To me the animals in this game seem crazy. If you’re initial spawn has a forest anywhere near you, changes are you’re gonna be chased down by wolves or a cougar before making it to town. Animals are afraid of people, they don’t just see a human and chase that person for 10 miles without giving up.
I think animals should not spawn for a few ingame hours, this makes it so a player won’t have to fight off a pack of wolves with the only building in a mile being the shelter.
Make it so animals don’t just attack the player unless the player is injured. You could add an ability that the player can use to attempt to scare the animal off, but this would be tedious and there could just be a check for the wild animal, based on the injury level of the player the animal ignores the player, follows the player, attempts to see the players fighting strength and going in for the kill.
It could go like, follows the player, the player throws a rock at it, it leaves him alone, OR it decides to attack the player to see if he would put up a fight. Could make the levels easy too. Make a pack of wolves change their behavior based on the size of the pack.