Wolves don't fetch

[Boreal]

Bought the game last night. I learned that ignited flares, when thrown, scare off wolves. Great! I am equipped with this resource as soon as I begin a new game. I'll surely get the 5 day achievement this time around!

Roughly 8 minutes into the game and a wolf crosses my path. I pull out my flare and prepare to ignite should the wolf become aggressive. There he goes. -Click!- My flare gracefully lands in front of the wolf. I quickly become full of shame as I realize that I have just thrown my flare, not ignited, to a hungry predator. Wolves don't fetch. /Game over

Moral: New to "The Long Dark"? Memorize your key binds before venturing into the wilderness.

[tomas_herbertson]

A couple patches ago it might have worked! :lol:

Ah well. At least you won't be making that mistake again in a hurry. Nature--she is a harsh teacher.

[elloco999]

Best way to deal with wolves is just to run. Works 99 out of 100 times. Flares are by no means guaranteed to work, even when lit.

[Boreal]

Best way to deal with wolves is just to run. Works 99 out of 100 times. Flares are by no means guaranteed to work, even when lit.

Thanks for the tip! What are flares more useful for? Lighting?

[elloco999]

They can be used for lighting or for hopefully keeping wolves at a distance. For the latter you need to have the flare lit before the wolf gets to close. If it has already decided to attack holding the flare isn't going to stop it. You can try throwing it at a wolf, that will sometimes still work, but not always.

Just ran into the 100th time myself... A wolf was tracking me and I thought I was already in the clear, when I sprained an ankle. Before I could take a painkiller the wolf was on top of me. The weird thing was that I was at 95% health, maybe 10% tired and not cold or thirsty, but I actually died from that attack. Usually I can chase a wolf off with just a few hits, taking 15-20% damage, but this one just kept going and going until I was dead. And so ended my 80 day run.

[Boreal]

That is a strange thing. I wonder if the sprained ankle was enough to put you into shock. Sounds like they need to fix that or look into it as a bug. I think I saw you post it in the bug section. Tenacious wolf right?

[elloco999]

Right. I found this fight so far away from every other wolf fight I had that it seems strange to me. Either a bug was causing the wolf to not run off or die, or the sprained ankle had a huge impact on my ability to fight the wolf, in that case it needs some tuning IMHO. So I reported it as a bug to get it to the attention of the devs.

[EternityTide]

I actually find flares more useful as markers at night. I put two lit flares at a set distance from each other and I use them as a reference point to calculate the distances from landmarks, and therefore I can work out a map