Wary Predators

Tired of every wolf, bear, and bison in TerraFirmaCraft charging you the instant it lays eyes on you? So was I. Wary Predators makes TFC's dangerous animals behave the way real animals do: cautious, aware of you, and usually more interested in keeping their distance than in picking a fight.

What it does

In vanilla TFC, predators attack on sight. It does not matter how far away you are or whether you have done anything to provoke them. If they can see you, they come for you.

Wary Predators changes that. Now an animal only considers attacking once you get close enough to make it nervous, and even then, whether it commits depends on the kind of animal it is. A wolf will almost always give you a wide berth and slip away. A bear will hold its ground and defend its space if you crowd it. A tiger or a polar bear, the ones that actually treat people as prey, will still come after you, because that is who they are.

Three things stay true no matter what:

• If you hit an animal, it fights back. Every time. Wariness is not weakness.
• If an animal is already fighting you, it does not suddenly forget and wander off (unless it is the kind that gets cold feet, like a wolf making a half-hearted approach).
• Animals still hunt each other normally. This only changes how they treat you.

Every species feels different

Each animal is tuned to match how it really behaves around humans:

• Wolves are shy and rarely attack, often breaking off before they commit.
• Black bears usually flee, but the rare one that decides you are food means it.
• Grizzlies are not hunting you, but get too close and they will charge hard.
• Polar bears are the boldest bear and will actually stalk you.
• Ambush cats like cougars let you get close, then pounce.
• Lions and tigers are the apex threats, and tigers in particular will hunt you down.
• Crocodiles wait at the water's edge and strike when you are almost on top of them.
• Boars are genuinely aggressive and charge readily.
• Moose and bison are not out to get you, but crowd them and you will regret it.
• Wildebeest are skittish and will almost always just run.

The result is a world that feels alive and a little bit dangerous in a fair way. You can walk past a distant wolf without a fight to the death. You can also learn, the hard way, not to corner a grizzly.

Animals that fight back

Realism cuts both ways. Attack an animal and it should not just stand there.

Hit a boar, moose, wildebeest, or bison and it turns and charges you back, chasing you down for a while instead of shrugging off a spear thrown from across the field the way it does in vanilla. These are big, ornery animals, and now they act like it.

Defenseless no more: peaceful mobs can fight back!

There is also an optional feature to make some passive livestock fight back if you harm them. Turn it on, and a cow, yak, musk ox, goat, or pig will defend itself when you strike it: it stops fleeing, comes at you, and lands a few blows before backing off. If you continue hitting it, it will keep fighting, so a careless poke can turn into a real scrap if you're not careful. This option is off by default, because a cow that can hurt you is a bigger surprise than most people expect. Flip it on in the settings if you want your barnyard to bite back. But know this: your relationship with livestock matters. An animal you have raised and made familiar with you will not turn on you, no matter how you treat it. Only half-wild or barely-tamed livestock defend themselves, so harvesting your own well-raised stock is not dangerous. The familiarity line is adjustable, so you decide how much trust it takes before an animal stops fighting back.

Make it your own

Everything is adjustable from the in-game settings configuration GUI, with tooltips for every option. Want wolves even more timid? Want the boars turned back up to full menace? Want livestock to fight back, or the whole thing knocked down to something gentle for a relaxed playthrough? You can adjust all of these behaviors and more, with no manual editing of a config text file required. If you have Cloth Config installed, along with a configuration mod like "Configured," Wary Predators will use it automatically.

Compatibility

Built for TerraFirmaCraft on NeoForge 1.21.1. Drop it in alongside TFC and you are good to go. It only touches how these animals decide to attack you, so it plays nicely with the rest of your pack.

Give the wildlife a little respect, and it just might return the favor. Most of the time.