Various issues with taming animals

[starship]

The taming mechanic was really exciting to me before I achieved it, especially with the wolves. Once I had the wolves, their behavior was a big let-down. Some examples:

If you take a couple wolves out on a run, they will eat and screw, dropping puppies randomly that cannot be easily moved.

AFAIK, you don't actually need to feed your tamed animals unless they're injured. This is really unrealistic and allows a player to maintain a large pack of wolves, boars, etc. without any effort, once they've tamed a couple and given them food to reproduce. The players themselves can't realistically go without food, why not also have the animals' health work in the same way?

Maybe they should have gender, instead of just needing 2 of one species to reproduce. This would make capturing them more interesting, as you might need to get more than 2 at first.

I would much prefer to have to feed my animals, and for their reproduction to take longer. And frankly, both boars and wolves give birth to litters of young, not just one at a time.

I'd rather see pregnant animals.. even if it's just an indicator in their health/status bar. They need more food, you can see that they're pregnant and not take 'em out on runs, etc. Maybe it takes quite a bit longer to give birth (even have a regular gestation period instead of a random amount of time after *1 minute*.

The control loop for wolves seems especially slow. Maybe it's the same for all tamed animals. But if you want to heal an injured wolf in a pack, and you throw down some meat, you may have to wait 10+ seconds for them to do anything about it, watching the whole time to make sure some other wolf doesn't eat the food. Or pausing in the middle of a run to just stand about as the wolf scratches themselves, barely alive, with food right in front of 'em.

That right there was actually driving a friend of mine a bit nuts (noobier than I), trying to feed an injured wolf we had on a run. He thought he was doing something wrong. I already knew it could take a long time for them to react.

And wolves' attack animations looks a bit like they're shaking hands.. at best, clawing something, not biting, which I thought was supposed to be their attack method. Their animation is very clunky. They honestly all look like they have arthritis.

And petting a wolf either makes them stay or follow you. I like the boar mechanic where petting does absolutely nothing useful. It's just a shared love sim. I wish one could do this with wolves and cubs.

What about tamed animals going feral again? If you give them zero love, they're not fed at all, and they escape, why should they care about their tamer anymore? Not that I want to have to grind my way through petting all my animals daily or so. Maybe even having some kind of radius effect, where your presence, some petting of some animals, etc. helps to maintain the taming level of nearby animals.

I am thankful that my pack of wolves doesn't howl incessantly, like they did at first.

And finally, as so many have said, it'd be great if we could tame other animals too, like deer.... and trolls. ;) ;)

[knighttemplar1960]

Its a magical mythical land. If you take starred wolves out and they whelp while you are out the pup grows when next you chance by. If you only breed starred wolves and you run into one during the day you'll know its one of those and you can have it follow you. (It obviously imprinted on you when it was born).

If you've even spent any time or worked on a farm you know that many domesticated animals find food on their own (especially those owned by subsistence farmers) and wolves were bred into dogs for many purposes one of which was to help their humans get food, not the other way around. Feeding animals excess food allowed then to produce more and larger but that required having excess food.

Animals can only heal by eating once per day AND they have to be hungry to eat, injured or not.

Its a magical and mythical land. All the animals are functional genetic hermaphrodites and their litter size in this magical land is 1.

You haven't watched a dog catch a rabbit or squirrel have you? They grab it by the neck in their muzzles and shake it back and forth until its neck breaks to paralyze it so it can't escape. Wolves and dogs usually only claw creatures that are larger than themselves. This is one of the reasons that you often see spiked collars on hunting dogs. (Other animals do this too).

Tamed animals that lose their people don't always go feral again. If they are in the city and there are few or no other animals of their species around they will often wander around the locale getting snacks from the locals. The ones that do go feral and run in packs can often be rehabilitated by breaking up the pack, feeding, and tending the dogs. This works as long as they didn't attack any people. In some countries (like the Philippines) tame animals that have no owners roam city streets and are fed by locals and stay tame.

Red tail, white tail, and mule tail deer are notoriously hard to tame and those that are tamed often leave when they rut. Reindeer are the exception that tame and stay tamed. Also, there is a difference between tame and domesticated. There are several types of animals that the Vikings domesticated (geese, ducks, sheep, goats, horses, donkeys) that aren't in the game (and some, like chickens), that were added later.

[starship]

I appreciate the history lesson! :) Sorta. :) Most of that is not new to me.

Not really trying to ask for complete realism because obviously this takes place in a magical afterlife where Odin made all the rules.

And yeah, I'm familiar with tamed animals not turning totally feral. I was more alluding to abusing one's animals.. never interacting, never feeding.. those animals go elsewhere and don't necessarily get along with humans.

As far as foraging goes for animals.. I'm pretty sure that pigs don't live off the land when in a pen. Chickens? Sure! Cows? Sure. Wolves? What are wolves going to eat in a fenced in area of grass? :) Now, if they're wandering freely and slaughtering all the wildlife, sure.

It's really more about a game balance issue. Getting the wolves was my goal from the start, as soon as I learned one could tame boars.

So I'm only in the Bronze age now with the initial boss defeated, and the "Forest is Moving" events were really stressful and fun before I had wolves. Now, my pack of wolves descends and just murders the crap out of 'em. And I basically don't have to do anything. I don't have to upkeep the wolves either. It's still kinda fun but.. now there's no challenge involved.

I feel like once I got the wolves, I got overpowered. But if I had to feed them all the time.. go hunting for deer or feed the crap out of my boars to slaughter a bunch often, then that would balance it out. There would be a more natural limit on the total number of wolves I could manage. Right now, there really isn't. It wouldn't be a sort of "free" mega-defense after doing the initial work of taming a couple. There would be tradeoffs.

And with the pregnancy issue.. Yes, those pups will grow up to be tamed wolves.. having never interacted with a human or their parents because they were just abandoned in the Black Forest or wherever, completely fending for themselves. Versus the pup growing up around humans, getting fed by humans, etc. And yes, I can tell them to follow me if I encounter them again, but why would they even recognize me?

I mean a kitten that is abandoned and never pet.. is not a tame cat when it grows up. Hell, a kitten that is fed by humans but not given any love is a f'd up cat when it grows up. It's easier to approach than a wolf.. or cougar.. because of a massive amount of evolution. And frankly any animal can be approached in theory and "tamed" in theory.. or at least made friends with.. *in theory*. But just because one guy befriended an alligator or crocodile for life doesn't mean I'm going to try my luck the next time I'm in the swamps IRL. :)

And re: their attack.. maybe I'm wrong but I thought I read some game wiki that said their attack was a bite attack and yet they don't bite (I think). I was more alluding to the disconnect there and the clunkiness of the animation.

And re: the litters.. that's also more of a game balance issue. It would sideline a wolf. They'd be pregnant and need to just lay around for a long while. I'd need to be careful to not let them die and make sure they had plenty of food. Maybe I'd put them in a stronger pen, safer from attacks, and have the non-pregnant wolves be the guard doggies. Again, there would be tradeoffs and work required to grow this pack into a massive defense.

I had to be careful at first, and I put a lot of time and resources into it. But now I don't have to anymore, and that just feels kinda cheap to me. It feels overpowered. I'd kinda rather have to balance out the total number of wolves that I could field based on how much meat I could produce or hunt.

But maybe this is just the general dynamic of the game. Like not having to use any resources to repair stuff. :) And then accumulating a ridiculous number of some of those resources with nothing to use 'em for (pelts and hides especially).

Cheers

[knighttemplar1960]

Nothing that lives in a pen lives off the land but if you put a pig in a yard that has room to roam it will root around and find things to eat on its own. They literally eat anything that isn't poisonous and their sense of smell is all most as good as a dog's. If you keep a pig you don't have to compost. You can just throw that stuff in the yard. You don't have to buy fancy feed or grow things specifically for the pig. If you want to really give them a treat they love Oreos.

All animals have personalities and behave differently from other animals of their species. My wife and I have both tamed truly feral cats. Her cat Bubbles was a barn cat that got bitten by racoons. She found it laying on the porch with infected wounds. (The cat apparently understood that people could help or she just didn't care anymore). When my wife went close to it, it crawled under the porch. She went to the vet and explained the situation and the vet gave her a liquid antibiotic to put into food. She fed and medicated the cat from a distance. She would sit on the top step and the cat would crawl out from under the bottom step and eat and then crawl back under again. This went on for about a week and the cat started feeling better. When my wife went outside the cat started following her around from a distance. The cat got braver and braver and finally one day followed her into the house and never left. Bubbles would follow her all over the house and sleep on her feet but would never let anyone pick her up but she understood my wife had helped her and that made all the difference.

We now have a cat in the house that was feral (we named her Terrorist). She and the rest of her grown litter mates were living in a maintenance shop and a blizzard hit. A friend asked if we could come help and we went over and picked up 7 half frozen and slow moving cats. We took them home and warmed them up, acclimated them to people and rehomed 6 of them. The 7th decided she liked it where she was and stayed. She lived in a cat carrier for several weeks and if we leave it where she can find it she crawls into it. When she can't find it she walks into the dog's kennel and lays on his pillows. Her favorite thing to do is to hide under the bed and when someone walks by leap out and attack their ankles and then run back under the bed. A little annoying but we live right on the edge of town and the field across the street has field mice. The only mice we find in the house now are dead ones that she drops as presents. She knows she was rescued too just like Bubbles.

If you have ever adopted a dog from a shelter they become your friend for their lives because of what they went through in the shelter. They know that you rescued them and they let you know that they appreciate it.

Wolves can't feed themselves in a fenced in yard either but if they have a bit of room to roam they can. The field across the street from us has all kind of wild life in it and a coyote and a fox both live in the tree line there. A wolf could do so too and it would run the fox and the coyote off.

Keep playing. Your wolves won't feel over powered when the raids from the next biome start.

[starship]

I mean.. I don't disagree with any of that per se. Awesome re: the feral cats! I've had plenty of cats, none of which started out feral though.

That being said.. maybe in-game pets should heal over time then, if they're foraging?

Maybe my issue was more about seeing the state of the animal. It's "hungry" so I want to feed it. AND... if one googles this, one can find mentions of the animals dying off if they're not fed. As far as I can tell, it doesn't actually work that way but may have in the past..?

AND... this is a mea culpa re: the dynamics of this game. I was so OP with my pack of wolves.. I thought.. till I unleashed the "Ground is Shaking" raid. Lost most of my wolves in that one, but it's a good thing they were there given my base design at the time. :) It was quite a shock and exciting. :) Had about 6 trolls on that raid. :)

Something both the friend I'm playing with and myself didn't really appreciate about this game till after unlocking this raid and such.. is how much the game ramps up from time to time. Sort of like a staircase of difficulty, and a staircase of powering up that don't necessarily coincide. That dynamic isn't quite what I'm used to in games, but now I get Valheim's shtick more.

And yeah, I didn't quit playing. :) I had to slow it down a bit b/c of some hand injuries (unrelated), and I am jonesing for this game soooo badly.

cheers!

[Jbones]

i'll just comment on one thing - when i'm at home with iron or better armor on - i usually don't eat anything if i'm just building or cooking. So kind of like the animals. most raids i can eat if needed then jump into the fight by the time i was messing around in the mountains. so for me not feeding the animals was kind of the same. Of course the wolves have full health without food and you're at like 25 but i could see feeding them going into a fight like myself kind of works out.

[Darkbirt]

Originally posted by starship:

And finally, as so many have said, it'd be great if we could tame other animals too, like deer.... and trolls. ;) ;)

+1 I also want trolls.

But we need a way to transport them first. They don't seem to fit on the ships.

What I also want to mention. Can we tame some flying animal, it would be great.

[knighttemplar1960]

Originally posted by starship:

I mean.. I don't disagree with any of that per se. Awesome re: the feral cats! I've had plenty of cats, none of which started out feral though.

That being said.. maybe in-game pets should heal over time then, if they're foraging?

Maybe my issue was more about seeing the state of the animal. It's "hungry" so I want to feed it. AND... if one googles this, one can find mentions of the animals dying off if they're not fed. As far as I can tell, it doesn't actually work that way but may have in the past..?

AND... this is a mea culpa re: the dynamics of this game. I was so OP with my pack of wolves.. I thought.. till I unleashed the "Ground is Shaking" raid. Lost most of my wolves in that one, but it's a good thing they were there given my base design at the time. :) It was quite a shock and exciting. :) Had about 6 trolls on that raid. :)

Something both the friend I'm playing with and myself didn't really appreciate about this game till after unlocking this raid and such.. is how much the game ramps up from time to time. Sort of like a staircase of difficulty, and a staircase of powering up that don't necessarily coincide. That dynamic isn't quite what I'm used to in games, but now I get Valheim's shtick more.

And yeah, I didn't quit playing. :) I had to slow it down a bit b/c of some hand injuries (unrelated), and I am jonesing for this game soooo badly.

cheers!

In game tames heal once per day. If they are hungry and allowed to eat. The healing takes place then (very easy to see with lox).

Tames don't die if not fed. (They may have in early stages of the game but it was more likely that a creature got into the pen if your tames were dead when you returned). They don't breed if they are not fed and if there are too many in the area they don't reproduce even if they are fed (unless they clip through their enclosure which happens more frequently if the enclosure is full).