vampire bat defense. We need an alternative method.

[daduhweewah]

I havent found any way to combat the vampire bats aside from running them into pigs or other mobs. Which still takes time since they only aggro off you one at a time it seems (it seems random I either dump none or half of them, sometimes it takes a while to get down to a manageable 2-4 bats)

 

I hate making suggestions, but instead of pig skins or in addition to pig skins we need the hound teeth or its replacement in bat fang for a weapon similar to the teeth trap except for bats. Perhaps a structure that is made out of silk rope bat fangs and twigs/ligs. Something that mimicks some stuff some cultures have and still do to catch bats. A net that would run between two posts/or tea trees or a specific type of tree. Where your character can run underneath this net and draw the bats into. 

Given the number of bats in each spawn, and the scarcity of silk. Id think the net should be good for 20 catches and maybe a capacity of 5 at once which would make 2 nets optimal. 

 

Or maybe even one net that catches 5-10 times and could be built in a cluster like the tooth traps for hounds. But id like some way of fending vs vampire bats that didnt involve me running through a pig village or jungle biome. Gets kind of boring. 

[Rhovious Aran]

Well, you can just outrun them, they will lose interest and from then on you can pick them one by one.

[daduhweewah]

Yes. That is currently the only way. I have no problem surviving obviously, it just gets old having to do that. An alternative method was the point of thread. 

 

Imagine if you had to treat the waves of hounds the same way every time. It would get old. But you can run them through traps, or you can build bunny huts or pig houses, essentially using traps only during red hound seasons and running then through mobs when they dont threaten fire. Also you could do treeguard farms for hounds. You could make tentacle farms with wickerbottom also. 

 

But there is only one method for the vsmpire bats at the moment. That is my point. (I dont use wickerbottom, maybe her tentacle farms would work on the bats but i just use wilson for lack of buffs)

[Rockman9123]

I actually do agree there's no real "creative" methods to deal with the vampire bats besides just running away and letting other things deal with them.

Even later stages of the hounds you can face head on with sufficient gear because they spawn one after another so you can take them down before they hit critical mass. With the Bats its just all at once which makes this impossible.

Personally to keep with the theme of city building a wouldn't mind seeing a "hamlet version" of the Houndius Shootius that you could build up to help defend against them, perhaps if the developers don't mods could add this in the future.

[daduhweewah]

Yes. That is currently the only way. I have no problem surviving obviously, it just gets old having to do that. An alternative method was the point of thread. 

 

Imagine if you had to treat the waves of hounds the same way every time. It would get old. But you can run them through traps, or you can build bunny huts or pig houses, essentially using traps only during red hound seasons and running then through mobs when they dont threaten fire. Also you could do treeguard farms for hounds. You could make tentacle farms with wickerbottom also. 

 

But there is only one method for the vsmpire bats at the moment. That is my point. (I dont use wickerbottom, maybe her tentacle farms would work on the bats but i just use wilson for lack of buffs)

 

edit : 

 

also forgot i had another idea for them. Houndius shootius reminded me. A new type of pig who is a ranged shooter. Bow and arrow or something. You build his houses and they shoot at the bats from more of a distance and rarer misses like the normal watchtower pigs. Maybe just an actual watchtower where the pig is stationed up top. 

[Yokoblue]

I personally use the big water dudes that jump and bite. You aggro 1-2 and you can run in circles while they stomp the bats to death.

I do agree though we need a different way, i wouldn't like a hound trap equivalent because running to your field of hound trap was never that fun to begin with. I think a think to distract them or paralyze some of em would be a better alternative. A think that make sound or something to distract some... The problem isn't that they are hard to deal with on a 1-2-3 basis, its that 10-15 at once reduce the amount of strategy you can use against them.

[magia]

You can one shoot them with blunderbuss, good luck with reloading though.

Edit:

Now when I think about it, if they dont fly over stone walls, once we get gates in DS, you could make tiny fort and safely shoot from there.

[Ackzay]

I have no problem using the pan flute to put them all asleep before any of them even target me. Stand still and wait for the bats to drop down and play the flute immediately. Some will wake before you kill them all but it's much easier than dealing with all of them awake.

 

Or you could just stash berry bush hats throughout the main travelways and then hide, so they land and immediately aggro something else and then you bat cleanup. 

[Mday]

If there are "other ways" to deal with the bats, people will probably call it too easy.

[Szczuku]

You can visit bat caves and bats will usually sleep there 1-2 days b4 the attack.

If you kill enough bats you'll end up with only 3 bats durring the actuall attack.

That's the alternative methotod you should use as this is what devs intended.

[Rhovious Aran]

Well you are not wrong.

But your comparison with hounds doesn't add up for me on a subjective point of view. You are technically right. But for me. The bats at least have a useful drop, and I can avoid it for them to set anything on fire by only fighting them during the day.

Whereas the hounds set everything on fire, so I can only ever fight them way off my base and don't drop anything and they even attack walls. I am way more annoyed with the hounds in my DST megabase than I am with the bats. To the point that after 1100 hours of gameplay I am asking myself if I shouldn't turn them off completely when I think of situations where I lose my mind when I just had to dispose Deerclops at the end of winter, then it frog rains for 3 days in a row and then right away after that hounds come.... In RoG you get interrupted from the things you wanna actually do all the time.. I hate it.

With the pigs I am always looking forward to their coming cause it means I get to have more pig skin to expand my village further.

[Rockman9123]

7 hours ago, Szczuku said:

You can visit bat caves and bats will usually sleep there 1-2 days b4 the attack.

If you kill enough bats you'll end up with only 3 bats durring the actuall attack.

That's the alternative methotod you should use as this is what devs intended.

I had no idea this was a thing, awesome

[CrimXane]

18 hours ago, daduhweewah said:

I havent found any way to combat the vampire bats aside from running them into pigs or other mobs. Which still takes time since they only aggro off you one at a time it seems (it seems random I either dump none or half of them, sometimes it takes a while to get down to a manageable 2-4 bats)

 

I hate making suggestions, but instead of pig skins or in addition to pig skins we need the hound teeth or its replacement in bat fang for a weapon similar to the teeth trap except for bats. Perhaps a structure that is made out of silk rope bat fangs and twigs/ligs. Something that mimicks some stuff some cultures have and still do to catch bats. A net that would run between two posts/or tea trees or a specific type of tree. Where your character can run underneath this net and draw the bats into. 

Given the number of bats in each spawn, and the scarcity of silk. Id think the net should be good for 20 catches and maybe a capacity of 5 at once which would make 2 nets optimal. 

 

Or maybe even one net that catches 5-10 times and could be built in a cluster like the tooth traps for hounds. But id like some way of fending vs vampire bats that didnt involve me running through a pig village or jungle biome. Gets kind of boring. 

Alternative method ?

They are literally retextured hounds.

Well deal with them how you deal with all the waves like crocodogs.

I just don't get why u complaining they are literally weaker hounds

[Rockman9123]

20 minutes ago, CrimXane said:

Alternative method ?

They are literally retextured hounds.

Well deal with them how you deal with all the waves like crocodogs.

I just don't get why u complaining they are literally weaker hounds

Excuse me but what? How are they anything like hounds besides being an enemy that hurts you?

Hounds spawn one after another which allows you more to more reliably fight them head on. Bats all spawn at once which makes this much more difficult. Although Bats are weaker independently they become unmanageable when 40 bats spawn on top of you all at once, Hounds don't do this.

I also don't see anyone dealing with the Bats with Tooth Traps, as your post suggests would be a valid method. 

I also deal with Crocodogs by sitting in my Limestone boat and Saber and killing them as they come to me, I don't see how that would be applicable to the Hamlet.

Mechanically the bats are quite different than hounds so it's a bit silly to compare them so closely.

 

[CrimXane]

1 minute ago, Rockman9123 said:

Excuse me but what? How are they anything like hounds besides being an enemy that hurts you?

Hounds spawn one after another which allows you more to more reliably fight them head on. Bats all spawn at once which makes this much more difficult. Although Bats are weaker independently they become unmanageable when 40 bats spawn on top of you all at once, Hounds don't do this.

I also don't see anyone dealing with the Bats with Tooth Traps, as your post suggests would be a valid method. 

Mechanically the bats are quite different than hounds so it's a bit silly to compare them so closely.

 

Spawn them away from your base and leave them, they will die eventually.

[daduhweewah]

19 minutes ago, CrimXane said:

Alternative method ?

They are literally retextured hounds.

Well deal with them how you deal with all the waves like crocodogs.

I just don't get why u complaining they are literally weaker hounds

I just dont get why you consider this complaining. I just suggested more ways to deal with them that wasnt running them through mobs. Also said I hate making suggestions. You cant honestly think that zero of the ideas in this thread are things you wouldnt use (pig archer towers/houndius shootius type structure/bat nets to replace the tooth traps) and would make your game more enjoyable.  

I have no problem surviving them. My second play through is day 149 (died day 4 in jungle unaware of the swinging vines) I am just getting bored of running them through mobs. Its been the second most tedious thing I do in the game (next to having to use the shops for anything flint related and meat related so I dont kill off all the hippopottomoose- which I never would complain about having to use stores as this is the intent of hamlet) and it happens more often than the hound attacks  

 

Did not know about the bat caves though. But every suggestion aside from the panflute has been running through mobs to disengage them. The blunderbus is useless because nitre is so scarce. 

It might be extra tedious to me as I have so many hours in this game (must be 3-4k hours since I stumbled onto DS on the ps vita - there you go klei, your vita version wasnt all for naught, you found me haha) Have been amped for this game since it was announced, unfortunately ROG was my favorite and I do not think thats a reflection of how awesome klei has been on each release, but more of a reflection of the lack of differences between each release and feeling repetitive despite the new terrains. Game structure remains the same. Prepare for the next season during your current season and stockpile items.

 

Klei is and will always be my most respected developers for the simple fact of price of titles and no in game purchases and the quality of the games they produce. (Amazingly you see people bitching about klei charging people 7$ for the dlc, since its labeled a dlc I guess it “triggers” them)

 

I will say that I hope klei makes another game in this very genre that hooks me again down the line. 

[Mday]

Ever since the update the drop rate of pig skins seems to be lowered. I no longer let pig guards handle the bats just so that I can grab every pig skins.

This is how I kill the bats by myself:

Normal character will need cutlass supreme/dark sword to perform a two hit kill, also need Football helm + logsuit and full HP. Now as soon as you hear the bats spawning, rush to the edge of the map and spam the "F" key, best when there are corner or narrowing space. Bats will kind of get stuck at the edge/corner as they fly in circle around you. So instead of getting kited all the time now you can actually hit the bats. You are gona take some hits but it is manageable. You can try and dodge some of the bat's attack while you perform this trick, but I world rather just tank the hits and finish the bats as fast as possible.

[Yokoblue]

5 hours ago, Mday said:

Ever since the update the drop rate of pig skins seems to be lowered. I no longer let pig guards handle the bats just so that I can grab every pig skins.

This is how I kill the bats by myself:

Normal character will need cutlass supreme/dark sword to perform a two hit kill, also need Football helm + logsuit and full HP. Now as soon as you hear the bats spawning, rush to the edge of the map and spam the "F" key, best when there are corner or narrowing space. Bats will kind of get stuck at the edge/corner as they fly in circle around you. So instead of getting kited all the time now you can actually hit the bats. You are gona take some hits but it is manageable. You can try and dodge some of the bat's attack while you perform this trick, but I world rather just tank the hits and finish the bats as fast as possible.

If you are that well equiped, might as well do the mass pig in your base strat. Brick wall, 7-9 pig guard houses, they kill them pretty quickly and you only lose the pig skin every now and then when they set em on fire but who cares, even with the lower drop rate, unless you want a massive village, you still have a lot.

 

I use wes so i don't have the luxury of 2 hit kills and not a lot of hp either. In games over 100 days, they are too many lol

[CrimXane]

7 hours ago, Mday said:

Ever since the update the drop rate of pig skins seems to be lowered. I no longer let pig guards handle the bats just so that I can grab every pig skins.

This is how I kill the bats by myself:

Normal character will need cutlass supreme/dark sword to perform a two hit kill, also need Football helm + logsuit and full HP. Now as soon as you hear the bats spawning, rush to the edge of the map and spam the "F" key, best when there are corner or narrowing space. Bats will kind of get stuck at the edge/corner as they fly in circle around you. So instead of getting kited all the time now you can actually hit the bats. You are gona take some hits but it is manageable. You can try and dodge some of the bat's attack while you perform this trick, but I world rather just tank the hits and finish the bats as fast as possible.

im not a fan of exploits, but i rather go to pigs and pick up all the stuff quickly rather than gear up and lose items to kill them using an exploit.
just circle in one place and let the pig guards kill
they won't pick up anything during combat ( or there is a threat nearby )

[Mday]

1 hour ago, CrimXane said:

im not a fan of exploits, but i rather go to pigs and pick up all the stuff quickly rather than gear up and lose items to kill them using an exploit.
just circle in one place and let the pig guards kill
they won't pick up anything during combat ( or there is a threat nearby )

tbh I won't consider that an exploits. I simply beat the AI's kiting strat and it is by the totally legit edge of world. The bat's aren't actually stuck as they can still move out of the say edge of world, it will just take them afew seconds to do that.

The issue with pig guards is, 1# it takes longer to clear the bats if you just hands off and let the guard do the job, #2 torch will burn any pig skins laying on the ground.

But no exploits you say, I hear you:D 

Yet another way to deal with bats, is kite and hit them with torch, let them burn to death. It can take a while to kill them all but it can be done. Obviously you don't want to be doing this in your base. 

[InSanity71]

On 11/18/2018 at 11:02 AM, CrimXane said:

Spawn them away from your base and leave them, they will die eventually.

The only problem with doing this, and I have done this several times, is that when you come back through that area you left them at there still tends to be a decent amount of them still alive that just become a nuisance.

[Zinglon]

Build some pig watch towers and flingomatics

[zVince]

These waves are easily cautered. For this you need to have a Ro Bin (not so necessary), but what you need to do is disperse the bats, run take a tour to the lookout posts, when you realize will only get 2-3 bats behind you.  Kill them, the rest of the bats or you will be attacking the guard pigs, or you will only be waiting for a target in the initial place where the wave began. Then you just need to press  "f " and kill them all easily, they will hardly attack you.

[inferjus4]

All your ideas, except OP's, are not solving the problem. There are traps that can help you deal with hounds, which are really helpful, but there are none that can help you with giant horde of the bats. You can not outrun them without coffee, if they hit you you are probably dead (because of stunning attack of all of them), if night is coming then Pig Guards will burn the city and if you wanna use them against other mob like Hippo then you will waste a lot of time and it is risky because of how fast bats are. We need a trap to fight those flying rats, like nets suggested by OP. 

[Mday]

Honestly not having any issues with the bats. If anything I think they need to triple the numbers of bats spawn cause right now the game is too easy.