struggling

is anyone else having trouble getting by? i'm really demotivated and feel kinda isolated.

i've been playing since early access and i also played lioden avidly for a few years until wolvden's release. i know that its hard to get the ball rolling in the beginning of your lioden pride, but things are extremely slow right now and i'm not sure if its normal. gameplay and progression just seemed a lot more simpler on the sister site (and yes i know this game is different

i get a maximum of 2 carcasses (which are either bunnies or birds) daily when hunting. i'm pretty sure i have my parties organized and i have all the hunters i possibly can right now. if i could i would buy higher stat + proficiency hunters, but this isn't an option. i have three parties and send them out as often as i can. i explore frequently too but only get about 1-2 feathers in terms of amusement items. i struggle on the daily to feed and play with my wolves and it seems like i'm getting nowhere. i have to beg on giveaway forums basically every time i log on and i enter raffles as much as i can

i started with 40 GC because of the access pack i bought, and it was a bit easier earning SC at the start but now i barely get any. i have no idea what's going on with the market and i honestly have nothing left to sell. when i do, my trades collect dust for weeks even when i advertise them. 

no one seems to be interested in my studs or the other things i try to sell. i advertise as often as i can but nothing works. i thought if i got some SC i could buy the supplies i needed instead, but i obviously can't. i had a flu breakout in my pack and spent days looking for the herbs for the cure, but couldn't find any. several of my wolves have run away because i couldn't keep them fed or happy.

all of these issues may chop up to low proficiency wolves but i've been playing for weeks now using the same hunters and herbalist but i don't see any improvement. my only useful wolves are my scouts. i don't have the money to stud my girls away fordecent looking pups, and i don't have the territory either...

i feel like i'm drowning in incredibly hardcore players with fully customized kings and dozens of merles. i know i joined early access but i still feel like i'm ten minutes into this game. i know this game was made to be more difficult than lioden with features like hunting synergy but i feel like things are just too hard. i can't even provide the bare minimum for my wolves for their mood and hunger. i know wolvden is also early in development and there are many updates to come, so i wanted to give things a chance to improve over time, but nothing seems to be getting any easier.

i don't mean to sound like such a downer but i don't know what i'm doing wrong and i'm not having much fun :( is anyone else having this issue? or am i just missing something?

As someone who isn't having trouble, I think wolvden's got two major issues:

1. Horrible market. The market is almost entirely made up of people who spent actual money on their wolves in order to quickly jump up to ten marks, to get GC to retire out breeding males, etc. If you don't have wolves with super desirable bases/marks/stats you're not going to get anyone to buy your pups or your stud. 

2. It seems slanted toward people who can get online a lot. My job is really high intensity for a few hours and then I have the rest of the day to myself, so I can easily explore every time my energy bar fills up, and send my hunters out on all their hunts. That keeps me well stocked in food and toys, to the point where I can (and do) donate them to players who aren't having so much luck. But if you can't check in every half an hour to an hour for most of the day, you're in trouble. You're better off logging in for five minutes once an hour than you are being online for an hour at a time.

If you aren't in either of those categories it seems really easy to fall behind on food and toys, and then you need money, which you can't get except through the daily quests (only about 100SC a day, plus most of them are going to need you to be online quite a few times to manage it usually) or the trading center. And if you're not in group one you're not going to make money off pup trades and if you're not in group two you're not going to make money off item trades. And there's not really any other options. 

I don't know enough about how games work to know how those problems can be fixed, but I think they need to be, because I've seen a lot of people having the same issues you are. 

I'd suggest going through the encounters guide for finding toys, also rescouting guarantees 2 amusements each time.

For hunting, are you in an easier biome? Do your hunters get along?

- Make sure your hunters get along by checking personality guide, then just keep hunting to have their proficiency and synergy raise. Also, exploring is a good way to get some food and amusement from very common encounters; chase the beaver, turn back, follow north, take a feather from bluejay, digging... Also, prioritize who you feed. Unless it' a pup or mother is nursing, hunger/mood doesn't have to be 100% until you can afford that.

- We can't really help with the market. Even good puppies don't sell well. I usually just sell carcasses for 3-4 SC per use for people who might need them for quests. Also, saving GC to customize your breeding male is a good thing to consider. You don't need rare bases or markings to do well. Just decent stats and a pretty male. Not everyone is a fan of merles or inuits, there are no many studs that are penta merle/inuit so why to try to compete with that market when you can go for something else?

- Forage with herbalist as much as you can, exchange common herbs for the rare ones when you need. It takes a bit, but don't let herbalist sit with full energy. All small actions raise proficiency and with high proficiency diagnosing is free and eventually free.

- Try to do the snake quest every day as well, it's a good source of income and a good way to get SC towards the territory. Also selling some trash to the Raccoon, it doesn't give a lot but even 20 SC a day stacks up.

- Also, before you have a steady supply of herbs and meds. Don't roll on poop in explore, don't lick the frog and don't eat rotting food. Those actions can get you wolf sick and so avoiding them decreases the chance to get sick a lot.

You mentioned you have THREE hunting parties. How? You have den soace for 12 adult wolves. Three full hunting parties would be 15 wolves. If you have three hunting parties of 2-3 wolves each, scrap them and make one hunting party of wolves with compatible personalities. One full party of five wolves that get along will do better than three parties trying to fill the slots with the same wolf in multiple positions.

@werewolf two on my parties only have one wolf, and the other has two. they are sorted by personality. i dont have enough wolves of the same personality to fill a party

@phantom i'm in the mountain biome. my hunters are sorted based on personality type

@kahvin i do have a few marking items but i cant apply them or customze my male since he's already in the breeding male role ;-; i would sell food thats how i made money on lioden but i dont have enough even for myself. do you mean exchange herbs with other players?

i forgot to add that i do quests as often as i can but they usually require items i dont have or successful hunts that i can't complete while online

thank you all for the advice though i just dont find much enjoyment out of the game in its current state ig

Your hunters don't need to have the same personality to get along. You just need to pay attention not to have aggressive with friendly and stoic with romantic. But you can have stoic and aggressive together or friendly and romantic together. The visual guide Kahvinporo liked let you see all possible combinations. And as others said, your party will do much better with more than 2 or 3 wolves. With a full party of 5 compatible wolves hunting is much better.

You can definetly apply marking applicators even if your wolf is already in the breeding male role. You just have to temporally removing him from public stud (not retire him nor remove him from the breeding male role), you can do that by remove the check in the "List this breeding male from public stud" box in the Breeding male settings, then customize him the way you want and putting him up for public stud again.

And about exchanging herbs, you can exchange 3 herbs of the same type you already have with 1 herb you need at the bottom of your herbalist page. It's a feature whose purpose it's exactly to make available every herb you need to make medicine even of you don't find them in explore or foraging.

oh awesome thanks!!! so i can combine my friendly and romantic party?

Yes romantic and friendly get along

Yes, of course! And a 5 wolves party works way better than one with less members and each wolf will spend less energy, so you can send them out hunting more often without the need to wait for their energy to regen