Wolf Spider Aggro?

[Ink Hyaena]

So this might seem like a dumb question, but my friends and I just started playing last night and we ran across a wolf spider not far from the starting spawn. This thing would NOT let up no matter what we did. Kept killing us one by one, even if we were far away, then if we came back to help a friend up, it would IMMEDIATELY target the person who got up, even if it was a good distance away. We managed to hobble our way back to camp and hide inside the tent taking turns whacking it with spears because it kept trying to get in and would not leave. We eventually killed it after how long. Is this normal, for it to just target EVERYONE no matter what? What is the strat for this thing??

[HALO_run]

yes that's normal at night

[RequiemsRose]

Wolf spiders are pretty aggressive, and pretty quick, and they normally patrol at night. If you are still early enough that avoiding them is the priority, build your base somewhere high up (like the baseball), sleep through nights to help avoid their patrols, and maybe the eyepatch wouldn't be the worst idea (though its no cure-all for aggro).

If you do plan to take them on but are nervous, there are some places you can be safely out of their reach and still cheese them with a bow or spears (you will likely need a lot of spears or arrows if using the earliest available options). In the meantime, practice the block mechanic with things that dont hit so incredibly hard (mites are a good start). If you time the block just right you get a perfect block (youll see little sparks, you can negate the damage of the attack, it doesnt increase your block threshold, theres tons of reasons why this is great), which will change your approach to melee entirely if you get the hang of it. Yes, even the wolf spider can be perfect blocked. It does take practice though.

Also, you will find healing is incredibly important as well. If you are still near the start you likely only have bandages available so far, which slowly trickle heal mostly. You can use some food to help that early on though, i personally like gnat roasts. I generally keep bandages active so i always have a trickle heal going, and keep a few other more instant healing items on me for when i take more serious damage (but it can be hard to keep enough sap for a constant bandage for multiple people right at the start). Though there are a couple of granola bars in the very first science station, i think its only two though but they can heal a bit as well. When you get the chance to, make the smoothie station, that is where a lot of your healing and even some buffs will come from as you continue. Any three food items that dont already make an existing recipe make slop, which has no real bonus effect but it does instantly grant a decent chunk of health, especially later on when you can make it work even better to. The other smoothies also generally heal, but the known recipe ones do have special effects as well that can prove useful later (including one that increases your overall health for a duration).

[Ink Hyaena]

Originally posted by HALO_run:

yes that's normal at night

Oh this all happened during the day. They've been hella aggressive every time we stumble on them and try to get away. 90% of the attacks are happening during the day when we're trying to get stuff done and explore.

[Ink Hyaena]

Originally posted by RequiemsRose:

Wolf spiders are pretty aggressive, and pretty quick, and they normally patrol at night. If you are still early enough that avoiding them is the priority, build your base somewhere high up (like the baseball), sleep through nights to help avoid their patrols, and maybe the eyepatch wouldn't be the worst idea (though its no cure-all for aggro).

If you do plan to take them on but are nervous, there are some places you can be safely out of their reach and still cheese them with a bow or spears (you will likely need a lot of spears or arrows if using the earliest available options). In the meantime, practice the block mechanic with things that dont hit so incredibly hard (mites are a good start). If you time the block just right you get a perfect block (youll see little sparks, you can negate the damage of the attack, it doesnt increase your block threshold, theres tons of reasons why this is great), which will change your approach to melee entirely if you get the hang of it. Yes, even the wolf spider can be perfect blocked. It does take practice though.

Also, you will find healing is incredibly important as well. If you are still near the start you likely only have bandages available so far, which slowly trickle heal mostly. You can use some food to help that early on though, i personally like gnat roasts. I generally keep bandages active so i always have a trickle heal going, and keep a few other more instant healing items on me for when i take more serious damage (but it can be hard to keep enough sap for a constant bandage for multiple people right at the start). Though there are a couple of granola bars in the very first science station, i think its only two though but they can heal a bit as well. When you get the chance to, make the smoothie station, that is where a lot of your healing and even some buffs will come from as you continue. Any three food items that dont already make an existing recipe make slop, which has no real bonus effect but it does instantly grant a decent chunk of health, especially later on when you can make it work even better to. The other smoothies also generally heal, but the known recipe ones do have special effects as well that can prove useful later (including one that increases your overall health for a duration).

Thanks for the tips! I'll have to relay this to my friends :)

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Ink Hyaena:

Originally posted by HALO_run:

yes that's normal at night

Oh this all happened during the day. They've been hella aggressive every time we stumble on them and try to get away. 90% of the attacks are happening during the day when we're trying to get stuff done and explore.

I guess if you get them moving, they'll probably go all out, but I've never seen a wolf spider out of its nest in full daylight.

Definitely a wolf spider, not an orb weaver? Those are not as vicious but are active all day and quite sufficiently aggressive.

(Or is the behavior different between solo and multiplayer, maybe?)

[Ink Hyaena]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by Ink Hyaena:

Oh this all happened during the day. They've been hella aggressive every time we stumble on them and try to get away. 90% of the attacks are happening during the day when we're trying to get stuff done and explore.

I guess if you get them moving, they'll probably go all out, but I've never seen a wolf spider out of its nest in full daylight.

Definitely a wolf spider, not an orb weaver? Those are not as vicious but are active all day and quite sufficiently aggressive.

(Or is the behavior different between solo and multiplayer, maybe?)

No, these were definitely wolf spiders because we also had an orb weaver tag team with a wolf to try to kill us in another tent.

[Serpiko82]

Originally posted by Ink Hyaena:

Thanks for the tips! I'll have to relay this to my friends :)

Also, if you killed at least one wolf spider, you should have unlocked the "mithridatism" mutation. It's a must when fighting spiders with early gear, since it reduces the health drain from poison. Killing more wolf spiders will increase its effectiveness dramatically (1 kill - 25% resistance, 5 kills - 50%, 10 kills - 75%).

The only downside is that it doesn't work against Black Widows, whose stronger venom bypasses mithridatism entirely, but that won't be a problem until far later in the game.

Tip: in order to farm wolf spiders kills, there's two good points relatively near the starting point where you can find single ones sleeping inside their lairs. One is in a small cave under the Yoked Girth Head, another under a pile of dead leaves nearby, just south of the plank.
If you catch them while they are sleeping inside during the day (you can easily tell when they're asleep because they lay crouched and "snore" loudly), you can build walls and obstacles on the exit of their lairs, effectively trapping them inside. It's safe, because when they sleep you can do pretty much anything around them with impunity, as long as you don't touch or interact directly with them, waking them up. Then you can take your time killing them with arrows from safety.
Watch out for a third one patrolling around the plank though, that party pooper might decide to join...

[Morbsexual]

I feel this. My partner and I made a base which was unfortunately near a spider nest and we got 1 big orb + 1 mini orb + 1 wolf absolutely WRECKING us.

They pretty much just forced us to abandon our base because even if we weren't hostile toward the spiders they would do flying leaps to get to us (we have a two story base) and ended up trashing all of our structures.

The AI in this game could probably chill abit. Especially when it comes to camping bases / bodies. I don't find that aspect to be very fun

oh, and this was on the "medium" difficulty lol.

[jmcdona6]

Wolf spiders are your #1 fear factor for the first half of the game. Almost no way to combat them early game. When you see one you run. When you think you hear one, you run. When you see grass moving, you immediately stop in your tracks and prepare to run. Even when you run, you better hope you ran soon and fast enough because it may not be enough. But they also have low spawn rate and spawn predictably in certain areas/patterns. I think its working as intended.

Good news is at some point 50-70% of the way through they start to melt away with better gear. I farm them for materials now.

[Michael]

Originally posted by Ink Hyaena:

Originally posted by HALO_run:

yes that's normal at night

Oh this all happened during the day. They've been hella aggressive every time we stumble on them and try to get away. 90% of the attacks are happening during the day when we're trying to get stuff done and explore.

Did you kill any spiderlings outside one of their lairs? That might aggro them. If not, one of your friends probably aggroed them and isn't fessing up. They sleep in their lairs during the day.

[RequiemsRose]

To be fair, that one wolf spider that patrols on the mint container side of the mystery machine has been known to patrol in the day in my games to. Dunno if that one is just weird, gets annoyed by something near it while sleeping (there are stink bugs and ant wars semi-often nearby), or is just intended to be extra annoying like that but I have been wrecked by that one in the early game myself a few times because he was out during the day when i didnt expect it (and then i started prioritizing getting aphid slippers quickly to help with another posters previously mentioned "RUN!" strategy). He's not out every day, and doesnt even exist on mild apparently (lovely surprise), but he can be out during the worst of times.

[Serpiko82]

Originally posted by Michael:

Did you kill any spiderlings outside one of their lairs? That might aggro them. If not, one of your friends probably aggroed them and isn't fessing up. They sleep in their lairs during the day.

I've seen some random Wolfie occasionally wandering around in the daylight.

[Vardis]

From https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/131030-public-test-patch-notes-for-update-110/

"Creatures will properly lose aggro after incapacitating a player instead of immediately retargeting them on revive regardless of where they are."

I suspect that will fix what you ran into.

[Michael]

Originally posted by maurizio.g1982:

Originally posted by Michael:

Did you kill any spiderlings outside one of their lairs? That might aggro them. If not, one of your friends probably aggroed them and isn't fessing up. They sleep in their lairs during the day.

I've seen some random Wolfie occasionally wandering around in the daylight.

Sure, but it's rare. It wouldn't be happening 90% of the time unless there is some weird bug involved.

[Random]

Originally posted by Michael:

Originally posted by maurizio.g1982:

I've seen some random Wolfie occasionally wandering around in the daylight.

Sure, but it's rare. It wouldn't be happening 90% of the time unless there is some weird bug involved.

300 hours in.
Yeah, it does.

Remember that spawn point you blocked off?
Then you killed the Mutated/Wolf.
They don't always repop in the same spot, and if they're pathing is blocked to their bed, they rome. And sometimes they just pop out of their holding cell, for no apparent reason(other then glitching out).

So how you've progressed the world, or built in it, and if you're sleeping or working at night, saves/reloads, location... can all change the outcome of seeing roaming Wolf's about.

No matter what though, the bugs cannot 'hear'.
They work on LOS.
So keep that, and you won't be bothered - until you're ready.