Not all corpses/carcasses spawn crows

[Dr. S.]

Has anyone else noticed an issue where not all carcasses/corpses spawn crows?

I'm on mystery lake, near two corpses, one by a fishing hut and another nearby (at the little island). Crows are only circling over the corpse by the fishing hut. I'm not aware of anything that should cause this. Weather's fine; that's not the issue. In any case, either both should have crows or neither, no?

[UpUpAway95]

Yes, although I'm not sure it's an issue.  While doing my Broken Railroad Only runs, I found that there were always some of the corpses that were without crows.  Which ones changed over the course of the run... that is, the crows would migrate to different corpses.  Also, when I had a kill on the ground, the crows would leave the prop corpses in order to circle over my kill.  I think there is a limitation as to how many groups of crows can be found in an area at any one time... and that's sometimes less than the number of corpses in that area.

[peteloud]

2 hours ago, Dr. S. said:

In any case, either both should have crows or neither, no?

It is realistic for there to be a fixed number of crows, so that if there were many animal carcasses  and/or corpses there would not be crows for every bit of carrion.  It would be unrealistic for a murder of crows to be generated for each carcass/corpse.

[Dr. S.]

1 hour ago, peteloud said:

It is realistic for there to be a fixed number of crows, so that if there were many animal carcasses  and/or corpses there would not be crows for every bit of carrion.  It would be unrealistic for a murder of crows to be generated for each carcass/corpse.

I was talking about how I thought TLD worked, not what would be realistic in a hypothetical post-apocalyptic world. Sorry if I was unclear.

Maybe I'm not observant enough, but I always thought that if the crows were out then every outdoor corpse/carcass had crows. Apparently that's not true? If so, that makes me wonder which corpses or carcasses might not have crows, and under what conditions. In particular, is it possible for the carcass of an animal that I've hunted to not have crows, even if the crows are out around other carcasses? That would affect the way that I search for them.

[odizzido]

My guess is that some existing map items are not flagged as corpses. This would mean that any items you do make(dead animals) are generated as corpses and will always spawn crows, if the weather conditions allow it of course.

[UpUpAway95]

30 minutes ago, Dr. S. said:

I was talking about how I thought TLD worked, not what would be realistic in a hypothetical post-apocalyptic world. Sorry if I was unclear.

Maybe I'm not observant enough, but I always thought that if the crows were out then every outdoor corpse/carcass had crows. Apparently that's not true? If so, that makes me wonder which corpses or carcasses might not have crows, and under what conditions. In particular, is it possible for the carcass of an animal that I've hunted to not have crows, even if the crows are out around other carcasses? That would affect the way that I search for them.

From my observations, again in Broken Railroad, it is possible that a kill will not have crows... at least initially.  I do believe the game does give some priority to kills over the prop corpses... causing crows that had been previously flying over a prop corpse to migrate to the kill for a period of time at least.  As for which prop corpses have crows and which do not... as far as I can tell, it's mostly random and, again, the crows will migrate to different corpses over time... much like the active rabbit groves can change to different locations on the map over time.

My observations, however, are not from specific testing of this particular feature... just observations based on spending a number of runs that I intentionally limited to the small zone of Broken Railroad.

[Lord of the Long Dark]

Yes the game would be way too easy otherwise. By the time you complete your forge run if you already had 60 feathers the game would be way too easy. 
 However you can “force” feathers to drop if you harvest a carcass. On bodies just give it a few days and eventually they generate. 

Edited May 12, 2021 by Lord of the Long Dark

[UpUpAway95]

9 hours ago, Lord of the Long Dark said:

Yes the game would be way too easy otherwise. By the time you complete your forge run if you already had 60 feathers the game would be way too easy. 
 However you can “force” feathers to drop if you harvest a carcass. On bodies just give it a few days and eventually they generate. 

Feathers can drop after harvesting a kill regardless of weather or not crows actually appear.  Feathers can also respawn by corpses that have no crows flying over them.  The two types of spawns/respawns are not exactly contingent on each other.  Furthermore, some corpses will not have feathers around them despite there being crows flying over them.

Edited May 12, 2021 by UpUpAway95

[Dr. S.]

So I've been paying more attention to this ... Here's a picture I just took.

 

 

These are two wolves I shot the previous day and came back to harvest. Only one carcass had crows.

The interesting thing is, I harvested 2 kg of meat from the carcass on the right. When I finished, I noticed that the crow sound was louder, and when I looked up there were two groups of crows, one over each carcass. I backed up to take another picture, and while I was framing it, the crows over the carcass on the right disappeared, leaving only one group of crows, over the carcass on the left.

[stratvox]

I have noticed this too, and I'm pretty sure that this is something that has changed.

[hozz1235]

Perhaps HL only allows a murder of crows within certain proximity of each other?

[stratvox]

Yeah, I thought of this too, but at the same time I can remember seeing two murders on corpses/carcasses that were mere yards apart in the past. I'm pretty sure that this is a changed behaviour.

[Andy_K]

Just once I'd like to find a dead crow. No more need for collecting feathers, ever 😁

Edited June 14, 2021 by Andy_K