Bear

The Bear guild is one of the most powerful carnivore guilds in the game. Their strategy is to opt for higher base stats at the cost of having very few unique or special abilities, which seems to be an effective strategy for them.

There are two Bear build types, "specialist Bears" and "generalist Bears." "Specialist Bears" are specialized to their niche and environment. "Generalist Bears" are not specialized in anything but are more adaptable.

## Specialist Bear Builds

### Panda

Belonging to F tier, the Panda Bear is one of the worst builds in the current meta. They have an extremely low respawn rate due to their mating season being only 3 days in spring. Some data miners have even found that Panda's stomach isn't even build to digest bamboo, causing Pandas to eat around 26 to 84 pounds per day and spending about 10-16 hours eating. But what's really holding them back from getting to even D tier is their absolute dependence on bamboo. Of all the Bears, Pandas are by far the weakest and the least intelligent, but also the most over-specialized bear.

The combination of stats and abilities they have made it so even if they decided to stop being strict herbivores and pursue a more generalist approach, they can't really defend themselves without a massive re-spec. They have the bite force comparable to tigers and lions, but with Mobility and Stealth as low as theirs, there's no way they would ever be able to make use of it against another player without Getting destroyed.

### Sloth Bear and Sun Bear

Jumping all the way to C tier, there is the Sloth Bear and Sun Bear. These bears use another specialist type build, mainly focusing on insects. Sloth Bears and Sun Bears are miles ahead of the Panda in viability. Insects, especially beehives, are a great source of XP, assuming that a player can tank the damage from the stings. Not only that, but unlike bamboo, insects are almost everywhere, so habitat loss due to human builder players doesn't pose as big a problem to them as it does for Pandas. What keeps them down is that although they're great at tearing into well-fortified insect bases, they're actually not good at defending themselves. They have losing matchups against every other key player in their region, including Pythons, Leopards, Dholes, and Tigers, which led them to be ranked in C tier.

### Polar Bear

Belonging to B tier, the highest-ranking "specialist Bear" on our list is the Polar Bear, being one of the biggest land predators in the entire game. Despite the ridiculously high Power stat, they have bad matchups against the other popular Arctic builds. Their immense strength doesn't really come in handy that much. Since their best strategy to score eliminations on seals is to catch them off guard when they come up to recharge their stamina gauge. They don't have the Mobility to chase Seals down in the water, nor do they have the Power to defeat Walruses on land.

Their immense strength doesn't really come in handy that much. Since their best strategy to score eliminations on seals is to catch them off guard when they come up to recharge their stamina gauge. They don't have the Mobility to chase Seals down in the water, nor do they have the Power to defeat Walruses on land.

Due to the Global Warming world effect causing the temperatures to rise and the ice to melt, Polar bears are left with mostly no ground to play since they have specialized into ice mobility. Dataminers have found that Polar Bears are adapting to this change and have started to learn how to fish.

    There's far too much luck involved in the Polar Bear gameplay to place them any higher than B tier.

## Generalist Bear Builds

Generalist builds, if done right, will almost always outclass their specialized counterparts since they're much more prepared to cope with the rapid shifts of the meta, like, for example, if human players need materials to build their forts or if the ice starts to melt. In addition, these Bear builds differ from the others because they have the Bear's signature move, Hibernate.

Hibernation is key to the success of the Bear players because it allows them to completely skip the time of year that they're least suited to. Now, this does incur some difficulty on the player since if they fail to collect enough loot to get them through the winter, hibernation will actually drain their Health and possibly even lead to a game over, but if the Bears' abilities are used correctly, this shouldn't be an issue.

### Brown Bear

Next up is the Brown Bear, with one of the highest Power stats in the game. Their sheer force is only outclassed only a few other builds. They also have fairly high Mobility, which still does not match that of the wolves or elk that they share a server with. However, both of these stats are put to good use because of the animals' high Intelligence, one of the highest among solitary builds. This lets Bears use their strengths to successfully raid the treasure chests that human settlements control.

Unlike its more specialized counterparts, it doesn't have the same toxin resistances that would allow the Sun Bear and Sloth Bear to easily take out Eusocial Insect players, so it's certainly not invincible by any stretch. Still, it can make up for these inconsistencies by doing what it does best, griefing Salmon mains. The salmon quest line's final objective is to return to their spawn point, and unfortunately, this exploit is common knowledge among the Bear subreddits. Brown Bears have almost as good a matchup against fish as ospreys do. It's really unfair honestly. A not so commonly known fact is that there have been some human mains who have caught a brown bear climbing trees, giving them a slightly weaker arboreal mobility than the Black Bear due to their higher bulk. There are a few varieties of Brown Bear, of which the Grizzly is actually the weakest. Sitting at the high end of A tier, the strongest variety of Brown Bear, the Kodiak Bear, can just barely sneaks its way into S tier along with the last Bear on the tier list, the Black Bear.

### Black Bear

Belonging to S tier, Black Bears are true champions of survival and adaptation. When the Anthropocene patch dropped, every other North American Bear actually quit the server, not wanting to deal because of the competition, including one of the Ice Age Meta's top tiers, the Cave Bear. The Cave Bear and the Flordia Man Bear were both specialists that were unable to survive the banning. But the Black Bear player base has very useful abilities to go arboreal. This is thanks to having slightly larger versions of all the Brown Bear's abilities plus extremely good Arboreal Mobility. This allows them to get access to literally everywhere and can get to loot that most bears can't. Due to their lower bulk than the other bears, Black Bears are vulnerable to the Intimidation ability.

## Gallery

A Black Bear in its natural habitat.A Brown Bear player with a salmon he just griefed.A Sloth Bear player in the build's natural habitat.A Sun Bear taking a seat somewhere.Two pandas climbing an artificial structure.In the Anthropocene expansion, Polar bears have struggled due to melting ice sheets.A Polar Bear fishingA Brown Bear climbing a tree