The Hunt Skill
( ingame review: help hunt )
As the help file in game says:
“Using a combination of tracking, intuition, acute hearing, and reading the signs of nature, a skilled character can hunt a target within an area. This skill will tell the direction the target has gone, as well as general certainty of the results.”
The hunt skill is an incredibly useful tool for finding mobs, players, or pet/summon which in the same in-game area you are in but, for whatever reason, their location is unknown to you. Even if your character does not have the hunt skill, its existence enables the “hunt trick” which is available to all characters at all levels and will be covered below after the skill review.
For instance:
hunt raccoon
You are certain that a raccoon is east from here.
Would indicate that I need to move east from my current location to approach (and possibly reach) a mob named “raccoon”.
In an area with multiple mobs of the same exact name, you can use an increment prior to the name (e.g hunt 2.raccoon, hunt 3.raccoon, etc) to target each other mob of the same name (just like accessing multiple items of the same name would be done) like:
hunt 2.raccoon
You are certain that a raccoon is south from here.
Class access
Every class has access to the hunt skill at some point, although four of the seven primary classes will have to tier up quite a bit to have access to it earlier in the game.
Levels for Hunt (Sn: 301) —————————————————-
Mage Level : 201
Cleric Level : 201
Thief Level : 42
Warrior Level : 68
Ranger Level : 20
Paladin Level : 201
Psionicist Level : 201
Racial access
All Wolfen characters have access to the hunt skill at lvl1 as well, regardless of class.
Subclass Perk
The Navigator subclass of the Psionicist pclass have the ability to use the hunt skill (once acquired through class/racial means) to hunt through portals.
Campaign Mob Immunity
All campaign mobs are immune to the hunt skill revealing their direction, resulting in an “unable to hunt that target” message as shown below:
hunt pixie
You seem unable to hunt that target for some reason.
Nohunt Flag
Also, you should know that some mobs in game have a “nohunt” flag, meaning they are invisible to the hunt skill resulting in this message when hunted:
As an example of a nohunt mob:
look at cleric
This evil-looking cleric scouts around for all types of things. You can see on his waist a belt with ingredients for a spell that looks extremely deadly. The dark elf cleric is in perfect health.
However, when hunted:
hunt cleric
No one in this area by the name ‘cleric’.
This message indicates that the mob (which you can interact with normally via it’s name) has a nohunt flag set.
Hunting speed and the Fasthunt wish
By default, the hunt skill has a recovery lag after each attempt using the skill which can introduce a significant delay in gameplay while hunting many mobs in an area. There is an available wish, called “fasthunt” which reduces this lag.
“Fasthunt: When you are hunting victims out in the wild, you will take less time to recover before being able to hunt again.”
Cost for the fast hunt wish is (see ingame: “help wish” for more information about wishes): 5000 quest points + adjustment based on previously purchased wishes
This concludes the review of the basic function and use of the hunt skill, but where the skill really shines in Aardwolf is the in game feature called the “hunt trick”.
The Hunt Trick (a trick for all classes and ages)
( ingame review : help hunt trick )
Regardless of race, class, level and/or tier every character can attempt to use the hunt skill, even though the results are very unreliable. This particular oddity, coupled with cp mob hunt immunity, is what allows all classes of any level to leverage the “feature” called “hunt trick”.
From the hunt trick help file:
“During campaigns you will get a specific message when you try to hunt your target, preventing you from doing so. Other targets with the same or similar names may still be hunted, however. This is very useful when, for example, your target is ‘a guard’ in an area with 30 different guards and only one will give credit.”
So in an area with multiple mobs of the same name as your sought after cp mob, often only one of those mobs will give credit for your current campaign. The hunt trick will often allow you to locate your particular cp mob’s exact location (using the where command):
For instance looking for a cp mob names “troll warrior” but I see many troll warriors in my current area, it would take me a very long time to kill them all to find my partiuclar cp mob. Using the hunt trick I am able to:
hunt troll warrior
You are certain that a troll warrior is south from here.
hunt 2.troll warrior
You are certain that a troll warrior is south from here.
hunt 3.troll warrior
You seem unable to hunt that target for some reason.
Ah ha! The cp mob is “3.troll warrior” and the where command reports that particular mob is:
where 3.troll warrior
a troll warrior South-East corner of the battlefield
So my cp mob is located in the room: “South-East corner of the battlefield”
And all I need to do is navigate to that room (manually move, mapper find+goto, or use a plugin like SnD which will leverage your mapper data) and kill the mob. If more than one of that name mob “troll warrior” happens to be in that same room, you still might have to kill all of them there to get your cp mob, but this is vastly better than having to kill all of them in the zone (there can be 20+ of some mobs in the same zone).
The more you use the hunt trick, the more easily grasped this concept is and the more quickly you will be able to complete those precious campaigns for sweet, sweet quest point rewards!
Commonly hunted mobs
Now that you are familiar with the hunt skill and the hunt trick, here are some commonly hunted mobs, listed by area with a brief description of why they are commonly hunted.
Area | Mob | Common Hunt Reason |
Gauntlet | Deep Dragon, Lightning Golem, Death Tyrant | hunting these mobs will help you locate the Battle Room through the maze |
Verume | lizardman citizen / lizardman priest / lizardman warrior | hunt trick useful to narrow down cp mob from many similar mobs |
Lower/Upper Planes | pet/summon | to locate entrance (which is also the exit) room after moving from it (remember to order pet/summon to sleep in entrance room, then hunt it to return) |
Citadel | Blandine/Beleth Valefor/Janus Gabriel/Belial Michael/Baal Jean/Vapula Lauence/Saminga |
hunting one of each of these pairs will lead you to the other; useful for hunting cp mob e.g. if your mob is “Michael” then you would hunt “Baal” |
Maelstrom | overgrown oyster / coral / seagrass | hunt trick useful to narrow cp mob down from many similar mobs |
Fairy Tale 1 | youngest prince second prince third prince fourth prince fifth prince sixth prince eldest prince |
after killing one of these in the Great Palace you can hunt the one of the others (might have to increment the #.<mob>) to find the exit |
Firebird | Princess Elena | a “nowhere” mob |
Prosper | nymph | to find exit to the imaginarium (type exits in room with nymph) |
Nenukon | exile eagle champ/paladin of the lynx tribe ice demon/yota timo fox master/lynx master mounted |
hunt exile for “entering Nenukon” hunt eagle champion/paladin of the lynx for “Pit of Monhui” hunt ice demon/yoto timo for “Small Cave/Yota Timo’s Lair” hunt fox master/lynx master for “Far Side / Great Wall” hunt #.skele (increasing) for “Yota Timo’s Army” |
Promises | zombie / 6.Captain | hunted to navigate to “On the Flying Dutchman” across the “On the Ocean” maze |
Scarred | pete | to exit the winding tunnels into main area |
Xylmos | rubber | to exit the Rose Ether to rubber room |
Horath | spider/queen minion/Aiwiss dragon/horde |
spider/queen to lead through mines maze and to find the other in pair minion/Aiwiss to lead into mist maze and to find other in pair dragon/horde to find gates on other side of mist maze and to find other in pair |
Sahuagin | Azhirlur/accountant/treasure room Kutrok/unholy missionary Tumek/nanny/near-blind hatchling Vekma/punisher/enforcer |
hunt these names to find their respective rooms through the maze; if you have a cp mob of one of the Prince names, you can increment the mob count (2.<mob>, 3.<mob>, etc) until you are able to hunt it to lead you to the room in question |
Lagoon | gatekeeper | to find cexit “enter crack” |
Cougarian | field guard | to locate the entrance to main Cougar area (then “roar) |
Helegar Sea | eternal cold | hunted to find the iceberg for cexit “climb iceberg” which leads to yeti area; the iceberg will be within 1 move (N,E,S,W) from eternal cold |
Good luck and have fun!
-Flynnt
Also keep in mind that the hunt skill does not work on mobs in the same room you are in, which actually is sort of helpful in use with the hunt trick. If you have a prolific mob, say a sentry in firebird…which can be in very similarly named rooms (Sentry Post, A Sentry Post, The Sentry Post) it can be a real pain to find your cp mob. However, since hunt does not work (and therefore hunt trick does not work) if you are actually in the room with the mob you are trying to hunt it allows this:
1) run to the first room with the exact name as displayed by the where on your cp mob (which the hunt trick + where outside of that room should reveal unless it is a “nowhere” mob)
2) execute the hunt trick while standing in that room. if it succeeds (meaning it finds a mob that you are unable to hunt) then at least one version of your cp mob is NOT in the room you are in and you can move to the other same named room and run it again (depending on how many rooms you have to cycle through)
3) when the hunt trick fails doing this (or the unable to hunt mob switches rooms) it usually your cp mob is in the same room you are in! again, due to the fact that hunt does not work on mobs in your room and outside of that room hunt trick was able to locate your “unable to hunt” mob.
its a more subtle usage of hunt trick that can help eliminate long protracted clearing every mob in the area. Sometimes though if you have more than one cp mob in the area in multiple rooms which have the same name, this subtle usage of the hunt trick wont work and you still have to clear the rooms brute force style. Often however, it is helpful to narrow the mobs down.
Also keep in mind that the game usually assigns cp mobs that are roughly near you in level. There is quite a variation in my testing, but I if all other things are equal if you have 4 cp named mobs in the same room as you and only one of them is +16-20 and the others are +21-30 your mob is most likely the +16-20 mob (or lower level if present). That can help you single out your cp mob faster too.