Trap megathread animal hunting traps and PC traps

[Firefox]

Sounds like you two are onto something. If rabbits are going to spook easily, then it would be nice to have a way for new players to kill them at a distance so they can still be used as a source of food. Enter: The rabbit stick. To craft a rabbit stick you need a... stick. Go figure. In it's simplest form a rabbit stick is a stick about the length of your forearm and big enough around to have sufficient weight to kill small game. You throw it sidearm at your quarry and hope that it gets cracked with one of the ends as it spins around. A hit either kills instantly or maims the target so it is easy to finish off at close range. it would only be useful for small game in Haven and Hearth because you can only hold one at a time and only rabbits and chickens will go down in one hit.

The boomerang would also fall into this category, but I think it is hardly appropriate for the game's setting.

[Jackard]

i think the snares from the OP are a fine way of catching rabbits and would be appropriate under the Hunting skill. just leave them near bait or outside rabbit holes or spook rabbits into them

[ImpalerWrG]

All excellent ideas, I agree that skittishness/flightiness should be greatly increased, generally the smaller the animal the more skittish. In general hunting should consist of most time spent searching for animals punctuated by brief interactions with them in which you either succeed or fail to make a kill. Higher skill lets you find animals faster because your not scaring them away and have a better chance of making a kill. Traps should be a viable alternative way to get animals without investing in much skill but it should have it's drawbacks because of this, you'll need frequently check the traps as a dead animal in a trap shouldn't last more then a few hours before it rots/gets eaten. Traps would be the 'personal' method to get animals, good for a lone hermit while hunting is the 'volume' way and produces a large surplus appropriate for sale or to support a community.

[vikingdragons]

Thanks for the support and the ideas and improvements. I like them. Hopefully Jorb and Loftar will take them into consideration.

[Jackard]

Traps should be a viable alternative way to get animals without investing in much skill but it should have it's drawbacks because of this, you'll need frequently check the traps as a dead animal in a trap shouldn't last more then a few hours before it rots/gets eaten.

should avoid suggestions that only add tedium. i suspect checking traps every few hours in case of decay would not be very fun! after all, traps would already have drawbacks (the waiting and if bait is required to have them succeed outside of certain areas)

if hunting is active its better if traps are left passive, a way to get a little extra food while doing something else. and theres always the risk of other hunters taking your kills if you leave them too long

[ImpalerWrG]

You have a point but how would you propose balancing traps? If their both easy to make and preserve the animal caught in them for long or indefinite time we would probably see mass spamming of traps with players visiting them infrequently to just 'harvesting' the dead animals, with enough traps the time between catches grows very short so I can just walk out to the traps and obtain a new animal very easily. Perhaps traps will need to have some kind of area effect so a large group of them in one spot aren't effective, after all there are only so many dear or rabbits in any one area. Also am I correct that animals are only present when players are nearby, I recall reading that some ware on the forums, if so its going to make traps tricky to implement as they will need to generate animals somehow.

[Jackard]

uhh shouldnt that take care of itself? trap clusters arent really that great if theres only one or two rabbits spawned in an area

[ImpalerWrG]

I think the animal spawning is the issue, if it only occurs around players then you'd have to be standing near traps for them to work. If the Traps can spawn animals were probably looking at a big load on the server as each player could cover huge areas with traps and these areas would then continually spawn animals which would move around and eat up cycles. This makes me think that perhaps traps should just roll some random numbers and generate already dead and trapped animals rather then having to actually trap animals, of course if a player is watching and an animal actually stumbles into a trap it should indeed trigger and be able to capture/kill the animal.

[Jackard]

continually spawn animals

no one said that had to be so

[Orteil]

Stealth should effect the range at which animals see you. Add more easy to make stealth clothes for hunters, like Spruce Shirts and Spruce Pants. This way you have an improvised Guille Suit.

To be honest, at first I thought that's what Stealth did.

Craft Poisons to help you take down your prey easier. Do extra damage, do damage over time, cause stun effects, etc.

New skill : Poison-making (required : plant lore). Can craft poisons of varying intensities using the existing herbs (nettle, rustroot, maybe pavot and hemp [puts the animals to sleep ?]) and new ones - that could also be used in cooking, etc. (That would produce edible meals, but some recipes could result in actually poisoned food, which would be interesting when using said food as a trap for an opponent or as a back-stabbing trade move).
If you can make it so that poisons can be used to poison water sources and nearby wells (for sieging cities and what-not), I'll love you forever

Also there could be ultra-rare small animals you'd only catch with traps, using very specific, uncommon bait.

Also also termites should totally fight with ants