Things I Wish I Knew When I Joined

Wolvden Beginner's Guide - offsite access here

~things I wish I knew when I joined~

these things are MOSTLY my opinions and based on my experiences - others may have different views

TL;DR version is at the end

the currency is silver [pine]cones and gold [pine]cones aka sc and gc

MAJOR DIFFERENCES BETWEEN LIODEN & WOLVDEN

• stats are extremely important

• you can have a female lead
• when your lead wolf levels up, their HP refills but energy does not

• pupsitters protect differently & do not guarantee pups to survive unless they are at 100% survival
• no cub or adol training
• lucky feet do not guarantee a win (enemies are much tougher than on LD too)

• you can not fight for territory - most of it must be bought with sc

• FAPA - feed all, play all requires you to have amusement items to use (unlike lioden where you can just play with everyone)

• auto-nesting does not provide the nesting materials (unlike lioden which includes nests) • nesting requires 10 individual ITEMS (vs 6 USES on lioden)

do not use the word free when you want to give stuff away - mods start yelling/issuing warnings.. since there is no transfer system at the moment, use the word refunded (this is where you add 1sc to a trade with your gift & then set a 1sc buyout)

• when creating your lead wolf, a female lead has it's advantages - when you retire your lead, explored biomes are reset and you start from scratch. also, the special custom bases that will be exclusive later on (howlite, honeydew, etc) are only available for your first/lead wolf, not your second starter.  if you are worried about gaining stats, scouts gain stats almost at the same rate as lead wolves (personally, I feel like they have the potential to gain more stats as lead wolves have a very difficult time gaining stats once they reach level 20 - stats then come from random battles whereas scouts can pick up 0-2 stats every 4hrs or so from rescouting areas). you can not sex change your lead wolf (however any other not bred wolves of any age can be sex changed). personally, if I had it all to do over again, I would have started with 2 female wolves.

• once you complete Tala's breeding quest/tutorial, you do NOT have to set a male immediately - I advise waiting, there will be plenty of better looking, higher started males for sale or free in the forums, trading center, or discords - any adult male can be set as your breeding male without needing to pay gc to retire a breeding male (25gc + 25gc to replace your male immediately and bypassing the 30 day cooldown + 20gc to retire your lead wolf IF your breeding male is your lead)

• stats are important. if you play lioden, they really don't matter there. in wolvden, they do. if you want to explore all biomes, you will need a scout with 101 strength and one with 101 wisdom (they can be the same wolf but you are allowed 2 scouts) - picking wolves with high stats in these categories will help you in the long run. for ideal hunting, you will need 1 stalker with high smarts and wisdom, 3 chasers with high agility and speed, and a finisher with high strength. for you herbalist, they need high wisdom and smarts (at present time, they do not actually affect things but since WD has said it, it is safe to assume this will matter eventually). stats do not matter for pupsitters.

• when starting out, IMO/IME it is important to get a team of 5 hunters as soon as possible. hunters need compatible personalities to work well together. aggressive and friends wolves fight. romantic and stoic wolves fight. aggressive works well with romantic or stoic and friendly works well with romantic or stoic. clashing personalities may bicker instead of hunt causing you to lose your prey. here is a chart I recommend saving for future use.  each time you edit your hunting team, it affects their synergy. you want to set a team of 5 as soon as possible, ideally with one edit to your party. each edit reduces approximately 10 to 14% synergy. hunting is hard. like ridiculously hard those first few days especially.. they will fail most hunts, but as they gain proficiency and learn to work as a team, it gets better.. stick to critter trails, you can then progress to small, medium and large trails.. I recommend NOT moving from the 3 starter biomes until your hunting party of 5 is at least 80% synergy. biome difficulty affects your hunting the most.

• you get 4 territory for free, and your 5th space is unlocked with an achievement - slot 6 costs 130sc and each additional space adds 25sc to the cost of the slot before - I recommend getting to 8 as quickly as possible and a 9th before day 5 (5 hunters, 2 scouts, and 1 pupsitter - herbalist will unlock on day 5 at rollover). this means you need to earn 465sc for the first 4 + 205sc for the 9th slot

• that's a lot of sc, how do I earn it?

 - do your daily quest from the snake

 - sell stuff to the raccoon - he has 200sc a day to spend and it rolls over to the next day any that you do not use..  specifically sell him meat chunks, eggs, dead fish, and small carcasses such as stoats, rats and weasels that the raccoon pays 3sc per use.. 

 - for other stuff, selling it on the trading center is more profitable, feathers sell for 5sc minimum, herbs sell for 10-15sc or more each (or save these, you will need them starting day 5), carcasses sell for 1gc or 15-20sc+each, amusement items will sell for 3-5sc or more per use

 - you can also find sc randomly in explore and from battles

• pupsitters.. if you're coming from lioden, pupsitters work in a totally different way than broodmothers do. pupsitters have a limited amount of protect to give. all wolves start out at 60% protection and can watch up to 10 pups - this is split between the pups. a pupsitter watching 1 pup can offer 60% protection to it, watching 2 pups gives each pup 30% protection, up to 10 pups with each receiving only a 6% survival boost.  unless a pup has a 100% survival rating, it can die whether it is protected or not. to boost survival, while the pups are nursing, keep mom fed and happy (100%) and once weaned, keep the pup 100% fed and happy - these actions add 7% survival to each pup each rollover

• exploring/battling/leveling up.. in the beginning especially, you dont want to battle anything more than 2 level above you. you won't win and it will waste energy and HP. as you level up, you do not want to waste HP on stuff more than a couple levels below you. the xp gain is not worth the HP you lose. bears and badgers are tough to fight even at the same level or lower than you - unless you have a snake quest, I advise avoiding them.. lucky feet IMPROVE your odds but do not guarantee a win against enemies 

• caves - you want to at least get a second cave.. if your wolves get sick with a contagious illness and you cant heal them before rollover, you need to be able to isolate them and put them alone in a cave. your lead and unsorted wolves can wander into ANY cave so they are not safe.

• befriending wolves in explore is different than on lioden - even if you have 10 green arrows, it doesnt guarantee you will friend them. the first move is always random - once you make a move, the wolf's personality will be revealed in the top right hand corner. once this is done, you can use this guide to help friend the wolf. based on their personality type, pick the move that will give you the most green (+4-6). do the same with your next move. now it will tell you whether or not you have friended them. when your lead reaches level 10, you can start finding chased wolves (designated by a purple comet symbol) and at level 15, you can find wolves with exclusive Mark's (designated by 1 to 5 stars, showing you how many special items that wolf has)

• illnesses.. Your pack is immune until your 5th rollover.  There’s a lot of illnesses and if you have a large pack, expect to get multiple illnesses a day.  if you explore lots, cure your lead with a Cure For All so they are immune for 3 rollovers.  Regular cures make them immune for 1 rollover/the rest of the day.  My personal strategy is to not heal minor illnesses (ticks, open wounds, constipation, cystitis, diarrhea, and tapeworms) - and to heal lethal or contagious illnesses immediately.  Wolves at this point can only have 1 illness at a time.  I use healing salves to boost their HP so they can still hunt/scout/breed and HP refills when you level up.  “Wolves that have an illness that is not lethal will not die if they’re at 0 HP. Additionally, sickness, hunger, and low mood will not kill a lead wolf or cause a breeding male to die or run away. It will only affect ordinary pack members. The only way a lead wolf or breeding male can die is through retirement or old age.” - Grouse House Illness/Herbalism Guide Lethal illnesses are Distemper, Heatstroke, Infection, Poison, and Pox (puppies only) - you should heal these IMMEDIATELY

• grouse house guides are amazing! I recommend subscribing to them all for easy access, especially Diligent Dailies, Explore Encounters, and the Illness Guide

TL;DR (personal recommendations - thing I would have done differently)
-  i would create 2 females wolves for my starters

-  stats are super important

-  do not set a breeding male after the tutorial/Tala’s quest (when you find a nice adult one, I would set them as a scout as well as your breeding male)

-  pupsitter protection is split between the number of pups they have

-  wolvden is much harder - the first few days you will struggle for sc but it gets easier

-  the raccoon is a scammer & for most things, you are better off to sell on the trading center

reserved for future use

reserved for future use

reserved for future use

reserved for future use

Rotting corpses can be turned into bones. Because of this if you're having trouble finding amusement items you might be better off not selling corpses to the raccoon and rather converting them to bones once they rot. Bones converted like this will have half the uses of the original item.

Why are female wolves better to start with than male? It doesn't really seem to explain?

That is a personal preference, mainly because if you want to retire your breeding male early, you are going to have to pay extra gc to retire your lead as well as start over scouting biomes again