How to deal with Timberwolves - The Long Dark

Fear timberwolves? Hopefully this video helps.
0:00 Intro
1:15 Stealth
2:37 Fighting timberwolves
5:37 Hit regions and weapon effectiveness
6:17 When they bite
8:10 Fighting combined with light source and safespots
11:26 Which light sources work
15:07 Which throwing items work
16:54 Which weapons work
18:21 Draining timberwolf morale

[@Bashrobe]

Timberwolves will change their behavior and enter "struggle mode" if you stand in the back section of any cave as well. This is the only known way to enter struggles with timberwolves in Blackrock.

[@leroy8888]

I like the idea of a fully grown man in the middle of the canadian snowy wilderness, standing on an elevated platform and hurling 50+ stones at a pack of wolves to scare them off, all while making grunting noises in the process.

[@AmplifyChris]

The last tip is great… survived the timber Wolfes, killed by a bear.

[@marcocortes9968]

7:15 stripping naked during a battle to the death also adds an extra intimidation factor

[@Bearmauler]

With this quality of videos, your channel is gonna boom, I can feel it.

[@rabooey]

I had no idea there was this amount of game mechanics for Timberwolves. Thanks again for all your hard work and time making these videos for us noobs!👍👍👍

[@derkatzenfuerst6077]

Excellent video, thanks for the valuable information! I died to a pack of Timberwolves in Black Rock yesterday. While I knew how to walk through them with a torch, I ended in a dead end, got tired and over encumbered and ran out of defence measures.

[@generallooch8665]

Plz keep up this absolutely wonderful essential work that you do. We all appreciate this and everything you do so much.

[@Pest789]

Fantastic information once again! Thank you!

[@martindenkatte1974]

I dont need these guides but i absolutely love TLD content 😂

[@TocsTheWanderer]

My understanding is that them starting a struggle has nothing to do with the area they're in, but rather if you stand still for too long. There are areas where they're scripted to behave differently, but I've found that they'll start a struggle anywhere if you just stand still.

[@Eight-Bites]

Perfect time for this video to come out, I've been preparing myself to go to Bleak Inlet and Blackrock, lol.

[@emike0326]

Take a bunch of flares and arrows blackrock is excruciating

[@maddyo5045]

Such a huge fan bash! Thanks for making these, I love learning new things even as a veteran player!!!

[@Azzadooo]

Hey Bash, as always a great video. Thank you

[@Kamamutra]

very accurate and interesting video as usual from you. ty for sharing

[@SamuelLavoie]

Great detailed guide with recent infos, very helpful 👍

[@qClyde]

Unique guides! Will you make a video about walkthrough tales?

[@shandorunia]

Excellent video. Bookmarked this and also subbed.

[@Scaramanga81]

great job bash👍

[@Sakja]

Great video. Now I can try those two areas.

[@eduardstreltsov3961]

awesome job, thanks

[@seek5011]

bro that's exactly what I needed❤❤❤❤

[@SuperJack-Jack]

Thank you for the great info. I usually deal with glitcher wolves by turning them off in the custom menu.

[@saeedTHEgreat]

Thanks for the video. lots of useful info. There are two things that I have experienced differently. Timberwolves can still bite you if you are not facing them while carrying a torch (I think they won't bite if you are carrying a marine flare though). Also I think standing next to a camp fire is not a 100% guarantee that they won't bite. I feel safer putting a lit torch down next to the camp fire. I feel like the timberwolves respect the torch on the ground more than they respect the campfire. I might be wrong but that's how it seems to be the case for me.

[@canadianobserver5552]

awesome.. thanks for the vid... kudos

[@vidholf]

Thank you!! ❤

[@rux2128]

Great video, like always! Btw, have you tested how long it takes scared timberwolves to form a pack?

[@Bashrobe]

There seems to be no minimum time, though often they will just run in different direction. If you run into 2+ timberwolves they will engage you again.

[@ArchimedesLP]

Bash, one thing I noticed in my testing is that frequently an entire pack of aurora timbies will respect the held flare(blue or red) and sometimes they just attack through it. This seems to be a permanent effect, although to use it you would need to test the particular pack you're dealing with before relying on it. I can't think of another instance where there is such an important binary difference in wolf behavior with no discernible cause/trigger. If we could crack this one it would open up another powerful way of dealing with aurora twolves(if only sometimes.) Any thoughts on this? Great video! Looking forward to more :)

[@Bashrobe]

Hmm, can you give some more details, do you mean something different from what I show at 13:55 ? Any particular place you noticed this, interloper difficulty? custom?

[@ArchimedesLP]

@@Bashrobe I may have to go back and do more testing. This was in Interloper(or possibly custom Interloper with some minor settings changed to control spawn points or remove sprains.) Testing was done in the cannery, sometimes the aurora timberwolves would wait patiently while I was walking around with a blue/red flare(type didn't seem to matter.) Other times they would just attack through the held flare. This was not determined by being "weak" as I tested while sprained/encumbered etc. I couldn't find any variable that would reliably determine whether I would be attacked or whether they would be held at bay by the flare, but it seemed that when they respected the flare, it didn't matter if it was a red or blue type. I do need to do more testing to make sure I didn't run afoul of the rule onscreen at 14:05 (possibly sometimes when lighting a flare I already had a wolf charging at me?) but that still wouldn't explain why they were held off by the red flare just as effectively as the blue.

[@Bashrobe]

@@ArchimedesLP Cannery timberwolves are notoriously buggy. It seems the area is a bit too small for the pack, what I'd look for is if any of them is doing the triple bark which signals the wolf is about to charge, perhaps in a loop. Often the cannery timberwolves will just bark and still stand in place as their pathing is blocked by some of the clutter lying around the cannery. It's possible the wolf that was trying to attack was just stuck behind some pipes when you were holding the red flare. The island timberwolves brought to the 2 trailer area (so they change to struggle attack) could be better for testing as that area is fairly open.

[@ArchimedesLP]

@@Bashrobe Ok, thank you for all the info! Next time I get some free time I'll do some more testing and try to incorporate all of this.

[@psychotropnilachtan8869]

Haha you are so right about players pretending those 2 regions dont exist. I just encountered pack them for first time and immediately decided to never come back to that region again :D

[@nocturnalverse5739]

Did you mention somewhere that leaving their territory or entering another packs territory will cause them to stop? This is the type of content mid experience players like me need, and obviously is great for beginners.

[@Bashrobe]

Yeah I did not mention it, timberwolves are very persistent though, leaving their territory is often not enough until you get very far away. They will happily follow you across half the map until something scares them (bear, auroras, they can't reach you etc.). Running into another pack is also a bit complicated especially if they're smaller pack and/or you kill a few of them, they might just merge into a larger pack sometimes.

[@phillipfuentes4276]

Are you going to make one about bears and moose?

[@Bashrobe]

Maybe at some point. For now I plan to do a poison wolf video and one about struggle mechanics, maybe a bear/moose dance guide.

[@yo64yo]

22:00 aiming at the feet and getting rebounds multiplies the damage? or is it just the length of time the torch touches them.

[@Bashrobe]

It seems an item deals morale damage each time it falls on the ground, so if something you throws "bounces" a bit it will deal morale damage each time it touches the ground. Torches in particular seem quite bouncy, but it can happen with flares too. It's good to aim towards feet as that often happens to bounce like that.

[@caleschley]

Seems like death was the only real option all along.

[@kimsgrim8451]

Shoot flares and keep walking.

[@SenkoVT]

I find it very hard to shoot those packs in close range because they keep sprinting around ... and since im a Sprinter kind of guy, im usually exhausted which means the torch isnt as effective. The video was good but it didnt really help me with timerwolfs From now on i'll try to slowly walk with a torch or sleep in a car for 3 hours 😂

[@DaBirdiee]

YASS TWINNIE SLAYYY!!! I’ve been waiting for this video! 🍓\🗿/ 🧈

[@x3CatsInCoat]

🍓\🗿/ 🧈

[@Bashrobe]

🍓\🗿/ 🧈

[@tamarackgaming]

Kill all but one of a pack. It will repopulate eventually but until that happens, the single will have a morale break immediately on detecting you. If you kill them all then the entire pack will respawn fairly quickly. Just as an aside, if you can, put a building or a rock or a cliff at your back. Limit the ways they can attack you.

[@Bashrobe]

Yup, a lone timberwolf will never attack on its own. But respawns are more complicated than this, it has nothing to do with the killing the whole pack but rather your location. Many packs have multiple possible spawns, e.g. the BI delta area - you can kill a pack but they will "respawn" because the next day another pack is randomly chosen as active. Meanwhile some locations (BI cannery, Blackrock pack right in front of the prison) have no alternate spawns and remain consistently dead just like bears/moose. They will spawn back one by one so the more you kill the better. And the respawn timer is quite long - 20 days on day 50+ interloper. Lower difficulties have them respawn faster, so strangely, timberwolves will cause more trouble to voyageur/stalker players due to faster wildlife respawns. I didn't really want to get into spawning mechanics in the video as they're likely changing with wildlife refresh we'll get in 2024.

[@Brakathor]

Setting them on fire with a flare gun puts me in my happy place. I'm gonna attempt the Blackrock region ONE more time before I call it quits. I'm new to the game, and they're kinda ruining the "walk around and explore" aesthetic that I've appreciated so far. Blackrock is a REALLY ill conceived map too. The whole thing is path funneling, which is TERRIBLE for a game like this. Ash Canyoon at least pulled that off, in a way that didn't feel super contrived. Sad, cause I was envisioning something genuinely cool for this region.

[@Bashrobe]

I hear you, Timberwolves tend to put off new players. They take a while to get used to, it might help to try a throwaway run only in Blackrock or Bleak Inlet just to get used to their mechanics. The thing is, once you're used to them, they feel less dangerous than black wolves. As someone with ~3k hours in the game, I consider black wolves the deadliest wildlife in the game, despite being more common, as they can give you a surprise struggle anytime, and on interloper that can mean death even from full condition.

[@Brakathor]

@@Bashrobe - Funny enough, now that I learned how to deal with grey wolves, it's bears that have ended my last 3 runs. The last one was the worst. Bear came in practically teleported on top of me while I was hunting rabbits, coming in from an area leading to a cliff that I just explored on Timberwolf mountain. There was literally nothing I could have done.

[@Bashrobe]

@@Brakathor Checkout the beginning of the struggle video. Bears deal a ton of damage, but they shouldn't outright kill you if you're not below 10% condition. Always good to carry a stim or some healing food.

[@Brakathor]

@@Bashrobe - Yeah, no if I had a stim it would have saved my run. I always start in Ash Canyon, and make my way to pleasant valley. I died on Timberwolf Mountain. somehow I BARELY managed to make it back to the cabin, but I was only on 1 or 2 health, so I probably didn't have time to start a fire. I just clicked on the bed as quickly as possible, hoping it would save me, but my warmth bonus was so pathetic, on account of having no coats, that it couldn't take me above freezing, so I died in the bed.