Diamond ratings are completely random?

[No, I'm not, You are!]

You can shoot legendaries down instantly, single shot, heart shot, right ammo, the whole 9 yards of ethical hunting... and still only get gold...

So what is up with that? What determines the diamond? I only play singleplayer btw, so you can rule out lag completely, if that is a thing ;)

I did play multiplayer ONCE, and never again. Because when I joined this 'close' server (allegedly), the lag was so bad and all the animals were so glitchy... I shot my first animal and it was instantly a diamond. I left asap and never tried again. Horrible experience.

So diamonds is like playing the lottery? I have about 500 hours in the game and can still count the amount of diamonds I shot on ONE hand.

[PESCADOU]

Originally posted by Golden Monkey:

You can shoot legendaries down instantly, single shot, heart shot, right ammo, the whole 9 yards of ethical hunting... and still only get gold...

So what is up with that? What determines the diamond? I only play singleplayer btw, so you can rule out lag completely, if that is a thing ;)

I did play multiplayer ONCE, and never again. Because when I joined this 'close' server (allegedly), the lag was so bad and all the animals were so glitchy... I shot my first animal and it was instantly a diamond. I left asap and never tried again. Horrible experience.

So diamonds is like playing the lottery? I have about 500 hours in the game and can still count the amount of diamonds I shot on ONE hand.

They are still working on the new SUNDARPATAN map, I think that may come from there.

[Carstein83]

An animal is a diamond, if you pass the harvest check and get the necessary rating/score. The score is determined by the size of the trophy organ. Since the level is not determined by the size of the trophy organ, but the weight of the animal, legendary is not auto diamond. There are animals, that are legendary, because they are fat, not because they have a diamond trophy organ.
A lot of servers are modded, that means they have an increased amount of diamonds, these diamonds are worth nothing.

EDIT: You can increase the chance for a diamond by doing herd management (there are a lot of good youtube videos about HM) and not shooting the low levels on the map.

[Sokurah]

These "troll" animals are actually quite common. Max lvl does not mean a safe Diamond, even when you pass the harvest check.

But also sometimes non Max LvL can be Diamond too, but those are usually hard to spot.

I dont really wanna promote this, because some people dont really like when you are using it but i dont really care. Anyway you can get the population scanner on nexus and see what's on your map including all Diamonds and "Trolls". They are fixed they way they are, when they spawn.

Sometimes the scanner makes mistakes but from my experience they are rare. I played about 350 or more hours without the scanner and now maybe 200 more with the scanner.

[Geronimo]

And don't forget that each individual is scripted and the higher levels don't just stop at lvl 9, each one has a better set of skills and advantages than another level 4. And some of these are very tricky to track, and kill.

[Vulpus_013]

Originally posted by Golden Monkey:

You can shoot legendaries down instantly, single shot, heart shot, right ammo, the whole 9 yards of ethical hunting... and still only get gold...

So what is up with that? What determines the diamond? I only play singleplayer btw, so you can rule out lag completely, if that is a thing ;)

I did play multiplayer ONCE, and never again. Because when I joined this 'close' server (allegedly), the lag was so bad and all the animals were so glitchy... I shot my first animal and it was instantly a diamond. I left asap and never tried again. Horrible experience.

So diamonds is like playing the lottery? I have about 500 hours in the game and can still count the amount of diamonds I shot on ONE hand.

Diamonds are intended to be very rare. There is no point in a Diamond rating if you get one every other hunt.

[Sokurah]

Well some people get more lucky than others.

The initial Diamonds on the map are rng. You usually get between 5 and 15 depending on luck.

Rest is up to farming, if you are willing to do that. I'm not.

[Woodyplank]

The devs tell us that less than a handful of diamonds might be on a map at the same time. That's in total, not per species. Some species tend to have more trolls (max level animal for the species that will not score high enough to be a diamond) than others. For example, in my experience, a 5-medium Fallow deer has a good chance of actually being a diamond, while a 5-Medium male gemsbok has a very low chance of being a diamond or a level 3 bird or bunny has a better chance of being a diamond than 9-Legendary red deer. In this game the only time finding a max level animal is a sure fire diamond is when the lower end of its trophy range est exceeds the minimum diamond score for that species. I don't farm, just keep my eyes open. The majority of diamonds I've harvested were taken while I was hunting a different species. Hunt Red Deer, kill a diamond Feral Goat, hunt whitetail drink zones and kill a diamond Mallard. That sort of thing. It's a bummer when you stumble across a level 3 bunny sitting there without a care in the world not 20 meters away on the day you left the shotgun or .22 at home. Ha Ha.

[Sokurah]

It depends in the map and your luck. Initial population is random.

Like i said. Usually between 5 and 15.

But i've seen populations with 3 or even 1 Diamonds.