Tips for Realism?

[Whiskey River]

I started playing this amazing sim a week ago and I'm almost finished with the story. I've been playing on normal mode, but I'm thinking of going to hard and I'd like to do it as realistically as I can. The problem is...I'm not a hunter and, interestingly enough, I've never run a hunting lodge.

So what I'm wondering is...any advice for making things more real? I'll switch to hard mode, and I'm thinking no fast travel, but what else? Do you plan how extended trips? What's the best way to improve the herds, as far as "scheduling" goes? Visit every herd you're trying to improve once a week? Once a month? Do you just work on one species at a time, or one zone at a time? Any other tips, or just ideas for role playing realistically would be greatly appreciated.

[dbond1]

For me the most obvious thing you can do if achieving realism is your aim is to carry a single weapon. I grew up hunting and I never carried more than one firearm. I know no one who carries two rifles in the field.

As for herd management, my approach is to just take it as they come. Target one-star matures where they appear, and let herds pass when there are no qualifying animals in them. I don't care to be too scientific about it. After all, five stars exist with no herd management at all. I reckon doing so increases the odds, or numbers, in a reserve, at least I hope it does!

But when I select a target, I prioritize those which would result in possible improvement to animal quality, one star matures.

If by hard mode you mean Ranger difficulty, yes that is the most realistic option in Way of the Hunter. Finding animals becomes much harder. You know they're around, you can hear them. But it becomes difficult to pinpoint where they are. And you lose the ability to cherry pick the best ones to target without hunter sense.

[Kak2R🍸🧀]

This is how I play now:

Ranger difficulty, with headphones
No HUD
All animal icons on map disabled

Personal rules
- never look at the map
- no callers allowed until you can see the herd

I find it's the most romantic, immersive way to play, which keeps me in touch with the exploratory essence of this game. I find that looking at the map and markers & herd icons "takes me out of the moment", and I end up beelining from A to B without really taking in the surroundings as much. It's less fun.

It also makes me stalk, which is good, because that's the best part of the hunt imo. Navigating difficult terrain and managing to spot a herd without using callers is very satisfying.

Herd management I don't worry too much about - I typically get to within 150m for every shot, and if I can spot wonky antlers then I cull. But I always shoot something. I focused on herd managing more seriously before, but it just became a job, not fun.

Fast travel I only use when out of ammo, or at the end of a 'day'. At the start of a day, wherever I've fast travelled to, I look up at the clouds and move in a direction opposite to them. From that point on I don't care nor wish to know where I am on the map, at least not by looking at the map.

[Pete Gaimari]

Originally posted by KingGhidorah:

This is how I play now:

Ranger difficulty, with headphones
No HUD
All animal icons on map disabled

Personal rules
- never look at the map
- no callers allowed until you can see the herd

I find it's the most romantic, immersive way to play, which keeps me in touch with the exploratory essence of this game. I find that looking at the map and markers & herd icons "takes me out of the moment", and I end up beelining from A to B without really taking in the surroundings as much. It's less fun.

It also makes me stalk, which is good, because that's the best part of the hunt imo. Navigating difficult terrain and managing to spot a herd without using callers is very satisfying.

Herd management I don't worry too much about - I typically get to within 150m for every shot, and if I can spot wonky antlers then I cull. But I always shoot something. I focused on herd managing more seriously before, but it just became a job, not fun.

Fast travel I only use when out of ammo, or at the end of a 'day'. At the start of a day, wherever I've fast travelled to, I look up at the clouds and move in a direction opposite to them. From that point on I don't care nor wish to know where I am on the map, at least not by looking at the map.

You were doing good until you said you used callers when you saw the herd.

[Whiskey River]

Hey, thanks for the replies. Good stuff, there's a lot here I can use. Although I don't know about following the clouds though. :-) I'm more of a planner/get there first and wait for them kind of guy. I have autism which for some reason makes me want to organize and plan everything out. Time to get back to the hunt, thanks again.

[Sunshine]

What I did was pick a "reserve" to focus on and stick to it, like in real life (well, in my country at least). You can't just go anywhere and shoot stuff, obviously.

I picked Coada de Vulpe and spend quite some time just scouting the territory, making notes about animal encounters, noting down locations, herd strength, number of males/females and so on.

When I had a good idea what to find and where, I started to focus on a specific species, aside from small stuff like hares or foxes, but these are not fun to hunt in this game anyways due to their dumb AI and unrealistic behavior.

I usually go for boar, roe and red deer.

Since IRL you try to preserve the strong bucks so they can mate, I focus on the weak ones first. I do not really care about trophies much, the game spams you with 5-star animals anyways considering that a 5 star animal is the best ever possible outcome... they are not rare enough to feel special, but that's another story.

To round it all up, I created a map for myself and keep a simple text notebook about what I shoot, where, and update herd status where necessary so I can keep track of everything. That helps me to create immersion and make the game feel less pointless, since I dislike the vanilla missions and quests strongly.

Like so:
https://i.imgur.com/pHBM9xU.jpeg

On top of that, I stick to real life rules and hunting techniques, aside from sitting in some stand for hours, I always stalk. I do only take clean shots with the animals well being in mind and also disregard the game's partially absurd caliber restrictions, even if that means my "hunter rating" (so stupid) will be low despite using calibers on game that is perfectly fine IRL. The ammo matters, the cartridge not so much. I also don't go on killing sprees or shoot things for the sake of it.

Needless to say, all that in Ranger mode.
Never even touched another difficulty setting and never will.

Hunting is about skills and knowledge, not having one's hand held by stupid text pop-ups that tell you everything...