You stirred the cauldron!

[Faceplant]

Spent many hours over the last two days on my current play through building up a boar farm. I thought I'd seen every way that they could be wiped out. I built the farm in meadows, plenty of distance from the plains. Double thick, 4-high stone walls surrounding them to keep out all the nasties, and then the bats come and wipe out all 30 or so in a matter of seconds.

I don't mind the events, in fact, I kind of like them, in that they keep me on my toes and give me a reason to build a secure keep. I wouldn't even mind if I died from being unprepared, but there was no way to protect the boar from bats. I was killing them as fast as I could with my iron sledge, but there were way too many. I guess the only way to have a farm now is to keep them inside a secure building.

It was bad enough having to build a stone wall around them, rather than keeping them in a natural fenced in area. Now they need a stone "barn" just too keep them safe. I assume the bats can't spawn in buildings, otherwise I don't know how to keep them safe.

I assume others have had this event. Any suggestions on how to protect a farm from bats?

I'm glad it happened in this world, where I only had a new boar farm, rather than my main world, where I also have wolves and lox, which were much harder to get to my keep. I don't imagine they would be in danger from bats, but I don't know for sure, and I really don't want to risk it.

[Eightball]

I hear roofing your pens works against bats.

But unless things have changed the raid mobs go after you, not your base. If you are in or near your base it and its contents can fall victim to the baddies as a sort of collateral damage.

In my experience if I lead them away from my base (but still stay within the red 'raid' circle marked on the map) I can fight them with little risk to my base and its contents.

Again, maybe things have recently changed and I am unaware of it, but so far fighting raids away from my base while still in the circle has worked.

[Faceplant]

It's kind of a catch-22, you have to be near the farm for them to breed, but then they are in danger of the events.

The first thing I did was run away from the boars, but the bats were all there, not near me. By the time I got back there to defend them, they were pretty much all gone.

[Polonius Ulf]

You can put boars and wolves in the same pen where they can defend one another. Better than a pen, though, is to use your dry moat. Make it a bit wider than necessary and fill it with boars and wolves. This happens very fast. You can grow food for the boars in the same enclosure and when it is ripe just pull it out of the ground.

Then you'll want more wolves patrolling the outside as well as the interior compound.

And leaving the obvious for last, when an event starts hie thee to thy animal pens to help with the defense.

Finally, rotate your tires. hth.

[Zathabar]

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

It's kind of a catch-22, you have to be near the farm for them to breed, but then they are in danger of the events.

Really? Define "near" We usually put farms and Breeding pens a short way away from where we have our bass for this exact reason. 9/10 the Event spawns cantered on one of us and the Pens are at worst on the edge of the spawn circle usually just outside.

The only time we've had issues like the OP when we put the Pens as part of the main crafting complex?

That said yeah basic Roof at least or an enclosed "pen/Bunker area where the little guys can run too works as well.

[blprice61]

Originally posted by Zathabar:

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

It's kind of a catch-22, you have to be near the farm for them to breed, but then they are in danger of the events.

Really? Define "near" We usually put farms and Breeding pens a short way away from where we have our bass for this exact reason. 9/10 the Event spawns cantered on one of us and the Pens are at worst on the edge of the spawn circle usually just outside.

The only time we've had issues like the OP when we put the Pens as part of the main crafting complex?

That said yeah basic Roof at least or an enclosed "pen/Bunker area where the little guys can run too works as well.

Studying up on the info from the wiki about active zones and activities that require being active to function gives a worst case figure of 64 meters and a best case of 180 meters. Of course that doesn't help much since it is rather difficult to figure out where the zone boundaries are and even if you knew... measuring distances is... a real pain.

For taming and breeding you pretty much have to go with the worst case of 64 meters to be on the safe side. Now factor in the event mechanics, the rule of 3 and 40. There are a number of build-able structures defined as 'base structures' - wiki again has the list and some of them are non-obvious.

Except for the breeding and taming pens, the rest of your tamed herds could be on the far side of the world - really limited only by the pain of moving them. That is to say tame animals mature just like plants in your farms, or beehive honey production. The game will track how long its been since the last visit and adjust things accordingly.

You can decentralize your "base" into activity centers which will help immensely even in the face of the difficulty of measuring distances in game. Pay attention to how much actual game time you spend in at any particular activity.

You could, for example, place your breeding and taming pens between your various crop (including trees here) farms. Careful attention to the rule of 3 and 40 along with analysis of your activities would allow you to build a 'raid-free' distributed farm and barnyard complex removed from your "base" with its crafting and comfort structures.

[Limekim]

What i've recently started doing to combat the worst case scenario is basically encasing a couple of my boars completely and making them as inaccessible as possible, so if my actuall farm gets wiped out by a raid i can take them out of their "jail" lol and not have to go hunting for 1-2 star boars again

[Cap'n Bells]

Originally posted by Limekim:

What i've recently started doing to combat the worst case scenario is basically encasing a couple of my boars completely and making them as inaccessible as possible, so if my actuall farm gets wiped out by a raid i can take them out of their "jail" lol and not have to go hunting for 1-2 star boars again

ditto here!!

[Grailoch]

If you use portals, keep your breeders remote. Don't add more than 2 base items, portal +1. This should avoid all raids but "being hunted" that is focused on you and should not be an issue with farm animals. Or don't kill Bonemass and prospect silver with an AOE sledge.

[Faceplant]

All great suggestions, and I do have one base that I (after losing the entire farm twice) optimized the distance from the main compound such that I have them just in a basic fence, but I don't think that eliminates the risks entirely, since there are structures in the area that I use.

In other places I've had no problem building a "normal" looking fenced in enclosure that I've kept inside the walls of my compound. Events spawn outside the walls and normally I don't even concern myself with them. In that case I'll probably just combine all the animals together and hope for the best.

In this case, unfortunately, I just happened upon a 2* boar in a relatively small meadows that is surrounded by plains and mountain. I built a house while I tamed and cultivated them, planning on brining in some wolves and lox eventually. I haven't seen another boar of any sort in this sliver of meadows since, and the chances of finding a 2* is likely pretty close to 0, so I'll probably just abandon the place.

I find it a bit silly to have farm animals in a game that you can't actually have in a farm-like setting. Did they consider the effect that the bats would have before they introduced them? They add nothing to the game that I've seen, since they do no damage, yet they seem to have ruined the ability to have a normal farm.

[blankitosonic]

Originally posted by 76561199241361747:

If you use portals, keep your breeders remote. Don't add more than 2 base items, portal +1. This should avoid all raids but "being hunted" that is focused on you and should not be an issue with farm animals. Or don't kill Bonemass and prospect silver with an AOE sledge.

You know that tamed animals dont breed if you are not in a 64m area near from them , right ?
Or you say to make a couple of animals for a backup ?

[Eightball]

If you mean bats have ruined or at least made it more difficult to have simply fenced breeding operations I would say they have not ruined the option, just made a bit riskier.

So it is possible to keep most of your animals in simply fenced pens (off-site for example) while keeping your breeding animals a bit more protected.

The issue really seems to be there are no player made defenses available to help deter 'flying' raids from things like bats and drakes and who knows what in the future like we currently have for land raids (like spike walls).

Maybe we need something to slow flyers down so players have a bit more time to draw them off?

[Grailoch]

Originally posted by blankitosonic:

Originally posted by 76561199241361747:

If you use portals, keep your breeders remote. Don't add more than 2 base items, portal +1. This should avoid all raids but "being hunted" that is focused on you and should not be an issue with farm animals. Or don't kill Bonemass and prospect silver with an AOE sledge.

You know that tamed animals dont breed if you are not in a 64m area near from them , right ?
Or you say to make a couple of animals for a backup ?

I know. And, no.

When you want to breed, go there, toss em some food, sit back and eat dinner, watch a movie, or something else while the babies are made.

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by Eightball:

If you mean bats have ruined or at least made it more difficult to have simply fenced breeding operations I would say they have not ruined the option, just made a bit riskier.

So it is possible to keep most of your animals in simply fenced pens (off-site for example) while keeping your breeding animals a bit more protected.

The issue really seems to be there are no player made defenses available to help deter 'flying' raids from things like bats and drakes and who knows what in the future like we currently have for land raids (like spike walls).

Maybe we need something to slow flyers down so players have a bit more time to draw them off?

I don't see why I would want to store animals off-site. If I want to build a "normal" looking compound with farm animals, having them off-site defeats the purpose, as does housing them in a closed building.

I could keep some protected that I can use to re-populate the "show" animals if they get slaughtered, but that seems silly, just to protect against a mob that really is just a pest.

I've never had a drake event, so I don't know how that compares, but that's disabled by defeating Moder, so it's only relevant for a short time, in which I'm probably mostly going to be in the mountains preparing to defeat Moder, but the bats don't appear to have a way to disable them, so they will just keep coming once activated.

[TVMAN]

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

I don't see why I would want to store animals off-site. If I want to build a "normal" looking compound with farm animals, having them off-site defeats the purpose, as does housing them in a closed building.

Have you ever heard of a 'barn'?

[Faceplant]

Originally posted by TVMAN:

Originally posted by Faceplant8:

I don't see why I would want to store animals off-site. If I want to build a "normal" looking compound with farm animals, having them off-site defeats the purpose, as does housing them in a closed building.

Have you ever heard of a 'barn'?

That is a good point. I don't know if Vikings had barns, but making a barn-like structure within a stone-walled compound would be a reasonable compromise. It is a totally different aesthetic, though.