Greydwarves and Greylings

[MistrBill]

So far, I've spent a lot of time in meadows, swamps, and black forests. The first two feel about right in terms of spawn rate. Swamp's difficult and punishes carelessness, but it feels hard but fair. Meadow's fine for a beginner learning the ropes.

But what is up with the greyling (meadow) and greydwarf (black forest) spawn rate? They're not difficult to kill even early on, and getting swarmed is a challenging experience. But fer cryin' out loud, day and night there's an endless supply of them. I've got entire chests filled with resin and grey dwarf eyes. You'd think after you've killed a few THOUSAND of them, the word would get out to leave the viking alone! They just. don't. ever. stop. coming, no matter how many you kill.

[AlexSledge]

Truth. The struggle is real.

[Veseljko]

Dont worry, you will find a way to use them and in no time you will find your chests empty.
Some suggestions:
Resin: lighting in general (sconces, standing torches, or even jack-o-turnip) and poison bombs which will be useful later against groups of enemies like wolves and fulings.
GD eyes: standing blue torch and eyescream. Blue torches are visible from the longest distance and it looks great, while eyescream is great stam food.

[Draconifors]

Originally posted by Veseljko:

Dont worry, you will find a way to use them and in no time you will find your chests empty.
Some suggestions:
Resin: lighting in general (sconces, standing torches, or even jack-o-turnip) and poison bombs which will be useful later against groups of enemies like wolves and fulings.
GD eyes: standing blue torch and eyescream. Blue torches are visible from the longest distance and it looks great, while eyescream is great stam food.

Fire arrows also use up resin rather nicely, if you use the bow a lot and haven't progressed to high-quality arrows.

[Polonius Ulf]

Greylings and first-tier greydwarfs are for skilling-up with your weapon(s) of choice. That's why they are so numerous without really being dangerous. They also break-up repetitive chores.

[Veseljko]

Originally posted by Draconifors:

Fire arrows also use up resin rather nicely, if you use the bow a lot and haven't progressed to high-quality arrows.

Oh, totally forgot about that XD. Didn’t use them for ages. I struggle to get enough resin for sconces and bombs.

[MistrBill]

I see most of you are looking on the bright side, and I understand your points. But there's gotta be a better way to get the resources. They're like swarms of mosquitos in those two biomes.

[pipo.p]

You can slightly reconsider things; just pretend that Greydwarves are tree spirits, and that for each fallen tree two of them will spawn. Granted this doesn't really explain their number, but it's a start.

[Samoth]

don't go at night. pay attention to the blue swirls. raze the land between you and your target location. use camp fires if you intend to stay at night. Notice fires, plural. Or if you have access to Bonfires centralize some and fan out camp fires. Remove or destroy any object that breaks your line of sight. And don't sleep there.

And you are correct.
BF has an endless supply of reinforcements it can teleport on a whim. Not rapidly, but constantly, that is scaling. Have a day!

[MistrBill]

Originally posted by Samoth:

don't go at night. pay attention to the blue swirls. raze the land between you and your target location. use camp fires if you intend to stay at night. Notice fires, plural. Or if you have access to Bonfires centralize some and fan out camp fires. Remove or destroy any object that breaks your line of sight. And don't sleep there.

That will all work, but dealing with them isn't the point. They're not tough to fight, even in groups. My complaint is that, rather than being challenging or interesting, the never ending tidal wave of the little @#$!'s is irritating and distracting.

[Samoth]

then manage them with form, create places they can't get to.
As well if you have accomplished the above there should not be many to deal with. But anytime you move beyond rendering range in BF you must assume it will be refilled. Tables are your next option, and more.

[Veseljko]

Originally posted by MistrBill:

My complaint is that, rather than being challenging or interesting, the never ending tidal wave of the little @#$!'s is irritating and distracting.

Then tame some wolves and set them to roam around your base to do it for you. Or spam a lot of campfires all around the base to prevent mobs from spawning.

[loppantorkel]

You need them for eyescream. Circle of life and so on...

[TehJumpingJawa]

Originally posted by pipo.p:

You can slightly reconsider things; just pretend that Greydwarves are tree spirits, and that for each fallen tree two of them will spawn. Granted this doesn't really explain their number, but it's a start.

I'd be in favour of it working this way!

More reasonably though, I think greydwarves should require trees in order spawn.
Deforesting a region should stop them spawning.
I'd also like to see deforestation (and terraforming in general) reflected on the map.

[FTZ35]

Wait until you get to he Mountains.... you kill one drake, try to get back to mining, another comes right away.... and it's just the drakes. It gets worse if golems start spawning repeatedly.

[Taonath]

They are one-hits and don't do any real dmg themselves. IMHO nothing to worry about, just a slight annoyance when you are at 0 stam and not rested while chopping down a few hundred trees to root out a whole Black Forest area... other than that just shrug them off or let them hit you and continue whatever you are doing - eventually they will run into your line of fire anyways and die while you chop away.

Personally I find it more annoying to have to clean my inventory when accidently picking up their droppings.