Traps and hostile forest

[werepacman]

Can too many traps in the area make spirits extremely hostile?
I got this massage after surrounding my cells with traps.

[PALU]

I doubt there's any connection. The spirits get angry if you take and don't give (or don't give enough to compensate for what you've taken).
"Taking" includes killing animals, of course, but also cutting down trees.

[Brygun]

Ive wondered this myself as if I have alot of traps what can happen is I dont check them often enough and some animals not just died but started to decay.

[PALU]

Without knowing, I'd expect kills by your traps to be considered to be killed by you.

[werepacman]

Just checked with save game.
After setting X amount of light lever traps I received message that forest is extremely hostile.

This can be penalty for hunting small game or too many traps or too many traps of one kind.

[werepacman]

Or. There are limit of traps per day.

[PALU]

And I assume you used a backup of the save to play through that day without setting any traps as a reference and that nothing was caught in the traps? Also the character should be awake at the time the feedback message is given.

When the current spirit system was introduced it was unbalanced in that every animal killed counted the same regardless of size. This resulted in the spirits always becoming hostile to people living off small game, because sacrifices could not compensate for the several birds that was required each day to survive. It was re-balanced, however.

If you're close to the limit between hostile and extremely hostile a single small bird kill can push you over the line, but there's no way to find out how close to the line you are.

[werepacman]

I checked all traps in the area they were empty.

And I made an experiment with save file:
1) load game save, wait/making staves - no message about hostile forest.
2) Load save game, set about 12 traps - got message immediately: forest extremely frightening
3) set 9 traps, wait - got message - forest is hostile
4) setting, disassembling one trap many times- message - forest is frightening
 
So actions affect spirits depending on what you and how many times.
Perhaps you can set same amount of traps but during more days with sacrifices to please spirits.

[PALU]

Interesting results. Thanks for sharing them.

I'd expect you'd end up in a similar relation with the spirits regardless of whether you set all traps/do all kills at once and appease the spirits one bit every day as if you'd spread the offensive behavior over a longer time while appeasing the spirits. Note that if you do it all at once you may hit the bottom, at which time your relation can't get worse, and that the relations slowly and gradually return to neutral if nothing is done affecting the relations (such as e.g. living from vegetable/stored food, not killing anything [etc.] nor sacrificing).

Of course, doing all the offensive stuff at once leaves the spirits rather displeased with you for a while, so spreading it out is probably better.

[Ara D.]

Did you cut any young trees to make your traps?

[Tom H]

I just had an event in which my trap/fence resulted in 3 reindeer and a wolf all at the same time. One deer had been killed by the wolf. When I killed the 2nd trapped deer I got one of those 'scary' forest messages.

I had not been setting anything new (like traps) nor cutting trees previously.

[werepacman]

Did you cut any young trees to make your traps?

No, those trees where from pile.