Hunting
This page is a Hunting is a non-combat skill in Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Players with a higher level in this skill will collect more meat and other useful materials from animals that they have killed.
Description
Hunter skills increases the amount of meat and other useful materials you recover from animals you kill.
Leveling Up
- You can read the book series The Joy of Gutting to level up this skill.
- This skill is raised by killing wild animals such as boars, hares, red deer and roe deer.
- In terms of hunting wild game, hares grant the least amount of experience, then roe deer, then boar, then killing red deer (female), and finally killing red deer bucks (the males).
- Usually, the fastest method to leveling up Hunting is to kill as much Boar as possible. They are very slow, and are commonly found in clearings, meaning that you will often find easy sight lines and can pursue on horseback without losing view of the boar. Just be sure to have a decently powerful bow.
New perk points unlock at levels: 3, 5, 8, 10, 13, 15, 18, 20.
Hunting Perks
| Hunting Perks |
| Icon | Name | Hunting Lvl | Effect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gamekeeper Rules the Woods | Quest reward in Cherchez la Femme | You've been given permission to hunt in the woods, so any meat you get from game won't be identified as stolen. | |
| Antlers | Lvl 3 | Enables you to get antlers from hunted animals. | |
| Tusks | Lvl 3 | You're able to remove tusks from some animals. | |
| Butcher | Lvl 5 | You're able to get offal from hunted game. | |
| Tanner | Lvl 5 | You're able to skin dead animals. | |
| Huntsman | Lvl 8 | You'll cause wild animals 20% more damage. | |
| Wild at Heart | Lvl 8 | Wild animals will be less skittish when you're close. | |
| Forester | Lvl 10 | Your conspicuousness and visibility fall sharply when in the woods, so you can be stealthier. Useful, especially when stalking people. | |
| Salty | Lvl 10 | Raw foods in your inventory won't spoil so fast. | |
| Steak Tartare | Lvl 13 | You can eat raw meat. |
Trainers
General Tips
Hunting can be a profitable endeavor, especially when prepared to maximise it.
With use of the right Bow and Arrows, hunting becomes much easier. With exception of Boar, one need only worry about speed and distance, for the most part. A Villager's Bow of some kind, and Long-distance arrows (or the Better ones) are an excellent combination. Ironically, Hunting Bows are generally less useful, with the exception of Capon's hunting bow, as they generally draw at the same speed as Longbows. Thus one would simply use a Longbow instead. For Boar, it is advised not to use the strongest bow, but a bow with good damage and high draw speed, and your strongest arrows, tipped in some kind of Poison to slow them or do additional damage.
The use of Poisons does not affect the meat that is gathered.
It is strongly advised to hunt near a cooking source, in order to cook the meat and offal (with the Butcher perk). This decreases the Spoilage rate and removes the Stolen Flag, along with increasing value and (usually) decreasing weight. Locations can include places such as a cleared-out Bandit or Cuman camps, Hans Capon's hunting camp (used the Quest The Prey, but always available) or any other source. Drying meats is also better than cooking, either outright or in the long run, due to dried goods having zero spoilage. Smoking meats is usually inferior in every way, including value, nourishment, weight, etc.
The use of things such as increasing Vitality, using the Buck's Blood potion or certain Stamina Perks will increase Stamina, allowing longer aim time. Things like the Bowman's Brew or the Drinking perk Drinking Habit, one can reduce the bow sway. It is also notable that bow sway is predictable, and can be dealt with through practice.
Increasing Carry Weight through the Mule perks, increasing Strength and getting a higher-capacity Horse and Saddle will improve the amount of hunting goods one can carry, and therefore profit off of.
It can also be a good idea to get the Gamekeeper Rules the Woods perk from the Quest Cherchez la Femme as soon as possible, if Cooking or Drying food isn't available or as quick. Selling to Grocers and Butchers may net a higher profit.
For reference, if Henry and his Horse have a combined available weight of 500, they could carry a total of 830 Raw Red-deer venison (about 7-9 deer), or 1,000 Cooked red-deer venison (9-10 deer) with a total value (before sale) of 15,000. Two trips of 830 Red-deer venison to a Drying shed would make 1,660 Dried venison, totalling 500 Weight, and a total value (before sale) of 24,900. All of which could be hunted from Red deer, which are generally one of the easiest to hunt. A single Red Deer, dropping 100-120 meat, can be worth (before sale) anywhere from 1,500 to 1,800 and weigh 50 - 60 cooked or 30 - 36 Weight Dried.
Keep in mind Dried Meat can be stockpiled indefinitely. Dried hare meat is the best to dry and sell at 60 Value to 1 Weight (6 val to 0.1 weight) but are less numerous and drop less meat. More hunting time means more spoilage. Dried venison (Red Deer) are second at 50 Value to 1 Weight (15 val to 0.3 weight), drop more meat and spawn in packs. Though Boar and Roe Deer have high values, they fall off in Value to Weight; Boar 22v to 1w (11v to 0.5w) Roe 22.5v to 1w (9v to 0.4w).
Exploit: You can avoid spoilage of the freshly hunted meat (at 100% freshness) by moving it to your horse or a storage locker, as long as you keep at least 1 in your inventory (this rest will spoil, the transferred amount wil not). Do note though, that this works at 100% freshness only, while the game will combine any inventory within 5% of the same freshness in one bulk, so make sure not to have any 95%-99% fresh meat of the same type in your inventory before you collect your next kill. For serial hunting (hares), simply move all but one then feed the remainder to Mutt (or drop it if you don't have A Woman's Lot DLC), for spree hunting (i.e. deers, or when fulfilling quests that require innards), kill all animals in a small area, then quickly collect all meat/kidneys/liver/offal and transfer all but one of each to your steed.
This exploit works for cooked meat too, as long as you keep one cooked item in your inventory after the transfer (i.e. you can hunt a red deer for 175 lbs, transfer 174 to your horse, then ride to a campsite, transfer all 174 back to Henry to cook it over a fire and transfer 173 cooked meat back to the horse, saving 17lbs of carry capacity).
Finding game
Part of the challenge of leveling up this skill is finding where you can actually hunt game, and despite the fact that while yes, the woods are where you will usually find them, that is not always the case.
Wild animals aren't necessarily found in the woods, as they can sometimes be in areas that are rarely, or unfrequently passed by people,such as in the edge of civilized areas, which border said woods.
Hunting Locations
Rule of thumb is that when you spot game (other than Hare), it means there is a Hunting Spot of said game nearby, however, this is not always the case, as there are secluded regions around Bohemia which also have game without specific hunting spots, when such sightings are made, they may not follow what is common to be seen in terms of numbers and types of animals, and they will usually be always on the move, if casually, until they are agitated by players that is.
There are also some Interesting Sites that are secluded deep within forests which also may spawn Red deer bucks.
- Having the Seek! perk from the Houndmaster skill tree (only available with A Woman's Lot dlc), you can command Mutt to find nearby locations you have yet to find. Doing so once you spot game will ensure that you find a Hunting Spot, should there be one.
Hare
- The most abundant and easiest game to find, Hares can be found everywhere, and contrary to other wild game, they do not have specific Hunting spots.
- A clear indicator that Hare are around is usually marked by the presence of Hunting spots, since Hares share the wilderness with other animals.
- Hares will spawn continuously around the woods.
Roe-deer
- The most common and easiest type of deer to encounter, roe-deer are greyish in color, and slightly taller than a dog, and often found frolicking.
- They are usually located either in denser woods, or at the edge of said woods, usually making pasture of crop fields, grass fields and often found closely to less used roads.
- Such roads are commonly the ones used by residents who live in the edge of a village.
- They always travel in packs of 4.
Boar
- These wild hogs are usually found rather secluded, most often hiding away in deep forests, or at least woods that have less travelled roads, but should you have good visibility and perhaps little to no brush that surrounds a Boar's Hunting spot, then it is very easy to notice it since it is almost always marked by multiple mud puddles and sometimes a small hill near it that would double as a burrow.
- They are commonly found in groups of 2 or 3.
- Boar meat is the heaviest out of all, carrying all the Boar meat from these carcasses is almost impossible unless both you and your horse have very high carrying capacity.
Red deer
- The noblest of game, Red deer are marked by their large size and brown color, in contrast with the gray hues of their Roe-deer cousins. The females have a dark brown body with beige-white rump, whereas the bucks (the antlered males) have golden brown hues, and tower over females.
- The differences between them are that the bucks have roughly twice the amount of meat and have antlers which you can acquire (if you have the perk Antlers).
- Red deer are found in either clearings, or less dense regions of deep wilderness, either is almost always accompanied by a little lake or a deep puddle of gathered rain water.
- A good indicator that you may have stumbled upon such a site is that one moment you are in deep dark forest, and then you are looking at very tall grass that is encompassed by said forest as the sun shines through, and usually you can see an uprooted tree which has fallen over and made possible for water to gather on the hole.
- A Red deer's hunting spot usually spawns said deer in either of the following:
- 1 male
- 2 males
- 4 females
- 1 male + 4 females