Tracking Njerpez

[StudleyKansas]

Every time I see a Njerpez in the distance, I count the number of squares away from me that he is, and I walk directly there.  Sometimes I get the encounter and am able to fight him, but most of the time I don't.  That's fine, I can understand that he has walked off or whatever, but what I don't understand is that I'm never able to find his tracks.  I would think that by knowing for certain he was within a certain square, that it shouldn't take but a few minutes of looking to find a trail.  I find rabbit tracks, bird tracks, every other kind of track but no human tracks, and this is in the winter time with a ton of snow.  I start in the middle of the square and slowly make circles that get a little larger each time I go around, no human tracks.  Am I just having crappy luck or does the game not generate human tracks when they are that far away or what?

[PALU]

I don't think you're guaranteed to land in the middle of the tile... That said, it can be surprisingly hard to find tracks, and I sometimes wonder if there were any, of if the tile the Njerp was displayed to be on is incorrect.

I typically move to the tile adjacent to the Njerp one, move 25 tiles diagonally towards the edge of the Njerp tile, and then 50 along one edge, 50 along the next, 50 along then next, and 50 along the last one to return to what should be the starting point of the box. That assumes I actually landed at the center of the adjacent tile, though.

[StudleyKansas]

How often are you able to find tracks doing it that way?

[PALU]

Most of the time. It probably helps to have a good tracking skill, but humans leave fairly good tracks. There have been cases in the past when tracks seemingly have just stopped, despite my character having a good skill, and looking around didn't show continuation any either.

[Shadowdweller]

In my personal experience there's a LITTLE bit of weirdness due to how new creatures are generated.  First off - njerpez and animals seem to be generated by the game every so often.  When they do so, they don't have an established pattern of tracks laid down.  Once they HAVE been generated, they run around the area - after which tracks should be visible and available if 1) you have a high enough tracking skill to find them, 2) weather conditions (like falling snow) haven't erased them, and/or 3) the type of terrain is suitable for tracks.  I don't know if Njerpez do the same, but Foreign Traders seem to occasionally magically disappear....only to appear again later or appear somewhere nearby.

[Bedlam]

The way he is displayed on the world map can be a little odd. If the Njerpez is closer to the border of a map than he is to the center, then he can "seem" to be in the square adjacent to where you're looking for him, which expands your area to search for tracks a lot.

Tracking used to be a fantastic way to hunt in URW, but in one of the updates it got nerfed. Now you can't depend on it for anything, going to the world map tile where you saw something and tracking there is useless. It's become more or less the minor stat that helps you follow tracks on the zoomed-in map that you already found.

The slightly disappointing theory I sometimes lean towards is that when you haven't encountered an animal/Njerpez on the zoomed-in map, there will be no tracks to find at all.  Not sure if this is true, but sure seems like it in my games. In other words, the tracks get generated when you zoom in on a tile, probably based on random factors and what animals/people are likely to be in the area.

Here's generally what I do when I see someone - go to the tile they were last in, zoom in and see if there are visible tracks right there, if not then zoom out and walk around the area. Usually the guy will reappear somewhere, or you encounter him while moving. He didn't vanish for good even though he doesn't leave tracks, he's still around there you can be sure of that. Could be in a thick forest and not even visible, but still possible to encounter.

[StudleyKansas]

I have had much better luck with finding things that I see in the distance, many thanks to PALU.  I don't use his method exactly, because I don't want to take for granted that I'm in the center of the tile when I zoom in.  Instead I move around until I'm sure i'm in one of the corners, and proceed to walk the entire perimeter.  This is much easier if the tile in question is bordered by different biomed tiles, but even if it's a sea of coniferous forest it's still doable.  I'll often add a marker to the search tile with a big red X that way when I zoom out I can see if I've wandered too far.  In my experiments the width and height of a tile is around 60 paces, but I rarely count each pace as I'm looking for tracks, I just have an idea of how much of a tile fits on my screen and keep it in mind as I move.  If I'm ever not sure I'll zoom out and see if my dude is still on the X that I put on the map.

To Bedlam: I only started playing recently, but I've found the tracking skill to be incredibly handy in difficult tracking situations where the fresh tracks I'm interested in are all mixed up with half a dozen other animal tracks spread out over a two week period.  True you can use it to identify tracks that you can already see on the screen, but it can also make new tracks appear that your character didn't notice before.  For instance, if I see very fresh stag tracks leading northeast, but I don't see the next set of tracks, I'll use my tracking skill on that spot and quite often my character will discover that next set of tracks that wasn't visible before.  Once he does discover them, they will magically appear on the screen so you can see them too.  If I'm dealing with a numerous and mixed tracks situation and I can't figure out which way the bugger went, I'll hit "x' on the keyboard to examine each tile surrounding the last known tile the prey passed through, this will automatically use the tracking skill on each of those tiles without having to actually move there, and will frequently uncover tracks that weren't visible before.  This does not count as using a turn in the game, so you don't lose time walking back and forth while the prey gets further away.  This little trick is what took tracking to a whole new level for me.

[PALU]

The tiles are 50 * 50 (100 * 100 meters).

Tracking is also necessary in spruce infested forest, where a lot of the tracks are hidden from the player (but not the character) by trees, and it will also tell you if there are tracks on tiles covered by logs, shrubs, etc. that otherwise hide tracks from the player.

Edit: I just had two cases of vanishing characters. The first one was a merchant group. I went there, was told they were up ahead, and found a single pair of footprints (with a tracking skill of 88) in open terrain. The next day or three I went to look for an adventurer (I was fairly sure it was a known one, not robbers), and miraculously managed to find the single pair of footprints in a spruce forest tile. I also had a couple of vanishing Njerps my half hearted seach attempts failed to find any tracks of in between (my character was on a failed quest getting round trip of 8 villages). All in all, a rather lousy half week.

[MrMotorhead]

Looking for tracks on the zoomed in map is the go-to way I've been able to hunt down beasts (both 2 and 4 legged).  I have to be extra careful when looking for dangerous game, because sometimes I get tunnel vision looking for footprints, when the actual beast is visible!

My character with the highest tracking will only very occasionally get the notification that "you see tracks" while walking around zoomed out, without even using the skill.

I have mostly given up using the skill on a zoomed out view as it just does not seem reliable.

I can attest with certainty that tracks will be visible even if you can't see what left them.

I have also seen foreign traders disappear, pretty much right in front of me.  I found them in the overland map and I caught up with them, and was doing some trading, when all of a sudden they took off in one direction, moving fast.  I followed the tracks that they left but it seems they went behind a tree and just vanished, like they flew away.  The tracks stopped and I wasn't able to find them again.