Do enemies attack things when you aren't nearby?

[SWK]

It seems they only engage player structures when the player is nearby and they're aggro, but i'm not sure if goblins are eating my house when i'm gone. Sometimes i come back and the standing torches are now a pile of materials.

[Sabaithal]

Depends on what you mean by nearby. If you're on a different landmass, I don't think so.

From what I understand certain mobs that spawn in areas will stay there if the player leaves the area, but they won't be loaded in until the player is somewhere close by.

And from my understanding, if the player isn't near a location, no mobs are loaded in at all.

Could be wrong about that though.

[AAND]

The game is devided in cells. Aslong you arent in a cell or if you leave one everything will get paused there. So if the area isnt near or next to you or in line of youre sight nothing will happen.

[Ptolemy]

Originally posted by AAND:

The game is devided in cells. Aslong you arent in a cell or if you leave one everything will get paused there. So if the area isnt near or next to you or in line of youre sight nothing will happen.

That's correct. If you're finding destroyed structures around your base then it happened when you were nearby.

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

From what I understand certain mobs that spawn in areas will stay there if the player leaves the area, but they won't be loaded in until the player is somewhere close by.

That's also true. Critters don't actually despawn unless their spawn is specific to night-time, in which case they despawn at daybreak. The rest of them just get unloaded from memory when no one is closeby.

[Weaver]

Unless you are close enough to make things load in nothing happens aside from fuel consumption/automated processing and plant growth.