Koalefant Questions! (Op?/Mechanic?/Advice?)

[Zackman777]

Hey everyone, I just had a few questions about the Koalefant and was hoping someone can answer them. I've been playing Don't Starve Together with some friends for a couple weeks now and have made it almost through winter. I thought the game was almost impossible food-wise after day ten until we found out about berry bush farms and improved farms. Although we had farms going, it still seemed impossible after day 15. Fortunately, I recently realized what an amazing food source Koalefants were. When you killed them you get 8 pieces of meat and an edible Koalefant trunk. After sometime of getting pretty used to the mechanic of find and hunting Koalefants, I've developed a couple of questions. 

 

1.) Is it normal for Koalefants to spawn so often?

I've found myself to become so dependent on them, but it helps me keep our group alive easily till winter. After getting an excess of 5 meaty stew in food surplus each of the last 3 attempts, I've noticed how fast I find Koalefants and how easy it's become to hunt them. Are they supposed to spawn this fast, or is it because there are several people in the game? Maybe the game is spawning them so often to compensate for all the people in the game? Was it like this in the single player version of Don't Starve?

 

2.) Do Koalefants spawn during winter?

I've never found Koalefant tracks during the winter. 

 

3.) Does anyone fully understand the current mechanic of Koalefants? 

I can't tell if the tracks spawn randomly day, or if one spawns a day. (which I don't think is true because I've found multiple ones on the same day plenty of times, unless it was bug) I also can't really decipher if the tracks could be places randomly on the other side of the world, causing me to have to run over there to get it, or if the game purposely picks random times to spawn tracks right outside of the players' screens. 

 

4.) Is this feature of the game too OP and breaking the game?

Does anyone else feel it's op? I mean, I've gone from dying so often from hunger and not being able to play the game, to having a surplus of food and am actually able to explore a lot of the features of the game and enjoy myself. Before using Koalefants as a solid food source, I never had time to build anything without being at bay with my hunger bar. Is it bad that I'm becoming too dependent on it?

 

5.) Lastly, what are you tips, findings, or ideas you have to share about Koalefants?

The advice I'll put here is that even if you're afraid to hunt one without a wooden suit, at least follow the tracks and spawn it in for later. As far as I know, they don't despawn. When you find them, just lay a trap there so it leaves a mark on your map for later. Since it dishes out a decent amount of damage per hit, I'll let you in on how I usually fight it with no armor and one axe: When you find it, it will always run away from you when it gets close. You'll have to develop the skill of making it run toward the edge of the map and get stuck so you can land the first hit. This will cause the Koalefant to go hostile on you, and you should run away as soon as you get the first hit. Just keep running until it tries to attack you. After it misses, run toward it and hit it about 3-4 times, then run away again. If you keep repeating this correctly, you should never get hurt from Koalefants and get a lot of food from it.   

 

Anyways, I'm looking forward to the responses. Also, I'm not expecting any one person to answer all of this. Just contribute what you know! Maybe others will find this super useful! 

 

Have fun on Don't Starve Together and good hunting!

[GLERMZ]

Hello there.

1) Koalefants spawn as long as you keep exploring. If you are constantly moving on the world (your friends too) you will most likely hav eloads of koalas and meat. Jus spawn them and kill right away and they will keep spawning fast (Don't forget also this increases the chance of Vargs/Ewcus)

2) During winter is the same, is just more easy for you to miss them. But they are as frequent as autum (in my opinion).

3) I don't know exacly but i can tell you sometimes i found and killed 4 koalas in a single day, with other people finding their ones too. Like i said above, as long as you keep exploring and running around the world they will spawn, you need to be alert and don't miss them.

 

4) It's worked as intended. Koalafants are defently a really good way to keep the meat coming specially in the beggining when you dont want to extinct the beefalos before they reproduce in the spring. But like i also said above also increases the chance of Vargs and Ewcus that you need to deal with.

5) Yes if you find a koalafant tract and don't "tap it" it will remain their unless you leave the Load Zone (I think). The moment you tap it it will despawn if you dont keep tracking it. Stucking the Koala in the edge to hit it is mandantory if you have no friends around to push it to you or nothing to throw to her. They are smarter in DST then in DS so it's a little bit harder. You can hit a koala 5 times before dodging the attack, 6 if you have no lag at all. 3-4 it's the safest method.

Keep up the good work, hope the answer helped you in anyway.

ps. Make sure you and your friends do some bee boxs for the winter. Will make it a lot easier for you guys to survive with incoming meat of the koalas.

Best Regards,

Glhrmzz

[ImDaMisterL]

1) As far as I know, in DST, yes.

I never found their tracjs as easily in DS then in DST.

2) No and yes, normal Koalefants don't, Winter Koalefants do, they drop a different nose when killed, used to craft a warmer vest; the puffy vest.

3) Yes, you hunt them, if you find them you kill them, get meat and an item that you can either eat or make a warm vest with.

4) No, because a Koalefant is not the only thing you can fimd when hunting IF you're not playing base DS with no DLC's, in DST you might also find an Ewecus, that was made to only be able to be killed by two or more players and his loot is currsntly not worth it, or you can find a Warg, a horrible big wolf monster that spawns hounds to help him fight you... *shivers* Brrrrrr...

5) I don't hunt them TOO often, afraid that I'll find a Warg or an Ewecus, I only hunt them in case I need food and/or warm clothes, so try not hunting them everytime you see a track, might lead to an unpleasant surprise.

[ThePurplePanda]

ImDaMisterL pretty much sums up all I wanted to say. But I have somthing to add about tips for killing the beast.

 

I see a lot of people using the "block it on the map and start fighting it". I never really did that because with its charge, I'm too scared to take good damage. It's silly cause I can easily fight alone Moose or Bearger but I have another way to kill it pretty easily.

 

When I find the koalefant, I push it into beehive. When it is close enough, I poke the behive (with a axe or something, to not do massive damage), and the killer bees start to chase me. I just run a little and make sure that, when the killer bees stop chasing me, they will find the koaelephant on their way home. Technically, you just have to make sur that the koaelephant is between the beehive and the killer bees. After that, they just start to poke the koalephant. You can then watch the fight, and even doing some damage (be careful to not take back the aggro of the koalefant).

 

Another technic during Spring is to drive him into Beefalos (they will be hostile because it's the mating season). Then again, just watch the fight and make sure to have a Beefalo hat or a safe way to pick up the loot.

 

Sorry for my bad english, if you don't understand something, please let me know.

[Tulingu]

Your questions can be found at the DS wiki: http://dont-starve-game.wikia.com/wiki/Koalefant

Winter Koalefants, cloth crafting recipes, drop rate, hunting mechanics, spawn rate etc. Let's not forget the Varg you may find instead of Koalefants

[PandaWaffles]

Killing tips:

 

If you're in a rock biome, lead it to a tallbird. The tallbird will win the fight with a bit of health left, but you can help the koalefant win the fight, then finish off the adorable mass of meat. It'll result in like 10 meat + a tallbird egg if one's been laid.

 

If you're near a swamp, lead it to a tentacle. It really won't be hard at all. The only problem with this method is getting the meat since it'll be surrounding the tentacle. As long as you're patient and not too greedy, you probably won't get hit though.

[Mobbstar]

Despite not asked, I want to point out that koalefants poop. So if you don't kill them as soon as you find them, you don't need beefalo or pigmen for farmland.

 

They might spawn more often based on how many players are around, like butterflies do. I am not sure.

 

They're not OP since early on you could spend your day with better things than hunting (unless you're desperate for meat like Wigfrigid). Later in the game the chance for finding hostile creatures greatly increases, and let me tell you, a Warg is deadly.

[GLERMZ]

Despite not asked, I want to point out that koalefants poop. So if you don't kill them as soon as you find them, you don't need beefalo or pigmen for farmland.

 

Even if i agree to that i always found out more easy to give 3 monters meat to a pig and then give him a stack of lowers for instant stack of poop

[TemporaryMan]

Another option for hunting them is to set up a fire nearby, stay far enough away that it relaxes, then attack when it sleeps at night.

[Zackman777]

Wow, these are all great info. I really appreciate it!  

 

So a few things I've noticed and wanted to ask more about:

So in DS, how rare are Koalefant tracks?

 

Because of the other two creatures you could spawn in, are Koalefants really even worth it? 

[LeadenStik]

Koalefants are quite a good trade off, 8 meat and one trunk in exchange for some of your time. The percentage for Varg of Ewecus starts at 5%, and raises to 33% or something at day 100 or thereabouts (the percentage is shared between them in DST). Probably safer to go with friends if in late-game, Ewecus can easily kill even a well-prepared loner without blowdarts. They might be even more dangerous than Vargs due to their projectile. Pig villages can deal with Vargs, though.

[Zackman777]

Bump

[ImDaMisterL]

Why are you bumping this? You got answers for what you asked and for what you didn't ask!

[Zackman777]

Why are you bumping this? You got answers for what you asked and for what you didn't ask!

Yeah, I guess you're right. I did it just for my question on how rare it was in DS compared to DST, my bad!

[Zackman777]

Alright guys, I think I finally figured out how the mechanics for these adorable, delicious creatures work! I've bought DS with the RoG expansion and did quite a lot of testing on all 3 versions of the game. I used Ctrl+L to see the log so I could see when the game decided to toss the player a suspicious track. If you want to go ahead and try it yourself to do your own testing, it will say "Suspicious dirt placed" when it places suspicious dirt into the world.

 

Here are my findings: 

Don't Starve (without RoG):

Unfortunately, it seems like you rarely ever get suspicious tracks in the original Don't Starve. Once I finally found one and spawned a Koalefant, I never found another track until after I killed said Koalefant. This means that you can't have more than one Koalefant alive at the same time. Interestingly enough, I found a track and decided to make a campfire near it and waited several days to find out that the track NEVER disappeared. I think the way they designed the code before RoG for dirt piles makes it so that once a dirt pile has been placed, it will never go away from that one location until the player has decided to follow the track. This is probably why is sometimes seems so rare or why some people think the game is broken and say they can't ever find tracks. As you'll find out later in the next section, it appears that when the game spawns a suspicious track, it's placed anywhere around the player right outside their screen. 

 

Don't Starve (with RoG):

So I noticed they changed the code up a bit after enabling RoG. Some of the differences I found were that the dirt piles will disappear if the player doesn't find it for awhile and will be placed down somewhere else later for the player to find. (I think this is what they meant when they said that they fixed that Koalefants weren't spawning, but I could be wrong). When dirt piles spawn and I didn't follow the tracks, they seemed to spawn every day or two. After deciding to see if you I could find the dirt pile several times after the log stated that it was placed,I found that it was placed right outside the edge of my screen 100% of the time. You can have more than one Koalefant roaming around per world.

 

Don't Starve Together:

I've played with friends a lot on DST and can say that the code they used for the dirt piles is pretty much the same as how they had it in RoG, but it's a little different. I think that there's a chance that the game will spawn a dirt pile for each player separately. I've found dirt piles as someone else I was playing with also found one, meaning that two or more dirt piles can spawn around the same time. We also figured out that you can spawn in multiple Koalefants, but I'm not entirely sure if that depends on how many players are in the game. At max, we've had 3-5 Koalefants roaming around alive in the same world. These tweaks would make complete sense though because with the possibility of having more players that means they may need more opportunities for hunting big game for their meat or trunks to compensate for how many mouths there are to feed.

 

If anybody tries to figure out the mechanic too or accidentally figures something out and finds something wrong with what I put or have things to add, don't hesitate post it!

[NotStarvnMarvn]

ImDaMisterL pretty much sums up all I wanted to say. But I have somthing to add about tips for killing the beast.

 

I see a lot of people using the "block it on the map and start fighting it". I never really did that because with its charge, I'm too scared to take good damage. It's silly cause I can easily fight alone Moose or Bearger but I have another way to kill it pretty easily.

 

When I find the koalefant, I push it into beehive. When it is close enough, I poke the behive (with a axe or something, to not do massive damage), and the killer bees start to chase me. I just run a little and make sure that, when the killer bees stop chasing me, they will find the koaelephant on their way home. Technically, you just have to make sur that the koaelephant is between the beehive and the killer bees. After that, they just start to poke the beefalo. You can then watch the fight, and even doing some damage (be careful to not take back the aggro of the koalefant).

 

Another technic during Spring is to drive him into Beefalos (they will be hostile because it's the mating season). Then again, just watch the fight and make sure to have a Beefalo hat or a safe way to pick up the loot.

 

Sorry for my bad english, if you don't understand something, please let me know.

Lead the Kolaefant to the beehive, get the bees to poke the beefalo. gg

[TemporaryMan]

Except I have several live Koalefants roaming my DS:RoG world and a quick search will show I'm not the only one, so obviously they aren't limited to one at a time.

[ThePurplePanda]

Lead the Kolaefant to the beehive, get the bees to poke the beefalo. gg

 

Well I was talking about the Koalefant, obviously. I think you get it.

[NotStarvnMarvn]

Well I was talking about the Koalefant, obviously. I think you get it.

I know it just looked funny.

[Zackman777]

Except I have several live Koalefants roaming my DS:RoG world and a quick search will show I'm not the only one, so obviously they aren't limited to one at a time.

Okay, I'll edit my post a bit then. 

[Zackman777]

If anybody could confirm if how I think the dirt piles work on all three versions of the game, it would be much appreciated. I think really experienced players could possibly help out with this with ease. I guess I'm just trying to get some detailed information on the mechanic and was looking for some people who might want to help out.  

[TemporaryMan]

In DS, hunter.lua OnDirtInvestigated() function (particularly line 231):

elseif self.trackspawned == self.numtrackstospawn then    if self:SpawnHuntedBeast() then        trace("...you found the last track, now find the beast!")        GetPlayer():PushEvent("huntbeastnearby")        self:StopHunt()    else        print("SpawnHuntedBeast FAILED! RESETTING")        self:ResetHunt()    endend

BeginHunt starts periodic calls to OnUpdate which removes old dirt pile trails and starts new ones.  StopHunt cancels these periodic calls to OnUpdate.  OnBeastDeath starts a cooldown until BeginHunt is called again.  So there's no new trails of dirt until the Koalefant dies.

 

In DS:RoG, it's nearly identical.  The only additions are the chance of a Varg, trails dissapearing if ignored for .75 clock cycles (45 seconds) in Spring, longer reset time in spring (3 days vs. 5 clock cycles), and a new LongUpdate method.

 

Looking at the source code, I don't see how it's possible to accumulate multiple Koalefants.  It shouldn't be, and yet it is.

[Zackman777]

 

In DS, hunter.lua OnDirtInvestigated() function (particularly line 231):

elseif self.trackspawned == self.numtrackstospawn then    if self:SpawnHuntedBeast() then        trace("...you found the last track, now find the beast!")        GetPlayer():PushEvent("huntbeastnearby")        self:StopHunt()    else        print("SpawnHuntedBeast FAILED! RESETTING")        self:ResetHunt()    endend

BeginHunt starts periodic calls to OnUpdate which removes old dirt pile trails and starts new ones.  StopHunt cancels these periodic calls to OnUpdate.  OnBeastDeath starts a cooldown until BeginHunt is called again.  So there's no new trails of dirt until the Koalefant dies.

 

In DS:RoG, it's nearly identical.  The only additions are the chance of a Varg, trails dissapearing if ignored for .75 clock cycles (45 seconds) in Spring, longer reset time in spring (3 days vs. 5 clock cycles), and a new LongUpdate method.

 

Looking at the source code, I don't see how it's possible to accumulate multiple Koalefants.  It shouldn't be, and yet it is.

 

Wow, this is really helpful, thank you. 

 

So when you said "cycles in Spring, longer reset time in spring", did you mean two different seasons and not just Spring?

 

Also, I guess they intended to have the dirt pile moved around if not found by the player in DS without RoG, but had a code that stopped the periodic call?

[TemporaryMan]

No, those are both spring.  

 

Dirt piles disappear if ignored for more than 22.5 seconds (.75 time segments, TUNING.SEG_TIME = 30).  In hunter.lua, lines 172-177 (OnUpdate function),

if self.lastdirttime and GetSeasonManager() and GetSeasonManager():IsSpring() then    if (GetTime() - self.lastdirttime) > (.75*TUNING.SEG_TIME) and self.huntedbeast == nil and self.trackspawned > 1 then        self:ResetHunt(true) --Wash the tracks away but only if the player has seen at least 1 track        return    endend 

The wiki says koalefant tracks can be washed away after rain, but rain is only a narrative justification.  The game's actually only checking if the season is spring; tracks still disappear on sunny spring days, while summer and fall rain will have no effect.  Makes sense on default settings, when spring is the only time frequent heavy rain turns the ground to mud.  It doesn't make as much sense if rain is turned to lots or none.

 

The delay after a failed hunt is different in spring than other seasons.  This does not apply to successful hunts or dirt piles that were ignored entirely, only failed hunts where the tracks washed away, a dirt pile or track didn't have a suitable place to appear, or the hunted animal itself failed to spawn for some reason.  In hunter.lua, lines 215-219 (ResetHunt function),

if GetSeasonManager() and GetSeasonManager():IsSpring() then    self:StartCooldown(TUNING.HUNT_SPRING_RESET_TIME)else    self:StartCooldown(TUNING.HUNT_RESET_TIME)end

And in tuning.lua,

HUNT_RESET_TIME = 5,HUNT_SPRING_RESET_TIME = total_day_time * 3, 

Thus, in most seasons failed hunts reset after 5 seconds but in spring it takes 3 in-game days. (24 minutes!)  Successful hunts have a delay between 0.9 and 1.5 days regardless of season.  So if you start following animal tracks in spring, do not abandon them for more than 22 seconds or you'll need to wait a long time before starting over.  So long, in fact, you'll potentially miss 2 or 3 animals.

 

Those line numbers are for DS:RoG, but I checked the code for DST and the behaviour is the same.

 

[ThePurplePanda]

@TemporaryMan thanks, that's very interesting !