Becoming a hunter:
Breakfast on pike or whatever roast cuts of meat you have left; then [w] wield two javelins or your bow and an arrow, and head out with murder on your mind. Look for open areas, mires, where the prey cannot hide in thick woodland. Ignore birds or small mammals for now, you probably need a big kill for a good amount of fur and meat. Elk, reindeer or pig are your targets. Should you spot one, close in and watch their movements carefully. When you are sure you see a tile they have moved over, go there and use your tracking skill to look for tracks. If that doesn't work you can zoom in for a closer look, exploring the tile to find the sign. Any tracks will complete the task, but if we are lucky we find the tracks of the animal we saw when zoomed out.
With snow on the ground, following the tracks should be easy enough. If you spot the prey, a tiny arrow next to it should show you which way it's facing. If it's facing away, you may be able to sneak up on it. You may get close enough to take a shot - about 12 tiles is maximum for a javelin or up to 20 tiles with a bow. The closer you get, the better your chance. [t] is how to throw a wielded weapon or loose a nocked arrow. If the animal spots you it will likely flee, which makes it a much harder target to hit. Hold your fire and follow it, wear it down. Sometimes it's better to zoom out, then hopefully you can see the prey. Move to it and zoom in again, and you might find it close by.
This is when javelins come into their own, if the animal is in range you can throw one from each hand and maybe get a hit or even two! Animals are slowed by wounds; you can examine them using [F3] to see what kind of wounds they have, and if the wounds have made them lame, crippled or unable to walk. They may also be bleeding, which makes them simple to track and over time will kill them - though most often the bleeding will stop before that happens. If your javelin or arrow stays stuck into the prey, the weight will also help to slow it down. Javelins weigh more than arrows, but then an arrow gives a much better chance of a hit at longer ranges. If you have had no success by the afternoon, it maybe a good idea to head home and try again tomorrow - getting a kill late in the day often means you will not have the time to skin and butcher it before night sets in and you need to sleep.
Once you have made a kill, go next to the body and retrieve any weapons from it. Rest until your fatigue is 0%, then press the skill menu, [h] for hideworking then skin the hide. Drop the hide then press b to butcher the remains. Pick up all you can, making sure you remember to keep the spirits happy by General Sacrificing [F4] a cut of the meat. The fat is the most vital bit, as you will need it to tan the skin. Leave bones and antlers etc if you cannot carry them. Head home to process your booty.
Cleaning the skin is the priority, then tan it with the fat from your kill. While it is tanning, make a fire and roast at least 40 cuts of meat. Try and make sure you can complete these tasks from your shelter, it helps to prevent you freezing to death! Next to your shelter, you should now start drying the remaining meat. This is where we use the withes you made earlier, grab some withes and dry all you can. Six withes will dry 48 cuts. The meat will take three or four weeks to dry, which is why we roasted some earlier. Light a fire next to you to warm you as you work if needed.
Sleep when you need to, keeping an eye on the tanning skin and keeping drying meat cuts. When the skin is tanned, rinse it then keep working on the meat until you can finish the tanning process. Use the fur to make gloves or footwear or whatever you need to keep yourself warm and frostbite free. You will need thin cord, you can get some by peeling bark from a birch tree then working it into birch cord.
Often, the first animal you track will not count towards the game course when you kill and skin it. The next one should, so as soon as the meat is drying and the hide is tanned you need to be going out hunting again. The next part of the course is trapping, and the easiest is a loop snare or light lever trap. Zoom out, move one tile from your camp, zoom in again then make the trap somewhere you will be able to find it again. Zoom out and Set A Trap should complete, then go do something else for a day or two. You don't have to catch anything in the trap, just go back and check it to complete the task.
Your next job is to visit a settlement, but this is a good time to pause doing the game course and hunt for a while. This is because one of the upcoming tasks of the course is agriculture, and you can't complete that while there is snow on the ground. As the task following The Settlement is to trade something; if you wait a few weeks and hunt, by the time you go to a village you should have a few furs to trade with, and also some of your dried meat. You can trade lots of things with villages, but timber will usually be too heavy to carry there to trade for anything worth the effort. Foods, furs and hides, excess weapons, clothes and tools are good items for trade. Save your cordage as you will likely need it.
When hunting in spring, pay attention to your Speed and the snow. If there is a good crust on the snow you can walk on top of it, but be aware that the crust can melt away on a sunny day, leaving you floundering through thigh deep snow. On days with no crust, you can pass the time productively by making weapons or clothes or peeling bark from alder and birch trees. If there are any plants poking through the snow, you can train your Herblore by trying to identify them. As the snow thaws, make a wooden shovel from a block of wood and build a cellar to store food for longer.
When you think you have some good stuff to trade, strike out for the nearest Driik village. You may want to make a shelter half way if you can't make the trip in one day. Don't trade with them for any animals yet, as that is a later task in the game course. Likewise, don't get any companions. Look for good weapons, armour and axes - a good bow or spear, an iron spectacle helm, or a quality handaxe are excellent choices. A handaxe works well for all tasks, other axes are specialised to their task and great to have but at this stage a fine or masterwork handaxe will help you a lot. The holy grail is a masterwork broad knife, for hideworking. Use a bit of common sense when trading - nobody is likely to want your splendid collection of feathers or elk bones.
Now you must put into the water in some sort of craft. You can use a punt if you traded for one in the previous task, if not then make a raft and a paddle. You need three tree trunks for a raft, and a board for the paddle. The next task is to fish for something, use the rod you got earlier and a cut of meat as bait, and head into the rapids. It may take a few tries but you will catch something in the end. Now you have to build something, which is a good time to think about a cabin. Build it near the water, and make sure you can build a cellar next to it, and that there is also room to tan hides. The minimum useful size for a cabin is two interior tiles, one for the fireplace and the other to sleep. You will be a lot more comfortable though, if you build at least four internal tiles. Only one wall or corner need to be built for now, to move on with the game course.
Agriculture is the next task, by now the snow should be gone so decide how many tiles you want to plant and place four branches on each of them. DO NOT put them next to anything flammable such as trees, walls etc.. Set them alight, noting how two adjacent fires can spread to other tiles with flammable material on them, and also how it is much easier to light a fire if there is already a fire next to it. Now leave the soil to cool for a day or two, and then use your agriculture skill to sow your seeds.
The last two tasks of the game course are to buy an animal and hire a companion. Load up what remains of your trade goods for an animal - a dog or cow is best - and also take along food and a few javelins to hire a companion. Leash the animal with the rope you are given, then head home. Tie the animal to a tree until you have made fences to pen it in, and put the companion to work felling trees. Use the level-up to improve your stats/attributes, not your skills or spells. As the water gets warmer, a good use of your free time is to grind swimming. Be very very careful doing this, staying close to shallow water so you can wade back to shore when you get too tired or cold. Grind climbing if you want to by building a fence around your vegetable patch, and climbing along it. Grind stealth by pressing hiding while you do stuff - it seems to work best when there is an animal in visual range, birds in traps are good for this.
Topic: A guide for the aspiring hunter (Read 11635 times)