Question regarding trapping

[SunriseEagle]

I'm fairly new to Zomboid and just tried trapping for the first time but I seem to misunderstand something. I tried traping birds for now and placed my traps on farmland (at least the foraging tool indicates that it's supposed to be farmland) by clearing part of the field to place my traps. It's 100 tiles away from my base and I checked it several times now with different intervals (tried daily and after that every 6-7h) but I didn't manage to catch a single bird with 40+ attempts. Either my bait goes missing (using worms) or the trap breaks altogether.
I tried a different field which was way further out and had the same result. But I also tried planting some in a deep forest area and was able to trap 3 birds with 8 traps (level 0 trapping btw). The wiki suggested that farmland would be the best area to trap birds so how come I can't catch a single bird with it but deep forest works right off the bat? Could it be related to zombie population or am I missing something more obvious?

[Zetro]

the bait you use matters. at least in b41 it did

[SunriseEagle]

But worms are supposed to be the best bait for birds or is that outdated information?
Oh and I'm playing on b41 and multiplayer.

[Hakurei_Meimu]

I am not an expert in trapping, but I assume someone got too close to your trap—within 100 tiles—during the mechanic check. From my understanding, the trap only works if no one is within 100 tiles of it, and in any in game hour if someone's within that distance the "tick" reset.

[SunriseEagle]

I was alone on the server for multiple days while testing it out and I camped inside the base over the night which should be far enough away (around 200 tiles).
Did I just get extremely unlucky? Or is there a limit on traps in the same area and they all stop working if you go over that limit?

[Zetro]

The bait missing and trap going off seems to suggest to me it’s working. Note that zombies nearby the trap mess with the trap I think. Any person including yourself going near the trap will mess with it too. Best place I’ve found to put a trap is in the deep woods where nobody goes by and there is little zombies. Use multiple traps too because different trap types you have use different success chances as well.

[MrMinMax]

The way it works in b41. Put stick traps on the roof, bait with earthworms. Leave the area (75 tiles), like go loot into a different map chunk. Come back and you will get your birds.

[SunriseEagle]

I got it to work in the deep forest and am fine with the results.
But I still don't really understand why farmland isn't working at all even though the wiki says it gives you the best chance to catch birds. Tried clearing out the area to see if that changes anything but it was still the same result. The bait was missing in every trap meanwhile the traps I placed in the deep forest had ~50% catchrate without any issues.

[Armagenesis]

No other players nearby right? They could be messing with you.

Other than that, might just be the case of RNGesus giving you the middle finger.

Oh yeah, you use stick traps to for this right? Could also be the case of using the wrong trap.

[DrLamp]

There also cannot be any player made structure within 75 tiles of the trap. So no walls or floors or anything. I would make sure there is NOTHING in that area at all other than the game terrain. Additionally, as Hakurei pointed out, your character cannot walk within that 75 tile radius during the check. What I will usually do is set my traps in the evening (around 7pm-ish) since I'm unlikely to be in that area and then check them sometime after 6-7am. That should be plenty of time for the traps to spring, but not so long that they break (that will still happen though).

[SunriseEagle]

Just to summarize:
- I cleared a small area of farmland by destroying some of the leftover wheatplants. (used foraging to confirm its marked as farmland)
- It's 200+ tiles west of our base and 120+ tiles south and I didn't leave the base while waiting.
- I used 18 sticktraps with worms as bait
- I tried checking the traps after a day has passed and roughly once every 6h after not seeing any results with the daily checks (besides losing bait and the occasional trap getting destroyed)
- I moved half of the stick traps to deep forest further away and the other half to another farmland even further away (another wheatfield).
- Added some crate traps while I was at it and switched back to daily checks.
- The sticktraps and crate traps in the deep forest started showing results on the first checkup.
- The sticktraps on the wheatfield were only missing the bait again.
- Cleared zombies around the wheatfield (none of the zombies were really close by)
- I was the only one on the server for the entire duration.

Still didn't catch a single bird on the farmland with 60+ worms wasted at this point while the deep forest keeps showing results. Like 50-60% of the traps have something in them when I come along to check around 6 am.

I can't imagine that I'm simply that unlucky to not catch a single bird in the farmlands.
The only thing I can think of is a random zombie still being within 75 tiles proximity of said farmland but that seems a bit stupid and hardly possible to control with zombies roaming around every now and then. And it's not like I don't encounter any zombies around my deep forest traps. Not many, but the occasional straggler shows up around there and it doesn't seem to be an issue.
I really just want to know what I'm doing wrong at this point as it's not really that big of an issue any more thanks to the deep forest.

[DrLamp]

Originally posted by SunriseEagle:

- I tried checking the traps after a day has passed and roughly once every 6h after not seeing any results with the daily checks (besides losing bait and the occasional trap getting destroyed)

Zombies won't stop traps from working, but that can damage them. However, you coming around every 6 hours very well might interrupt the trapping. Set them and don't come back. I would give them a good 12-24 hours with you being nowhere near them.

[SunriseEagle]

Originally posted by DrLamp:

Zombies won't stop traps from working, but that can damage them. However, you coming around every 6 hours very well might interrupt the trapping. Set them and don't come back. I would give them a good 12-24 hours with you being nowhere near them.

Only started doing 6h checks after not seeing any results with 24h checks.
But I switched back to 24h checks after I moved my traps and included crate traps for rabbits. Yet I still didn't catch a single bird on the wheatfield but 50+ inside the deep forest. I'm just baffled at this point haha

[DrLamp]

Originally posted by SunriseEagle:

Originally posted by DrLamp:

Zombies won't stop traps from working, but that can damage them. However, you coming around every 6 hours very well might interrupt the trapping. Set them and don't come back. I would give them a good 12-24 hours with you being nowhere near them.

Only started doing 6h checks after not seeing any results with 24h checks.
But I switched back to 24h checks after I moved my traps and included crate traps for rabbits. Yet I still didn't catch a single bird on the wheatfield but 50+ inside the deep forest. I'm just baffled at this point haha

Ah, I see I didn't read that correctly. Honestly, I'm kinda stumped as well. In build 41, trapping was sorta my thing. It sounds like you were doing things right. Maybe the server was running mods that was interfering, but I don't know why that would happen in just one "biome".

Well as long as you're catching them now I guess that's what really matters.

[SunriseEagle]

It's my own server I'm hosting for a couple friends and I don't run any mods so it's not that either. I guess I'm just unlucky in the weirdest way haha
Thanks for the help though!