So, during my time as a shrub, I have heard mixed reports about hunting and what not, so I figured I would make a thread so that people can explain why they like it, or why they dislike it. No flaming and no idiocy, I just want opinions.

Edited for spelling and grammar. Sorry, I -had- to.

Ecology is major pwnage, tracking has some nice and deadly traps, geared towards pure offense, but expensive. Messing someone up with charybdon darts and your weapons, then tackling them into a snakepit, and have your way with them, very satisfying I imagine.

I want a tent.

From what I've seen so far of the new skillsets, they're quite enjoyable. While I haven't spent a -lot- of time messing around tracking, I did find some of the abilities amusing. Animals are always cool, they remind me of being a sentinel in Aetolia.

I've sent one proposed change to my envoy: make it so that when you're walking around with multiple creatures of the same type, they "stack", so you see "She is followed my 32 cows" instead of a large amount of unneeded text.

One major problem with tracker hounds and wolves, is they die in one to two attacks, they've got weevil resilience.

Ugh. It's going to turn into a flame thing, I know it. But, not by my hands!

Ecology is a fairly nice skill - we have the ability to make smudges, fetishes, and an animal companion. Smudges are just add-ons to our demesne, which will work very, very well, if everything is timed right. Fetishes allow us to afflict at as relatively high rate - we can use some, not all, of the poisons, and nearly trans ecology (it's around myth or so) we get the ability to double afflict.

Trans resilience does manage to shrug off about, what was it, 1/3 of the afflicts? Something like that. Smudges do various things - prone and covers you in mud, causing you to move slowly,some cause 300 bleeding and blind, some are strange and uncertain in nature, some deal quite a bit of damage - some break a random number of limbs.

As far as the animal goes - it's a spy tool that, at trans, is like a xp-less conglute. Of course, if the animal dies, we die (assuming we're online). The only really safe place to put them is in a guildhall or a peaced room, however, that's not even safe. They can be tracked to over manses, and you can be forced to recall them. (I leave mine in the etherwilde)

I'm very unfamiliar with tracking. Hunting allows you to catch fish, chickens, snakes, ring up some cows. It's pretty cool.

Oh, Ecologists can make Pathways (basically, wormholes) between two rooms on the same plane of the same terrain. Anyone with the base-skillset Hunting can use them.

Okay.. these are pretty low skills, but I didn't have many lessons.. but I love rustle and cluck. Only problem is that freakin' Nell doesn't seem to want to take my 19 cows. Damn her!

How very spammy.. Deb gave me 1000gp about for 19 cows.

Rustle is awesome. Cluck I've found to fail too often and have a massive recovery time, so it could be better. Since it's not a combat skill, though, it has room for error, and it's still nice to not have chickens jumping out of my hands.

Rustle is overpowered, we used to only give it to Shrubberies

The skillset is really great, just needs a few tweak. I dunno much about ecology, cept nerf it seems to be the attitude of a lot of non-eco people, heh. Tracking is rather fun. You get a wolf companion (hound if your a city dweller) this companion and seek out items and mobs in you location, and mortals world wide. Also you can unite with the mob, which is like moonbeam in its basic form but much better for reasons I wont discuss on the forums for fear of nerfing *Sagenod* The companion can also attack, and the clamp ability is basically a 20% passive chance that the attack will clamp down on the victims arm, rendering it unusable until the writhe and causing a few points of wounding. in addtion, traps are rather nasty, especially if the tracker has time to set up a layout of them. Picture this. You enter a room. Go oh crap its diamante nerf run! try to leave, but a springtrap throws you back in, triggering a dart trap, which hits you with charybdon every 2 seconds, then, once thats out I tackle you north, making you fall into a pit whereupon you break your legs if not levitating, are stunned, and 5 snakes become aggro at you, attacking until you get out. While your in that pit, I can hit you with ease, as can my wolf, and you are unable to go on the offensive until you get out. Granted, flyers can get out like cheese whiz, and its really not terrible to get out unless afflicted like hell, but snakepit is rather nasty, specially hajamin-pits,

wow it definitly sounds like some good skill sets.