Them bears

[Bittereinder]

Hello,

a small question on 'Fear'.

I can easily kill a bear, but last 2 times I died of fear, after the bear had died.

How come? When the bear gets on his 2 feet, does it increase the lenght of the bear aka kill the bear as quickly as possible?
Let's say I have 30-50 BB left after I killed it. Should I take more BB increasing food on my hunting trips?

[Alexivo]

I don't know everything about the Fear debuff that a bear invokes when he roars, but here are my observations. Also, while i wont be releasing my humor levels, the general idea of fear can still be gathered from my observations.

When i stay close to a bear, he usually doesn't "cast" the fear debuff, except upon occasion. When I step into a crevice or behind a wall where he can no longer reach me, he roars much much more often (almost guaranteed). I believe there is always a random chance to cast, but he simply chooses to perform the further away you are or when unable to reach you.

Fear itself: I believe its effect to be exponential in effect with regards to how "scared" you are (ie, how much the fear meter is full directly corresponds to how much BB is consumed per tick). I have noticed when only one fear is upon me, i can outlast its duration without having to eat anything. When several fears have been applied and the meter is more full, my BB depletes faster.

Max BB helps a lot. If you have a larger pool of BB and eat food, the speed at which your BB fills up is faster (than if you have a small BB pool). Because of this, you can overcome the depletion rate which multiple applications of fear affects upon you easier when you have a larger BB pool and eat something.

My strategy for killing bears: Fight them around obstacles. If you can limit the movement of which direction the bears can move, as well as which direction he can attack you from (use guard!), you can better gauge which direction to stab in as well as which direction to face when he attacks. If you can stab him more often the fight lasts less time, allowing for less opportunities for him to roar or attack you. I also put regain composure on my hot bar so that I can reduce the amount of imbalance i have, mitigating his various attacks from doing as much damage as they would otherwise. I usually just tank his stun attack rather than trying to avoid it.

[Bittereinder]

Now I easily killed one, only losing 10% of my BB. I stayed close this time and kept hitting him very fast.
Not troubled by fear at all...

Mmm, maybe my fear increased because I ran off the first time.

[Alexivo]

Likely, he roared more often when you kept your distance.

The increased fear meter meant that each tick took off more BB (at the higher "values" of fear). Think of it as the way crops purity multipliers work. Low purity low multiplier, high purity exponential increase in the multiplier. As the "fear meter" decreased, each subsequent tick took less BB damage.

[Hans_Lemurson]

My first bear encounter had me KO'd while I was in the middle of butchering its corpse.

Bear-Fights have time-limit, and that time limit is your Black Bile. Eating food doesn't help you while in combat. The only thing to do is end the fight as quickly as possible: Run up to the bear and stab it repeatedly until it stops moving.