A bug where bears health resets?

[Chaos]

So I just tried to hunt a bear, put two arrows into its head and then it mauled me (I'm archery level 4, so my arrow do a decent amount of damage). After it mauled me, I got up, grabbed my bow and shot three more arrows into its head and it STILL didn't die and mauled me again.

Now the only reasonable explanation I can have for this is that somehow the bear's health resets when it mauls you which makes no sense at all.

Has anyone else experienced this and know if that is indeed the case?

[iwasa]

Welcome to the animal model used in TLD.

Primarily revolves around critical hits or bleeds. A critical hit kills the animal on the spot. Any other non-trivial hit inflicts a bleed (non cumulative) which would mean the animal will eventually die. Multiple hits each give a chance for a critical result (so the animal dies) so shooting the animal repeatedly is not entirely futile. If you got the bullets or arrows you can try to get that critical by scoring multiple hits but there is no guarantee.

You don't kill a bear by damage (at least as far as I know). You kill a bear because you scored a critical hit or it bled out. That's why the usual advice for the easiest kill is to get a bleed on a bear and let it bleed out.

One thing that needs to be kept in mind when the animal is bleeding is that going "inside" like a dwelling for a prolonged period (more than a game hour) can result in healing the animal. So don't spend a long time inside or stay inside until you're pretty sure the animal had bled out.

[Chaos]

Originally posted by iwasa:

Welcome to the animal model used in TLD.

Primarily revolves around critical hits or bleeds. A critical hit kills the animal on the spot. Any other non-trivial hit inflicts a bleed (non cumulative) which would mean the animal will eventually die. Multiple hits each give a chance for a critical result (so the animal dies) so shooting the animal repeatedly is not entirely futile. If you got the bullets or arrows you can try to get that critical by scoring multiple hits but there is no guarantee.

You don't kill a bear by damage (at least as far as I know). You kill a bear because you scored a critical hit or it bled out. That's why the usual advice for the easiest kill is to get a bleed on a bear and let it bleed out.

One thing that needs to be kept in mind when the animal is bleeding is that going "inside" like a dwelling for a prolonged period (more than a game hour) can result in healing the animal. So don't spend a long time inside or stay inside until you're pretty sure the animal had bled out.

If you don't kill animals with damage, then what exactly is the point of the rifle and archery skills giving increased damage?

[Rhapsody]

They said you don't kill a bear by damage. Damage is very important for hunting moose since they don't bleed at all. Logic-defying, but it kinda fits in the game play. It's also important for dealing with wolves since they have much less health than a bear. You can kill off a wolf just as it jumps on you if you landed a solid hit that only requires 1-2 seconds for it to bleed out.

[IFIYGD]

Head shots also suck for bears- they have really thick skulls. (Do an internet search for a black bear skull...) There are only a few crit areas on a bear's head- the "sweet spot" above/between the eye and the ear, directly in the eyeball, and in the nose or mouth- and none are guaranteed crits (and you have to be dang lucky to get one into an open mouth).
For bears, using the bow and arrow, I try for the neck/throat, back of the neck/between the shoulder blades or the butt (butt shots are surprisingly good for many animals in the game).
Land a good arrow shot and get somewhere safe and let the thing bleed out if I didn't manage a crit.

[iwasa]

Ask Hinterland about damage, I am sure there was some purpose/intent for it when they thought it up and maybe never revisited the issue or took reference to it out because they had other priorities.

I am only explaining my understanding of how the animal model works for hunting purposes. If anyone thinks that damage, because it was mentioned in the skill tree, has to be important or relevant for the kill, that's fine. I have no evidence or knowledge to dispute that belief. I suspect that damage has some effect but that it would not be a decisive one.

[kinytheman]

The skills don't increase any damage in any way, it literally reads critical hit increase. Animals only die from critical hits or bleeding. No health bars. Moose do not bleed so need a crit to die. Look up what weapons have what crit chance against which body part.

[Apsa]

Here is the dirty little secret the dev, Alf or whatever his name is, does not want you to know:

You were actually HEALING the bear each time you hit it. That is because the bear has a bleed timer. That timer varies depending on where you hit the bear - thus it can bleed out more or less quickly depending where it is hit (leg, torso, head).
BUT every time a bear is hit, it will reset the timer. Thus if you hit the bear in the head, and it starts bleeding and will die in 2 hours, and after an hour you fire again and hit it in the leg, the timer resets - thus the bear heals to full health and starts bleeding from full health again.

That's why in your fight, you were healing the bear to full health each time you hit it. i bet that sounds stupid? :) but that is how it is.

People think that evry time a bear is shot, and you stack hits, it starts bleeding from an additional spot. Just to be clear, the bear bleeds only from the last spot hit.

Whats even more hilarious is that if you had hit the bear in the head for a fast bleed and then you hit it in the leg, the ebar does heal, AND then it starts bleeding more slowly - because of the leg hit versus the initial head hit.


As others have pointed out, you also have the chance to register a critical which will kill the bear outright.

Thus your best bet is to hit the bear one time and wait for it to die. You can go inside even (people report a bug where going inside the bleed timer of the bear resets - that was fixed a long time ago).

BUT - What remains, and people are not aware of, is the fact that Bears and other animals disappear when a blizzard comes.

Ok, what does this have to do with your bear kill?

A bleeding Bear may disappear if a Blizard comes if you do not stay close to it.

Why?

Because all animals you stay close to will not despawn during a blizard.

Thus people report not finding their Bear kill, but what actually happens is that a Blizzard comes while the Bear is bleeding out, and after they cant find it - b/c it dis-pawned.

Your head is spinning?

Also another point to keep in mind about the mechanics - If you go inside to wait for a bear to die - it is only when you go back outside that the game will check the bear if it is alive or death. Thus if you look at your stats, the bear kill will not be registered until you open the door and go outside.

This also means the following thing - if you hit a Bear and go inside. You go to sleep. Now in a few hours the bear should have died, but a blizzard comes. Now the game has not checked the bear death (untill you walk outside) thus the bear (which should have bled out) disappears because as we said all live animals despawn during a Blizzard and the game does not know the bear is supposed to be dead b/c it checks only when you oppen the door.

The above mechanic makes people think Bears disappear if you wait for them inside to bleed out but it is actually the above that happens.

ok.

Now a mouse as said above will never die of bleeding, even if the animal leaves bleeding spots on the snow. You can wait for hours and the mouse does not care how many 1000's of litters of blood it looses. To kill a mouse you need to stack damage, and Crit's count towards that stacking.


Finlay a wolf, if you do not crit it and thus kill it, you do damage to it - this damage is taken into account if after that wolf jumps on you for a hand on hand fight. You will need allot less hits with your weapon to kill the wolf or make it run away.

Thus damage helps

Anyway - good luck.

[rmesch2014]

The blizzard thing might have got fixed. I've now had the following scenario twice:
Bear hit, blizzard strikes, I go inside and sleep through the blizzard, a few hours after the blizzard stops the bear is dead. Otherwise I fully agree with the above assessment.

[Apsa]

Originally posted by rmesch2014:

The blizzard thing might have got fixed. I've now had the following scenario twice:
Bear hit, blizzard strikes, I go inside and sleep through the blizzard, a few hours after the blizzard stops the bear is dead. Otherwise I fully agree with the above assessment.

Good to know it has been fixed.

Just to check - did the Blizzard start and you went inside? Or the Blizzard started once you were inside.

My reasoning is that if we are inside and the blizzard starts the game dis-pawns the animal.

If we are outside with the animal, the game checks the animal when a blizzard starts, sees us close or sees the bleed and does not dis-pawns it. Then if we go inside AFTER the blizzard start, all is ok.

Thus the issue may still remain when we are inside and then a blizzard starts and the game does not do a check with the Bear until we walk outside but by that time the bear has been dis-pawned b/c of the previous mechanic..

So just checking.

[iwasa]

One problem with the game was that the game state was only valid for a certain period of time, something like one game hour. After that the game state would no longer be considered valid and when the character reenters the world (e.g. exits a building) the world respawns according to game logic.

Before the game did not remember the state of bleeding animals so when it spawned the world anew it spawned the animals as unhurt.

That was changed a bit. Now the game remembers the state of the animal, even if it doesn't hold the game state to be valid anymore, so if the character returns to the world and the animal would have bled out by then the animal spawns then dies. If the animal would not have bled out it spawns uninjured.

Why it was coded that way I have no idea.

[rmesch2014]

Originally posted by Apsa:

Just to check - did the Blizzard start and you went inside? Or the Blizzard started once you were inside.

The blizzard hit when I was still outside, so you might be right.

[Chaos]

Originally posted by iwasa:

One problem with the game was that the game state was only valid for a certain period of time, something like one game hour. After that the game state would no longer be considered valid and when the character reenters the world (e.g. exits a building) the world respawns according to game logic.

Before the game did not remember the state of bleeding animals so when it spawned the world anew it spawned the animals as unhurt.

That was changed a bit. Now the game remembers the state of the animal, even if it doesn't hold the game state to be valid anymore, so if the character returns to the world and the animal would have bled out by then the animal spawns then dies. If the animal would not have bled out it spawns uninjured.

Why it was coded that way I have no idea.

As a programmer, the more I learn about how this game was coded, the more amazed I am that this jumble of spaghetti code actually works. Don't get me wrong, I love the game, but so much of the coding of this game is... questionable to say the least. It at least makes it a bit more understandable as to why it's taking the devs so long to add the content for TFTFT, I can't imagine trying to unravel this mess to make new things work.