What is the best weapon for winning wolf encounters? Part 1.

[Lonelywolf]

Hello fellow survivors! I've just finished a round of testing this afternoon in a sandbox set up directly for this sort of SCIENCE testing. A lot of players, myself included, have oft asked what the best weapon is for winning a wolf struggle. Here's the first batch of results!

I tested only the Heavy Hammer so far, and I'm quite pleased with the results! Despite the added burden of carrying it around, it packs quite the scary punch to it, sending wolves running very early in the struggle, wether it occured at full fatigue or half fatigue! I also tested rapid fire clicking vs. rythmic clicking. I'll let you guess which is better and give you an answer on that one later!

The results were honestly a little surprising. For result set number one: The average ending % of condition (What you have after the struggle) at full rest is 88.6%. The highest amount was 98% and the lowest was 75%. Judging from some of the results, it appears that the hammer carries a roughly 25-33% chance to end a wolf struggle near immediately, within ~5 clicks. I don't have any other weapons tested yet so this may end up being the only weapon with such capability, making it a good choice despite its carry weight if it has such a bonus! All of these numbers were garnered by engaging wolves at 95% fatigue or higher, meaning well rested!

The second set of results are a little more interesting, to say the least! I need to do a bit more testing to fully ensure the spread of ranges, but preliminary results are supportive of the first set! All of these numbers were obtained by testing wolf struggles at roughly ~50% fatigue, or the middle between well rested and exhausted. (Drained? I think...) The highest ending % on condition after the struggle was 99%, with the lowest being a staggering 25%! The average was 69.4% condition. This number seems a bit skewed when reviewing the results under a different light. If we remove the results where I had near instantaneous wins (under 5 clicks till wolf leaves) that leaves the condition spread from low to high at 25%-92%. The average ending condition with these results is 58.5%. 3 out of ten recorded or scored struggles ended almost immediately, but I also had 3 more struggles I didn't tabulate due to the fact that they ended near instantly! This leaves us with 6/13 struggles at half fatigue ending 'prematurely' for a standard wolf struggle. While the results aren't completely indicative, this leaves us with roughly 20-35% of all struggles ending near instantaneously at half fatigue.

So cutting all the math out of the picture, what's the base takeaway so far?

• Heavy hammer has a high chance of ending a wolf struggle "immediatlely" (under 5 clicks)
  
• At full fatigue HH will range you between ~70% and 100% condition after struggle
  
• The base varience at half fatigue is 20% MORE condition lost compared to full fatigue, and the lower floor is further removed from that number by near 50%! This indicates that fatigue is the primary factor in determining outcome of the attack (Which was 'common knowledge' already.)
  
• The Heavy Hammer is well rounded in terms of varience for scaring wolves quickly.

Another interesting takeaway I've found is that hitting wolves with the hammer DOES DEAL DAMAGE!!! After assaulting my friendly test subjects mutliple times, they started dropping like flies. It took about 4-6 encounters to bring about this result. I need more testing to normalize this result as it is POSSIBLE that it's just the RNG of the hammer braining them to death outright. However, we know that A. Hinterland has confirmed all animals have condition/HP and IIRC it does not regenerate and we know that B. Bleed damage/burn from flares/arrows/rifle hits will kill an animal. My current working hypothesis based from this preliminary finding is that struggles, even with weapons that only SCARE animals, still causes damage to the animal and that subsequent attacks, either during struggles or regular hunting, have greater chance of success due to the fact they have a smaller health pool at that point.
Obviously this is just a working hypothesis and not fully tested yet so take it with a grain of salt for now.

Final Takeaway: Heavy hammer is a well-rounded choice for engaging with wolves hand-to-fang. Despite its high carry weight, it offers a suitable defense against wolves at full and half fatigue (and you should NEVER engage a wolf under half fatigue... Experience talking here...) and has high odds of outright sending the wolf fleeing immediately. Currently no other weapons have been tested at this point, so Heavy Hammer takes a ranking of 1. Out of 1. Out of potential 6 total weapons. (Hammer, Prybar, Knife, Hatchet, and the improvised versions of these. Hands aren't counted in this list, as they are most certainly the worst.)

Check out my YT (https://www.youtube.com/c/Lonelywolfofficial) for the video which will go live in about ~3 days time from now, if you're interested in watching me play with wolves multiple times. I'll also create a new discussion for the next weapon or ask that it get merged with this one as I don't want to bury it in comments when I get the results. Cheers! More SCIENCE and Data to come.

[Lonelywolf]

Final takeaway is based on only this data set taken so far. This could very easily change as the tests conintue. I'll give out the raw data later as I continue to do more tests with each weapon and such. I did measure for fatigue! I did over half of my tests at half fatgue and the other portion at full fatigue (well rested.) The final takeaway here is just for the current data collected, and isn't indicative of all weapons or ranges of conditions. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

[Lonelywolf]

Stalker. With 29% protection via clothing.

[Rumors]

While interesting, IMO, I think the best way to compare the weapons would be to collect all of them at 100% condition, top off all resource bars, and then save near a wolf. Then make tons of copies of this save and keep testing each one on the same wolf, leaving no other variables changed other than weapon used (use an auto-clicker or macro to ensure consistent clicks), and then record the results (condition left, if and when animal fled or died, injuries sustained, etc.). Repeat like... 100 times for each weapon. A 1,000 would be ideal but... not feasible unless multiple people were working on it.


I wouldn't blame anyone if this level of rigorous testing was never performed due to the sheer amount of time and tediousness it'd take to do. But it'd definitely provide the most scientifically accurate results.


Edit: Actually, the whole save thing might be a heck of a lot more feasible to do on Wintermute since you can do hard saves.

[IFIYGD]

Originally posted by Rumors:

While interesting, IMO, I think the best way to compare the weapons would be to collect all of them at 100% condition, top off all resource bars, and then save near a wolf. Then make tons of copies of this save and keep testing each one on the same wolf, leaving no other variables changed other than weapon used (use an auto-clicker or macro to ensure consistent clicks), and then record the results (condition left, if and when animal fled or died, injuries sustained, etc.). Repeat like... 100 times for each weapon. A 1,000 would be ideal but... not feasible unless multiple people were working on it.


I wouldn't blame anyone if this level of rigorous testing was never performed due to the sheer amount of time and tediousness it'd take to do. But it'd definitely provide the most scientifically accurate results.


Edit: Actually, the whole save thing might be a heck of a lot more feasible to do on Wintermute since you can do hard saves.

Someone already did this tex st, a good bit ago, on the online forums. Pretty much the way you described it. While interesting, the autoclicker usage, same exact lclothing, in the same exact xondition, with all stats at 100%, and the same wolf, with the same HP/stregnth, is not how most games go, or how most people play.

Any tests like this are just rough guidelines. Unless you want to test every weapon, in every condition, with every possible combination of clothing every possible combination of damage recieved results, every possible combination of afflictions before, during, after, that do not pervent equipping a weapon, every possible combination of weapon and clothing condition %, with every wold in the game world, every wolf spawn, every map, every possible weather condtion, Aurorae included... and I am sure I missed at least one or two other variables that could come into play.

I kinda have some other things to with the next 30 year of my life, including hoping I live that long. Not interested in volunteering to do this y type of test, or be second or third or fourth or... to do it to confirm results. Lol! I'll take my chances with whatever I have on hand while I am out wandering the great Canadian Post-apoc North of Great Bear Island. I love Science, but... not this much. xD

[Rumors]

Thing is though, for data to be accurate, you need to keep all variables identical between tests other than the one you're testing. And you only test one at a time. That's just scientific method 101. I mean, I really doubt the game is so complexly coded as to make the Heavy Hammer function worse than an axe when 50% hungry, 30% thirsty, at 28 C in Pleasant Valley but better on the same conditions but in front of a Fishing Hut in Coastal Highway and both worse if you're at a Fishing Hut in Mystery Lake. That amount of complexity would introduce a hellish amount of bugs and add little to the game.

I mean, yeah, it's not "gameplay conditions", but we only want to know the difference between weapons since it's a strongly safe assumption that all will degrade by the same proportion if you're, say, cold or on a hill or whatever.

[Lonelywolf]

I used a save editor instead of copying the save. I can maintain control over the variables with that. I tested every time with full % tools, clothing, and stats. By picking different wolf targets and doing multiple tests per set of factors, I was able to isolate the majority of the variance. While it's not a PERFECT method for determining root outcome, it does assist in giving a very accurate viewpoint into the subject. It means I can test the scenario over and over to ensure a range is healthy and identify outliers and remove them from the range of outcomes.

And that's what I did during my tests and continue to do, is identify outliers and remove them from the stack so that the data speaks without odd or non-standard variances fuddling the data.
And that's what the results stand to so far. At this point I've done 20 more tests with the same conditions as the original set, and the data stays inside the same margins. Give or take ~5% condition. This means the data is accurate enough to not only infer but to extract a probably and accurate observation about wolf struggles. In any non-staged, non-variance controlled environment (I.E standard play,) the Hammer maintains a good balance of getting the wolf off you before more than 30% condition loss, provided you're fighting at tip top shape, and with good protection clothes. (29% defence.) If you drop your fatigue to half the results skew more in favor of the wolf, obvisouly. But the hammer still gives you wonderful odds for beating the wolf off before death. And this dataset doesn't include the odds of the hammer ending the struggle near instantly. That number still stands at a rough margin of 25-35% of all encounters so far.

While not a perfect scientifc test to determine to the smallest of accuracies the exact % of condition and every factor that effects a wolf struggle, it does give a very clear and rough idea of what to expect out of a situation given a certain tool and a certain set of factors. Which guides the player in the choice of what weapon to use when fighting the wolf off you.

[gnusjunkie]

Thanks - have only had a chance to quickly skim and will take some more time to review in detail and come back with better-informed questions. But for now, just this: thank you for doing this, and very interested to see more results.

[Lonelywolf]

Originally posted by gnusjunkie:

Thanks - have only had a chance to quickly skim and will take some more time to review in detail and come back with better-informed questions. But for now, just this: thank you for doing this, and very interested to see more results.

No problem! I'm doing some more testing on the Hammer now and will update my spreadsheet with the results. I'm going to do some continued testing at half fatigue. I've attempted to seperate what I'm coining as 'instant wins' from legitemate struggles. 'instant wins' are when the wolf disengages after less than five clicks of the mouse. By removing this set of data from the overall averages, this gives the player an idea of what a prolonged struggle with a wolf will net you in terms of damage and length. I do however,compare the instant wins/total struggles to get the % listed above. I haven't yet tested the prybar and I've never experienced 'instant wins' when using the knife or hatchet in standard gameplay, so I'm betting its a feature found only with weapons labled 'scare.' (Hammer and prybar.)

[gnusjunkie]

Originally posted by Lonelywolf:

No problem! I'm doing some more testing on the Hammer now and will update my spreadsheet with the results. I'm going to do some continued testing at half fatigue. I've attempted to seperate what I'm coining as 'instant wins' from legitemate struggles. 'instant wins' are when the wolf disengages after less than five clicks of the mouse. By removing this set of data from the overall averages, this gives the player an idea of what a prolonged struggle with a wolf will net you in terms of damage and length. I do however,compare the instant wins/total struggles to get the % listed above. I haven't yet tested the prybar and I've never experienced 'instant wins' when using the knife or hatchet in standard gameplay, so I'm betting its a feature found only with weapons labled 'scare.' (Hammer and prybar.)

Yep. While recognising that the whole point of your effort is to get past this sort of thing, my anecdotal experience is the same as yours: the hammer/prybar seem to have a chance to end the struggle as well as a chance to injure the wolf each 'round' of struggle (if that's the right term). That doesn't seem to be the case with the blades (knife/hatchet, whether machine-made or improvised), where you just do damage until the wolf breaks away mortally wounded.

[iheartmyocd]

Stand by what I've said in all of these threads -

1) There is a notable difference between the best weapon for a single wolf encounter and the best overall weapon for all of them.

2) All wolf encounters v. weapon selections involve a HUGE amount of outside or random factors, plus overall conditions that need to be factored in for science to count.

The testing you've done is brilliant, but for science you are seriously limiting your base study to only achieve only one very specific result, aka getting the wolf off of you, and not taking into consideration the many other variables that must inevitably play into it - the hammer is a massive weight to carry around all of the time, which affects inventory management greatly and thus impacts the overall gameplay for one thing. The only way to truly test it, I FEEL IMHO MY OPINION ONLY ETC, would be to do a 250 day run on each difficulty using only the hammer for defence, and then another 250 day run on every difficulty using only the axe for defence, and then another 250 day run on every difficulty using only the knife for defence, and then compare results. That would probly provide enough data for a conclusive opinion.

I myself use the hatchet, always. For me the slightly larger health hit is more than balanced out by the lighter carrying weight, equal usefulness, ease of replacement, definitive wolf death (no coming back for a second go at me), added benefits of a free wolf hide (invaluable), guts (fishing lines, crafting and clothing repairs), and meat (both cooking skill and calories), not to mention having a new path for travel through what had been a wolf-infested area. (Make your way to the Quonset through five wolves using a hammer, loot it, and then step out, you still have five wolves waiting for you. Do it with a hatchet, you have zero wolves, enough fur and guts waiting for you to make a wolf coat and even repair it, along with a full level of cooking skill and enough calories to survive a month even if you stay full all of the time).

Using the knife means a longer struggle, and the health hit just isn't worth it. Using the hammer, I lose all of those benefits. Under certain, very specific (and incredibly rare during a long run) circumstances I will concede that it is the better option. Overall though, I pick hatchet.

In the end this game is all about making desicions and choices, then paying for them if you made the wrong ones. Choose right, live, decide wrong die. If the hammer works for someone's game play, they should go for it and be happy.

[bili00777]

did anyone notice weight or encumbrance having any effect? im almost sure it has but since you are testing the struggles.. :D and tnx!

[Lonelywolf]

Originally posted by iheartmyocd:

Stand by what I've said in all of these threads -

1) There is a notable difference between the best weapon for a single wolf encounter and the best overall weapon for all of them.

2) All wolf encounters v. weapon selections involve a HUGE amount of outside or random factors, plus overall conditions that need to be factored in for science to count.

The testing you've done is brilliant, but for science you are seriously limiting your base study to only achieve only one very specific result, aka getting the wolf off of you, and not taking into consideration the many other variables that must inevitably play into it - the hammer is a massive weight to carry around all of the time, which affects inventory management greatly and thus impacts the overall gameplay for one thing. The only way to truly test it, I FEEL IMHO MY OPINION ONLY ETC, would be to do a 250 day run on each difficulty using only the hammer for defence, and then another 250 day run on every difficulty using only the axe for defence, and then another 250 day run on every difficulty using only the knife for defence, and then compare results. That would probly provide enough data for a conclusive opinion.

I myself use the hatchet, always. For me the slightly larger health hit is more than balanced out by the lighter carrying weight, equal usefulness, ease of replacement, definitive wolf death (no coming back for a second go at me), added benefits of a free wolf hide (invaluable), guts (fishing lines, crafting and clothing repairs), and meat (both cooking skill and calories), not to mention having a new path for travel through what had been a wolf-infested area. (Make your way to the Quonset through five wolves using a hammer, loot it, and then step out, you still have five wolves waiting for you. Do it with a hatchet, you have zero wolves, enough fur and guts waiting for you to make a wolf coat and even repair it, along with a full level of cooking skill and enough calories to survive a month even if you stay full all of the time).

Using the knife means a longer struggle, and the health hit just isn't worth it. Using the hammer, I lose all of those benefits. Under certain, very specific (and incredibly rare during a long run) circumstances I will concede that it is the better option. Overall though, I pick hatchet.

In the end this game is all about making desicions and choices, then paying for them if you made the wrong ones. Choose right, live, decide wrong die. If the hammer works for someone's game play, they should go for it and be happy.

You make some very good points. What I'm trying to do here is not determine for anyone the best weapon in any given situation or any overall situation, but determine which weapon does what, when, and how. For example: Hammer does scare, it does it pretty fast usually, depending on your fatigue it does it with little harm to the player, and has a chance to end it near instantaneously. Once all testing is done and complete I'll link to my spreadsheets where I'm storing the data so you can all ponder it yourselves. I'm basically trying to collect raw data and draw conclusions from that about the weapons. Obviously if you want the wolf to die from the encounter, Knife or Hatchet is the way to go, because prybar and hatchet don't add bleed effect. If you are low on HP or just want to be done with ASAP, prybar or hammer is probably the way to go.

That's why I'm testing. To get all the data pulled so we can have something to source to when it comes time to discuss, so we can say: What's your goal? Scare vs kill? Okay now that you've got your goal, what's the next bit? Which does it faster? Less tool % lost? More condition left on player? ETC.

Obvisouly there will never objectively be "the best" because it's all situational and factor dependant. But with data to back it up you can make a more informed choice rather than "I heard hammer is good but hatchet works too which to choose?" Now we can have criteria and data to chose from to inform those decisions. Well, mainly for new players anyway. Plus its fun to test around and see what the game does with each situation while testing.

[hinterland_community]

Please avoid discussing or promoting mods for The Long Dark as this is not something the game currently supports.

[iheartmyocd]

Oh okay, I had to re-read the thread to get the mod thing but now it makes sense lol. That said -

@Lonelywolf: All good points, and don't get me wrong, I am facinated by the sheer effort you are putting into this. It's fantastic, and the numbers should be pretty interesting when you get through it. (I heart science lol). So on that note, I hope I can say this without sounding unappreciative or like I'm trying to poop in your corn flakes (I'm really not)...

I really, REALLY hope you are only focusing on the data sets specific to each weapon and how they compare to one another rather than "which is best overall." As I said before (and I still do), "best overall" would require a huge and lengthy amount of research to determine, as so many random and/or situational elements go into each encounter. Then there's the added problem of there being the two weapon types, blunts and sharps. The sort of accepted heirarchy or those are fists/prybar/hammer for the blunts, then knife/axe for the sharps, And then you need to factor in availability, replaceability, repairability, situational circumstances... for example, if you shoot a charging wolf with an arrow and draw blood before he attacks, yadayada. As a straight data set of plusses and minuses for each option it'll an amazing piece of work for people to learn from. Just don't stray from the objectivity and it'll be fine.

[Lonelywolf]

Originally posted by iheartmyocd:

Oh okay, I had to re-read the thread to get the mod thing but now it makes sense lol. That said -

@Lonelywolf: All good points, and don't get me wrong, I am facinated by the sheer effort you are putting into this. It's fantastic, and the numbers should be pretty interesting when you get through it. (I heart science lol). So on that note, I hope I can say this without sounding unappreciative or like I'm trying to poop in your corn flakes (I'm really not)...

I really, REALLY hope you are only focusing on the data sets specific to each weapon and how they compare to one another rather than "which is best overall." As I said before (and I still do), "best overall" would require a huge and lengthy amount of research to determine, as so many random and/or situational elements go into each encounter. Then there's the added problem of there being the two weapon types, blunts and sharps. The sort of accepted heirarchy or those are fists/prybar/hammer for the blunts, then knife/axe for the sharps, And then you need to factor in availability, replaceability, repairability, situanional circumstances... for example, if you shoot a charging wolf with an arrow and draw blood before he attacks, yadayada. As a straight data set of plusses and minuses for each option it'll an amazing piece of work for people to learn from. Just don't stray from the objectivity and it'll be fine.

I'm not going for "best overall!" as I don't think such a thing exists. It's all subjective really. What I'm doing is trying to find what fits each situation best. Or, more clearly, which one BEST FILLS A ROLE. If the role is scare, it is X. if the role is bleed, it is Y. Or at least breakdown why the data points to that. Either way, no singular on will win out either way.