Wolf kills

[DrMembrane]

Dear Community,

I keep hearing about how people kill wolve during wolf attacks but in all but one instance, the wolves run away before I can deal the killng blow, any advice?

[Kaisentlaia]

Try dropping your knife before attacking, so you will use the hatchet instead, then deliver 4 full charged blows. It's tricky, but can be done.

[bethany]

Unless you just really want to use a particular weapon, there shouldn't be any need to drop one to prioritize another. When in combat with a wolf, your most effective weapon will automatically be equipped. Sometimes saving your own life is more of a reward than dealing the killing blow, but you can certainly follow injured wildlife and wait for them to bleed out.

[Kaisentlaia]

Ideally yes, but practically once a player gets a hang on the fight mechanich wolves change from scary bitey monsters to... well, dinner.

I hunt wolves with the hatchet a lot because the knife deals more damage but at the third fully charged blow the wolf is wounded enough to flee, but never enough to die on the spot. Surviving a wolf attack with crafted clothes is no big deal for me anymore, usually after a fight I'm at 50-60% and usually near my base camp. I was quite good at fighting with the knife and tracking wounded animals once but lately the trail seems to disappear before I can find them, and even if I go inside and sleep/craft/waste time for a few hours most of the times when I go out again to search for the carcass I can't find it anywhere.

Therefore lately I prefer the hatchet. True that it deals less damage, but it's the easiest way to kill a wolf on the spot and avoid losing the wounded animal somewhere over the rainb... ahem... map border?

I agree that IRL common sense would dictate that for defending or attacking it would be better to use the most effective weapon, but in game the most effective weapon from a damage point of view isn't really the most effective if you consider the risk and reward (lose a bit less condition but the wolf flees, or lose a bit more condition for a chance to get immediatly 4-5kgs of meat, guts and pelt).

[Scyzara]

I agree that IRL common sense would dictate that for defending or attacking it would be better to use the most effective weapon, but in game the most effective weapon from a damage point of view isn't really the most effective if you consider the risk and reward (lose a bit less condition but the wolf flees, or lose a bit more condition for a chance to get immediatly 4-5kgs of meat, guts and pelt).

You can also use the knife to kill a wolf on the spot, it's just a bit more tricky. You need to give it two full-charged hits first, then one only half-charged hit and finally another full-charged hit.

A full-charged knife hit deals 30% damage, so after your first two hits the wolf has 40% condition left. Your half-charged (or 1/3 charged, both works) next hit will bring it to between 25 and 30% health. If you charge the third hit too much (and the wolf thus drops below 25% health), it will run away. If you don't overcharge your third hit, the wolf will continue to attack you and you can kill it with a forth (full-charged again) hit.

It doesn't always work and certainly needs some practise, but it can be done. Your hatchet advise is probably the better choice though.

[Denyo]

Ideally yes, but practically once a player gets a hang on the fight mechanich wolves change from scary bitey monsters to... well, dinner.

I hunt wolves with the hatchet a lot because the knife deals more damage but at the third fully charged blow the wolf is wounded enough to flee, but never enough to die on the spot. Surviving a wolf attack with crafted clothes is no big deal for me anymore, usually after a fight I'm at 50-60% and usually near my base camp. I was quite good at fighting with the knife and tracking wounded animals once but lately the trail seems to disappear before I can find them, and even if I go inside and sleep/craft/waste time for a few hours most of the times when I go out again to search for the carcass I can't find it anywhere.

Therefore lately I prefer the hatchet. True that it deals less damage, but it's the easiest way to kill a wolf on the spot and avoid losing the wounded animal somewhere over the rainb... ahem... map border?

I agree that IRL common sense would dictate that for defending or attacking it would be better to use the most effective weapon, but in game the most effective weapon from a damage point of view isn't really the most effective if you consider the risk and reward (lose a bit less condition but the wolf flees, or lose a bit more condition for a chance to get immediatly 4-5kgs of meat, guts and pelt).

Can you,please,provide us with tactics,which you use in fighting minigame,which makes hatchet so much reliable than a knife? I am really intrigued with this tip as my experiences are quite different than yours.

Can you tell,what order of hits do you make with hatchet? I,myself,can kill wolf with a knife at 100%,if I make this order: Full charged hit( 30%) - full charged hit(30%) - less than half charged hit(10%) - full charged hit( 30%). And it is very hard to make that third hit correct(not too much charge,and not too low charge).My success with imediate kill with this tactics is about 1 killed wolf of 6 or 7,which is quite fair chance for hardest mode.

Do you use hatchet at 100% condition or its condition plays no role? And...the best would be,if you could provide a video about killing a wolf with hatchet.Oh,and one more question...is your tactics 100% reliable? You can kill wolf in every fight?

Thanx for explaining in advance.

[Kaisentlaia]

Hatchets deal 25% damage with a fully loaded hit (or at least they did a while ago, I'm not playing much lately so I'm not sure if something changed with the last update), so to kill a wolf you will need 4 fully loaded hits (25*4 = 100%). It's easier for me to do it this way than calibrating the strenght of the blows with the knife as you do, but your mileage may vary.

AFAIK to kill a wolf on the spot the last hit has to bring it down from almost-fleeing condition (25%-30%) to 0% condition in one strike. If you bring it down to anything from 24% to 1% it will flee. Attacking with the hatchet so isn't 100% reliable (as it isn't with the knife if you think about it) because if you double-click by mistake you will deal 25% + 25% + 25% + let's say 1% and the wolf will run away. I guess that the hatchet's condition matters as well but I never tested.

I'm sorry, I don't have a video nor the time to make and upload one, but it's quite easy to experiment with the hatchet. I read this somewhere on reddit a while ago and I tried it until I got the hang on it.

Edit: I didn't notice Scyzara's reply, based on my experience everything he wrote about the knife is correct.

[Random Fires]

Hey thank you very much for the thread and info. I never once considered looking for a sweet spot on strength percentages. Always went for the full strength hit. Thank you indeed. Will make vid if I can repeat this. Never killed a wolf in one melee attack before.

[Denyo]

Thanx for reply,Kaisentlaia. Yesterday Scyzara did some tests with attacking wolves with hatchet.And I watched her streams.We did 4 attempts,but sadly,none of them ended with wolf dead drop.I was recording all those atempts,so I could analise them.Indeed,hatchet does exactly 25% damage every time,but thing was,that after third hit,when wolf was down to 25%,either he did ran imediately away,or he ran after 4th hit.4th hit was fully charged,as i could clearly see at replaying recorded attacks,just I don`t know,how wolf could still flee.

But,it is definately worth to give it more tries.I will go into fights with wolves with axe from now on,so I can then get more results.

I am thinking...if this tip will have decent success rate,then is hunting knife almost not needed at all.After all,with my experiences,I don`t find it so drastical difference between harvesting dead animal with knife or with a hatchet.I mean,time of harvesting never made me too much issues.

Anyway...this tip may again change completely my way of playing game. I love new challenges and experiments.

[coryduran]

So I haven't read all posts, sorry if someone addressed this, but killing wolves during fights is something I've been trying to master, so I'll tell you what I know.

Hunting knife is the way to go clearly, just because it does the most damage. In my opinion, being able to kill a wolf during a fight is more so about mindset and understanding how the fight will play out than any particular skill set.

In my own experiences, if I fight a wolf with the intention of getting it off as soon as possible, I can get it off with my health around 75-65%. What that tells me, is that if I start a fight with a wolf at 100% or vice versa, if I relax during the fight, and actually focus on the wolf health, rather than trying to get it off as soon as possible, even if it takes a little while the chances of that wolf killing me are slim to none. This makes focusing on it's health meter and killing it much easier.

How this is done, is that initially I will hit the wolf with a full power attack, then gauge from there what I need to do to get the wolf down to between 30 and 35% health (in my experience, a full power attack will fully kill the wolf if it's health is 35% or lower, but if you drop it too low it will run before you get the chance to finish it.

Once you get the wolfs health into that range, using intermediate/weak attacks, a full strength blow will finish it. The first few times you do this, the wolf will probably drop you down to 30% or so, maybe more, maybe less, but where I'm at personally with my proficiency since I use this strategy a lot (even in stalker I have an abundance of cloth, and old mans beard makes antiseptic significantly less important) I can kill the wolf completely and still usually be above 50% health, which I'm usually relatively comfortable with. This gives you the option of either healing up and going back to the kill later, or harvesting right away (although if you're gonna harvest a corpse while weakened I always suggest starting a fire to help keep you safe, and making sure it won't burn out during the harvest)

[Kaisentlaia]

Thanx for reply,Kaisentlaia. Yesterday Scyzara did some tests with attacking wolves with hatchet.And I watched her streams.We did 4 attempts,but sadly,none of them ended with wolf dead drop.

You are welcome. Maybe on Monday I'll have some time to record a video. It doesn't work every time for me either, but I was able to drop them on the spot many times using the hatchet. Maybe looking closely at a recording I'll be able to determine how it really works.

[Kaisentlaia]

Hey guys, look what I made you

Since I don't have a youtube account and I don't want one either, you can see the video here.

Sorry for the bad quality, I'm not the sharpest video editor in town. Anyways, as you can see my hatchet was at a very poor condition (27%) and I was still dealing 25% damage with every hit, so condition doesn't influence the damage dealt. This wasn't the first time I succeeded as well, I did get a kill on the spot 2-3 times in a row while trying to record the video properly. So yeah, pretty reliable method if you ask me.

Also, devs, is it me or I was able to get a little bit too near that wolf? Ok, I was crouching and the wind wasn't blowing, but I was carrying two pieces of cooked meat as well. Bug?

[octavian]

Also, devs, is it me or I was able to get a little bit too near that wolf? Ok, I was crouching and the wind wasn't blowing, but I was carrying two pieces of cooked meat as well. Bug?

I asked the same question and the answer I got is that it will get fixed, there are some issues with the new sneak mechanics, and this is one of them.

[Kaisentlaia]

Oh thanks Octavian, I missed that one.

Also, since I'm here replying... watching the video again I noticed that the flee limit is a bit less than 25%. Maybe 20%?

[octavian]

Also, since I'm here replying... watching the video again I noticed that the flee limit is a bit less than 25%. Maybe 20%?

Sounds about right.

Also, the fact that a player can dissect the fighting mechanic like this is an indication that it will change, I think, as I don't see it working in the long run. Maybe it's part of the ongoing wolf problem, at least I think it is. Because the challenge and mechanic of fighting wolves hand to paw is what affects the number of wolves and their behavior. The converse is also true, their numbers and AI is what determines the fighting mechanic.

[ThresholdSeven]

EDIT: Looks like the wolf kill system is no longer the same after today's update so this post may be invalid.

Hi guys,

I read this forum and wanted to make a video of a wolf kill with a knife. Here it goes.

Pay close attention to the strength of the hit bar at the bottom compared to the wolf's life bar at the top. I could have made an even stronger hit on the third hit. It appears to be around 60% to 75% that is the sweet spot give or take a few, but that's just an estimation. A more accurate and maybe definitive conclusion could be made by examining the bars closely.

[bBvideo 560,340:2mpxu5ed]http://www.twitch.tv/thresholdseven/c/7003201[/bBvideo]