Predators

**"***The monsters swore, as they were sucked up into the funnel of that deep, dark nothingness, that they'd be back. And they'd be... hungry.***"**
— **Texas**

 **Residence** | Fœnum (formerly)
 **Relationships** | Ungulates (prey)

The **Predators** are the main antagonists of *Them's Fightin' Herds*. They are AI controlled enemies that appear in modes such as Arcade Mode, Local Versus against CPU and the online Pixel Lobby while traversing the Salt Mines. They serve as the primary enemy encounters in Story Mode.

Long ago they had caused chaos to the hoofed inhabitants of Fœnum on a daily basis until they were banished by The Horned Prophet to a magical realm known as The Hold. After an age of peace, the Predators have escaped their supernatural prison and are now threatening to infiltrate Fœnum en masse, lead by the greatest and most terrible of all: The Devourer. While having escaped The Hold, the Predators are still trapped in the void between realms and thus cannot physically interact with the inhabitants of Fœnum. Instead, they appear as abstract ghosts.

## Types of Predators

### Fluffers

**Fluffers** is a wolf predator. It has moderate amount of health. Fluffers performs aerial jump-in attacks, but can do a low ground attack as well.

In Arcade Mode, it's the first predator that the player must face in the final segment.

In the Salt Mines, Fluffers may summon shadow clones to fight the players and then disappear. It has the least salt yield.

### Flopsie

**Flopsie** is a puma predator. It has second lowest health. Flopsie's toolkit consists of multihit attacks, one of them being a hitgrab, meaning the player must block their attacks to make them vulnerable before attacking.

In Arcade Mode, Flopsie is the second predator the player faces after defeating Fluffers.

In the Salt Mines, pumas drop moderate salt quantity.

### Cuddles

**Cuddles** is a cobra predator, and has the lowest health. Cuddles specializes in projectiles and long-range attacks, and will attempt to zone the player out. The player will have to close the distance to attack effectively.

In Arcade Mode, Cuddles is the third predator the player faces after defeating Flopsie.

In the Salt Mines, shares the same salt yield with Flopsie.

### Flappy

**Flappy** is a hawk predator. While they have relatively low health, they are constantly airborne and are capable of performing diving and overhead attacks while quickly retreating to a safe distance. Anti-air attacks are necessary to bring them down to ground level before attacking.

They do not appear in Arcade Mode nor Salt Mines.

### Huggles

**Huggles** is a bear predator. While slow and has a large hurtbox, it specializes in armored moves, has the most health in comparison to other predators (3400). Bear often baits the player into attacking them before retaliating with a counter attack or an ublockable, auto-guard grab attack that inflicts heavy damage.

In Arcade Mode, it serves as a final opponent of the run.

In the Salt Mines, Huggles is a rare spawn and is the most difficult predator to defeat, but has the highest salt yield. In the mode's final round, if there are at least two or more players, whichever has the highest amount of pocketed salt will turn into Huggles and must eliminate the remaining players. Eliminating all of the remaining players earns the "Apex Predator" bonus and reward the player the Shadow palette of whichever character the player began as. The player must also play on official Pixel Lobbies (highlighted green or blue on the lobby menu) to earn the palette reward.

## Other Predators

There exist other predators that do not cause madness to the inhabitants of Fœnum, and are typically descended in some way to the predators themselves. These descendants do not exhibit the ill-will behaviors of their more mean ancestors, and are able to coexist peacefully.

### Longma

*Main article: Longma*
The Longma are a very proud race who are half horse, half dragon. They reside in the Empire of Huoshan, a village built over the gaping maw of an active volcano. It is said that the Longma are descendants of a stallion, Honored Father and a dragon, Honored Mother. Notable Longma's include Tianhuo.

### Sheep Dogs

*Main article: Sheep Dogs*
Sheep Dogs are the only known predators to actually live side by side with ungulates, specifically the Sheeple. No one really knows how this came about.

### Shadows

**Shadows** are counterparts of the player characters that are encountered in the Salt Mines. They are summoned by the wolf, do not fall asleep, and have more complex AI in combat. They share a unique color palette primarily consisting of red, maroon and purple, and all have red eyes. The player can unlock these palettes by obtaining the Apex Predator bonus in Salt Mines, for a character they started Salt Mine run as.

## Story Mode

### Chapter 1

First mention of predators can be seen in Ribbon's story, where she tells Council about her encounter with a pack of wolves. It's implied that they're seeking for the Key. Then the predators make another appearance during Texas' storyboards, shown to live along with the ungulates, only to later attack them and be banished into The Hold.

Wolves are encountered throughout the main story. A large Fluffers serves as a miniboss just before leaving the mines in Part I. Miniature versions of Cuddles are found midway through the mines, and will attack the player alongside Fluffers. A giant Cuddles serves as the final boss to Part I, with a regular-sized Fluffers fought in Phase 2.

The first Flopsie the player will face appears in Part II, in the Haunted Undercity in Reine, and becomes prominent throughout the rest of Story Mode shortly after.

Flappy is first encountered in Part III while Arizona is scaling the Huacaya Mountains, and reappear in the final part.

Huggles is a hidden mini-boss at the Altars in Reine and the Temple of Gloom, in Part II and IV respectively. In both instances, it's larger than normal. Huggles can also be fought in a secret room behind the library in Reine's Museum. All three encounters are optional.

## Trivia

* In the game files, each predator has codename: *wscout*, *pscout*, *cscout*, *hscout* and *bscout*.
* Predators' bodies are transparent, as seen in storyboards featured in Story Mode's Prologue sequence, and especially visible if brightening up gameplay pictures. This and FHTNG's dark energy "body" are the only instances of alpha color on the in-fight screen.
* The predators have pupils. They can be visible by tuning up the saturation.
* Their shadow bodies are weak to sunlight, therefore they can only stay in dark places, such as caves and basements, and come out at night.
* Each of the predators have a color code of sort: red for wolf, magenta for puma, yellow for cobra, blue for bear, and purple for hawk.
* All but hawk have commands for super attack.
	+ Wolf's and puma's supers are multihit attacks. Their input is Quarter Circle Forward + any two attack buttons.
	+ Cobra's is a blockable hitgrab attack. When cobra grabs opponent, it will inject posion, which will cause some of the health to turn red. If got hit, all the red portion of health will disappear, dealing colossal damage. Its input is Quarter Circle Backward + any two attack buttons.
	+ Bear's attack is an auto-guarded, unblockable hitgrab attack called "Ravenous Rampage". Its input is Quarter Circle Backward + any two attack buttons.
* An idle Arizona frame with a broken predator palette was used as a placeholder for the bear's victory pose.
	+ Sometimes grabbing Arizona placeholder could still be spotted if trying to perform an air throw as a bear.
* Puma's and cobra's throw animations had placeholder graphics from the wolf. These were corrected in the Menu 2.0 update in October 2019.
* In the past, shadow clones used to have default palettes, before an update to set the difference between playable character and enemy.
* There's a sixth "main" predator in a face of alligator implied to exist: one can be spotted in the main menu along with other predators (in the pre-1.0 versions), and on the Salt Mines teleport entrance, along with carvings of other five predators.
	+ Alligator also appears in Lauren Faust's early concept art, along with wolf, puma and bear.

## References

1. ↑ https://forums.themsfightinherds.com/index.php?threads/early-access-patch-3-3-17-18.1749/
2. ↑ https://steamcommunity.com/games/574980/announcements/detail/1786146242179143621