Cannibal Management

[Lumin]

I recently started playing and cannot stop. However, the cannibals have been giving me quite a hard time recently and it's wearing me thin fast. At first I was a little upset that they weren't showing up. I wanted to farm them. Now they raid me constantly. There isn't a moment for me to go out and enjoy exploring. They are always there.

I read effigies can make their spawning go down for the area. With the few seconds I have to spare, I rush out and erect effigies. After erecting 1 large and 3 small effigies around my base I noted these changes: the skull-leaders (more of 1-skull, not 2) show up more during the night than day, and during the day I have the starving and skinny groups show up fairly frequently. The effigies seem to work a little. I'll continue to erect small ones around.

How do you all manage your cannibal activity?

How can one erect HB traps all along the front of their base but still allow passage of sleds while keeping the cannibals out? Is that possible?

Edit: To delete fires you let them burn out. When it prompts to fill it back with sticks cancle the build (Default 'c').

Edit: Effigies definitely work, lit or not. I've been free of any cannibals for 8 days straight with 1 large and 9 small effigies scattered about.

Edit: If you place an effigy in a known path of cannibals, it sends them back about 200 yards. I put one in a known path and I see them running in circles farther down their path. I guess it threw them for a literal loop!

Day: 62
Difficulty: Normal
Structure Damage: Off, On when rennovating
Base Location(s): Stump on beach next to the Plane Tail.

[bikethor]

Sounds like the canibals get worse the more days you survive.

I abandoned my last game and started new. The canibals got meaner, faster, sneekier .. And with 3 aligator spawns in my base .. it was all I could take.

I'm thinking of making a base just as a slaughter house for the canibals. I won't sleep there, I'll just lure them over and kill all them there. Then sneek away to a private undisclosed location.

[DanteBrane]

On the save I'm playing right now I usually just ignore them when I don't feel like fighting and let the traps take care of them. I have a small fort with rows of deadfall traps protecting it. If they run through one deadfall, another one in front will get them. You can run through them when they are triggered and log sleds can go through them too. Cannibals can also run through deadfalls that have already been triggered so thats a downside. I wouldn't be able to tell you how to make a pathway for log sleds through HB traps cause I barely use them, sorry.

When I do feel like fighting, I go to a small battlefield I made that has random traps scattered around it and some towers I can stand on for using the bow. It can get pretty crazy, sometimes I actually have to retreat cause they just send too many mutants at once. It feels like when I distract them there, they patrol around my fort less for a day or 2.

You can destroy fires that are lit by hitting them with a weapon, it would be better if you could kick dirt onto it or something so that you don't have to destroy it to put it out.

By the way, where did you hear about effigies making spawning go down? If it's from the wiki then it probably doesn't do that, a lot of info on the wiki is wrong. I think effigies only have an effect on cannibals when they are lit. It would be nice if unlit effigies would serve as a warning or be used for marking territory, so it can hopefully make cannibals turn the other way or they risk being turned into another effigy.

[Chillum]

So, the plane tail section has a few places it lands.

If you are near the stump I think you are (south east, south of the yacht, just north of 4 or so shipping containers) then that is a very heavy Canni area. Theres a few canni paths that lead past there bridging the small village thats near the yacht with the small village near the sinkhole and the larger village on the southern shore (acrossed the bay), Me and my friend like to build there in hard mode for pretty early on heavy canni activity.

Good softball spots would be if you follow the stream away from the cockpit to the shore, that little shoreline area/small valley is very rarely patroled, last time we built there we only had a smattering of packs day 15-30 and next to nothing after that.

theres also another shoreline area further south where the sheer cliff face breaks into a ramp down to the water, I've heard of people having good luck there but Ive never tried it.

The northern areas (snow) also tend to have less patrols and canni activity.

[Lumin]

Originally posted by DanteBrane:

By the way, where did you hear about effigies making spawning go down? If it's from the wiki then it probably doesn't do that, a lot of info on the wiki is wrong. I think effigies only have an effect on cannibals when they are lit.

I read through the Discussion Topic posted by Cougarific in 2014:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/242760/discussions/0/522728730156058304/

I have erected 5 additional small effigies since this post and I can affirm that they really do drastically reduce the frequency and size of raiding parties, albeit they are unsightly as ♥♥♥♥. I went from groups of 6-8 down to 1-2 with 8 effigies scattered far and wide (few hundred feet in either direction).

I haven't lit them on fire yet, as I'm afraid they will burn out and be destroyed.

You mentioned having a killing arena. That sounds like a lot of fun to build up to, but I'm nowhere near ready for that as of yet.

[gamerhelligon]

This is one reason I don't play much anymore. I used to love playing this game. I build up a nice little base, got my traps out, kill the few that come and investigate.

I don't know which patch it was, but something snapped lose and now it's non stop attacks all day, everyday. I now have to be in the mood to play it because it's more of a chore than it is fun.

By day 3, I had 5 bone baskets filled and full bone armor after I built a 2 high bone fence around my compound. I like a challange but seriously, it's supposed to be a survival / craft game not a slaughter the cannibles all day everyday so you can't get anything else done, game.

Love the game, just need to tone down the attacks a bit. Can't survive and build anything when all you do is fight all day and night.

[DanteBrane]

Originally posted by gamerhelligon:

This is one reason I don't play much anymore. I used to love playing this game. I build up a nice little base, got my traps out, kill the few that come and investigate.

I don't know which patch it was, but something snapped lose and now it's non stop attacks all day, everyday. I now have to be in the mood to play it because it's more of a chore than it is fun.

By day 3, I had 5 bone baskets filled and full bone armor after I built a 2 high bone fence around my compound. I like a challange but seriously, it's supposed to be a survival / craft game not a slaughter the cannibles all day everyday so you can't get anything else done, game.

Love the game, just need to tone down the attacks a bit. Can't survive and build anything when all you do is fight all day and night.

I agree, I would have prefered if the cannibals were less common but were very difficult to fight so you had to be prepared or use stealth. Maybe if the fighting and survival mechanics were better this wish would have came true. I still like the game but now it does feel like you are fighting an endless wave. I mean, how many cannibals are living on this island?

There's still hope for custom settings being added so we can adjust what we want. That would be nice, it could please everyone.

[Primal]

ive read up on this and it seems like the more cannibals you attack/kill the more pissed of the tribe gets but what i would do it build up some walls around your base and line the outside up with traps but still leave a path to exit from

[Meowser has not]

You can delete fires by hitting them

[Krosh [Ger]]

I think it depends on your start! I made a camp directly at the beach by the yacht, completely with rock walls and some wooden platforms in the water and I lived there for days without them ever noticing me! I hunted rabbits and lizards and I am sure they saw me one or two times, but everything was cool since I didnt actually hunted them. I killed two of them without some others around and it was okay but after the first flew they started searching for me! But even then jt took days until they really attacked my base! I never experienced such massive hoards of them as most of you said, but I think I just tried to avoid every possible contact, so they couldnt get as aggro as yours!

Tl;Dr
I think the more you piss them off, the more they will try to kill you :D

[Zalzany]

yeah they got a hostilty system with 3 diffrent tribes. They got find your base before the AI knows where to raid you, not sure if one has to run away an live to tell about it or not, then its based on hostilty how many you killed I beleive, as well as the days played for how bad they try to kill your base.

[Lumin]

Update: I think effigies are bugged.

Upon a restart of my game the continued onslaught resumed. I even had a group of 16 show up (probably two groups of 8). I've had to kill about an average of 30 in a whole day. It's exhausting.

I immediately thought that the game reloading had subsequently cleared the temporary memory cache (this seems how items appear again after you've looted them), which had negated any mysterious effect of the effigies.

The next step was to see if burning the effigies would help. Nope. Did erecting the same amount as before, in the same places, cause the same reaction? Nope. Did burning the newly erected effigies work? Nope. Is there any effect whatsoever? Well, their pathing patterns have changed very slightly, but they still walk past a wall of effigies with no effect.

If effigies lose their effectiveness after each restart of a saved game then I might as well abandon my first base...

[Lumin]

Originally posted by TOG Zalzany:

yeah they got a hostilty system with 3 diffrent tribes. They got find your base before the AI knows where to raid you, not sure if one has to run away an live to tell about it or not, then its based on hostilty how many you killed I beleive, as well as the days played for how bad they try to kill your base.

I've killed far over 100. How ♥♥♥♥♥♥ am I?

[Felony Ferret]

This is partly my fault, because I chose poorly for my base location,but I managed to get the basic structures of my base set up: walls, traps on the outer parameter, and a living area.

th4e cannibals for the most part left me aloneuntil I got the my actual house built, Now I can't leave my walls without there being enemies lol. I had to get a boat built just to move logs into my compound for further construction.