bugnar

I only recently got into Vintage Story, and while I'm having a great time, there is one source of trouble that is almost unavoidable and oftentimes invisible. The bears. The everloving bears. I'll be trekking through shrubbery, just to have to turn tail and run 300 blocks the other direction because some sleeping ursine was entirely concealed by the bushes, and I had zero way of knowing it was there. I'll be approaching the crest of a hill, not even to reach its apex, when a god forsaken bear comes blitzing from over the opposite side. How did it detect me? I have not the slightest clue. Probably my footsteps, but what am I supposed to do, crawl around 100% of the time? Expect a bear around every tree, every cliff, every bush? I enjoy the challenge set by wolves. They broadcast frequently so you know they're at least nearby, at least giving me time to prepare for fight-or-flight. Drifters are a nice consistent enemy to have to plan around with undulating light levels and temporal storms; but bears just feel like a consistent nail in my foot. I've taken a look at the survival configuration settings, and it's baffling that my only option is to tone down creature hostility in its entirety. I'm struggling with bears, not with every fight that comes my way. Additionally, the sentiment around nerfing bears on this forum hasn't been optimistic to say the least. Many people repeat the sentiment of meeting the wilderness survival aspects on its terms, or configuring it to be different. I appreciate having the survival and combat configuration options available, but I wish for them to be more expansive. I don't want to play such a softened version of the game, but I also don't want bears breathing down my neck constantly. I know I'm not the only person who's had this issue, so apologies if it's a worn out subject, but I just don't find the carnivore behavior immersive. Spending my life learning about the creatures inhabiting this earth has made me very subconsciously anti-bloodthirsty-beast. I just find it silly and reductive to the true nature of the animal, in this case being bears, which are intensely powerful kleptoparasites, cursorial hunters, and dietary generalists. All in all, I feel like bears should be defending something when they aggro on you, and not chasing you because they just wanna kill you soooo bad. A very common thing they could defend are partially eaten corpses, be it creatures they've killed on their own or that other entities, including the player, have killed. I do enjoy the rampage mechanic, and how its range is increased in winter! Its a fun way to mimic bears chasing down vulnerable prey, like they tend to do in calving seasons. I also enjoy the high health, speed, and strength stats of the bears. It's very reflective of the brute strength they possess in the real world. Overall I am just not the biggest fan of how they behave, and would like to at least be able to toggle the carnivore hostility to neutral while keeping Drifters hostile.