Fresh Meat & Animal Respawn

[potbelly86]

First time i got to shoot animal my feelings were "I just hit a gold vein", but the feeling quickly went away. I have played a lot since and this feeling i experienced has never been back, here is why:

I find it irritating that fresh meat goes bad so fast, somehow the hunting does not feel rewarding because you end up eating the meat relatively fast to avoid food poisoning. Not to mention indoors, where the degrading of the meat feels even more faster while air temperature is fairly low. Every bullet should feel extremely valuable but somehow i have found myself to be avoiding hunting.

How to deal with this?

Giving less meat from an animal? - No, getting only few kilograms from a deer would seem silly and to compensate increased amount of deer had to be shot we would need more bullets, making them feel even less valuable.

Making animal respawn more rare? - Yes, In ideal situation player would end up continuously searching for new resources, as situation already is with resources left behind by humans. Enviroment once full of game would become a silent wasteland with rarely and randomly spawning animals.

I also found myself hunting in coast town, simply because wolf respawn is so rapid that every time you go out you find some.

How to make them deadly and avoidable again? Now those feared creatures are more valuable than a deer.

They already give less meat, should wolf meat degrade faster? - No, It would make killing a wolf as a last resort an unrewarding experience taken the risk you take.

Making wolf stronger? - Yes, Make wolf withstand two rifle shots, first one only slowing if down and making it randomly fight or flee. This would also make the bullet used on deer so much more valuable as you end up using less shots to get more meat thus making wolf an unwanted prey and avoidable.

[elloco999]

Tip on storing meat: cook raw meat before it's condition drops too much (below 60% I think) so the meat has 100% condition after cooking. Then store the cooked meat in a freezer (Coastal Highway map) or an outside container (backpack/ corpse, Mystery Lake map) and it will keep long enough. If you eat 1 piece of venison each day, the meat of 1 deer will not even reach 50% this way before it's all eaten. Cooked meat degrades much slower than raw meat.

The wolves in the coastal town are there to make it harder to get to all the loot in the town. They are meant to be hard to avoid. In my current run I'm at 144 days and have only been attacked twice by wolves when I didn't want to be attacked. They are a pain, yes, but that's intentional. But it's not impossible to stay out of their way.

I think the way both deer (hunting) and wolves work a.t.m. is pretty close to just right. Wolves could be a little stronger (as in a little harder to kill in a fight) but I don't think it should take more than 1 shot to kill them. Any round that's capable of taking down a fully grown stag can also take out a wolf.

As it is now, wolves already give less meat, less hide and no guts compared to deer. I would not waste a bullet on a wolf for any other reason than to save my life. But as it is now it's too easy to kill a wolf in a fight when you have a hunting knife. So many people hunt the wolves not with a rifle, but with a knife. That feels wrong to me. I think they should make the wolves harder to kill in a fight, but not harder to chase them off. A few stabs should still send them off running with their tail between their legs, but killing them should cost you more than just 5-10% condition, a bandage and some antiseptic.

[potbelly86]

I think you might have partly misunderstood what i meant, i was intentionally hunting wolves in a coastal town because they did not feel like threat and because they spawn so rapidly there. Why to take a risk of weather rapidly changing towards bad while searching deer. I would rather step outside, kill a wolf in a front of the house and go back to fireplace, with respawn so rapid why would i leave the yard. (well obviously when i am out of bullets ).

New patch however seems to make wolves more avoidable once again <3

(luckily i wrapped up my game yesterday on 133 days, new personal record but committing suicide in a survival game just felt so wrong!)

I do agree that knife fighting a wolf came too easy, but it appears to be approached too.

[elloco999]

Ah, I did misunderstand you then. I thought you had to kill them because every time you exited the building you'd be attacked.

I do think though it's worth going after the deer since they yield more meat, the meat has a higher calorie value and they give more hide and guts. But I do get why you would just camp in the town and kill a wolf as that's much less effort and you can stay close to the safety of the houses. But less effort also means less to do and thus more time spend doing nothing (= sleeping mostly). I'd rather go hunt a deer and have something to do. I do try to kill the deer as close to a house as possible though

Yeah wolves seem to have been addressed I'll have to play some more to see how well I like the changes.

Congrats on the record!