Bear Riding

Bear Riding – tame the Bjørn, raise cubs, ride into battle

The Bjørn of the Black Forest can be tamed. Feed it berries, honey, fish or meat until it trusts you, let two tame bears have cubs, and put a saddle on a grown bear to ride it: it trots, runs, leaps, claws and slams the ground on your command. Light or heavy barding sends it into a fight, saddlebags make it your pack bear, and a war harness binds all three. Every piece starts in the Black Forest and gets better with the materials of each biome after that. One wild bear in ten is a Bearborn: a rare bear with a frost, night or honey pelt that grows bigger and stronger with every level it gains at your side.

No other mod is needed.

| Piece | What it does | Crafted at | Cost (quality 1) | |---|---|---|---| | Bear Saddle | lets you ride the bear | Forge | 4 bear hide, 4 deer hide, 8 leather scraps, 4 bronze | | Light Bear Barding | armour and health, no slowdown | Forge | 6 bear hide, 4 deer hide, 4 bronze | | Heavy Bear Barding | much more armour and health, slower | Forge | 16 bronze, 4 bear hide, 8 leather scraps, 20 bronze nails | | Bear Saddlebags | 8 to 24 slots of storage | Forge | 4 bear hide, 4 deer hide, 6 leather scraps, 2 bronze | | Light / Heavy Bear War Harness | saddle, barding and bags in one | Black forge | a saddle, a barding and saddlebags of quality 4 or better, 10 linen thread, 4 blue jute, 4 black metal |

Taming

1. Find a Bjørn (the game calls it simply Bear) in the Black Forest. It is rare: one bear roams an area at a time, and it fights back.
2. Lay food where it can reach it: blueberries, raspberries, honey, raw fish, raw meat or deer meat.
3. A fed bear that is not alarmed grows tame in 30 minutes, like a wolf. Stay out of its sight, or it will come for you instead of the food.

A tame bear follows you or stays on command (E), like a tame wolf. It still needs food to stay content and to breed.

Cubs

Two fed, tame bears close to each other court and have a cub after two minutes. A cub is a small bear that runs from danger and grows into a tame bear in 75 minutes. No more cubs are born once four bears and cubs live within 10 m.

The Bearborn

One wild bear in ten is a Bearborn. You know it by its pelt (frost grey, night black or honey amber) and its name. It takes half as long again to tame, and then:

• It levels up beside you. It gains 2 experience for every 25 m it walks with you (following or ridden) and 15 for every killing blow. Level 2 needs 50 experience, level 5 needs 500, level 10 needs 2250.
• It grows. Every level makes it a little bigger, up to 30 % at level 10, on top of its stars. Saddle and barding grow with it.
• It gets stronger. It starts with 25 % more health and gains 10 % more health and 5 % more damage per level.
• It sleeps instead of dying. A tame Bearborn that falls lies down and sleeps off its wounds for 60 seconds, unharmed by anything, and wakes with 30 % health. A player's blow (the butcher knife) still kills it.
• Its cubs may carry the blood. A cub of a Bearborn grows into a Bearborn itself one time in four.

The hover shows its level and experience:

> Bearborn · level 4 · 312/500 XP

Five qualities, five biomes

Each piece is upgraded like any vanilla item, but every quality is made at the station of its biome and asks for that biome's materials.

| Quality | Biome | Station | Materials (saddle) | |---|---|---|---| | 1 | Black Forest | Forge | bear hide, deer hide, leather scraps, bronze | | 2 | Mountains | Forge, level 2 | wolf pelt, troll hide, iron, silver | | 3 | Plains | Artisan table | lox pelt, linen thread, black metal | | 4 | Mistlands | Black forge | scale hide, carapace, blue jute | | 5 | Ashlands | Black forge, level 3 | asksvin hide, flametal, Morgen sinew |

The look changes with the quality: bear leather, bronze and moss-green wool in the Black Forest; deer leather, iron and red wool in the Mountains; black leather, black metal and linen in the Plains; scale hide, carapace and blue jute in the Mistlands; asksvin hide and flametal in the Ashlands.

Putting tack on

1. Tame a bear.
2. Use the piece on it: point at the bear and press its hotbar key.
3. To take it off, point at the piece (saddle, bags or barding) and press Shift + E. It drops beside the bear with its quality.

A bear wears one piece at a time. To ride, fight and carry at once, bind a war harness. Bags must be empty before they come off. A bear that dies drops its tack and everything in its bags.

Riding

1. Point at the saddle and press E to mount.
2. Steer with the mouse: W walks, Shift runs, S stops.
3. E gets you off.

| Key | On the bear | |---|---| | Attack | a claw strike or a bite, in turn (10 mount stamina) | | Secondary attack | the slam: both paws down, hitting everything around (25 stamina) | | Jump | a leap forward (15 stamina) |

• Running, striking and leaping use the bear's stamina, shown next to its health like on the lox. Your riding skill halves the cost of running, as on the lox.
• Out of breath: without stamina the bear will not strike or leap until it has rested.
• A ridden bear does what you say. Standing still, it waits instead of running after enemies (config MountFightsOnItsOwn).

Barding

| Quality | Light: armour / health | Heavy: armour / health / speed | |---|---|---| | 1 | 8 / +10 % | 16 / +20 % / −15 % | | 2 | 14 / +15 % | 28 / +30 % / −14 % | | 3 | 20 / +20 % | 40 / +40 % / −13 % | | 4 | 26 / +25 % | 52 / +50 % / −12 % | | 5 | 32 / +30 %, fire resistant | 64 / +60 % / −10 %, fire resistant |

• Light barding is a padded coat with studs: it never slows the bear.
• Heavy barding adds overlapping plates over hump, back and neck and a brow plate. Better smithing makes them lighter, so the heavy barding slows less at higher quality.

Saddlebags