Game is extremely hard for me.

[ŁōãF]

Can never find anything despite following tracks for ever and if i find them i cant kill them and they run away with the speed of light.

[magicISO Sweden]

some tracks are old plus use callers and it gonna help plus find drink and food zone and you gonna find more animals

[magicISO Sweden]

and setup some towers and treestands

[Sylke]

And a lot patience too ;)

[Sylke]

Love this game!

[magicISO Sweden]

Originally posted by Sylke:

And a lot patience too ;)

so true

[Thermal Lance]

stop running around

[periquitoasesino]

It was hard for me at the beggining, now, after 600 hours, it´s not easy, but now it´s not so hard.

Skills and perks are very important. Polymer bullets for .243 use to work better and this game wouldn´t be the same without treestands and tripods. They are very very useful tools.

Layton is better for starting. Hirchsfelden is hard

[Lenny Rat]

Tracking is good fro 2 things; finding what you shot, or finding places to setup your tripod/tree stand.

Locate zones, setup a tent and stand, then sleep and wait.

[BrutalDeluxe77]

Don't run. You pretty scare away any animal before you get even a glimpse of it. In the best case you get a warning call since running produces too much noise. You need to be more silent, thus keep an eye to the noise indicator (the loud speaker symbol in the HUD). The more bars are shown the noisier you are. It's worst (loudest) if bars are shown even in red.

Don't walk around with the gun in your hand, equip the binocular. Stop often and use them to observe your surroundings.

If you walk around listen to animal calls then use the appropriate caller to lure them nearer while you are hidden in bushes or under a tree. Pay attention to your visibility indicator. It's best if it is only a line or no line at all when you are hiding.

If you are bad with the guns, exercise at the Hirschfelden shooting range. It's in lower right corner of the map.

You could analyse the age of the track by examining the droppings. Avoid old or very old tracks if you want to stalk an animal, go more for fresh, very fresh or just now.

Let the animals come to you, use callers and hide near need zones at the correct time. If you scare animals at a need zone, hide and wait a couple of minutes (and use a caller if you have one). Often the animals return, typically they are then nervous and could get spooked more easily but they return.

There are plenty of beginner tutorials on youtube, have a look. Go for the newer ones, since the game has changed over the time.

[licker98]

From what I can tell, the animals all just move from one need zone to the next. When you're starting out, find out where the need zones are by spotting animals or tracks at a need zone. If you go to a need zone at its allotted time you will see animals, provided you haven't already scared them away.

[Nightwalker]

Following tracks is not a very productive use of your time. Sounds like you've found that out. The poop can turn from "just now" to "old" in roughly 30 game min. Walking can spook animals 100 meters or more away from you. Running can spook animals within 150 meters and using an ATV can spook them at 300 meters. Search near water sources for glowing weeds or circular areas full of tracks. Those things identify animal need zones. There will be a time frame when animals are most likely to be using those need zones.

[RamMack]

Nobody has mentioned the wind. You need to keep wind in your face as much as possible. At least you don't want it blowing in the direction you are trying to hunt. Also you can check your codex and it will tell you how you spooked the most deer. By sight, sound or smell. Good luck

[☣☠Captain Crusader☠☣]

use your scope and you can fire up to 400 m

[N1ck0]

Not surprised nobody mentioned the footsteps volume is broken, therefore you can't even stalk them properly. All I see is assumption you're running around or whatever when you never mentioned your play-style.

Typical from this board...

Now for the tips. All depends on your play-style.

But there's still some basics some have mentioned, and I'll reiterate them for easier read.

Keep in mind animals are hyper-aware, some more than others. The most aware are the small predators such as Foxes, Coyotes, and Jackals. Less aware would be the Hares. It's pretty representative of reality as they're really quick, but kinda dumb, and have a limited vision. They're still very sensitive to noise though.

When speaking of hyper awareness, we're speaking of vision, hearing, and smell. So yeah:

1. Check your HUD for wind direction. The green cone represents where your smell is going. If you don't use Scent Eliminator when going down-wind, animals don't even need to see or hear you, they'll flee once you're at less than 100-400m. Depending on if they were aware of you prior to smelling you.

2. Check your HUD for the sound indicator. You see red in it? You're being heard from at least 100-200m away. Chances are you again, won't even see animals before you're detected. Sound indicator is white? You're still not all clear. If it's white, but full, you're still being heard at less than 100m. Chances are they'll still flee on you, but you'll have a chance to see them flee now.

If you hear an animal call, or footsteps (what you barely can do anymore), time for you to crouch. It will reduce your visibility and noise, to a point now you can sneak on them more effectively. You can crouch slowly, or fast with Sprint button, but that will also increase your noise. (There's perks you can buy by leveling-up that will reduce your noise levels.)

3. They see you before you see them. Read animals' descriptions in the codex, some animals have good vision, others don't. But most have. Moose are nearsighted for example, but Bears have an excellent vision. So again, use your HUD to see how you're visible.

Anything that has a circle on it, is too visible. Full circle is the worst, you're being seen within 200m by some animals. half-circle with flat line, you're being seen at 100m by most animals. Flat line, you're starting to become harder to detect by animals under 100m, but at 50m or less, you want a transparent small line. And you achieve that by hiding in bushes and under some trees.

All of this of course, was possible when you could hear footsteps of animals so you could assess what you can't see, as if you see animals, chances are they already saw you first, unless you're at 200-300m scoping them with clear vision.

Now footsteps are broken, and we have geniuses here saying it's okay because it is supposedly more realistic. But it realistically, makes the game not playable for a lot of play-styles, and for newbies and casual players. But who cares right?

So yes, this game was already hard enough, now it's just plain stupid. Maybe it will go back to normal one day, maybe not. With EW, we never know what surprise is coming around the corner, and when.

For now, what you wanna do is still apply the tips listed here, but adapt your hunting style to the current situation. Before, callers to lure animals were very useful for ambushing. But now, unless you're hidden in a stand, since you can barely hear animals coming, forget about it.

Try to have the clearest vision you can have, and use your scope a lot when roaming around. Now your priority is finding need zones, and farming them. They're everywhere, but often mostly around lakes.

Once you found enough need zones, check the hours ranges where the animals go to it, and adapt to this by sleeping until around these hours, and go to a vantage point to scope animals from afar before they can even hear you, smell you, and see you.

Sounds fun huh? Well, that's the name of the game now, if they never fix the damn animals' footsteps volume. Or until they do.

[dbump]

Also, check out the Guides section of this forum; there's some great info, but as mentioned above, the game mechanics have changed substantially, so be wary of anything that doesn't specifically mention Scoring 2.0 or is a few years old.
I think this maps guide can really help when you're starting:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=938853537

It's also useful to understand what weapons are appropriate for what animals; there are a number of good guides on that, but I prefer this version because you don't have to cross-reference a table of weapons that correspond to a weapon class with a table of animals that correspond to the same weapon class:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/11-CnYBRgjFTNvNNVaZ5qkyyf_xN7beh6clfjckTH2Ic/edit#gid=1513454395
You can just spot an "X" in the game, then look at the single table for the map you're on and identify if you are carrying a weapon that is appropriate. Shooting an animal with a weapon that's only listed to the right of that animal will result in a certain kill, but less points. Conversely shooting one with an under-powered weapon will usually result in a wounded animal that you can spend an hour tracking down.

I know it's not particularly realistic, but I actually walk around the map while holding the binoculars up to my eyes (a move that would result in broken face/binos IRL), and I have spotted a ton of game through little openings in the trees that I would have obliviously tramped past otherwise. And yes, I absolutely run dead smack into trees on a regular basis.