Decoys and Scent Mechanics


WanderingPalm

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I can't find any official clarification on this, but others playing this game seem fairly confident that the Decoy mechanic chooses the smelliest thing in your inventory to drop. What remains unclear is whether or not size or condition factors into this, as well as what "smelliness" each item actually has. The smell indicator is terribly vague and seems unreliable at best, so I can't make heads or tails of where things rate in terms of smell, and what factors contribute. Here's a scenario I just ran into in my game:

I was holding an untouched rabbit carcass, which gave me 1 smell bar. I harvested all the meat (as one item) and cooked it. I still had 1 smell bar. I dropped a decoy--the game chose my cooked rabbit meat (which I picked back up). I then harvested the gut from the rabbit carcass, which now put me at 2 smell bars. I dropped a decoy--the game chose the fresh gut.  So the part of this that doesn't make sense to me is that the cooked rabbit meat was smellier than the rabbit carcass, even though it didn't affect my smell bar.

The only thing I can assume from this is that each bar has a value attached to it, and doesn't tick over to the next bar until that first value is filled (for example, the first bar is a range of smell 1-50. If a rabbit carcass has 20 smell, we're still on the first bar. If you add a cooked rabbit meat, it adds 25 smell, bringing us to 45 total smell, which is still in the range of the first bar. If you add a fresh gut, it adds 40 smell, which gives us a total smell of 85, which is now over the range for the first bar, so we have two bars of smell. This is all theoretical.) The problem with this mechanic, then, is that we can't actually tell what is smellier than what (since no one can actually confirm how the Decoy mechanic works), especially given that we don't know what else factors into the number.

Even more confusing, here's another scenario I ran into the other day: I was standing in front of a deer carcass with nothing smelly in my inventory (0 smell bars). Harvesting 4lbs of meat in .5lb pieces (8 total pieces) put me at 3 smell bars. I dropped all of them, bringing me back to 0 smell bars, and then harvested a single 4lb piece of the deer, which put me at one smell bar.

So weight of the item does not factor into the smelliness value. I suspect that condition also does not factor in (because between a 98% fresh fish and a 20% raw venison, the fish was dropped as the Decoy), although in the event of having two items of equal smell, the Decoy option will choose the lower conditioned one. So if that is true (and if the Decoy does actually drop the smelliest item), then as far as I can figure,  fresh gut > cooked rabbit meat > rabbit carcass (I'm unsure if raw rabbit meat is stinkier than fresh gut or not), raw fish > raw venison, and raw X > cooked X (though I don't know how different meats compare). Now, that's a lot of assumptions for the player to have to make about one of the core mechanics in the game.

Can I please get a straight answer on how Decoys and Smell are actually determined?

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The only problem I see is in assuming the two mechanics (decoys and scent) are related.  Decoys have been in the game for a long time and don't appear to have any mechanical changes (although the list of what can be a decoy has changed).  Scent is new.

As far as I can tell decoys are chosen from a preference list (lexicographical ordering if you want to be stodgy about it).  Testing it should just be a matter of having all the decoy things and seeing what order they drop in.  Condition does seem to be what determines what drops first for two of the same type of thing.

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General comment first.. weights don't seem to factor in at all, in any TLD scent mechanics. Only the total number of a particular item. 6 pieces of cooked meat, regardless of weights, light up one scent bar, for instance. @WanderingPalm's theory seems to be heading in the right direction, I suspect:

11 hours ago, WanderingPalm said:

The only thing I can assume from this is that each bar has a value attached to it, and doesn't tick over to the next bar until that first value is filled (for example, the first bar is a range of smell 1-50. If a rabbit carcass has 20 smell, we're still on the first bar. If you add a cooked rabbit meat, it adds 25 smell, bringing us to 45 total smell, which is still in the range of the first bar. If you add a fresh gut, it adds 40 smell, which gives us a total smell of 85, which is now over the range for the first bar, so we have two bars of smell. This is all theoretical.)

The only thing missing here, is that there's a (using the above example) 0-50 range before a scent bar lights up. In other words, the first bar ranges from 51-100, not 0-50. 5 pieces of cooked meat won't light the first bar, but 6 will. From which we might infer that one piece of cooked meat has a smell value of, for example, 9. It pays to remember that every piece of cooked meat increases the detection range at which wolves will notice you, even though no scent bar will show. All of which actually supports the above theory.

 

3 hours ago, Prestermatt said:

I can tell from personal experience that a whole, just-recovered rabbit carcass will drop before the small chunk of rancid, cooked meat saved expressly for that purpose.

Given that the whole reason I even ventured out was to check that snare, I was not happy.

Well, one fresh rabbit carcass lights up a scent bar. However, one piece of cooked meat, rancid or not, will not. So I'd say that pretty much is exactly as expected. The game assigns a higher 'smellyness' rating to the fresh carcass.

 

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4 hours ago, happybjorn said:

As far as I can tell decoys are chosen from a preference list (lexicographical ordering if you want to be stodgy about it).

It did used to be that way.. (and the list had some weirdnesses about it), but Hinterland have expressly stated that things are now assigned a "smellyness" rating, which is used instead. At the same time, they stopped the decoy system from dropping things that wolves would not be interested in, like candy bars.

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5 hours ago, JAFO said:

Well, one fresh rabbit carcass lights up a scent bar. However, one piece of cooked meat, rancid or not, will not. So I'd say that pretty much is exactly as expected. The game assigns a higher 'smellyness' rating to the fresh carcass.

Yeah, that's what I figured.  Still sucks, though.  Because it defeats part of the purpose of bringing along decoys if you're just going to automatically going to drop something better.  Now that I remember, I also once dropped a whole, 1300 calorie bass instead of one of the 500 calorie whitefish I was carrying.  It makes sense given the way the game is set up, but not from the perspective of a person trying to survive.

Perhaps there could be a way to prepare actual "decoys" ahead of time, kind of like we do for rose hips and mushrooms now?  Maybe they are no longer edible, but take first priority over other things in the inventory when dropping?

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2 hours ago, Prestermatt said:

Perhaps there could be a way to prepare actual "decoys" ahead of time, kind of like we do for rose hips and mushrooms now?  Maybe they are no longer edible, but take first priority over other things in the inventory when dropping?

That's something you'd need to make a posting in the Wishlist section for.. I can see it getting plenty of support, which might motivate Hinterland into implementing it.

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4 hours ago, Snake Plisken said:

i think it uses the most worn down food  = the oldest is the smelliest,  so make a bunch of small baits and when the condition gets to zero they will always be dropped first, 

Except that a whole, fresh fish or rabbit counts as smellier than an old, rancid bait chunk.

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8 hours ago, Prestermatt said:

Except that a whole, fresh fish or rabbit counts as smellier than an old, rancid bait chunk.

i just tried it out, i had old very low condition small pieces and brand new big pieces,  and as i walked i drooped them one by one, and always dropped the  oldest less conditioned pieces i had first, 

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On 8/18/2017 at 2:53 AM, JAFO said:

It did used to be that way.. (and the list had some weirdnesses about it), but Hinterland have expressly stated that things are now assigned a "smellyness" rating, which is used instead. At the same time, they stopped the decoy system from dropping things that wolves would not be interested in, like candy bars.

Any chance I can get a link to where Hinterland says that? I'm hoping that it might include what affects that rating, and if they outright say that the Decoy chooses the smelliest (wolf-edible) item. With that information, we can at least figure out what to prepare as bait in advance, or at least understand what we'll lose before actually hitting that button.

I never messed with Decoys before the official launch (I normally just crapped my pants and got killed when I saw a wolf in the old days). Did it seriously just drop items in alphabetical order? Haha, well, I guess this is an improvement to the system, then, even if it doesn't always make sense.

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2 minutes ago, Mel Guille said:

Baiting a predator doesn't always work, so your survivor will drop as bait whatever item is the "smelliest" and therefore most likely to be effective.

Ah, thank you, Mel! And could you possibly tell us if each item has a set Smelliness, or a range based on other factors (like Condition)?

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9 hours ago, WanderingPalm said:

Any chance I can get a link to where Hinterland says that? I'm hoping that it might include what affects that rating, and if they outright say that the Decoy chooses the smelliest (wolf-edible) item.

Sure..

It's from the v.364 "Vigilant Trespass" update release notes. All it says is;

Quote

Only Meat (includes Fish and Guts) may now be used for Decoys, and the “Drop Decoy” action will automatically select the “smelliest” (i.e. lowest Condition) meat in your Backpack.

 

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Thanks, JAFO!

Quote

Only Meat (includes Fish and Guts) may now be used for Decoys, and the “Drop Decoy” action will automatically select the “smelliest” (i.e. lowest Condition) meat in your Backpack.

Well, that...just isn't true. We know for a fact that "smelliest" =/= "lowest condition", given the preference for certain items over others, regardless of their respective conditions. Perhaps I need to re-read the update notes for back when they added the scent mechanics. Or just wait patiently for an official response.

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30 minutes ago, WanderingPalm said:

Well, that...just isn't true. We know for a fact that "smelliest" =/= "lowest condition", given the preference for certain items over others, regardless of their respective conditions.

Agreed.. I suspect that whoever wrote it made the sadly far-too-common mistake of writing "i.e." when what they actually meant was "e.g."

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16 hours ago, WanderingPalm said:

Thanks, JAFO!

Well, that...just isn't true. We know for a fact that "smelliest" =/= "lowest condition", given the preference for certain items over others, regardless of their respective conditions. Perhaps I need to re-read the update notes for back when they added the scent mechanics. Or just wait patiently for an official response.

Adjectives aren't game mechanics.  You could save yourself an immense amount of time by testing Scent and Decoys separately and comparing where they overlap after.

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Yes, I could, and have, tested, but since I am unsure what contributes to the "smell", this is a lot of extra time to waste for a mechanic that my character should already be able to determine. I'm not opposed to testing a bunch of combos and charting them for the forums and others--but I don't want to start documenting things only to find out I'm still missing some other factor that invalidated previous tests, or waste a bunch of extra time accounting for factors that make no difference. And since this all requires a hefty investment in time (gathering bear, wolf, deer, and rabbit meat and hides, fish, carcasses and quartered bits, and gut of varying conditions and weights, as well as equivalent pieces of meat and fish that are cooked) when you're also trying to play and enjoy the game, whatever the developers can tell me would let me get back to enjoying my game faster. If, for example, condition is not relevant except to determine which of two guts you drop, then this makes doing the tests feasible. Because, at least on PS4, there is no way to simply spawn in the items you want to test, and with the decay rate being what it is, certain combinations are unlikely if not impossible to test between.

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