Hunter, part #2

[Cy]

TL;DR
What to kill first and where?

Full story:
I'm on Sklotopolis (Novus) server. Managed to make a bow, arrows, quiver, practiced on an archery target, tamed a horse, caught a wild one, made a large cart, overweighted myself greatly on many occasions and even cooked some steamed veggies.

Now I crave meat! Where to find something killable with long bow QL60, basic arrow shafts QL20 and 40/30 in Archery/Long bows? I also have hunting arrows but I want to use up shafts first.

I've seen a video of a rooster, some free ranged cows, goats, etc. Can I just kill those if I see them? Is there a spot where I can find those? Or are there some enemies I can try to take? I'm a Trollslayer already (i.e. I managed to shoot a troll twice, for 2 and 3 hp respectively, and somebody else finished it soon after). You can worship my majestic skills now.

[Kitsune Dzelda]

I must admit I like your posts. :P

I think youll find Improvement and Repairing those arrows to be worth your time. Think of it like this: Bard of Dale didnt shoot Smaug in the heart with his great longbow with wooden sticks now did he? I also believe that if you happen to know a Libilan cabal, you can get them enchanted to do more damage as well. Bloodthirst is an archers best friend. :)

That said yeah, domestic animals arent very difficult, wont hit hard, and you can definitely practice on them as long as you keep them in range. I even think the odd huge spider or cave bug isnt out of the question either ^^

A good place to find domestics is on the steppe, where tons of horses and cows spawn. Actually, a steppe is where I trained on Mythmoor too! Ahhh the memories of dragging the corpses home and stuffing them into the token ;3 Made an unholy sound for weeks it did ;3

[wildbill]

Chickens are an easy first kill, surprising, pheasants are not that easy to kill, so be careful of those. I tried to kill a turtle, almost died from that.

I think pigs are not too hard, but be careful, boars which are similar, are very hard to kill.

[bob_2059]

That said yeah, domestic animals arent very difficult, wont hit hard, and you can definitely practice on them ...
...A good place to find domestics is on the steppe,

But don't mess with bison.

[GreenDragonHart]

wolfs (toughest on the list here), wild cats, dogs, seals, pheasents(kinda have some fight in them), are all good for practice, as well as sheep, chickens, and pigs. you can also kill horses dont know how tuff they are also if you make some rivets you can turn you leather into studded leather which is better good luck

[Cy]

Okay, having read all the comments, I yet have to find the mythical land of steppe. If you mean any big field of grass in general, then yes, I've found those but occupied solely by horses and couldn't bring myself to kill one just for practice and leather... I have a venerable horse pulling my cart, though, because I thought "venerable" means it suffers a venereal disease and felt sorry for it. If Tuckerr reads it, your horse is safe and sound. Come get it and have a cup of honey milk camellia tea.

I checked, can't fix or improve arrow shafts, only hunting or war arrows can be fixed and for those I need to mine iron and smith arrow heads which I don't enjoy. The only reason I have hunting arrows is because I found some rocks when foraging and threw them into the camp fire to get rid off. Turned out there was enough iron for a small anvil and few arrow heads (hammered those in shape with my bare fists and yes, you can touch me). I almost doubled my fletching just by improving those and now my plain arrow shafts can survive about 2 shots each. Today I'm going to raise bow making as well because I feel mine will break any minute. I still didn't kill anything, though. Just hurt a rat badly from about 100 metres (eyeballing the distance) but went out of arrows before I could finish it. It didn't even see me, though. It was fun.

The distance itself is why I don't seem to need an armour at all so I'm walking in my leather pants and boots only (because, you know, pants are important). Dropped the rest to feel lighter on my feet. As far as I can tell there's no cold or any penalty for walking without jacket in the rain and it didn't exactly made me look like a hunter anyway.

Going to find me some pheasants now and see if they can spot me before I shaft them to soup. Thanks for all the comments and cheers!

[MyProfile]

Im not familliar with your server but check its map (online likely) and look for an area with these tiles.
https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Steppe_tile

They should be easily located by their color.

Here is your servers maps.
http://www.sklotopolis.bplaced.net/Livemaps.html
I think you want the olive or light brown looking areas.

[GreenDragonHart]

Yep head south from we're you are to get to the stepp also type /GPS and it will show you a link to the whole map and you can see were you are and we're other stuff is, also you have a sleep bonus type/fsleep to turn it on and off you can use it to boost skill gains. Also if you turn up distance veiw in settings you can see farther and that would help a Hunter

[GreenDragonHart]

Also if you vote daily you get a 25copper reward and you can use that to buy arrow heads and other stuff you don't want to make yourself, the link is in the info tab, also voting helps the server and let's other people know that you like the server which is good

[Cy]

Imping was fun at first. Got me a brand new imped quiver full of brand new imped hunting arrows 40-50ql each and one of them - call me Fletcher, it's a lot, right? I mean, one of those should kill a cat, no? Actually you can call me Fletcher, Trollslayer, Archer, Carpenter, Bowyer and Pathfinder but not a hunter. Not at all. Cat survived 11.

Tracked me a greenish old troll. Tracking is fun in this game, I admit. It's almost shame stealth doesn't work on mobs. Would be great to ambush an unsuspecting cow and shear it from behind! Or milk a ram. Or something... From the shadows! Unfortunately 41 hunting arrows shot from hiding, higher ground and recommended distance is no match for a troll even when 40 of them hit "very hard" in various underarm pits, lower backs and necks.

So I got me 10 quivers full of 40-50ql hunting arrows and got a sucker. Imping them wasn't that fun though. Neither was collecting 317 back or loosing the rest in the bushes. Only one broke. Therefore I'm sad. Sadder even when I think about how troll's tooth, gland, club and meat don't really cover my 93 missing arrows or invested time, neither do 50 iron I got for burring his sorry butt.

Summarizing, 50+ hours in, I'm nowhere close where I wanted to be, I did tons of stuff I didn't want to do, I learned about differences between WU and WO (I kind of grew tired of hearing "it's coming in the next update" after asking why stuff described on the wiki doesn't work), I customised my keybindings to the point where I rarely use context menus and put my guy to sleep on hides in his smelly tent. Will be back in a month or so to see how's he doing. Or not.

Cheers to everyone and thanks for all the comments.

[LokitheWeaver]

Okay, so another "tip" from my time as hunter.

1) Arrows and archery are, uhm, shall we say "underpowered"? If you want to stay in the role-playing area of "hunter / tracker", you might consider adding a spear. Pretty legit to take out a pig with a big spear, as a hunter.

2) Ah, no one expects a second tip . . . water can also be your friend. Many game animals (pigs, chickens, pheasants) can't swim (as I recall), so if you really want to stay with bows / arrows, hunt from a shoreline. When that aggressive pheasant gets annoyed at you, back into the water, reposition and pelt him with more arrows.

[bob_2059]

Originally posted by Cy:

Okay, having read all the comments, I yet have to find the mythical land of steppe. If you mean any big field of grass in general, then yes, I've found those

Steppe is a less-common biome type than grass, and the tooltip will actually show steppe when you mouse over a tile.
The only advantage I know of with steppe over grasslands for spawns is that Bison will spawn on steppe, but as I mentioned above don't mess with them. They're probably the toughest non-aggro mob type, roughly equivalent to a hell hound. On top of that, arrows are just about useless against them- most arrows will "bounce off" their thick hide.

[Cy]

Thanks for the tips and steppe explanation. Just as an update: I think the game grew on me a little when I discovered my easiest pray is black wolf. About 8 hunting arrows (give or take, depends how many I miss and, I think, if it's old or not). Above said, I also read butchering knife gives better yield (or at least that carving knife gives worse) but I yet have to try that. It might be profitable after all. Depends on how I'll manage to push the meat and hides. For the time being I tried cooking meals and it's interesting it always succeeds and eating gives temporal 10% skill boost (different for every player). Maybe people will buy meals off me and will have to buy a lot of different ones to find the boost they like.

So... The only things that I'm not happy with is that I need to mine iron and smith arrowheads, but I'll try to buy a bulk off someone soon, and some UI quirks like no "close active window/component", "open equipped backpack" and "repeat last action" keybindings or no indication of where the person emoting "hello" at me is or of what I hear exactly when there's a sound effect going on (would be nice to know what just gave me a heart attack). And maybe an option to disable tile borders, I don't know what those are for but I seem to do fine without them and it's sometimes annoying to find grass tile to track. The rest of my issues might just be Ultima Online nostalgia screaming at me. If you think about it, these games are really similar.

Who knows then, maybe we will cross our paths in game after all. It's really really weird how this game plays with my emotions.

[bob_2059]

Originally posted by Cy:

Just as an update: I think the game grew on me a little

This game is not easy, and it has a really steep learning curve. A lot of people get totally overwhelmed at first. You seem to be getting past that point.

Above said, I also read butchering knife gives better yield (or at least that carving knife gives worse) but I yet have to try that.

If you butcher with anything other than a butchering knife, you're limited to 1 meat per carcass. With a butchering knife, you can (that doesn't mean will) get more. How many more is based on several factors- your skill and the QL of the knife, for two. The most I've personally had is a dozen from one animal- but that was on-deed with animals bred in captivity. For wilderness kills, like you're going to get hunting, 5-6 pieces are typical for me with butchering skill in the mid-60s.
I don't know for a fact if a butchering knife gives better QL meat cuts, or better chances with tails/paws/hides/etc. But it definitely impacts the quantity of meat you can get.

Or milk a ram.

Is that anything like milking a dog?

[Cy]

Originally posted by bob_2059:

Originally posted by Cy:

Just as an update: I think the game grew on me a little

This game is not easy, and it has a really steep learning curve. A lot of people get totally overwhelmed at first. You seem to be getting past that point.

Well, maybe but that steep learning curve comes from crafting recipes that don't match what you do in real life. It seems like developers overcomplicated stuff to create artificial need for resources you shouldn't need to do certain tasks and therefore force you to interact with other players who might sell or give you said resources. I don't mind complicated crafting if it matches what I already know about the process from real life experience. When it's "just weird" people get frustrated. I think this and the lack of sane default keybinding are the only reasons the beginnings in Wurm aren't pleasant for an average player.

Originally posted by bob_2059:

Originally posted by Cy:

Above said, I also read butchering knife gives better yield (or at least that carving knife gives worse) but I yet have to try that.

If you butcher with anything other than a butchering knife, you're limited to 1 meat per carcass. With a butchering knife, you can (that doesn't mean will) get more. How many more is based on several factors- your skill and the QL of the knife, for two. The most I've personally had is a dozen from one animal- but that was on-deed with animals bred in captivity. For wilderness kills, like you're going to get hunting, 5-6 pieces are typical for me with butchering skill in the mid-60s.
I don't know for a fact if a butchering knife gives better QL meat cuts, or better chances with tails/paws/hides/etc. But it definitely impacts the quantity of meat you can get.

Thanks for confirmation. Actually, assuming I'll find customers, it might be enough to just get 2-3 meat pieces out of one kill.

Originally posted by bob_2059:

Originally posted by Cy:

Or milk a ram.

Is that anything like milking a dog?

I hope not! ;D

Originally posted by brew:

The quote summarizes the issues, you're wanting this to be something vs experiencing it.

Well, maybe. But RPGs aren't something new. We've all experienced them and have a certain idea about what is good, what seems to work as a game mechanic and what doesn't, and some expectations about how things work. I tried to confirm my expectations in previous thread and heard back from the actual players saying it's close to what I want. Let's just say it wasn't that close...

Originally posted by brew:

Keybind issues:
escape, settings, keybinds, https://i.imgur.com/O1AStDN.png

I prefer console but that's not the point. There are no keybindings for certain stuff (close active window, open equipped backpack, open equipped quiver, stealth, etc.) and other stuff is simply limited by the UI (like manual sorting of containers in your inventory - the game just tells you A can't fit in B instead; you need to use tricks, e.g. juggling them between your backpack and ground when you want to sort stacked quivers).

Originally posted by brew:

The emote sounds comes from the direction of the person, headphones work :)

Yeah, I know, but it's not always that easy! :D I more than often turn around and there's... NOBODY there! Freaking ghosts, man!

[Cy]

Originally posted by brew:

https://www.wurmpedia.com/index.php/Key_bindings

Hahaha, okay, some sane default keybindings exist. ;)