Wildlife, Wolf Packs & Poison

Read the warning

• Ridge Boar: Move sideways during the wind-up and use solid terrain to interrupt the charge. Give a recovering boar space before its next attempt.
• Forest Bear: Keep distance from its face and leave the pursuit area. Do not wait for an extra warning when its swipe is ready and you remain in reach.
• Dune Scorpion: Watch for the sand tell, move out of sting range and carry an Antidote before exploring desert encounters.
• Mire Toad: Use the pounce warning to step aside. A wall still blocks the leap; a narrow opening must actually fit its body.
• Cave Skitter: Keep an escape lane when several appear. A short burst is followed by a pause, which gives room to reposition.
• Stoneback: Circle to a side or rear opening. Frontal hits still work, including arrows, but spend more time and durability.
• Pale Stalker: Carry a real light source and use fueled, burning stations as temporary light. Light changes its approach; it is not an unconditional safe zone.
• Murk Eel: Reach dry ground or use the existing boat protection. A shoreline obstacle still prevents an unreachable bite.

Ready contact attacks strike promptly on a valid server simulation tick. Their brief hit animation accompanies damage instead of postponing it. Only special movement such as a boar charge, toad hop or stalker lunge has a short advance warning. Range, cooldowns, physical radii, solid obstructions and ordinary armor/death rules still apply; leaving reach prevents a delayed phantom hit. Existing circle contact, mob pushing and smooth interpolation remain unchanged.

Wolf packs

A single caller can alert up to 5 wolves total within 12 tiles. The 0.65 s howl is a server-controlled warning, not a client effect that creates enemies. Nearby wolves share one valid target, do not recruit recursively and disengage after a bounded escape. Night awareness is larger than daytime awareness. Existing wolf density is not increased. See Wolf for actual timings.

Poison and Antidote

Dune Scorpion poison has 1 HP pulses every 2 s for 6 s: three pulses under ordinary simulation. An active poison neither stacks nor refreshes after another sting. The server keeps the finite timer with the saved character, pauses it while the character is offline and clears it on death or respawn. An abnormal long simulation step cannot deliver an accumulated burst of every missed pulse.

Craft Antidote by hand from a Toad Gland, Mushroom and Berries. Select it and complete the normal 1.2 s use; curing occurs only after the saved transaction succeeds. It has a 3 s cooldown, cures poison without healing, and can be used at full health while poisoned. Trying it without poison does not consume it. Moving or canceling before use completes does not give an instant cure.

Make the new materials useful

• Chitin from Scorpions, Skitters and Stonebacks becomes a durable Chitin Vest at a Workbench.
• Pale Fang from a rare Pale Stalker becomes the fast Fang Dagger; it has finite durability and normal authoritative reach/cooldown rules.
• Murk Eel drops the existing Catfish. Use the retained Campfire/Furnace cooking recipe to make Cooked Catfish; no duplicate fish taxonomy is introduced.

EU #1 continues to use Worldgen V4. These encounters use its eight active environments and share the normal local spawn budget.