Game mode: [SELECT ONE] Single-player
Type of issue: [SELECT ONE] Bug
Server type: [SELECT ONE] PvE
Region: [ NA ]
Mods?: [ Are mods installed: No ]
Edition: [ Select one: Steam ]
Bug Description:
A clear and concise description of what the bug is.
pet/mount sometimes won’t eat while leveling, effectively canceling the chance increase to a specific stat(e.g. +14% bonus chance to vitality) and resulting in major stat losses(pets ending up with less armor, strength, or hp than they should). this is something i only recently noticed. i have yet to test it on a thrall but imagine it’ll be the same
Steps to Reproduce:
Please provide a step-by-step process of how the bug can be reproduced. Please be as detailed as possible; the more details, the easier it will be for us to find and fix the bug:
put food in your pet/mount’s inventory and notice it consume one piece
check the stats section and see that the chance increase is in fact applied
at some point you’ll notice it will eat to recover health but not gain the increase in chance to a specific stat. this is very evident after it’s gained a few levels when you see its say, armor didnt level up despite feeding it the very same food needed to raise its armor
by not retaining the chance increase, this leads to the player essentially having no say in what stats may increase on your mount/pet which is clearly the complete opposite of what is intended by the leveling system
i would appreciate if this is looked into at your earliest convenience. in the meantime, a sort of workaround i found was to feed your pet and make sure that it does in fact consume the food item, regularly check its stats section and if it does not in fact have the chance boost, take the food out of its inventory and put it back. that way it’ll eat and gain the corresponding chance increase
this does however get very annoying very quickly so you’d really be doing a solid to everyone who may have this bug by looking into it asap
Just to confirm - I’ve also encountered this bug in singleplayer (I believe it’s been running since the patch that changed how followers consume food (so that thralls would no longer stack pork bonuses)).
From what I’ve observed, thralls do behave slightly differently to pets/mounts, in that they more often ‘remember’ to eat, though still not 100% reliably.
There seems to be a difference in the way followers handle healing from damage, versus healing from gaining Vitality - if they take actual damage (eg from being hit), then they tend to heal normally (which then will reapply the growth chance bonus), but if they increase Vitality when they level up, then they attempt to heal slowly without eating and have to be manually force fed.
This becomes an even greater problem if they do not gain Vitality when they level up, as the player is then left with no way to make them eat (other than to get an enemy to hit them). Especially at low levels, this can cascade into multiple levels without access to the growth chance bonus from food.
This matches my experience with thralls recently. If you have friendly fire enabled kicking the thrall seems to work, and is cathartic after all the times your thrall decide to do nothing
When it’s off I’ll tell my thrall to charge and then when they agro double tap X to give them the stop command, making sure they get hit before giving them another command
I do hope they can fix this soon, but at least there are some partial workarounds while we wait
yeah that is exactly what’s happening with me. they’ll eat when they take damage, applying the bonus from the food item but when their vitality increases they won’t eat it
it gets real irritating having to check every time that the increase is in fact applied. it’s only a recent thing though
it wasnt that way before. they used to eat it just fine and i never had to worry about their stats leveling wrong
it’s good to see that im not the only one. that way it’s more likely to get some attention from the devs
yeah there are sort of workarounds but im situated near sepermeru and i cant exactly have my level 1 horse with its 53 armor get hit there what with how high level the mobs are
i also don’t feel it’s too safe for it to get ganged up on by shalebacks over down in noob river
i have something of a soft spot when it comes to certain animals in games
I can understand your trepidation, and by no means did I want to dismiss the issue. It is worse for pets and mounts for sure than it it for thralls. I have only a very small amount of thralls, and very few pets and mounts, so I do relate to actually worrying about your thralls/mounts/pets safety.
Up just north of Sepamaru there are several lakes that have a lot of shalebacks around so you won’t have to travel far for those.
I’m not sure for mounts, you might be better off riding it and letting it get hit once and then smacking down the shaleback, especially with the way horses bolt and run in circles sometimes
I know it’s no where near as good as an actual fix but hopefully it helps someone deal with a bit of the frustration in the meantime
thats a good idea, yeah. it will serve until a proper fix can be issued
i thought about the lakes by sepermeru but im pretty sure theres a greater risk of getting corrupted shalebacks to spawn over there
and nah youre good i didnt get the imrpession you were dismissing anything. appreciate the help
i have a considerable amount of pets/mounts and an okay amount of thralls but i imagine them leveling up in a way thats not intended would suck worse for someone with only a few to start with
i just hope this gets some attention from the devs soon
If they are full health, they won’t eat any food even when leveled. You have to manually get the food out of their inventory and givce back, or give them one piece of food every time (I usually do this, I rarely stack foods… They have to learn how to survive, I don’t want chubby slaves/pets!).
If they get points in VIT, they gain max. HP, but their current HP remains, so they “think” “I’m wounded, I need to eat to heal”, so the bonus will be allpied automatically.
That’s certainly how it used to work - and I find still does with thralls most of the time (but not with 100% reliability - leading to still having to check whether they did eat), but with pets and mounts I find that even in that situation they only eat if I force it in some way - otherwise (so long as they are within the +10%/+25% damage bonus duration from having previously eaten) I find they do not eat to heal ‘damage’ from gaining vit anymore (and actually just sit there healing at base heal rate instead…)
This issue was introduced as a side-effect when the follower feeding was modified to prevent things like the old stacking pork buffs problem (and to stop them eating one of every stack of anything edible that got put into their inventory - I even lost at least one Heart of a Hero that way lol - my own fault, I knew that was how it worked back then, I just didn’t think it through ). I suspect the main issue is that was set up to make sure they don’t eat more than one item of food to gain the buff, until the buff has worn off - and my guess would be that the conflict this creates with trying to feed followers for levelling was just an unforeseen side-effect. Bit we’ll see what the devs say (or do)
i did notice that, yeah. and while it’s an okay workaround, it can get annoying pretty fast
it used to be that they would regenerate lost hp both from taking damage and gaining more vitality, while applying the bonus chance. now the bonus is no longer applied but the food is still consumed
yeah used to be they’d heal from both damage taken and vitality gained, while still applying the bonus. i noticed recently that the bonus was no longer being applied after the latter
). I suspect the main issue is that was set up to make sure they don’t eat more than one item of food to gain the buff, until the buff has worn off - and my guess would be that the conflict this creates with trying to feed followers for levelling was just an unforeseen side-effect. Bit we’ll see what the devs say (or do) 
