The currious case of Robbers

[Ara D.]

I encountered robbers one winter night while traveling. I was leading several pack animals and had three dogs with me. While trying to flee I was able to spot three robbers. A fight broke out between us, before it started I dropped most of my things to lower my penalty. I managed to severely wounded one before I was surrounded and knocked out. I woke up several wilderness tiles away, without my pack animals or dogs. While back tracking to the scene of the assault I found my dogs. When I arrived I found three dead robbers, my things, and no tracks of a surviver.  So I ask/suggest who carried me away, how are my dogs not dead if I lost and was taken, and if my dogs did finish them off should I not wake up at the spot where I fell unconscious? Also if I was a robber I would take the bulls or at least make one into steak dinner.

[Saiko Kila]

Robbers didn't take your bulls? Strange I say, because when I was travelling with 3x dogs, 2x bovines and 2x pigs (in v3.52), they did take ALL lashed animals (the dogs were unleashed before fight, and I've found them later).

I'm also curious about who dragged you, but from my experience it's rare if there are only three robbers. Usually there are 5 or 6. Sometimes it looks as if there are two, I kill them with arrows, but usually they are just a vanguard it seems, the others being far away enough to be disinterested.

The dogs may be not dead, because they ran away temporarily, or were unconscious and left to die. But it may be they are treated as a non-threat by AI, once you are down.

Though I think it may be the algorithm doesn't take all circumstances into consideration, and always drops the character away, even if it is the sole survivor. By the way, the things dropped may be protected partially from taking. Also although they took all my animals in my case, they left some masterwork items I had in inventory (like a handaxe) and other stuff.

Additionally there may be some roleplaying as an explanation - that it is the character, wounded and delirious, who just wandered away before regaining his senses. The text doesn't say that the character is dropped, it says "You come to your senses in unfamiliar surroundings".

[PALU]

I had a case with my previous character where the character was attacking a robber band (as part of a robber quest) with a significant number of henchmen. One robber managed to hit my character with an arrow, resulting in immediate feinting (the character fainted a lot, eventually fatally). Despite not even being physically reachable (a henchman was blocking the only access tile) my character was carried away and dumped. Stupidly, I had the character return to the robber location (I think some spare gear was picked up on the way), zoomed in to the same tile, and everyone was frozen in the locations they were in when my character fainted. The fighting resumed, and that fight was eventually won. This happened before the bug that prevented you from ordering henchmen to attack targets was fixed.

However, if you approached the site of the battle zoomed in, it might be that the fight resumed while you were moving towards the area (although I think you ought to have heard sounds of fighting when approaching), with the dogs eliminating the remaining robbers.

The number of robbers seems to be random in the range 3-6. I had a case of more than that once (9?), but I think I managed to draw in a second robber band in an ongoing fight at that time (this happened when far too many robber bands were spawned, but that bug has since been fixed).

Anyway, this is a curious case...

[Ara D.]

Well I'm not sure what the game considers taking, but my bulls were unleashed thankfully they did not wander too far and it was on a mire edge so I had some open ground to track on. I was able to recover them all after two days of searching. As to the more than 3 robbers I checked for tracks of survivors for two days and intermittently over a couple of days more, the site was between a hunt camp of mine and an owl village I was trading at, but I never did find fresh tracks in the area.

[Saiko Kila]

I once camped in a place where I killed two robbers, and no one was pestering me, so maybe there are so low number bands sometimes. Anyway I suppose you could be dragged by a cat, or even forest spirits, there could be no other survivors.

I'm not sure the animals are taken, maybe the ropes are taken, because the animals often can be found nearby.

[Tom H]

Thank you all for re-awakening my fears of dying to some event I cannot do a damned thing about...hehe!

[Ara D.]

I was lucky. The thing I should have done in that situation to be safe would have been to attack with the dogs and run like hell.

[PALU]

@Tom H: It's trivially simple to avoid getting killed by robbers: just yield. They'll take your valuable stuff and tell you to run. Sure, it stings, but you can definitely save your hide (you may presumably be unlucky enough to be robbed in the coldest of winters, lose your best clothes, and then freeze to death because you fail to make a fire, but you need to be very unlucky for that).

Also, it's rather unusual to die from robber encounters. Even if you kill some of them, they just beat you severely and then dump you somewhere (after taking your stuff, of course). Now, dragging yourself back to your homestead with one or more broken limbs and then wait for them to heal is no fun, but generally not life threatening. It's also possible to receive a fatal blow in any fight, including against robbers.

In terms or mortal danger, though, robbers are well below wolves, bears, or Njerps on the scale.