The new Sandshark behavior is a good start but it could still use some work, Sandsharks still spend a good amount of time outside of the sand charging at anything they see while stirring up giant clouds of sand, and they'll still chase you for 50+ meters if they spot you.
The new Sandshark behavior is a good start but it could still use some work, Sandsharks still spend a good amount of time outside of the sand charging at anything they see while stirring up giant clouds of sand, and they'll still chase you for 50+ meters.
I agree! an ambush predator that highly specialized (non-streamlined body, only pectoral fins for propulsion, bulky/heavy form) should have no business chasing its prey in a 50+ meter endurance exercise.
I really hope grown creatures can remain hostile to other animals, so that you can have base guards that hang around.... By the way, the sandshark is by far my favorite creature, next to the mesmer. I know a lot of people find them annoying, but I just love 'em! Especially with the new ambush behavior, they're now even more dynamic!
I really hope grown creatures can remain hostile to other animals, so that you can have base guards that hang around.... By the way, the sandshark is by far my favorite creature, next to the mesmer. I know a lot of people find them annoying, but I just love 'em! Especially with the new ambush behavior, they're now even more dynamic!
I've done a few tests on mesmers before the most recent update, specifically regarding their predation. Though I saw them open their wings several times, I never actually saw one hypnotise a real fish for a prolonged period of time. People assure me, however, that they can do this.
The new Sandshark behavior is a good start but it could still use some work, Sandsharks still spend a good amount of time outside of the sand charging at anything they see while stirring up giant clouds of sand, and they'll still chase you for 50+ meters.
I agree! an ambush predator that highly specialized (non-streamlined body, only pectoral fins for propulsion, bulky/heavy form) should have no business chasing its prey in a 50+ meter endurance exercise.
Yeah, what I think they should do is sit perfectly still under the sand until something gets really close (maybe 5-10 meters depending on the size of the creature) before jumping out, taking a bite, and then diving back into the sand, they should also decrease the size of the sand clouds it stirs up.
Another thing I'd like to see is the leech-like creatures (the Bleeder and Lava Larva) latching on to other creatures in the enviroment. I could also see the Lava Larva attaching themselves to the Precursor Thermal Power Generator, Primary Research Facility, and those small tripod cubes because of all the power being generated.
The new Sandshark behavior is a good start but it could still use some work, Sandsharks still spend a good amount of time outside of the sand charging at anything they see while stirring up giant clouds of sand, and they'll still chase you for 50+ meters.
I agree! an ambush predator that highly specialized (non-streamlined body, only pectoral fins for propulsion, bulky/heavy form) should have no business chasing its prey in a 50+ meter endurance exercise.
Yeah, what I think they should do is sit perfectly still under the sand until something gets really close (maybe 5-10 meters depending on the size of the creature) before jumping out, taking a bite, and then diving back into the sand, they should also decrease the size of the sand clouds it stirs up.
Another thing I'd like to see is the leech-like creatures (the Bleeder and Lava Larva) latching on to other creatures in the enviroment. I could also see the Lava Larva attaching themselves to the Precursor Thermal Power Generator, Primary Research Facility, and those small tripod cubes because of all the power being generated.
Speaking of lava larva, in x box 1, do they suck the power out of you seamoth? I don't know
The new Sandshark behavior is a good start but it could still use some work, Sandsharks still spend a good amount of time outside of the sand charging at anything they see while stirring up giant clouds of sand, and they'll still chase you for 50+ meters.
I agree! an ambush predator that highly specialized (non-streamlined body, only pectoral fins for propulsion, bulky/heavy form) should have no business chasing its prey in a 50+ meter endurance exercise.
Yeah, what I think they should do is sit perfectly still under the sand until something gets really close (maybe 5-10 meters depending on the size of the creature) before jumping out, taking a bite, and then diving back into the sand, they should also decrease the size of the sand clouds it stirs up.
Another thing I'd like to see is the leech-like creatures (the Bleeder and Lava Larva) latching on to other creatures in the enviroment. I could also see the Lava Larva attaching themselves to the Precursor Thermal Power Generator, Primary Research Facility, and those small tripod cubes because of all the power being generated.
Yeah, about the leech creatures, I would love to see that kind of behavior implemented. It's pretty implausible that they just sit around the ALZ/ILZ waiting for something technological to turn up.
And I agree about the sandshark, mostly. I think that the sort of behavior in the video, where it detected the spadefish, switched into "sandcloud" mode and finally burst from the ground to eat it would work well. It could make sandshark encounters fairer, as you would have some warning from the sand clouds that they were about to be brutally mauled. Additionally, it would sort of fit with the sandshark trying to get as close to the prey as possible before ambushing.
I also think that the slow roaming behavior it displayed, where it cruised around under the sand with just its fin sticking out, was really cool, so I'd like that better over them being stationary. That fin could be some kind of sensory organ, after all... (plus I love how "jaws" like it is ). Other than that, though, I agree with everything you said!
Some additional thoughts on the mesmer:
What about that whole "Mesmers can hypnotise predators much larger than themselves, eating them alive" bit? I've only ever seen mesmers go after small fauna, and even then, when they kill the fish the corpse just remains floating. (<--I'm not sure if this has been fixed and corpses disappear once mesmers "eat" them). However, I would love to see mesmer predation made more accurate to its description. Maybe it retaliate when bigger fauna attack it (I'm thinking "mid-level" predators like the size of the bone shark, and maybe it could attack other fauna like cave crawlers that are just slightly bigger than catchable fish). Once it successfully hypnotises the would-be predator, it could maybe take a bite out of it- or better yet, it could pull a "finding nemo" and swallow the larger predator whole.
-EDIT-
Just did a size comparison in-game, the mesmer is barely as big as a boomerang. There's no way it could eat an entire predator the size of a boneshark! My bad, everyone. I would like to see mesmers eat the bodies of most of their victims, however. As of right now, the mesmer just kind of "kills" them, and leaves a corpse. I think it would be neat to see mesmers actually predate some fish, and if the fish are bigger than it then maybe see a slightly bloated mesmer swimming around more slowly. After all, in the wild, fish eat other fish of greater size than them...
New series: "A day in the life"
Ok, so I've decided to finally off again/on again start studying the creature behaviors. I figured the best way to do that is to spend some time documenting them in their natural habitat. So, I slapped on creative, put on invisible, and watched away. Yes, I know that this eliminates all the fun things like creature interactions with players (reapers grabbing you, mesmers hypnotising you, etc.). I'm sorry, I was just too lazy to do that. So, you'll just have to make do watching the creatures slaughter each other instead of me.
And I do mean slaughter. For my first episode, I did the mesmer. MAN, are those things ravenous! I've got two videos down below, and since they both add up to over 10 minutes, I'll explain in short some key details:
1. Mesmers eat. A LOT. Like, really, just the one must have gone through an entire boomerang shoal in minutes. Dear devs, unless the mesmer has the metabolism of a god, please have them "cool down" to digest after they eat something.
2. Mesmers mostly hypnotize the same kind of fish. In this video, almost everything I saw them hypnotize was boomerangs. Towards the very end of the video, you see it start to hypnotize something- I didn't catch it on camera, but it was the one time the mesmer ate an eyeye. The second video is me desparatly trying to recreate the eyeye-eating (which I finally did, check the end of the 2nd vid).
3. Mesmers have two kinds of attacks, the hypnosis one and the one that comes (like john cena) outta nowhere. Often times, a mesmer would swim next to a boomerang, and then POW! Flash of blood, boomerang is suddenly dead. No sign of movement from the mesmer. I don't know, maybe they have death-psychic powers.
4. Mesmers are wasteful. Every time they would eat a boomerang, they would leave behind the corpse. Towards the end, and in the second vid, you can see it eat an eyeye. This was the only time the mesmer actually ate a fish, as nothing was left but blood after it successfully ate the eyeye. Dear devs: I would love to see mesmers eat these bigger kinds of fish like boomerangs, and would even love to see a bloated mesmer swimming lethargically around after a meal that was larger than itself! It would really add to the world, in my opinion.
5. Mesmers do, in fact, aggressively defend themselves from large predators (just like their scan card says they do! Yay, thanks devs!) Towards the middle of the second video, I decide to have a mesmer fight club and spawn in a boneshark. Sure enough, the mesmer attacks the boneshark (after a weird mutual-attack-ballet?), and sends it swimming with its tail between its... wait, scratch that euphemism. I spawned an ampeel, which proceeded to fight with the mesmer. I lost track of the mesmer on that second fight, so I spawned in another ampeel and mesmer to fight. The mesmer was thoroughly destroyed, though the first mesmer came back (from the dead?!) to avenge his fallen comrade.
First, 9 minute vid:
2nd, 2 minute vid:
-EDIT-
I noticed a few more things, watching through a second time:
1. the mesmer actually does eat a hoopfish and an eyeye early in the video, but it's kind of hard to notice
2. At around 4:20, the mesmer blazes it chases several fish around, but the fish actually swim away and the mesmer gives up.
-EDIT AGAIN-
So, I was going to record the second video in "day in the life," but on my way there I found mesmers using their hypnosis ability to attack, and subsequently chase away, larger fauna. Since I didn't have any footage of that yet, here you go:
Oh, and does anyone want another reason the devs are amazing? Do you all know how the cyclops just wouldn't right itself after bumping something, and would be permenantly left at an angle once it had collided with terrain? You know, the thing that makes your eye go all twitchy? Well... I bumped my cyclops, and lo and behold it righted itself! (some of you may have known about this before, it may have been in the game for a long time. The point is I'm just noticing it now, so YAY!)
Yes, I know what my cyclops is named. Yes, I know it's a dead meme. No, I could not think of anything else.
First off, I made some edits to my previous comment. Secondly, here is "A day in the life" part 2!
Sandsharks!
For the second episode, I watched some sandsharks. Honestly, I'm speechless. After 14 minutes of observation, I can conclude that sandsharks are officially insane. Not the good insane, either. The sort of "honestly what the hell do you think you're doing" insane. There's way too much stuff in that video that just doesn't add up, so I'll just make a few quick comments...
1. I looked at two sandsharks for this observation, so I pray that there are others out there who are different than these two. I shall name them "Samantha" and "Gracie" for the duration of these notes.
2. Specimen one, "Samantha," was actually the same sandshark from the first video. Watching her in her natural habitat, she was... lethargic, to put it kindly. At times, she barely qualified over "vegetative state" (this isn't to say that I entirely mind this, after all, ambush predators should be slow). I think she caught... 1 spadefish over the course of her observation? In fact, of the two, I think she was the more model sandshark. Stayed in the sand, generally chillaxed until she needed to hunt some poor, unsuspecting prey fish.
3. Specimen two, "Gracie," was a mess. I start her observation at around 4:30, if you want to watch. Gracie is by far the more insane of the two specimens. She bugged out and swam all the way to the surface, seemingly could not figure out how to chill under the sand, and engaged in prolonged and inconclusive assaults on biters and spadefish. More than once, she went into full freak out mode (at nothing), and proceeded to charge through the water, chomping madly. I just... I have no words for Gracie.
4. Additionally, I think the sandsharks have an averse reaction to tech. Though I didn't capture it onscreen, one of the sandsharks would continuously charge my cyclops. I had the "invisible" cheat on as well, so it couldn't have been me it was reacting to.
5. I may have discovered the god of spadefish. Check around 9:46
Warning! The quality SUCKS around 9 minutes in.
It doesn't get better for the duration of the video. I'm very sorry to everyone, but not sorry enough to record another 14 minutes of gameplay with those two insane creatures...
-EDIT-
Hope that all sandsharks are not insane
I was passing through another grassy plateaus, and I decided to give the sandsharks one more chance at being normal. This one I found just outside my cyclops behaved in a perfectly wonderful fashion, in my opinion. Faith in sandsharks restored!
(this video is much shorter, and actually has good quality. In the future I'll try not to upload vids past 9-10 minutes, because maybe that's what causes the horrendous quality-destruction)
That right there's a Gasopod nest. I also noticed Gasopods and Stalkers having small confrontations around the Kelp forest, too.
Hope that helps
It's awesome! Hopefully I can find more evidence of this in the future! By the way, I think you'd like to know that the next episode I'll be doing is the crabsquid.
That right there's a Gasopod nest. I also noticed Gasopods and Stalkers having small confrontations around the Kelp forest, too.
Hope that helps
It's awesome! Hopefully I can find more evidence of this in the future! By the way, I think you'd like to know that the next episode I'll be doing is the crabsquid.
That right there's a Gasopod nest. I also noticed Gasopods and Stalkers having small confrontations around the Kelp forest, too.
Hope that helps
It's awesome! Hopefully I can find more evidence of this in the future! By the way, I think you'd like to know that the next episode I'll be doing is the crabsquid.
Ok, for episode 3 I did the big-headed electronic terrors known as "Crabsquids." Let me say, I was not expecting the results I got. As per usual, I'll do the bullet points of things to watch out for in the vid (which is only 7 min this time),
1. If mesmers won the "surprisingly aggressive" award, then the crabsquids have got to win the "surprisingly chill" award. Throughout the video, most of what they do is just float around and make their signature echolocation calls. For such a large predator, this is rather unusual. The only time a crabsquid truly gets angry is around 2 minutes in, when it attacks a wandering warper. It then proceeds to slay a boomerang on its way back around the DGR base. Something to note about the boomerang is that the crabsquid does not eat it, rather it just kills it and leaves it there. In fact, for the entire video it would seem that the crabsquids didn't eat anything.
2. (FYI, the next two are more complaints than observations)
3. The crabsquids, for the entire video, didn't use their EMP blasts once. This is understandable, considering there was no technology around, but I would really like to see them use their signature ability to assist in hunting. This lack of ability use I'll coin as a "Crabsquid problem," where a creature has an ability that makes sense when it interacts with the player (e.g. crabsquid EMP, lava larvae power drain), but it never uses in its natural environment. The problem with this is that it's not very believable that an organism would evolve a feature that is useless in its natural habitat. As a suggestion, I could see the EMP being used to stun jellyrays, which brings us to my next complaint/observation...
4. The crabsquids never go after any of the jellyrays. In their data entry, it clearly states that the crabsquid's main food source are the jellyrays, but not once do either of the crabsquids attack one. It makes sense that they would eat them, given their enhanced eyesight, small mandibles, and tiny claws (all of which would be good for dismembering and consuming a small, jellylike organism). I understand that it would be difficult to implement this, because you would have to deal with the jellyray corpses and having the jellyrays respawn at a rate that wouldn't overflow the DGR, but I would really like to see it added. I could see the crabsquids using their EMP to stun prey so that they could eat it, as previously mentioned.
That's most of my observations. Here's the vid, and as always feel free to tell me anything I forgot to notice:
So, I decided to add a special feature to this episode, one that includes lots of violence! I decided to record a video in true @Jamezorg fasion, where I just make the crabsquids fight as many creatures as possible! The creatures for this episode were actually selected from the pool that crabsquids could naturally encounter, to keep some semblance of recording these creatures in their natural habitat. In the lineup we have river prowlers and mesmers from the LR, and blighters and shockers from the BK. Notably absent are warpers, which we already know the crabsquids hate, and blood/cave crawlers from the BK (which might have been difficult to do, considering crabsquids are pelagic and the crawlers are benthic. To note in this video:
1. the crabsquids remain admirably calm when presented with mesmers and blighters. In fact, little to no violence happened at all between the three of them. However, the crabsquids completely flip when they spot the spine eels. It would seem that the spine eels send the crabsquids into a fiery rage, as they then proceed to kill the blighters (and maybe some mesmers?) that they had ignored earlier. They also attack the shocker.
2. Towards the end of the video, the spine eels decide they've had enough of being slaughtered and pull a reaper leviathan out of there. Unfortunately for them, the crabsquids also have mastered the fine art of noclip. Due to this, I follow the main battle outside the cave at around 5:43.
At 2:29 on the first video, the Crabsquid does "bite" a Jellyray. You can see the cloud of blood.
Actually, it's a boomerang that the crabsquid bites. You can see the cloud of blood form around it, and it stops moving.
Can you do spineeels next plz? Or did you abandon this thread.
I haven't abandoned the thread! I'm merely out in the subnautican wilds collecting more data. I was actually planning on doing something else next, though I'll try to get to bleeders and spineels asap.
At 2:29 on the first video, the Crabsquid does "bite" a Jellyray. You can see the cloud of blood.
Actually, it's a boomerang that the crabsquid bites. You can see the cloud of blood form around it, and it stops moving.
Can you do spineeels next plz? Or did you abandon this thread.
I haven't abandoned the thread! I'm merely out in the subnautican wilds collecting more data. I was actually planning on doing something else next, though I'll try to get to bleeders and spineels asap.
For episode 4 I shifted my attention far shallower and far tamer than the crabsquids of the DGR. I studied gasopods. For setting up the location, I tried to chose a place that had gasopods but was also close to biomes with predators. This way, I could hopefully capture some gasopod interactions with more interesting creatures. As you will see in the video, however, I have to spawn in a few predators, seeing as none spawned near my chosen gasopods. * As usual, my notes on the scenario beforehand:
1. The gasopods are fairly tame, and also fairly stationary. For most of the video they don't stray out of the little hollow that they spawned in. I don't think anything needs to be done about it, gasopods seem like pretty stationary animals, but I just thought I should note it.
2. [SUGGESTION] The small hollow that the gasopods circle around in is full of life, but has relatively low significance for the gasopods. I can see how it would be an ideal habitat, seeing as it's sheltered from the rest of the environment, and has plenty of vegetation. However, since the gasopods are virtually stationary in that spot I would like to see something akin to @Jamezorg's "gasopod nest-" maybe a few eggs scattered along the bottom.
3. Predators make almost no moves to attack gasopods. At one point, a sandshark wanders relatively close to the two gasopods, but makes no move to attack them. This fits well with the environment, as predators would have been conditioned not to attack the gasopods
4. When confronted by predators (that I spawn in right next to them), the gasopods engage in "freak out mode" and buck around like crazed cattle (<-- which, if I remember correctly, was the inspiration for their bucking maneuvers). This seems very believable, and I liked it. However, they never expel any gas at the predators, even when a sandshark swims within one meter of one of the gasopods. This presents a sort of "Crabsquid problem," where the gasopods will gas the player but not any other animals in the environment. I think this could be easily fixed by just having the gasopods gas and buck when a predator enters a certain radius around them.
Without further ado, here's the video!
Warning: the quality is unexpectedly poor on this video, and I have no idea why. Not as bad as the sandshark one, but just kind of low-res.
*
In fact, as I was exploring the Kelp forests around the aurora, trying to find a suitable recording location, I was unable to find any stalkers. The two most plausable explanations for me are:
A) it was a bug, and no stalkers spawned
or
B ) The devs have made it so that the kelps forests near the radiation are more barren (in which case, kudos!)
Episode 5: Bleeders
Firstly, these little bleeders proved to be incredibly annoying to film! Due to: the bleeders' small size, the kelp, the schools of fish in the kelp, and other distractions, keeping the camera on just one of these little fellows proved to be a hassle. So, for this video, I end up following about 2-3 bleeders around. Preliminary notes, as per usual:
1. The bleeders prove to be... rather dull. In fact, due to their high level of annoyance to players attempting to cross the kelp, I expected these creatures to be the scourge of the creepvines. However, evidently, the Subnautican fauna have smartened up when dealing with these tick-like leeches. Throughout the video, not a single bleeder managed to attack/latch on to another animal. I'm fine with this actually, I don't think we need god-like bleeders killing everything in the Kelp Forests.
2. The bleeders appear to be getting bullied by boomerangs. For some reason, you can see multiple boomerangs in the video chasing after bleeders, and sometimes even catching them. The bleeders even flee from this supposed "assault." However, whenever a boomerang catches a bleeder, it merely bumps into it, then swims away. Either this is an incredibly odd boomerang game, or an incompletely-coded predatory behavior (or a bug). If it is meant to imply that boomerangs prey on bleeders, then I think that's a great idea! It's plausible, as boomerangs are one of the only prey species with conspicuous teeth. Additionally, it would help to flesh out the Subnautican food web other than just "all prey fish are eaten by all predator fish." In short: I'd love to see the boomerang as a low-level predator/omnivore, eating some bleeders!
Video might be low quality, and I experience LOTS of lag for the duration...
Bonus feature: Bleeder zerg rush!
After watching the bleeders fail so completely to eat anything in the above recording, I decided to give them a shot when the odds were stacked heavily in their favor. So, I created a new world, spawned in a bunch of bleeders, and gave them a stalker to chow on. Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that bleeders are still slower than stalkers, so in the end I gave the bleeders some help by freezing things with the stasis rifle. I also spawned a few other creatures to see how the bleeders would match up. I was curious to see if the bleeders would latch on to the animals (which the wiki said they did, I think) to suck their blood, or if they could just attack like normal. As for the latching on, I could find no evidence of this. As for the attacking, the animals I spawned in ended up eating the bleeders, mostly. If the bleeders do attack the animals in the video, I didn't notice... Anyways, enough talk! On with the video!
SUGGESTION:
Bleeders should latch onto their victims in the same way they latch on to the player, it's a bit odd to see them only rushing at other animals in the wild and not sucking their blood...
Episode 5: Bleeders
Firstly, these little bleeders proved to be incredibly annoying to film! Due to: the bleeders' small size, the kelp, the schools of fish in the kelp, and other distractions, keeping the camera on just one of these little fellows proved to be a hassle. So, for this video, I end up following about 2-3 bleeders around. Preliminary notes, as per usual:
1. The bleeders prove to be... rather dull. In fact, due to their high level of annoyance to players attempting to cross the kelp, I expected these creatures to be the scourge of the creepvines. However, evidently, the Subnautican fauna have smartened up when dealing with these tick-like leeches. Throughout the video, not a single bleeder managed to attack/latch on to another animal. I'm fine with this actually, I don't think we need god-like bleeders killing everything in the Kelp Forests.
2. The bleeders appear to be getting bullied by boomerangs. For some reason, you can see multiple boomerangs in the video chasing after bleeders, and sometimes even catching them. The bleeders even flee from this supposed "assault." However, whenever a boomerang catches a bleeder, it merely bumps into it, then swims away. Either this is an incredibly odd boomerang game, or an incompletely-coded predatory behavior (or a bug). If it is meant to imply that boomerangs prey on bleeders, then I think that's a great idea! It's plausible, as boomerangs are one of the only prey species with conspicuous teeth. Additionally, it would help to flesh out the Subnautican food web other than just "all prey fish are eaten by all predator fish." In short: I'd love to see the boomerang as a low-level predator/omnivore, eating some bleeders!
Video might be low quality, and I experience LOTS of lag for the duration...
Bonus feature: Bleeder zerg rush!
After watching the bleeders fail so completely to eat anything in the above recording, I decided to give them a shot when the odds were stacked heavily in their favor. So, I created a new world, spawned in a bunch of bleeders, and gave them a stalker to chow on. Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that bleeders are still slower than stalkers, so in the end I gave the bleeders some help by freezing things with the stasis rifle. I also spawned a few other creatures to see how the bleeders would match up. I was curious to see if the bleeders would latch on to the animals (which the wiki said they did, I think) to suck their blood, or if they could just attack like normal. As for the latching on, I could find no evidence of this. As for the attacking, the animals I spawned in ended up eating the bleeders, mostly. If the bleeders do attack the animals in the video, I didn't notice... Anyways, enough talk! On with the video!
I still stand by my position that Bleeders should come in swarms at night like misquetos, and gathering in groups around the lights of the Creepvine.
How should I even start? I feel like stalkers are among the first creatures that come to mind when people point to Subnautica's fluid and interactive environment. They were among the first to ever actually interact with their environment, outside the player: They collected scrap metal, and they even have a defined predator/prey relationship with the peepers of the safe shallows. They have complex interactions with the player, display the ability to learn... they're one of the only animals who are recognized as having a high intelligence in their data entry! When I realized that 4546B was actually a living environment, as opposed to a series of creatures who exist solely for the player, it was after watching a stalker. So, it is with great honor that I introduce this episode. The video is rather short and heavily lag-influenced, but I feel like I captured a lot of stalker dynamics. There's so much we still don't know about them (although hints would be nice, @devs...), so many behaviors that could be elaborately coded or mere flukes of nature. In fact, so much goes on in this video that I'll simply state obvious things as the pre-notes, and post my speculations in another comment. Anyways, it is my pleasure to present "A Day in the Life" episode 6: The Stalker!
1. As you will probably notice, in this video I happened upon a rather huge congregation of stalkers. About 4-5 of them, to be exact. This presents a wonderful chance at watching stalker-to-stalker relationship dynamics- both friendly and hostile! Firstly: The stalkers can be viewed grabbing metal, and stealing it from other stalker's nests and other stalkers directly! Secondly: Stalkers who have been slighted by metal thieves appear to chase after the perpetrators, often swimming after them and biting at them. Thidly: I shall now take this chance to decree that large groups of stalkers are known as "A gaggle of stalkers."
2. The stalkers appear to have distinctive nests, marked by the spot where they pile their metal. They appear to patrol loosely around these nests, occasionally leaving their patrol route to chase after more scrap, or a potential meal. It would appear that the nests only correlate to the stalkers's metal, and not to any eggs, as egg locations appear to be near to (at best) a stalker's nesting site
3. The stalkers (obviously) hunt fauna. In fact, it would appear that the stalker's favorite food is the peeper, as they can be seen chasing after peepers especially, even though other fauna (like hoverfish and boomerangs) are nearby (<-- this only further reinforces the predator-prey relationship and co-evolution of the stalkers and peepers!). The stalkers also appear to ignore gasopods, as one is nearby the stalker late into the video and it doesn't react.
4. Unrelated to the stalkers, but at around ~1:40 you can hear a crashfish swim out and detonate (I think)
If anyone has any speculations about stalker behavior after watching the video, feel free to comment! Speaking of said video, here it is:
Short speculation:
1. about the stalkers chasing each other, and stealing other metal: It appears that maybe the stalkers only chase after metal thieves if they see their metal being stolen. I am unsure if this motivates other stalkers to try to steal metal while the current nest owner is away, however...
Episode 5: Bleeders
Firstly, these little bleeders proved to be incredibly annoying to film! Due to: the bleeders' small size, the kelp, the schools of fish in the kelp, and other distractions, keeping the camera on just one of these little fellows proved to be a hassle. So, for this video, I end up following about 2-3 bleeders around. Preliminary notes, as per usual:
1. The bleeders prove to be... rather dull. In fact, due to their high level of annoyance to players attempting to cross the kelp, I expected these creatures to be the scourge of the creepvines. However, evidently, the Subnautican fauna have smartened up when dealing with these tick-like leeches. Throughout the video, not a single bleeder managed to attack/latch on to another animal. I'm fine with this actually, I don't think we need god-like bleeders killing everything in the Kelp Forests.
2. The bleeders appear to be getting bullied by boomerangs. For some reason, you can see multiple boomerangs in the video chasing after bleeders, and sometimes even catching them. The bleeders even flee from this supposed "assault." However, whenever a boomerang catches a bleeder, it merely bumps into it, then swims away. Either this is an incredibly odd boomerang game, or an incompletely-coded predatory behavior (or a bug). If it is meant to imply that boomerangs prey on bleeders, then I think that's a great idea! It's plausible, as boomerangs are one of the only prey species with conspicuous teeth. Additionally, it would help to flesh out the Subnautican food web other than just "all prey fish are eaten by all predator fish." In short: I'd love to see the boomerang as a low-level predator/omnivore, eating some bleeders!
Video might be low quality, and I experience LOTS of lag for the duration...
Bonus feature: Bleeder zerg rush!
After watching the bleeders fail so completely to eat anything in the above recording, I decided to give them a shot when the odds were stacked heavily in their favor. So, I created a new world, spawned in a bunch of bleeders, and gave them a stalker to chow on. Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that bleeders are still slower than stalkers, so in the end I gave the bleeders some help by freezing things with the stasis rifle. I also spawned a few other creatures to see how the bleeders would match up. I was curious to see if the bleeders would latch on to the animals (which the wiki said they did, I think) to suck their blood, or if they could just attack like normal. As for the latching on, I could find no evidence of this. As for the attacking, the animals I spawned in ended up eating the bleeders, mostly. If the bleeders do attack the animals in the video, I didn't notice... Anyways, enough talk! On with the video!
I've seen bleeders lach on to reefbaks, peepers, and most passive things. I will give you, they didn't latch onto predators but your results might be different then mine
Episode 5: Bleeders
Firstly, these little bleeders proved to be incredibly annoying to film! Due to: the bleeders' small size, the kelp, the schools of fish in the kelp, and other distractions, keeping the camera on just one of these little fellows proved to be a hassle. So, for this video, I end up following about 2-3 bleeders around. Preliminary notes, as per usual:
1. The bleeders prove to be... rather dull. In fact, due to their high level of annoyance to players attempting to cross the kelp, I expected these creatures to be the scourge of the creepvines. However, evidently, the Subnautican fauna have smartened up when dealing with these tick-like leeches. Throughout the video, not a single bleeder managed to attack/latch on to another animal. I'm fine with this actually, I don't think we need god-like bleeders killing everything in the Kelp Forests.
2. The bleeders appear to be getting bullied by boomerangs. For some reason, you can see multiple boomerangs in the video chasing after bleeders, and sometimes even catching them. The bleeders even flee from this supposed "assault." However, whenever a boomerang catches a bleeder, it merely bumps into it, then swims away. Either this is an incredibly odd boomerang game, or an incompletely-coded predatory behavior (or a bug). If it is meant to imply that boomerangs prey on bleeders, then I think that's a great idea! It's plausible, as boomerangs are one of the only prey species with conspicuous teeth. Additionally, it would help to flesh out the Subnautican food web other than just "all prey fish are eaten by all predator fish." In short: I'd love to see the boomerang as a low-level predator/omnivore, eating some bleeders!
Video might be low quality, and I experience LOTS of lag for the duration...
Bonus feature: Bleeder zerg rush!
After watching the bleeders fail so completely to eat anything in the above recording, I decided to give them a shot when the odds were stacked heavily in their favor. So, I created a new world, spawned in a bunch of bleeders, and gave them a stalker to chow on. Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that bleeders are still slower than stalkers, so in the end I gave the bleeders some help by freezing things with the stasis rifle. I also spawned a few other creatures to see how the bleeders would match up. I was curious to see if the bleeders would latch on to the animals (which the wiki said they did, I think) to suck their blood, or if they could just attack like normal. As for the latching on, I could find no evidence of this. As for the attacking, the animals I spawned in ended up eating the bleeders, mostly. If the bleeders do attack the animals in the video, I didn't notice... Anyways, enough talk! On with the video!
I've seen bleeders lach on to reefbaks, peepers, and most passive things. I will give you, they didn't latch onto predators but your results might be different then mine
I'd love to test this! If you have any screenshots, could you post them?
Episode 5: Bleeders
Firstly, these little bleeders proved to be incredibly annoying to film! Due to: the bleeders' small size, the kelp, the schools of fish in the kelp, and other distractions, keeping the camera on just one of these little fellows proved to be a hassle. So, for this video, I end up following about 2-3 bleeders around. Preliminary notes, as per usual:
1. The bleeders prove to be... rather dull. In fact, due to their high level of annoyance to players attempting to cross the kelp, I expected these creatures to be the scourge of the creepvines. However, evidently, the Subnautican fauna have smartened up when dealing with these tick-like leeches. Throughout the video, not a single bleeder managed to attack/latch on to another animal. I'm fine with this actually, I don't think we need god-like bleeders killing everything in the Kelp Forests.
2. The bleeders appear to be getting bullied by boomerangs. For some reason, you can see multiple boomerangs in the video chasing after bleeders, and sometimes even catching them. The bleeders even flee from this supposed "assault." However, whenever a boomerang catches a bleeder, it merely bumps into it, then swims away. Either this is an incredibly odd boomerang game, or an incompletely-coded predatory behavior (or a bug). If it is meant to imply that boomerangs prey on bleeders, then I think that's a great idea! It's plausible, as boomerangs are one of the only prey species with conspicuous teeth. Additionally, it would help to flesh out the Subnautican food web other than just "all prey fish are eaten by all predator fish." In short: I'd love to see the boomerang as a low-level predator/omnivore, eating some bleeders!
Video might be low quality, and I experience LOTS of lag for the duration...
Bonus feature: Bleeder zerg rush!
After watching the bleeders fail so completely to eat anything in the above recording, I decided to give them a shot when the odds were stacked heavily in their favor. So, I created a new world, spawned in a bunch of bleeders, and gave them a stalker to chow on. Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that bleeders are still slower than stalkers, so in the end I gave the bleeders some help by freezing things with the stasis rifle. I also spawned a few other creatures to see how the bleeders would match up. I was curious to see if the bleeders would latch on to the animals (which the wiki said they did, I think) to suck their blood, or if they could just attack like normal. As for the latching on, I could find no evidence of this. As for the attacking, the animals I spawned in ended up eating the bleeders, mostly. If the bleeders do attack the animals in the video, I didn't notice... Anyways, enough talk! On with the video!
I've seen bleeders lach on to reefbaks, peepers, and most passive things. I will give you, they didn't latch onto predators but your results might be different then mine
I'd love to test this! If you have any screenshots, could you post them?
Sadly, no. I play on Xbox and the screenshots I take will be on Xbox. But if you have Xbox, you can go to my page and look at them. My name is savoryraptor64 if you wanted to know.
Comments
I agree! an ambush predator that highly specialized (non-streamlined body, only pectoral fins for propulsion, bulky/heavy form) should have no business chasing its prey in a 50+ meter endurance exercise.
@subnauticambrian Same here, I LOVE MESMERS
I've done a few tests on mesmers before the most recent update, specifically regarding their predation. Though I saw them open their wings several times, I never actually saw one hypnotise a real fish for a prolonged period of time. People assure me, however, that they can do this.
Another thing I'd like to see is the leech-like creatures (the Bleeder and Lava Larva) latching on to other creatures in the enviroment. I could also see the Lava Larva attaching themselves to the Precursor Thermal Power Generator, Primary Research Facility, and those small tripod cubes because of all the power being generated.
Speaking of lava larva, in x box 1, do they suck the power out of you seamoth? I don't know
Yeah, about the leech creatures, I would love to see that kind of behavior implemented. It's pretty implausible that they just sit around the ALZ/ILZ waiting for something technological to turn up.
And I agree about the sandshark, mostly. I think that the sort of behavior in the video, where it detected the spadefish, switched into "sandcloud" mode and finally burst from the ground to eat it would work well. It could make sandshark encounters fairer, as you would have some warning from the sand clouds that they were about to be brutally mauled. Additionally, it would sort of fit with the sandshark trying to get as close to the prey as possible before ambushing.
I also think that the slow roaming behavior it displayed, where it cruised around under the sand with just its fin sticking out, was really cool, so I'd like that better over them being stationary. That fin could be some kind of sensory organ, after all... (plus I love how "jaws" like it is
Some additional thoughts on the mesmer:
What about that whole "Mesmers can hypnotise predators much larger than themselves, eating them alive" bit? I've only ever seen mesmers go after small fauna, and even then, when they kill the fish the corpse just remains floating. (<--I'm not sure if this has been fixed and corpses disappear once mesmers "eat" them). However, I would love to see mesmer predation made more accurate to its description. Maybe it retaliate when bigger fauna attack it (I'm thinking "mid-level" predators like the size of the bone shark, and maybe it could attack other fauna like cave crawlers that are just slightly bigger than catchable fish). Once it successfully hypnotises the would-be predator, it could maybe take a bite out of it- or better yet, it could pull a "finding nemo" and swallow the larger predator whole.
-EDIT-
Just did a size comparison in-game, the mesmer is barely as big as a boomerang. There's no way it could eat an entire predator the size of a boneshark! My bad, everyone. I would like to see mesmers eat the bodies of most of their victims, however. As of right now, the mesmer just kind of "kills" them, and leaves a corpse. I think it would be neat to see mesmers actually predate some fish, and if the fish are bigger than it then maybe see a slightly bloated mesmer swimming around more slowly. After all, in the wild, fish eat other fish of greater size than them...
Ok, so I've decided to finally off again/on again start studying the creature behaviors. I figured the best way to do that is to spend some time documenting them in their natural habitat. So, I slapped on creative, put on invisible, and watched away. Yes, I know that this eliminates all the fun things like creature interactions with players (reapers grabbing you, mesmers hypnotising you, etc.). I'm sorry, I was just too lazy to do that. So, you'll just have to make do watching the creatures slaughter each other instead of me.
And I do mean slaughter. For my first episode, I did the mesmer. MAN, are those things ravenous! I've got two videos down below, and since they both add up to over 10 minutes, I'll explain in short some key details:
1. Mesmers eat. A LOT. Like, really, just the one must have gone through an entire boomerang shoal in minutes. Dear devs, unless the mesmer has the metabolism of a god, please have them "cool down" to digest after they eat something.
2. Mesmers mostly hypnotize the same kind of fish. In this video, almost everything I saw them hypnotize was boomerangs. Towards the very end of the video, you see it start to hypnotize something- I didn't catch it on camera, but it was the one time the mesmer ate an eyeye. The second video is me desparatly trying to recreate the eyeye-eating (which I finally did, check the end of the 2nd vid).
3. Mesmers have two kinds of attacks, the hypnosis one and the one that comes (like john cena) outta nowhere. Often times, a mesmer would swim next to a boomerang, and then POW! Flash of blood, boomerang is suddenly dead. No sign of movement from the mesmer. I don't know, maybe they have death-psychic powers.
4. Mesmers are wasteful. Every time they would eat a boomerang, they would leave behind the corpse. Towards the end, and in the second vid, you can see it eat an eyeye. This was the only time the mesmer actually ate a fish, as nothing was left but blood after it successfully ate the eyeye. Dear devs: I would love to see mesmers eat these bigger kinds of fish like boomerangs, and would even love to see a bloated mesmer swimming lethargically around after a meal that was larger than itself! It would really add to the world, in my opinion.
5. Mesmers do, in fact, aggressively defend themselves from large predators (just like their scan card says they do! Yay, thanks devs!) Towards the middle of the second video, I decide to have a mesmer fight club and spawn in a boneshark. Sure enough, the mesmer attacks the boneshark (after a weird mutual-attack-ballet?), and sends it swimming with its tail between its... wait, scratch that euphemism. I spawned an ampeel, which proceeded to fight with the mesmer. I lost track of the mesmer on that second fight, so I spawned in another ampeel and mesmer to fight. The mesmer was thoroughly destroyed, though the first mesmer came back (from the dead?!) to avenge his fallen comrade.
First, 9 minute vid:
-EDIT-
I noticed a few more things, watching through a second time:
1. the mesmer actually does eat a hoopfish and an eyeye early in the video, but it's kind of hard to notice
2. At around 4:20, the mesmer blazes it chases several fish around, but the fish actually swim away and the mesmer gives up.
-EDIT AGAIN-
So, I was going to record the second video in "day in the life," but on my way there I found mesmers using their hypnosis ability to attack, and subsequently chase away, larger fauna. Since I didn't have any footage of that yet, here you go:
Oh, and does anyone want another reason the devs are amazing? Do you all know how the cyclops just wouldn't right itself after bumping something, and would be permenantly left at an angle once it had collided with terrain? You know, the thing that makes your eye go all twitchy? Well... I bumped my cyclops, and lo and behold it righted itself! (some of you may have known about this before, it may have been in the game for a long time. The point is I'm just noticing it now, so YAY!)
Sandsharks!
For the second episode, I watched some sandsharks. Honestly, I'm speechless. After 14 minutes of observation, I can conclude that sandsharks are officially insane. Not the good insane, either. The sort of "honestly what the hell do you think you're doing" insane. There's way too much stuff in that video that just doesn't add up, so I'll just make a few quick comments...
1. I looked at two sandsharks for this observation, so I pray that there are others out there who are different than these two. I shall name them "Samantha" and "Gracie" for the duration of these notes.
2. Specimen one, "Samantha," was actually the same sandshark from the first video. Watching her in her natural habitat, she was... lethargic, to put it kindly. At times, she barely qualified over "vegetative state" (this isn't to say that I entirely mind this, after all, ambush predators should be slow). I think she caught... 1 spadefish over the course of her observation? In fact, of the two, I think she was the more model sandshark. Stayed in the sand, generally chillaxed until she needed to hunt some poor, unsuspecting prey fish.
3. Specimen two, "Gracie," was a mess. I start her observation at around 4:30, if you want to watch. Gracie is by far the more insane of the two specimens. She bugged out and swam all the way to the surface, seemingly could not figure out how to chill under the sand, and engaged in prolonged and inconclusive assaults on biters and spadefish. More than once, she went into full freak out mode (at nothing), and proceeded to charge through the water, chomping madly. I just... I have no words for Gracie.
4. Additionally, I think the sandsharks have an averse reaction to tech. Though I didn't capture it onscreen, one of the sandsharks would continuously charge my cyclops. I had the "invisible" cheat on as well, so it couldn't have been me it was reacting to.
5. I may have discovered the god of spadefish. Check around 9:46
Warning! The quality SUCKS around 9 minutes in.
It doesn't get better for the duration of the video. I'm very sorry to everyone, but not sorry enough to record another 14 minutes of gameplay with those two insane creatures...
-EDIT-
Hope that all sandsharks are not insane
I was passing through another grassy plateaus, and I decided to give the sandsharks one more chance at being normal. This one I found just outside my cyclops behaved in a perfectly wonderful fashion, in my opinion. Faith in sandsharks restored!
(this video is much shorter, and actually has good quality. In the future I'll try not to upload vids past 9-10 minutes, because maybe that's what causes the horrendous quality-destruction)
I decided to record video of a small herbivore in its natural habitat
It's literally just a hoverfish swimming around for 5 minutes
That right there's a Gasopod nest. I also noticed Gasopods and Stalkers having small confrontations around the Kelp forest, too.
Hope that helps
It's awesome! Hopefully I can find more evidence of this in the future! By the way, I think you'd like to know that the next episode I'll be doing is the crabsquid.
Oh my god, I can't wait...
After crabsquids do bleeders
Ok, for episode 3 I did the big-headed electronic terrors known as "Crabsquids." Let me say, I was not expecting the results I got. As per usual, I'll do the bullet points of things to watch out for in the vid (which is only 7 min this time),
1. If mesmers won the "surprisingly aggressive" award, then the crabsquids have got to win the "surprisingly chill" award. Throughout the video, most of what they do is just float around and make their signature echolocation calls. For such a large predator, this is rather unusual. The only time a crabsquid truly gets angry is around 2 minutes in, when it attacks a wandering warper. It then proceeds to slay a boomerang on its way back around the DGR base. Something to note about the boomerang is that the crabsquid does not eat it, rather it just kills it and leaves it there. In fact, for the entire video it would seem that the crabsquids didn't eat anything.
2. (FYI, the next two are more complaints than observations)
3. The crabsquids, for the entire video, didn't use their EMP blasts once. This is understandable, considering there was no technology around, but I would really like to see them use their signature ability to assist in hunting. This lack of ability use I'll coin as a "Crabsquid problem," where a creature has an ability that makes sense when it interacts with the player (e.g. crabsquid EMP, lava larvae power drain), but it never uses in its natural environment. The problem with this is that it's not very believable that an organism would evolve a feature that is useless in its natural habitat. As a suggestion, I could see the EMP being used to stun jellyrays, which brings us to my next complaint/observation...
4. The crabsquids never go after any of the jellyrays. In their data entry, it clearly states that the crabsquid's main food source are the jellyrays, but not once do either of the crabsquids attack one. It makes sense that they would eat them, given their enhanced eyesight, small mandibles, and tiny claws (all of which would be good for dismembering and consuming a small, jellylike organism). I understand that it would be difficult to implement this, because you would have to deal with the jellyray corpses and having the jellyrays respawn at a rate that wouldn't overflow the DGR, but I would really like to see it added. I could see the crabsquids using their EMP to stun prey so that they could eat it, as previously mentioned.
That's most of my observations. Here's the vid, and as always feel free to tell me anything I forgot to notice:
So, I decided to add a special feature to this episode, one that includes lots of violence! I decided to record a video in true @Jamezorg fasion, where I just make the crabsquids fight as many creatures as possible! The creatures for this episode were actually selected from the pool that crabsquids could naturally encounter, to keep some semblance of recording these creatures in their natural habitat. In the lineup we have river prowlers and mesmers from the LR, and blighters and shockers from the BK. Notably absent are warpers, which we already know the crabsquids hate, and blood/cave crawlers from the BK (which might have been difficult to do, considering crabsquids are pelagic and the crawlers are benthic. To note in this video:
1. the crabsquids remain admirably calm when presented with mesmers and blighters. In fact, little to no violence happened at all between the three of them. However, the crabsquids completely flip when they spot the spine eels. It would seem that the spine eels send the crabsquids into a fiery rage, as they then proceed to kill the blighters (and maybe some mesmers?) that they had ignored earlier. They also attack the shocker.
2. Towards the end of the video, the spine eels decide they've had enough of being slaughtered and pull a reaper leviathan out of there. Unfortunately for them, the crabsquids also have mastered the fine art of noclip. Due to this, I follow the main battle outside the cave at around 5:43.
without further ado, here it is!
Actually, it's a boomerang that the crabsquid bites. You can see the cloud of blood form around it, and it stops moving.
Can you do spineeels next plz? Or did you abandon this thread.
I haven't abandoned the thread! I'm merely out in the subnautican wilds collecting more data. I was actually planning on doing something else next, though I'll try to get to bleeders and spineels asap.
Ok son ok... but remember I am unstoppable!!!
For episode 4 I shifted my attention far shallower and far tamer than the crabsquids of the DGR. I studied gasopods. For setting up the location, I tried to chose a place that had gasopods but was also close to biomes with predators. This way, I could hopefully capture some gasopod interactions with more interesting creatures. As you will see in the video, however, I have to spawn in a few predators, seeing as none spawned near my chosen gasopods. * As usual, my notes on the scenario beforehand:
1. The gasopods are fairly tame, and also fairly stationary. For most of the video they don't stray out of the little hollow that they spawned in. I don't think anything needs to be done about it, gasopods seem like pretty stationary animals, but I just thought I should note it.
2. [SUGGESTION] The small hollow that the gasopods circle around in is full of life, but has relatively low significance for the gasopods. I can see how it would be an ideal habitat, seeing as it's sheltered from the rest of the environment, and has plenty of vegetation. However, since the gasopods are virtually stationary in that spot I would like to see something akin to @Jamezorg's "gasopod nest-" maybe a few eggs scattered along the bottom.
3. Predators make almost no moves to attack gasopods. At one point, a sandshark wanders relatively close to the two gasopods, but makes no move to attack them. This fits well with the environment, as predators would have been conditioned not to attack the gasopods
4. When confronted by predators (that I spawn in right next to them), the gasopods engage in "freak out mode" and buck around like crazed cattle (<-- which, if I remember correctly, was the inspiration for their bucking maneuvers). This seems very believable, and I liked it. However, they never expel any gas at the predators, even when a sandshark swims within one meter of one of the gasopods. This presents a sort of "Crabsquid problem," where the gasopods will gas the player but not any other animals in the environment. I think this could be easily fixed by just having the gasopods gas and buck when a predator enters a certain radius around them.
Without further ado, here's the video!
Warning: the quality is unexpectedly poor on this video, and I have no idea why. Not as bad as the sandshark one, but just kind of low-res.
*
In fact, as I was exploring the Kelp forests around the aurora, trying to find a suitable recording location, I was unable to find any stalkers. The two most plausable explanations for me are:
A) it was a bug, and no stalkers spawned
or
B ) The devs have made it so that the kelps forests near the radiation are more barren (in which case, kudos!)
Firstly, these little bleeders proved to be incredibly annoying to film! Due to: the bleeders' small size, the kelp, the schools of fish in the kelp, and other distractions, keeping the camera on just one of these little fellows proved to be a hassle. So, for this video, I end up following about 2-3 bleeders around. Preliminary notes, as per usual:
1. The bleeders prove to be... rather dull. In fact, due to their high level of annoyance to players attempting to cross the kelp, I expected these creatures to be the scourge of the creepvines. However, evidently, the Subnautican fauna have smartened up when dealing with these tick-like leeches. Throughout the video, not a single bleeder managed to attack/latch on to another animal. I'm fine with this actually, I don't think we need god-like bleeders killing everything in the Kelp Forests.
2. The bleeders appear to be getting bullied by boomerangs. For some reason, you can see multiple boomerangs in the video chasing after bleeders, and sometimes even catching them. The bleeders even flee from this supposed "assault." However, whenever a boomerang catches a bleeder, it merely bumps into it, then swims away. Either this is an incredibly odd boomerang game, or an incompletely-coded predatory behavior (or a bug). If it is meant to imply that boomerangs prey on bleeders, then I think that's a great idea! It's plausible, as boomerangs are one of the only prey species with conspicuous teeth. Additionally, it would help to flesh out the Subnautican food web other than just "all prey fish are eaten by all predator fish." In short: I'd love to see the boomerang as a low-level predator/omnivore, eating some bleeders!
Video might be low quality, and I experience LOTS of lag for the duration...
Bonus feature: Bleeder zerg rush!
After watching the bleeders fail so completely to eat anything in the above recording, I decided to give them a shot when the odds were stacked heavily in their favor. So, I created a new world, spawned in a bunch of bleeders, and gave them a stalker to chow on. Unfortunately, that didn't change the fact that bleeders are still slower than stalkers, so in the end I gave the bleeders some help by freezing things with the stasis rifle. I also spawned a few other creatures to see how the bleeders would match up. I was curious to see if the bleeders would latch on to the animals (which the wiki said they did, I think) to suck their blood, or if they could just attack like normal. As for the latching on, I could find no evidence of this. As for the attacking, the animals I spawned in ended up eating the bleeders, mostly. If the bleeders do attack the animals in the video, I didn't notice... Anyways, enough talk! On with the video!
SUGGESTION:
Bleeders should latch onto their victims in the same way they latch on to the player, it's a bit odd to see them only rushing at other animals in the wild and not sucking their blood...
I still stand by my position that Bleeders should come in swarms at night like misquetos, and gathering in groups around the lights of the Creepvine.
How should I even start? I feel like stalkers are among the first creatures that come to mind when people point to Subnautica's fluid and interactive environment. They were among the first to ever actually interact with their environment, outside the player: They collected scrap metal, and they even have a defined predator/prey relationship with the peepers of the safe shallows. They have complex interactions with the player, display the ability to learn... they're one of the only animals who are recognized as having a high intelligence in their data entry! When I realized that 4546B was actually a living environment, as opposed to a series of creatures who exist solely for the player, it was after watching a stalker. So, it is with great honor that I introduce this episode. The video is rather short and heavily lag-influenced, but I feel like I captured a lot of stalker dynamics. There's so much we still don't know about them (although hints would be nice, @devs...), so many behaviors that could be elaborately coded or mere flukes of nature. In fact, so much goes on in this video that I'll simply state obvious things as the pre-notes, and post my speculations in another comment. Anyways, it is my pleasure to present "A Day in the Life" episode 6: The Stalker!
1. As you will probably notice, in this video I happened upon a rather huge congregation of stalkers. About 4-5 of them, to be exact. This presents a wonderful chance at watching stalker-to-stalker relationship dynamics- both friendly and hostile! Firstly: The stalkers can be viewed grabbing metal, and stealing it from other stalker's nests and other stalkers directly! Secondly: Stalkers who have been slighted by metal thieves appear to chase after the perpetrators, often swimming after them and biting at them. Thidly: I shall now take this chance to decree that large groups of stalkers are known as "A gaggle of stalkers."
2. The stalkers appear to have distinctive nests, marked by the spot where they pile their metal. They appear to patrol loosely around these nests, occasionally leaving their patrol route to chase after more scrap, or a potential meal. It would appear that the nests only correlate to the stalkers's metal, and not to any eggs, as egg locations appear to be near to (at best) a stalker's nesting site
3. The stalkers (obviously) hunt fauna. In fact, it would appear that the stalker's favorite food is the peeper, as they can be seen chasing after peepers especially, even though other fauna (like hoverfish and boomerangs) are nearby (<-- this only further reinforces the predator-prey relationship and co-evolution of the stalkers and peepers!). The stalkers also appear to ignore gasopods, as one is nearby the stalker late into the video and it doesn't react.
4. Unrelated to the stalkers, but at around ~1:40 you can hear a crashfish swim out and detonate (I think)
If anyone has any speculations about stalker behavior after watching the video, feel free to comment! Speaking of said video, here it is:
Short speculation:
I've seen bleeders lach on to reefbaks, peepers, and most passive things. I will give you, they didn't latch onto predators but your results might be different then mine
I'd love to test this! If you have any screenshots, could you post them?
Sadly, no. I play on Xbox and the screenshots I take will be on Xbox. But if you have Xbox, you can go to my page and look at them. My name is savoryraptor64 if you wanted to know.