Survive animal attacks

If you are a new player and being attacked by animals there are a few things you can do to survive.(Or just be a scrub and use enders client.) 


 * If there is water nearby run for it and wade into it as deep as you can. The animal should not be able to hit you when you are at the deepest wading point. Do not try to swim away as you are guaranteed to drown instantly. You can then wade up or down stream to get further away from the animal. Keep going until the picture of the animal turns into a question mark and disappears.


 * If you had to leave something behind when the animal attacked you and you are desperate to get it back, wade a short distance away, come out of the water long enough to get the animal to chase you and then pop back in again. Do this until the animal is two or three screens away from the thing you want to retrieve. Then you can sneak past it in the water back to your starting point and try to get the thing you left behind.


 * You can run into a house and wait until the animal drops the aggro before you come out. However it is quite likely the animal will still be on the doorstep.


 * You cannot log out while an animal is aggro'd on you.


 * You can log out after the animal has knocked you unconscious and it is no longer aggro'd on you. You will know that the aggro has ceased when the picture of the animal in the top right corner disappears. You are unconscious while the little x's circle around your lying down character's head. (Typically if you log out for 15-30 minutes, the aggressive animal will have despawned.)


 * If an animal is camping your body, that is waiting until you become conscious again and then attacking once more, you can try waiting until the first instant that you become conscious and then running like hell.


 * You may wish to return to your hearth fire, if you have been exploring and found yourself in territory where the animals are aggressive. Again you can't do this while the animal is aggro'd on you but you can do it while unconscious. Use the Travel menu under Adventure to do this. You can always travel to your hearth fire no matter how high your travel weariness is.


 * The presence of towns and hearth fires lowers the level of the surrounding animals. Level I and II animals will never attack but will fight back. Beside a town the animals only generate as level I or II but of course you can still lead a higher level animal back to the the town. Staying really close to a town can keep you from being attacked.


 * You can build an enclosure to be safe in. This can be built of permanent materials, such as a fence or a row of completed baskets, or of incompleted materials, such as a row of fires that have not been built and are represented by little signposts.


 * You may need to reset your defense if you are being ko'd by animals frequently. "Death or Glory" for example is a suicide defense, and if it was the last one you used you will take a lot of damage every time you are attacked afterwards. To reset your default defense merely click on "Combat maneouvers" and then select "Dodge". If you have been carrying a shield and put it down remember to reset your defense from "Shield" to "Dodge".