How to fight the natives and defend your base

[Xinyan]

So I noticed a lot of people are having trouble with the natives, hence the devs adding a way to turn them off, but the game is way more fun with natives on. of course some people want to play without natives for other reasons than difficulty, but I am posting this for those having trouble fighting the natives. I get what people are saying about them being hard to fight, but they really aren't, and I'm not just being an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ like half of the people on here, I'm saying that you just need to know how the natives behave and how to fight them. You just don't have the information to succeed! So I have two things that I want to share here. First, my personal strategy for fighting the natives and second, how to defend your base and minimize attacks on it.


Fighting the natives:
While you can melee the natives effectively and some people may have an easier time of that, ranged attacks are FAR superior in my view and I often take out whole groups without taking a single hit (although more often than not I take a couple). The trick is to move backwards, keep the melee guys in between their ranged attackers and yourself, and aim for head shots, which are always an instant kill. Holding down the shift key when using the bow steadies your aim. Unless you meet them out in the jungle away from base it is always possible to get the drop on them, so I always start off with a single bow shot to the head, instantly taking out one of them. I then start backing up while checking where the archers run to and positioning myself accordingly while drawing my bow. I wait until they are pretty close to guarantee a hit, another native goes down, then immediately switch to my spear, which I always carry two of. If you get hit while aiming, don't worry about it, stay calm and just click your throw button again, line up your shot, and hit them in the head. This way you can take out 3 melee guys very rapidly, although you have to switch back to the bow if there is a fourth, which is a pain because it takes longer to draw it than it does to throw a spear and you will definitely get hit. Any remaining archers can be taken out by watching their draw, waiting until they are about to fire, then side-stepping and taking your own shot before they can draw again. Sometimes it might be more effective to run up to them, causing them to switch weapons, then shooting them in the head, just depends on how many of them there are. One important note is that if the terrain doesn't let you block the archers well, you may have to move side-to-side as you back away from the melee fighters, which makes it a bit harder, but keeps you from getting hit with arrows, or at least lowers the chance by a lot. Another note is that when backing away, try to hug close to any trees that you pass, as the archers will run to a new location if you block their shot, giving you more time to deal with the melee guys without being shot at. One final note is to always wear armor, even stick armor helps, but I try to get armadillo armor on day 2 or 3 at the latest. You can only make it from the big armadillos, I think they are five-banded armadillos, whereas the safer area in the south of the island has smaller three-banded armadillos. My final piece of advice is that no hostile animal that I have encountered other than the obvious one will cross water, even very shallow water, so if you need to escape, you can cross a river or run into the ocean or a pond. In some areas this even works for the natives, but they will cross water of a certain depth, unlike animals. You should note, however, that some rivers have large tracks of dry river bed, so pay attention or you'll think you're safe and end up as jaguar food. The best way to deal with any animal is to escape to an area they can't access and shoot them in the head.

Defending your base:
The key to base defense is understanding how the natives do things and always being prepared for a fight. First of all, the natives are drawn by fire, the more you are burning things, and the longer you burn things for, the more often they come. I can't confirm that they don't come if you don't use fire at all, as I rarely go a day without lighting up something at least temporarily, but I can confirm that I drastically reduced the number of attacks that I suffer by putting out my campfire when I am not using it (just move a water source into the top node where you normally add wood). Next, the natives will camp out somewhere near your camp before attacking, so a daily patrol around the perimeter of your camp will allow you to hear their singing and prep for the fight, topping up your health and stamina bar (blue mushrooms, meat, and several other items give stamina back. I have not been able to determine any other factors other than fire for how often the natives attack, but I did test using fire at a different location from my main camp, and sure enough, natives only ever showed up at that location, once destroying my charcoal burner while I was away (because I wasn't patrolling that area). I don't recommend this strategy unless you are also patrolling that area, however, because it caused me to wander into a group of already hostile natives rather than being alerted by their singing like normal, it was NOT a fun fight. I have not managed to get the natives to ever step on a trap, I have no idea how effective they are or are not. In order to avoid native attacks while you are away for more than a day you can simply make sure there is no fire burning for two days before setting off on your trip. It is possible that you only need to do this for one day, but I have not tested this, as attacks aren't common enough to do so effectively. The last piece of advice that I have for base defense is to use modular shelters and make sure that all parts are attached. These shelters have more HP the bigger they are, something that I found out completely by accident. This means that the natives will take longer to destroy it if you mess up somehow.

With these strategies I have been able to build enormous bases that even include things like an internal shower/water filter area where there is no ceiling, but it is completely enclosed. With my above combat strategy, you can even take out groups of natives with zero bow/spear skill at day 1, which I tested in survival mode when I happened to start off super close to one of the native camps. I do NOT recommend doing this, however, it is definitely not easy, just possible. Just ignore the trash talkers, they aren't better than you just because they know something that you don't. Hopefully this information helps someone to enjoy the game more fully, but if not, then oh well, I tried, hope you all have a damned good time playing regardless.

EDIT: I added a tip about holding shift while firing a bow in order to steady your aim.

[Amigurumi]

This is great info, thank-you very much! I haven't played long enough to actually run into any natives it seems, though I have heard some singing and headed in the opposite direction.

[MonkeyGamesVR]

Thanks, don't have the game yet, but could come in handy when I does and enter the green to survive. 🙏namastè.

[stensen]

as with animals, hitting them once will cause bleeding damage.

they definately seem to go hard at the mud cooker. thus, it seems to be a good strategy to place the cooker including the backwall at a defensible position, ideally somewhere inside the base, and to funnel the natives to that area. this tends to mess up my plans for a visually pleasing base, though :(

spike traps actually work quite well to defend against natives if placed strategically, e.g. behind your cooker. you need to place several ones, though, and they might get triggered by animals as well, potentially consuming many leaves and time to set them up again.

i intend to test how the natives react to a shed placed at the backside of a cooker. it might at least delay them long enough to take them out before destroying the cooker.

tbh, the main difficulty (and frustation) i have with the natives is how quickly they seem to destroy structures. it is not about killing them but about killing them quickly enough. especially since i would prefer to do without sound queues to indicate an attack. the great thing about anaconda island is that your structures are actually safe from native attacks. this alone just makes it so much superior to the other locations. however - and that remains to be my biggest concern - there isn´t really much to build on that huge area that has a practical purpose. with regard to other locations, i dont see any reason to bother with defending a huge compound if i can (more or less) easily squeeze everything really needed into a safe area. so i am mainly trying to find other "safe spots" with close enough access to capybara, peccary, or tapir, nuts, water, and bananas. and when we are talking about access, we are mostly talking about not having to walk for more than 10-20 seconds. the only thing really keeping me running at this point is to test out some of these "safe areas" that are not caves. i think i already found at least three pretty amazing ones. and there are still some to check out. another big area would be at 47/22, just south of the river. i didn´t test yet whether natives ever spawn there. they will spawn just across the river but they should not be able to get to you from there.

[Bunks]

My camp is a completely squared connection of frames all with exterior mud walls arranged like a castle with walls and a center keep, each side with one ramp(shed) inward and outward, to get in and out. My one wall with the cooker has been the only place they have attacked so far. So that sort of confirms the cooker being a focus point.

Whenever I use my smoker(center of camp) that is when they attack from random directions, so I use it sparingly now, and instead built a dryer since it gives longer life to food anyway.

As for combat, I found using a bow pretty hit or miss since it is so hard to keep aim steady. My favorite tactic so far is using a bladed axe as my melee, but carry 3 bamboo spears at all times. They are light, easy to aim, and cheap. When engaged I spear as many of them as I can and then run away till they bleed to death, then grab the spears and rinse repeat.

[Xinyan]

Originally posted by Bunks:

My camp is a completely squared connection of frames all with exterior mud walls arranged like a castle with walls and a center keep, each side with one ramp(shed) inward and outward, to get in and out. My one wall with the cooker has been the only place they have attacked so far. So that sort of confirms the cooker being a focus point.

Whenever I use my smoker(center of camp) that is when they attack from random directions, so I use it sparingly now, and instead built a dryer since it gives longer life to food anyway.

As for combat, I found using a bow pretty hit or miss since it is so hard to keep aim steady. My favorite tactic so far is using a bladed axe as my melee, but carry 3 bamboo spears at all times. They are light, easy to aim, and cheap. When engaged I spear as many of them as I can and then run away till they bleed to death, then grab the spears and rinse repeat.

Thanks so much for bringing that up! I added another tip to my guide: Hold the shift key to steady your aim with a bow. I forgot that I only found that out when I was looking through my keybindings to see if there was a hotkey for drawing your knife (slot beside your weapon slots). There isn't such a hotkey, but I was thrilled to notice that shift key thing for bows.

[Xinyan]

Originally posted by stensen:

as with animals, hitting them once will cause bleeding damage.

they definately seem to go hard at the mud cooker. thus, it seems to be a good strategy to place the cooker including the backwall at a defensible position, ideally somewhere inside the base, and to funnel the natives to that area. this tends to mess up my plans for a visually pleasing base, though :(

spike traps actually work quite well to defend against natives if placed strategically, e.g. behind your cooker. you need to place several ones, though, and they might get triggered by animals as well, potentially consuming many leaves and time to set them up again.

i intend to test how the natives react to a shed placed at the backside of a cooker. it might at least delay them long enough to take them out before destroying the cooker.

tbh, the main difficulty (and frustation) i have with the natives is how quickly they seem to destroy structures. it is not about killing them but about killing them quickly enough. especially since i would prefer to do without sound queues to indicate an attack. the great thing about anaconda island is that your structures are actually safe from native attacks. this alone just makes it so much superior to the other locations. however - and that remains to be my biggest concern - there isn´t really much to build on that huge area that has a practical purpose. with regard to other locations, i dont see any reason to bother with defending a huge compound if i can (more or less) easily squeeze everything really needed into a safe area. so i am mainly trying to find other "safe spots" with close enough access to capybara, peccary, or tapir, nuts, water, and bananas. and when we are talking about access, we are mostly talking about not having to walk for more than 10-20 seconds. the only thing really keeping me running at this point is to test out some of these "safe areas" that are not caves. i think i already found at least three pretty amazing ones. and there are still some to check out. another big area would be at 47/22, just south of the river. i didn´t test yet whether natives ever spawn there. they will spawn just across the river but they should not be able to get to you from there.

I can see why you would just say meh and not bother with a big base. I've found several caves large enough to put everything you need in as well as a couple of safe locations where you could build two modular shelters for a firewall, sleeping place, and drying racks and just build everything else in the open because natives don't attack there (although I have not yet been to anaconda island as I still have a few finishing touches on my base, I have heard that it's a safe spot, though). I personally just love building huge bases, and I kind of enjoy defending them as well. I actually died three times in story mode trying to collect all of the schematics I needed by day two (thank you energy mushrooms), before I finally succeeded in starting my current base and actually starting to really play story mode.

[stensen]

Originally posted by Talishan:

I can see why you would just say meh and not bother with a big base. I've found several caves large enough to put everything you need in as well as a couple of safe locations where you could build two modular shelters for a firewall, sleeping place, and drying racks and just build everything else in the open because natives don't attack there (although I have not yet been to anaconda island as I still have a few finishing touches on my base, I have heard that it's a safe spot, though). I personally just love building huge bases, and I kind of enjoy defending them as well. I actually died three times in story mode trying to collect all of the schematics I needed by day two (thank you energy mushrooms), before I finally succeeded in starting my current base and actually starting to really play story mode.

i am sure you will love anaconda island despite the lack of native attacks!

i actually just went to anaconda right away. just had to build a sleeping spot to rest at the bridge. i quickly collected the blueprints/items in the "old" part of the map with no real issues with bone/armadillo armor on me and then started building my initial base on anaconda. i would not necessarily advise this strategy when perma-death is active :) it is a nice challenge, though. and there is nothing more to build there, neither for practical nor for visual purposes. building more would actually just destroy huge parts of what little is left of the jungle on the shore of the lake and i really want to keep some of these beuatiful trees on the island.

why bothering with building lots of additional structures when the only real purpose of these is to make your base more defensible while at the same time these defences get destroyed very quickly by the constant attacks of i think five natives at a time and aren´t even required at different locations? to me, this simply looks like a giant waste of ressources. i built several big bases at various locations in previous runs and the only spot that can really compete with some safe locations is the abandoned fisher village. i would love to see some incentives to build more but as it is it is a "meh", indeed. having many little proxies accross the map seems to be more favourable to me at this point, anyway. it also keeps me moving and exploring every corner of the map. there just isnt anything else left to do for me. i might elaborate on this at another time, but i guess this would be beyond the topic of this thread.

all i want to say is that while at first sight, the "standard" locations seem to be very convenient to turn into a massive base, you really just need to visit them for the blueprints. there are alternative locations that are way easier to defend or dont require any defence at all, if that is a major concern.

[LaLunaArcadian]

Anaconda island is a great base area. As of today, natives WILL attack on the isle.

[Skarmo]

Old thread, but still very helpful OP.

Let me add that with ongoing attacks bow and spike traps are very useful. Watch where the tribesmen come from and build them in their ways. If possible, put the bow traps so that they aim at a tree. This way you will be able to recollect arrows that have been triggered by animals who are too small to catch the shot.

[HunterKiller]

Originally posted by Skarmo:

Old thread, but still very helpful OP.

Let me add that with ongoing attacks bow and spike traps are very useful. Watch where the tribesmen come from and build them in their ways. If possible, put the bow traps so that they aim at a tree. This way you will be able to recollect arrows that have been triggered by animals who are too small to catch the shot.

Good tactic.

[grampers62]

The only thing I would add is to perhaps hit a bowman with an arrow first. Even if you don't get a head shot you might be able to keep him moving till he bleeds out. One can still out run the melee and spear guys if one is attentive.