Scent Mechanics Analysis


Timber Wolf

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9 minutes ago, WanderingPalm said:

Hey, don’t judge. We all have our dumb moments.

Chuckles.. I'm not judging.. I have my moments too.. and the older I get, the more I seem to have them!

I only commented because I see a lot of people calling that area a lake.. and it really bugs the pendantic arsehole in me. <grin>

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1 hour ago, JAFO said:

Well, from what @Timber Wolf's tests show, that underlined part is not correct.. or no longer correct, at least.

Hm, well I’ll be a little more skeptical of this wiki. It has up-to-date picture and some info, but that’s no excuse. I’ll just stick to these forums, people like @Timber Wolf can do some crazy (but helpful) tests, or anyone else who has experience.

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9 hours ago, omoon66 said:

Hm, well I’ll be a little more skeptical of this wiki. It has up-to-date picture and some info, but that’s no excuse. I’ll just stick to these forums, people like @Timber Wolf can do some crazy (but helpful) tests, or anyone else who has experience.

It could always be a case of the Wiki using older info, not being as up to date, or posting info from the change notes without directly testing it. 

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On 10/8/2017 at 4:40 PM, omoon66 said:

It does, if the wiki is right, that is

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I suspect that the underlined line is paraphrased from the update note provided in v .364, which read:

>>>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.<<<

Now I further suspect that the above note used the term “smelliest” (in quotations, even) to provide a story reason why it auto-deploys your oldest bait. I think the quotations are there to show that this is not mechanically factual, but rather a superlative descriptor to describe age which could be replaced by any number of other words (e.g. grossest, moldiest). This is simply so that we drop the 2% bear meat instead of the 73% bear meat we were planning on eating.

To put it another way, what I think this means is that we have two different mechanics at play. “Smell”, which decides what order you deploy bait in, and “Stink”, which determines your Stink bar. It seems that the two line up with everything, except that “Smell” figures in condition (but only within the category of that meat), which “Stink” doesn’t seem to (based on the current results of Timber Wolf’s tests).

Anyway, the Wiki is probably less credible than Timber Wolf. :D

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11 hours ago, cekivi said:
15 hours ago, WanderingPalm said:

Anyway, the Wiki is probably less credible than Timber Wolf. :D

Generally a safe assumption ;) 

Thank you very much. :)

I killed a bunch of animals in a different game and again checked my numbers.  Everything still adds up the same, regardless of the condition.  If Wiki has conflicting data, I'd like to see it. ¬¬

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On 10/9/2017 at 6:41 PM, Ahatch said:

Is there a scent mechanism if you shoot a deer with a bow ? Do the wolves smell the blood from the wounded or dead deer?

I don't think so.  You need to have the scented items in your inventory for the wolves to take notice.  I suspect the calculation is actually made using the inventory numbers. 

I completely forgot mention that I've noticed that the guts do not add up right if they are at the same condition level and stacked.  The value used in the scent calculation is only 1, regardless of the size of the stack.  In other words, the calculation is being made based on the number of inventory slots that are filled with the different scented items.  This isn't a problem with meat, because it never stacks.

Here is an example from the game I am using now to retest the numbers.  I have a total of 10 guts in my inventory, but they only fill 3 slots in my inventory due to stacking.  The scent calculations are adding up as if I only had 3 guts.  As you can see, carrying these 10 guts is only lighting up 2 scent bars.

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59e22c8c858dd_tld2017-10-1410-25-38-86.thumb.jpg.822e3d52d2a6c3975723414cfb918798.jpg

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17 hours ago, WanderingPalm said:

I suspect that the underlined line is paraphrased from the update note provided in v .364, which read:

>>>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.<<<

Now I further suspect that the above note used the term “smelliest” (in quotations, even) to provide a story reason why it auto-deploys your oldest bait. I think the quotations are there to show that this is not mechanically factual, but rather a superlative descriptor to describe age which could be replaced by any number of other words (e.g. grossest, moldiest). This is simply so that we drop the 2% bear meat instead of the 73% bear meat we were planning on eating.

To put it another way, what I think this means is that we have two different mechanics at play. “Smell”, which decides what order you deploy bait in, and “Stink”, which determines your Stink bar. It seems that the two line up with everything, except that “Smell” figures in condition (but only within the category of that meat), which “Stink” doesn’t seem to (based on the current results of Timber Wolf’s tests).

Anyway, the Wiki is probably less credible than Timber Wolf. :D

Yes, but that is a helpful feature, although it doesn’t always work for me. If anyone can explain, I always carry a .2lb 0% fish for decoys, but sometimes it drops my new venison instead. Any explanation?

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20 hours ago, WanderingPalm said:

To put it another way, what I think this means is that we have two different mechanics at play. “Smell”, which decides what order you deploy bait in, and “Stink”, which determines your Stink bar.

As far as I can tell, the only determining factor for which order decoys are dropped, is the order in which they were picked up.

I tested this using piles of different meats, both raw and cooked.  It became clear right away that smell value was not the only factor in which order decoys would be dropped.  But it did seem like a smell value was part of it, because most similar items would be dropped sequentially - but not always.  So, 4 raw pieces of venison would be dropped, then some other things, then the last piece of raw venison, then a few more items.

Eventually, it occurred to me that the order I was picking things up had an effect on the order in which they were being dropped.  So, I stopped picking up piles of the same item and picked the different items up in a random order.  The order in which the decoys were dropped reflected the order in which I picked them up.

For the most part, the last items I picked up would be the first items dropped as a decoy - but not exactly in reverse order.

I don't see how this could possibly be working as intended.

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On 10/14/2017 at 3:53 PM, Timber Wolf said:

As far as I can tell, the only determining factor for which order decoys are dropped, is the order in which they were picked up.

I tested this using piles of different meats, both raw and cooked.  It became clear right away that smell value was not the only factor in which order decoys would be dropped.  But it did seem like a smell value was part of it, because most similar items would be dropped sequentially - but not always.  So, 4 raw pieces of venison would be dropped, then some other things, then the last piece of raw venison, then a few more items.

Eventually, it occurred to me that the order I was picking things up had an effect on the order in which they were being dropped.  So, I stopped picking up piles of the same item and picked the different items up in a random order.  The order in which the decoys were dropped reflected the order in which I picked them up.

For the most part, the last items I picked up would be the first items dropped as a decoy - but not exactly in reverse order.

I don't see how this could possibly be working as intended.

Wait, seriously? I remember seeing that as a result of your tests in some previous version of the game, but I figured they would have fixed it by 1.0 release. So there’s even more reason to be angry with the Decoy mechanic, then! That has to be a bug. I hope you reported it.

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