wolf stat imbalances - why do they happen?

My lead has high strength and wisdom. He fights a lot of bears because he did better against them from the beginning and I explored areas with high level bears. I fight almost nothing besides other wolves. 

I’m wondering if it’s something to do with which stars they’re already higher in? Could also be role related. And stats for pups from what I’ve been working with so far are affected by parents having higher specific stats. So high strength dad would be more likely to produce higher strength pups. 

I really doubt personality has anything to do with it as it's stated by staff in multiple places that there are no mechanics implemented for personality except hunting party compatibility, and that outside of that it's just fluff. I guess it's possible the staff could be straight up lying about this, but I think it's unlikely? 

It's an interesting topic anyway. Tbh from looking at my own wolves their stat imbalances are explained by the roles they do. Every time my finishers hunt, they have a chance of improving their strength, so naturally their strength improves relative to their other stats. Then the offspring of those finishers are born with higher strength, so I'm more likely to make them finishers later, and so on. I'm not saying there definitely isn't something else going on though, and would be very curious to find out about more mechanics affecting stat distribution.

Ah, okay, if staff said personality doesn't do anything then it probably doesn't.

I get it about hunters, I'm mostly wondering about why my lead wolf is so "specialized" in two stats. Magpie's right that it could be something to do with already high stats getting more increases on leveling? Or the "you figure out what enemies are easy to fight for your stat distribution and then you end up gaining more of the same stats by fighting the same enemies" thing - I basically never fight bears because it goes terribly for me! XD

Or the "you figure out what enemies are easy to fight for your stat distribution and then you end up gaining more of the same stats by fighting the same enemies" thing - I basically never fight bears because it goes terribly for me! XD

Same boat. Although my lead’s better stats are in Speed and Smarts, and neither have as big a margin as yours (bearing in mind he’s 4 levels lower) 🤔 This vaguely correlates with fighting enemies that tend to give +1 in those stats (if anything; only noticed through contributions to that EXP/stat gain project) but I'll have to see if that becomes more prominent with more levels!

As for other wolves: while I haven’t run the numbers or compared starting/current stats (so this is anecdata, take with salt) I’ve been keeping track of my wolves’ stats and there is absolutely a hunter/role + scout/biome correlation. Herbalist has high wisdom by a >10 margin with smarts as a second best, while the pupsitter’s basically well-rounded as she began. Which might make pupsitter a good “control” role to use if tracking stat gains?

Oh, that's a cool project!  I hope they publish an enemy stat gain summary soon.  Yeah, maybe it is just which enemies you tend to fight, then!

I guess a good thing to figure out would be whether the level-up stat gains are imbalanced, or if all the imbalance in all our wolves comes from additional stat gains (hunters that gain a stat after hunts, lead wolves that gain a stat point after enemy battles, etc).  Once I put some newly grown up puppies into roles, maybe I'll try to start tracking them to see if just counting the level-up stats would keep them balanced...

Popping in here with some math done - I've been wondering this same thing with my lead who's quite imbalanced in favor of Smarts and Agility. As far as I know, the only ways for a lead to stat up is 1) through levelling and 2) through the +1 stat gains from battling. I've decided to investigate the effects of battle stat gains and see if they do contribute to the imbalance.

Having gone through my userlog, I've calculated these total +1 battle gains: +27 Agility, +19 Smarts, +12 Speed, +8 Strength, +8 Wisdom. 

To calculate the difference between my +1 gains and my levelling gains, I've subtracted the +1s from my lead's current stats. This would leave me with just the stats from levelling - assuming my statement above about the ways for a lead to stat up is correct.

(Green is current stats as of writing this post, red is the subtraction of the +1s)

Strength: 94 - 8 = 86

Speed: 90 - 12 = 78

Agility: 132 - 27 = 105

Wisdom: 85 - 8 = 77

Smarts: 144 - 19 = 125

So... it's clear that my preference for fighting certain creatures over others do allow for more stat gains in certain areas, but even without the influence of these +1s, my base stats are still heavily in favor of Agility and Smarts. This means that the additional stats through levelling also play a role in the imbalance. How and why this happens, I have yet to understand.

I would tie this in to biome, but the Mountains provide boosts in Speed, which is not one of my dominant stats.

My best guess, though kinda shaky, is that the levelling gains are based on your lead's behavior and history with battles, and that it kind of 'enhances' the stats you're doing the best with? Or maybe it's even tied to personality, as some have mentioned, but I can't quite see the connection between that and stats. Overall, I'm just reluctant to believe it's truly random.

edit: calculated wisdom wrong... maffs is hard

Awesome data, thank you!! Yeah, that definitely looks like just leveling is imbalanced by itself.

Having leveling stat gains be tied to previous behavior seems like a really complicated mechanic, but maybe?  Or it could be that leveling just tends to give you more of whatever stats are already higher, which seems like a cool way to introduce different stat distributions really.  All right, there may be some user log searches in my future!

Okay, here's some of my data! I did it the other way around - searched the log for level-up stat gains and only added those up. Yeah, they're definitely uneven!   Disproportionally high numbers bolded (although this is of course subjective).

Kirith (lead)      strength 20   speed 48   agility 18   wisdom 16   smarts 52
Ikala (scout)      strength 49   speed 37   agility 31   wisdom 21   smarts 16
Nenana (scout)     strength 16   speed 20   agility 30   wisdom 27   smarts 37
Alavi (chaser)     strength  6   speed 10   agility  5   wisdom  3   smarts  4
Usqun (chaser)     strength 10   speed 11   agility 12   wisdom  3   smarts  4
Birch (herbalist)  strength  7   speed  8   agility  8   wisdom 19   smarts 28

So yeah, wow, those are mostly pretty big differences, more for some wolves than others. So, my high-strength scout is high-strength because of leveling gains, not because of which biomes she's been scouting! (unless the leveling stat gains depend on her biome-scouting history).

The next experiment would be to take one of the non-lead wolves off its job and assign it a different job and see if the pattern changes - if I make the herbalist a pupsitter, will he get stats more equally (which would mean it depends on the current role), or keep getting mostly wisdom/smarts (which would mean it depends on either the current stats or the past role)?  Making an herbalist with bad stats would also be interesting - if I make a high-strength wolf a herbalist, will they gain mostly wisdom/smarts anyway (meaning it depends on role) or strength (meaning it depends on stats)?  Best if the wolf has no previous role to introduce a third option...

Not sure I'm committed enough to change my wolf jobs around, but when I end up assigning new jobs later anyway, I'll be on the lookout for interesting test cases!

Maybe it's genetic?

That would be pretty tricky!  I should also pay attention to whether there are wolves who are mostly gaining stats that don't match their role and don't match their highest stat - although that will be hard, because if you gain enough of a stat it will become your highest stat sooner or later.