In the forest cover Quest

[Valor]

Hello,

I received this quest and I searched the area left and right, top to bottom. Its huge and quest doesn't give any more info (unlike many other that say for example xxx bordering yyy in the east etc), and I spend over 5 hours real time trekking through the area. I am getting quite tired of it. Is there maybe some hint, how to find the tracks? Can it spawn only on specific tile etc? Anything would help.

Thank,
Valor.

PS.: My save file has nearly 1 gB now from all the tiles explored....

[PALU]

It's probably the most tedious of the area search quests. It MAY be that track origins are only found in forests, but I've at least followed them out of it.

My search technique is to visit each tile in the area by going back and forth (or up and down) one world tile at a time, zoom in, turn 180 degrees, zoom out, turn again and move one tile...
However, it's very easy to miss tracks in spruce infested forests because of all the vision blocking spruces.
I've given up of such quests at least once after visiting all tiles in the area.

I've tried searching for tracks on each world tile, but gave up on that because it more or less doubled the in game search time. Since I've never actually searched for tracks on the world tile level and then zoomed in I don't know how good that method is for locating the tracks, although I suspect you may both fail to get any report and get a report of seeing some uninteresting tracks.

[Tom H]

I just refuse this quest now, having never been able to complete it. Likewise with the bird-stealing quest, in which I've never found the trap site. Sorry that I have no advice to give you!

What I can say is that I've found tracks by searching on the strategic map, spotting tracks, and dropping to the tactical map and searching the area. I never found the target animal, though.

[Valor]

In the end I finished the quest. There were about 10 tracks total, none even remotly visible from zoom in location and I basically stumbled on the due to sheer luck. I employed a strategy that I zoomed in on each tile and walked few steps in each direction. Then zoomed out and moved to another tile. Here I had to move a lot as there was goshawk hunting a grouse right next to me. And due to heavy rain I nearly missed it anyway as there were so few tracks (many hidden visually behind trees).

All the tracks were old so I burned twigs on each of them and in area 3*3 around them just to be extra sure. The cow appeared.

But I still feel the quest could have been done much better, and if I ever get this quest offered I will just decline it. If there would be some better way how to find the animal then maybe it would be fun, but now it was a chore. Bad unrewarding and tiring chore that took me several hours to complete and  in the  end I was just lucky.

Proposal to Sami: What if there was another ritual to help you locate the spot better? I have a small idea. You could set a 3*3 tile of branches (inner tile could have different compostion then outer, so the game knows how to recognize it, even some a bit more rare resource could be used as part of the burning.) And after you light the inner tile the fire would spread in only one direction, direction where the animal is. This would give you general idea and you would have to repeat it few times on different spots. But it would feel much more in hands of the player.

[PALU]

Once you've located the tracks you shouldn't need to burn twigs on all tracks, as you can follow them to see where they end, but given that you can miss tracks I agree you may need to try multiple possible "ends" (I've had to do so in the past), and burning the tiles surrounding the suspected last one in the possible movement directions sounds like a smart move.

I agree there's a need for something to help you to find the general area of the tracks (i.e. an area much smaller than the current circle) as long as you have to stumble on the tracks to find them. I have no idea if there's anything of use for that purpose in Finnish folklore, though.

For the bird thief quest I use the technique of walking along the border indicated within sight distance of the "other" type of tile mentioned, and so far I've managed to do them all, but it's easy to be unlucky and have all the traps and feathers blocked by trees. (I've also been lucky with search quests a couple of times with the "other" tile type being a river, limiting the number of tiles to search significantly).

[Tom H]

lol... I bow to the superior patience of my betters

[Shrimp]

For me, the way i do these "Find x place near y place" is to check the actual circle the quest leaves on your map and then narrow it down to tiles in the wilderness map through walking and checking the map often. Once i have the "circle" identified i then proceed to find out what places inside the circle match the description that was given to me. This way makes me find the place i was told about basically 2/3 of the time.

On the other hand, i agree that finding the lost animals is annoying, but mostly because of how the tracks work. One time i had this same quest where i had to find a sheep, i did find the tracks but they were nonsensical. For example, one line of tracks i found was going N, then empty tiles until i find another line going SE, then repeat empty tiles until i found a couple of tracks going in circles. A little walk S reveals some more going W and so on and so forth until i end up around the original first tracks i found. Makes you wonder where the heck was this sheep going. In the end i tried the ritual on the tracks i found and it didn't work.

It kind of happens the same when you are actively hunting, some tracks will just give you outright mixed signals and you will end up losing the animal because of it. I wonder if they plan on expandind the tracking system, maybe add auditive clues of animals escaping or something? I'm no hunter so no idea how it actually works, but as i see it the tracks as they are really fall short for the "stalking" they intend you to do on animals when you hunt for them.