I still spend WAY too much time looking for my arrows


Pharose

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I’ve been playing this game for many years and this is one issue that has brought lots of boredom and frustration to my previous survival games. I’m about 60 days into my cutom-interloper playthrough and I’m being reminded why I got bored and quit my previous stalker playthrough. After a while the challenges of not starving and not being eaten alive by wolves becomes more manageable but it gives way to another challenge: trying to figure out where those bloody wolves took my arrows.

It is the final act of spite by the dying bastards that once I plant an arrow in them they will run off into the great unknown to deposit the arrow in some obscure location, only to return to die in a nice obvious location where the crows and myself can easily locate their body. Sometimes the arrow will remain embedded in them until they die, which is much appreciated, but recently most of the wolves have managed to shake off theses arrows in mid-flight so that I have to spend hours looking for them.  Usually I will try to follow the wolves until they die but this is a rather costly endeavour in Interloper where I am perpetually freezing to death.

My most recent problem involves a pack of 3 wolves than descended upon my home in Milton. I shot all 3 of them with arrows and all 3 of them ran off with the arrows firmly embedded in their bodies while they bled to death. All 3 of them died in a tight area, not too far from where I shot them but I’m still missing all 3 arrows. I’ve harvested all of the corpses, which have now disappeared, but that did not reveal any arrows. I’ve spent about 20 minutes searching in frustration, but nothing has come up yet. It is an understatement to say that this is not fun, and I’d rather spend my time exploring Hushed River Valley and the rest of Great Bear Island.

There is a simple fix to this problem: the arrow should stick to the target until the end, or not at all. I know it’s realistic that arrows will fall out while the victim is running but what value does this give to gameplay? In my opinion it only adds frustration.

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I do aim for the head but I usually end up hitting them in the torso. 

In other news I have found one of the arrows! Unfortunately, the mostly-buried state that I found it in doesn't inspire a lot of confidence that I will find the others...

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Guest kristaok

I mainly just try to get as close as I can to what I'm huntin while crouched before I shoot, that way I can try to make a good shot so I won't risk losing many arrows. 

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Nothing worse than watching a wolf running away with an arrow stuck in them and then finding the carcass and not able to recover the arrow because the carcass is laying on it or it fell out somewhere.

I have started to note where the carcass is and returning to it when it despawns. So far I have had luck in finding the arrow there where the carcass was. 

There is an arrow in CH at the edge of the water laying there on thin ice that I can not recover. I have written it off as lost but I am still mad about it every time I walk by that area.

 

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So I did manage to find all three arrows in the end. The second arrow was on the Northern bridge to Milton, not too far from where I shot the wolf but a fair distance from the actual corpse. The third arrow was on the Eastern bridge to Milton which is quite far from the wolf corpse and where I shot him. 

Sometimes the wolves go on mighty adventures when they're bleeding out, like they just remembered some really important thing on their bucket list. Too bad they have a habit of dropping the arrow half-way through their journey. In previous games I've found arrows in really obscure locations nowhere near where I shot them.

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Well I've gotten myself into another crappy situation. I came across a moose in the area above Milton and I decided to take advantage of the opportunity and hunt with only 4 arrows in my inventory (all brand new arrows). I took advantage of the rocky terrain to run away from the angry moose and one by one I managed to plant all 4 arrows in that mighty beast. I used up all of my painkillers and rose hips because I managed to sprain my wrist/ankle on 4 occasions while clambering over the rocks. I also used up all of my daylight so I decided to head to the trailer to spend the night, hoping that I would find a dead moose in the morning with all 4 of my arrows in it.

As you may have guessed, that is the absolute opposite of what happened. I found the moose back in his usual location looking perfectly healthy with no arrows on him. I did a thorough search of his territory both below and above the road and I have not found a single arrow out the 4 that are missing. I honestly thought 4 arrows would be enough because the bear bled out after I shot him with 2 arrows but it looks like all 4 of my arrows belong to the moose now...

Kinda sucks because I've spent a lot of time gathering resources for a grand adventure in HRV, but it looks like I will be going to FM instead to forge some new arrow heads...

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I completely agree with the OP. Hinterland has made many deviations from "realistic" (and rightly so) in order to balance gameplay and keep a video game what it should be... fun. This is no different. Like @Pharose said, either the arrow stays in till the end or it falls out at the point of contact. There's so much snow time now it sometimes feels like a walking simulator. Don't add to it by making me search every nook and cranny for my arrow. 

Please patch this Hinterland.9_9

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Quote

There's so much snow time now it sometimes feels like a walking simulator.

This makes me laugh. My friends cannot see the appeal. Every time they walk by my PC they're like "I see you're walking through snow again. Ever do anything else?" I have completely failed to articulate how immersive the game really is.

I haven't lost too many arrows yet, but I have lost some that seem like they should have been "right there".

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I echo the comments on aiming for the head if you're shooting the wolves head on. One suggestion I'd make is to actually aim lower, if the wolf is moving towards you, it's obvious that by the time you release the shot and the arrow travels a split second has passed, thus you're bound to hit higher than where you aimed. 

I rarely miss the headshots and I improved my technique significantly when they removed the aiming reticle, usually I take the tip of the arrow as reference and aim a certain distance under the desired target. You'll have to pre-visualize the arrow flight path and that takes practice, but it's actually dead easy to do after a couple dozen shots. Just keep your distance consistent and you should be able to hit 9 out of 10 shots straight on. You can even shoot charging wolves with this technique, though you're pretty much dead if you fail, ask me how I know. :D

Also, it's good to lose arrows. Means you have to forge and craft more of them and skill up faster doing so. At a high skill level, the bleeding time is greatly reduced so you can just follow the wolf and it should drop dead not farm from where you shot him. 

Finally, blizzards and winds carry the arrows away from where they dropped. In this case, you're pretty much guaranteed to not find them anywhere close to the target. 

Good hunting! :coffee:

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Guest jeffpeng

It works like this mostly: The arrows drop where the wolf dies. That one works. Sure, there are instances where the arrow is buried in terrain afterwards, but even that isn't the big issue. The issue is that if the wolf dies while you are in a different scene - meaning other region or "inside" - the corpse will glitch to its original spawn location. That's why you find all those wolves in neat and tidy spots, but all the arrows in those weird parts of the world.

Two ways to avoid this: be outside when the wolf dies. If you are, the wolf will remain where it dies. Or: shoot him on the spot. It's not hard to head shot a wolf if you follow @Dan_ advice. Also for moose: they just don't do bleeding. I've sunken six arrows into a moose once before it gave in. 

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It's been mentioned in the forums a while back, and I think it's still true, sometimes at least... if you shoot an arrow into an animal and go inside a house before the animal dies, when you return, the arrow will be where the animal was when you entered the house.  I think it happens whether the animal is dead at that point or not.

I recently shot an arrow into a moose near the garage in Coastal Highway.  I had a fire going, so the moose charged, then it turned around near the fire and ran uphill toward the bear cave and trailer.  I moved up to the house in that direction, crouched near the door, and waited for the moose to walk back down the hill.  When it got close, I shot another arrow into it and quickly entered the house to avoid being stomped.  I waited for 20-30 minutes in-game to make sure the moose had moved away, then went back out.  When the outdoor scene appeared, I immediately saw one arrow on the ground where the moose had been before.  The second arrow was suspended in air for a moment, as if still in the moose where it stood when I entered the house, then it dropped to the ground.  The moose was still alive and walking around the clearing near the garage (they don't bleed out, as others have mentioned) - it took a few more arrows to eventually kill it.

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Something I noticed recently that has helped me recover more arrows is that:

Arrows roll down slopes!

I first observed this with a missed shot. It will actually roll quite a distance. Next time I found the body of a wolf I had shot, but with the arrow missing, I walked down the slope from the body looking carefully and found the arrow. This is because when the animal dies and the arrow drops, depending on the angle, it can roll down the slope away from the body. 

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Just saw for the second time a wolf shaking off an arrow. Both were shot while eating and unaware of me, both shots were in the flank. They shook off the arrow and only then went into fly mode.
Maybe it can explain some weird positions, especially when it's in a slope on a windy day...

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On 1/9/2019 at 9:04 PM, LkP said:

Just saw for the second time a wolf shaking off an arrow. Both were shot while eating and unaware of me, both shots were in the flank. They shook off the arrow and only then went into fly mode.
Maybe it can explain some weird positions, especially when it's in a slope on a windy day...

When they shook off the arrow did they have shooking animation? Or just standing there while the arrow removed?

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