Hi guys,

Can any of you give a synopsis of the Hunting Skill, Tracking Skill, and Ecology skill. I am not asking for a "power list", but rather a general overview. I'm wondering what types of things Hunting, Tracking, and Ecology can do.

Most of the posts are discussing specific abilities without the overview. I'd like to know if hunting can give you food, for instance.

I actually tried to have in character discussions yesterday, but it seems everybody was really busy--probably either with alts or skill testing. The one character who might of engaged in a discussion I think said he needed to get back power...I have a feeling that the Ecologists are draining their trees a lot.

Okay, let's start:

Hunting:
It's the base ability, some nice tricks in it, but I think it's mostly for Style. Except the ability to use Pathways, that's awesomly good.

Ecology:
It consists basically of three things:

Fetishes: For some power cost, you can create a so called fetish who can be upgraded with different parts, such as wings and fins. With those, we can give specific poisons to someone, some of those good, some of those not so good. Although if you want to use a poison with it, you have to have a vial of it in your inventory.
All in all fetishes can be viewed as nice addition to demesnes or

Smudges: We can bundle together some herbs to form so called smudges. If we burn them, we can set up different effects, like the hillssmudge that covers you in mud, or the mountain smudge that knocks you prone and breaks limbs.

And of course Rebirth/Transmigration:
You can make a little familiar out of a corpse, and you can basically use his ears and eyes. With the trans ability, if you die, you'll awaken at the familiar, with no experience loss, but he dies. That's one of the reason Ash'll probably never deepbond with his owl Oooru, he just doesn't want to lose him if he dies.

Then there are some other abilities in it, like the ability to influence animals or the ability to make pathways.

Trapping:
I don't know, I haven't heard that much of it. They can use traps, and they have wolfs/dogs. Haven't heard much more about it.

I know hunting is the base skill, but can it do things like get food? Can it be used to build commodities? Figured I'd ask. I heard about something called "fishcatch", for instance.

This makes me thing of something Ialie pointed out. Some of the Serens didn't want to hunt deer or something like that, IIRC. I wonder if that's gonna change now.

Well, with the hunting abilities, you can catch trouts, you can make cows to follow you, we can get snakes to go into a net...and we can soothe panicking animals. That's basically what hunting is animal wise.

From the commoditie quests, I think only the cow skill is used for that.

Is it true the fish are part of commodity quests too? A wise little bird told me that.

Oh, and also in hunting they have the greatest little skill, where you mimic animals in the area to try and attract them. I don't know how effective it is, but it certainly is amusing.

I heard it's broken.

I wonder if we're gonna see a lot more animals in the forrests now. I would assume they'd start spawning animals, that way you never know if the owl or rabbit is a normal one or a familiar.

Until you probe it.

Yes. Salty in Stewarts buys them, as does Monique in Delport. Elsewhere, I'm sure you can give them to the comm shop owner, or a shop owner than wants them, and you'll start finding the commodity in the store.

Could someone tell me what pool Hunting and Ecology are in?

Empathy: Specifically Communion.

Which is annoying, because I was counting on a 20% loss instead of 50% or so.

Hunting lets you catch chickens, trout, cows, and snakes more easily. Also, it has Ambush, which is rather nice. You set an attack, and when you ambush, you move into the next room with someone and try that attack, adding stun to it.

Ecology has been pretty well covered.

Tracking looks neat, but I don't know much besides the traps and what little I've seen.