Having trouble with trapping.

[Matty1v1]

I've already looked at some trapping guides, but I can't seem to trap a single animal. I tried putting lever traps along a lake bank, no dice. Tried trap fences, got nothing. Couldn't catch a single fox with a paw trap. Is it supposed to be this hard and unsatisfying or am I doing something wrong? And can someone please explain the mechanics behind trapping? How does it work under the hood?
 

[Bert Preast]

I'm no expert trapper but from what I have observed, trapping can be rather seasonal.  I tend to get nothing for a month or two, then suddenly I am getting a couple of kills a week.  So the first question is, how long have you been trying?  Next question, how good is your trapping skill?  With trapping around 65%, I have chased elk and deer towards my trap fence and watched the animals avoid the traps, as if they could see them.  So I think the skill matters. 

I usually use light levers and loop snares not at the water's edge; but rather on or around crops, berries and the like.  Obviously this works best when the berries or crops are ripening, I should probably move them during the winter and spring but I am lazy.  Instead I bait them with berries and get a few cold and hungry birds. 

I set trap fences across land bridges to peninsulas or between lakes.  This drives the animals into them, and unless the water is frozen should get a lot of kills.  I make a pit trap every six tiles or so.

I scatter fox traps about pretty randomly and bait them with some raw meat or fish.  If I see a fox, by next morning he is almost always in one of my traps.

Finally, animals don't seem to come to the traps when you are not in residence.  I have left a trap line for over six months, and come back to find it empty.  I suspect the game is husbanding resources by not simulating animal life when the player is not around. 

[PALU]

Building on @Bert Preast's comments:
- Traps generally need appropriate bait (for what you're trying to catch), although trap lines can catch small game if they're long/numerous.
- As mentioned, it's very uneven, so it can go a month without you even seeing a bird, and then suddenly you catch a lot of them over a short period of time.
- Traps have been reworked comparatively recently. One of the changes I've seen is an increased chance that a trapped animal manages to free itself and escape, in particular if you're able to see the animal getting into the trap. The chance of finding a triggered but empty trap when visiting traps is a lot lower. For that reason I have my character face away from the homestead small game traps while performing activities.
- Another change is that I've seen birds pass through/over small game traps without triggering them.
- Another change is that large game now ignore and trigger small game traps (i.e. just runs straight through them).
- I've also had recent issues with an elk running straight through a bear trap without triggering it, both while I was passing to the other side of the trap fence via the overmap (it was on the other side when I moved, but had moved to the starting side when I "landed"), as well as while chasing it. This has led me to question the effectiveness of bear traps against large herbivorous game, which is a real concern for my current character, both because it's winter so no digging can be done, and the whole region is mire, so there's nowhere I can dig a pit trap.
- It does seem that you need to refresh the wildlife near your traps. I try to visit the traps once every day on a short tour, which can cause you to (occasionally) find animals in them when you return. I disable traps further away when I don't want to spend the effort to check them as a role playing measure: capturing animals and then not collecting them is "wrong", even if nothing is actually generated in the area by the game (but you can never know if something was generated on your last visit and then entered the trap while/shortly after you'd left).
- When it comes to the smallest lever traps, I place them in lines (i.e. one next to the other) as some kind of trap fence to block the passage of birds, hares, and foxes to increase the change of something being trapped even when they're not baited. That's crucial in the early game when there's nothing to bait traps with.
- You can use "natural" bait in the form of berry shrub by placing traps on them hopefully luring berry eating animals into those traps. You can also pick berries and bait traps with them, and you can also bait traps with e.g. fat (using bark for tanning instead) to try to catch carnivores. Most of the time bait spoils before anything is caught, though.
- Trapping skill probably plays a role. However, my characters are usually poor at trapping, and it's a skill that doesn't increase much through normal use (i.e. to become good at it you probably have to perform dedicated training by setting, triggering and resetting traps repeatedly).
- One method that can be used is to set up a baited trap in an area where you've seen an animal. That sometimes work. Note that using that method to try to trap bears and wolves may result in you getting attacked while working on the trap or checking it. That's a particular danger with wolves, as your trap may catch one wolf, but the rest of the pack is then ready to greet you (lost my last character to this when the pack was far too close to the homestead so I had to take some action)...

[Tinker]

The quality of your traps seems also to be important. I have 5 poor snares that have not caught anything in two years but  the five decent snares near them have all cought about 10 hares or birds each in the same time.

It seems that spoilt meat or fish is still useable as bait, it also works for fishing bait.

As well as the weeks of waiting with no action in traps, followed by a few days of frantic activity there are some other unknown variables. I have a fence around my cave entrance with three pit traps, one has caught two bull elks, a doe elk and a reindeer, another has caught a bear, a reindeer calf and a forest reindeer but the trap between has not caught anything.

[Felius]

For large animals, I really recommend you first finding some before actually putting down traps. Finding an Elk/Reindeer, put a trap or minor trap fence on the location, maybe bait with a turnip, and voila, you'll get it. And it's quite likely that more animals will eventually appear on the same general area, instead of hoping you lucked out on spot you picked actually being somewhere they tend to go. Bears similar thing, just use meat instead of turnips.

Foxes: Same as before, but easier because you can use paw-traps. Raw meat is best bait, raw fish works too. I've heard stories of preserved/cooked meat working, but I haven't had as much luck with those.

Birds: Loop snares and/or lever traps all around wherever you're staying. Doubly so around your cellar and your field. They now can fly over the traps, mind you, but enough should be landing nearby, trying to steal your food or peck your crops. So trap your "reality bubble", and give it time. You'll probably be catching a whole damn bunch whenever you stay there for multiple days.

Hares: Never had any luck trapping those. Maybe loop snares around berry bushes I guess?

Most small animals: Small deadfall traps are useful, specially if baited with the appropriate thing, but you'll probably want first to find the animal or at least tracks. Meat on small deadfall traps can be really powerful given the value of the furs of some of tho

A note: Be careful with heavy deadfall traps. As I understand traps still have some chance of spawning appropriate animals near it. And one of the animals for heavy deadfall traps are wolves. Which come in packs and are an absolute nightmare to fight. Very valuable, yes, but incredibly dangerous too. I'd rather fight a bear naked with a single knife than a pack of wolves, even with proper equipment. So, do not put them in the immediate vicinity of your house. And remember that, once you get a house, you can shoot arrows and throw javelins through windows, so if you do get a wolf infestation, shoot from inside.

For actually trapping wolves, yeah, heavy deadfall traps, with at least some distance from your base, and, very importantly, let all non-trapped wolves leave before you try to grab the carcasses (because you might also want to let the trapped ones die naturally instead of accelerating it for safety sake).

Finally: Remember, keep the spirits happy. Do a general sacrifice daily (they don't seem to mind if your sacrifice is not valuable, caloric, or even poisonous, just so long it's not spoiled, so feel free to sacrifice berries, mushrooms, and whatever else you can find), and use any other appropriate spells you might know.

As an addendum: It's not as easy as it used to be anymore, but you might also want to consider trapping the most valuable of preys: Foreign traders. Upon finding a group and more or less figuring out their heading, some staked (important, because you want them to bleed to death without your direct involvement) pits on where they will eventually be can net you incredibly valuable goods. Do keep in mind that if they see you making a given trap pit they won't fall for that one. And they are pretty good at noticing trap fences, even if you use just a wall of trap pits instead of any actual fence, so make use of natural chokepoints, and careful to not make it too contiguous.

[PALU]

I've never had any impression of traps resulting in spawning of animals, but I'm also far away from having played UrW for a decade. As far as I understand, it used to work that way, but was changed a long time ago.
I fence up my base camp and add bear traps in the fence to protect against bears showing up, but they're rare and they've never arrived close to the trap construction time.

I believe milk weed roots and turnips are liked by both hares and elks (and I think there was a thread a couple of years ago about what baits worked and didn't back then: that's probably still mostly relevant. Loop snares and the smallest lever traps can catch hares.

The only thing I know eats prepared food is dogs, but I haven't tried to use it as bait.

I've accidentally killed a foreign trader in a trap once (it was a stand alone trap somewhere constructed long before they showed up, probably in an attempt to catch something that appeared nearby). Njerps and adventurers have always detected trap lines and trap fences for me, with Njerps intentionally triggering traps to bypass them. Adventurers can be incredibly stupid and cut down a tree next to a trap that formed a part of a trap line, and then proceed to step into it as it somehow no longer was visible (the bugger claimed everything was fine for every day of the month it took him to heal up). As I'm not trying to kill humans I don't add stakes to pit traps, as those are bound to damage the skin of the trapped animal, negating a large part of the reason for trapping it in the first place.

Edit:
I've just had an elk first pass through and triggering a bear trap without taking damage, and then later get caught in the same trap (after it had been reset), so bear traps aren't useless with elks: they're just unreliable (which makes sense). They're probably better is good bait.

[GrimmSpector]

I don't have the calories to set up a trap fence, barely surviving all my traps just stopped catching anything lately, not sure where the best place to build a trap fence would be. A lot of posts I've seen say to find something in the area and then set traps ... but wandering around randomly I don't really run into animals almost at all, except the occasional squirrel. And once I have a bunch of traps out there, the bait rots pretty fast for many.

Spirits are still reasonably happy, but I'm on the verge of starting to starve here

[Bert Preast]

Sometimes we starve to death or succumb to the cold.  Happens to the best of us. 

Keep fighting while you can though, tomorrow you may get a lucky throw on an elk and cripple it.  Where there's hope...   

I build trap fences across bottlenecks between lakes or over peninsulas.  It sounds like you need food badly though, and traps are unlikely to get you it.  Go hunting.  Use javelins or rocks, or a bow if you have one.  Be persistent.  Never give up!

[GrimmSpector]

Sometimes we starve to death or succumb to the cold.  Happens to the best of us. 

Keep fighting while you can though, tomorrow you may get a lucky throw on an elk and cripple it.  Where there's hope...   

I build trap fences across bottlenecks between lakes or over peninsulas.  It sounds like you need food badly though, and traps are unlikely to get you it.  Go hunting.  Use javelins or rocks, or a bow if you have one.  Be persistent.  Never give up!

For that I've have to come across and elk, be close enough to throw, and make the throw ... oh and have the spare calories to make another javelin...

I don't think I've EVER caught an animal on foot that I've been hunting, I always loose them in the trees, and I NEVER have seen one in a mire or other open area. I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

[Bert Preast]

If you were good at fishing, I would suggest fishing - but you've already said you are not good at fishing.

Trapping will take too long to set up a decent fence, you will likely starve before you get anything.

Farming is the same, it takes time to work.

Villages have food, and will trade it for almost anything.  This is the easy way to survive.  Make something, and trade it for a few cuts of food.

Otherwise, you must hunt or die.  Make a couple of javelins and head for open or pine mires.  Zoom in now and then, and look around.  Animals are there and with patience you can get one!

EDIT:  I forgot to say, you're not doing anything wrong.  Struggling to survive is the best bit of the game 

[GrimmSpector]

If you were good at fishing, I would suggest fishing - but you've already said you are not good at fishing.

Trapping will take too long to set up a decent fence, you will likely starve before you get anything.

Farming is the same, it takes time to work.

Villages have food, and will trade it for almost anything.  This is the easy way to survive.  Make something, and trade it for a few cuts of food.

Otherwise, you must hunt or die.  Make a couple of javelins and head for open or pine mires.  Zoom in now and then, and look around.  Animals are there and with patience you can get one!

EDIT:  I forgot to say, you're not doing anything wrong.  Struggling to survive is the best bit of the game 

I'll try ... thanks. Struggling is one thing, having no shot seemingly is another

[Bert Preast]

You always have a shot... but you have to take it well to survive.

I was starving and freezing but I got lucky, an elk in a snowstorm with just a rock.  Read about it here:

https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=6762.0

So keep trying.  If you die, follow my hunter's guide with your next Finn, and you should find things much less frustrating 

[GrimmSpector]

You always have a shot... but you have to take it well to survive.

I was starving and freezing but I got lucky, an elk in a snowstorm with just a rock.  Read about it here:

https://www.unrealworld.fi/forums/index.php?topic=6762.0

So keep trying.  If you die, follow my hunter's guide with your next Finn, and you should find things much less frustrating 

At the start of this run I ran into a bear that attacked me unexpectedly and it foundered in the snow and didn't kill me, just realllly hurt me, otherwise I'd already be dead. An elk with a rock that's pretty impressive! Does throwing use unarmed, or a weapon skill?

[Tinker]

As I understand it throwing does not use any skill, if you throw rocks they seem to use ckub skill, arrows and spears seem to use bow or spear skill, but other items are a bit vague.

[GrimmSpector]

As I understand it throwing does not use any skill, if you throw rocks they seem to use ckub skill, arrows and spears seem to use bow or spear skill, but other items are a bit vague.

My club skill is awful, explains why I can't hit a barn lol