Playing only with Bears as predators(highest scet ranges)

[Koopsta1994]

Has anyone else tried playing with certain animals completely disabled ?

At first I only did this for testing purposes, to figure out what settings I prefer on costum mode.

I pretty much only play sandbox mode and did a lot of testing with the wildlife, before i started a serious game again.

my last one was on costum with pilgrim settings for the animals and the survival serttings made equally challenging as on stalker. While I enjoyed playing with passive wildlife as it is the more realistic setting, I missed being hunted down by wolves and bears, and wanted to give some different settings a try.

I got the idea to leave out the wolves, because I have major issues with their behavior in the game, but thats a different story, I will just say that wolves are shy and intelligent animals. yes they can and will attack humans sometimes and are deadly,especially in pack, but they arent the suicidal zombies the geostorm has turned them into in the long dark.

personally I would have preffered a balanced version to choose between pilgrim and non passive wolves, but no matter what I set wolve fear to, they attack me no matter how well my character is. on the other hand on pilgrim, I can chase away a wolve from a deer carcass, while I am at 10 percent health and close to starvation etc, the wolve will wimper and run, not cool cause he should crush my bones and lick the marrow.

long story short, it motivated me to turn the wolves off, as I also played with the highest smell ranges, as they are most realistic. I cannot play a game where I can sneak past wolves and bears, as if they were completely fucked on some drugs and without any idea whats going on in their turf.

but entering any map with those settings, while having even just ojne piece of meat on you well... lets just say you will need a rifle with many bullets or a bow and go through the tedious process of shooting down every suicidal wolve after the other. Bears however are slower than wolves and more threatening, so I started a game without wolves, Bear and Moose spawns set to highest levels and called the save "Bearcountry".

I wonder if anyone else has tried this or something similar, its a ctually a great setting for a kind of different experience.

A great map for this setting is coastal highway, as well as pleasant valley, because you will really get at least 2 Bears that roam a large area and will notice you hunting in their turf, no matter what. The smell ranges set to the highest levels with the blood and meat factor also to the highest, it really becomes a challenge to go out and hunt and bring the meat safely to your hometead. You will find yourself harvesting a carcass for a few pieces of meat, then you make the mistake and take some guts as well, during the time you harvested them the bear roaming that area tracked you down, suddenly he stands before you and mauls you, there you go be more careful next time.

I learned a lot about Bears and their whole patrol routes on those settings, it actually made me study their behavioral patterns and what they do during  day, so I could best try and avoid being cornered or surprisedby them while hunting or traveling. but with the smell ranges set so high, threy still do surprise me every time I be a little uncareful. And no matter how much I leanr and how well it goes, if I dont pay attention and start to slip, I got a mauling coming my way and it wont be pretty.

Its a playstyle that can leave you really paranoid at times, as you know there is a predator you wont hear from far away like a wolve and it is slowly following your scent, maybe right now its even closeby but you just cant see it.. suddenly you hear it and it must be quite close and you realise yyou arent the hunter, but you are being hunted right now. It adds a lot to the game, while wolves really take from it for my taste, esopecially with realistic smell ranges.

It makes sense that animals in this game try and hunt down the player, dont forget there are corpses laying around on each map, you dont have to be a rocket scientist to understand, that a bear woken up from his sleep in winter, will binge eat on anything he finds and go back to sleep, therefore developing a taste for human flesh, same as the wolves. but the difference with wolves is, that they are shy animals and they will rather attack in pack and not alone and one by one, whereas Bears are like that.

After playing with these settings for a while however, I started missing the wolves kind of. But I knew also that turning them back on would only mean that I would go on a wolve killing spree on my second and third day of the new game and then have silence for a couple of weeks, to then go on a killing spree again.

I wonder how many people have tried playing with highest scent ranges and maybe only bears for example.

 

[XaldinVii]

This is an interesting play setting I will have to try it next once I get bored of my current Stalker play thru. I have to say the reason I started my first survival game on Pilgrim after playing the story, this was before the custom settings as well, was because I did not like the way the wolfs behaved as well. So I can say I agree with your being put off by the wolfs. Although I can see how with how to game works currently a pack of wolves would easily overwhelm a player.