Complacency ... a noob’s tale

[IamSameer]

Hi all 👋🏽

New survivor here, really enjoying the experience and this has become one of my top 5 games of all time!

After successfully managing 100+ days on Voyager starting at Desolation Point, moving through CH and then ML., killing a moose and a few bears. I decided to try stalker and after a couple of random spawns map starts & resulting wolf deaths, I started in ML & settled into a solid journey.

I covered all of ML and MT - crafting deerskin, rabbit items and the Moose satchel. I killed 70+ wolves and hunted a few bears. I remember thinking I was getting to grips with Stalker and feeling pretty confident.

Then it all went wrong -  I was savagely eviscerated by a wolf while at low health at the doorstep of my trapper cabin.

Details - I was being cocky and baiting two wolves with food to practice revolver timing. Having hit both wolves, I thought a hand to hand would finish one of them off - but mistakenly chose the knife, instead of hatchet which ended up with a much longer struggle.  To my horror, my health dropped from 50% to nothing (I had a healthy armour rating) and the black screen descended 😱

Lesson learned, confidence kills, even 1 foot away from safety!!

So for my next journey I have a couple of Qs:

1. Does the knife do less damage than the hatchet, therefore increasing the length of a wolf struggle? I have found that a hatchet stops the fight fairly quickly and I lose no more than a 30% health, often less.

2. Can wolves crit hit or is their damage consistent - my health dropped a lot, not sure what happened there.

3. I suck at shooting wolves with the revolver when being charged - the wolf pattern change is tough to deal with vs bow & rifle. Ahysuggestions, as it’s not easy to practice without serious consequences.

“For the soul, there is never birth nor death ... He is not slain when the body is slain.”

 

 

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by IamSameer
Grammar

[manolitode]

Congratulations on your progress 😊 Every death is a step up on the learning ladder and you summed it up pretty well yourself: "confidence will kill you". 

1) Damage will scare off the wolf. Knifes make a little bit of damage but cause the wolf to bleed out fast. Hammers on the other hand make a lot of damage but the wolf won't bleed out. Axes are somewhere inbetween these two. So hammer is the choice for a short fight, prybar works as well.  

2) From my experience wolf attack damage is inconsistent so yes, they may crit.

3) You'll receive aim assistance from revolver skill 4. Before that, I'd recommend luring wolves to safe areas where the wolves won't carry out their attack and practice your shooting ability from there. In MT you can lure them to the farmstead porch, in ML you can lure them to one of the fishing cabins. Stand just inside the cabin and the wolf will cease it's attack by the threshold. 

Edited February 19, 2020 by manolitode

[Hotzn]

Knife does more damage to the wolf than the hatchet, but the struggle takes longer, so you take more damage as well. If you fought the wolf off with the knife, you can be quite sure it will bleed out later.

I doubt that wolves do critical damage. The damage you sustain from a wolf fight depends on the duration of the fight (which you can influence by your choice of weapon and the speed of your clicking). Other factors are the protection your clothing provides and your exhaustion. So make sure if you go hand-to-hand with wolves that you wear the clothing which provides the best protection, that you are fully rested, and that your health bar is full.

[jhickie]

Great story, sorry it ended badly! Hubris is the greatest killer in TLD. Even when you're kitted out and feeling good, getting cocky can lead to a bad decision, which can cascade into more bad decisions, which can lead to an unexpected black screen. It's happened to all of us!

As mentioned above, the hammer is what you want to use in a wolf struggle. It won't cause a bleed out like the knife or hatchet, but it will end the struggle quickly with little damage to your survivor. You can then reset the battle and take another shot, likely to kill it since you already caused hammer damage. If I don't have a hammer but I have a knife and hatchet, I will use the hatchet. The knife takes way too long to battle with and you will take a serious hit to your condition.

Also, I don't remember how it works in Stalker, but there are alpha wolves in Loper which seem to be much stronger than standard wolves (they are bigger too). It's best to not put yourself in risky situations if you have low condition, because one of these guys can end you in seconds.

Good luck! Stay warm out there. 

[odizzido]

Yeah you do have to remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.

 

Honestly for practice with the revolver I would say make a custom game with wolf fear set to none, lots of wolf spawns, low struggle damage, and the highest loot settings and regen. You can get maximum revolver+ammo as well as wolves flying around like bees in an orchard.

[Valuable Hunting Knife]

practise what I preach, not what I do... just fire off a revolver shoot early doors if a wolf is approaching.  after the bleak inlet update ammo conservation is not an issue.  my other half will cringe reading this after the amount of times they've screamed at me 'just shoot it!' whilst I've tried to line up the perfect shoot at a zigzagging wolf and ended up a bloody ragged mess.  If you are after a relatively safe way to accumulate a meat store/skins early game then try to find areas when you can scare rabbits or even a deer into the path of a wolf.  You can get quite close before they look up from a good meal, even if you miss or wound they will run off leaving the prey behind, if you're sans ammo a torch, flare or even a well aimed rock may do the trick.

also, stalker is pretty brutal for animal interaction.  I'm comfortable at voyageur apart from massive brain freezes which have cost me runs at 460 odd days, and can get into a decent position on loper before forgetting that one mistake kills, but I've never got on with stalker, really lulls me into false security.  It's the long dark equivalent of battle royale.

I've read the heavy hammer is good for early struggle resolution, I use it on loper where there's not really a choice early, on, it's a fair weight penalty but maybe worth experimenting with to see if it works for you? welcome to the game and the forums btw, happy trail!