Newb Q's: Biome Winters

Heya all, I'm still getting my bearings in this game so I thought I'd prod some info from others on what winter is like in other biomes. Especially since I'm on the mend from some bad decisions recently, but am curious about moving my pack again.

For context, I did a pack move for the first time as well as got overzealous with the new (to me as I waited to pick the right breeding male) breeding mechanic so my first winter was spent in the Taiga and kicked my buns as I had too many mouths to feed with many failed hunts. I moved to the Taiga to curb the itch of getting out of a "beginner" biome. I had plenty of food at the time, I was even selling what I now consider to be fresh carcasses to the raccoon for fast cash. Again, too many pups was a mistake and I own that. But I had my heart set on moving and the one I wanted was still locked out. Today, I unlocked it in scouting. The rainforest. With winter right around the corner in game I'm hesitant to jump right in. It's a challenging level area and I'm not fully recovered from pupmageddon. It also got me thinking about what winter is like in other biomes, especially southern ones. Thus this thread.

Tl;dr is winter worse based on how hard it is to unlock the areas in explore? Or is it more to do that I picked a hard area for winter while ill prepared? Maybe even both. This next winter will be my 2nd one as a player and I fully intend to wait it out in my old home of Deciduous forest while I refill my food stores and generally enjoy it's aesthetic again. But that doesn't stop me from wondering how winters are on "the other side of the fence" so to speak :) I'd love to hear about them or seasons in other home biomes in general.

Spring gives hunting chances a boost, while Winter lower them, no matter what biomes you are in.

But the difficult and challenging biomes also requires wolves with very very high stats to be successful in hunting, even in spring, so of course winter are way harsher.

If you are the type of player that doesn't like to buy food from others and rely on food in excess to make a bit of money, you'll better stick with the beginner biomes, where after a bit your hunters will start to be consinstently successful, even with big preys. Personally, I've tried to move to even just medium biomes but it irked me to have lowered success chances even just by a bit (it made it more annoying to complete hunting and collecting quests) so I decided to stay in the starting ones, where I can hunt big preys without efforts and always have a good stack of food.

To help with the boredom of always being in the same biome, I rotate my Explore session through all the biomes (two days of explore in a biome and then I change to another one). That way I see different backgrounds and get different encounters.

If your pack is still kinda new and you still have to find a balance in taking care of your wolves (with puppies and maybe an increasing number of wolves), moving to Rainforest is a bit of a suicide. Unless you are adamant in living into a certain biome and are prepared to buy food from others to sustain your pack, you'll better wait a bit before moving.

Maybe in a month or two, you can try to move to a medium biome, see how it goes and then slowly make your way to the harder ones. From what we were told during Beta Testing, it is with that intention that the biomes were coded, so that it will need you some generations of wolves with increasing stats to be able to live successfully into the harder ones.

the tiaga is one of the harder biomes, you can see the difficulty below:

(taken from: wolvden.com)

as mentioned above, winter is the same across all biomes - so winter in the glacier & winter in the rainforest will have the exact same outcome. its moreso about the biomes individual difficulty!

the tiaga is one of the harder biomes at difficult. consequently catching prey will be quite difficult, and your wolves will need high stats, and I mean high high stats. I notice your hunting party ranges from around 300-600.

for reference, I'm in the coniferous forest & my hunting party is averaging around 700 stats total, and I'm only getting 50% chance on large trails. I'm able to stay afloat though and even sell the minor surplus I have

you can see here (this is directly from wolvden!) a spreadsheet on the different hunting chances & biomes: docs.google.com

the spreadsheet is purely looking at individual stat correlating to the hunting role , **not** the total stats your wolves have. so stalkers = wisdom + smarts, chasers = speed & agility, finishers = strength.

to see the percentages listed, all wolves in the party need to be over 50, 250 or 500 in their roles required stat.

this might help you in deciding how well your pack will fair in the other biomes. rn I'd say unless you're willing to spend SC on food, you'll struggle in one of the harder biomes. looking at your hunting party, your highest stat wolf is around 160/180 in her hunters role, & with the other members of your hunting party being much lower statted, you're going to have quite low percentages.