The beginner hunting experience is abysmal

[jdpvagabond]

If anything that flees while being hunted runs away at warp speed despite how wounded they are and relocates to an entirely different continent, at the very least give us a way to track the animals - I swear the forest is full of half dead deer because I can never figure out which one I was going after. Getting leather in the early game has boiled down to head butting pigs because at least they run AT you for a moment before running off.

[Jerico Hellsangel]

Here are a couple tips i´ve figured out myself so far:
1. When you hit them, they bleed, meaning their bloodsplatter can help you track them.
2. Tracking animal footprints is a skill that can be aquired in the skilltree.
3. Exploring helps you getting better equipment for the start like a longbow and poison iron/bronze arrows which help imensly.
4. As far as i´ve noticed, the animals stop running away when they are out of the render distance so running into the opposite direction and shortly after turning back, is an option.
5. Some animals like foxes or boars start fighting you once you damage them once so thats the exact opposite. Bears and Bisons obviously provide with the biggest reward but are also the tankiest. Again, making them bleed and having poisoned arrows helps in that regard when coupled with a nice cheese position.

[Rosse]

And what's up with the doppelganger wolves? I swear I find one totally alone, check my surroundings 360° twice and when I hit the wolf with an arrow, suddenly another one appears behind me. That and that they run almost teleporting when running away.

[Raman]

Hunting is nerfed now prior to update i could kill 10-20 animals a day.I am handicapped +old so vision +reaction is not sharp.Even in summer if is difficult to spot animals now due to decreased light.Previously if you headshot animals with a recurve bow was a kill, now they just runaway..by the time i shift to left shift they are out of sight so no way to catch them... there must be a 100+animals out there with 1 arrow in their head/neck.

[jdpvagabond]

To be clear, I'm fine with hunting being a challenge - during the beta it was too simple. As it stands now, though, hunting feels akin to trying to take out Usain Bolt with a tennis ball followed by a game of 'Where's Waldo' with 20 identical Bolts walking around with tennis balls lodged in their faces.

[Ivraas]

I don't get why they not drop dead after a mortal wound... especially when in some cases they do.
For example i shot wisent few times then he starts to flee, i managed to track him a little and he died. So the mechanics are there, just don't work everytime.

[Daniel_USA]

here are tips for hunting: you must learn to sneak. before you could get away with not sneaking but not anymore.

start off with rabbits, they have been nerfed and are now your tier 1 animal to gain experience.

hunt doe, they are weaker then bucks.

carry about 10 spears, aim for head/neck

spears used to stab into the animal's body a lot easier but not so much now. I've only had 1 stay in an animal in the last 10 hours of gameplay.

once you get 2 levels of hunting get the perk that lets you track.

The more wounded an animal is the more it bleeds out until it simply stops running and just falls over and dies. Sometimes it becomes stunned and just bleeds to death standing in one place.

I haven't hunted anything bigger than a deer so i don't know about bison, moose, bear anymore but in the past I would just make a bunch of spears and climb on something the bear or wisent couldn't reach me and throw spears non stop.

I'm guessing stone spears and what not is where the original wooden spear is now but I don't know.

Also game has poisons which you add to arrows so I'm guessing that is how you deal with bigger animals now.

[subwaybananas]

Originally posted by Daniel_USA:

Also game has poisons which you add to arrows so I'm guessing that is how you deal with bigger animals now.

the poison is not really good. It helps to bleed them out, if they run away and if the poison is applied, best chance have the iron bolts with 65%. But against bear and wisent you need really much firepower to survive, not enough time for bleeding/toxic ticks.
I forced to buy a iron crossbow and enough iron bolts. Bears and wisents need 2 headshots. If you get a big range you can kill before they reach you, all others are oneshots (and i kill all deers i see for revenge .
I´m not happy with the new hunting mechanik. I understand the reason for more weapon/hunting progression, but its really bad introduced in the game, at the moment it is more like get easy kill or have no chance, nothing between. And nothing provide you for that, especially the chapter quest >get a bow (the normal one) and hunt a bear and wisent... happy dying. The xp for hunting is too low, i don´t know how many animals i killed, but its in year two more than i ever killed in another gamethrough (all over the map is the overload meat/rot ), and still level 3, far away from 4...

[Schrank]

FIrst of all - great job of the developer imho on basically making hunting interesting again - but it feels there is yet a bit of polishing to do.

Just came back from a hunting trip myself to see what the community feedback is - I can confirm all the points above. I can live with tracking animals a bit, but the speed at which they are fleeing is just unnatural and makes it hard to even get the direction they went.

There's some weird behaviour as well, at least with moose (at least that's where I could replicate the behaviour) - they flee to a certain distance, and then draw wide circles around my position, as if they were somehow not allowed to leave viewing distance. I even managed to take advantage of it one time, by anticipating their 'course' and short cutting it to land another arrow. The interesting thing is - it didn't stop at all, even when I just stood still (sneaking).

Poison I'm really not sure about - I don't see much difference in behaviour or wound mechanics (stop and bleed a sec, then move again or stun). I used short bow + copper arrows + poison, was able to kill a buck with a lucky head shot once in a while, deer much more reliably. Badgers on the hand seem a bit more tanky.

I managed to kill a bear, with just keeping a certain distance where they seem to ignore you at least for the first shots. But that was lucky (I WAS hurt by the bear but managed to shoot the last deadly arrow) - at least with copper arrow + poison it is just not enough.

Wolves - at least if you get one singled out - are quite easy, any head shot seems to kill instantly.

My experience with the bison is - well, quite short - they go absolutely bananas, I would not stand a chance, maybe with quickdraw skill and iron arrows + damage resistance perks, idk.

I feel a bit underinformed about the mechanics - the only metrics you get is the main weapon (e.g. short bow damage 35) but not the ammo or poison effect. It feels hard to understand how you are actually supposed to hunt.

I totally agree that beta was way to easy, but right now it feels somehow off. But I think with a good amount of poishing, the hunting part could really shine compared to other survival games.

Here's some constructive ideas which might help (at least for me):

1. Documentation - what weapon / ammo for what animal (at least a suggestion), how does poison work.
2. Fine tuning of fleeing behaviour - a good hit on first shot should at least slow it down a bit, more 'natural' running patterns - the wide circle running looks unrealistic to me.
3. Make them stop more reliably - not necessarily in viewing distance, but maybe not miles away.

Optional - just suggestions because it impacted me on my actual game:

- IF hunting is to be more realistic and hard, which I hope it to be - look into skill / tech point skaling again. More realistic, slower hunting means much less successful kills a day, resulting in a much longer grind to get to higher levels to actually make hunting easier.

- If I remember correctly, that should have been fixed during the beta - maybe it is just me, but it feels like spawning of animals in sight (pop up) is a thing again.

[subwaybananas]

a one special trick for all who struggel with bears and bisons i forget. Its not the sweetest/nicest solution, but learn the easiest fences and build a save zone before attacking.

[Schrank]

Originally posted by subwaybananas:

a one special trick for all who struggel with bears and bisons i forget. Its not the sweetest/nicest solution, but learn the easiest fences and build a save zone before attacking.

Oh wow, didn't even think of that - but at least for me, that's just not fair to paddington & friends :-D

Actually, I WAS thinking of suggesting a simple hunter's stand construction, but I guess that just would not fit the actual gameplay - it would not help with smaller animals at all (static) and just bypass the deadliness of bear and bison. And I suppose those would occacionally flee, too, when health is low enough, at least that seems to be the case with fox, badger and boar sometimes (if you don't insta-kill).