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SpringFall Wiki

Wildlife

Overview

The land around your settlement isn’t empty. Deer graze, wolves run in packs, bears keep to themselves until pushed, and smaller game scatters at the first sign of trouble. Wildlife gives you a reason to range beyond your walls — meat, hides, and the occasional real danger if you’re careless about who you cross.

How it works

Animals live in a ring around your settlement rather than right on top of it. You won’t find wolves denned inside your walls, but the further out you go, the more you’ll run into.

Every animal falls into one of a few rough temperaments:

  • Skittish — deer, rabbits, pheasants and squirrels flee the moment they feel threatened. They won’t fight back.
  • Defensive — bears, boars, foxes and turkeys keep to themselves and only fight if cornered or provoked. Leave them alone and they’ll usually leave you alone.
  • Pack hunters — wolves are the exception. They hunt in coordinated packs and will actively come after prey, including a colonist caught alone.

Wildlife populations aren’t wiped out for good. An area you’ve hunted clean will have animals in it again if you give it time.

Playing with it

Assign a colonist to the Hunter job to have them track and kill wildlife for meat and hides. A killed animal leaves a corpse behind that can be harvested afterward.

If a wolf pack wanders close to your settlement, any colonist on guard duty responds to it exactly the way they’d respond to a hostile person — the fight plays out through the same detection and combat systems either way, so there’s nothing special to set up for it. Bears and other defensive animals don’t trigger that same automatic response — a guard only engages one if it’s already been provoked into attacking.

Good to know

  • Predators keep their distance from an active settlement by default, but that gap shrinks the further your colonists range from home — don’t assume the outskirts are as safe as your own walls.
  • Wolves are the animal most likely to start a fight on their own. Deer and other skittish game never will; bears and boars only will if you corner them.
  • Cleared-out hunting grounds recover over time, so it’s worth returning to an area rather than always pushing further out.
  • Exploring at night is riskier the further you stray from your settlement — pack a torch and keep an eye on your surroundings.