Persistence Hunting

[Heegrim]

Animals should get tired and no longer be able to run after around a day of constantly being chased. This is the main method of hunting that early humans used so it would be nice if we could chase animals to exhaustion to be able to easily kill them with a knife/spear or more easily capture them. 

[LadyWYT]

What's the point though? Players already complain about having to chase animals for a couple of in-game hours to kill them...I don't seem them enjoying needing to chase animals for a day or more just to kill it via exhaustion. There's also the little problem of energy gained from the food harvested versus energy spent chasing the animal. Chasing an animal for an entire day is going to burn through a lot of energy, for a bit of meat that will maybe last a day. Hunting yields could be increased, but at that point the player is facing less survival pressure since food stops being a concern, and spending a lot of time chasing prey to exhaustion probably isn't going to be very attractive when the conventional methods can yield more rewards in less time.

[Jubal]

I think the other point here is that the Seraphs are not otherwise faced with the same constraints as humans. They can't do things a human can do (an actual human can go longer without food!), and can do things a human can't do (outrun quadrupeds on two legs, turn thread into cloth instantaneously by apparent magic, single-handedly carve a decent sized room out of a rockface within a single day).

It could be a fun mod to have a "no we're really going to make the PC work as like a human as possible" but if you did such a mod right, it would be essentially impossible for solo players, humans are a gregarious species and most of the ways we function, early hunting methods very much included, require working in groups.

[PigeonK]

I really like this idea. My interpretation (as a counterpoint to LadyWYT's interpretation) is that the player would be able to hunt normally if chosen, but following an animal long enough causes it to progressively get slower, making hitting spear throws or melee attacks easier. I agree that chasing an animal for a whole day is too long if it was a necessary time investment for the kill, but the point seems to be that hunting otherwise works normally and an exhaustion mechanic would make it easier to catch an animal the longer the hunt takes. This would actually be a great mechanic to help the players that complain about hunting taking too long.

[Rainbow Fresh]

1 hour ago, PigeonK said:

I really like this idea. My interpretation (as a counterpoint to LadyWYT's interpretation) is that the player would be able to hunt normally if chosen, but following an animal long enough causes it to progressively get slower, making hitting spear throws or melee attacks easier. I agree that chasing an animal for a whole day is too long if it was a necessary time investment for the kill, but the point seems to be that hunting otherwise works normally and an exhaustion mechanic would make it easier to catch an animal the longer the hunt takes. This would actually be a great mechanic to help the players that complain about hunting taking too long.

I could potentially see merit in running an animal into exhaustion as alternative to capture wild animals for domestication. Seeing as my personal experience with using the one trap that's in the game makes me think running the animal into the ground for a day to guaranteed just... capture it manually would have been a better time than sitting next to a box, waiting for a the baby goat's trap food cooldown to wear off, and occasionally chase it back towards the trap.

For hunting purposes though, I, too, still do not see the point. If persistence hunting exists simultaneously to normal hunting with a bow... why bother wasting a day when you can spend 5 arrows? As mentioned before, persistence hunting by itself is rather questionable; if it takes a day you'd spend more energy chasing the animal down than it provides you. Which *could* work, from a balancing perspective, in the early game being like a passive reward of meat for players that keep chasing an animal down while living off of berries and mushrooms along the way exploring in the pre-bow days - but it would still be rather tedious and empower the already existing complaints about hunting. Early players need to run after the animals while chugging spears anyway, this would just replace the spear chugging with more running. On the other hand, if it takes significantly shorter to exhaust an animal it could become too easy to hunt. Especially since I can already see someone exploiting their water AI by just physically sitting at the shore, spook the animal into the water again where it loses "aggro" and swims back to shore in an endless cycle.

And, of course, as mentioned above if persistence hunting simply exists besides normal hunting, why would anyone choose more work over shooting a couple arrows?

Edited Monday at 08:03 AM by Rainbow Fresh

[Heegrim]

14 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

I could potentially see merit in running an animal into exhaustion as alternative to capture wild animals for domestication. Seeing as my personal experience with using the one trap that's in the game makes me think running the animal into the ground for a day to guaranteed just... capture it manually would have been a better time than sitting next to a box, waiting for a the baby goat's trap food cooldown to wear off, and occasionally chase it back towards the trap.

For hunting purposes though, I, too, still do not see the point. If persistence hunting exists simultaneously to normal hunting with a bow... why bother wasting a day when you can spend 5 arrows? As mentioned before, persistence hunting by itself is rather questionable; if it takes a day you'd spend more energy chasing the animal down than it provides you. Which *could* work, from a balancing perspective, in the early game being like a passive reward of meat for players that keep chasing an animal down while living off of berries and mushrooms along the way exploring in the pre-bow days - but it would still be rather tedious and empower the already existing complaints about hunting. Early players need to run after the animals while chugging spears anyway, this would just replace the spear chugging with more running. On the other hand, if it takes significantly shorter to exhaust an animal it could become too easy to hunt. Especially since I can already see someone exploiting their water AI by just physically sitting at the shore, spook the animal into the water again where it loses "aggro" and swims back to shore in an endless cycle.

And, of course, as mentioned above if persistence hunting simply exists besides normal hunting, why would anyone choose more work over shooting a couple arrows?

I agree that the AI would have to be a bit smarter so they don’t keep fleeing into the ocean and coming back. 
 

This would be more of a change geared towards new players or stone age/nomadic roleplayers. It’s not really something meant to be done once you have good ranged weapons.

People also did not sprint after animals while hunting this way, they would hike at a steady pace so they wouldn’t become exhausted (as someone else mentioned: you could forage along the way).

I think animals should have a slightly larger detection range to make being skilled with a ranged weapon even more rewarding. They should also drop or become wounded/slowed with fewer spear hits so that ranged hunting doesn’t just become a lengthy chase in the first place. 

[Rainbow Fresh]

7 hours ago, Heegrim said:

This would be more of a change geared towards new players or stone age/nomadic roleplayers. It’s not really something meant to be done once you have good ranged weapons.

You see, you say this - but then also this.

7 hours ago, Heegrim said:

They should also drop or become wounded/slowed with fewer spear hits so that ranged hunting doesn’t just become a lengthy chase in the first place. 

Stone age/nomadic roleplayers, ok; but the game shouldn't introduce a whole mechanic with all its balancing challenges and such for a very specific sub-set of players. Geared towards new players though? It takes all of 90 seconds if your spawn isn't completely barren to craft your first stone/flint spear. That means it takes all of 90 seconds to make the mechanic obsolete for beginner players as just throwing a spear to then potentially even wound/slow down the animal for an easier follow-up kill is in any way, form and shape superior to running- excuse me, hiking after them. I can also attest from personal experience that, given temperate climate start and average world gen luck, you can easily make it to late fall of your first year without hunting lest you push for leather which a beginner player won't cause they don't know what to push for. By that time surely you have a simple bow and some few arrows ripped out of bowtorns.

And speaking of "running vs hiking" and aformentioned balancing challenges: If most animals that need proper hunting (aka. anything that isn't a chicken) run away from the player at the speed of sound to begin with, if you don't run but just casually stroll after them it might take a fair while for you to catch up. Which begs the question: How long will an animal be exhausted for? Make it too short, and hiking won't work. Make it too long and animals will naturally present them as free meat because just everyday existence with the occasional "walking for player crops, get spooked by player" will "chase" them often enough for them to be exhausted. Getting this right is very finicky business which wouldn't be needed at all.

EDIT: And of course, lets not forget the second balancing question; does this affect only prey, or also predator? Imaging running in a circle long enough an a brown bear becoming literally a free kill. Sound kinda overpowered, no matter how realistic or not it might be. Make predators unaffected and the beginner player will complain that it'S stupid and nonsensical that the one animal they WANT to get away from never gets tired.

Edited Tuesday at 06:02 AM by Rainbow Fresh

[LadyWYT]

On 6/8/2026 at 1:34 AM, PigeonK said:

I agree that chasing an animal for a whole day is too long if it was a necessary time investment for the kill, but the point seems to be that hunting otherwise works normally and an exhaustion mechanic would make it easier to catch an animal the longer the hunt takes. This would actually be a great mechanic to help the players that complain about hunting taking too long.

Except if players are already complaining about needing to follow an animal for a couple of in-game hours in order to kill it, I don't think they're going to be thrilled about following an animal for even longer just to try to kill it via exhaustion. Which is pretty much how it would have to be balanced, otherwise it's opening the door to players just following animals and getting free food rather than actually learning how to aim ranged weapons properly.

From a coding standpoint, you'd have to figure out a way to determine whether a player is actively following an animal and for how long, versus whether an animal is being hunted by another animal. It's also going to pose a problem for livestock domestication, since wild animals spook easily and it's not really ideal to have players killing their animals via exhaustion simply because they built the pen too close to their house.

On 6/8/2026 at 3:01 AM, Rainbow Fresh said:

I could potentially see merit in running an animal into exhaustion as alternative to capture wild animals for domestication. Seeing as my personal experience with using the one trap that's in the game makes me think running the animal into the ground for a day to guaranteed just... capture it manually would have been a better time than sitting next to a box, waiting for a the baby goat's trap food cooldown to wear off, and occasionally chase it back towards the trap.

This I wouldn't mind, though I would say it's something that should really only apply to the baby animals since they can't really fight back. An adult is going to be much tougher to handle. Though depending on what kind of animal it is, the parent animal might take offense and get very aggressive toward the player(like a momma bear with her cubs).

 

15 hours ago, Heegrim said:

This would be more of a change geared towards new players or stone age/nomadic roleplayers. It’s not really something meant to be done once you have good ranged weapons.

Except stone spears are a stone age weapon, and are a pretty good one for hunting at that, so...why would the player be sinking a lot of time into trying to kill an animal via exhaustion when they can just use a weapon and do the job faster, leaving time for other activities? Or just...add more traps to the game and use those instead, rather than have to put in the effort. I agree with Rainbow here--I'm not entirely against adding features for specific types of players, but features should also be something that makes sense for a general audience. This kind of feature I really don't see a point, except for players who for some reason don't want to use any kind of trap or weapon to hunt. Which, I think it's also worth noting that if the player were intended to get food for "free" like that, then there probably wouldn't be a penalty for harvesting crushed corpses.

[MKMoose]

One problem with pure persistence hunting is that, as far as we know, it wasn't really a significant hunting method ever since humans figured out that throwing a pointy stick at the animal makes it much easier to track and catch up to. Humans' superior endurance and more developed sweating can be beneficial in hunting, which has even been documented in relatively modern times in some tribes in Africa (which has some biomes especially suited for getting animals to the point of heat exhaustion), but it's just one hunting method. Why not trapping, stalking, drive hunting?

Another problem with persistence hunting is that I frankly feel like it would be really quite boring and one-dimensional in gameplay. Well-developed hunting mechanics tend to involve multiple stages like observation, stalking, making the shot and tracking, with each stage asking different gear, skills and strategies of the player. Persistence hunting kind of devolves to just running for extended periods of time, and it's also largely devoid of gameplay progression. If the animal is easy to keep track of, then it's just tedious. If the animal is difficult to keep track of, then it becomes unreliable and frustrating. Striking the right balance feels borderline impossible when you have a lot of players at different levels.

Some sort of endurance system for animals can be a fun addition, but I personally feel like endurance should only matter when injured. This way it doesn't reward rather uncreative activities like chasing an animal for a long period of time, instead strongly pointing towards stalking and ambushing to injure the animal as the optimal way to slow it down first while still leaving the tracking aspect as an important part of the process. I think it would just be a better system in almost every way over simply allowing the player to tire out a healthy animal. And if you specifically want a way to chase animals, then it might be better to lean into pit trapping and drive hunting, rather than simple persistence hunting - both, assuming they're implemented well, would arguably be much more engaging and rewarding due to the layer of strategy and adaptation (finding a good spot, preparing the area, directing the animals towards that location) which persistence hunting largely lacks.

 

13 hours ago, Rainbow Fresh said:

And of course, lets not forget the second balancing question; does this affect only prey, or also predator? Imaging running in a circle long enough an a brown bear becoming literally a free kill. Sound kinda overpowered, no matter how realistic or not it might be. Make predators unaffected and the beginner player will complain that it'S stupid and nonsensical that the one animal they WANT to get away from never gets tired.

Frankly, I really feel like this cannot be reasonably fixed in any other way than just reworking animal behavior to be more involved and actually kind of realistic, rather than what for real animals would just be considered pathological. A bear shouldn't chase you until the end of the world. It could as well be twice as fast in full sprint for what I care, as long as it's more defensive, so it warns the player appropriately before attacking and relents quickly unless pestered repeatedly - what makes it really questionable currently is that it's hostile in the exact same way as the rust monsters. Wolves should avoid the player most of the time, but give them a run for their money when they hear a hunting pack in the middle of a forest.

And once you address their heatseeking behavior, then what you do with their endurance no longer has backhanded balance implications that make designing the game into whack-a-mole with obvious and predictable problems popping up after any significant change.

Edited Tuesday at 07:38 PM by MKMoose

[LadyWYT]

58 minutes ago, MKMoose said:

A bear shouldn't chase you until the end of the world. It could as well be twice as fast in full sprint for what I care, as long as it's more defensive, so it warns the player appropriately before attacking and relents quickly unless pestered repeatedly - what makes it really questionable currently is that it's hostile in the exact same way as the rust monsters. Wolves should avoid the player most of the time, but give them a run for their money when they hear a hunting pack in the middle of a forest.

The animals don't necessarily need to become entirely defensive either, since that can easily lead to the player becoming too complacent around legitimately dangerous creatures and doing things that they really shouldn't. I think having unpredictability is good in order to keep players on their toes; for example, bears and wolves might generally prefer to avoid the player or give some prior warning before they attack, but there's always the chance that they could decide to skip the formalities and start attacking. However, this doesn't mean that the animal needs to chase the player to the ends of the earth, or even kill the player. The animal could give up pursuit after a short distance, or perhaps give the player a good mauling before deciding the threat has been dealt with and moving on. The latter case can make things interesting since the player is still alive, and thus hasn't lost items or progress, but the injuries will mean that the player needs to pivot their attention to dealing with that lest their situation get worse, rather than continue with whatever they were doing at the time.

[MKMoose]

30 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The animal could give up pursuit after a short distance

This part specifically, I don't really like, because realisticaly most animals still generally won't pursue. Just to give some context: even for relatively dangerous animals like bears, easily thousands of minor encounters with humans can occur for every human death. For some animals, there are virtually no recorded deaths from animal attacks, or if there are then they can often be estimated to land in the ranges of one human death per millions of encounters. Attacks are often warned about and studied, and for good reason because the risk is very much there especially if certain risk factors are met, but the actual danger is often quite overemphasized. You can take a look at statistics regarding, for example, bear encounters and attacks in national parks compared to the number of annual visitors.

 

9 minutes ago, LadyWYT said:

The animals don't necessarily need to become entirely defensive either, since that can easily lead to the player becoming too complacent around legitimately dangerous creatures and doing things that they really shouldn't. I think having unpredictability is good in order to keep players on their toes; for example, bears and wolves might generally prefer to avoid the player or give some prior warning before they attack, but there's always the chance that they could decide to skip the formalities and start attacking.

Yes, with the caveat that skipping formalities should be specifically triggered when the player approaches very quickly or otherwise disrupts the animal (kind of like boars do currently where they will run away when approached slowly, but attack when the player gets too close, though the ranges could probably be tweaked and they still give little to no warning). I think it really should give a distinct "you've made a mistake" or "you've been careless" feel, not just be random and unpredictable. That applies even for many predators.

And it's also probably worth noting that animals can actually become unusually dangerous in some often overlooked situations like during the mating season (if the devs decide to introduce something like this, then that would warrant taking overall aggression down a notch but bumping it up at appropriate times) or when caused by disease or other pathology (if implemented, then ideally in a way that allows the player to actually see and hear that something is wrong with the animal before it attacks).

Overall that could be argued to be included in the "warn the player appropriately" phrase, but fair enough, it is an important thing to keep in mind.

[LadyWYT]

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

This part specifically, I don't really like, because realisticaly most animals still generally won't pursue. Just to give some context: even for relatively dangerous animals like bears, easily thousands of minor encounters with humans can occur for every human death. For some animals, there are virtually no recorded deaths from animal attacks, or if there are then they can often be estimated to land in the ranges of one human death per millions of encounters. Attacks are often warned about and studied, and for good reason because the risk is very much there especially if certain risk factors are met, but the actual danger is often quite overemphasized. You can take a look at statistics regarding, for example, bear encounters and attacks in national parks compared to the number of annual visitors.

Sure, but for a videogame, there should be some stakes, some level of suspense, that keeps pressure on the player to make logical choices and not play recklessly, lest they suffer the consequences. In real life, encountering large wild animals isn't going to always be an instant death sentence, but if the animal in question decides you need to be dealt with, you're not going to get to just hit a respawn button or otherwise recover from any injuries sustained within a few minutes. From a videogame context though, if the animal never hurts the player unless the player essentially does the equivalent of walking right up and poking the animal with a stick...then what the player learns is that they can basically ignore the animal entirely and continue doing whatever they want.

As for my own experience with mechanics like you've suggested, I modded my Skyrim files to make wild animals behave in that fashion. Rather than immediately start attacking as soon as I come into range, they'll stand there defensively and just watch, only attacking if I decide to go stand right next to them or otherwise attack them first, and sometimes not even then. While this does make traveling less of a slog, it also makes for a world that is ultimately not much better than the one with super aggressive wildlife, since the wildlife in question basically stops being any kind of real threat.

1 hour ago, MKMoose said:

I think it really should give a distinct "you've made a mistake" or "you've been careless" feel, not just be random and unpredictable. That applies even for many predators.

And it's also probably worth noting that animals can actually become unusually dangerous in some often overlooked situations like during the mating season (if the devs decide to introduce something like this, then that would warrant taking overall aggression down a notch but bumping it up at appropriate times) or when caused by disease or other pathology (if implemented, then ideally in a way that allows the player to actually see and hear that something is wrong with the animal before it attacks).

Overall that could be argued to be included in the "warn the player appropriately" phrase, but fair enough, it is an important thing to keep in mind.

Right, and that's kind of what I was trying to say earlier when I said that wildlife behavior should be relatively unpredictable. The average encounter should have the aggressive animal in question displaying defensive warning behaviors first, so the player has time to notice and react in an appropriate timely manner if they wish to avoid a fight. However, there should still be a small chance for the animal to choose violence first, giving players a good incentive to pay attention to their surroundings and avoid dangerous animals  first when possible, since there's no guarantee that they'll get plenty of warning before they get attacked. 

As for why creatures might immediately resort to violence, there could be several plausible excuses, as you've already noted. Mating season, disease, nearby offspring, particular species of animal known for aggression(like polar bears), or even just an unusually aggressive individual for that particular species. If one wanted to punish overhunting an area, perhaps killing too many prey animals but not dealing with the local large predators might make those predators desperate enough to start hunting the player.

[Chuckerton]

I always prefer a more interesting injuries system over persistence hunting. A crude bow with crude arrows, even if not immediately fatal, should cause animals to slow down and bleed if you hit them with it. 

On 6/9/2026 at 2:23 PM, MKMoose said:

Some sort of endurance system for animals can be a fun addition, but I personally feel like endurance should only matter when injured. This way it doesn't reward rather uncreative activities like chasing an animal for a long period of time, instead strongly pointing towards stalking and ambushing to injure the animal as the optimal way to slow it down first while still leaving the tracking aspect as an important part of the process. I think it would just be a better system in almost every way over simply allowing the player to tire out a healthy animal. And if you specifically want a way to chase animals, then it might be better to lean into pit trapping and drive hunting, rather than simple persistence hunting - both, assuming they're implemented well, would arguably be much more engaging and rewarding due to the layer of strategy and adaptation (finding a good spot, preparing the area, directing the animals towards that location) which persistence hunting largely lacks.

Like this. I think that stalking and ambushing should be the opener to a successful hunt. The cruder the weaponry the less disabling it will be. A steel arrow out of a longbow is gonna make for a very short hunt and a very slow animal, but a crude bow with a flint arrow might let the animal run hundreds of blocks and make the player follow a blood trail to figure out where it went down at. 

I think it would even be justified to make prey animals much more skittish and sensitive to sounds as a consequence. that and maybe let predator animals hunt in much the same fashion. Imagine finding out a wolfpack has been stalking you just a little too late 

As for chasing, pit trapping is fine and does kind of work in this game already, but drive hunting is something that requires a group of people to do and is generally done against herds of animals, which is cool and would be amazing to see in servers with a coordinated set of players (i would absolutely love seeing a video of everyones perspective in a hunt like this), but it shouldnt be THE way youre expected to hunt, because that completely kills it for solo players. Not to mention if the time to kill is just as long as it is now it kind of makes this a waste when you would still have to shoot and chase normally. 

if I were to design hunting in this game (i gotta get into modmaking at some point), the challenge of the hunt would be getting in a position or situation where you can make an effective shot. Tracking, sneaking, and very good aim would be essential, as animals will detect you and run from further away if youre not sneaky. A well-placed hit from most hunting weapons (anything from flint arrows to steel spears) is fatal to most prey animals (deer, maybe boar), but not immediately. A fatal hit with a crude hunting weapon might let the animal run hundreds of blocks before it bleeds out, requiring a lot of time to track and increasing the risk it falls off a cliff or is attacked by a different predator. Even if you dont hit it somewhere fatal it should slow it down somewhat. Using better equipment shortens the distance itll be able to run if it is fatally injured or increase the severity of whatever injury you do give it if you fail to make a fatal shot.
    The goal isnt to make hunting easier, its to make it more engaging. It takes a good amount of work to sneak up on and a lot of patience to get a good shot, but those actions are much more decisive. Right now, when im hunting im just running the animal towards a cliff or lake so it can get stuck on terrain or in water, and when i finally kill it the relief i feel isnt the tension of the hunt its that i can finally just do something else and stop dealing with frustrating animal pathing. Thats just me though, maybe im unique in feeling this way with current hunting but with how involved a lot of the other things in this game is i feel like the animals as a whole are really just not that engaging.