outdated, and after I fried the main board updated to ryzen5 5600G and 32GB DDR4-RAM, still far from high-end, tbh that hardware has been considered budget [= low-end but not outdated] components already when I bought them).

 

I did post several times, I'd like to see wolves behave more like irl, because they are, like in about every other survival game, too much misrepresented.

On 4/4/2022 at 10:20 PM, gibbelblonk said:

Everyone saying that wolves don't just attack people are speaking from a modern human perspective.

No, most fear mongers today (re-)painting the picture of the big bad man hunting wolf, are not acknowledging that incidents where wolves attacked humans historically didn't happen as often as they like it to be, wolves killed humans usually in self defence after some local pack killed too many sheep/cows and the humans instead of using better fencing hunted wolves. And from what we know today of what happened in the past, there is quite some possibility those livestock killings were done by wild stray dogs, mistaken for wolves.

On 4/4/2022 at 10:20 PM, gibbelblonk said:

Even 1000 years ago(which is way higher in the tier of civilization that's in VS)

The civilization's tech level in VS canonically is the Industrial Revolution (the intended technology level for vanilla end game) and that was in the second half of the 1800s, If my math is correct slightly earlier than 1900 was only slightly over 120 years ago, not over 1000.

Edited July 12, 2022 by Hal13

[Dawning]

I don't think it's the wolves themselves are the problem. It's the frequency and amount. I started a single player in 1.17 (just to see) and they spawn like crazy in large packs. But add a bear on that and the carnage is overwhelming. Bears are incredibly aggressive, plus they seemed to have killed all the rams/ewes/boars/sows in their area. I have a home semi-close to a small forest. In it spawned 6 wolves and 2 bears. They don't seem to attack each other though. 
 

I love the fact that there are bears and wolves, but I spend too much time dealing with them, it halts progression. 

Also, hares.......seriously 40 hares around my small garden one morning. How do I know 40? /entity remove hare-* 

I can't get anything done, if all I'm doing is dealing with one aspect of the game. Animals. 

Edited July 21, 2022 by Dawning

[Philtre]

1 hour ago, Dawning said:

Also, hares.......seriously 40 hares around my small garden one morning. How do I know 40? /entity remove hare-*

Trench around garden = trapped rabbits = free meat and small hides....

[Dawning]

18 hours ago, Philtre said:

Trench around garden = trapped rabbits = free meat and small hides....

Yeah I did that for the first two days, then it was too much to keep processing, all the meat spoils and it becomes something you are very tired of doing. 

[Lacrimarum]

On 7/22/2022 at 11:03 AM, Dawning said:

Yeah I did that for the first two days, then it was too much to keep processing, all the meat spoils and it becomes something you are very tired of doing. 

I take a bunch of meat, add an equal amount of vegetables, then make stew. Put it in crocks and seal them with fat and they will last for over a year in the cellar.

When it comes to the actual wolves themselves, I think that a lot of the proposed solutions deal with complex AI changes, which can be difficult to implement without a big budget. A better way, imo, to implement such changes might be for the player to have a debuff/buff on them which influences wolf behavior in simple ways. If a player has a low amount of health (<1/3), they will get the 'wounded' debuff which will make wolves behave in their currently aggressive fashion. If you recently injured a wolf to the point where it flees within, say, the last 24 hours, you will get a wolfslayer buff which makes them flee from you like rabbits do. Their normal behavior can be changed to only attack within a small radius and to make more noises to warn you away before you get close - no complex stalking behavior but a reduction to their aggression. If you do incite their ire, they will not follow you for very long if you choose to run. All of these behavior patterns more or less exist in other animals already, so this would just be tweaking which set of behavioral rules they follow depending on the player's status.

[Maelstrom]

Only problem is that wolf meat cannot be incorporated in meals (unless you're running a mod like Expanded Foods).

@DawningYou can throw the wolf meat in a container, let it rot and convert it to compost.

[Dawning]

On 8/3/2022 at 5:19 AM, Lacrimarum said:

I take a bunch of meat, add an equal amount of vegetables, then make stew. Put it in crocks and seal them with fat and they will last for over a year in the cellar.

When it comes to the actual wolves themselves, I think that a lot of the proposed solutions deal with complex AI changes, which can be difficult to implement without a big budget. A better way, imo, to implement such changes might be for the player to have a debuff/buff on them which influences wolf behavior in simple ways. If a player has a low amount of health (<1/3), they will get the 'wounded' debuff which will make wolves behave in their currently aggressive fashion. If you recently injured a wolf to the point where it flees within, say, the last 24 hours, you will get a wolfslayer buff which makes them flee from you like rabbits do. Their normal behavior can be changed to only attack within a small radius and to make more noises to warn you away before you get close - no complex stalking behavior but a reduction to their aggression. If you do incite their ire, they will not follow you for very long if you choose to run. All of these behavior patterns more or less exist in other animals already, so this would just be tweaking which set of behavioral rules they follow depending on the player's status.

I like this idea. It would make things more dynamic. Especially since you have to go into a forest to find the horsetail to heal yourself. I think that's cool. I feel that 6 wolves in three separate packs around your house is ridiculous. And the rabbits......I /removed 116 yesterday. I have the screen shot to prove it. 

[Gobs]

On 8/3/2022 at 2:19 AM, Lacrimarum said:

When it comes to the actual wolves themselves, I think that a lot of the proposed solutions deal with complex AI changes, which can be difficult to implement without a big budget.

Honestly, the mod that removes the player from the "hunt when hungry" list was enough to fix it for me. No complicated AI changes needed.