Man vs Bear

[FriarJohnno]

Hi Everyone,

I'm a long time casual hermit player having played off and on since way back in legacy, I've never been that interested in the combat system choosing to hunt via boat cheese instead.
This world I set myself a goal of getting strong enough to be able to face tank a bear and win.
Before starting I did a bit of searching and couldn't come up with solid info around what stats and gear would be required so I decided to make this post after achieving my goal.

I assume it can be done with much lower stats and gear than this as most of the time I was able to kill them easily without taking any damage or using any defensive moves.

The basic strat I used was:
Spam Quick Barrage until at least 6 IP
2 or 3 Storm of Swords depending if bear lowered it's openings
Then Full Circle until dead

Base Stats

Abilities

Gear

Weapon used was a 110q Hirdsman's Sword

Combat Deck

Not optimal just the cards I happened to have

[caz]

Thank for sharing

[noindyfikator]

nice achievement bro

[Apocoreo]

would you rather run into a hearthling or a bear?

[krikke93]

As a hermit who's been boat cheesing almost everything, you made me realize I should be able to take down a bear without too. I will try soon, thanks for the information on how you did it!

[Zentetsuken]

as a woman this is a very important topic for me

i would pick an encounter with a bear over a hearthling any day

nobody would ever ask me if I led the bear on or give me a pamphlet on bear attack prevention tips

i know a bear's intention, but i will never know a hearthling's intention, no matter how nice they are

[Dawidio123]

as a woman this is a very important topic for me

i would pick an encounter with a bear over a healthling any day

nobody would ever ask me if I led the bear on or give me a pamphlet on bear attack prevention tips

i know a bear's intention, but i will never know a hearthling's intention, no matter how nice they are

same

[DonVelD]

as a woman this is a very important topic for me

i would pick an encounter with a bear over a healthling any day

nobody would ever ask me if I led the bear on or give me a pamphlet on bear attack prevention tips

i know a bear's intention, but i will never know a hearthling's intention, no matter how nice they are

same

same

[vatas]

Haven bears are controlled by a simple script - if you know what you are doing, and have right kind of circumstances (usually just a boat and deep water is sufficient) it is very easy to "cheese" a bear.

Main obstacle is that bear has armor that doesn't lose durability (unlike player armor that has Wear stat), is flat reduction in damage taken (unlike player armor that tends to let at least tiny bit through as chip damage.)

(There's also a stat for Armor Penetration. While I'm not sure if it applies to animals, it probably does not based on reports that you need a metal arrow to complete "put an arrow into bear/moose." or instead of letting X percent damage through, the flat "Damage Threshold" is reduced by X percent which is less useful.)

Animals used to not have armor, and it seems to have been added as relatively blunt way to nerf "cheese" or "zerg" strategies for hunting (that were later nerfed even harder by the survival hardcap, btw.)

(Tangent that uses different kind of cheese as an example)
AFAIK this change falls into similar category as "Cheese Rack quality" - while it can be argued it puts a damper on the "high end sweaty faction pvp bois" it mostly just adds tedium to their game play while being an outright barrier for hermits and more casual players. (Village that grinds quality seriously, should have enough older excess logs to sink into newer Cheese Racks. Hermit/casual may not even have a proper tree planting setup, and buying a single hq Curding Tub + set of sufficient quality trays is relatively accessible, at least compared to hauling how-many-you-need Cheese Racks.

Anyway, there has been a claim that if you have the right set of moves, you only need a naked fresh character (with only UA raised to 10) to kill a bear. It will only require a boat and a long time. This would mostly be a challenge run where you intentionally boost an alt by providing it with Combat Instructions and helping it kill animals to pop them. In the context of a fresh world, it would be much more efficient to just spend the effort on raising stats more conventionally (while still cheesing lesser prey.) (AFAIK)

[Dawidio123]

(There's also a stat for Armor Penetration. While I'm not sure if it applies to animals, it probably does not based on reports that you need a metal arrow to complete "put an arrow into bear/moose." or instead of letting X percent damage through, the flat "Damage Threshold" is reduced by X percent which is less useful.)

It doesn't, which makes steel sword much better option for hunting because of it's higher base damage at a cost of lower armor pen. The armors were added to the animals probably to "gate" them a bit more since you realistically shouldn't be able to hunt a bear straight up day 1 by just punching it to death (which as you mentioned can be circumvented by using better moves) which was thrown out of the window when obsidian knives were introduced.