Near lethal wolf fight in a cave

[2cold2play]

OK, so I nearly got killed on day 180 in FM, and this is probably the most exciting wolf fight I have survived, so maybe it's worth sharing.

To begin with, I ran out of arrows. Not only that, I ran out of arrowheads and birches necessary to make arrows. You can probably tell where this is going...

Playing without arrows on late Interloper is suicidal, so I left HRV and headed for the Muskeg forge through Mountain Town. I had some birches drying in the trailer near HRV, so I figured it would be sufficient to make arrowheads. However, I also had only 5 coal, which was insufficient to reach the required temperature for the forge. So I decided, recklessly, that instead of going for the cave near the signal tower across the Muskeg from Old Spence Family Homestead, I would go to the right from the Homestead, and get some coal from the caves there, and some birch branches as well.

That area is always patrolled by wolves, but I figured I could dodge them. WRONG. With no arrows, no decoy, no flare gun, etc. I ventured into that area and a wolf started stalking me. Now I learned something interesting: on interloper it has become impossible to simply shake a wolf off by breaking it's line of sight, running, hiding, etc. You either have a decoy, or you kill it, that's it. I couldn't do either, so I took a couple of rocks as last resort.

The wolf kept stalking me when I saw a cave. A cave is sort of indoors, so if I enter it the wolf will leave, right? WRONG! As I entered the cave, which ironically had loads of coal, the wolf entered after me and slowly walked towards me, growling. I had nothing to do, and pressing ESC is not something that I find ethical, so I aimed a rock at the wolf and it charged me. Miraculously, I managed to hit it, and it ran away. End of story? Nope, because it was a cave, the wolf simply ran around for a while and started growling at me again. I aimed a second rock, and hit it again while it was almost on me, but this time I simply ran from the cave while it was running around in it.

This ordeal, however, was not ending. Outside the cave was a second wolf, who also immediately started stalking me. I tried walking away from it but then the second wolf came back and jumped me. I fought it off with a hatchet, taking 40-45 % condition damage. I probably only survived because I wear 2 bearskin coats, along with full other gear. Anyway, my condition was maybe 40 %, I was bleeding and the second wolf was still stalking me. Needless to say, I would not have survived a second encounter.

As a last resort, I used an emergency stim and simply started running from the wolf, still bleeding. I sprained my ankle and thought that this was the end, but when you take a stim you can run even with a sprain. Eventually and again miraculously, near the Muskeg lookout there was a deer, and the wolf started stalking it instead of me.

I bandaged the wound, disinfected it with old man's beard lichen and went for the Poachers Camp, because by that time the first sings of a storm were showing. I managed to reach the camp safely, another stim in my hand should another wolf find me, but there were no more wolves until the railway cars. I made fire, ate, made a tea, slept, made a tea again and slept again, and now I'm again at my max condition (90 % because of frostbite), with coal and birch branches, and the first thing I'm going to do is head for the forge and make sure I'm never out of arrows again.

TLDR: got cornered into a cave by a wolf, threw rocks and hit it twice, ran outside, but there was a second wolf there, and the first wolf jumped me from behind. I survived the fight and made it to a safe place with the help of a stim and a martyr deer.

Conclusions:

1) Make sure I'm never out of arrows, ever.
2) If 1 fails, always have several peaces of decoy in inventory.
3) Wolves will follow you into caves, and it's a very bad idea to try to escape them like this.
4) If all else fails, hit a stim, run and try to find a dear or a ledge.

Thoughts and comments appreciated!

[jswilliams]

There are differences in cave geography, but in many of them you can shimmy up rocks in the back. Doing this is out-of-bounds so the wolf will disengage.

This also an extremely unfair (lolz) tactic to kill a bear in its own cave and harvest in comfort.

Assuming you drop it with a properly placed arrow.

[jswilliams]

Oh and good story by the way.

[PowerOn]

That cave right of Spencer is a trap, one wolf patrol very close to cave mount, have killed then inside cave in Stalker.

If you get there lit a campfire ASAP, in Interloper I never use this route, the only way to by-pass this wolves is "goat" in the rocks very close to their edges over muskeg, but this way is painfully slowly and not 100% safety, other wolf patrol very close.

When coming from BR and need go in Spencer I prefer climb down for Muskeg before the cave, go over bear island and cross for that derelict shed before Spencer, ice is safety in this route.

[markwars]

If you have no decoys or weapons you could at least try a fire...if it's not too windy

Love your story...and your hard core frostbitten and still walking survivor.

[Aldodrem]

you can make the wolf flee if you see a large cliff or a high rocky outcropping. using those terrain and crouch climbing from the top/edge to the face of that terrain feature will cause whatever was stalking you to break away (the key is the part you crawled to must have only been accessible via climbing down, if you could have reached the point coming up from the bottom of where you crouched it won't work as the animal will just go around and come up under you.).

[jayjum]

I'm not sure the cool down on stims, but you cannot use one right after the other, I tried this, and it did not work.

Like Markwars said, should have done the fire chain thing. ;)

Funny thing is I just had a run in with a wolf, he was coming for me, I kept backing up, had flare gun in hand, but not aiming (only one shot left) I kept going, then crouched and he immediately turned away, happened to be a Deer nearby, and off he went. He did not care about that deer at all before I crouched though.

Ive also backed away from wolves for what seemed like miles, they just keep slowly following you, I just keep going until I hit a building, or a tree, or a cliff. Got lucky to not back right into another one.

[drIdentity]

great story!