Hunting, Tracks and Bloodtrails

[Mistake]

I’ve been playing LTD for several months now, I love the game, but these few things annoy me to no end.

When using the bow, there’s a good chance you’ll only make the target bleed. This is fine and all, except when the blood trail suddenly stops and you’ve no way of finding the carcass. This leads to my next point;

Tracks. Not my own, those of the animals. If the blood trails are going to disappear so quickly, can I at least get some prints to follow? It’s a heavy deer, it’s gonna leave some prints behind. Not only in the aspect of hunting, but being able to come across a trail of bear tracks and being like “Well, lets not go where these lead or I’m gonna get mauled.” 

It’s just an idea, but I feel the game would really benefit from such a mechanic.

[godhelpme89]

Could not agree more. The blood trail, or lack there of, is by far the most annoying part of this game imho.

[Mistake]

2 hours ago, godhelpme89 said:

Could not agree more. The blood trail, or lack there of, is by far the most annoying part of this game imho.

I’ve lost countless arrows due to the disappearing blood bug, fingers crossed this gets fixed soon!

[stratvox]

It's not a bug, it's just hard... like it would be in real life.

I find crows to be a far better way to find the animals you've hit. Wait a few hours, and if the weather's good go out looking for the crows that'll be circling the carcass. You've got three days to find it, so chances are good you'll have decent weather at some time to go searching. They tend not to go that far when they've been hit; they usually run in fairly big circles until they drop from blood loss.

I lose very very few arrows. This technique works.

Edited to add: I've also found arrows that were carried off by an animal that I couldn't locate sometimes weeks after I lost it... just sitting on the ground wherever it was the animal croaked out. Animal carcasses last for three days so in this scenario I've only found the arrow lying on the ground.

[Mistake]

40 minutes ago, stratvox said:

It's not a bug, it's just hard... like it would be in real life.

I find crows to be a far better way to find the animals you've hit. Wait a few hours, and if the weather's good go out looking for the crows that'll be circling the carcass. You've got three days to find it, so chances are good you'll have decent weather at some time to go searching. They tend not to go that far when they've been hit; they usually run in fairly big circles until they drop from blood loss.

I lose very very few arrows. This technique works.

Edited to add: I've also found arrows that were carried off by an animal that I couldn't locate sometimes weeks after I lost it... just sitting on the ground wherever it was the animal croaked out. Animal carcasses last for three days so in this scenario I've only found the arrow lying on the ground.

I only call it a bug as moments after I shoot an animal, the blood trail (including the large splatter of blood from the impact) vanishes into thin air, literally vanishing. It’s too quick to be covered by snow or anything (if thats even a mechanic). Thanks for the crow advice though, my guy, I’ll be using that in the future.

[godhelpme89]

No offense but it is not realistic at all. Blood drops don’t magically appear and disappear. I don’t mind it being hard or having to drops disappear quicker depending on the weather, but it’s not fun as it is now. It’s also weird that the blood wherever you get mauled by a wolf stays forever.

[stratvox]

That's weird, I don't have permanent blood splotches after wolf struggles in my game. In general, I've found that the blood trail will last for about half an hour to an hour in game time (which is three to six minutes real time). It doesn't take very long for it to go away, but it doesn't instantly vanish.

[Mistake]

That’s why im calling it a bug, because it will just disappear moments after appearing.

[stratvox]

I generally find that you can find it if you cast about... as soon as you look a little bit away from it it disappears. When you lose the blood trail, stop, back up, and start swinging your head around to figure out which way the animal zagged. 

That said, I have generally found that holing up and waiting for the animal to croak is a much better approach with a lot less wear and tear on your clothes and condition. Sure, when you get to it it might not be as fresh, but it still works to keep starvation at bay.

Of course, there could be platform differences here wrt the blood trail. I'm running under linux. And like I said I've generally found that the trail disappears after half an hour in game or thereabouts, and it's important to remember that half an hour in game is three minutes in the real world... you simply don't have a lot of time to get on that trail if you're wanting to follow it.

[Mistake]

Thanks for advice, its nice to hear a different way to track the beastie. It’s just a shame that I can’t seem to avoid the insta disappearing blood problems.