What determines big game quality?

[Moosenheim]

I feel like it's completely random. I've punched, chopped and long range foined beasties and get base quality kills, but then occasionally outta the blue I get something like a q100 badger.

[Mashadar]

Animal qualities are determined by random quality nodes, just like most other resources. When an animal spawns close to the center of a high quality node, you will get a high quality, if it isn't within the range of any node at all, you will get base quality.

[Nightdawg]

Basically, every animal has a base quality, which is a *minimum* quality they can have. (For example: foxes start at q25, badgers at q30, bears at q60, etc.)

When the world is generated, random invisible quality nodes are also placed into it, in random areas, which will determine what quality a specific animal, depending on the node, will have when it spawns.
All of those quality nodes are independent from eachother (a fox quality node will not affect a bear quality node and so on, they just overlap).

So for example, if a bear spawns on a quality node of q300 bears, the quality bear will be less or equal to 300, depending on how far it is from the center of the node. This q300 bear quality node will not affect other animal spawns in any way. If there is another quality node of another type overlapping it, whatever that node affects will not be influenced by this bear node. So you could find a q400 moose in this same spot, or a q100 fox, or nothing else.

At the moment quality nodes are very stupid, some of them allowing for +500% quality (people killed q700 whales, which have a base quality of 120).

Keep in mind that your survival will cap the quality of the animal you kill. If you kill a q300 bear with 100 survival, the animal will be q100. But if you kill a q60 bear with 100 survival, it will still be q60.

[Vivikus]

Animal qualities are determined by random quality nodes, just like most other resources. When an animal spawns close to the center of a high quality node, you will get a high quality, if it isn't within the range of any node at all, you will get base quality.

In my experience it's not where the animal spawns but where it dies. I find the highest nodes I can and mark them on my map. I then find the animal and lure it into the area and then kill it.