Wolfie punching bag. Wintermute. (Spoiler warning)

[strongpelt]

 

Well, This is as good a place as ever to share my experience of the first episode in story mode on The Long Dark.

WARNING: May contain spoilers for Episode one of the long dark.

 

Let's skip forward past the first few days right after the crash, you know, the days where it's just trying to teach you about fires and such.

Also, I want to mention before I had only played 8 hours of sandbox mode on peaceful back in June. Never fought a wolf or bear before. Knew about the controls for the game though.

Alright, So let's say the tutorial part took 3 days, so that’d put me on day 4.

 

Alright, So far so good, My injuries seem to be easy to heal, I got the hang of everything, supplies doesn’t seem so bad. Oh no… I see a wolf. I see it's eating, so I skirt around it. Huh, that was easy and terrifying. I continue my trek to look for the town.

Another wolf. Thankfully there's a car I quickly dart into. The wolf passes and I go on my way. Oh a church! That will be interesting to explore- Why is a wolf running at me. Oh no. I beeline it to the church and make it inside before the wolf can actually pounce on me. My heart rate going from the near miss. I loot things and decide to go back out, wanting to make it to the town before nightfall. I run to make sure I get out of the wolf’s land. I loot two cars before i see a bridge, I begin to walk towards the bridge. I hear something running towards me, I turn to my right and BAM. I’m being mauled by a different wolf. My heart's in my throat as I panic. I follow the screens directions. The wolf runs off.

My thoughts on my first wolf attack: Terrifying but not instant doom as I thought before.

Alright, so I bandage myself up, and manage to look up to see another wolf walking towards me. I go in the car by me and wait it out. I leave the car and flat out run to the bridge and cross it. I get to the town just as night sets in.

Flash forward to morning after meeting the npc. I go outside and I am greeted by a dead wolf. Must’ve been the one I fought off before. I take everything from it.

Game continues on wolf free for the most part. Until I’m nearing the end of wood gathering quest. Something new hurts me. I look up and realize a wolf is getting rather close to me to where it might be able to attack soon. I panic and turn around to run, only to run right through my camp fire. This is where I learned unlike other games, The Long Dark realizes people cannot run through campfires and be perfectly fine. Good for game play, Not so good for me in that moment. Will is howling in pain which freaks me out and causes me to stop in my tracks to fix the burns. Surprisingly not attacked.

Flash forward a few quests, to the bus. I investigate the bus, everything goes smoothly, I get a creepy feeling after seeing the blood in the cut scene. I go on top of the bus to make sure there’s no loot, I go down the bus and straight into a heart attack. I notice THREE wolves RUNNING for me. I mean full blown running for me. They weren’t bothering with trying to stalk my sorry butt. No, they wanted me to go apparently. I somehow manage to get over my panic and remember I have a flare gun. I aim at the middle wolf which is closest and stare in surprise as the one flare scares all three off. ‘I’m saved!’ I think, oh if only i knew how wrong I was.

It scared them off, for about 10 seconds, and then they came back. I am frantically shooting off flares at them as I run in the general direction of the town, trying to get back to the old lady’s house. Along the way I run out of flares, and manage to get mauled three times by three different wolves.

Finally, I see the house, I am not dead yet surprisingly and hope rushes through me. BAM. I'm mauled a fourth time right at the driveway of the house. I manage to get away from that with only a sprained wrist. Once inside the house I bandage myself up and marvel at how I was still alive. Surprisingly only my mittens were in terrible condition after that too.

Every time after that bus though I notice the town has about 6 wolves in it when it only had the rare one before. I am mentally kicking myself in the butt now for not looting the town earlier. I dismiss the thought of even trying to loot the town now. I just power through my quests.

I am still not done being a wolfie punching bag. I get mauled once going to the farm, and twice coming back from the farm. I survive this all too. I am now extra scared and cautious as I head for the graveyard. I managed to get back through a blizzard without running into any wolves.

The last stretch of the episode involved me treking a long way to the climbing area, with my nerves on high alert for wolves. I was also very close to starving but I didn't dare touch any meat for fear of attracting wolves. I do note, I did not see a single wolf on my way to the climbing area. It was like someone chased out all the wolves.

 

That sums up my experience with the episode, and mainly my experience with the wolves.

10/10 Would do it again, though next time I hope I'm a little more prepared to handle the flood of wolves. 

[JAFO]

G'day @strongpelt, and welcome to the forums!

1 hour ago, strongpelt said:

I look up and realize a wolf is getting rather close to me to where it might be able to attack soon. I panic and turn around to run, only to run right through my camp fire. This is where I learned unlike other games, The Long Dark realizes people cannot run through campfires and be perfectly fine. Good for game play, Not so good for me in that moment. Will is howling in pain which freaks me out and causes me to stop in my tracks to fix the burns. Surprisingly not attacked.

My guess is you weren't attacked because the fire was now between you and the wolf. They don't like fire.. even starting to light a fire can scare them off.

 

1 hour ago, strongpelt said:

Would do it again, though next time I hope I'm a little more prepared to handle the flood of wolves. 

Often crouching can help you avoid being noticed by predators. Also, see this thread for some other tips on dealing with wolves.

[Thrasador]

Yeah, the running through your fire was totally unnecessary....If you are standing next to a burning camp fire, once a wolf approaches within a certain distance of said fire (about 10 feet), it starts "yipping" like a scared dog and runs off a bit. This works even if the wolf is charging you already with the intent to fight.

As far as the rest of your story, that is all HIGHLY irregular. Since you have so little experience with the game, I have a very good hypothesis on what you did wrong, and I'm surprised @JAFOdidn't catch it. He must have been tired and/or in a hurry.

There is no way THREE wolves would all come at you at once, unless you were really close to all three of them....like walked past them all closely.....which I think you would have noticed and mentioned doing. This seems to have happened to you multiple times as well....not normal....

I'm thinking you must know nothing of the scent mechanic, and how scent attracts wolves from REALLY far away now if you have scent items on you.

Scent items include cooked animal meat/fish, raw animal meat/fish(even stronger scent), dead rabbits in your inventory, and especially uncured animal guts you harvested. (They say animal hides too....but hides don't seem to give off much scent) Just two animal guts give you one scent bar, as does 6 pieces of cooked meat, and less pieces of uncooked meat, or ONE dead rabbit. It stacks also, so if you are carrying one dead rabbit, two uncured guts, and like four pieces of uncooked animal meat then you will have three scent bars (the visibly displayed maximum...it may even go higher). Three scent bars will draw every wolf on a map from more than a kilometer away.

You should leave uncured guts and hides on the floor of a house (like Grey Mother's) until they cure....or drop guts/meat as bait and then back up so a wolf will eat it and wander off....instead of eating you. You need to drop one piece of gut or animal meat for each wolf coming at you though....

You should also cook animal meat as soon as it's safe to do so...preferably also in Grey Mother's house with the free ever burning fire. Also, limit the amount of cooked meat you carry to less than 6 pieces, they can still smell you from farther away with 5 pieces of cooked meat than 0 pieces....so the less meat the better. Also, drop bunnies off in a safe house until you are ready to harvest them, cook the meat, and drop the guts and hides to cure.

The scent bars, up until Wintermute, used to remain visible as (up to) three wavy lines at the top middle of the screen, but they disappear now a few seconds after picking up scent items. You can view scent anytime from the condition screen I believe, and you can toggle the lines the same way you toggle the time of day sun and moon display. Maybe you even noticed the wavy lines and didn't understand their purpose....that's their purpose, a scent marker.

Did I get it right @strongpelt ? Were you carrying meat, and guts, and dead bunnies around a lot? Or am I totally off base and you knew about smell? If you didn't have any bunnies, meat, or guts on you and ALL those wolves kept coming after you like that, then you should report it as a new bug. That's not normal....

PS Yes, ideally you should have looted most of the town during the wood/food quests. I THINK some of the wolves may go away again after getting to the point where you put the necklace on the grave. At least the three that start guarding the bridge during the prisoner quest disappear again....so you can get to the grave.....obviously.

When you FIRST get to Milton there is ONE wolf patrolling town, about three near the gas station, three near the farm, and one in the barn. The wolves patrolling the town do seem to increase as the quests progress....

PPS  There are no animals in blizzards, but the blizzard wrecks your clothes over time....

[strongpelt]

@Thrasador I had one uncured gut on me, simply to use as a decoy. I kinda know about the scent thing, I didn't realize it could attract wolves from the whole map though but I always try to keep my scent as low as possible. Now, I do remember i searched up the three wolf thing, wondering if it was scripted to happen. I found a post somewhere where someone complained that after the bus three wolves spawned right by them, though they saw them before the wolves noticed them. 

I do remember I was running off the bus and looking at the ground for a moment, So I'm wondering if I might have just gotten too close to all three when they spawned or ran just inside there attack zone when they spawned at the same time. I remember that mine seem to have come out of thin air almost... Wish I was recording that. I might go back and replay the episode and record the bus scene to see if I can recreate what happened. 

19 hours ago, Thrasador said:

about three near the gas station

You sure about this? I did go loot the gas station during the food quest and I didn't run into any wolves anywhere near it. 

Most of the advice I'm getting on wolves I have seemed to discover now. Though the fire being unnecessary I did not know about. Or maybe I did but I didn't think it'd work. Let me explain why. When I played sandbox I watched a few people play the game on youtube as I was thinking of moving forward to the mode where things would actually attack me. I remember seeing people throwing torches at the wolves and that scaring them off. Now, I have tried multiple times to throw a torch at attacking wolves (in various stages of attacking) and it has proved to have no effect. I have sense read up a bit and I think there was a change at some point that removed the torch throwing from working against wolves.

The one thing I would like advice on now that i'm on episode two however is... whats the best way to have meat on you? I haven't bothered to loot any deer or anything meat related since i started episode two but I seem to always be low on food. I need to get meat eventually. I know in episode one anytime i looted meat id cook it right away but I would always have at least that one scent bar on me. Id store food on the ground outside a house to try to keep the scent away but i need to carry a piece or two to eat when I have to sleep somewhere else. Any tips? 

19 hours ago, Thrasador said:

There are no animals in blizzards, but the blizzard wrecks your clothes over time....

That I didn't know about. Though even if the blizzard didn't wreck my clothes its so hard to see in them I don't think id willingly want to go out in one unless I needed wood or something to last the night. 

[JAFO]

3 hours ago, strongpelt said:

When I played sandbox I watched a few people play the game on youtube as I was thinking of moving forward to the mode where things would actually attack me. I remember seeing people throwing torches at the wolves and that scaring them off. Now, I have tried multiple times to throw a torch at attacking wolves (in various stages of attacking) and it has proved to have no effect. I have sense read up a bit and I think there was a change at some point that removed the torch throwing from working against wolves.

The problem with Youtube videos is that so many of them are now out of date. And yes, some mechanics have been tweaked.. but the torches (and flares, as it happened) not working against wolves turned out to be a bug that remained in the game for several months, finally being fixed in the 1.02 patch for Wintermute. But you need to land the torch/flare right in their path, a little ahead of the wolf, or actually hit the wolf with it, to get it to work.

 

22 hours ago, Thrasador said:

There are no animals in blizzards, but the blizzard wrecks your clothes over time....

3 hours ago, strongpelt said:

That I didn't know about. Though even if the blizzard didn't wreck my clothes its so hard to see in them I don't think id willingly want to go out in one unless I needed wood or something to last the night. 

There's a proviso to what @Thrasador wrote above. Wolves/bears that had already spawned before the blizzard started will still be out there during the blizzard. The only way to be sure of not meeting predators during a blizzard is if the blizzard is already blowing when you exit a loading-screen building. That way, none will be spawned until the storm is over. It also means that this is not a recommended tactic for the Mountaineer's Hut on TWM, as there's no loading-screen for that building.

As for clothing damage from blizzards, that has been greatly reduced from what it used to be. Moving cross-map during blizzards has now become a preferred tactic for many experienced players, myself included. But it does require very good familiarity with the map to succeed. Otherwise, it's far too easy to get lost and end up walking in circles as you get colder and colder.

[Thrasador]

9 hours ago, strongpelt said:

 

You sure about this? I did go loot the gas station during the food quest and I didn't run into any wolves anywhere near it. 

 

When I say three by the gas station or farm, I don't mean directly by the building....I mean in that area, but yes....over by the gas station and the surrounding wood lot areas by the gas station there are typically three wolves hunting you and deer.

Sometimes depending on where they move over time there can be two out front of the gas station past the pumps and the car, and one behind the gas station past the junk piles. If they were more spread out when you got there, then you were lucky in that instance. Sometimes all three are right around the gas station, sometimes they are farther out in the wood lots.

As far as scripting three wolves to appear after the prisoner cutscene by the bus, if they did that then they added it in a patch after I completed that section. After I did the bus bit, I doubled back the way I came which was hugging the wood lot wall around to the path under the "arch." I only saw one wolf in the wood lot,  and no other wolves by the bus in my playthrough.

I went under the arch to avoid the wolves in town, and because I knew that even though there are up to three wolves in the "gas station area"..... USUALLY only one of them is on the far end of the wood lot at any given moment. Usually when one heads to the gas station, a different one heads out to the wood lot. They seem to rotate around that area, and sometimes there are deer in the same area to chase into them. Sometimes if all three of them see the same deer, all three of them might be following the deer at the same time.....I guess that might of happened to you....

[Celeblith]

On 9/8/2017 at 10:31 PM, strongpelt said:

 Oh no… I see a wolf. I see it's eating, so I skirt around it. 

Another wolf. Thankfully there's a car I quickly dart into. The wolf passes and I go on my way. Oh a church! That will be interesting to explore- Why is a wolf running at me. 

I hear something running towards me, I turn to my right and BAM. I’m being mauled by a different wolf.

Alright, so I bandage myself up, and manage to look up to see another wolf walking towards me. 

I go down the bus and straight into a heart attack. I notice THREE wolves RUNNING for me. 

 Along the way I run out of flares, and manage to get mauled three times by three different wolves.

Finally, I see the house, I am not dead yet surprisingly and hope rushes through me. BAM. I'm mauled a fourth time right at the driveway of the house. 

I am still not done being a wolfie punching bag. I get mauled once going to the farm, and twice coming back from the farm. I survive this all too. I am now extra scared and cautious as I head for the graveyard. I managed to get back through a blizzard without running into any wolves.

I was also very close to starving but I didn't dare touch any meat for fear of attracting wolves.

The Long Dark: "Fuck all of you, but fuck this guy especially."

[MarrowStone]

I recommend holding onto the flare or torch until the wolf gets close and stops at the edge of the light. In this stage they stand and growl a few seconds while sizing you up, throwing now is the optimal time to convince them to run off.

Dont throw too early, its a very easy mistake to make. But also dont light those flares too late either, they seem to ignore them of theyre already getting ready to pounce.