Hunting and Trapping

[Elystole]

I was mulling over the Snowpine Lodge today and have a couple of thoughts for abilities. Maybe they would be general abilities, but they came to mind while thinking of the guild and its "loose conglomeration of bushcrafters, hunters, woodsmen, survivalists, and similar-minded people." They revolve around making hunting in the wild a more fruitful and less frustrating endeavor. I'm breaking them into separate concepts, but they might be better off combined into one ability because I don't know how big of a benefit they really grant compared to other abilities.

Bushcraft: Hunting Mastery
You've learned to identify the tracks and other signs of the animals common to any given area, and you can flush them out of hiding.
(OOC: Adds the types of animals that can be hunted to a room's survey information. Grants the ability to specify what you are hunting.)
Usage: survey, hunt <animal>
Prerequisites: Bushcraft: Tracking
Skill Requirements: Lots of Perception

Bushcraft: Trapping
You've learned to make traps, such as simple snares, in the wilderness using available materials. When you stalk your prey, you drive them towards your traps so that when they flee they are caught.
(OOC: Unlocks the ability to make traps out of foraged materials or set one-use traps in wilderness rooms. Animals that you hunt start ensnared in one of your traps.)
Usage: set <snare>
Prerequisites: Bushcraft Basics

If Trapping applied not just to animals that you hunt but any target that you engage from stealth, including range, I think it would be worth its own ability. Otherwise I would probably fold it into Hunting Mastery.

So these combined abilities address a few of the problems facing hunting: One, you don't know what is in the area so trying to find something in particular is a shot in the dark. Two, once you do find the right thing, you're still at the mercy of the RNG to get what it is that you're looking for. That especially sucks since there is a timer built into hunt. Three, when you do find the right target, they often run for their lives when you shoot them and now you're chasing a stealthed, wounded critter through wilderness rooms. It makes getting the furs that you need for anything a real chore. That's fine most of the time, but I think that dedicated characters should have the option to streamline their specialties and it would alleviate the pressure for more wolves/bears that spawn at rates high enough to reliably hunt.

Which leads to a third idea that I think would be great but probably doesn't warrant an entirely new ability. Maybe tie it into Hunting Mastery as a more general Bushcraft Mastery? Anyways, I think that dedicated bushcrafters should learn how to detect, not sense, Gaia distress. I'm not talking about the supernatural ability to know when the Gaia is getting upset, but the idea that after you've spent enough time in the woods distressing the Gaia you have an idea of what to look for.

"The woods become quiet. Too quiet. The sounds of the animals are gone and the air is still beneath the trees."

That should be your cue to leave. That final warning, the calm before the storm, lest you cut down one more tree or hunt another animal and all hell breaks loose. I would think that the old, weathered bushcrafters have stories about when the animals act strange and it seems even the trees and rocks turn against you that they tell the greenhorns before they get themselves killed.

[Sneaky]

When you hunt something, it starts off hidden, then when you shoot it, it's forced out of hiding, and it almost never will go back into hiding. I say almost never, because I haven't hunted every animal in the game, or at least I don't think I have. Anyhoo just wanted to point that out. Also, there were some distress changes a while back, and one of them I think included a way to detect when it was time to move on, but I could just be imagining that.

[Elystole]

I know they pop out of hiding once you shoot them, but I vaguely remember some of them trying to restealth. Or maybe I'm confusing my memories with those times that they started running away before I could shoot them. At the very least they do auto-bolt as soon as they see you which still results in your trying to chase them across the map to finish them off before they de-spawn.

And the changelog says that how druids sense distress is different as of July 8, 2015, but I didn't see anything about non-druids being able to detect the symptoms. Also, just to be clear, I don't think the bushcrafters would call it "Gaia distress" ICly.

[Mooshie]

These ideas sound awesome. I'm all about Snowpine getting some love

[Jirato]

Snowpine Lodge is a pretty cool guild. I hope to get a chance to give it some love after I offload some other things on my plate to Lassyn and Hayl, lol.

I like the idea of a version of Prospect but for hunting. I'd also love to see us FINALLY expand the trapping system. It likely wouldn't be a Snowpine-exclusive thing, though.