Noobie hunting stats

[Donnie]

Is 15 in unarmed enough to kill ants by punching?

I have a 12 in strength and was hoping to kill ants to get the strength food. I have q13 leather armor. My current unarmed skill doesn't seem to be enough.

Or is there a better attack to try to kill them with?

Edit: The use of charge, jump and slide enabled them to start making more hits on me.

What's the best way to begin hunting, if not punching ants? I'm getting sick of fish, rabbits and chickens.

Edit: With an axe equiped ,using chop for an attack, with 8 in melee combat, and with the skill militia training I was not even able to initiate combat with the ants. I kept clicking but never got into combat.

This makes it appear that the issue I'm having is not that unarmed is the wrong way to go. Using a weapon has not improved things.

Edit: another try, I used charge to get the four coins of initiative that chop seemed to require. Unfortunately after that I couldn't stop charging and never got the option to use the axe... It kept reverting back to charge, which is funny because when I tried punching the ants I could only punch them once and then had to get the mouse pointer back to being a sword to get a chance to punch them again. The charge attack keeps going where chop stops dead as soon as you take one swing.

Edit: changed thread name

[Leusoj]

You need foraging to start combat with ants. Right click on an anthill, then select Raid.

You won't stand a chance against them with your current stats though, especially with the new combat system.

[Donnie]

I've got foraging. I've been attacking the individual ant swarms because I was told that the trick is to kill all the swarming ants before you actually try to open the ant hill.

Since I can outwalk the ants, the method now would seem to be attack the anthill, walk a long way away making sure all the ants are following me and then run back and raid it while they are still trying to return. I'm going to give that a shot in daylight.

Where can I find clear instructions on how to use the combat system? I just read 330 posts and everything I read was from players with huge high stats discussing how 280 in unarmed was no longer as good as 120 in marksman. Is useful information available anywhere?

For example, I know my stats are too low and I know I need more, but if I need to get say 50 in melee before I can attack ants the obvious practical thing to do is give up on the project of killing ants altogether, rather than to keep trying every time I raise my melee skill another two points. Is there any basic information on the minimum stats needed to kill ants? Or as I asked in my op, should I start with foxes or mouflon instead of bugs?

[sabinati]

ants should be the intro to combat, they probably need to be tweaked a bit since the combat update probably made them a bit too powerful.

[Leusoj]

For example, I know my stats are too low and I know I need more, but if I need to get say 50 in melee before I can attack ants the obvious practical thing to do is give up on the project of killing ants altogether, rather than to keep trying every time I raise my melee skill another two points. Is there any basic information on the minimum stats needed to kill ants? Or as I asked in my op, should I start with foxes or mouflon instead of bugs?

Last time I raided an anthill, I got KOed wearing full leather equips (including bear amulet and bear cloak) with about 70str/30con and 25 unarmed. I suggest starting with foxes using ranged weapon (i.e. sling). Try searching the forums for hunting tips using fences/boats.

[Potjeh]

Kill them one by one. Charge the ant six times, then use flex to gain attack. If you need defence, use slide to convert some of that attack into it. Punch with full-ish attack till the ant's defence is removed, after that punch after every flex. It's better to do a lot of low damage punches than one with higher damage, because you gain more combat advantage that way.

[Donnie]

I was able to kill a level IX penned fox with a 14 in strength, 17 in dexterity, a q10 sling and 8 shots. Some of the shots seemed to be doing damage in the forties. However I didn't even attempt to even make a sling until my Marksman skill was 20.
At no time did the initiative (coins at the bottom of the screen) go above zero, or the combat intensity (number inside the flaming ring) go above zero, or the balance scale tip in either direction.

I was then able to kill a second level IX penned fox, but this time I needed to take twelve shots. Three of my shots appeared to do no damage at all. No red numbers rose up over the fox when I fired. When I stopped to chip more stones the combat intensity rose to 1 where it stayed until the fox died.

I don't know exactly how much lp I got what with chipping stone, skinning and butchering and making barriers, but after killing both of them I had 4000 some lp, enough to raise my marksman from 20 to 22.

[Donnie]

I was able to kill a level IX bear, with myself penned in against a rock using a sling. I don't know how many rocks I used, but probably about twenty. My stats currently are strength 15, dexterity 17, Marksman 22 and the sling was q14.

The bear gave me 19000 lp at full change and peaceful.

[sabinati]

i'm kind of suprised the bear didn't run off

[Potjeh]

Perception is the only relevant stat for marksmanship, it raises your minimal damage.