Bow-Shot Animals Running Forever?

[alkkamai]

Has anyone else had the experience, recently, of shooting an animal (wolf, bear, or deer) and had them run away in a straight line forever?

First was the wolf near the Fishing Camp on CH: he ran toward Rockfall until he ran up some rocks I couldn't follow. Been looking/listening for crows in the area for days to no avail.

Second was the bear near BC Campground: he ran across the stream and up the hills toward the single Fishing Cabin until I couldn't pursue. Same as before, no sign of crows in the clearest of weather. 

Another was a wolf between Misanthropes and Waterfront Cottages: he ran directly toward the sea until he hit the edge, went left toward the island you can't get to off the coast of Commuter's and died out on the thin ice.

I am playing on custom (don't have the code on me) with their fear set higher than normal, so maybe a specific circumstance. I also have the detection range (non-scented) smaller, so it seems to me they should stop fleeing closer to me as well although, admittedly, I know nothing of how these mechanics actually work.

[hozz1235]

Hmm...I thought they had fixed the issue with animals running up inaccessible areas.  Have you tried passing time and then looking for crows?

[UpUpAway95]

I recently shot a bear with the rifle in Coastal Highway between the bear den on Misanthropes Island and the Waterfront Cottages.  He ran straight out towards the island you mention and I feared that he was going to die out there on the thin ice so I stopped pursuing him and just watched from the rocks near Waterfront Cottages.  He eventually slowed his running to a walk and then turned back towards Commuter's Lament.  I stayed hidden and crouched (because I'm playing in Pilgrim mode  and the bear would run again if he spotted me) and I continued to just watch from a distance.  He continued at a slow walk towards Commuter's Lament and keeled over and died only after he got back onto solid ice (so I was able to harvest him).

I think having animal fear set high might be much the same way, so it might be better to crouch and just watch rather than pursue too closely.  I haven't used a bow much yet, but any animals I've failed to drop right on the spot (critical hit) with the rifle and ultimately turned and come back towards me before bleeding out. 

[alkkamai]

8 minutes ago, hozz1235 said:

Hmm...I thought they had fixed the issue with animals running up inaccessible areas.  Have you tried passing time and then looking for crows?

Yeah, both inside (to try to get it to die where it spawned - or maybe they fixed that?) and outside for different wolves I've shot near Quonset. A couple were recovered around Quonset (maybe the ones I waited inside for) and a couple I've never located.

7 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

 think having animal fear set high might be much the same way, so it might be better to crouch and just watch rather than pursue too closely.  I haven't used a bow much yet, but any animals I've failed to drop right on the spot (critical hit) with the rifle and ultimately turned and come back towards me before bleeding out. 

You make a great point, I will try crouching after pursuing enough not to lose them. I didn't think I was too close near the end, since I was well back from the Weak Ice line, but I may have been.

[galadhlinn]

Ok, I have two experiences to add to this thread.

1. I shot a bear near the hunter's blind in ML.  He ran (n, ne) up into a small alcove/draw with a rock outcropping in the middle.  I watched him run into the draw and behind the rock outcropping where I couldn't see him from where I was standing.  There is no way out from that draw except the way he ran in, as it is surrounded by bluffs.  I ran over there never taking my eyes off of the draw, never seeing him come out.  Once I got to the draw I picked up his tracks and blood trail.  I followed them into the draw and behind the rock outcropping where they just stopped, nothing, gone.  The tracks were fresh, and it only took me a few minutes game time to reach the spot.  I searched around for a few minutes to no avail.  Finally I gave up and headed back to the hunter's blind.  There about 25 paces from the blind the bear lay dead!  There were no tracks leading up to the corpse.

2. Today I shot a bear who was below me near the bridge on the sw corner of CH, down the road from the fishing cabins (with the workbench).  I was standing up on a high rock outcropping that could only be climbed from the backside.  I wanted to see if the bear would A. pursue me since I was up above him (he did  : P  ), and B. if he would come around the rock and climb up to get me (he did  : P  ).  I barely survived (thank you wolfskin jacket, deerskin boots and heavy work pants!).  After patching myself up (40% condition), I looked around and saw the bear trying to cross the highway just up from the bridge.  The bear was stuck, walking forward but not moving forward at the edge of the road.  I watched him for a bit and saw that he was bleeding.  I was tempted to not risk another attack nor spend a bullet and watch to see if he would bleed out.  I decided to earn the kill and shot him again.

[NardoLoopa]

You just need to channel Paris and hit'em in the Achilles:

(not really: this guy ran for a long time)

[galadhlinn]

Nice shot, NardoLoopa!

So I have lost one bear and two wolves since my last post, and I'm not sure if I'm doing something wrong, or it's game as intended or what, but I immediately set out after the wounded animal, and followed their blood trail.  In all cases I'm right behind them and can visually see them until they drop over a hill or go behind a rock bluff or something.  Then the blood trail just stops suddenly, and I lose the animal (and an arrow twice!).  I stay for awhile searching and waiting to see if the crows appear to mark the location of the corpse, but nothing.  The next day I go back and  there are two wolves patrolling where I shot them, so it would appear they survived.  Is this what happens sometimes?  One wolf I shot him in the face just as he pounced me, then I got a knife into him which caused him to flee.  Doesn't seem like he should survive that and be running around the next morning.  The blood in the snow where we fought was still there.

[NardoLoopa]

@galadhlinn, there are basically 3 type of arrow hits:

1. Instantly fatal
2. Blood-spatter at the location and blood dripping from the running beast
3. A bounce-off, where the arrow hit the beast, but the arrow falls to the ground at the site, and there is no blood-spatter.  The animal still runs away.

If you have #3, then they don't die after running, but also they won't leave a blood trail.  If you have #2, they always die . . . eventually.

It took me a long time to learn how to track them.  I don't mean that I didn't know the mechanic.  But just like you, I would lose the wounded animal's trail after some time.  I'm more successful now.  The following things helped improve my rate of success:

• Find a "bowl" or otherwise defined area, usually bordered by a cliff wall, and hunt there.  It leaves the animal with fewer places to go.
• Get an idea of the animal's patrol route.  Bears in particular seem pretty predictable.  After a day or so, check nearby caves -- sometimes they go home and die.
• Have good lines of sight -- Coastal Highway, with it huge ice sheet, allows for visual tracking.
• Visually track until the dodge out of sight.  Go to that location and find the blood trail.  Follow as best you can.  Animals can climb where you cannot, so sometimes you need to guess their trajectory and pick it up when they come back down to earth.
• Use your ears.  Galloping deer can be heard around rocks -- sometimes you can even tell what terrain they are on.  It's most useful to figure out if they doubled-back on you.

I'm still not great at it, but apparently the wolves feel I now have an unfair advantage on them; one recently headed out into the middle of FM's thin ice.  Even days later the arrow taunts me.  I'm still waiting for the wind to blow it ashore.

Best of luck!

btw: the puppy you knifed is dead somewhere.  It's his buddies that are after you now.

[Guest jeffpeng]

There is a bug in the game that carcasses of animals that die

• Out of bounds, meaning outside valid map space
• While the player is in another scene (another map, indoors with loading screen)

often times glitch back to the animals original spawn position, which is always the same for one and the same instance of any given animal. Arrows stuck in the animal when it dies will remain at the position of its demise and not travel with the carcass. That means that passing time "inside" will make it likely to experience this. Something I am not sure of is if the same occurs if the animal is not actively loaded due to distance, meaning "too far away". I'm not sure if the game even unloads entities that exceed a certain range to the player, but it would make sense.

Basically what happens here, I think, is that the game respawns the entity once the player enters the scene (the same map), but then realize that the entity is supposed to be dead and not yet to be respawned. You can sometimes even witness said behavior if you exit from a building and directly look at spawn point of a dead animal. You can then see the animal alive, and basically "die" again. Good places to see this are Grey Mother's and the Farm, both in Mountain Town.

Just now, NardoLoopa said:

A bounce-off, where the arrow hit the beast, but the arrow falls to the ground at the site, and there is no blood-spatter.  The animal still runs away.

That's basically like a blunt force injury from a pry bar or a hammer. The wolf will act very much dazed for a long time, and definitely has reduce hit points. Engaging a wolf wounded this way will yield a quick victory on all difficulties except Interloper, and shooting such a wolf will almost guaranteed end up killing it. From this I suspect wolves / animals have a condition just like the player, and that hitting them this way applies all the damage they would usually take, but without the bleed effect. I'm also not sure this is even intended as the instances where these glances happen are few and far between and occur actually pretty much random, regardless of range, angle or where the wolf was hit. Personally, to me it seems like for whatever reason the arrow simply fails to latch onto the wolf, and that the bleed effect is a subsequent effect that, in this case, never occurs.

[romerabr]

On 19/01/2019 at 1:48 AM, galadhlinn said:

I was standing up on a high rock outcropping that could only be climbed from the backside. 

When you are in a rock like that and shoot a bear, when he's going behind you to maul you, just drop to the other side of the rock, the bear will flee from you and you'll be safe.

[Ahatch]

16 hours ago, NardoLoopa said:

@galadhlinn, there are basically 3 type of arrow hits:

1. Instantly fatal
2. Blood-spatter at the location and blood dripping from the running beast
3. A bounce-off, where the arrow hit the beast, but the arrow falls to the ground at the site, and there is no blood-spatter.  The animal still runs away.

 

I have had a 2B when you have an arrow in low condition and when you use  when it hits the animal it breaks at the point of contact. Often there is a blood trail and you will have to wait for the animal to bleed out and harvest the broken arrow after. 

[UpUpAway95]

9 minutes ago, Ahatch said:

I have had a 2B when you have an arrow in low condition and when you use  when it hits the animal it breaks at the point of contact. Often there is a blood trail and you will have to wait for the animal to bleed out and harvest the broken arrow after. 

I recently shot a deer and there was a clear and massive blood spurt on impact, but the arrow broke.  When I got to the point of impact, there was absolutely no blood in the snow nor any blood trail in the direction the deer had fled.  In disbelief, I reloaded from the point I had last save (which wasn't too long before I shot the deer).  I repeated everything and the same thing happened again exactly - massive blood spurt indicating I had hit the deer, same broken arrow, and no blood on the snow anywhere.  That deer never did bleed out as far as I could tell.

[NardoLoopa]

1 hour ago, Ahatch said:

I have had a 2B when you have an arrow in low condition and when you use  when it hits the animal it breaks at the point of contact. Often there is a blood trail and you will have to wait for the animal to bleed out and harvest the broken arrow after. 

This is one of my favorite occurrences.  Since the broken arrow drops at the site of the hit, I don't have to worry about losing the arrow if I cannot find the carcass.

56 minutes ago, UpUpAway95 said:

I recently shot a deer and there was a clear and massive blood spurt on impact, but the arrow broke.  When I got to the point of impact, there was absolutely no blood . . .

The impact blood just indicates a successful hit.  However, if there is no blood at the impact site (on the ground) the animal will not bleed out.  In other words, you wounded the animal (it took condition hit), but it has no damage over time affliction.  So, as @jeffpeng says above, if you ended up in melee with the beast, it would be a much easier fight.

[UpUpAway95]

58 minutes ago, NardoLoopa said:

This is one of my favorite occurrences.  Since the broken arrow drops at the site of the hit, I don't have to worry about losing the arrow if I cannot find the carcass.

The impact blood just indicates a successful hit.  However, if there is no blood at the impact site (on the ground) the animal will not bleed out.  In other words, you wounded the animal (it took condition hit), but it has no damage over time affliction.  So, as @jeffpeng says above, if you ended up in melee with the beast, it would be a much easier fight.

That's pretty misleading though.  I would prefer if the animal isn't hit sufficiently to bleed out that they find another way to show the player that the arrow just wounded the animal slightly.  For example, the animal could make a specific "I'm wounded" type of sound or perhaps stagger momentarily.  IMO, seeing a blood spurt like that should always leave some blood in the snow at the point of impact.

[galadhlinn]

Thanks for the replies, tips and info on animal behavior.  I really appreciate them.

In the experiences I'm referring to there was blood splatter, blood in snow at point of impact and a trail of blood.  It has happened with a gun and a bow.  So by Nardoloopa's description this is a kill.  But I'm right behind them, chasing them, and then poof, blood trail ends and wolf is gone.  I turn back to pick up the blood trail again, following my own tracks, but the blood is gone, completely, even though it has only been a couple of minutes.  Then the wolves are back in their route by the next day, so it would appear as though they did not die.  When I am successful with a wolf kill, that area does not get another wolf spawn for a few game days.  The four times this has happened, it feels very different.  It feels like a bug.

On a side note, my preference is to push a deer to a wolf, let the wolf kill the deer and then shoot the wolf.  Works every time.  : )

[NardoLoopa]

If you can see blood, then there should be blood all the way to the animal (alive or dead).  If you are near a change of terrain (near rocks), the animal may have pathed (walked) differently than what you would think -- and then maybe you're just missing the continuation of the trail.  The animal may also double-back -- in which case older and newer blood mix and the direction of travel is hard to pick out.

However, if you have a visual, the animal just goes out of view, you arrive at the last known location following the blood within a short time, you should be able to hear the animal or at least confirm it didn't double-back (if you had view of the route the entire time).  If all that is the case, and you still believe the animal vanished, then I would file a bug report.