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

• 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.

• 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.

• Rain cuts every scent's range and makes trails fade eight times faster.

• Trails. You leave a fading trail behind you, and a predator that crosses it follows it to you.

• 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.

• How a predator hunts:

  1. Unaware. It tests the air now and then and only spots you by eye up close.
  2. 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.
  3. Tracking. The scent is strong and steady, so it comes on steadily.
  4. 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.
  5. 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.
  6. Gave up. It leaves you alone for a few minutes, unless you walk right up to it or hit it.

• 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.

• Food on the ground draws them as well.

• 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.