Originally posted by Ciuy:

When you chop a tree or hit a rock, etc, even once, you have a 100m sound range around YOU, for the next 60 sec, that slowly dies down by 4m/s. So hitting a tree ONCE, then running to base fast in 10 sec, you will generate noise from that 100m range effect minus 40m and slowly dying. I suck at explaining it but...basically be quieter.

That is why you see an army of dwarfs coming at you after you chopped a few trees, and keep coming. Or trolls see you from a very far distance for no reason.

Imagine you have a MASSIVE BELL around your neck, that rings for 60s every time you HIT something noisy. Might have different ranges etc on mobs and all that.

Thanks for paraphrasing my original writeup, which includes a link to the reddit post of the person who did all the work to dig the details out of the code.

Your version is greatly simplified, but it gets the point across.