Too many enemies.

[SandWhale]

Tldr: There are too many enemies for singleplayer and dealing with them ruins the tension and becomes a nuisance.

Note that my issue is not that the game is too hard, I actually think the difficulty is around where it should be. No, the real issue is that the game essentially blows it's load too early. Groups of cannibals are noticeably larger than the first game. Why is this bad? Encountering a few cannibals for the first time can be a tense, nerve-wracking experience. You're not sure whether they will attack or how hostile they are. Then, a few days in, you're slaughtering dozens at a time and they have lost all meaning. I went from hiding and panicking to rolling my eyes in annoyance every time another horde of them popped up to waste my time.

This is even more of an issue in the caves. My first encounter with the "twin" mutant was tense and fearful. The wonderfully creepy enemy made for a frantic fight as I tried to survive it's fast, aggressive attacks without room to maneuver. By the end my adrenaline had spiked and I was severely on edge. Then I fought 6 more of them in a row and they were ruined. All the work that no doubt went into their creation completely squandered in mere minutes. I had memorized their full movesets and they had turned from terrifying threats to mere annoyances.

By the time I got to the end of that first cave, I had fought literally dozens of mutants and received only one or two important items. It completely killed my desire to explore more caves. They are far too long and far too stuffed with enemies, becoming an exercise in tedium, and the reward to work ratio is off. It feels as though the enemy count has been balanced around multiplayer rather than for a singleplayer experience.

This can be fixed easily by simply reducing the enemy counts in singleplayer. I can only hope the developers hear me out on this one.

[Falonious]

+1

[Altor]

It is only about tactics how you fight them.
1- Babies I fight with big axe. Let them fly on you and kill it where it is landing with 1 hit.
Dont try to kill all in once.
2. cannibals you fight best with crossbow oder composite bow. headshot and they will die. Dont try hand-to hand combat with them
3. headless and 2 body mutants also not hand-to-hand. Fight also with composite bow or crossbow. Fast kill with shotguns, bombs. Even molotovs. Run to water when there is one near. They will die immediately .

I restarted the game after patched new. Could get all items slider, diving device and shovel without any troubles. Not saving game and getting killed even 1 time.
Only unbalanced enemy is now the new mutants. I couldn't find any tactic to kill these things.
Noone in this game is faster than you. Just keep distance and they will also not attack you all. Only 1 by 1. I think you just panic. They don't have any chance to kill you if you just kill them with a steady hand.

[JCglitchmaster TTV]

Agree'd. I'm just trying to create ziplines between areas and I kill a hoard at my base. Start making a zipline and find another hoard kill them. While building the tree house there's another hoard. I kill them. Build the tree house and go to connect the ropes and there's another hoard.

Like, can you ♥♥♥♥ off the 3 minutes? Why am I needing to murder 20 people every 5 minutes? The first forest was so much more intense because when you come across a hoard, they are not only deadly but they are an actual event. Here it's just bullet sponge enemies galore.

[Altor]

I think you can also change the aggressivity of enemies to light. Then they should be less enemies.

[shmodzilla]

Well i thought I'd be tactical and built my base in a cliff valley like Helms deep, after i got the defenses up now they just fall off the cliff 150 and land safely in my base and break everything.

[AcidMantis]

Originally posted by JCglitchmaster:

Why am I needing to murder 20 people every 5 minutes?

As long as you are using deadly force against them to prevent great bodily injury or death to you or others, no court in the land would consider it murder. Just make sure Kelvin gets everything on video and you shouldn't have any legal issues.

[Crater]

Originally posted by JCglitchmaster:

Agree'd. I'm just trying to create ziplines between areas and I kill a hoard at my base. Start making a zipline and find another hoard kill them. While building the tree house there's another hoard. I kill them. Build the tree house and go to connect the ropes and there's another hoard.

Like, can you ♥♥♥♥ off the 3 minutes? Why am I needing to murder 20 people every 5 minutes? The first forest was so much more intense because when you come across a hoard, they are not only deadly but they are an actual event. Here it's just bullet sponge enemies galore.

+1

[Stega]

Yea I have this same view, the scare factor and presence of the mutants and cannibals is quickly lost cause you fight so many of them. I have probably killed more "fingers" mutants in this game than Armsies and virginia's combined from the last game. Even in the old game when I saw a mutant I got nervous about fighting it. This game it really is just an annoyance, even more so with cannibals killing groups of 10 of them only to have another 10 show up 5 minutes later. Or having the muddies showing up everywhere even after I kill 20 on them.

[LeverenZ]

I was exploring the plane wreck when a group of cannibals attacked, so i easily killed them with the compound bow. They kept coming though, from every direction. That plane crash site is pretty open, i feel like i would've spotted the 50 cannibals i ended up killing.

Also in the forest it was a cool twist to see a cannibal run from a fight. In sons of the forest it's just annoying, they run for a few seconds only to then come back for you anyways. And it's no challenge killing them, but if I'm busy building my base it's insanely frustrating. As soon as you look at the ground someone hits you in the back.

[Humpenstilzchen]

Agreed. There is no fear factor. Just endless raids and endless killing.

You can´t stand still anywhere for longer than 20 seconds without being swarmed by cannibals. I like the fighting and everything but their spawn frequency is ridiculous. I leave a trail of corpses wherever I go. It never stops.

Often times I just keep running since fighting them is a waste of time anyway. There seems to be an endless supply of cannibals and they never learn from seeing their family members die horribly by the worst savage on this island. I don´t get it. How is that advanced Ai?

They are just suicidal idiots which get spawned into your face to harass you 24/7 and you play the meat grinder. which is fun for a while but gets old.

This is on custom mode with lower enemy aggression btw.

End of rant.

[Captain Rotmeat]

There are some areas you can build (like on the bunker cave entrance) where the cannibals literally just come non-stop. You can never sleep. It's always at least 5-6 cannibals just outside harassing you.

After a few days like that, I must've killed hundreds of them. It really pulled me out of the game - like seriously, how does small island like this support hundreds of hunters and gatherers? Why don't they realize I'm too dangerous to mess with and start avoiding me?

[Scharfzahn100]

Maybe the reason is, that you were to aggressive from the beginning on. If you meet them try to walk away and don't just attack everything you see. Also don't cut down to much forest near you base. Use the new transportation methods instead.

[oldlamehand]

My most effective tactics for each enemy type in caves.:"
Blind mutants: Avoid them and run past them.
Fingers: Avoid them and run past them.
Mutant Babies: Avoid them and run past them.
Twins: Avoid them and run past them.

There are a few situations where you have to clear a narrow passage with too many enemies with a grenade, but otherwise this tactic works better than anything else I've tried

[Rabbit]

Actually it really is a bug. I had no issue until a cave, where You get the shovel and tactical flashlight for pistol. When I swam through the final passage, You appear in a small cave...I killed like 30 of blind ones and these with vertical jaws along the whole body. They kept spawning. I had to drown them all and then rush into cave...it somewhat stopped, but after a while You get to the cave with shovel on body and (SPOILERS) the view on that huge underground facility. When I approached the body, the game suddenly kept spawning monsters right on that body....like 15-20 enemies in 2 seconds. I had to jump like an idiot to get through them, get the shovel and get out of there. I couldnt enjoy the view on that structure. That´s lame and need to be fixed. The same thing was when I got to the cave, where You get the tactical flashlight. I´ve been fighting for 40 minutes. This one cave almost starved me of all food and drink....♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. I love the game, but this sucks. It has nothing to do with tactics. You must be able to clear the cave to progress further. This was a freaking enemies loop.

[SandWhale]

Originally posted by Altor:

It is only about tactics how you fight them.
1- Babies I fight with big axe. Let them fly on you and kill it where it is landing with 1 hit.
Dont try to kill all in once.
2. cannibals you fight best with crossbow oder composite bow. headshot and they will die. Dont try hand-to hand combat with them
3. headless and 2 body mutants also not hand-to-hand. Fight also with composite bow or crossbow. Fast kill with shotguns, bombs. Even molotovs. Run to water when there is one near. They will die immediately .

I restarted the game after patched new. Could get all items slider, diving device and shovel without any troubles. Not saving game and getting killed even 1 time.
Only unbalanced enemy is now the new mutants. I couldn't find any tactic to kill these things.
Noone in this game is faster than you. Just keep distance and they will also not attack you all. Only 1 by 1. I think you just panic. They don't have any chance to kill you if you just kill them with a steady hand.

It's been a billion years since I posted this, but I just wanted to note that literally the first line of my first paragraph is that my issue is not with the difficulty of the encounters.