Is anyone else this terrible with wolves?

[itsLydt]

I have put about 100 hours in the game, interested in attempting interloper but it feels futile due to my incompetence in dealing with the gosh darn wolves. You'd think I would be getting better, but in my current game I have had more wolf struggles than in my other games combined. 

My current game is the challenge where you have to store a bunch of supplies in the garage in coastal highway. There is an abundance of wolves in this area it seems, and I can't for the live of me evade them. 

First complaint/issue: decoys seem useless or I have no idea how to utilize them properly. I was carrying some meat and guts etc, and see a wolf start trotting over from the ice. No big deal I think, I will simply drop a decoy and keep moving. So I drop a piece of fish using the hotkey, climb over a snow bank to stay out of sight, and keep on towards my destination. My thinking was that the wolf will stop to eat the meat and the placement of the decoy will prevent the wolf from seeing me, so I will be safe at least temporarily. No dice; the wolf trots over the snow bank right past my decoy and attempts to eat my face. Awesome. I fight off the wolf and retrieve my fish. 

I had many, many wolf fights since then, but this is the next relevant one: fire/torches even failed me. I thought that so long as you had a torch, you were safe from wolves! Apparently not. I was returning from a fishing spot near the garage, and had a torch with plenty of life left. There happened to be three wolves near enough to smell me, so they started stalking me while I tried to cross the street. I wasn't worried because of my torch! But then I noticed one of the wolves was getting closer than I expected...and charged me. Face eaten.

Luckily the other two wolves were right there still so I wasn't safe. I picked up my torch and limped over to the garage. I wanted to cook the fish I had caught, and was under the impression that starting a campfire would hold off wolves, so I put my back against the door and tried to make one. Cue my second wolf struggles in 2 minutes. At this point I was close to death and mad, so I went inside to evade the 3rd wolf.... temporarily.

I fixed myself up and slept off my wolf bites, and once I had restored most of my condition I attempted to cook my fish again. I made a campfire against the wall of the garage, and set my fish up. Finally. But I needed a couple sticks, so I walked a couple feet away from the fire and immediately heard the bark of the last wolf. No big deal, I'll just return back to the fire for a second. So I went back to my campfire and watched the 3rd wolf trot around the corner of the building, see me again, and do something I thought impossible. It jumped over my cooking fish and attempted to, you guessed it, eat my face. 

What. The. Heck. At this point I am spitting mad. Have the wolf mechanics changed? I took a break after part one of tales, and just started playing again to try out the frontier comforts update. Am I super unlucky? Or am I just terrible at the game? 😆 Suggestions/advice welcome! Thanks for reading.

[Leeanda]

20 minutes ago, itsLydt said:

I have put about 100 hours in the game, interested in attempting interloper but it feels futile due to my incompetence in dealing with the gosh darn wolves. You'd think I would be getting better, but in my current game I have had more wolf struggles than in my other games combined. 

My current game is the challenge where you have to store a bunch of supplies in the garage in coastal highway. There is an abundance of wolves in this area it seems, and I can't for the live of me evade them. 

First complaint/issue: decoys seem useless or I have no idea how to utilize them properly. I was carrying some meat and guts etc, and see a wolf start trotting over from the ice. No big deal I think, I will simply drop a decoy and keep moving. So I drop a piece of fish using the hotkey, climb over a snow bank to stay out of sight, and keep on towards my destination. My thinking was that the wolf will stop to eat the meat and the placement of the decoy will prevent the wolf from seeing me, so I will be safe at least temporarily. No dice; the wolf trots over the snow bank right past my decoy and attempts to eat my face. Awesome. I fight off the wolf and retrieve my fish. 

I had many, many wolf fights since then, but this is the next relevant one: fire/torches even failed me. I thought that so long as you had a torch, you were safe from wolves! Apparently not. I was returning from a fishing spot near the garage, and had a torch with plenty of life left. There happened to be three wolves near enough to smell me, so they started stalking me while I tried to cross the street. I wasn't worried because of my torch! But then I noticed one of the wolves was getting closer than I expected...and charged me. Face eaten.

Luckily the other two wolves were right there still so I wasn't safe. I picked up my torch and limped over to the garage. I wanted to cook the fish I had caught, and was under the impression that starting a campfire would hold off wolves, so I put my back against the door and tried to make one. Cue my second wolf struggles in 2 minutes. At this point I was close to death and mad, so I went inside to evade the 3rd wolf.... temporarily.

I fixed myself up and slept off my wolf bites, and once I had restored most of my condition I attempted to cook my fish again. I made a campfire against the wall of the garage, and set my fish up. Finally. But I needed a couple sticks, so I walked a couple feet away from the fire and immediately heard the bark of the last wolf. No big deal, I'll just return back to the fire for a second. So I went back to my campfire and watched the 3rd wolf trot around the corner of the building, see me again, and do something I thought impossible. It jumped over my cooking fish and attempted to, you guessed it, eat my face. 

What. The. Heck. At this point I am spitting mad. Have the wolf mechanics changed? I took a break after part one of tales, and just started playing again to try out the frontier comforts update. Am I super unlucky? Or am I just terrible at the game? 😆 Suggestions/advice welcome! Thanks for reading.

I'm not the best at trying to work out distances and how it works but I'd recommend watching one of @Zaknafein videos on how to deal with wolves, they're very helpful..    

It does sound like two of the attacks were because they were too close to you .   Maybe the fish one was because your scent was stronger than the fish.. guts do attract them too.,did you have many on you?

[conanjaguar]

 

[bysinda]

@itsLydt

I hear ya, buddy. I took me a long time to, first of all , stop jumping out my seat every time I hear a howl and to learn how to minimize the face-eating 

Torch is a great protection but you can't just stand too long with it in your hand. You either have to move away from wolves until you reach a house or just throw the Torch at the wolf and it will run away! But it only works only if there is one wolf. Because you will be throwing away your protection and until you pick it up another wolf can attack you. And most of the time,  Torch has to actually hit the wolf. But it works great, that's my every day solution 

If you have a scent, torches and bonfires won't help. Wolves will attack sooner or later. The smell taunts them. Every time I transport meat or guts I run like hell. Even the smallest piece of meat in your inventory that has 50 calories still will attract them and make them more aggressive. 

I used to walk around with a Torch and every time I heard them bark at me I would quickly drop all meat,  make a bonfire and get any weapon ready (stones and torches included), aim at them or throw a torch and they would run away. 

Decoys work only of you drop all your meat and run xD I think,  I never use them 

I forget,  are there weapons on whiteout challenge? Can't you just kill the wolves? 

Edited August 20, 2023 by bysinda

[MartianInvader]

I've never seen dropping a decoy do anything if the wolf is already stalking you.

It really helps to understand how wolves interact with fire and with being threatened. Let's go over the basics:

When a wolf is stalking you, it may occasionally run to keep up with you, but these aren't actual charges. A wolf only charges you if it gets very close, OR if you point a weapon at it. This can be any weapon, including just aiming a rock - if the wolf is growling and you aim a rock at it for even a fraction of a second, it will charge even if it's very far away, and won't stop running until it's close enough to initiate a struggle.

A few things can stop a wolf charge - hitting it with a damaging weapon (bullet/arrow/flare shell) will almost always cause it to turn and flee if not kill it outright - the only exception is if it's so close it's already beginning to initiate the struggle. Hitting it in the head with a rock will sometimes, but not always, cause it to flee. But the most reliable way to stop it is with fire.

A wolf either stalking you or charging you will stop once it's a certain distance from a campfire, held torch, or torch on the ground. It won't flee though, it will stand there growling at you. If you don't do anything for about 5 seconds, it will then overcome its fear and charge. However, if you point a weapon (or aim a rock) at it before 5 seconds pass, then it will flee. Also note that a wolf won't cross that distance to a fire, but if you bring the fire to it - say you throw the torch at its feet, or walk close to it while carrying the torch (this is common if you encounter it coming over a hill or around a corner), then it can charge you as it's already inside the fire's "safe radius".

So how do you safely get rid of wolves? If you have a torch, drop it (or throw it to the ground) while the wolf is stalking you and aim something (rock, gun, bow, whatever) at it. It will charge you, but stop when it gets close to the fire. Aim at it again at this point and it will whine and run away. Note that the wolf won't run forever, and if you have a lot of scent it may turn around and start stalking you again after a bit - but you can use the same technique to scare it away over and over.

Hope that helps!

[bysinda]

6 hours ago, MartianInvader said:

If you have a torch, drop it (or throw it to the ground) while the wolf is stalking you and aim something (rock, gun, bow, whatever) at it. 

If you already holding a lit Torch why not just throw it at the wolf?

[itsLydt]

On 8/20/2023 at 6:15 PM, bysinda said:

@itsLydt

I hear ya, buddy. I took me a long time to, first of all , stop jumping out my seat every time I hear a howl and to learn how to minimize the face-eating 

Torch is a great protection but you can't just stand too long with it in your hand. You either have to move away from wolves until you reach a house or just throw the Torch at the wolf and it will run away! But it only works only if there is one wolf. Because you will be throwing away your protection and until you pick it up another wolf can attack you. And most of the time,  Torch has to actually hit the wolf. But it works great, that's my every day solution 

If you have a scent, torches and bonfires won't help. Wolves will attack sooner or later. The smell taunts them. Every time I transport meat or guts I run like hell. Even the smallest piece of meat in your inventory that has 50 calories still will attract them and make them more aggressive. 

I used to walk around with a Torch and every time I heard them bark at me I would quickly drop all meat,  make a bonfire and get any weapon ready (stones and torches included), aim at them or throw a torch and they would run away. 

Decoys work only of you drop all your meat and run xD I think,  I never use them 

I forget,  are there weapons on whiteout challenge? Can't you just kill the wolves? 

Yeah, maybe if you smell enough they will not be dissuaded by holding a torch like I assumed they would be. I usually don't have this much issue, but it was extra frustrating in this instance because there are *always* 2-3 wolves right outside the garage where you need to store the food, and seemingly no (peaceful) way to get past them with it. Unless you complete the entire food stock with the canned food, but I was using fish because I was harvesting lamp oil anyway. And there are weapons but you also need the weapons for the stockpile, so can't use them too much. I guess it is supposed to be a challenge after all and I did end up completing it so can't complain too much.

[itsLydt]

10 hours ago, MartianInvader said:

I've never seen dropping a decoy do anything if the wolf is already stalking you.

It really helps to understand how wolves interact with fire and with being threatened. Let's go over the basics:

When a wolf is stalking you, it may occasionally run to keep up with you, but these aren't actual charges. A wolf only charges you if it gets very close, OR if you point a weapon at it. This can be any weapon, including just aiming a rock - if the wolf is growling and you aim a rock at it for even a fraction of a second, it will charge even if it's very far away, and won't stop running until it's close enough to initiate a struggle.

A few things can stop a wolf charge - hitting it with a damaging weapon (bullet/arrow/flare shell) will almost always cause it to turn and flee if not kill it outright - the only exception is if it's so close it's already beginning to initiate the struggle. Hitting it in the head with a rock will sometimes, but not always, cause it to flee. But the most reliable way to stop it is with fire.

A wolf either stalking you or charging you will stop once it's a certain distance from a campfire, held torch, or torch on the ground. It won't flee though, it will stand there growling at you. If you don't do anything for about 5 seconds, it will then overcome its fear and charge. However, if you point a weapon (or aim a rock) at it before 5 seconds pass, then it will flee. Also note that a wolf won't cross that distance to a fire, but if you bring the fire to it - say you throw the torch at its feet, or walk close to it while carrying the torch (this is common if you encounter it coming over a hill or around a corner), then it can charge you as it's already inside the fire's "safe radius".

So how do you safely get rid of wolves? If you have a torch, drop it (or throw it to the ground) while the wolf is stalking you and aim something (rock, gun, bow, whatever) at it. It will charge you, but stop when it gets close to the fire. Aim at it again at this point and it will whine and run away. Note that the wolf won't run forever, and if you have a lot of scent it may turn around and start stalking you again after a bit - but you can use the same technique to scare it away over and over.

Hope that helps!

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

As for the decoy scenario, I am confident it was not stalking me when I dropped it, it was doing its "interesting smell" type of trot towards me but I immediately dropped the decoy and ducked before it saw me. It didn't bark and attack me until it had walked past my decoy, but unfortunately due to the terrain it was basically on top of me when it saw me so it was basically an instant charge. I wonder if you are "smelly" enough they will ignore decoys?

Does dropping a torch in front of you work if there are multiple wolves? It's also rarely nice enough weather to have a torch to begin with, so there's that issue as well

[itsLydt]

On 8/20/2023 at 12:52 PM, conanjaguar said:

 

This is a great tip for nice weather, but what about the rest (majority) of the game? I encounter wolves way too often to rely on flares (at least in this challenge). I guess in many locations you can get behind some rock for shelter though.

[James Hickok]

I dont know if its just me but from some short time i have noticed that wolves dont make noise as much as they did. I mean i almost always heard the wolf nearby and now i cant. I got jumped multiple times in the last few days. Also one of the attack yesterday was so strange - i didnt hear the wolf, there were 2 rabbits close to him and he didnt care - he just decided hes going to get me ignoring the rabbits that were closer to him. I will post a video of it later. 

[Retro Seamstress]

I found Zaknafein's advice really helpful. Have a torch/flare/fire, then aiming something will make them run towards you and stop a short distance away, then aim again and they'll run. So to deal with them quickly, drop the torch/flare, aim a rock (or other weapon) briefly to get the wolf to run over, then aim again to get them to run away (or shoot them if you have a weapon). However, fire won't keep them at bay indefinitely. If you wait too long they will eventually charge in and attack.

Something I didn't figure out until recently is that carrying any meat, cooked or raw, produces scent and will attract predators, even if it isn't showing a scent status. The detection range isn't as great as when there are scent markers, but if there are wolves nearby they will still detect it and come investigate. I also suspect some of the new meat based recipes have a much higher scent than just cooked meat as I swear rabbit and venison pies seem to attract every wolf for miles.

I've also noticed that once a wolf detects scent, it will usually beeline in that direction. But if you keep moving and they don't spot you, they seem to keep heading towards where you were when they first detected the scent, and once they get there then they recalibrate. This gives you a narrow window to leg it and try to get far enough away that they don't spot you.

A big thing I've learnt is DON'T RUN. Once you hear the warning bark that you've been spotted, you often have a reasonable amount of time to get to a better position. Just keep walking. Don't run. If you run, the wolf runs. If you aim a weapon, the wolf will charge at you. But if you can keep calm you can often just keep walking until you reach a place where you can light a torch or escape. I can usually walk from the fishing huts on Mystery Lake to either the camp office or one of the lake cabins with wolves following me the moment I step out of the hut with a load of fish. 

It also helps to learn where the wolves tend to be and be more cautious in those areas. I do a lot of wolf avoidance where I can, especially in the early stages of a game when I don't much in the way of weapons or fire. I will do a lot of crouching, sneaking around, and throwing rocks to get the wolves to move away from where I want to go. Sometimes I'll be freezing and have to force myself to stay calm, stay crouched, move slowly, and make sure I'm in the clear before standing up and legging it. 

I'm a lot better at handling wolves now, but I still try to avoid them when I can. One of the reasons I like playing Interloper is that there are less wolves than Stalker. I played Stalker again recently to check out the new weapon variants and had forgotten how "wolfy" it is. 

[bysinda]

13 hours ago, itsLydt said:

Yeah, maybe if you smell enough they will not be dissuaded by holding a torch like I assumed they would be.

I found out about it the hard way. I was harvesting and cooking bear meat in Mystery Lake and there were 3 wolfs handing around nearby. Usually when I had a bonfire going they would just stop at some distance from it and growl indefinitely. When they detected me and came to growl I didn't chase them off right away, I let them growl because I was sure they wouldn't attack me right away, but I forgot to drop the meat I cooked on the ground. One wolf attacked me and right after I fought him off another one charged at me and *raspberry*, dead.

 

[hozz1235]

My tried and true method is positioning myself so there is a nice flat, open space between me and the wolf.  Have my bow out, let it approach to within a certain distance, draw the bow (which initiates the wolf charge), wait until the charge is straight at me (not zigzagging) and plant the arrow in it's nose (or general area ;))

If there are multiple wolves, I will try to separate them in a way so I can use this method to pick off each individually.  It kind of becomes a fun challenge to see if I can kill them all in close proximity so I only need one fire burning as I harvest

[Chaos Theory]

On 8/20/2023 at 1:09 PM, itsLydt said:

I have put about 100 hours in the game, interested in attempting interloper but it feels futile due to my incompetence in dealing with the gosh darn wolves. You'd think I would be getting better, but in my current game I have had more wolf struggles than in my other games combined. 

My current game is the challenge where you have to store a bunch of supplies in the garage in coastal highway. There is an abundance of wolves in this area it seems, and I can't for the live of me evade them. 

First complaint/issue: decoys seem useless or I have no idea how to utilize them properly. I was carrying some meat and guts etc, and see a wolf start trotting over from the ice. No big deal I think, I will simply drop a decoy and keep moving. So I drop a piece of fish using the hotkey, climb over a snow bank to stay out of sight, and keep on towards my destination. My thinking was that the wolf will stop to eat the meat and the placement of the decoy will prevent the wolf from seeing me, so I will be safe at least temporarily. No dice; the wolf trots over the snow bank right past my decoy and attempts to eat my face. Awesome. I fight off the wolf and retrieve my fish. 

I had many, many wolf fights since then, but this is the next relevant one: fire/torches even failed me. I thought that so long as you had a torch, you were safe from wolves! Apparently not. I was returning from a fishing spot near the garage, and had a torch with plenty of life left. There happened to be three wolves near enough to smell me, so they started stalking me while I tried to cross the street. I wasn't worried because of my torch! But then I noticed one of the wolves was getting closer than I expected...and charged me. Face eaten.

Luckily the other two wolves were right there still so I wasn't safe. I picked up my torch and limped over to the garage. I wanted to cook the fish I had caught, and was under the impression that starting a campfire would hold off wolves, so I put my back against the door and tried to make one. Cue my second wolf struggles in 2 minutes. At this point I was close to death and mad, so I went inside to evade the 3rd wolf.... temporarily.

I fixed myself up and slept off my wolf bites, and once I had restored most of my condition I attempted to cook my fish again. I made a campfire against the wall of the garage, and set my fish up. Finally. But I needed a couple sticks, so I walked a couple feet away from the fire and immediately heard the bark of the last wolf. No big deal, I'll just return back to the fire for a second. So I went back to my campfire and watched the 3rd wolf trot around the corner of the building, see me again, and do something I thought impossible. It jumped over my cooking fish and attempted to, you guessed it, eat my face. 

What. The. Heck. At this point I am spitting mad. Have the wolf mechanics changed? I took a break after part one of tales, and just started playing again to try out the frontier comforts update. Am I super unlucky? Or am I just terrible at the game? 😆 Suggestions/advice welcome! Thanks for reading.

I’ve found it really depends primarily on your scent. The Fandom wiki has good info on this topic. If your scent is three bars, even if you drop a decoy, the wolf will usually still follow. Many times if I’m ferrying meat, I keep an eye on the bars as I’m loading up and only let it go to the max of the second meter. 

I’m curious about decay affecting decoys as well. Perhaps fresh guys work better? I only use fresh guts as decoys as I’ve had bad results with other baits. 
 

Finally, I’ve found it’s important to properly bait the wolf. Drop it from a distance and then lure the wolf in a straight line towards the fresh gut. 

[Smellyfries]

Something about decoys is that they used to work way better, lets say a wolf is stalking you and you drop some smelly bait. The wolf would immediately stop stalking you, and prioritize the bait. Additionally, if it ate the bait, there would be a brief window where the wolf would just turn around and walk away, presumably to buy you a little more time to leave. It would only start to charge at you again if you get really close to it, almost in struggling range. Also, there was always a small chance that the wolf just ignored your decoy, which I thought was a fair feature.

Now, using decoys back then made every wolf encounter super easy if you knew what you were doing. Since the wolf prioritizes the decoy, it is no longer stalking you, so you could just take your weapon of choice, stand a little ways away from the bait, and line up the easiest wolf shot of your life. 

I don't remember when decoys were nerfed, but I completely understand the reason. Dropping a decoy made wolves a cakewalk, and though we have our torch method today to deal with wolves, on harder difficulties, relying on a torch could be difficult due to lacking matches, and the harsh weather. It feels a lot less like a free wolf kill than the old decoy method.

[mfuegemann]

I often use the torch/flare method with the revolver, shooting at the wolf, once he stops. This will kill over time or immediately while indreasing my small arms skill.

[dcats55]

This torch thing is fine with all the easy levels, but on Interloper you can not constantly fire up some torch or fire, you have to conserve matches. I just lost another game due to SUPER GOD-LIKE WOLVES. They are not afraid of anything, and even if you have a full set of good clothing, Bear, Wolf, Deer, Rabbit, and all the underlying items, one SUPER GOD-LIKE WOLF attack takes off 2/3s of your life, even if you get a no-kill hit in on him with your bow before he gets to you, so when that second one is hiding just behind the first, you are DEAD. I even had one of these GOD-LIKE wolves dodge an arrow a couple of days ago, just as I released the arrow it literally jumped to my left to avoid the hit, it didn't turn and run, IT JUMPED TO THE LEFT... WTF.

Interloper use to be a good game, I never played the lower level they were too easy, but now with Hinterland trying to make it harder, they have IMO screwed the game up.

Eat an entire deer in two days, or a wolf in one, or 3 to 4 rabbits in a day, and be starving to death on the next?

Every aspect of the Interloper has gotten out of hand, the cold stays 3 arrows down, and as you add more clothing the cold stays 3 arrows down. The game I just lost was just 97 days, and only one out of three days was it warmer than 3 arrows down, and that was 2 arrows down. 

I understand you want to make the game a challenge, but How Long Will We Let You Live is Not How Long Can You Survive? Please ease up on ONE aspect of the game,  just any ONE.