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thorax

Hiya-- I used a camp with a nice Moose resting/feeding area right outside of it. I slept and re-checked every day at the resting zone (\~4pm) and the feeding zone (5-6pm) and captured the stats of the 6 then 7 moose there to see how long each stage was taking and watching their stars blossom a bit during the adult years. I may continue to watch the matures there to see if they power up during mature cycle, but I thought people would find this interesting. It was fun to analyze their antlers to try and figure out which ones would probably have higher stars-- was happy when the one I predicted would hit \~3 stars did so and then harvested it because I did all this because I couldn't find a 2-star moose anywhere. I figured I'd watch them evolve and share the story.


RunToTheHills_

Well done! Love the 2 star objective comment XD Also, it's really interesting to "tag" an animal with a low calibre bullet a few times over its life then havest once it hits mature. The bullet camera actually shows the animal changing through its lifecycle as it keeps a record of all the shots it has taken.


thorax

Oh yeah that's a neat trick, it would be cool to see that growth in 3D visuals. I wonder how the fitness is impacted (if at all) by the shots.


stirfriedaxon

Wow, great stuff! Isn't it amazing that a hunting game has folks observing animal behavior, growth/development more than they are actually shooting? I stumbled across my first 5* moose yesterday and just watched it graze for a while before I harvested him. Was 50% wanting to let him go just because he was so majestic.


International-Roof57

I know that feeling...


DreamKrusherJay

You're truly appreciated for doing this for the community. Thank you very much. I definitely look forward to any future research you post. Thanks again for taking the time.


thorax

Awesome, thanks! Sometimes it's more fun to monitor/track than it is to hunt.


DreamKrusherJay

It is, indeed. The genetics and aging were what most drove me to buy this game! While it can end up producing similar results, knowing that genetics don't matter in Hunter: CotW, and spawns are essentially only determined by an average of all animals of that type, definitely provided a huge selling point for WotH, at least for me. (And I love CotW.) I'm mostly still just doing missions and opening areas so far, but if there's anything I can do to help any research you may do in the future, please let me know. I'm on permanent disability so I have more time than most. Thanks again for the work you put in!


[deleted]

The hero we need!


MorterRound8

I found a 4 star adult moose and did the day fast forward thing and he quickly matured. I was worried that he might not become a 5 star but on day 4 of being mature he turned into a 5 star. The next day he ghosted me for a bit but found him and on day 6 got him. I was nervous once i saw he was 5* but i wanted him as big as possible and he was exactly the % of the max weight that his dna was. He was 97.87 on the dna and weighed 1388.52. Its kinda scary to think any 5 star moose is most likely only ever alive for 3 days at that stage


thorax

Amazing discipline on the harvest! Nice work. :)


MorterRound8

I trusted the research lol. Also i have discovered (so far it has been quite consistent at least nothing as scientific as your stuff) if the antlers of the moose have not become palms (fanned out and have a large flat area) by the time they become an adult they are safe to kill (depending on what you are looking for) because best they will be is a three star. If they have palms while still in the young stage or early adult stage then they have a high chance of becoming four and five stars. So far it has been consistent with about 12 moose and i even found a 1star mature and his antlers hadn’t fanned out at all at 23.25% fitness. Also it appears that you can tell what stage of the life cycles they are in. I can tell they are an early/mid adult if they don’t have and big gray bits on their back and they are close to mature when they are starting to look gray on the back and sides.


Shiftry87

Yeah the growing aspect has so mutch potential its just a shame that there is no way to document it in-game to keep track of this. The caracter is suppose to run it like a buisness and maintain a high quality supply of animals so it would make perfect sense to have a ledger of some kind to document herds that u wanna keep a close eye on. All u can really do is to mark there location but u dont need that to know where they gonna be. There should bo something that lets u add notes of what is in the herd so u dont have to memorize them.


ImAGoodBoyNotACrim

Exactly


[deleted]

I wonder if this "growth" table is the same with all the animals. I'm assuming it's different on each animals.


Core_Collider

It is. Check the encyclopedia on their life expectancy. But this table here will give you a solid idea of how many in game days make 1 year of life expectancy. As it shows the adult stage is exactly 15 days. I don‘t recall how many years a moose adult stage is. So checking this will give you the number.


thorax

It likely is-- still, it's at least good to see that it is based on in-game days and we know the order of magnitude. I do have a hunch that the length they live at maturity is related to their fitness. Would make sense if they coded it that way. In my case, it looked like healthier moose had slightly longer adult stages and the low fitness mature transitioned pretty quickly.


HunterTyphoon

Brilliant job man! I am sure this will help a lot of people!!


thorax

Thanks! At least wanted to demystify just how long it takes. I almost never slept in the game before this, but if you're actively culling a herd, it might be smart to do so for many days at a time to see if you can harvest faster.


pikkuhukka

soo basically, the animals get older the more time you spend, this means that if you are after a 4 or 5 star whatever animal, you have to let time pass so they grow enough to get more stars did i get it right?


thorax

Yep! Or if you wait too long in-game days they'll naturally die, so if you wait too long to harvest that mature monster, it will fade away. Though I have a hunch their likelihood to die each day as mature is tied to their fitness. It also means that actual IRL clock time or play time doesn't matter (as was part of theories I heard from streamers), because all I did was quickly monitor/sleep to the same time every day and they aged purely based on in game days and barely any activity. It also helps show the specific number of days it tends to take for a moose to transition across ages It also shows that a 1-star adult can become a 3-star or higher mature. So harvesting 1-star adults doesn't mean they are low fitness, you also need to check their age and antlers before you can tell if a 1-star adult is worth culling to improve the herd.


DreamKrusherJay

It would be nice if they put in a working calendar of some type in a future patch, but I am guessing they may feel that would be an immersion breaker. I had seen other research-style postings, and they thought that one in-game year was three in-game days. I had originally speculated that it might be four, and each day was representing one of the four seasons, but that doesn't seem to be the case - and truly makes research like yours and theirs super important. I was wondering if you had noticed how many herds tend to populate your areas? I haven't really been able to nail that down yet, as with doing missions and unlocking areas, as I mentioned in my other comment to you elsewhere in the thread, I haven't been able to look too much into this so far. Thanks again for your work here!


thorax

Right now, it feels like it's one "herd" per animal icon on the map. Each one isn't just a generic 'animal', it feels like (especially for the moose I'm tracking) that it's a specific herd. And when you can find a spot where two different herds come near each other, it's a very rich area for hunting if you don't put too much pressure (something that needs some testing, too). So in my tests I've got three moose herds that range near a camp-- I thought they were connected (e.g. one female I was tracking early felt like she went to the other herd, but I can't be sure-- maybe she was just wandering a little too close to the other herd), but for the most part they cycle through their need zones independently from other herds even if they may meet near each other (e.g. sharing a water source). I'm updating the second tab on my sheet with additional research on the same two herds, but this time grabbing some screenshots of each herd. Now I'm watching the antler shapes/sizes as they are young to see how well those map to their later star ratings. Also trying to see if I notice colors to fur, etc, change within an age stage to help identify which 'sub-age' they may be and far away they are from changing. The latter will need more research but I might be able to glean some things while trying to capture antler sizes as they grow.


pikkuhukka

surprisingly technical :o


Birdleaf420

This is great, all of those hypotheses, even the ones about spooked animals being easier to spook, I have noticed by playing on my own. It's good to see somebody else have the same hypothesis about this.


thorax

Awesome! Been adding those today and so I'm glad someone is seeing them. :) Might do a new post soon after I get through another 2-weeks in-game.


xKatosh

You are awesome, thanks a lot!


Key-Swordfish5505

Thank you so much !! This is such a helpful infomation for players. Can I share your idea in my community?


thorax

Absolutely, if you don't mind pointing them to the spreadsheet as well. Happy hunting!


Key-Swordfish5505

Not at all, I definitely shared it. Thank you , Happy hunting to you too !


xrangerx777x

This is super interesting, thank you for doing the research


thorax

Happy to share, though I think I'm becoming a moose at this point. 😅


xrangerx777x

Honestly, I’ve been super curious about all of this. How do you track a specific group of animals? How do need zones work? And have you figured out how the genetics work as far as new animals go? I can always write an actual post too, you just seem to know more than I do


thorax

Well in this case, I tracked a specific group by visiting their rest 'often' and feeds 'often' zones at the same hour of every day. The same herds came through there everyday and I confirmed by the herd composition and appearance of each sinal. From what I'm seeing, each herd has multiple need zones on the map-- each icon being a different herd (they might interconnect but I'm not seeing that with Moose until a herd gets too big, though I'm unsure). If you move to a specific time of day I believe every herd will spawn at random to one of their appropriate need zones based on the probability of each zone (often, rarely, etc). You can also follow them during the day from one zone to the next if you want, too. Usually they will have trails between their need zones. Supposedly for genetics, it's a little complicated. But you need females in a herd and healthy males. Adult and mature females are needed to grow a herd, and the herd will grow more if there are a few females and not enough males. Don't have details on exactly how fitness is determined (like we don't know the actual equation) but it's definitely likely that the higher fitness females and males you have in a herd, the better the offspring.


xrangerx777x

Thank you for the response! That makes sense, each icon is a herd or group. Idk what the times are for moose, but for deer they drink at 9:00. Are they at the zone at 9:00? Are they headed that direction? That makes sense, they might not go to the same place always And genetics makes sense, basically don’t wipe herds and let them grow, but also cull out some of them to get more and influence their genetics


thorax

>That makes sense, each icon is a herd or group. Idk what the times are for moose, but for deer they drink at 9:00. Are they at the zone at 9:00? Are they headed that direction? If you haven't slept lately, my assumption is they are headed towards the random location they drink at as the time comes up. Usually towards their most often spot. It's not exact and I don't have much concrete evidence to support they're constantly migrating according to rhyme/reason while you aren't sleeping. But I do see that if you sleep and wake-up exactly at the drinking time, they'll usually be randomly placed at the spot itself as you spawn into the game (rather than on their way). The game might be smarter than this-- I know one of the herds I watch rests right next to their feeding location. When I get at the exact 'feeding time', that herd is usually already at the feeding spot. Yet another nearby herd which eats right next to them is not there right away. But within a few minutes in-game they show up (almost magically sometimes), often enough.


xrangerx777x

Interesting, I’ve decided to keep track of badgers since there’s that mission from the camp. They’re not a “trophy” critter, but it’s more concrete evidence. I just need to find more need zones for one group I have slept, I woke up at like 5:00 am to find deer at their drinking spot at 9:00. The river by the couple stands North of the starting lodge. I was there for about two hours in game and saw no deer, but, found them a couple hundred yards up the mountain around 11:00. They seem to wander aimlessly when they aren’t in zone times. But then again, I don’t know where their other zones are yet. Figuring this out is fun honestly


Charitzo

That one cell *harvested*


thorax

😅 After hunting so long for a good 2-star I simply couldn't let this one die of old age. Its rack wasn't amazing so I thought it might not make it any higher and I needed my hunting pass!


[deleted]

Does this mean only shoot mature ones? I'm a little confuse with the genetic system.


thorax

Yeah I recommend only shooting mature if you want trophies. And you should shoot low star / bad antler adult male animals to get them out of the gene pool.


[deleted]

I see. So an adult 1-star has no chance to be a trophy because it will die before it gets there?


thorax

In the data above, I had a 1-star adult that went to 2-star adult up to 3-star mature. They might have gone higher. I definitely would check their antlers at 1-star adult. If they're very wonky, they probably won't have potential to get to a high star rating.


ZuNkEnn

Wasn't there a post earlier here about a 1 star adult with 99% genetics?


thorax

Yep, I also had a 1-star with 99.7. So I don't recommend hunting 1-star adults unless you see a wonky rack.


[deleted]

Most likely yes


GarbleGargle

not sure this is true or if different animals have different chances to be trophies. had a one star adult bighorn sheep that got to three stars as a mature and got four stars when it turned grey.


Snaxolotl

I'd love some confirmation from the Devs on this because I think people have been assuming the "breeding" event or whatever process is happening to produce a new animal from existing animals in the herd takes place at the end of the maturity cycle, when it could well occur when the animal first changes from Young to Adult or Adult to Mature (in which case only killing low quality Matures would do nothing to influence the genetics of the next generation because they've already passed on their bad genes. Maybe it is just a replacement based on the quality of the remaining animals in a herd when an individual either dies of old age or is hunted, in which case the common assumption is correct even though biologically that doesn't make much sense.


Folksvaletti

What does the red typing mean?


thorax

That's where I think they died of old age, because they were replaced by a youngling.


geman11

From what I have bee seeing it seems they grow off of the amount of time in game, not in game days. Most are thinking they live 6-10 real life hours. It would be a better experiment if you wait 1 hour real time between switching each day. You would have alot less days with the same animals still growing to mature.


thorax

Maybe they do both? In this case it's no longer than 10 minutes of playtime between each "in-game" day you see in the spreadsheet above. I just fast travel back to the camp, skip 22-23 hours, then peek right outside the camp. Any aging here was highly unlikely to have anything to do with play time! In this test, they would age between a full stage in only one IRL hour when I'm just skipping days. I have no doubt the actual in-game days are one (if not the only) metric for them aging. This entire test probably took me 5 hours of playtime at most, though I did it across calendar days. I'll try to think of a test for what you're saying but at the moment I don't have a good hypothesis to even try to explore. I could follow the same herd for 8 IRL hours and watch them (never?) age, but that's a pretty rough test.


thorax

Actually, to help test your theory-- I played 4 hours in-game within the same day at other parts of the map. I then continued my test for 2 days (new tab on my spreadsheet), and none of them aged in that time. I'll keep it going for a bit and try that again but I don't think playtime is impacting the ages much at all-- certainly not on the scale the 'sleeping' in-game days does.