Hunting tips?

[MacGregor]

After wasting countless hours and few quivers of arrows I'm unable to hunt anything and thinking about leaving the game. Since I cant progress only running after rabbits...

But to the point. Tried hunting with boat. foxes, badgers, boars. Even if I'm able to find some creature near water, aggro it and lure to deep water border. After first hit from water they run away everytime, without even being to low HP. 90% of times I'm unable to keep up with them (2 speed). Even If I'm sometimes able to maintain distance I run out of stamina, end up very far away from boat, can't maintain distance and shoot at same time or animal simply jumps back to water somewhere else and cant keep up or go back to boat in time.

Is there any better trick to hunting? Since it seams to be extremely hard solo. I have Marksmanship at around 30

[blank2]

here is a good tip, next time you are agroed to one of those animals that flee, go ahead and begin fight with them on peace ( top right corner, swords) then proceed to beat them up keeping the sword (attack) on curser, then as soon as you see them de agro you and run away insta agro them again, rinse, repeat.
your welcome fam.

[DafyddapDafydd]

I've found that for bow hunting, there's a very specific way to boat hunt that works most of the time. Like you noticed, there is a mechanic where if you're shooting an animal and you're out of its reach, it will flee long before it normally would, which means you have to chase it down. Worse, if you're chasing a hostile animal, it might decide that it's done fleeing and then turn on you while you're out of stamina.

The way around this is to aggro it from a rowboat in deep water, but only do damage while you're on dry land. Find a long stretch of relatively open ground and lead the animal there. Then, land on one side of the animal a fair distance away from it, shoot at it once or twice, and then get in your boat and head back to the deep water before it can strike back. Next, land on the other side and shoot it again as it charges. Repeat this until the animal is either dead or you are too wounded to continue.

It's a bit of an art and it takes a some practice to get it right, but most of the time you can kill the animal without it fleeing (and it'll save you some arrows!).

Also, PM me your location and I might be able to get you a better bow if you're close by.

[Vesena]

Is there any better trick to hunting?

Neigh.

[MacGregor]

Those are some solid advice's that I need to test out when I will be less frustrated. Thanks!

But what about mele? It's easier or not viable way to hunt? Also how high skills I would need for this?

[DafyddapDafydd]

Depends on what you're trying to melee. I wouldn't recommend melee until you've gotten yourself some better armor and a decent shield, sword, and/or metal axe. Even then, you won't want to take on the bigger animals like moose or bear for a while until you can get maybe ~30-50 damage per hit on average through their armor, which takes some time with how long it takes for hermits to raise their stats.

I'd say your first order of business if you want to go melee should be to get maybe 50 agi, 40 ua, 40 mc, and 60 strength, plus the gear mentioned above (and don't forget some combat moves!). That should be enough to easily take on medium animals like wolverines and boars if you're careful and use a boat/horse.

[valeriesusanne]

My go-to strategy for boat hunting is to agro the animal, then lead it to a place where the shallow water juts out into the deep water, like a leg. I lure it as far out as it can get and position myself so that I can move in its way when it flees, so it's trapped in that bit of shallow water, then start shooting. When it flees, it will run around, bounce off the boat, and eventually re-agro, then I move back into the deep water and shoot at it until it flees again - then block it again - until it dies (or escapes if I'm not quick enough to block it) Time consuming, not always successful, but relatively safe.

[Hadehariast]

One of my favoured hunting tricks when starting out is to use shallow river crossings to manipulate the animal's movement to make it easier to shoot. I look for a stretch of river where there is a river crossing and a relatively straight stretch of shallow water on each side of the river. If you imagine that the shallow water creates an H pattern, you can aggro the animal and move to the top-left point of the H, and then when the animal gets close, boat over to the top-right point of the H. As long as you remain in the shallows, the animal will run back to the crossing, cross over the river, and then run directly at you. This gives you a clear, straight shot at the animal as it comes towards you. Then you boat back over to the top-left, and repeat until the animal flees-- at which point, you have a clear, straight shot at it's back.

If you bow hunt on land, deer are surprisingly easy to kill. Even with a Q20 hunter's bow and some Q25 bone arrows, a deer can be killed in three shots. After the second shot the deer will flee, and the third shot kills it. As long as you take care to position yourself with a clear line and try to take your first shot near max distance, you don't even have to move your mouse to aim-- just repeat all three shots at the same point. Until you get a feel for this, it's probably wise to do this near an escape route-- either a cave entrance or with a boat waiting on shore nearby. Deer are fast, and they can beat you up pretty badly if you miss either your first or second shot.

[LunarArchon]

Its pretty easy to bow hunt with a clovered wildhorse. I would recommend skipping the boat fuckery because its too finicky.
Get on a horse with a quiver full of arrows and practice on badgers and foxes which you can kite easily. Get used to pressing the shoot hotkey (H) and once you are in combat you can autoaim at the prey by clicking on their portrait in the top right. Continue to work on upgrading your bow and bone arrows to get as much damage as possible. Also keep boosting Marksmanship, 50 is a good goal for the next step with 100 ideal for the third tier of animals. You can move onto boars(usually slow, horse speed 2, but armored needing at least 12 shitty arrows sometimes), wolverines(usually fast, horse speed 3, but 2-3 shitty arrow shots to get it fleeing), Aurochs(mostly fast?, horse speed 3, fleeing 3-5 shitty arrows), Deer(usually fast, horse speed 3, fleeing 3-4 shitty arrows). Also at this point you should be able to 2 shot lone bats in caves with decent internet speed and practice. Do not try bears(horse speed 3), lynxes(horse speed 4 - better to melee anyways), moose(horse speed 3-4) until you have a much better bow and arrows.

For late game reference I am able to kite bears and moose very easily with a Q100 hunters bow using Q80-100 bone arrows and 107 Marksmanship. It takes a lot of arrows but is normally worth it.