New, and not really sure what I'm doin

So, I just started. I also play lioden, and its strange. i have the opposite issues in each game lol.

here I'm not clear on how to feed my wolves. i know to go to hoard but it says no animals are available for it, which means they arent hungry...I hope?

I'm not sure how to set roles in the den, cant figure out mating, cant even find smaller canids to kill for the snake quest. Not sur ehow to sort my wolves either.

I'm having no problem recruiting wolves, which i struggle with majorly in lioden [maybe i just know wolf body language better? idk lol]

Welcome to wolvden! :D

All your wolves are happy, healthy, and full until todays rollover in 30 minutes

To feed/play I prefer going into the hoard and doing it via items instead of each wolf individually 

You fight canines (and other creatures) via exploring, same as lioden

Mating you need a breeding male, you can either stud your females in heat to other males or use your own, you need to finish a unique quest first to unlock breeding. Pick your breeding male carefully as you cant change it later without retiring or waiting for him to pass

To sort your wolves you need to unlock caves with cave items you get while exploring or you can buy them in bulk in the trading center

You can feed wolves the same way as you can feed lions in LD, from the hoard or directly from your wolf's profile. If they aren't hungry, there is no option to feed. Also, all food fills 10%, bigger carcasses only have more uses than small ones.

To set roles, you need to do the snake quests for all the roles. The tutorial quests teach you how to do that and how to mate - and make caves to sort. 

Small canids are coyotes that are found from many biomes. 

Befriending guide: wolvden.com

Grouse House has made guides for everything really, I recommend checking those.

Hey there, welcome to Wolvden!

Looks like all your wolves are full right now, which is why you don't see the option to feed them. Hunger is indicated by the red bar on a wolf's page or your den overview, and each adult wolf's hunger will go down by 20% each rollover. You can feed them on their individual pages, or from your Hoard.

If you haven't completed the tutorial quests yet, you should do so- go to the Questing Snake in the Crossroads and you'll get a quick overview on hunting, breeding, setting up caves, etc. Wolf roles can be set by going to an individual wolf's page and clicking 'Settings' beneath their picture. You can only have 2 scouts at a time (and 1 herbalist, once you unlock that quest after a few days of play) but you can assign as many hunters and pupsitters as you want. Roles can be changed at any time although there is a brief cooldown if you want to reassign a wolf to their previous role.

It's a good idea to set up at least two caves for sorting wolves. In the event that one of your wolves comes down with a contagious illness (which won't happen right away, you have immunity for your first few days of play!) you should quarantine them away from the rest of the pack until you can cure them. Unsorted wolves will 'wander' and may spread or catch illnesses across caves. Try to isolate and/or cure them before the next rollover to keep pesky illnesses under control!

Check out the various Grouse House guides, they'll tell you pretty much everything you need to know. Have fun!

thats the other big question: whats a 'rollover?" is that a real world day? im assuming its a time frame

i did find the tutorial quests, i feel kinda silly about that now

A rollover happens at midnight server time and the game rolls into the next day. Wolves age ½ months and get little hunger and amusement loss. 

You need to manually click a button to rollover, and if you don't your account stays "frozen" and your wolves don't age. So if you're busy, you can just... not roll over and you won't lose anything.

so like on howrse, where you manually 'age them' every day

If you play Lioden, rollover in here works the same way it works in there. If you don't log in and don't press the rollover button, your account stay "freezed" as you left it, so you can take hiatus or a pause whenever you need without worrying about your wolves getting hungry or running away.