Wolf Scent Over Power.

[hiraku_13]

The wolf scent in the game is way to over power. You have wolfs that can smell you  5 to 6 miles away which is ridiculous. I can understand if a wolf was close to your area but for them to smell you so far away and not only one but 4 sometimes at the same time is just too much. Please i hope you guys fix this because is way too much when your trying to fight one wolf and now you got five on you just because you have meat on your inventory. I understand why you guys did this and i get it but come on guys for them to smell you 5 to 6 miles away is too much

[Stinky socks]

Pretty sure wolves have good sense of smell in real life. You can turn down that difficulty in settings when you start survival. Pick custom.

[hiraku_13]

14 hours ago, Stinky socks said:

Pretty sure wolves have good sense of smell in real life. You can turn down that difficulty in settings when you start survival. Pick custom.

I'm pretty sure is broken i dont mind the difficulty but that scent AI is hella broken proved it today. Was super far away where wolfs look only like small black dots in the distance and a few minutes later the whole pack of 7 were in my area. I understand difficulty wise and i know they do things like this to make it more hard and that's cool but there should be a balance on how far that crap can reach LOL.

[Stinky socks]

Well, wolves can smell prey from over a mile away easy. At that distance they would likely be a small dot. Seems about right. I am playing on custom difficulty and have their nose toned down a bit. It is quite manageable until I begin to haul around a pack of raw meat.

[antoxalias]

On 2/9/2021 at 12:42 PM, hiraku_13 said:

The wolf scent in the game is way to over power. You have wolfs that can smell you  5 to 6 miles away which is ridiculous. I can understand if a wolf was close to your area but for them to smell you so far away and not only one but 4 sometimes at the same time is just too much. Please i hope you guys fix this because is way too much when your trying to fight one wolf and now you got five on you just because you have meat on your inventory. I understand why you guys did this and i get it but come on guys for them to smell you 5 to 6 miles away is too much

You have to take into account the direction of the wind, if you stay downwind, you can hide your scent more easily. See The Long Dark Wiki for more details. Here: https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Scent 

At the Mechanics of Scent section, you will see that staying downwind helps you cover your scent.

If the direction of the wind is at your back your scent is going directly to the wolf in front of you, blowing your cover.

Edited March 23, 2021 by antoxalias

[Stinky socks]

I did not know they incorporated scent physx into wind! Very cool!👍

[darkscaryforest]

On 2/9/2021 at 5:42 AM, hiraku_13 said:

The wolf scent in the game is way to over power. You have wolfs that can smell you  5 to 6 miles away which is ridiculous. I can understand if a wolf was close to your area but for them to smell you so far away and not only one but 4 sometimes at the same time is just too much. Please i hope you guys fix this because is way too much when your trying to fight one wolf and now you got five on you just because you have meat on your inventory. I understand why you guys did this and i get it but come on guys for them to smell you 5 to 6 miles away is too much

Make sure you look at the other side of the road too.  It's pretty easy to forget, but you see, you're the hunter and the wolf are the prey- not the other way around.  The scent from meat can be as much of an asset as it is a liability. You can use it as a means to manipulate wild life to go where YOU want it to.

Edited March 30, 2021 by darkscaryforest

[Admin]

Moved to appropriate forum.

[RegentRelic]

What do you mean? Unless you are carrying an entire rotting carcass with you the wolf can barely smell two stone throws away and they need it since they can only see about 25 feet.

[UpUpAway95]

This setting is completely adjustable in the custom menu... actually 2 settings would affect it:

Wildlife Smell Range can be varied from Low (where it is set in Pilgrim) to High (where it is set in both Stalker and Interloper).  It can even be pushed to Very High (one setting beyond where it is at in Interloper)

Scent Increase from Meat Blood is currently set at Medium for all Standard Difficulties, but can be varied from None to High.

Therefore, it is not universally OP.  Rather, it just means you personally don't like where they have the setting in whatever standard difficulty mode you're playing in.  Why not try a custom game?

Edited April 2, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[metlman72]

When you first begin playing TLD it definitely can seem that the scent detection is OP. It did for me as well. I learned that carrying meat or guts/hides around should only be done to get back to your home/base. You can just leave it outside in the snow right out front of your base (meat that is). Just grab a steak or two when you need and cook it up in the safety of your base. The hides and guts just leave on the floor inside to cure.

Try not to bring meat out with you for the days adventures. You can eat cat tails if your in a pinch throughout your days adventures. That and you can usually scavenge enough food in houses and stuff for the day. This is the food you should be bringing with you when you go out for the day. 

The bottom line is this game is super heavy on resource management. Food is one of them. As you get more time in the game you will learn all the best ways to do this.

I can tell you first hand that it is well worth the harsh learning curve when you first start playing this game. It is one of the most relaxing, exciting, terrifying,  frustrating and rewarding gaming experiences I have had. 

As well this community is one of the best if you have questions about anything game related. Or if you just want to share a story from your time in the game.

Almost forgot this, lighting a flare or a torch should keep the wolves at bay giving you time to get where you need to be. Always have one ready if you can. Just don't get to close to them.

Good luck out there..... you got this.

Edited April 3, 2021 by metlman72

[Old Hermit]

I personally love the way the blood smell and general scent works.
I remember i once was heading to Mountaineers Hut, through the great corridor coming from Deer's Clearing, with some meat on the bag, and i could see those 'small black dots' at the limit of render distance, coming all hurried and interested ^^

I think that is the way it should be, and i play mostly Stalker, so i'm always surrounded by wolves. I'd prefer if Stalker would have the scents adjusted to maximum, not high (i know that there are custom settings, but i prefer Standard modes 'cos i don't unlocked all feats yet).

The wolves ar not a great threat if you know how to deal with them and has some resouces ready. They are the main wildlife challenge, and i compare them to StarCraft Zerglings (annoying, high damage if neglected, shows up quickly, populate everywhere). If you remove or tune down their main interactivity mechanism, they will become simple and easily avoidable security dogs.

[Nicholai]

This mechanic is really out of tune. It's not about adjusting it from difficulty settings, it is simply unrealistic. I play on stalker mode and carrying a single piece of cooked meat or having a full scent meter does not make noticeable difference. All the wolves in the draw distance begin to stalk on me when I carry even a single piece of cooked meat, regardless of wind. I wonder what would happen if the stink meter was full, would attract all wolves across the region? A simple google search tells that the smell range of wolves can go up to 2.5 km, more or less, under the right conditions. I want to believe that these right conditions refer to at least a few degrees above 0 C, not -20 C. 

And the funny part is they turn back when I drop the meat. Does it stink less on the ground than in my backpack? Grab it, stalking again, drop it, turning back again. Michael Jackson would be proud of them. 

By the way, this mechanic is not challenging except interloper since you can obtain quite a bit arsenal once you go over a few regions. It is just annoying. 

[Leeanda]

2 minutes ago, Nicholai said:

This mechanic is really out of tune. It's not about adjusting it from difficulty settings, it is simply unrealistic. I play on stalker mode and carrying a single piece of cooked meat or having a full scent meter does not make noticeable difference. All the wolves in the draw distance begin to stalk on me when I carry even a single piece of cooked meat, regardless of wind. I wonder what would happen if the stink meter was full, would attract all wolves across the region? A simple google search tells that the smell range of wolves can go up to 2.5 km, more or less, under the right conditions. I want to believe that these right conditions refer to at least a few degrees above 0 C, not -20 C. 

And the funny part is they turn back when I drop the meat. Does it stink less on the ground than in my backpack? Grab it, stalking again, drop it, turning back again. Michael Jackson would be proud of them. 

By the way, this mechanic is not challenging except interloper since you can obtain quite a bit arsenal once you go over a few regions. It is just annoying. 

Maybe it's because when you're carrying it ,they smell/see you as injured or weaker. Same with most predators in the wild, if you smell of blood it's harder to distinguish between it being yours or something else.

[MrWolf]

3 hours ago, Nicholai said:

I play on stalker mode and carrying a single piece of cooked meat or having a full scent meter does not make noticeable difference. All the wolves in the draw distance begin to stalk on me when I carry even a single piece of cooked meat, regardless of wind.

It varies for me in Interloper.  Yesterday I was harvesting and cooking deer meat at a campfire and a wolf was patrolling nearby, far enough away that it wouldn't detect me if I walked around the fire.  I experimented with how much cooked meat would attract it.  I had to pick up 3 or 4 pieces before it turned my way.  Sometimes I've had one cooked piece attract wolves from farther away, regardless of the wind direction.  It seems to be a random value in each case, as to how much meat I pick up before a distant wolf picks up the scent.

[ManicManiac]

Setting all the hyperbole aside...  I don't think there anything here for Hinterland to fix.
I think the mechanic as is works fine and sort of requires us to be just a little a little more careful and thoughtful of how we travel (and what we have in our pockets).

We can get surprisingly close to wolves without being detected (as long as we get low and don't carry any meat/raw meat/raw gut/raw hide in our pack).

I think that for players willing to travel cautiously, it's possible to make it through most areas easily undetected by any wolves at all.  That includes really camped areas like Old Island Connector.

On 4/3/2021 at 12:15 PM, Old Hermit said:

I personally love the way the blood smell and general scent works.

 Agreed.

Edited December 30, 2022 by ManicManiac

[Leeanda]

When I tried stalker not so long ago I noticed that they weren't particularly drawn to me as much as I expected them to.  I did use the evade and avoid as much as possible and got quite a few sprains from getting as high as possible to avoid them.. I spent the first 20-30 days carrying a piece of meat with me and I seldom ran into any trouble from them..  most of my attacks were due to my carelessness and the occasional unavoidable ambush.