I always wondered why she took so much damage, this is huge, thank you for finding and sharing this!

I noticed that myself on my tests but brainfarted and forgot to add that as a potential thing to watch out for, thanks H1pp0_ for catching that!

I did one or two more test runs and basically you can stay at the Shotgun House longer, especially if the AI ends up bugging out and not attacking the shelf, but I found it just better to move out to the Ladder House when Big Lycan's audio queue occurs.

I'll look into cleaning up the main post since it looks a bit, messy as we end up learning more.

Update on testing at the bottom of post.

Been trying on Hardcore a few times to see if the encounter in the Village is time based before the Lycans run off, So far i've tried a strategy three times with success, will be doing more testing Hopefully the points below should be easy to follow if you want to try this yourself.

Shotgun house

• The first house where you get the shotgun, barricade the door with the shelf first, run around and grab all the items (especially the 2 gunpower's)
• When the Lycan begins to attack the shelf, wait until he almost swings then take a shot at his head, it'll cause him to stagger and jump back, repeat this as long as ammo allows, but only ever fire one shot at a time, be sure to use the shotgun here too to help buy time.
• Once Ethan says "There's no end to them" queues the encounter to intensify with more Lycans and Arrows being shot at Ethan
• Once the bookshelf is broken, head to the back of the house, jump down the hole, and pick up the Scrap Metal as you crawl your way out of the house, sprint up to the second house.

Ladder House (2nd barricade house)

• Depending on how long you were able to hold out at the Shotgun House, Big Lycan should be roaring away shortly after you enter the second house and barricade it. Ethan will also audibly signal his arrival.
• First things first, force close the door and barricade ASAP as a Lycan you ran by is probably right on your tail.
• Go into your inventory and create Handgun Bullets and grab all the items on the main floor as you probably won't be able to get them until later.
• Your priority is to make sure the Lycans do not break the bookshelf or the Window to your left, just rinse and repeat, shooting the Lycans off the windows and making the Lycan hitting the bookcase jump back, in a minute Big Lycan should be at the front of the house swinging his mallet, this damages the lycans around him.
• Important thing to note, the Big Lycan luckily cannot break the shelf.
• Help Big Lycan kill the small Lycan at the door, cap him in the head with the Shotgun.
• Now that the Lycan at the door is dead, just keep the Lycan's at the window off with the knife.
• Rinse and repeat until a Lycan spins you around and initiates the cutscene.

I've so far tested this three times on Hardcore. Every time it has worked, now there may be times where the shelf may break which may just be RNG, since some Lycans may come in on all fours to attack the Door/shelf and you may not see him.

One attempt I timed it once I barricaded the Shotgun House at 0:08:05, with a Lycan grabbing me from behind to initiate the cutscene at 0:11:38 in the Ladder House, I'll be continuing to try to find a good start and end point to determine if it really is a fixed timed encounter, I may also put up a clip of it once I figure out the best way to record and share.

To those that are running Hardcore and have difficulties with the first Village encounter, hopefully this does help you!

Further testing showed me that certain queues in the encounter are time based.

• Entering Shotgun House (Starts the Encounter, Lycan's roar)
• 1 minute in "There's no end to them"
• 1 minute and 14 seconds in (Big Lycan roars)
• 2 minutes annd 17 seconds in (cutscene) Big thing to note to trigger the cutscene, you do want to be moving around, if you just stand still the cutscene will not trigger until you take a step.