How do I find animals?

[dragon2n]

I am new to the game and am liking it so far. The only problem that I am having is the fact that I cant find any animals. Am i doing something wrong?

[TeckXKnight]

Most animals will kill you if they find you. You're not doing anything wrong, just explore further out than you currently are and away from civilized areas. I've noticed most new players consider a single minimap a large area and severely limit the scope to which they explore.

[Jeebus]

Trust us, they're out there. When you walk halfway across the world with 9 HP, you see a LOT of critters, and they all want to eat you.

Basically, just wander far enough from civilization and they'll rear their evil little heads. Hell, get a large enough clearing of a particular terrain, and the animals will sometimes spawn next to you. Chickens do this a lot if you're willing to grass over your village and surrounding area, and aurouchs/mouflon do it sometimes as well. Hell, if you got forest tiles and not a lot of houses around, you can sometimes have boars and/or bears spawn IN YOUR WALLS. It has happened to me before. Point is, you will get eaten.

If all else fails, rabbits are plentiful for the patient.

To review:

1. Explore, especially away from civilization, where terrorist critter cells like to set themselves up.
2. Plant lots of grass in and around the village, making sure to clear cut a "meadow" in one direction so the grassland doesn't revert to forest tiles. Sure, it'll nerf the number of boars, bears, and deer showing up, but more chickens, aurouchs, and mouflon will spawn, and they like to spawn closer to civilization, from my experience. I also see more rabbits in grassland. Livestock is also prolifilc in moors (yellow grass tiles) and heath (pinkish grass tile), so don't be afraid to plow some of your grassland to farm, simply if you have some sort of terraforming fetish.
3. However, do keep forest tiles close to your community in at least one direction, so you can easily reach some happy hunting grounds.
4. Be patient. Sometimes you can walk forever and a day and only see ants, and the next day three boars and a bears are descending on your position fast while you're carrying a boat.
5. Don't plant fir trees... Actually, that has nothing to do with the number of animals you will encounter. I just hate those friggin' trees. They're EVERYWHERE!!

[ImAwesome]

how large does a grassland have to be to have animals spawn? I did a bit of terraforming because of my location but no animals have ever spawned in the area, its about 15X25 tiles

[TeckXKnight]

They'll spawn on it even if it's a 1x1 tile. It's all just chance. The more you have the higher your odds.

[jordancoles]

By animals what do you mean?

There are friendly animals like rabbits, frogs, chickens, foxes, etc. And then there are unfriendly, bears, boars, trolls, people

There are also domesticated animals which you can get from taming wild herd animals such as cows, sheep, pigs etc.
In most cases you'd want to avoid any animals until you are around 40-50 UA where you can kill foxes quite easily.
If you really want to see an animals just wander around on a boat or something and you'll find some eventually.