I'd like to have more specific information about spawn chance settings

[Kristian2]

I've tried inquiring about this in the steam forum but that didn't work out the way I hoped it would, so I thought I might have better luck here and maybe even a response from a dev. So anyway, if I'm not mistaken, it seems as if each animal species has their own base spawn chance, so even if I give them the same spawn chance in the custom difficulty settings, they are not going to be equally common. That makes me wonder how common or rare I should expect each animal to be with each setting.

[Mroz4k]

First of all, welcome to the forums!

As for the spawns, the way I think it works is that each of the regions has preset locations that can spawn animals, and the "frequency" simply determines how many locations will be spawning animals, and how much of them will spawn there. To give an example: lets assume new location added into the game has 10 deer spawn locations, 6 wolf spawn locations, 2 moose and 2 bear spawn locations. If the default settings are set, the game is determined to generate 6 deer spawn points, 4 wolf spawn points, 1 bear and 1 moose spawn point. 

These spawn points will then be randomly distributed in between the "possible locations".

Now, some spawn points will be "bountiful" - having a lot of animals spawning in, and they will ALWAYS spawn animals there - for example, deer spawn by Trappers in ML or wolves at the Gas station in CH. Depending on the settings, there will be more or less of them there.

Don't expect a message from a dev. They are busy, and they rarely respond to such requests, besides Hinterland purposedly does not answer this kind of questions - they want to keep the mystery going on. The core value of Hinterland when it comes to responding to community questions is that they want players to theorize and learn these things through trials. On very rare occasions, they will interfere and respond to clear out some information, but that usually refers to bugs. 

Final issue with spawn points of animals:
Note that this might have changed, I wasnt able to play the game since Wintermute because of insufficient hardware. But, before that, it worked this way.

Spawn points for animals were permanent. In each game generated, the animals would always spawn in those locations where you found them the first time, and never anywhere else. However, there is also something called "overhunting" - if you periodically killed off all the animals in that region, they would respawn back, but gradually in smaller numbers and less frequently. So, for example, if you traveled some road often, and always killed off all the wolves in that area, you were able to "drive them out" for a long time. Not sure if you could stop them from respawning entirely - I guess if you can, then they will start spawning elsewhere, but I never got even close to testing it, I tend to play the game with respect to animals and only kill them when I have to.

I think they will just start coming back again after a while.

Probably not the answer you were looking for, but I hope it was helpful.

[Kristian2]

Thank you, that is helpful. I would still like to have some clarification in regard to the ratios. If for instance I were to set all spawn chance settings to medium, how numerous would each type of animal be in comparison to each other in general, and how much does each spawn chance setting affect that ratio? I don't mind if you can't provide precise numbers, I'd be fine with just getting a rough idea.

[Mroz4k]

I think we can do that. Roughly, at least - by using a very helpful spreadsheet (props to @epower for making it) that assigns "custom settings" to the game presets we are all well familiar with. 

If you are familiar with at least two of the preset modes, you should have a basic idea of what these custom settings are like. I am used to Voyageur and Interloper, so I think I can tell pretty well what, for example, a bear spawn chance can mean.

On Timberwolf mountain, there are 4 bear spawns that I am aware of: Linking Steam page with old, outdated TLD maps by  Whiteberry_toarda

On Voyager, which is "low" - there will always be 2 caves occupied by bears. (not sure if this setting on the spreadsheet is correct, because I think the spawn should be medium).

On Interloper, I seem to see 3-4 bear caves occupied. Not sure if its all 4 of them always occupied because on the Interloper runs I have been to TWM, I rarely visit all those locations.

However, these things do wary from time to time. In a nutshell, I would guess that "very high" setting will have all the spawnpoints occupied, and "low" settings will have roughly 1/4th or 1/3rd of them occupied.

But I think there is ONE more issue I didnt put into consideration - that is "groups of animals" - this also makes a difference. Like I said, some spawnpoints are 100% occupied in games. Usually this means the bountiful spots that people visit to hunt in case of deer, or high end loot areas which has wolves to make looting challenging. On the contrary, there are also "miserable" spawn points which dont usually spawn animals, and if they do, its usually a lone one, or two at least. These spots will be populated on Stalker which has higher numbers for animals spawned.

[Troxism]

The way spawn points and spawn settings have worked for a while (since the update after the Timberwolf Mountain update, Penitent Scholar I think?) is that there are 'pods' of animals on the map, that move between preset spawn areas (at least on Interloper). As an example, Quonset has a 'pod' of wolves that moves between Quonset, and the ice out front of Quonset every few days. Mystery Lake has a pod location near to Camp Office, and then a pod location on the far side, closer to the bear. There are numerous pod locations for Deer and Wolves that work like this. Note that they all seem to shift all at the same time on the same map, ie one day they just all shuffle over randomly at once, although sometimes a pod stays in the same place while others move, so I'm not 100% on the exact mechanics.

*Note that the reason I call them 'pods' instead of 'packs' is that A: they don't have any sort of pack AI or anything like that, they just patrol the same general area, and B: because some 'pods' are only 1 or even 0 animals depending on the settings).

So what does setting Deer/Wolf spawns to be higher actually do? Well, while I haven't done extensive testing of higher settings, at a glance it seems to make the 'pods' bigger. For example, on Very High, you get 4 wolves in the pod on the lake close to Camp Office. On High you get 3. On Medium you get 2, ect. This is however a bit more complex then that since as I said some pods are small (0-1 animals). For example, on the other side of Camp Office on the path to Trappers, there is a pod of 1-2 wolves depending on the settings, that also moves around to various places on the track. So it's not always the case that changing the setting changes a specific pod's size.

*Note that the custom mode's Interloper preset is actually incorrect. Interloper is supposed to have less wolves then Stalker, yet in the presets for Custom mode Interloper is on 'Very High' and Stalker is on 'High'. This is further proven by the fact that I have never seen 4 wolves at once in places like on the lake near Camp Office until playing 'Custom' Interloper, I have always for literally dozens of Interloper playthroughs always seen only 3 there. And it was stated by the devs when Interloper came out that it is supposed to have less wolves then Stalker, so this isn't a case of 'this was bugged before and was fixed this patch'.

It becomes even more complex, because in a few places pods can overlap, or you can have a situation where you kill the entire wolf pack just before the pods all 'shift' across the map, and you can sometimes get another pod spawning nearby and it seems like the population came back.

For Deer, it works similarly, but Deer pods tend to be even bigger. Even on 'Low', deer pods are 1-3 Deer. On Very High you can sometimes have 5 Deer in a single spot or even more with overlapping pods. Setting the setting higher for Deer also seems to cause more possible deer locations to be occupied at once. In general Deer tend to be more prolific then Wolves on similar settings.

For Rabbits, they don't move around, instead all 'rabbit groves' are always occupied (unless you killed all the rabbits and are waiting on respawns), and the setting simply affects how many there are (but again, even on 'Low' there are 2-4 rabbits in every grove so quite a few). It might also affect respawn times, to be honest I don't exactly bother with tracking rabbit respawn timers because it doesn't really matter.

For Bears, the setting seems to affect how many bear caves are 'active' at once. On lower settings AFAIK what happens is not every bear cave is occupied at the same time and it shuffles around periodically. On the highest setting, more of them are occupied and they don't really shift around.

Also, there are only 3 bear spawns on TWM, not 4. It's just the one in the far north (on the way to the summit) patrols in both directions randomly (in a huge range), both towards the river area in the west, and the path from Deer Clearing in the east, so it sometimes can seem like there are 2 seperate bear spawns there, but there is only a single bear cave there, in the middle of the narrow north path between those areas (near the rope that leads right next to the rope directly to the summit that starts out empty). The other two spawns are ofc the cave to the east of the cabin (this bear patrols around that area and comes around Crystal Lake), and the one to the far west of Crystal Lake up the river that patrols that region. Other maps have varying amounts of Bears (1-4).

For Moose, I don't know exactly what the setting does, because I haven't been able to pin down the exact mechanics of Moose spawning yet. This is almost entirely speculation, but I think the way Moose spawning works is there are a few Moose at a time, and they move around the various maps (each map except I think DP has a Moose location). That or there is a Moose at every location, but it only shows up periodically until killed (and then I presume it has a longer respawn time). If one of my two guesses is correct, then the higher Moose spawn setting would presumably make the Moose more active in those spots, or have more of them moving around the game world at the same time (so more spots are occupied at once).

For Fish, this setting is really weird, because it doesn't actually make any sense. Prior to this update, the way Fish worked is that fishing gave you a fish on average every X hours on Stalker/Voyageur/Pilgrim (skill, time of day, RNG, and a few other factors like overfishing also influenced this time ofc), and on Interloper it started out as the same as those modes, but steadily increased the average time it took to catch a fish up to 2X by day 50, meaning you got about half the fish on Interloper post day 50 per the same amount of time spent fishing. This btw is why fishing in longer sessions and cancelling right after you catch a fish gives more fish per hour on average then fishing 1 hour at a time, or at least that is how it worked before this update, maybe it has changed now.

Which brings me to the Fish spawn setting post update: it makes no reference to scaling with game days, so IDK if they changed it to Interloper just giving you less fish from Day 1 then other modes (ie the Medium setting just increasing average time to catch a fish from day 1), or if it still works the same way with scaling with time survived, but it's not properly explained? Fishing is very tedious and time consuming to test as you need a huge sample size to draw useful conclusions, so I think it will be a while before anyone bothers actually testing this.

[Kristian2]

I appreciate taking the time and effort for such in-depth answers. It's been a while since the last time I actively played TLD, so it's a little fuzzy to me how many animals of each species I encounter with the preset modes I've used and I have no idea about the numbers of moose since they're a new addition. Could you give me at least a ballpark figure of how many of these pods on average each type of animal is likely to have in one map?

[Troxism]

To be honest no idea specifically, because I rarely go to the remote locations on each map (there is just no reason to go to half the places other then once to collect plants/loot). I know where the pods are, but it's hard to list every location in words, and I don't exactly sweep the entire map every few days to see how many are spawned each time, I just keep track of all the stuff nearby where I am living at the time. Also some spawn areas overlap with each other, and scent mechanics can sometimes drag wolves from really far away places, further complicating identification of where every wolf is from. I think it's something like 14 or 15 wolf spawn locations on Mystery Lake, where not all are occupied at once (slightly less then half at a time, some pods cycle between two locations some between three, some are almost always occupied but take 'time off' every few swapping cycles, some are almost always empty but occasionally have a wolf, and as I said the swapping cycle is separate from the animal respawn which is linked to the animal itself and not it's current spawn location) as an example. Its I think 14 possible locations on Coastal Highway, 5 on Desolation point, ect. 

If I had to give a rough guess, about 40-50% of all the spawn locations for Wolves and Deer (it's about 50% for wolves, less for Deer on average) were occupied at once on Interloper unless you killed some animals off (I have way too many hours there so this is a pretty educated guess). I have less experience on other settings, but as I said I don't think the amount of active pods actually changes for Wolves (from what I have seen), just the amount of animals in each one. For Deer it does seem to change slightly, but it also seems to influence the number of animals in the pod as well, just less then wolves. And as I said, some locations are more active then others (some pods cycle like clockwork between 2-3 locations every few days, but some pods are almost always present in a certain spawn location and are only rarely absent unless the animals are on respawn timer from being killed, and some locations are almost always empty and rarely contain animals).

But honestly I know my understanding of animal spawns isn't perfect, at the end of the day it's just based on observation and some speculation based on what I see. It could be more complex or less complex under the hood then I am making it out to be. But the general assertions are accurate, at least for Interloper mode.

As for the Moose, I gave my best guess in the post. Hard to tell as I have been focused on testing other things rather then playing globe trotter to study Moose spawn patterns (I have hunted some but that isn't enough data).

[Mroz4k]

Ugh. I dont know about this pod thing, but I guess if that is how you see it, fair enough.  

In my experience, not that much has changed in the way animals spawn - what you call pods is in my opinion just a randomized spawns.

However, if what you meant to say that there are some "paths" they take, that is true. The animal behaviour (for predators, at least) suggests that they have certain paths that they take from time to time - some paths they take more regularly, to a point that it seems they have some patrolling areas - to give an example, the mentioned wolves at the lake in Mystery Lake. They will sometimes migrate down the lake towards the bear. However, this is not something that happens regularly, it is a random chance. At the same time, some wolf spawns have "more rare paths" which sometimes puts a wolf (as far as I can tell, it always is just a lone one, at least on Voyageur) into a location where wolves are not that commonly seen. And they don't migrate together - you can just as easily see a 1 wolf over there, and have 1 by the Camp office entrance of the lake. This doesn't happen often but it does.

However, this "behaviour" is entirely spawn point based. If you learn it, you can still predict where you can expect to run into wolves and where not. 

Bears are different. They actually have preset patrol paths. And they will irregularly circle them. So, even though you know they spawn in the cave over there, you can still run into that particular bear far away from his lair. At the same time, the lair location is not as dangerous as the game stresses (you can actually sleep in bear cave and it will not come back for many days. 

The way Moose is described, he works the same as bears. They will likely have long patrol routes, will be solitary, dangerous to encounter. 

But, even bear spawn points are specific. In some cases, the bears will not wander off that far from their lair. Example being a bear spawn on the way to TWM at PV. There is a narrowed rock passage that has a bear cave there, the bear does often hang around his lair in there. However, even this bear has a patrol route that he occasionaly takes - this takes him down towards the birch wood, where the ruined cabins are. I think thats the one. 

In general, deer will wander around their spawn points in big circles, but they seem to congregate more than other animals. Which is why you will see a herd of them, just strolling around, unless something spooks them.

Wolves will usually "guard" the area more, but they don't congregate that much, which is good cause it makes it easier to deal with them. Unless you are playing Stalker where you get to deal with several of them at the same time quite often.But that is not because of coordinated effort, only because of their sheer numbers. Its the scent mechanics that will pool them together - but I dont think the wolf territories overlap on their own. 

Bears are and always have been solitary. They have generally pretty long patrol routes and can wander off pretty far from their lair. 

I expect moose are the same. I qualify bears and mooses as Tier 2 animals and Deer and wolves (and rabbits) as Tier 1. Would not be suprised if we eventually got another "small animal" like a fox that would be Tier 2 small game.

By the way, rabbits work the same as deer. They have their locations, can hop out of them quite far, but seem to congregate more as a group.

Spawn points are, however, permanent. If your game does not generate wolves around the train derailment from the start of the game, they will never spawn there, ever.  Its the same with bear caves. Which is why it makes sense to mark down in your journal where you encountered animals and where not, if you plan to establish safe paths. 

Unless this changes with more difficult modes, but I highly doubt that - the entirety of the game suggests that the world is generated during the world creation, and that's it. The numbers do change, due to overhunting. Keeping at least one deer alive in the area seems to mitigate the effect a lot. 

I am pretty familiar with spawn points for all maps except for mountain town and Broken Railroad, which I dont know at all. The maps by Whiteberry are decently precise when it comes to terrain (except for FM, that one is very poor), but there are many "animal spawns" missing in there. I know the remote areas pretty well too, I regularly go on walks around the whole map while I play long term games to learn the map, especially natural shelters. A skill well worth it if you are cut off by a blizzard far from a decent indoor shelter.  TWM in particular is very good to learn, cause you can get cut off by a blizzard in one of the locations where there are no cave exits. 

[Troxism]

9 minutes ago, Mroz4k said:

 

Spawn points are, however, permanent. If your game does not generate wolves around the train derailment from the start of the game, they will never spawn there, ever.  Its the same with bear caves. Which is why it makes sense to mark down in your journal where you encountered animals and where not, if you plan to establish safe paths. 

 

Yeah this is 100% not true on Interloper (or even on Stalker since the animal location revamp) and I can confirm that in every single version of the game since Interloper came out over a year ago including 1.16 and 1.17. The wolves sometimes are there at Derailment and then they move after a few days, and then they move back. That is what I mean about pods moving around. The pod that spawns at derailment cycles every few days between the area between Camp Office and Derailment, and the area between Derailment and the Train Bridge. Maybe it is true on lower modes that the pods never move around. Same with various other pods on other maps.

When I said I don't walk in remote areas, I mean I don't check the pod locations in them every few days, I do know where the spawns are. It would just be too tedious and annoying to constantly check them.

[Mroz4k]

There is one place where bears actually congregate, to my knowledge, but I have never seen more then 1 of them there. That will be the PV Farmhouse. As far as I can tell, there are three different bears that have paths set to visit this location. Its the bear that lives in a cave next to a rope location that will lead you up to radio tower. Then there is a bear which lives in a cave behind a small "lake" - there is a potential bunker spawn with meds next to it.

I actually think that if one of the bear spots is occupied there, the other one is not. So, I am guessing there will always be just one bear, visiting the farmhouse in a game. 

But these are just theories.

I think there was also a third bear that ventured there, but I just cant place him now. The third bear was one that usually hangs around the birch wood.

[Mroz4k]

 

Here is where I have to disagree

This is not true. Thing is, the animal spawns in Interloper are, in my opinion, set to high - but the amount of the animals is minimal. Meaning that the wolves actually spawned "everywhere" (or on most places) BUT the Maximum number of animals per region is by default very small. Which is why you will encounter solitary wolves in different locations (very rarely there are more then two wolves in any spawn point on Interloper). This is what makes wolves so unpredictible on Interloper, and such a pain to deal with. And, beside that, the animal respawn rate in Interloper for wolves is pretty high - so, if you clear out the wolves in the entire region, they will soon spawn again, but perhaps in locations where they werent originally.

But, this should not be the case for Stalker. Stalker has high number of animals, but not all the spawn points. So, if the wolves never spawned in train derailment, you shouldnt see them in the future, either.

But, I admit, could be wrong.

[Troxism]

There are many spawns with 3 wolves on Interloper (and with the new 'custom' Interloper having Very High wolves for some reason, those locations have 4 instead and it doesn't line up with regular Interloper at all). Some have less as you and I both mentioned, but no, they most definitely do move around. This is pretty obvious since I have for example killed all 3 wolves on the lake near Camp Office, then literally the next day (ie way less then the normal wolf respawn time) there is a new pack of 3 on the far side of the lake (not behind the cabins which is a separate spawn, but on the actual lake, just the other side far from Camp Office), and I have never seen those two groups active at the same time, so it's not a case of 'X wolves can be up at once and they are just randomly distributed all over all the possible spawns'. In addition it's always 3 in each group of those. On the other hand there is the lone wolf in 3 possible locations along the track from Camp Office to FM on Interloper. And the pack of 3 in 3 different location along the rails from Camp Office towards Train Bridge.

And the thing about it is these shifts all happen on the same day. One day I see wolves close to Camp Office both on the lake and between Camp Office and Derailment (ie literally 6 wolves within relatively close distance to Camp Office), then the next day both packs have relocated to behind the wagons at Derailment, and the far side of the lake respectively. And me killing them doesn't influence this as when the shift happens it's all new ones, even if I killed the old ones at the original spot. And this is the same for many other places like Quonset. You can actually have zero wolves around Quonset if you arrive there at the right time (however it is random where they start out so you just have to observe from a distance to see where that pod is at the moment).

And if it was a case of 'it's just spawning new wolves after you kill them', well this happens even when I haven't killed any wolves for weeks, they still move around.

I mean I can't rule out the possibility that my game is just functioning differently, or is bugged, but I keep it up to date and have never messed with the game files, and my experience with this has been consistent through many versions, and even literally as recently as yesterday, so it's not a case of bad memory from a long time ago. I've spent literally hundreds of in game days across many games in some locations like Camp Office/Fishing Camp, and 50-100+ total days in many other locations like The Riken/Mountaineer's Hut/PV Farmstead, so my sample for this is quite significant at least for Interloper mode; I am not simply basing it off 1-2 experiences across a few days.

Even yesterday I had almost this exact experience I describe on ML in Milton proper; Very High Wolf spawns, I first end up killing 4 wolves on the side of Milton that is towards the gas station, and then not 2 days later, there are 4 fresh wolves on the side that is closer to the farmstead. Too short of a time for standard respawns, and the wolf locations/patrols were different (and I observed them from a distance with nothing smelly on me first, so it wasn't a case of them coming over to investigate smell, which obviously they do from a huge distance in some cases). Then the same thing around the farmstead; 4 wolves in the 'field' towards the ruined barn thing, and then 4 wolves pretty much exactly around the actual farmhouse a short while later after I killed them. And then again when I just dodged them all for a while, they still eventually flipped positions between those locations.

It also may be the case that it seems like they are just patrolling further afield to you, but if that were the case, I wouldn't be getting this 'kill 4 wolves', then they all 'respawn' in a shifted spot 1-2 days later, while if I kill them right after a 'shift' the area stays clear for a while until the next swap. Or like I said, maybe my game files are just corrupt or something, but that is unlikely. But I have seen this way too many times in way too many locations and both a long time ago and very recently. Or maybe I just suck at explaining what I mean and I should just make videos of it instead.

[Kristian2]

Alrighty then, thanks for the enlightening input. Guess I'll have to get a feel for the ratios myself when I get back into the game when the next patch is released.

[cullam]

In my experience (mostly on Stalker), the pod theory seems to hold up. 

I will find a group of 5 wolves on the ice near Quonset, or in the town, but not both at once. But I have absolutely found one full and the other clear, and then had it be the opposite the next day. Other "migrating packs" would be the Mystery Lake wolves, who hang out on the camp office side, or the cabins side, but I've never seen both at once. (again, I've seen them appear in both places over the course of the game). Same with the Mystery Lake train tracks wolves. I'm not sure if they're the same pair that can be found closer to the dam, but they've got at least two distinct regions. 

I have no idea how this affects lone wolves, or any other wild life. But a bunch of the "packs" certainly seem to display this varying hunting ground behaviour. 

[Pillock]

I think it would be much better if the Custom settings had more precise descriptions of what effects they will have in the game. I agree that Hinterland's policy generally seems to be for the player to work things out for themselves through in-game experience, and I very much like that approach to most aspects of playing The Long Dark - but I don't think this is a good policy when it comes to setting up a 'custom' game.

If you choose custom settings rather than one of the preset Experience Modes, then presumably it's because you know pretty well what results you want to get out of those settings - if you don't know, you choose one of the preset experience modes. You don't want (or I don't, anyway) to have to learn this through trial and error, because that entails choosing some settings, going into the game, realising that you one or more of the variables isn't how you wanted it, quitting the game, starting again with adjusted settings, then maybe realising again that you don't quite like the results, and quitting again and starting again, and so on into infinity. That's not a good game experience. If I'm given the option to use custom settings, then I want to just set up my game how I want it, and then play. I want to get it right (or very nearly right) first time, otherwise I feel like I'm wasting my time. For that to work, I need to know pretty precisely what each setting does, and what I can or can't achieve with them; and I don't feel like this is something I should have to rely on 3rd-party spreadsheets and walkthroughs to find out - ideally it should be there in the menu.

If you are allowing players the freedom to choose the settings, then I don't see any advantage in hiding the details or being vague about the results of those settings: that just makes the whole exercise less enjoyable.

[Patrick Carlson]

2 hours ago, Pillock said:

I think it would be much better if the Custom settings had more precise descriptions of what effects they will have in the game. I agree that Hinterland's policy generally seems to be for the player to work things out for themselves through in-game experience, and I very much like that approach to most aspects of playing The Long Dark - but I don't think this is a good policy when it comes to setting up a 'custom' game.

If you choose custom settings rather than one of the preset Experience Modes, then presumably it's because you know pretty well what results you want to get out of those settings - if you don't know, you choose one of the preset experience modes. You don't want (or I don't, anyway) to have to learn this through trial and error, because that entails choosing some settings, going into the game, realising that you one or more of the variables isn't how you wanted it, quitting the game, starting again with adjusted settings, then maybe realising again that you don't quite like the results, and quitting again and starting again, and so on into infinity. That's not a good game experience. If I'm given the option to use custom settings, then I want to just set up my game how I want it, and then play. I want to get it right (or very nearly right) first time, otherwise I feel like I'm wasting my time. For that to work, I need to know pretty precisely what each setting does, and what I can or can't achieve with them; and I don't feel like this is something I should have to rely on 3rd-party spreadsheets and walkthroughs to find out - ideally it should be there in the menu.

If you are allowing players the freedom to choose the settings, then I don't see any advantage in hiding the details or being vague about the results of those settings: that just makes the whole exercise less enjoyable.

We hear you. Please keep in mind there are display/UI considerations to think about in terms of how much information we can display with each variable description. Are there one or two that you can point to specifically where you feel like there is a disconnect between the description and what it apparently changes in the game? 

[Pillock]

1 hour ago, Patrick Carlson said:

We hear you. Please keep in mind there are display/UI considerations to think about in terms of how much information we can display with each variable description. Are there one or two that you can point to specifically where you feel like there is a disconnect between the description and what it apparently changes in the game? 

It's not that I've found a particular discrepancy between the description and the in-game reality; it's more that I don't really know what Low/Medium/High is going to mean when I get into the game. I feel like I'm shooting in the dark a bit.

I can cycle through the default modes and note down what they are (or I can use the spreadsheet that someone else in the community has produced) and make a judgement from that. But it would be more useful if, as well as an overview of what the setting does in general (like you currently get), there was also a little description of each setting position, so that I could make a better judgement of which one I want.

For example, for 'Blizzard Frequency' it says "Determines how common blizzards are". Well, that's obvious, thank you! But how frequent is 'Very High'? And how frequent is 'High'? Etc. Again, I can cycle through the default settings and judge from my experience of playing them, but I don't want to have to do that for every setting, because then it will reset all my previous choices and I will have to start again! It would be nice if, when you selected 'Very High', for example, the description panel actually said something like "Blizzards occur every 2-3 days on average", or "Every day there is a 60% chance of a blizzard", or however it works - or even something less precise without using numbers, but that at least gives you an idea. And it could say Interloper Level so that you have a quick reference to that for each setting. And then when you changed the setting to 'High', the description could change as well so that it says "Blizzards occur once or twice a week on average - Stalker Level " (or whatever).

I think that would go quite a long way to making the process less oblique (if that's the right word to use).

Thanks for taking the time to reply, by the way, @Patrick Carlson. Very much appreciated.

[Ruruwawa]

56 minutes ago, Pillock said:

For example, for 'Blizzard Frequency' it says "Determines how common blizzards are". Well, that's obvious, thank you! But how frequent is 'Very High'? And how frequent is 'High'? Etc. Again, I can cycle through the default settings and judge from my experience of playing them, but I don't want to have to do that for every setting, because then it will reset all my previous choices and I will have to start again! It would be nice if, when you selected 'Very High', for example, the description panel actually said something like "Blizzards occur every 2-3 days on average", or "Every day there is a 60% chance of a blizzard", or however it works - or even something less precise without using numbers, but that at least gives you an idea. And it could say Interloper Level so that you have a quick reference to that for each setting. And then when you changed the setting to 'High', the description could change as well so that it says "Blizzards occur once or twice a week on average - Stalker Level " (or whatever).

@Pillock you describe exactly how I'd prefer to learn about the settings.  Since this level of detail isn't currently available I'm on my 10th trial-and-error reroll with custom settings.  Exactly what the individual setting values affect is often not obvious, even for experienced players.

Yes, per-setting info is a lot more text to translate -- with a significant additional localization cost.  I'm not trying to trivialize that.  But for me this would make the Custom feature far more useful.  

@Patrick Carlson, since you ask let me point to the four inter-related loot settings.  (I exclude the item specific loot settings like sticks and rifle since those are simple to understand and works as expected.  Also starting gear, which is fast to test.) 

But for these four settings, it's hard to tell which knob does what.  

• Baseline Resource Availability -- which items are included at each setting level? How does this value interplay with the other three settings?
• Loose Item Availability -- which items are affected by this setting?  Hatchets,  knives and bullets?  Or just common loot like sweaters and sewing kits?
• Empty Container Chance -- why do I still get empty containers when I set this to None?
• Container Item Density -- how much does this modify the amount of loot?  I find it hard to spot the effect of this setting, but maybe I just don't understand what to look for.

I'm not faulting the core implementation of the loot spawning system; I'm sure it's provides the flexibility you need as a developer.  But man it's hard to understand from the player perspective -- I wonder if it would be easier if you just gave us the mathematical formula!

[Pillock]

15 minutes ago, Ruruwawa said:

I wonder if it would be easier if you just gave us the mathematical formula!

No, thank you!

[Fuarian]

On 12/13/2017 at 6:08 AM, Mroz4k said:

First of all, welcome to the forums!

As for the spawns, the way I think it works is that each of the regions has preset locations that can spawn animals, and the "frequency" simply determines how many locations will be spawning animals, and how much of them will spawn there. To give an example: lets assume new location added into the game has 10 deer spawn locations, 6 wolf spawn locations, 2 moose and 2 bear spawn locations. If the default settings are set, the game is determined to generate 6 deer spawn points, 4 wolf spawn points, 1 bear and 1 moose spawn point. 

These spawn points will then be randomly distributed in between the "possible locations".

Now, some spawn points will be "bountiful" - having a lot of animals spawning in, and they will ALWAYS spawn animals there - for example, deer spawn by Trappers in ML or wolves at the Gas station in CH. Depending on the settings, there will be more or less of them there.

Don't expect a message from a dev. They are busy, and they rarely respond to such requests, besides Hinterland purposedly does not answer this kind of questions - they want to keep the mystery going on. The core value of Hinterland when it comes to responding to community questions is that they want players to theorize and learn these things through trials. On very rare occasions, they will interfere and respond to clear out some information, but that usually refers to bugs. 

Final issue with spawn points of animals:
Note that this might have changed, I wasnt able to play the game since Wintermute because of insufficient hardware. But, before that, it worked this way.

Spawn points for animals were permanent. In each game generated, the animals would always spawn in those locations where you found them the first time, and never anywhere else. However, there is also something called "overhunting" - if you periodically killed off all the animals in that region, they would respawn back, but gradually in smaller numbers and less frequently. So, for example, if you traveled some road often, and always killed off all the wolves in that area, you were able to "drive them out" for a long time. Not sure if you could stop them from respawning entirely - I guess if you can, then they will start spawning elsewhere, but I never got even close to testing it, I tend to play the game with respect to animals and only kill them when I have to.

I think they will just start coming back again after a while.

Probably not the answer you were looking for, but I hope it was helpful.

I wish there was an option to customize each individual spawn location and how many animals will spawn there... I hate having so many deer near my home, the challenge of going hunting for the whole day is ruined with their proximity and chance of spawning.

[epower]

Agreed @Fuarian.  The non-agoraphobic deer on the ice of CH, Crystal Lake, Mystery Lake and outside Trappers does make it a bit too easy.  I'm experimenting with a modified Stalker setting with all land animal spawns on Low.  Fish I kept at Medium.   I still see groups of 3 deer but I'm hoping that once I hunt them down the Low Animal Respawn Frequency setting will prevent their return for a month, thus forcing me to range farther afield.  

Here's the Code for any who are curious.  I'm liking it so far but still debating the Low calorie burn rate.  That setting may or may not go back to medium. 

8pmk-kgpq-Kkq2-mGaF-bgAA     ack  critical typo - passive Wildlife

8pmk-kgpq-Kgq2-mGaF-bgAA  try this one instead

Being fairly new to the game, I'm not sure I would want a setting quite so fine-grained as determining exact spawn locations, and I think the devs might balk at the amount of coding such a feature would likely require, however, it would certainly be nice to have a more "natural" behavior setting for deer.   A few ideas:

1. Deer mostly spawn in remote locations, only rarely near habitations
2. Deer avoid wide open spaces which lack grass and natural cover, i.e. ice
3. Increase the range at which the deer runs away from the player

 

[Fuarian]

1 hour ago, epower said:

Agreed @Fuarian.  The non-agoraphobic deer on the ice of CH, Crystal Lake, Mystery Lake and outside Trappers does make it a bit too easy.  I'm experimenting with a modified Stalker setting with all land animal spawns on Low.  Fish I kept at Medium.   I still see groups of 3 deer but I'm hoping that once I hunt them down the Low Animal Respawn Frequency setting will prevent their return for a month, thus forcing me to range farther afield.  

Here's the Code for any who are curious.  I'm liking it so far but still debating the Low calorie burn rate.  That setting may or may not go back to medium. 

8pmk-kgpq-Kkq2-mGaF-bgAA

Being fairly new to the game, I'm not sure I would want a setting quite so fine-grained as determining exact spawn locations, and I think the devs might balk at the amount of coding such a feature would likely require, however, it would certainly be nice to have a more "natural" behavior setting for deer.   A few ideas:

1. Deer mostly spawn in remote locations, only rarely near habitations
2. Deer avoid wide open spaces which lack grass and natural cover, i.e. ice
3. Increase the range at which the deer runs away from the player

 

See, I'd like to have it where deer have a herd mentality where they are always grouped together. If you shoot one or scare one then all of them will run away and they will keep running away and eventually relocate to a new area to hang out in. Obviously some AI tuning will be needed for this. 

Also, I don't think restricting the respawn times will make it nearly as long as a month. I'd love that. But I don't think it's as long as that. 

[JAFO]

22 hours ago, Ruruwawa said:

Empty Container Chance -- why do I still get empty containers when I set this to None?

Because Hinterland implemented it backwards.. so that none means always empty, low means usually empty, medium means sometimes empty, and high means seldom empty.

Alternatively, they could have called it "Chance of Loot in Container", which would have avoided all the confusion.

[Ruruwawa]

1 hour ago, JAFO said:

Because Hinterland implemented it backwards.. so that none means always empty, low means usually empty, medium means sometimes empty, and high means seldom empty.

Alternatively, they could have called it "Chance of Loot in Container", which would have avoided all the confusion.

Ah, well that's one mystery solved.  I'm using Low baseline and "high" empty chance and getting more loot than expected.  Because I really have it set to high not-empty chance.

It's weird because the Interloper default for this setting (in Custom at least) is High.  Another bug?

[Troxism]

AFAIK it's Container Loot Density that is 'backwards'. Empty Chance should be working fine, the reason you still see empty containers on 'None' is because the Empty Chance is simply the chance to not even check the loot table; the loot table itself can still roll nothing, esp depending on other settings (Low overall loot removes many items from the tables as an example). High should be 87.5% chance to not check the loot table at all. It's possible it was flipped ofc, but the amount of loot on custom interloper by default seems way too similar to previously for it to be a coincidence.

At least the way it worked previously is Container Loot Density reduced the maximum amount (ie it couldn't go below 1) of items you could get from a container (1 on Stalker, 2 on Interloper), which should correspond to the current Low/High. Which is why custom Interloper starts at 'High'.

Having said that, some of the default custom settings actually are straight up incorrect compared to the standard difficulties (some of these are very easy to see for yourself unlike loot which is obviously pretty random and hard to test).