What are your personal suggestions on best spots/areas to place tents in each reserve?

[Threwlys]

What i want to know is where are your favorite spots to put tents on reserves you have hunting for a long time. Every time i try to choose spots in the reserves i become very confuse. I'm never satisfied, ever thinking this or that spot is better or more effective or not. Maybe i can have great suggestions from the experts and veterans about hot places i could place some tents, at least in some of the most favorite of all reserves. Just drop screenshots of the maps here, no need for x and y coordinates. Thanks in advance, guys.

[RidgeBack69]

Go to UHCapps and view shared reserves here is a link http://www.uhcapps.co.uk/shared_reserves.php

But don't get too caught up in where your tent is it really is not all that important other than to put you in the area that you want to be without walking and don't forget if you start a game at a tent no animals will spawn within 150 meters of it.

[Tod1d]

I pretty much just spread them out evenly over the reserve to access areas quicker. Once you find a favorite spot you might want to move a tent closer.

[Fletchette]

1.) Right next to your waterfowl setups.
2.) As close as you can to your feeders ( 450m away if I recall).
3.) If you like to hunt from permanent stands or towers, then near them.

But, as RB and Todd said above, for normal hunting it really doesn't matter much. Just spread them out so you can fast-travel around the reserve without have to walk or run long distances. The animals roam randomly, so don't get too hung up on the idea of "hot spots". While there a few choke points created by the terrain, most hot spots are considered hot because people hunt there a lot. Meaning you're naturally going to find the most animals where you spend the most amount of time.

If you are doing short hunts, then spawn areas matter more. These are AREAS, not specific points or places, just general areas where the animal spawn at the beginning of the game. They spawn and start roaming 1 game hour before you spawn. As the hunt goes on, they spread out more across the reserves because of random roaming.

[Knut]

The animals roam randomly

No, they don't.

The pathfinding system is a bit more sophisticated than that.
Animals roam between attraction zones, but there's a certain degree of randomness regarding which attraction zones they aim for and which path they take to it. And they also cover a lot of ground doing so.

If you learn where those zones are, you'll encounter animals way more frequent than just randomly walking the map.

One of those hotspots is for example tower 6 on RFF and the small ponds north of it.
One must be quite unlucky to do a tour around there without encountering elk at all.

Every map has plenty of these smaller areas where certain animal species frequently roam to.

[Radamus]

Someone posted some tips in general finding good spots long ago and I picked up on them. I've tried this idea on the last half dozen reserves and I'm satisfied with the production. Zones and points have one level of value at the start of a hunt but if you do long hunts, more than a couple hours, I think numbers go up because when they spawn, they drop from the sky and start walking. I've actually seen this happen, only once but it was wild to see that. Pathing and species/numbers change for every hunt.

So the tip was - "look for places where multi species tracks cross each other." The theory was, your between spawn points and you are in sort of a intersection. With enough trial and error, you can find some real sweet situations where things will make sense. I've got some places that are too good - that's when you FT to a tent and you can't crawl to a TS before something kills you. When that happens, you're on a spawn point. I'm not sure animals are all active until you physically come within a certain range, but I've seen exceptions to this, also seen supporting evidence. With the new extended render range this has made a difference. A lot of stuff is in visual range you will never see. I'm not sure how this has effected that theory but I'm not seeing animals frozen in place like I used to. I do see them hanging out in one spot but when I get within huntermate range and they make a call, they know someone is there to hear it and start roaming.

the biggest thing to finding animals, keep moving, glassing and watching. Put your head on a swivel. When you find a spot where you can see all kinds of different animals standing in one place, you got you a good spot.

[VonStratos]

To complement what Radamus said, go here: http://thehunter.wikia.com/wiki/Huntable_Areas there you will find details about every reserve, and maps where animals usually spawn(they aren't exact but very close), they start walking one hour before the player enter in the hunt, just put the tents in the areas where you see more concentration of the animal you want to hunt, and move it depending on your personal experience, but keep in mind that there is not a "best place", sometimes the same spot can give a lot of animals and sometimes you can find one, or none, luck its the half of the hunt, the other is skill of curse.

[Fletchette]

The animals roam randomly

No, they don't.

The pathfinding system is a bit more sophisticated than that.
Animals roam between attraction zones, but there's a certain degree of randomness regarding which attraction zones they aim for and which path they take to it. And they also cover a lot of ground doing so.

If you learn where those zones are, you'll encounter animals way more frequent than just randomly walking the map.

One of those hotspots is for example tower 6 on RFF and the small ponds north of it.
One must be quite unlucky to do a tour around there without encountering elk at all.

Every map has plenty of these smaller areas where certain animal species frequently roam to.

Oh, Knut, discussions of what is random can get complicated and quite theoretical. By random, I meant the inability to predict where the animals will go, and what routes routes they will take. Even knowing where an animal is at a given point in time, I doubt even the Dev's could predict where the animal will be an hour later. This is because at periodic intervals, the AI changes direction based on the outcome of a random result pulled from a random number generator.

You're correct that there are attraction zones (water, bedding, etc.), but all of the animals of a species are not attracted to the same ones or at the same time, and some may never be attracted at all during a game. If an animal is attracted to a zone, when, and for how long, is determined randomly. The attraction turns on and off during the day at different times for each animal (or group/herd). They may be coming or going, from different directions, and at different times. They aren't following paths or trails for long distances.

My understanding is that what the Devs refer to as "pathing" is not long distance routes, or even routes toward things, but rather pathing is short routes around objects and terrain that is inaccessible or where they may get stuck. So pathing avoids cliffs, large trees, boulders, etc, and helps them find things like river crossings. When an animal crosses a "pathing" it temporarily follows it until the obstacle is avoided. This is what I meant when I said, "choke points created by the terrain".

I believe there are also inclusion areas (roaming areas for each species) and exclusion areas (where they are prohibited from roaming). There is also code to turn them when they hit boundaries/borders, but not it's not set. They can "bounce off" and almost any angle.

So my point was that a species will spread out across the map over time (within that species' roaming area), and although they are sometimes attracted to certain areas, which ones are currently attracted, and which particular area they are attracted to is not set. It's largely random and can vary by time of day. And most importantly, how animals get from one area to another is also random (other than pathing to avoid getting stuck).

In the end, discussions about randomness often result is discussions of probability. Just because certain outcomes may have higher likelihoods, the individual events can still be random. A pair of dice is often used to demonstrate the point. It's assumed that each roll of a pair dice results in a random outcome (2-12), and it does, but as you continue to throw the dice a normal distribution curve results with 2 & 12 being the least likely (1 in 36), and 7 being the most likely (1 in 6). The resulting bell-curve is a normal distribution of individually random results. And nothing that has happened in the past (previous throws) will help predict the outcome of future throws because they are random.

I'm sure you know all of this, but I wanted to explain why I said roaming was random.

Of course another important variable, is that their roaming behavior changes when they are rendered, sometimes dramatically.

[Knut]

I'm sure you know all of this, but I wanted to explain why I said roaming was random.

I understood what you wanted to say with it. And in general, I agree with you.

It was just such an oversimplification, that in essence, it became wrong, and I felt the need to elaborate to avoid misinformation, even if not intended.

[VonStratos]

And not to mention other variable, that in certain hours some animals like to take a nap, so you can feel like there is nothing around, and is because they are sleeping.