New Animals

[Forrest]

@Satouthedeusmusco

Can you explain what will board do in freezing cold of north canada . 

Boar will die itself . 

You can not add that animals which are not suitable to put . 

Otherwise I am agree with cougar . 

Cougar 

Beaver 

Owl 

Squirrel

[manolitode]

Don't forget the mighty walrus

[Forrest]

@manolitode

Yes offcourse walrus is an amazing idea

[Rap Turner]

Yeah, I was thinking about wolverines until a friend pointed out that would spell shoa for all other animals in a pretty short in-game time

[flakeinator]

I want some geese in the game. Probably be a decent source of food and you could use the feathers. Possibly use those features for some type of strange cloak to help keep you dry while snowing instead of for arrows.

[Snowpecter]

Fox like hinterland logo

[Forrest]

@Snowpecter yes same here . We need a fox 

[Kranium]

19 hours ago, flakeinator said:

I want some geese in the game.

No way do I want cobra chickens in this game, bear and moose are scary enough! lol

 

I'm good with cougars. I live where this game is set, and we have cougars here. And elk. Not to mention orca...

[flakeinator]

8 hours ago, Kranium said:

No way do I want cobra chickens in this game, bear and moose are scary enough! lol

 

I'm good with cougars. I live where this game is set, and we have cougars here. And elk. Not to mention orca...

Cougars and Elk would be cool though I am freaked out enough when a wolf or bear is coming at me. I would love to see an Orca in the ocean in this game even if you can't "catch" or harvest it.

I was also thinking that if the bear has a cave to live in why aren't there dens for the wolves or the possibility to find burrows or warrens for rabbits.

[breh]

ok as a canadian myself I must say a beaver would be an okay thing to add but they got most animals in the area I live in down pat. the wolves here don't fear crap ( other than bears) but still don't attack humans on sight. the bears absolute tanks and they are very tough up here but I own a .303 the same rifle in the game and I killed a bear with about 5 bullets now i don't know how many it takes in game but I get this is a survival game and not a hunting sim.
the stag's or elk or deer whatever you wanna call them act just like they do up here they bolt if they sense danger. but my final animal I have to talk about is the moose now moose are very deadly but they do not attack on sight they attack as a defence if they feel threatened and I have walked up on a moose in game and the distance was about 20 ft and it charged me and didn't run away that is unrealistic but hey I am not going to go on a rant about it so an A- goes out to the game devs .

Edited December 19, 2020 by breh
fixing grammar

[ChillPlayer]

1 hour ago, breh said:

 the distance was about 20 ft and it charged me and didn't run away that is unrealistic but hey I am not going to go on a rant about it so an A- goes out to the game devs .

maybe have a look at the disclaimer when the game starts - have you ever encountered a moose after a geomagnetic event?

[Derek0311]

Wolverines, Marten, Ptarmigan, Geese.

[wilsonaka]

The only animal I'd want to see added and that would make sense to me would be Sea Lions.  That would be assuming, of course, that GBI is on the west coast somewhere, also they would only be available on some maps.  They'd be an excellent source of lamp fuel or quick calories (you'd have to cook down the blubber first), and meat (with parasites).  You could bait them with raw fish.  Other than that, I think that the wildlife in The Long Dark are reasonably balanced.

[Lexilogo]

New animals are hardly a bad thing, but I agree with the sentiment that adding animals for the sake of more animals isn't good game design. Animals should serve clear, new purposes, not just be present for variety's sake. The Moose is a good example, it isn't JUST there to be a moose, it has a clear role as being the rarest animal in the game with high rewards for hunting it.

 

There are plenty of good ideas in this thread but I think the obvious nobody has mentioned so far- While this is technically not a "new animal", I would like to see Crows reworked so they're physically in the world and can be hunted. More universally present than other animals with no specific hunting grounds (though they'd obviously collect around corpses), has a bunch of feathers instead of hide, with the main catch being they're too fast to hit with rocks. (though, maybe their senses could dull during auroras?) You'll probably need to be willing to be inefficient with ammo/arrows to get meat from them making them a "last resort" hunting target, or should you need crow feathers.

[Lone Trekker]

On 11/28/2020 at 9:28 AM, Satouthedeusmusco said:

First off. Let me say that I'm the kind of person that doesn't believe balance is the be all end all of a singleplayer game. I don't think every item should be as important as the other. And I don't think some strategies being objectively better than others will ruin a game like the long dark.

 

In my opinion, adding more animals is great as long as they are significantly different from the other animals. There are two animals in particular that I think would be great additions.

 

Boar: Don’t let your opinion of domestic pigs fool you, the boar is a dangerous beast. Boars prefer running away, but if they are cornered they might charge and initiate a struggle with the player. A boar struggle is slightly less dangerous than a wolf struggle and just like a wolf struggle you can fight back. Boars will also run from predators, players in the path of a fleeing boar will be knocked down, suffering a sprain. Gameplay wise, the boar could serve as a somewhat dangerous prey animals that isn't a moose. I think the game kind of lacks an intermediate

 

threat right now. Currently I find it a bit weird that there are so many predators but so little prey. Loot wise boar hides aren’t that useful. But they have good meat and plenty of guts on them.

 

Cougar: A new apex predator. The cougar will serve as a dangerous late game threat. She’ll be very rare and elusive. Like the moose, if you want to hunt her you’ll have to look for scratch marks on trees where she sharpens her claws. Like bears you might find a cougar sleeping in a cave, and like wolves you might find a cougar feasting on a recent kill.

 

But don’t think you’ll often be the one hunting her, she’ll challenge your position at the top of the food chain by hunting you. Cougars will actively stalk the player. The process will be very in-depth. The player will know that a cougar as begun stalking them when they wake up during the night to the sound of the cougars bloodcurdling screams. In the morning the play will find scratch marks surrounding their base. The stalking process will now begin. The player must avoid cramped passages and sharp corners where the cougar might ambush the player. The player must avoid sleeping outside without a fire or risk being awoken by sharp claws and teeth. Even caves and fishing huts aren’t safe. The player should also frequently look behind themselves for the cat might strike in the back. Gameplay wise the devs at Hinterland could save a lot of effort here while also making this stalking more tense by not actually spawning the cougar in during the stalking phase. If the player is prudent and never gives the cougar the opportunity to strike she might give up on stalking the player and leave them alone. Overconfident of desperate players will eventually be ambushed. During the ambush the cougar will actually spawn (either behind the player, around a corner or at the entrance of a cave that the player is sleeping in) and pounce. A cougar pounce leads to the most dangerous struggle in the game as while the player can fight back, losing it will always result in death (you're her next meal after all). Loot wise cougar hide could be used to craft a stealth robe that makes the player harder to detect. The meat is pretty bad, and there are few guts on the cougar.

 

 

 

And lastly there are a couple of animals that I think would make a fun addition, though they probably wouldn’t be that impactful.

 

I’d like to see some kind of bird that spends lots of time on the ground like a turkey or pheasant. I’m not actually Canadian so I don’t know what bird it would be or if they even exist. It’d be similar to a rabbit but rarer and harder to hunt. You wouldn’t be able to stone it like a rabbit. The bird would have some high quality meat but most important you’d be able to gather a large number of feathers from it that you could use to craft higher quality arrows that travel further.

 

I’d like to see some kind of ferret of weasel. It’d be incredibly rare and would hunt rabbits. It would also steal dead rabbits from your snares. You could stone it like a rabbit, but if you catch it you’d have to initiate a mini struggle where it will claw and bite at you before you can finish it off which could give you a nasty infected bite wound and cause bleeding. It would have little meat and guts but from his hide you could make a very high quality hat and gloves

Actually I very much like your approach to the cougar. +1

[Derek0311]

On 11/28/2020 at 12:28 PM, Satouthedeusmusco said:

First off. Let me say that I'm the kind of person that doesn't believe balance is the be all end all of a singleplayer game. I don't think every item should be as important as the other. And I don't think some strategies being objectively better than others will ruin a game like the long dark.

I completely agree.  This isn’t a situation where we are competing against an opponent and balance is required.  In fact asymmetric advantages are the reason so people live and some people die in a survival situation.