So... About the bats that spook you...

[JamesBucket]

Im not sure if my game is bugged or Im stupid (most likely the latter case), but the Totally Normal Bats that spawn when chopping tree dont seem to appear at all. 

1. I chopped down entire forest. No bats

2. I spawned in 300 hundred evergreens, made wilson auto-chop with 15 golden axes. Came back from lunch, checked the recording. No bats

3. Rummaged through script files. Found battreefx.lua, looked through the script, nothing about spawn chance I can meddle with. No bats.

am I missing something?

[Mr. Matt]

They only appeared for me when chopping Mushtrees but not from pine trees.

[Szczuku]

I thnik they're random (and also bugged) 

For me they only appeared once when i was chopping birchnuts trees

[Zeklo]

They only start occurring after a set amount of days. How far in were you?

[GetNerfedOn]

They appeared thrice to me as i was chopping down evergreen trees late autumn.
Ms. Wickerbottom reacted rather succinctly:

"Curious. I seem to be hallucinating."

[Tapirus]

I don't see any bat for now (even after chop a lot of forests and spent several Days), but one friend saw that affect twice in Day 10 or 15.

[Maxposting]

Day 200+

No bats

[Rellimarual]

I’ve had them several times in the course of normal chopping. The devs did say it wouldn’t happen in the early days.

[Instant-Noodles]

Totally Normal Bats can spawn when chopping Evergreens, Lumpy Evergreens, Twiggy Trees, Birchnut Trees, Spiky Trees, and Mushtrees, but NOT while under the effects of a bravery potion (i.e. Brew of Phobic Abrogation or Brew of Phobic Abatement) or in Woodie's beaver form.  Note: Bats cannot spawn when chopping Poisonous Birchnut Trees or Totally Normal Trees.

Assuming default world settings, the following formulae are in effect:

For every chopping action your character performs, a counter (which begins at 0) is modified as follows:

New Counter Value = Minimum of [ A + B * 3.5 ] OR [ 100 + 3.5 ]

Where:

A = Maximum of [ Old Counter Value - (Time Difference in Seconds Between Chops)^2 ] OR [ 0 ]
B = Minimum of [ (Days Survived in Seconds / 7200)^2 ] OR [ 1 ]

After performing a chop where the counter becomes greater than 70, totally normal bats can spawn with the following chance:

Chance of Spawn = [(Counter - 70) / 30] ^ 2

Caveat: Bats cannot spawn if the chop causes a tree to fall EXCEPT when that tree is a Fully Grown (i.e. Old State) Evergreen, Lumpy Evergreen, or Twiggy Tree.

When totally normal bats do spawn the Counter value is reset to 0.  Your character will also lose 10 sanity.

This means:

1. The maximum increment to the counter per chop is 3.5.  If you survived for at least 15 days (15 x 480 seconds/day = 7200), then the counter can increment by this maximum.
2. The longer the time between your current chop and last chop, the greater by which the counter can decrease.
3. When the counter reaches 100 and you chop one of the valid trees, you have a 100% totally normal bat spawn chance (with the caveat above).

TL;DR: The more you consecutively chop trees in close proximity and without taking breaks, the higher the chance totally normal bats will spawn.

 

EDIT:

6 hours ago, JamesBucket said:

wow, thank you that explained a lot to me. is there a script file that dictates what you just said? (so I can rig it?)

It's in spooked.lua.  Here is a quick mod to change the chance of spawning.  Just paste it in a modmain.lua (with an accompanying modinfo.lua) to use:

local chance=1 --100% chance

AddComponentPostInit("spooked", function(self, inst)
  self.ShouldSpook=function()
    return math.random()<=chance
  end
end)

4 hours ago, Alarsin said:

Woodie has a lower chance of spawning bats with each chop.

He actually doesn't.  Woodie does, however, recover faster from the spooked animation since he begins said animation 2 frames faster than other characters.

[JamesBucket]

6 hours ago, Zeklo said:

They only start occurring after a set amount of days. How far in were you?

taking your advice, I used console command to skip to day 30. Still no bats. You think I should legit wait? 

21 minutes ago, Instant-Noodles said:

TL;DR: The more you consecutively chop trees in close proximity and without taking breaks, the higher the chance totally normal bats will spawn.
 

wow, thank you that explained a lot to me. is there a script file that dictates what you just said? (so I can rig it?)

[fimmatek]

5 minutes ago, JamesBucket said:

taking your advice, I used console command to skip to day 30. Still no bats. You think I should legit wait? 

Some things that I noted from the formula from Instant-Noodles' post:

First, the counter drops very quickly (quadratic) with time, this means that waiting 10 seconds nulls down the counter.

Second, the increasment grows with the survived time quadratic as well (at least at early game). So for example, if you survived just 7,5 days then the maximum increasement is 1/4 compared to when you survived 15 days, or 1/16 after 3,75 days. So it can be pretty low.

Even with each chop, the term A decreases with 1/4. (If I'm right that there is at least half a second between two chops). Since 3,5/16 is approximately 1/4, and assuming that I'm not wrong so long, it is simply impossible to spawn bats before surviving at least 3,75 days. But even aftere 7,5 days you'll need a very dense forest to increase the counter to 70.

So I would recomment waiting one or two hours legit (cannot be hard with godmode) and then start chopping trees that are planted very closely to each other.

 

[MKFox66]

try in Caves !

[Zeklo]

1 hour ago, JamesBucket said:

taking your advice, I used console command to skip to day 30. Still no bats. You think I should legit wait? 

I'm pretty sure it's based on personal survival time rather than actual clock time. So even if you join a server that's well into year 3, if you've only survived a small amount you won't see them. So unless you know the command to set personal survival time up, then yes wait.

[JamesBucket]

35 minutes ago, Zeklo said:

I'm pretty sure it's based on personal survival time rather than actual clock time. So even if you join a server that's well into year 3, if you've only survived a small amount you won't see them. So unless you know the command to set personal survival time up, then yes wait.

thanks, will try that

1 hour ago, fimmatek said:

So I would recomment waiting one or two hours legit (cannot be hard with godmode) and then start chopping trees that are planted very closely to each other.

 

or.... you could tell me where I could find the script file?

[fimmatek]

6 minutes ago, JamesBucket said:

or.... you could tell me where I could find the script file?

What kind of script file?... I'm not really into the code of DST, all I said was concluded from @Instant-Noodles's post. You should ask them where this part of the code is. Or if you mean a different script, can you specify which one?

[JamesBucket]

31 minutes ago, fimmatek said:

What kind of script file?... I'm not really into the code of DST, all I said was concluded from @Instant-Noodles's post. You should ask them where this part of the code is. Or if you mean a different script, can you specify which one?

yeah, I was refering to lua files you find in pc. still, thank you

[Spaartan]

just use woodie  

[Alarsin]

 

Just now, Spaartan said:

just use woodie  

Woodie has a lower chance of spawning bats with each chop.

[Spaartan]

45 minutes ago, Alarsin said:

 

Woodie has a lower chance of spawning bats with each chop.

darn

[MasterWolf]

I spawned the bats by opening a Halloween skinned ice box and a chest. I am 75 days into my world, I was probably at 70 when they spawned.

[JamesBucket]

59 minutes ago, MasterWolf said:

I spawned the bats by opening a Halloween skinned ice box and a chest. I am 75 days into my world, I was probably at 70 when they spawned.

that's just special feature for the skin

[MasterWolf]

1 minute ago, JamesBucket said:

that's just special feature for the skin

It's not every time though

[JamesBucket]

2 minutes ago, MasterWolf said:

It's not every time though

does it cover the entire screen as well as decreasing your sanity?

Got the bat effect. Did not wait for 15 days, but rigged the tuning.lua so each segment = 3 seconds. Waited until day 15 and went on chopping. Got Bats. Thank you everyone

[MasterWolf]

Just now, JamesBucket said:

does it cover the entire screen as well as decreasing your sanity?

Yes to the first, I don't remember the sanity. But my character acted the same as the bats from chopping trees.

 

[JamesBucket]

2 minutes ago, MasterWolf said:

Yes to the first, I don't remember the sanity. But my character acted the same as the bats from chopping trees.

 

interesting, will check it out. thanks