Hunting

Hunting is one of the two methods by which players can get meat, the other being trapping (unless you're willing to go in village and buy your meal). Hunting animals also provides a source of leather and fur, which can be made into clothing or other useful things.

The most common and successful hunting tactic is simple: sneak up to the prey (using the [H] hide command) and kill it with your weapon of choice. Often, this will be a ranged weapon of some sort, usually either a bow or javelins. Usually the head or body is targeted in order to bring down the animal as quickly as possible.

Hunting using melee weapons is possible, although difficult and usually requires patience. Animals frequently outrun even players with high Agility, but they cant keep going forever. Eventually, if you keep following the same animal and it keeps running, it will eventually get too tired to outrun you. Don't run after it - just walk after it and use tracking to stay on its trail and don't give it a chance to rest. Then, when it becomes breathless, go in for the kill. Remember to kill it with blunt attacks - preferably to the head - if you can because this will damage the animals hide less so the skin will be more valuable or produce better clothes when you tan it. This tactic is called cursorial hunting and is practiced by many animals, including humans, in real life.

Sometimes the player is placed next to the animal when encountering them; a crippling leg wound can slow them down enough for the hunter to catch up. Sometimes animals are crippled using ranged weapons, then finished off with hand-to-hand combat. If the animal sustains a bleeding injury, they leave a blood trail as well as randomly fainting, eventually dying from blood loss.

Often the prey manages to run out of site when hunting. To re-encounter them, either zoom out to the wilderness map (with [ENTER] command), or run in a straight line in the direction the animal was last seen in.

Tracks
Tracks in the zoomed-in map, added in v3.12b, have helped with the location of escaped prey.

When standing over one of these tracks, if you use the tracking skill ([Alt] + [T] command), you are informed of the direction of the tracks. Sometimes the animal pursued walks in circles extensively, making it very hard to find what direction it finally took.

Hunting animals is not to be confused with hunting Njerpez, which is another sport topic entirely.