[3.63 - Not a bug, working] Lacking penalty information on setting traps

[Buoidda]

I long thought penalties don't apply when setting traps, because lack of message about it like in say, fishing. Now I'm told they do apply.

[paulkorotoon]

Could someone experienced please explain how exactly penalties affect traps? Does it takes more time to set a trap if you've got high penalty? Are the chances to catch a prey affected? Or maybe something else?

[trowftd]

I remember reading somewhere that the animal has an easier time finding out where your trap is and scares the prey. But I have no idea how that is implemented in the game.

Maybe you have a lower chance to actually see an animal trapped when you check on the trap.

[JP_Finn]

I can't find the exact commentary from Sami, but it was implemented back in 2015 in version 3.20
Dev history

[trowftd]

From the Version: 3.20 (patch 2) Released: 17-Mar-2015 in the news.txt

In short, higher the TRAPPING skill the more easily animals enter your traps and more reliably they stay trapped.

If there are animals at the area they may enter your traps depending on how succesfully these
traps are set or constructed. If there aren't animals at the area your traps will remain empty.
However, if there weren't animals at the area today the situation may not be the same after a couple
of days.

* Even if animals at the area wouldn't be actually hungry, properly baited and succesfully set traps
may attract them beyond regular feeding needs.

* Succesfully set traps may trigger additional animal population checks for appropriate animals

Sorry for some wall of text but I think reading the forum posts are easier than skimming the news.txt file

[Buoidda]

...and hearsay the penalties reduce the trapping skill check. But the game text feed doesn't tell you about this like in other tasks.

Can anyone please confirm if that is true or not? Currently I'm doing awfully lot of dropping everything - picking up everything.

[paulkorotoon]

Thanks @trowftd, this is exactly what I asked for. Didn't think of searching the news.txt.

[trowftd]

Ok I wrote something completely different in my first message but I am just modifying this as to not flood the post.

As far as I tested, while I was crafting a trap it warned me that the crafting will be very slow and difficult to craft that now(I carried a lot of weight). While (a)pplying the trap, it did not give any information about whether or not my task would be penalised.

So I think there are 2 outcomes:
1) The weight does not effect when you are laying traps so it does not inform you about it.
2) It actually does penalise and not informs therefore it is a bug/missing feature.

[JP_Finn]

I believe it’s case 2)
But given the nature of trapping, even save scumming isn’t reliable testing method.

@Sami, can you shed a little light on the issue of no skill penalty text while setting traps please.

[Sami]

In general, penalties do not apply to setting the traps, but penalties do naturally apply to crafting item traps eg. loop snares and paw boards. The game naturally tells you about this, and worse quality item traps are naturally worse in attracting or catching the prey.

In making of trap construction, pits, deadfalls etc., penalties do not apply as you can dig a pit, and set the trunks according to your best trapping knowledge even though your penalties would make the process longer than usual.

However, if you are so seriously injured that you can't function normally, eg. only one hand is usable, then the trap construction outcome may also be worse than normally. In this case the game tells you that things are "slow and difficult to your this-and-that-part being not usable." etc. So, in that sense, the penalty information is shown when it applies to your trapping effort.