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I think the difficulty of hunting is fairly balanced, and realistic. It makes hunting more difficult for a strong build (Kaumo), and more challenging, and interesting. Hunting isn't a free ticket for food, it's really hard to hunt (as it should be). Managing to kill a reinder is really an achievement, and you need to hit the first time you see him, else it's screwed up.
It means that you need some sneak to hunt now too.
Some tips : hunting at night (animals sleeping, easier to sneak by), lighter build for hunting, hunting near traps/lake/sea.
Btw, I saw some decent mods (didn't tested), including one with metalworking, one with tub, etc.
While I know it's realistic that reindeer's can detect you from a mile away, it's not very fun. There's a very fine line between challenge and frustration, and while the previous version was challenging (as in, you had to sneak to effectively hunt and it took a long time and a lot of walking), it was also fair, if you played smart, and were a good tracker you could hunt an animal and, even with bad skills, be sure that you would get it eventually, if you didn't fuck up.
The 3.15... isn't. It's god damn annoying! Half the time, it'll see you and you can't, because the screens too small. If you fire at it, you'll almost always miss. If you sneak up to it (when it's back's turned to you), it will somehow get alarmed and run off.
I have pretty much heeded all of the hunting tips, done everything i could to hunt it down, but that reindeer is a god damn cheater, and I refuse to kill off my first successful character, because the AI won't play fair. And when I mean won't play fair, I'm not talking about handholding or some other bullshit, but actually having the AI play within the same limitations as me. I don't know where the wind is blowing, or how much i smell and how to mask it, so why should I, as a player, be punished for things I have no control of. I can't mask my smell, so why should it smell me. I can't see more than 11 squares in front of me, so why should I be punished for not seeing it coming. It gives you no ability to make up for your mistakes, because you don't make any mistakes, it makes them for you.
You see, when I hunt, I follow a track, as i follow it i hear something running, ok, I follow it again, I hear something running again, I follow the track, I see it at the border of the screen, it spots me instantly. there's
no way i could have seen that it was there, nor that it was facing me. So i had no way to hide behind something. Sometimes, i find it sleeping, i sneak up to it, without a sound, then it jumps up, and runs off screen before i can fire a shot.
Killing a reindeer in this version isn't an 'achievement' it's luck, plain old luck. It would have been, if the game actually gave you the tools to hunt within the system. There are so many variables in the hunting system that we have no control of. It smells you, you can't do shit. It hears you, you can't do shit. It sees you, you can't do shit. It's so crazy that the only reliable way to hunt, is to strip naked, charge at it, and hope you outrun it. That ain't an achievement, that's just a good agility and endurance score. So the only way to catch any large game, is to literally be superhuman, made specifically to hunt and outrun animals.
That's not balanced or realistic, that's just fake difficulty.