Proposal: Animal Dens

[agentlemanloser]

Proposal: Addition of animal dens/warrens for certain animal types along with certain behavioral changes to encourage PvE and community cooperation.

While snakes will continue to spawn regularly, the map will also generate rattler dens. These dens will remain, generating rattlers in increased amounts, until the den is destroyed. The rattlers will also display increased hostility towards any who approach. This will give players a periodic challenge, in that dens will occasionally interfere with travel, mining, farming, etc. depending on where they spawn. This will also give players a further reason to cooperate, as cooperative strategy might be required against ten or more rattlers.

Bear, too, should be provided with a den from which two to three bear would spawn. This would, like the snake den, give players a reason to cooperate to hunt the bear and destroy the den. This necessity could be increased by a slight behavioral change to the bear: bear should investigate and hang around camps that have processed food/fish in open containers, assuming a den is in the local area.

In fact, all future hostile creatures - wolves included - should follow a similar implementation strategy.

Dens, when destroyed, could yield useful items.

I also propose the addition of another insect type: a grasshopper. Grasshoppers would behave in much the same manner as crickets, but would periodically appear in much greater numbers and have the chance of becoming locusts. A flying locust swarm could then descend on fields or even unwary travelers. A swarm's eating time for a field would be measured in days, perhaps, giving players a chance to log in and fight them off before damage occurred. As it is, more threats to homesteads need to be implemented. Player threats must be accompanied by Enemy threats to balance enjoyment for different play styles.

The enemy threat could be added to by expanding the behavior of beaver, as well. Beaver should gnaw and slowly damage (though perhaps not destroy) wooden fencing, giving players the occasional need to fight them off. More interaction between wildlife and settlers is crucial. The wildlife should be more than another passive resource.

I realize that a wilderness update is in the works, but I strongly doubt that it will involve any change to the wildlife listed above. I strongly encourage the developers to consider these changes, as this game would truly benefit from a more dynamic interaction between player and environment, rather than simply player and player.

I have mentioned in another post the importance of creating an experience that rewards not only static play but mobile play as well; the above changes would also give a bit more for those who like to explore the map to see and do.

[dageir]

Beavers could act like they do in nature by felling trees. Occationally they shuld build dams tha could cause flooding and renderering fields uselessfor a while. In order to remove the flooding the player needs to destroy the dam. This would perhaps demand fluid dynamics which we dont have right now it seems.

[thl111]

This is a good idea. I think in case of snake den, people can gather their eggs, skin and other stuff in there as ingredients for some witchcraft recipes later on. Bear den should have bear cubs, etc... Also, animal dens have different elemental stats and be permanent locations on map. Also, animals spawn in a life cycle kind of way from offspring to adults. This way, it'd give players a sense of time and as animal dens are a resource for hides, other rare items for crafting, there will be more strategic thinking and conflicts over it. Finding dens will need tracking skill and animals will spawn more often and more in quality near their den which, if implemented, will be great for trapping.

[T0ne]

I like this idea. Would add some depth to the current hunting system. You could even make it so that population control became an issue, thats to say if a bear den randomly pops up near your base and you dont clear it out. Well you may find your base surrounded by more bears then you would expect, or they killed other valuable animals in the area or eat items you may normally forage for. By making natures presence much more dangerous, maybe it would force players to work together a bit more and not always be looking to kill each other right off the bat.

I would think they should spawn randomly throughout the world, maybe add in traps, and or some form of animal tracking. The traps could be left out, and after 24hours or so they point you in the direction of the nearest animal den. Or maybe you leave traps out and they have a chance to trap an animal, combat would still be required but maybe the animal would be in a weakened state. Animal tracking seems like it would be pretty simple considering we have a scent tracking system in place already.