Pittraps

[Shrimp85]

So far in the early game, my go-to strategy is to dig a 7x3 pit, about 3 or 4 blocks deep, near a forest and lure bears and wolves into it. It’s saved my ass more than once! I start hunting them with nothing but flint spears that I craft and place next to the pit trap. This works too well.

My suggestion would be to give animals a small chance not to fall into a 3-block-deep pit when they’re chasing a player.

However, if they’re right behind me (1–2 blocks), the chance that they don’t fall in should be higher. If they’re further away (6–10 blocks), the chance should be much lower that they avoid the pit.

Sorry for my English — hope it’s clear what I mean. If this has already been suggested, please close this post.

Edited October 12, 2025 by Shrimp85

[Facethief]

1 hour ago, Shrimp85 said:

However, if they’re right behind me (1–2 blocks), the chance that they don’t fall in should be higher. If they’re further away (6–10 blocks), the chance should be much lower that they avoid the pit.

This’d be basically natively included if animals and other creatures had momentum-based navigation, but that’d be difficult to implement because of the 1m world resolution and lack of slopes.

[Echo Weaver]

I love pit traps too. Mainstay of my gaming style.

[MKMoose]

That would be part of animal pathfinding/behavior improvements, so I don't think it's likely to happen in the near future. Would be great though, because their current behavior is sometimes a bit simplistic.

Trapping pits have apparently been used for hunting for a couple thousand years at least and have been highly effective, remaining in use all the way into modern times to some extent, so I would love to see them expanded somewhat. Placing sharpened sticks into the ground pointing upward and covering the hole with branches, and maybe even leaving bait inside, could be a cool alternative to conventional hunting with bows or spears. The related items could offer quite a lot of other possibilities as well in terms of decoration and protection.

[Shrimp85]

42 minutes ago, Facethief said:

This’d be basically natively included if animals and other creatures had momentum-based navigation, but that’d be difficult to implement because of the 1m world resolution and lack of slopes.

I don’t think full physics simulation is needed.
If the target (players only) is 1–2 meters away, the wolf should have a 95% chance to fall into the pit (3+ blocks deep).

At 3–4 meters, the chance to fall in drops to 50%. If it doesn’t fall, it should slow down at the edge for 1–3 seconds.

At 5–7 meters, the chance drops to 10%. If it doesn’t fall, it should slow down at the edge for about 1 second.

For everything else near 0%.

But I really have no idea what kind of CPU strain this would add and how to implement.

Edited October 12, 2025 by Shrimp85

[Shrimp85]

15 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

Placing sharpened sticks into the ground pointing upward and covering the hole with branches, and maybe even leaving bait inside, could be a cool alternative to conventional hunting with bows or spears. 

The Mod primitive survival has them.

I used the first pittrap with them, but they dont break when a animal crash in. would be to expansive anyway in this case. 

so i tryed the scond one without spikes....more than good enough.

[Echo Weaver]

16 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

That would be part of animal pathfinding/behavior improvements, so I don't think it's likely to happen in the near future. Would be great though, because their current behavior is sometimes a bit simplistic.

Trapping pits have apparently been used for hunting for a couple thousand years at least and have been highly effective, remaining in use all the way into modern times to some extent, so I would love to see them expanded somewhat. Placing sharpened sticks into the ground pointing upward and covering the hole with branches, and maybe even leaving bait inside, could be a cool alternative to conventional hunting with bows or spears. The related items could offer quite a lot of other possibilities as well in terms of decoration and protection.

If you haven't checked this out, Primitive Survival has pretty much exactly this feature, including spikes at the bottom. The feature is really well-done. Good to check out the config, though. It has several features that are not related to the theme that you might or might not want.

[Facethief]

9 minutes ago, Shrimp85 said:

I don’t think full physics simulation is needed.
If the target (players only) is 1–2 meters away, the wolf should have a 95% chance to fall into the pit (3+ blocks deep).

At 3–4 meters, the chance to fall in drops to 50%. If it doesn’t fall, it should slow down at the edge for 1–3 seconds.

At 5–7 meters, the chance drops to 10%. If it doesn’t fall, it should slow down at the edge for about 1 second.

For everything else near 0%.

But I really have no idea what kind of CPU strain this would add and how to implement.

The issue is that you’d have to be able to, at random, mark a block that has a high path cost as one that doesn’t, on the fly, on a per-animal basis.