PredatorsHunt
Predators hunt by scent on the wind: raw meat, blood and food chests draw them, rain washes your trail out. They smell, track, chase, search and give up. Raise your food cache.Predators Hunt
What it does: wolves, bears, fenrings, trolls, greydwarfs and other predators find you by scent instead of by sight. The scent is carried on Valheim's own wind. Downwind they pick you up from several times as far; upwind you are nearly invisible. What you carry decides how strongly you smell, and rain washes your trail out. Food in your chests smells too, so keep it in a raised cache. A predator that smells you does not know where you are: it follows the scent, closes in, chases you on sight, searches when it loses you, and gives up in the end.
Version 0.1.0. Single player and listen host tested; not yet tried with a second player.
Features
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You smell of what you carry. Raw meat and fish are the strongest signal and cooked food is weaker. A bigger load smells a bit more. Fresh blood adds a spike that fades over a minute or two: your own wounds, or something you just killed.
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Wind. Straight downwind in a good breeze a predator smells you from three times as far. Straight upwind the range drops to about a seventh. Crouching upwind of a wolf is how you get close.
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Rain cuts every scent's range and makes trails fade eight times faster.
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Trails. You leave a fading trail behind you, and a predator that crosses it follows it to you.
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Stored food smells. A chest with raw or cooked food in it draws predators to your base. A chest counts as a protected cache only when both hold:
- its base is at least 3.5 m above the ground;
- nothing walkable lies within 2.5 m of it at that height: no hill or rock, and no floor a creature can walk onto from the ground.
Build a ramp or stairs up to it later and it is no longer protected.
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How a predator hunts:
- Unaware. It tests the air now and then and only spots you by eye up close.
- Interested. It has a scent and walks toward where it thinks the scent is. Each time it smells again it corrects the guess, but it has no idea where you actually are.
- Tracking. The scent is strong and steady, so it comes on steadily.
- Pursuit. It sees you. It sprints in bursts, and it can now take a step, ledge or rock that used to stop it, or leap a short gap.
- Searching. It lost you. It goes to where it last saw you and works outward in a widening pattern for about a minute and a half.
- Gave up. It leaves you alone for a few minutes, unless you walk right up to it or hit it.
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Kills smell too. With The Dead Remain installed, carcasses are scent sources. A hungry wolf goes for a nearby kill before a distant player, and a wolf you interrupt at a kill attacks: it will not run. Not every predator goes to every kill; the chance depends on the biome: 40% in the Meadows, 50% Black Forest, 30% Swamp, 35% Plains, 10% Mistlands, none in the Ashlands, 60% Deep North.
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Food on the ground draws them as well.
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Every number is a config value (Configuration Manager, F1), and so is the list of predators (each with its own nose).
Works with
- The Dead Remain (optional): carcasses become scent sources, and its scavenger AI does the feeding.
- Migrating Creatures (optional): animals travelling in a herd keep to their route while they only smell you; on sight they hunt and leave the herd.
Console (F5)
ph_status, ph_list, ph_scent (your scent, and how far a wolf smells you downwind, across and upwind),
ph_cache (is your food cache protected, and why), ph_wind <bearing> <0-1>, ph_blood <amount>.
Multiplayer
Every player needs the mod: each client works out its own scent. A player without it smells of body scent only.