Has persistence hunting been made more difficult?

[jhharvest]

Hey guys and gals!

I haven't played UrW in ages and installed it again recently. And gotta say I'm finding persistence hunting hard as nails now. I had a character with pretty much max starting javelin skill and I missed 10 javelins at elk / reindeer at 5-10 squares. The animals feel like they're looping around a lot more than before, so tracking seems trickier and even with 70+ sneaking I get spotted at max vision range. Oh, and I can't remember move speeds varying so much! I had a girl character whose running speed was 6km/h which is, uh, not great!

Tldr; Didn't play the game for a while and now I suck.

[JP_Finn]

Yes and no. The animals seem to be more wary, realistic. Some of us have had deaf&blind hares and grouses. But those are not very common.

Persistence hunting is still OP. Chasing down an elk* to out of breath in just 300-400meters is still way too easy. *with dogs
Abusing/using knowledge of herd mentality makes forest reindeer and wild pig hunting easy too.

[jhharvest]

Yep, I hear you on the out of breath elks thing. But then a normal character also goes to 100% fatigue from just jogging at 12km/h for 200 metres so it's a bit wonky both ways.

I think my main difficulty came from missing so much of my ranged attacks. That said, my only personal experience of primitive bow hunting is one afternoon with a tribe in Africa. They were able to get close enough to small birds to hit them quite consistently with a simple bow and untipped arrows and even I was hitting a badger sized target consistently from 15 metres. But then maybe the URW square is 2m * 2m so then 10 squares would be 20 metres at which point I can totally get how even a pretty decent archer misses a lot?

[JP_Finn]

Yes indeed. Sami has commented on few occasions that even with 100 Bow skill, don't expect to hit diving goshawk in the eye-ball from 40m away... (well, sort of, I exaggerated it)
I wouldn't shoot a whitetail, or local blacktail, mulie, further than 20-25m (with traditional bow and arrow, wheelie bow maybe up 35m, but I don't take mine out almost ever, not enough time. Rifles and shotgun need to get out too ) I'm not super-enthusiast-archer either, but I can put 3 of 3 arrows in 3 separate paper cups from 15.

[PALU]

I've found that you should run as little as possible. WALK when you follow your prey. When they start to get slightly out of breath I have my character run when I see it until the animal starts running, and then return to walking, with the aim to keep the animal run as much as possible, ending up in them totally exhausted, with the character recovering between short sprints while walking.

IF you manage to hit the target with a ranged attack that will slow it down, or at least get it to tire faster (in particular if it becomes lame), but hits are far from guaranteed.

[jhharvest]

Yep. And I guess the weapon quality also affects the hit chances in UrW. When you have just a stone axe it doesn't seem possible to make anything except crude javelins? I started an Islander with 80% carpentry, max touch and dexterity and I could only make a crude staff -> crude javelin. How much of a penalty does a crude javelin give to throwing? I feel like with enough patience it should be possible to straighten a crude staff. Maybe I can mod it in, requires two stones, water and fire and in 3 hours you can turn a bad staff into a decent staff.

For arrows maybe this kind of a thing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vdPtaZ10i0

[jhharvest]

I've found that you should run as little as possible. WALK when you follow your prey. When they start to get slightly out of breath I have my character run when I see it until the animal starts running, and then return to walking, with the aim to keep the animal run as much as possible, ending up in them totally exhausted, with the character recovering between short sprints while walking.

Yeah, I was able to get this to work in open mire but in forest it was too tricky. And a character with less than 6km/h walking speed I found that the animals were able to rest too much while I was walking to them. I used to play so that I'd take the first stat roll I got for any character but now I feel like I have to reroll to get a couple of good stats at least.

[trowftd]

Yep. And I guess the weapon quality also affects the hit chances in UrW. When you have just a stone axe it doesn't seem possible to make anything except crude javelins?.

You are probably true on this part. I think Sami made it that way in order to have some kind of progression at the game. Just so that you don't start with solid items from the start.

And the items that you use for crafting also matters. Stone knife and stone axe are the worst offenders when it comes to that, I don't think there is any way you can craft a decent or fine items with stone tools. Unless you mod in of course

[jhharvest]

Yeah, I totally get the need to have progression. But I guess there would be alternate ways to implement progression, like making a decent javelin / bow with makeshift tools would take a very long time. A javelin made from a fresh slender trunk will warp and bend as it dries out making it worse over time compared to one made from a staff that was dried for 6 months first. A quickly made bowstring can snap when in use, so for best reliability you want good quality which takes longer and needs specialised tools to twine. Dunno, just thinking here.

Maybe I should make an alternate mod to BAC that allows you to make good quality primitive weaponry by spending longer on it.

[trowftd]

Yes, but the problem with the waiting times is that the realistic times in URW is just too much imo. I tried to make a mod with the seasoning of the staves and everything, but at the end it just turned out that I was able to find the bow I wanted while I was waiting for the stave to season.

And the other problem is that, at least right now, weapons do not fail. It would be wise to have multiple staves seasoned at the same time so, if your bow fails you already have a solid piece of wood to work with. But weapon durability is not necessarily in the game right now. It is on the dev plans, and if it finds its way into the game, it very well change all the "find 1 good item and its over" strategy. Of course, you can always add to your roleplaying that after certain time, you craft another weapon but it seems tedious to track the time and everything else together.

[jhharvest]

Oh? I thought it had been implemented since the urw.ini has the section:

Code: [Select]

// Weapon damage & degrade system hasn't been fully tested, and some may find it too harsh as
// there is not (yet) possibility to repair weapons. For these reasons you can turn weapon damage off
// here by setting this value to NO
//
// For value changes to take effect you need to restart the game or view help screen (?).
//
[WEAPON_DAMAGE:YES]
But now that you say I don't think I've had anything except arrows break.

[trowftd]

Yep, I am aware of that line too, but like you said, I've thrown hundreds of javelins straight at the walls and never had one broken. They also don't degrade after usage in crafting too. The oncoming update will have degradable fishing hook parts so I guess it won't be too far until we see proper durability.

[PALU]

Weapons do get damaged by being blocked or you blocking with them, but I haven't seen any damage from other use (apart from the arrows already mentioned).

[jhharvest]

Coming back to the game two years later and... Persistence hunting is still awful. If I spot prey in the forest it's just not worth it. I can never find it even with very high tracking and speed. If it's an open mire then finding the prey is usually trivially easy. I think the balance is off. It just doesn't feel good.

[GrimmSpector]

Yes and no. The animals seem to be more wary, realistic. Some of us have had deaf&blind hares and grouses. But those are not very common.

Persistence hunting is still OP. Chasing down an elk* to out of breath in just 300-400meters is still way too easy. *with dogs
Abusing/using knowledge of herd mentality makes forest reindeer and wild pig hunting easy too.

I need to understand how you guys do this so easily ... I lose them too often in terrain, even with really high tracking I can't keep up even close to their pace if I don't run and if I run I'm done too quickly...I don't know what else to do!