The cougar will immediatly starts to hunt you

[exeexe]

"Once the survivor begins attacking the den with Noisemakers, The Cougar will begin hunting them immediately "

https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Cougar

What does this even mean when the cougar is a teleport mechanic?

[Lexilogo]

To my understanding (of course, it's hard to test now that it's been rolled back), what that meant is that the encroachment timer, between 70 or 10 days depending on difficulty, would immediately go to zero, so if you wanted to get mauled by a Cougar for a chance at the pelt/claw, you could skip the wait by bombing the den.

[Veskaida]

17 hours ago, exeexe said:

"Once the survivor begins attacking the den with Noisemakers, The Cougar will begin hunting them immediately "

https://thelongdark.fandom.com/wiki/Cougar

👋🐺Oh wow! Someone quoting what I wrote!

The Cougar is currently disabled atm like Lexilogo said, so it's a bit hard to continue testing. But I'll give a rundown of what I know here. I also made a post discussing 'some' of these behaviors in a separate thread earlier:

Here's everything I know about Cougar behavior:

Spoilers for Pre-Redesign Cougar Behavior and the Challenge Mode "Escape The Darkwalker"

Spoiler

tl;dr Throwing 1-2 lit Noisemakers at an active Cougar Den causes The Cougar to immediately become active in the region, and at close proximity to the player. This frequently results in an immediate Cougar Struggle, but it is also possible to ignite/throw all 3 Noisemakers without the Cougar attacking in time.

 

Pre-Rework Cougar Behavior:

There were two different ways to encounter the Cougar:

• (Step 1) Spending more consecutive time in a Region than the Cougar encroachment timer
• (Skip to Step 4) Throwing 1-2 lit Noisemakers at an active Cougar Den. 3 Noisemakers would destroy the Cougar Den and make the Cougar inactive globally for a time.

1.) "Cougar Encroaching" appears when the survivor spends enough time in one region region (consecutively), and appears 65/25/25/15/5 days (based on Game Mode). Encroaching always appears 5 days ahead of the Cougar's arrival (E.G. Interloper was 15 days till "Encroachment" and 5 days till "Threat Arrived").

2.) "Cougar Threat Arrived" from the Encroachment timer reaching 0 Days and expiring with the survivor still in the same region: the Cougar becomes active in the region immediately for 10 days, this timer will refresh if the survivor is within the affected Region, but will decrease with time spent outside it (and not returning before it expires). During this time the Cougar can attack at any time when outdoors,  basically a reverse of the "Cabin Fever" check. (excluding 'outdoors' shelter areas with no load screen such as Mountaineer's Hut, Stone Church, etc. or the "indoors" back section of outdoors caves). While outdoors in a Cougar-active region a red cougar head icon appears in the lower-left of the UI, showing you are at-risk of an attack.

3.) Cougar stalking the Survivor: I haven't tested this extensively, and it's probably irrelevant now that the Cougar is getting a rework/redesign, but I believe the Cougar worked like an invisible entity (similar to The Darkwalker) which moved around the map, trying to pursue the survivor.

• Long distances: cougar sounds play periodically
• Medium distances: "Cougar Theme" begins playing
• Close distances: "Cougar Theme" increases in volume

Throwing 1-2 lit Noisemaker's at the Cougar's Den fast-forwards you to 'THIS' step in the Den's active region

4.) Once the Cougar is a close distance to the Survivor it seemed possible to frighten nearby wildlife (including normally difficult to scare animals like Moose/Bear). Though I'm not sure if this was a proximity check to the Cougar (like how Wolves flee from Bears), or was applied globally to all currently loaded animals (similar to weather transitions from non-Aurora -> Aurora, where wildlife are a hard interrupt to their behavior to flee). Once the Cougar is at close proximity to the player, it will attack, though there also seems to be some element of randomization: since the Cougar theme would become louder and quieter, though this may be explained if the Cougar entity is also pathing through geometry of the world.

5.) Cougar Struggle: mauling animation, Condition damage to the survivor is rolled, check to see if the survivor is wearing Ballistic Vest: if not, then roll to see if they are afflicted with "Severe Lacerations".

6.) If the player survives the condition loss, they can choose between the cards "Desperation" or  "Strike" (if they have a loaded firearm/bow with simple arrows in their inventory), then it applies a stagger filter to the player's camera and slows the game's timescale to ~10% and gives the player ~10 seconds OR 1 shot to kill the Cougar.

7.) Exit the struggle sequence and return to normal gameplay.

 

[rush247]

@Veskaida, so does the den exist before a cougar shows up in an area you've been in too long?  I was under the impression it doesn't.  But I guess it would make sense if it does.

[Veskaida]

Yes. There was only 1 Cougar Den in all of Great Bear per sandbox, but it's location changes randomly for each sandbox world you play. Unfortunately I wasn't able to test if the Cougar Den changed locations once it was destroyed, but I don't believe that it would: given it was a map-able point-of-interest.

But I believe it was 1 possible spawn location for the Cougar Den per major Region, though I only managed to find two of them (one in two different runs) before the Cougar was removed, and obviously didn't get to test it thoroughly:

Pre-Cougar Rework Cougar Den locations

Spoiler

• Sundered Pass: south of Ambler's Lake
• Timberwolf Mountain: south of Eric's Falls/Waterfalls Cave

 

Edited June 30, 2024 by Veskaida
Edit: Why yes, I DID spray paint "danger" on the Cougar's Den.

[rush247]

So we actually already had a way of hunting one down so to speak.  I hope this aspect doesn't change, it's good as is imo.