What are your thoughts on Feral Sense?

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plzkthxbye

Scavenger
Do you like playing with Feral Sense on? If you play with it on, do you play with it on during the day only, night only, or always?

Do you always play without it?
 
Mostly without, but doesn't really matter - it's basically just a "be cautious in a city on D1" -setting. Too few zeds in the world to make an impact when you know you have it on, it mainly makes the first week a little more volatile.
 
I vaguely remember setting all zombies to have feral sense, nightmare speed, and insane difficulty, and it as basically impossible to do anything on day 1 in the city. You'd just get 10 zombies constantly and no method to shake free from them.
 
I did a run where I turned Feral Sense on day-only on day 7, and all-day on day 14 (with two-hour days) to replace disabling blood moons. Originally, I had it on from day 1, but since I was also playing with mods to increase regular zombie spawns 10-15x (variance depending on biome/day-night), I had to turn it off for the first week.

It might be fine with normal spawn rates, but since I prefer mass-zombies, there's no chance I'm ever playing with Feral Sense on again unless I do one of the lowest difficulties. It was like having ~50m smell at all times, turned every outing into a grueling slog of everything taking longer to do, and was just thoroughly not enjoyable.

You might think, gosh, can't be that bad, and I would remind you to think of how miserable it would be to have that with 2x special zombies (Plague Spitter/Frostclaw at the time) always knowing where you are at all times of day and night if you so much as twitch a finger to make a sliver of noise.
 
Ostentatio said:
I did a run where I turned Feral Sense on day-only on day 7, and all-day on day 14 (with two-hour days) to replace disabling blood moons. Originally, I had it on from day 1, but since I was also playing with mods to increase regular zombie spawns 10-15x (variance depending on biome/day-night), I had to turn it off for the first week.

It might be fine with normal spawn rates, but since I prefer mass-zombies, there's no chance I'm ever playing with Feral Sense on again unless I do one of the lowest difficulties. It was like having ~50m smell at all times, turned every outing into a grueling slog of everything taking longer to do, and was just thoroughly not enjoyable.

You might think, gosh, can't be that bad, and I would remind you to think of how miserable it would be to have that with 2x special zombies (Plague Spitter/Frostclaw at the time) always knowing where you are at all times of day and night if you so much as twitch a finger to make a sliver of noise.
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You're literally admitting to modding the game and then complaining about it. Your input is worthless because it only has value if they wanted to normalize for mods which would be stupid. Everything you said would be a much more valuable to the modders.
 
Before they added the smell, I used to have it turned on all the time. Now I prefer the smell option, which is basically the same thing but without being permanent. It’s an interesting option if you like constant action, although as others have said, with the number of zombies in vanilla, it’s almost irrelevant—except maybe in the Wasteland or the Desert. With spawn mods, it’s crazy.
 
Always on for everything I can't imagine playing without it. Unless I were playing stealth, then I’d probably turn it off, because it feels unplayable with it on.
 
Have I? Yes, mostly not paying attention with the settings.
Will I constantly? No

I went the opposite direction. Why; the underlying thought is why
does a player, enable feral sense, insane, nightmare? Because for
them, something is missing in vanilla gameplay for them, or there
is a hellicopter parent ideal of giving excess power ups to quickly.

My vanilla game play, Nomad just rearranging some variables, I get
more entities constantly, just like on a horde night but everywhere. My Fps has
been stable in and out of cities before and up to 2.6. I have the Inconvenient entities
incorporated with the spawn meaning spiders, dogs, insta attack vultures, specials
ranged entities, etc. But, I can use tactics and strategies and get to use all of
the game. Not just avoidance or battle.

It naturally slows progression, there is a lot of fighting and environmental
interactivity and sounds especially at night. There's fighting, dying, eating,
flapping and constant unwanted visitors roaming around the premesis. I can choose
either to go toe to toe, play stealth, throw rocks and cause mob fights, or just watch
natural mob fights in passing, all in a single gameplay. Patrol areas and length of
chase time have been increased.

So in a nutshell that is why I don't use feral sense. I just modded mine, personally
to make more sense to me. Feral sense only addresses one missing aspect, I tried to
cover as many missing aspects as possible, to give a complete resolution.
 
Treb said:
You're literally admitting to modding the game and then complaining about it. Your input is worthless because it only has value if they wanted to normalize for mods which would be stupid. Everything you said would be a much more valuable to the modders.
Click to expand...
... the question asked said nothing about mods or vanilla, so I "admitted" my terrible sin of using mods together with the mechanism which was being asked about. Any 'complaint' I had about that combination is fully one of self-imposed suffering, using the settings and mods which I "admitted" to using, because I was trying a different zombie-threat scenario in that particular run.

My setup with Feral Sense was a more of an extreme application of its intended effect, but by late-game, the numbers of zombies weren't the nuisance; the issue was, as some others have alluded to, that feral sense is inescapable. Stealth is completely meaningless, almost every new room is a front-and-back fight, et cetera.
 
You rarely get a break with feral sense. It's rare that if you can see a zombie, they haven't already spotted you (in an outdoor setting). Combining FS with Insane + Nightmare run speed makes getting to the trader alive a huge accomplishment.

I'm definitely not a fan. I like to be able to creep around town during the day, or night, and be able to avoid detection (mostly) if I'm sneaky enough. It's nearly impossible with FS on.

I have well over 4000 hours played. I've tried multiple playthroughs with it on, but I've never managed to enjoy it.
 
I play with it set to always on, it makes the first 5 days oppressive as hell. Just heading out to do the first buried supplies quest is so much harder because of it.

When its turned off i can get 3-4 quests done by the end of day one, i've even managed to get a workbench and forge crafted day one.
When its turned on though? Sometimes i don't even manage to hand in the first fetch or clear quest.

The first night with brightness set to 0% is always nerve wracking, you cant just sit around doing nothing, night time is for chopping trees while keeping both ears open for the warp speed feral's that zoom at you from maximum render distance.


BestSettingsEverTM.png
 
plzkthxbye said:
Do you like playing with Feral Sense on? If you play with it on, do you play with it on during the day only, night only, or always?

Do you always play without it?
Click to expand...
I have it on at night but sense it up zombie spawns i had to turn it off cuz early game it was near impossible my zombies spawns are 3x and citys are 5x
 
I would prefer the feral sense system if it were a little more "realistic" (and therefore impactful on certain types of gameplay) versus what we have now where looting a bird's nest attracts all zombies in a three block radius, being hyperbolic. For example, using a firearm would produce that effect instead, or explosives/explosions.
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In general, there's too few zombies in vanilla for it to be impactful. It just turns the game into "don't explore a harder biome where there's predatory animals day 1". Otherwise, it just leads to more zombies interrupting your mining or building sessions, which is more annoying than anything.
 
plzkthxbye said:
Do you like playing with Feral Sense on? If you play with it on, do you play with it on during the day only, night only, or always? Do you always play without it?
Click to expand...

I turned it one for one game after the feature appeared and haven't turned it on since. I didn't like the affect it had on stealth.

I hold out hope that we might get options that turn it on under some unique/interesting circumstance. I could think of some:

* Maybe it is on during the day before a horde night?
* Maybe it scales based on how much fog there is, or isn't?
* Maybe it scales back based on stealth in some way?
 
i always leave it on but i also have zombies always set to walk so it evens out. i will say though it is absolute donkey bits trying to go through the wasteland sometimes. i usually find out a bear is nearby about .005 seconds before it hits me :/
 
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