Trapping

Crafting skill

Trapping is perhaps one of the best ways to get food, trapping basically means setting traps in random locations and waiting for an animal to stumble into them. Traps are very easy to set up, and can yield huge rewards. One of the most popular types of trap is the trap-fence, a long line of fences and trap pits, designed to force animals (usually herbivores like forest reindeer or elk) into the pits. Trap fences are set up as follows:

==O==O==O== where = is a fence or obstacle and O is a pit

Naturally, there is a lot of individual variation on the precise spacing of the trap pits. The most common trap pit used is the trap pit with sharp stakes, as it often kills whatever animal stumbles into it, which is advisable if something dangerous such as a bear or lynx has been caught. However, if you don't have the time (or don't want to check the traps every few days) it may be more useful to set a plain trap pit as they incapacitate, rather than kill. Since corpses are wiped from the map after a period of time, this will give you a greater margin of time to kill them, and also provides skill gain. You cruel, cruel player.

Traps can be baited with raw or cooked fish or meat. Predators are known to try to steal food from the player, and if food is placed on a trap, they will wander into it.

As of version 3.13, the game uses a much more realistic trapping simulation. The success of a trap is dependent on where and what kind of trap is used. If a trap does not catch anything for a month or so, it is highly unlikely that there are any animals nearby, and so the best course of action is to move them away. Different animals now prefer different types of terrain; for example, bears favour caves. Beginning hunters may want to set simple deadfalls and snare traps, as they catch small game far more efficiently. It is also a good idea to set traps where you see small game; if you see a fox in the area it is probably a good idea to set some fox traps. The Favourable Trap ritual also helps to attract more game to your traps.

My favoured location is a lake amidst a sea of trees. Fences among 8 neighbouring sectors to complete sealing the lake, with maybe 3 trap pits each side, and some more fox traps beside the fence to catch fox. That will ensure 4 medium to big animals during the first month, after that the local animals are exhausted and the rate trickled down to near nothing until the next season. Still, that's enough food for one year.

Trap pit, also, in my experience is better than spiked trap. You will sometimes fall down your own pit, and it will only cause you bruises. Spiked traps can kill you. Second, trap pit will keep preys alive longer. Sometime you notice an animal in your pit but you have pressing business to be elsewhere for days (like a waiting pile of almost fresh meats need to be dried). A day or two in that pit wont be enough to lose you that carcass, something cant be said for spiked. And third, with a trapped animals you can kill them slowly to practice your skills: stand one step away from them if that's bear, or next to them for everything else, and slam your weapon class of choice on that target.
The trapping skill increases the chance that animals will fall into your traps. Having any traps will increase the spawn rate of that type of animal but the animal may evade your traps if your trapping skill is low. You can best train trapping by triggering the trap with 0 or 9 and then [Mtr] to reset the trap.

It is best to have traps of all different types because each one spawns different animals. Bears won't get stuck in loop snares because they are too small and hares won't get caught in bear traps because they are too big.

If you don't want animals eating meat out of your cellar you should put traps all around your cellar. There are 8 types of traps and 8 directions around the cellar.

Animals (except dogs) don't eat roasted, smoked, or dried meat. Carnivores will only eat raw meat. They don't mind if it is spoiled and will eat spoiled raw meat happily.

It is thought that herbivores can be baited with plants but we don't yet know which plants attract which herbivores. You can help us find out by putting different types of plants in your traps and then when an animal is caught, checking whether the animal ate the bait, or left it in the trap.

For example, if you put a bream in a bear trap and catch a bear, after you kill the bear, the bream will be gone because the bear ate it. So we know that bears like breams (and raw fish in general). If you put a milkweed root in the bear trap, after you kill the bear the milkweed root will still be there, so we know that bears don't eat milkweed roots.

It is a long and slow process, but you can learn what we already know by coming onto IRC and typing:

/msg urwbot bait for bear

If you learn something new, please share it with the bot:

/msg urwbot bear ate raw fox cut /msg urwbot bear didn't eat roasted fox cut