Why Hunt
Hunting is the most reliable early-wipe gathering loop there is: no monument, no PvP, minimal risk -- walk into a forest and harvest. Animals are renewable sources of meat (food), Cloth, Leather, Animal Fat, and Bone Fragments, the raw materials behind sleeping bags, armor, arrows, and Low Grade Fuel.
Kill quietly. A Hunting Bow or spear is the tool of choice -- guns drop animals faster but the gunfire pulls other players to you. Hunt with a bow, harvest with a sharp tool, and you fund your whole early game without firing a loud shot.
The Prey
The safe-to-hunt animals, in rough order of value:
- Chicken (~20 HP): harmless, flees slowly, killable with anything -- an easy first meal but low yield.
- Boar (~150 HP): the best early target. Clusters near water and beaches; great meat + cloth + a big fat/bone haul (roughly 8 pork, 10 cloth, 20 leather, 40 fat, 50 bone with a bone knife). Will fight back if you crowd it, so tag it from range.
- Deer / Stag (~150 HP): a flighty runner that gives up the chase quickly -- bow it from a distance; it hits surprisingly hard if it turns on you.
- Horse (~200 HP): worth FAR more as transport than as meat -- saddle it and ride, don't skin it. Only butcher one if you're desperate.
The Predators
Two animals hunt YOU -- treat them differently:
- Wolf (~100 HP): aggressive on sight, fast, with a lunge that bites from ~3 m, and they roam in packs of 2-4 -- lethal to an unarmed fresh spawn. Their saving grace: wolves are TERRIFIED of torches (and loud voice chat) and will flee instantly. A bone-knife skin gives ~5 wolf meat, 10 fat, 35 cloth, 40 bone, 75 leather -- plus the skull for a Wolf Headdress (cheap early head protection).
- Bear (~400 HP, Polar ~420): the most dangerous land animal -- short sprint bursts up to 4x your speed, heavy bite, and it causes Bleeding. It has NO torch/voice fear. Never melee one; kill it from range with a crossbow, a bow with plenty of arrows, or ideally a bolt-action. Low-gear escapes: place a foundation and jump on top to spear it, swim across water to break the chase, or run in circles to drain its stamina. The payout is the highest of any animal -- so hunt bears only once you're geared.
Jungle Predators
The Jungle biome added a pack of new predators that are more THREAT than prey -- learn their tells before you roam there:
- Tiger: the apex hunter. It stalks slowly from BEHIND and only commits when the kill is certain -- check your back constantly in thick foliage.
- Black Panther: a rarer, stealthier, harder-to-spot version of the same lethal ambush.
- Crocodile: lurks in rivers, strikes from the water, crawls onto land, and DRAGS prey back under. Tell: jungle croc water runs darker and muddier than the bright-blue freshwater elsewhere -- treat murky water as occupied.
- Snake: hidden in the leaves; its poison bite SLOWS your movement. It hisses just before it strikes -- jump the instant you hear it.
Treat the jungle like the bear: don't melee these, keep distance, and watch (and listen) constantly. Bring radiation protection too -- mid-tier monuments can spawn in the biome.
Harvesting Tools
The tool you SKIN with decides your yield, separate from what you killed with. The sharper the blade, the more you recover -- so don't gut a bear with a rock.
The early-game answer is the Bone Knife: it costs just 30 Bone Fragments (which you gather while hunting anyway), returns the maximum leather, and -- crucially -- does NOT lose durability when used on dead animals or players. Carry one on every hunt purely as a harvesting tool. A Stone Hatchet, Hatchet, or (mid-game) Combat Knife also hit the max-leather tier. As a weapon the bone knife is weak; its job is the skinning, not the kill.
What the Drops Make
Every kill feeds your crafting economy:
- Animal Fat + Cloth -> Low Grade Fuel, which runs boats, minicopters, and chainsaws (see the Smelting & Refining guide). Hunting is the no-monument way to fuel vehicles.
- Bone Fragments -> Bone Knife, bone arrows, and Bone Armor -- a full primitive kit straight from the hunt.
- Cloth -> sleeping bags and armor repairs; never in surplus.
- Leather -> the gate to advanced armor (Road Sign Jacket/Kilt and beyond).
- Meat -> cook it for food and healing (see the Medical & Food guide).
A single early-wipe hunting trip can hand you a sleeping bag, a bow's worth of arrows, fuel, and the leather for your first real armor -- which is why experienced players hit the forest before they ever touch a monument.