Trapping Guide! SPOILER WARNING

[Croak]

Note- Can anyone confirm if you can be near the traps for each animal? Seems like I only catch things when they're in the meta.*
*Confirmed for Mice and Rats.

So since trapping is new and most people either can't get it to work or don't know how to make it work I thought I'd make a guide for people who are new. People who have had success, please share!

Trap recipes:

Wooden Crate Trap:
Saw
Plank=3
Nails=5

Stick Trap:
WoodenStick=4
Twine=1

Snare Trap:
Saw
Plank=1
Twine=2
SkillRequired:Trapping=1

Trap Box:
Saw
Plank=4
Nails=7
SkillRequired:Woodwork=1;Trapping=2

Cage Trap:
Wire=5
SkillRequired:Trapping=3

There are also mouse traps which seem to be rare loot.
From what I can figure out it seems like the crate traps are for squirrels, stick trap is for birds, and snare trap is for rabbits. Mouse trap obviously for mice. I can confirm the stick trap, the other two are guesses.

Bait:
IMPORTANT NOTE: BAIT MUST BE FRESH IF IT IS SPOILABLE (I've done testing and stale bait works, so as long as it isn't rotten you're good)!
Rabbit Bait: Carrots, Apple, Lettuce, Cabbage, Corn, Banana, Potato, Tomato.
Squirrel Bait: Orange, Peanuts, PeanutButter, Cereal, Apple, Corn, Popcorn.
Bird Bait: Bread, Corn, Cereal.
Mouse Bait: Cheese, PeanutButter, BaconBits, Chocolate, Orange, Apple, Tomato.
Rat Bait: Cheese, PeanutButter, BaconBits, Chocolate, Orange, Apple, Tomato.

So this is what I found after digging through the code for a while. Traps have "durability" and the animals you catch will break out after some time, resulting in empty traps with no bait. This is coming from code, so I'm sorry if it's unclear which trap it's referring to! :(

Trap Strength:
Crate Traps-15
Box Traps-15
Cage Traps-20
Snare Traps-10
Stick Traps-15
Mouse Traps-50

Now some info on the animals you can catch!

Rabbits:
Strength-24 (This means they'll break out quickly, so check in often!)
Hours of activity: 19:00-5:00
Zones:
Towns/Trailer parks-2
Vegitation-8
Forest-10
Deep Forest-15
Trap chances:
Cage Trap-30
Snare/Box/Crate-20
Bait Chance:
Carrots-25
Apple-15
Lettuce/Cabbage-20
Corn/Banana/Potato/Tomato-15

Squirrels:
Strength-20
Hours of activity: 19:00-5:00
Zones same as rabbit's.
Trap Chances:
Box-15
Cage-30
Crate/Snare-20
Bait Chance:
Orange/Peanuts/Apple/Corn/Popcorn(cooked only)-20
Peanutbutter/Cereal-25

Birds:
No strength value so don't worry about escapes!
24/7 activity
Zones:
Farm/Town/Vegitation-30
Trailer Park/Forest/Deep Forest-20
Trap Chances:
Only stick trap, with a value of 30.
Bait chances:
Bread-30
Corn/Cereal-25

Mice:
No strength!
24/7 activity
Zones:
Farm/Trailer Park-60
Town-50
Vegitation-20
Forest/Deep Forest-10
Trap chances:
Just the mousetrap for these, with a value of 20.
Bait chances:
Cheese-40
Peanutbutter/Bacon bits(cut up bacon with a knife)-20
Orange/Apple/Tomato-15
Chocolate-20

Rats:
No strength!
24/7 activity
Zones:
Farm-50
Trailer Park-40
Town-30
Vegitation-20
Forest/Deep Forest-10
Trap Chances:
Also only uses the mousetrap, but with a value of 15.
Bait Chances:
Cheese-40
Peanutbutter/Bacon bits-20
Chocolate-10
Orange/Apple/Tomato-15

Assuming these values feed into a percentage out of 100, it should be pretty easy to figure out what you will catch with a combination of bait and trap. I managed to figure out the trap chance is calculated hourly, so keep that in mind when checking traps!

Example: Mouse trap w/ tomato bait in a house-85% for a mouse to be caught every hour, 60% chance for a rat to be caught every hour.

As for those who aren't sure about the zones, here's how it essentially works:
Town zones are inside or near houses. Farms are on the large farmland plots. Trailer parks are inside and around trailers. Vegitation is the grassy areas between forests and housing. Forests are areas with a fair number of trees, away from buildings and behind vegitation. Deep forests are those places where only insane people go because you can't see ♥♥♥♥.
IMPORTANT NOTE ON ZONES:
Roads do not count as any of the above stated zones! They are their own type of zone and don't appear to be used in the trapping calculations!

On the subject of rewards for trapping! Just without cleaning it's just the dead animal. With cleaning it goes as follows:
Mice, Squirrels, and rats all give you 'small animal meat.' This goes stale in 2 days.
Rabbits give you 'rabbit meat.'
Birds give you 'small bird meat.'
Keep in mind that cleaning isn't always the best thing to do. It lowers the weight of the meat and makes it look pretty and stack, but it reduces the amount of hunger you replenish and, at least in the case of birds, removes the happiness boost.
HOWEVER, credit to Dudeman325 on the Indie Stone forums for this, cleaned meats can be used in advanced cooking to make stir fries and burgers with the correct ingrediants! By using them this way you end up with food that gives much more hunger and happiness than an uncleaned animal! (keep in mind for those with a low cooking skill this may not be as effective)
I believe the exact amount of hunger this restores is based on the size of the animal you catch, but it doesn't appear to be much higher than 30 or so in each case.

To the devs~
I'm sorry for digging through your code, as a CS major I feel dirty T~T

[AstrobotJones]

Messaggio originale di Dudeman325:

I'll admit, that's how I first thought baiting a trap would work before I actually did it. It was a bit of a shock when I was expecting to put a spoonful of peanut butter on a mousetrap and ended up dumping out the whole jar. :D

It does seem a bit jarring atm... ;D

Maybe baiting a trap uses up a small amount of -hunger from the food you use as bait? Although I suppose that does make removing the bait from the trap a bit more complicated...

That seems like a fairly doable solution. I suppose the picked up bait would just be spawned into an new item with a very small -hunger bar. ???

[Croak]

Just got level 1 trapping, woo! Mouse traps and tomatoes work magic :D I actually managed to catch a rat that gave 16 hunger, so in a few cases it's wrth the tomatoes.

A few of my tomatoes have gone stale, so I'm going to see if trapping works with stale bait, or if stale is considered rotten.

In other news, my next crop of cabbages have come in so I'll be trying my hand at rabbits tonight! :D 18 crate traps at the ready and a zombie-cleared forest lol.

[Croak]

2 nights in a row standing among crate traps, in (probably) deep forest, baited with fresh cabbage. Not a single hit. Weird thing was I left them up in the day between nights, and 8 of them had their bait disappear during the day hours when rabbits shouldn't be active. Anyone ever caught a rabbit? And if so what set up did you use?

[Croak]

So after 3 nights and one day of checking these crate traps both every few seconds and hourly (ran back and forth from my safe house in case rabbits need space) I've caught nothing. Started with 18 crate traps set in deep forest baited wit, fresh cabbages, and level 1 trapping. According to the code I found this would give me a chance value of 55 per hour, 50 if it was just forest. I stayed near the traps for all of night 1, then left in the morning after no success from 19:00pm to 5:00am. I came back just before 19:00pm and found 8 of the traps had no bait. Now I was thinking bait only disappeared if it was either the wrong kind or if the animal got caught, ate the bait, then escaped. But this happened during day time, so maybe there's a bug? I stayed near them all of night 2 again, with no luck on the remaining 10 traps. So I stayed there all of the next day too. At about 16:00pm I ran back to the safehouse for food, came back and found 2 traps without bait again. I got back before 19:00pm. That night the cabbage went stale, but I know it could still work since I had been catching mice and rats with stale tomatoes, and this time I ran back and forth every 2 hours to give the traps a chance alone. Once again, nothing.Checked them 5 times throught the night and not one caught anything or even lost its bait.

If any devs see this, can you confirm whether I'm doing something wrong, or is there a bug? This is on a multiplayer server at this location:
http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.6179265817965533,0.10930081402741763,418.85447095105826

[Dudeman325]

I have caught a rabbit, once. The setup was pretty simple, 3 crates in the woods just East of Muldraugh (in the clearing in the middle of the trees in the link, my safe house is to the North with flowers in the driveway), Apples baited in all 3. He was a hefty little bugger too, about as much -hunger as a steak if I remember right.

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.3993198514700506,0.18303381579607966,164.84466236095113

I'm more than positive that stale bait works just fine, although it can go rotten while in the trap. With rabbits and squirrels, like you've noticed you really don't want to bait traps for them until sundown, if you look in ISTrap.lua you'll see a bit that shows that traps can have their bait taken, and even be destroyed regardless of the state of the animal you are trying to catch. The comments for that bit of code reasons that it was because another animal stole your bait, or a bigger animal smashed it.

Edit: Looking at your last post, I'm suspecting your lack of success at catching rabbits is due to a combination of losing your bait before 19:00, and that the cell you are trapping in MIGHT be considered Vegetation (my best guess due to the density of the surrounding trees). You may have some more success in this patch of trees to the West, although it is a bit further away...

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.6070471459176546,0.09572023491339014,81.17680257236239

[Croak]

Messaggio originale di Dudeman325:

Edit: Looking at your last post, I'm suspecting your lack of success at catching rabbits is due to a combination of losing your bait before 19:00, and that the cell you are trapping in MIGHT be considered Vegetation (my best guess due to the density of the surrounding trees). You may have some more success in this patch of trees to the West, although it is a bit further away...

http://pzmap.crash-override.net/#0.6070471459176546,0.09572023491339014,81.17680257236239

I'll try out a few traps closer to the heavy tree concentration when I have cabbages again. I'll also keep in mind not to leave the bait there after dawn, I must have missed the chance to destroy the bait. I'm just a bit exhausted after an 18 trap effort for 3 days with nothing to show for it but a couple stale cabbages...

[Robert Johnson]

I'll look into this today, maybe it's a zone problem, but I think the zone is correctly set around here...

[Croak]

Messaggio originale di Robert Johnson:

I'll look into this today, maybe it's a zone problem, but I think the zone is correctly set around here...

I guess it's totally possible I have the worst luck on the planet but seems a little unlikely with the sheer number of traps I used :P

[Cipher88101]

Has it been confirmed anywhere whether or not you need to give the traps space for them to work?

[Croak]

Messaggio originale di Cipher88101:

Has it been confirmed anywhere whether or not you need to give the traps space for them to work?

You don't :)

[Johnnyonoes]

Thanks a lot for this guide!

[Johnnyonoes]

Hey I wanted to add some information that differs from what you mentioned. Animals that interact with a trap are either trapped or they run away with the food. After a bunch of testing (I am almost level 4 right now) there is never an instance where an animal is trapped and then they espace. If they are trapped then they are there for good, there is no need to camp near the traps in fear that they will escape.

A bug that I noticed, I will put it in the tracker tomorrow, is a trap that is triggered off screen will not change sprites, where if you sleep nearby the traps you can see which ones have an animal in it or not. It would be especially nice if you could visually see that a trap is baited or not, but it is not that big of a deal.

Here is a screen shot of my set up. Got a pile of like 300 off to the side of my place now :P You can clearly see the traps that have a tasty treat inside because of the fact that I sleep nearby.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=307225333

Carrots are super quick to grow, so don't waste your time on cabbages. Just water to 80, then water to just below 70 when they get to 40-50.

Thanks again for this guide!

[Foolish Bastion]

Messaggio originale di JohnnyO:

Hey I wanted to add some information that differs from what you mentioned. Animals that interact with a trap are either trapped or they run away with the food. After a bunch of testing (I am almost level 4 right now) there is never an instance where an animal is trapped and then they espace. If they are trapped then they are there for good, there is no need to camp near the traps in fear that they will escape.

A bug that I noticed, I will put it in the tracker tomorrow, is a trap that is triggered off screen will not change sprites, where if you sleep nearby the traps you can see which ones have an animal in it or not. It would be especially nice if you could visually see that a trap is baited or not, but it is not that big of a deal.

Here is a screen shot of my set up. Got a pile of like 300 off to the side of my place now :P You can clearly see the traps that have a tasty treat inside because of the fact that I sleep nearby.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=307225333

Carrots are super quick to grow, so don't waste your time on cabbages. Just water to 80, then water to just below 70 when they get to 40-50.

Thanks again for this guide!

I say well done sir!

[Croak]

Messaggio originale di JohnnyO:

Hey I wanted to add some information that differs from what you mentioned. Animals that interact with a trap are either trapped or they run away with the food. After a bunch of testing (I am almost level 4 right now) there is never an instance where an animal is trapped and then they espace. If they are trapped then they are there for good, there is no need to camp near the traps in fear that they will escape.

That must be what the 'strength' values refer to then. I was just assuming they break out since I was reading code and didn't see the exact method strength gets implemented.

[Shnifter]

just tried to make a Trap crate . Got the planks , nails and saw but nothing . I had made one before the new update . So has something changed or been broken ?