Guides:Hunting guide

Mongolian Hunting Guide

The purpose of this guide is to share information, hints and tips regarding hunting on freedom to readers.

The information provided below comes from our [Members from Mongolia] personal experience with fighting/hunting and is what works for us.

The rules of hunting

Always consult people for knowledge on local hunting grounds and try to discover what works best for you.

Always be considerate of others.

Always assist people in danger.

Always bury your kills.

Never dig up tundra.

Never bash spawners.

The hunter in you

Consider the following questions:

• Do you live in a populated area?
• Is the local area around you mostly deeded?
• Are you only interested in hunting within your local area?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then hunting may not be in your best interest.

Please understand:

• You will want to move away from other players to improve your chances of finding creatures alive.
• Living in a populated area affects hunting as creatures will not spawn on deeds and any locations containing too many animals within a small locality.
• Sometimes you need to leave your local area and venture to places where few people travel to. The best hunting spots are often the ones that few people visit. This may include valleys deep within mountain ranges or the deserted and partially abandoned islands.

Knowing the prey

It is important to understand how the AI and spawners work.

• Back in the days of when Golden Valley was open to the public, many creatures spawned on mountain sides and cliffs and became stuck as they were unable to come down. To resolve this issue, Rolf modified the AI slightly and made it so that some creatures especially wolves, dogs and bears would always seek to go downhill.

• Creature spawners naturally succumb to decay over a very long period of time. This affects the hunting ground every few months.

• Animals can spawn somewhere up to 50-100 tiles away from the the spawner.

• In some extremely rare circumstances, spawners can also be found in caves. This is not a bug. Spawners in caves also decay much quicker. (Confirmed by Enki)

• When a creature has its back turned to you, it has a smaller agro range.

• If your combat rating is high, some creatures tend to have a smaller agro range to you. This is very noticeable with wildcats once you reach 50+ fighting. It is sometimes possible to walk right up to one, kiss it, and still not have it agro you as if it completely refuses to fight you.

• Wolves, dogs and champion creatures tend to move around a lot.

• Wolves and huge spiders naturally have a very large agro range.

The hunter, their equipment, style and why

Weapon, armour, shield and horse:

• Mauls - Mauls may be slightly slower than swords but they make up for this with power. Mauling damage also suffers the least penalty when striking against armoured creatures such as scorpions. For this reason alone, mauls are the most effective and versatile weapons when fighting against creatures. Some veteran players also believe that it is the best weapon overall for both PVP and PVE.

• Shield - To protect you from blows.

• Short Bow - Bows are useful for luring creatures off the side of mountains and inaccessible terrain. Medium and Long bows have a minimum range and shooting long distances doesn't always lure the creature to you. If the creature gets hit by an arrow and is too far away from you, it doesn't detect that you have attacked it and sits idle as if nothing happened. Short bows work best because there is no minimum range and its ideal range is just close enough to lure creatures towards you.

• Studded Leather - Studded leather offers similar protection to chainmail but weighs a lot less and is therefore less cumbersome and uses less stamina than chainmail making it ideal for climbing or travelling in difficult terrain where one may be forced to dismount from their horse.

• Any Horse - The faster the better - Fighting from horseback gives you a height advantage when engaging creatures on leveled terrain and having a height advantage will improve your combat rating. It is also very useful for escaping from danger.

Fighting stance, focus and targeting:

• Normal Fighting - Train normal fighting whenever possible. The most dangerous fights you will ever engage in are the ones where you are suddenly ambushed by dangerous creatures (Such as an aged starving troll). The safest way to fight against a tough opponent solo is to fight in a stance that offers you a decent hit chance without compromising your safety to the point where you risk serious injury or death. Normal fighting offers a balance between hit chance and dodge/parry rate.

• Focus - Focus affects your hit chance and dodge/parry rate by raising your combat rating. It uses stamina each time you attempt it whether you succeed or fail. Personally, i avoid using focus unless I know the fight against the opponent will be a long one such as when fighting trolls. Choosing when to focus is very important as you stop hitting while focusing and blows to your body can interrupt you. I find the best times to use focus is right after I block an opponents attack.

• Target - Whenever it becomes reliably possible, target the head of the opponent. Blows to the head of creatures do more damage. Be aware that each time you attempt to target specific body parts, a bit of your stamina is used up. Stamina affects your chance to dodge/parry, your attack speed and possibly your hit chance. Always keep your stamina as high as possible before and during fighting.

Miscellaneous equipment:

• Hatchet - For chopping wood.

• Butchering Knife - Needed to reliably butcher animals

• Shovel - Used to bury dead corpses so animals respawn sooner. In emergencies, you can also use the flatten option to create ground to stand on when on steep hills and mountainsides.

• Carving Knife - For creating kindling, extra arrow shafts and emergency tools such as mallets (useful for building woven fences to climb out of places).

• Steel & Flint - Lighting signal fires, cooking meals, etc.

• Cotton & Healing covers - You will get hurt while hunting. It is important to carry strong healing covers with you incase you sustain a nasty wound. Hint: When trolls are butchered, their gland and tooth create a supreme healing cover of 20 strength.

• Satchel - Useful for storing animal parts and can also be used as an emergency bandage when you run out of cotton.

• Rope - Leading animals

• Water - If you hunting away from lakes and shores, sometimes you may struggle to find water sources to drink from. Always carry water with you in a waterskin or pottery jar

• Small Barrel with 2.50 water in it - It is believed that storing meat and meals inside a barrel of water helps to preserve it. For this reason alone, I recommend carrying a barrel with a small amount of water in it with you. In emergencies when you run out of water from your waterskin, you can drink the water in the barrel.

• Sailboat - The sailboat is the perfect boat for a hunter because you can easily lead your horses while sailing in it and it can sail reliably well in any wind condition.

Different hunting methods

Building pit traps - Very easy to set up and can be done anywhere but successfully trapping is very uncommon.

A common problem which was present in Wurm a while ago was animals spawning on mountain sides and refusing to come down. Rolf fixed this issue by modifying the creature AI slightly to encourage some creatures to make their way downhill whenever they spawn on steep terrain. Wolves, dogs, and bears will seek to travel downhill whenever possible.

To exploit this new AI, some players dig out small pits just for the purpose of trapping animals.

In my opinion, the best places to dig out such pits is at the lowest point in between two mountains. This creates a large bottleneck which funnels all the creatures from the mountainside down into this pit.

Steppe & Tundra Hunting - Easy to spot animals and little preparation required but very common amongst players.

Hunting in steppe and tundra terrain makes hunting very easy as you can easily spot creatures from extreme distances and determine early on whether the creature is too tough for you to handle or not.

One major problem with this method is that all steppes are frequently visited by other players and creatures are sometimes hunted out.

Forest Hunting - Many animals to hunt, little preparation required and somewhat uncommon amongst players but spotting animals and hidden dangers can be difficult.

In my personal opinion, the best hunting ground is within thick forests away from settlements. It is also very common to find older fat grazing animals in forests that have been undisturbed by players.

Pine forests are the best forests to hunt in because the pine trees are tall and thin, giving you good medium-long range visibility.

Forests also provide many resources necessary to create emergency shelters/camps, basic tools and weak healing covers.

Mountain-top Hunting - Often contains many old and starving creatures but is usually dangerous and difficult to reach and difficult to retreat from.

On some mountains across freedom, in particular Death Mountain on the south of the grand steppe, there are many decaying fence walls that other players have built to climb up to the top of the mountain. The journey to the top of the mountain is often dangerous and slipping off at a high elevation can almost mean certain death. It is also not uncommon to run into aged starving creatures who will almost always attack you from a higher position while you climb up the mountain.

The hunting on top of mountains is only ideal if you are planning on leveling your fight skill. There are always plenty of tougher creatures to kill on mountain tops but most will be starving.

Beware of hidden trolls on mountain tops.

Mountain valley Hunting (Natural pit traps) - Contains many creatures (mostly diseased and starving) and sometimes treasure from death piles but can be dangerous, difficult to reach and escape from.

Beware of death pits.

Inside mountain ranges, there are often valleys that funnel creatures into a tight space bunching them up close together. The valleys that you can't climb out of are called death pits because players fall into them, get ganged up on by a mass of creatures and die.

If you can safely reach the bottom of such valleys then the hunting and skill-gain is often very good as you can slowly lure piles of creatures slowly towards you and finish them off slowly one by one.

Mongol recommended hunting grounds

Steve's Tundra and the surrounding forests - This entire area is completely overrun by trolls. It is very common to run into champion trolls out here as there are many spawners and few players nearby. In the forests, you will find even more trolls as well as scorpions, lava spiders, bears, wolves and huge spiders.

The Eastern Plains - The Eastern Plains is the only true steppe hunting ground that hasn't been seriously affected by human settlement. Although the hunting here is quite common, on a good day you can expect to run into masses of crocodiles and trolls on the steppe and lava spiders along the eastern forest.

The mountain North-West of the Grand Steppe - This enormous mountain is home to a variety of different creatures lurking within the pine forests. On the Grand Steppe side, there are trolls and spiders which roam the mountain side. On the North side near Hermit's Heaven, there are many angry scorpions and goblins. It is also very common to find deers on this mountain.

The South-East quadrant of Freedom particularly around Elysian Bay - This surrounding area has many different environments ranging from steppe to forests to lakes but the entire area is mostly rolling hills and mountains which is ideal for naturally trapping many creatures. Although I'm not very familiar with the area, I have come across all types of creatures especially wolves, bears and trolls.

The North-East Islands - For anyone who has a boat and wants to go hunting, the islands in the north east provide an excellent opportunity to sight-see and kill. The southern island is predominantly steppe making it ideal for spotting creatures. On the south island you will find mostly lower level creatures such as Goblins and wildcats. The northern island contains many raging crocodiles on the south west end and spiders, goblins and bears everywhere else. Greenish wildcats have also been spotted here.

Recommended reading

Fighting

Fighting Guide

Archery

Healing Cover