Hello is anyone else experiencing a great hold up caused by this?

I can use every charge and not encounter a single wild wolf. Then I'm left waiting for them to refill.

If I let the auto explore feature cook it does 20 searches before reaching max. Generating a handful of pebbles. (Which who needs them?)

I really got excited by the update and wanted to get back into the grind only to find that its not possible anymore.

How are others feeling about this?

PS to add: Really wish I had finished my campaign achievements T-T

For me, ive oddly enough been encountering wild wolves more frequently since the update, though the small amount of pebbles is rather annoying.. Sure i dont mind it but i wish it would go higher. I also was hoping that the auto explore would also give EXP but it doesn't.

I am not experiencing any issues, though it sounds like occasionally it can be hard to hit the 10 Explore Kills activity. Seems like that could be solved by increasing battle encounters, since they were decreased in one of the earliest pushes to curb botting (because they had the highest rewards). The new system works very smoothly if you rotate between activities and campaigning, which I think is part of the point 💖

Where are you auto-exploring? I know some regions provide knucklebones in auto-explore! You can also get knucklebones from leveling up wolves to release, which is even faster in NG+ (and increases with level of NG+) -- the storylines also give big chunks of XP at once! As well as using your wolves in Gauntlet, equipping XP-based companions, and using them in Hunting, all of which can level them faster to help you farm bones if WW are the primary play you are looking for.

Edit to add: My campaign achievements are complete, but I've seen others say that they are advancing certain campaign achievements with Auto-Explore, so hopefully that makes your life easier in the long run as you can continue to advance without the backbreaking grind 💖 I'm sure we'll get some tweaks to help make our advancement on Achievement/Activities/Seasonal Activities a little easier on the battle-related side, and I'd have to imagine sometime this month before Goldsea Seasonal!

Looks like maybe they drop everywhere? I can confirm KB encountered in Blackwater Pines, Bloodmoon Grove, and the Black Hills.

Blackwater Pines is where we saw 6KB in one go (apparently with one star!!).

It seems like auto-explore is meant to make Campaign a little more similar to other professions, where you play other areas of the site and when you come back there's some progress, rather than something to log off and come back overnight to riches and treasure. So the rewards are generally going to be low but consistent, although I believe they still increase with NG+ level/stars (not sure exactly how that balance is yet, we're all still playtesting!), so they reward you for checking back into campaign as you play the entire gameplay loop.

Edit to add: The Auto-Explore Cap also increases, I can't remember whether by stars or NG+ level or both. Mine is currently 20, it may keep increasing depending on whether its tied to NG+ or stars.

Based on my playstyle, I haven't run out of charges yet! I am not a big WW collector, so my motivations are simply to complete activities. I usually am in the Campaign for the purposes of fulfilling the activities, and I will Explore until my wolves run out of stamina, and then I'll go elsewhere until the "Feed Wolves" activity shows up so that it makes feeding their greedy butts worth it. ꉂ(≧▽≦)

For me, the way LW has kept my attention is the fact that there are so many activities to do outside the Campaign. The previous pet site I was on, Flight Rising, only really had their equivalent of the Campaign for grinding and money-making / food obtainment / creature leveling purposes and I got burnt out real fast. So having LW de-centralize the Campaign as part of their overall game design is actually something I really appreciate. I get that it's not for everyone, but I am happy in this niche!

I also joined about 10 months ago and have been playing pretty casually the whole time, and have gotten 34,082 scenarios done, and 44 of the 50 Campaign achievements so I do believe it is doable! I will agree with others that the upcoming Seasonal will be a real test, as I was certainly in the Campaign a lot more to get tickets then. That's when we should be getting our next bi-monthly update as well, so I am hopefully that adjustments may be incoming.

@Reave Pessimistic would be more accurate than realistic imo.

What do we need a community manager for? The forums are dead. No one posts anywhere. There are the same ten lorwolves I see around. No one is starting drama or chaos. There isn't a community that needs to be managed. LW is such a small game. I disagree with your assessment of the game's needs. If we're down to a one-man team, I think it's best that we trust that the developer of the game that we've enjoyed for 3 years will continue to develop it in a manner that is befitting LW's legacy.

ALSO, he said that we are getting updates every 2 months. There is stuff that is finished and going to be given to us on a slow drip. That's our community management. Every two months, we will get a post and an update and then a chance to respond in the bug report forum, suggestion forum, and the news post itself.

That doesn't mean that we have to like every possible update, but we could at least give the updates a chance to release before worrying that the game is gonna die again: "The community needs some assurances that the same thing isn't gonna happen for the like... 4th time in a row." ^^