Has persistence hunting been made more difficult?

[Bert Preast]

I hardly ever run.  Hunt in open terrain, pine mire and open mire.  Don't zoom in to stalk the prey, usually the best shot you will get is if you bump them on the overland map.  Have javelins or a bow and arrow readied at all times.  If you miss your first shot, you may be better waiting a while for the animal to calm down, then hunt it on the overland map again.

When an animal is fatigued, you've got this.  They will flee again with a last burst of energy, but follow them and you'll find them breathless and ready for the kill.  Be single-minded, be persistent.

If your walking speed is below 6 km/h, it maybe best to stick to trapping, fishing or farming.  Not every man is capable of running down an elk.  Play to your strengths!

[PALU]

I used to never run, but have shifted to selective sprints. I track prey walking to keep them bolting, and once they have gone from slightly fatigued to fatigued I run as soon as I see them again to get them to bolt as quickly as possible, giving them less time to recover. Once they start to run I stop.

Tracking in spruce terrain is a pain, and there's a high risk of losing prey that only requires a little bit more before they're breathless because you can't find the continuation of their tracks or their tracks just merge with a mess of older tracks, and when you finally do manage to find them again (if you do), they've recovered.
Being persistent when chasing prey is important, but you also need to know when to give up (or at least that you should have given up some time ago) because your character is too tired to realistically be able to catch the prey before falling asleep, or it's getting too dark to track the prey. One option is to leave a map marker and then return to try to find your prey again the next day, as animals tend to stay in the general area of some time.

A fast character is definitely a lot better at persistence hunting than a slow one, but it still isn't impossible for slow characters to succeed. A really annoying thing is when the prey's walking speed is higher than that of your character and the tired prey starts to walk in a straight line, without diverting into loops and whatever, so they recover while getting away from you. Fortunately, all prey isn't that savvy.

[GrimmSpector]

I hardly ever run.  Hunt in open terrain, pine mire and open mire.  Don't zoom in to stalk the prey, usually the best shot you will get is if you bump them on the overland map.  Have javelins or a bow and arrow readied at all times.  If you miss your first shot, you may be better waiting a while for the animal to calm down, then hunt it on the overland map again.

When an animal is fatigued, you've got this.  They will flee again with a last burst of energy, but follow them and you'll find them breathless and ready for the kill.  Be single-minded, be persistent.

If your walking speed is below 6 km/h, it maybe best to stick to trapping, fishing or farming.  Not every man is capable of running down an elk.  Play to your strengths!

Ahhh! I'm Kaumolainen, and my speed is usually 4 km/h ... so THAT must be it, what stats should I have maxed instead? lol.

I used to never run, but have shifted to selective sprints. I track prey walking to keep them bolting, and once they have gone from slightly fatigued to fatigued I run as soon as I see them again to get them to bolt as quickly as possible, giving them less time to recover. Once they start to run I stop.

Tracking in spruce terrain is a pain, and there's a high risk of losing prey that only requires a little bit more before they're breathless because you can't find the continuation of their tracks or their tracks just merge with a mess of older tracks, and when you finally do manage to find them again (if you do), they've recovered.
Being persistent when chasing prey is important, but you also need to know when to give up (or at least that you should have given up some time ago) because your character is too tired to realistically be able to catch the prey before falling asleep, or it's getting too dark to track the prey. One option is to leave a map marker and then return to try to find your prey again the next day, as animals tend to stay in the general area of some time.

A fast character is definitely a lot better at persistence hunting than a slow one, but it still isn't impossible for slow characters to succeed. A really annoying thing is when the prey's walking speed is higher than that of your character and the tired prey starts to walk in a straight line, without diverting into loops and whatever, so they recover while getting away from you. Fortunately, all prey isn't that savvy.

Interesting, I'll keep that in mind and give it a try. Maybe I'll get lucky. I keep trying to chase the elk that's near my home and seems to get past my pit traps blocking all exits, but it always gets away even in the Heathlands.

[Bert Preast]

If you want a great hunter, have a read of the guide:

https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=6814.0

[Brygun]

Brygun of BAC here

Definitely having a harder time with persistence hunting. The character Calle has 100% skiing, 75% stealth. 40% tracking and a non stealth speed of 4 mph. Not a great speed but that's not what endurance hunting needs.

I have made pursuits of young elk etc on the ending winter phase with thigh deep snow with a moderate crust.

Does it ever get deeper than thigh deep?

I'm not seeing anything more than light fatigue on gluttons and elk.

His tracking is reasonable to stay on the path though in deep forest losing them until they circle around. Once an elk has gotten into spruce Ive had on luck closing on them and they never seem to get tired.

I did once tire down a reindeer when at lower skill levels in an open mire where it had no place to hide.

Was something done to change the animal endurance mechanics? Im not sure this is where it should be in the game.

[PALU]

I've seen waist deep snow. I'm unsure if I've seen deeper than that, but can't rule out chest deep being possible.

The introduction of snow effects on animals and the introduction of crust makes major differences to animal endurance.

Snow now affects animals, so elk and reindeer tire very much faster in deep snow, and it seems to get worse the thicker the crust is. At the same time, a sufficient crust now makes it possible for the player character to ski without losing stamina.

I very recently gave up on trying to chase a glutton with my fast (7 km/h) character during "spring" (thigh deep snow still, I think) due to it recovering stamina completely even though I didn't lose its tracks more than very marginally, while elks and reindeer are fairly easy to hunt down in open terrain while skiing. They can shake off my player when getting into spruce terrain and have their tracks get into a mess of older tracks. I've found badgers to be very easy to tire out (both with and without snow), with the main problem being to track them (so open terrain is a great advantage).

Slower characters have a harder time and they require more luck when it comes to the prey movement (a straight line will allow the animals to recover stamina while moving), but with meandering and walking in circles it's still possible to hunt elks and reindeer down. However, even slow characters have been able to catch elks and reindeer, but the failure rate is higher (you can (ab)use the system to try to zoom in on the map close enough to an animal to hurt it with a javelin or arrow: with a bit of luck you're able to cripple them, which makes a rather significant difference to the difficulty of tiring them. Using arrows should be possible even at fairly large distances, although the hit rate will be fairly low. I haven't used broadheads, but I guess that would improve your chances of bleeding the prey out).

I'd say the Calle character definitely is on the poor side when it comes to tracking, although it matters less during the winter, but losing the track means losing time that the prey can use to recover stamina, and it means any spruce terrain is a gamble. 4 mph should be about 6 km/h, which I consider to be a fast character, so I'd be happy with that speed on a character of mine (I consider 4 km/h and less to be slow, and 5 km/h to be about average).

[Bert Preast]

In the far north east I have seen snow "chest deep"  and "more than chest deep".

Different animals tire at different rates in the snow, some are hardly affected at all while others pile on the fatigue pretty quickly.  Whether there is a crust or not can also affect things. 

Gluttons, like foxes, wolves and dogs, are faster than any human and have more endurance.  I have found that unless you can wound them, you may as well give up as you will never wear them down.

[PALU]

You can still wear down animals with more speed and stamina than the PC provided you can pin them against an obstacle and get them to run back and forth along it, such as e.g. along a river (as few UrW animals swim voluntarily, unlike real world ones). However, you can easily find that a single slip up may result in them escaping to either side and leave you in the dust.

[JP_Finn]

In the far north east I have seen snow "chest deep"  and "more than chest deep".

Different animals tire at different rates in the snow, some are hardly affected at all while others pile on the fatigue pretty quickly.  Whether there is a crust or not can also affect things. 

Gluttons, like foxes, wolves and dogs, are faster than any human and have more endurance.  I have found that unless you can wound them, you may as well give up as you will never wear them down.

The presence of crust makes huge difference in my experience: small animals, up to gluttons, just fly on a crust. I've not met many wolves, not that I'd wish to chase a pack anyway. Crust seems to tire reindeer and elks somewhat.
Reindeer and elks seem to plough through crustless snow with little effort, whereas smaller animals struggle, sinking in.

[cookie]

IDK if it's gotten harder. Feels just the same amount of suck that I remember.

I've got a 5mph Kaumolais with (it appears) at least 85% in all his stats because I rollscummed HARD. I never take one without maximum agility and strength for maximum spearchucking. Don't know how people are running at 7mph!

I've never run down an Elk without first laming or crippling them, at which point I switch from my bow/javelin to Kaumolais Spear and calmly walk them down, then bonk 'em on the head until dead. Then again, I've never made a character with sub-80 skills in tracking, spears and bows. Stealth seems mostly useless but I generally bump that a bit too. I try to stealth before I take my shots and I have no clue if or how much that helps.

The elk's faster, of course, but the animal walking in circles combined with my high tracking and hearing means I can usually keep a good bead on it even in dense spruce.

The name of the game is to keep following until they're in sight, then peg 'em with an arrow or javelin. Rinse and repeat until they're lamed/crippled... then calmly follow with spear to give the CDG when they're breathless. In a few previous saves I used a masterwork mace for the CDG but I don't think that's necessarily worth the extra weight if you have a kaumospear.

I don't bother chucking javelin unless they're within 5 squares. And I only ever bother USING javelins when I don't have at minimum a hunting bow or longbow.

Because - I hope I'm wrong here - it appears that javelins do LESS damage than arrows when, in reality, they should do nearly SIX TIMES the damage. The game stats also imply that longbows do more damage than hunting bows, when the game text implies the opposite.

Sami really keeps a lot of important stuff close to the vest and that frustrates me sometimes.

[JP_Finn]

I think the snow crust /fatigue might mostly affect players ( not characters ) from low snow environments...

And even then, craft a pile of something, anything, of value, go to village that has doggos to sell. Purchase any size or sex pooch. Find large game, shoot to cripple, sic your pooch on it. Head to the general direction of the chase. Follow barks. Bonk breathless beast on head, and then bust their skull in.
Skin. Butcher. Thrive.


Dogs in hunting are like cheating.

(but I still think the dogs chasing game should let out barks before reaching the target. And most anything running should have still slower fatigue build up)

[Matti-patti]

It's easier to persistence hunt if you can run a bit, I don't go at 0% since that would mean ditching even a knife, but I tend to go for 1-2% max. For weapons I just have knife, bow (short or northern due to lighter weight) and less than 10 arrows. You really don't need that Kaumo spear when you are hunting elks and deer.

[PALU]

If the unspecified 1-2% refers to encumbrance, my experience from swimming is that 1% is "free", i.e. you can swim as far with an encumbrance of 1 as with 0, but with a significant penalty to the range at 2.
That was some time ago, but I don't think this has changed since.

If someone could be bothered, it should be possible to test by counting how many tiles you can run before reaching a fatigue level of e.g. 10 at various levels of encumbrance.

[Plotinus]

I've got a 5mph Kaumolais with (it appears) at least 85% in all his stats because I rollscummed HARD. I never take one without maximum agility and strength for maximum spearchucking. Don't know how people are running at 7mph!

Owl tribe are much faster but they have smaller build/carrying capacity. I don't think you'll ever see a 8km/hour Kaumo.

[Matti-patti]

If the unspecified 1-2% refers to encumbrance, my experience from swimming is that 1% is "free", i.e. you can swim as far with an encumbrance of 1 as with 0, but with a significant penalty to the range at 2.
That was some time ago, but I don't think this has changed since.

If someone could be bothered, it should be possible to test by counting how many tiles you can run before reaching a fatigue level of e.g. 10 at various levels of encumbrance.

Yup, encumbrance. There actually was a thread on that: https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=6751.0

I've got a 5mph Kaumolais with (it appears) at least 85% in all his stats because I rollscummed HARD. I never take one without maximum agility and strength for maximum spearchucking. Don't know how people are running at 7mph!

Owl tribe are much faster but they have smaller build/carrying capacity. I don't think you'll ever see a 8km/hour Kaumo.

Though it's worth emphasizing that the bulk (as in character's body weight) only matters for maximum carry weight and the encumbrance free clothing you can wear, between those points it's all about character's endurance stat. The clothing thing can be an issue (less so if you are able to find the masterwork clothes to dress both light and warm) during colder periods, but I find linen undershirt + nettle cloak + fur mittens + fur hood + fur footwear to be very functional set and it only weights 10,7 pounds combined. In the dead of winter you will be skiing so more equipment and you won't be running either so it's less an issue.