Help with bird thief quest

[DemAvalon]

So I got the bird thief quest, talked to the old man the quest giver told me to talk, the old man will only tell me if I bring him a whole dead bird, ok then I thought I will just set some baited loop snares and go check for the area the bird hunter told me about (the ones where his supposed loops are), I can't find them at all, I looked online and the general tip is that if you are in the center of the circle (the marker on the map) you will be very close to it, but no matter how much I look I can't find the loops with the feathers, I even modified the graphics for the loop snares so they look like squares with red centers, and made the trees invisible, (though they still block sight) and even still I can't find, please don't tell me that they only show up after you deliver the bird to the old man.

[PALU]

The snares exist in the game world from the time the quest is generated (or at least accepted), so you can find the snares while waiting for your traps to bag a bird.
This quest, like all the other "find things within area" quest, requires a tedious search through every tile within the area that matches the description: it does not have to be near the center.
I use two techniques for these area searches:
1. The preferred one is to sweep back and forth over the area on the world map, zooming in to every tile of the right type, look forward, look back, zoom out, move to the next tile, repeat. This covers an area is less than 5 days (but it generally takes more than one).
2. When the target is in spruce infested forest visibility is too poor for the previous technique to work. In that case I follow the borderline on the zoomed in map for as long as that feature is relevant, zoom out, move to the next one, etc. This technique generally takes longer and is more prone to overlooking a tile.

Thus, when going on these quests I make sure to bring food for at least a week.

[DemAvalon]

Ah!, I see so its a general area then (I guess I got lucky with the wounded adventurer I did before this one), when you say to look on the terrain that matches the description, in my case it says "at border location of  heathland area right next to coniferous forest in the west", that means I have to look only on the heathlands that have coniferous forests adjacent on the west or that I have to look in the middle (at the "border") or in both terrain types?

[PALU]

In your case the traps are located on the heathland, but if the heathland doesn't have coniferous forest as its western border tile it's not of interest. Heathland is sufficiently open that you ought to see the traps using zoom in/look forward/look backwards/zoom out. The site can be quite some distance from the border (I believe injured adventurer shelters have been found close to the center of the tile), but so far walking on the border has been sufficient for me to find clues. I'd say the bird thief one is one of the harder, because the traps and feathers do not stand out the way blood splatter does (but your tile mod should ease that a bit).
If you want to use the "follow the border" search method I'd recommend walking a fair bit inside the heathland tile within view of the border to cover as much of the tile as possible.

[codyo]

It would be nice if doing these quests weren't so tedious in trying to find who/what you're looking for.
That's the reason why I forget that quests are even a thing sometimes. Bad rewards for a week of boring work.

[PALU]

I certainly wouldn't mind if the areas were shrunk considerably.

[caius]

It would be nice if doing these quests weren't so tedious in trying to find who/what you're looking for.
That's the reason why I forget that quests are even a thing sometimes. Bad rewards for a week of boring work.

I agree.  I assume it improves my "reputation" with a village, but that improvement is unnoticeable as far as I can tell. 

Does anyone know if quests "build" from a specific village/culture?  That is, do I need to complete "low level" quests in order to qualify for "higher level" quests?  If that is the case, I'm willing to grind through some of these tedious ones if an eventual pay-off will come.

[codyo]

I do not believe there is a hierarchy like that. But there are culture specific quests, depending on what character you go as.
Also seasonal specific.

There are some rarer, interesting ones, but I have seen no trace of those in my own games.

[PALU]

I don't think there is any hierarchy as such, but there are reputation/culture/... criteria for some of them, so I'd assume some would require you to be well known, some a stranger (I think), and there may be ones requiring being sufficiently trusted. There's at least one requiring being of the same culture.
There are subtle clues as to your standing. If you're unknown or disliked you tend to be called <culture> <man/woman>, you've also got "frequent guest" and "my friend". You can certainly make yourself disliked by individual characters ("No, Kaumolais man, we're not talking") through a certain quest path, while others in the same village indicate they like/accept you.

[DemAvalon]

Thanks for the help, I will use the faster method and see if that works, again thank you for the help, I was getting seriously frustrated (I don't think I will ever do bird thief again). This quest would be alot less annoying if you could just use any feather, and instead you just spoke some ritual words or something ike that.
actually how much of the red dot that represents the player has to be on the blue circle to be considered part of the search area? like if just the very corner of the dot is on the circle and there is a tile that matches the quest giver description should I look there? also if I abandon this quest will it still show on my quest journal?
edit: to answer my own question, no the quest is gone from the journal if you abandon it, so screw you old man I hope you and your bird rot in hell.

[caius]

I too got this quest and am wondering when the thief will confess.  I gave the sage the dead bird, cast the spell, and the quest originator immediately game to me and said we'll need to now wait and see when the person confesses.  It has been 7 days of waiting for the bird thief.  How long does it take to actually catch the person?  When I talk to the quest originator, his pat answer now is:
"We still have to wait.  I have no news about the thief." 
...and my response is, "So we'll wait and hope that the thief eventually comes forward."
...to which his response is, "Let's do like that. Maybe we'll be wiser tomorrow."

Any guidance?

[spamgoose]

It took a long time for me. I think about 7 days or even longer. But yea, the worst part is I had no idea whether the spell worked or not. Though I hope that it doesn't let you say that it's done, unless it's actually worked.

The confessor may be in a different village, so I kind of wondered if there distance of the village effects the time before he confesses.

[PALU]

It's taken a fair bit of time for me every time, so after a few days I had my character repeat the ritual (at that time the feather wasn't consumed, and I think it still isn't yet, and there are several feathers anyway).
However, I think there is no difference in the dialog if you screw it up (I believe I threw the feather into the fire at one attempt), although it MIGHT of course be that the first attempt actually worked.

The thieves have always been from nearby villages in my cases, so it's not a as if they need to set out on a week long trek to confess. Walking the distance and back again would take less that a couple of hours.

[amyhistoria]

I've find the traps in around day 10 and do the ritual immediately. Also after first ritual I come to the hunter to confirm. Also I redone some rituals after that. It turns that at last day the thief still didn't come. Luckily I've backup at "expire at 3 days", in order to test a "fur cap migration issue".

And I heard that the reward is very disappointing...Waiting for the Mr.Coding Sami to tweak that..

EDIT: I checked the wiki, it turns out that...

Once the feathers have been acquired, the spell can be cast in a village sauna or a base rock after either of these has a burnt out fire (you can check by looking with l, this will also tell if a gray ground square is base rock).

the ritual must be casted IN THE VILLAGE.

[PALU]

Yes and no. The "sauna" you build yourself at your homestead isn't a real sauna. The villages have sauna stoves in their saunas, while characters can build only normal stoves. A character built "sauna" works as a sauna for all purposes other than the quest(s?), such as smoking and taking a sauna bath, though. It's a nasty surprise to find out there's a distinction in this one case.
The "no" part is that bedrock does not have to be in a village (and I think it would be very hard to find any in villages). I usually use bedrock, as my characters settle by rapids where these are easy to find.

I don't think the bird thief reward is fixed (to a particular reward), so what you get should vary. However, when you get a disappointing reward, think of it as a relations building effort.