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| − | I just like to work on databases...
| + | Just another editor. |
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| − | That, and try to keep this site a place made for all of you, the hunters.
| + | I write guides in my spare time- you can check it out at http://www.furoma.com/guide |
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| | --[[User:Kirbix|Kirbix]] 8 January 2009 (UTC) | | --[[User:Kirbix|Kirbix]] 8 January 2009 (UTC) |
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| | {{MHP|724015439|Hunter Profile}} | | {{MHP|724015439|Hunter Profile}} |
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| − | ==HUNTING MECHANICS==
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| − | I wrote This guide is designed to help explain the hunting process. It is based upon the guide written by Mousehunt developer Dave Vanderburg himself (Original article is found [[Hunting Sequence|here]] . His original text is in italics- annotations and deductions based upon the experience of hunters and their communication amongst one another is written in regular
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| − | ===The hunt is started===
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| − | ''There are a few ways a hunt can be started, most commonly is by the Hunter's Horn. A hunter can start an immediate hunt by sounding the horn themselves, or if a friend is hunting in the same location and sounds their horn it will automatically sound the horn of any friend who is also ready to hunt. The second way a hunt can be started is by a random Trap Check. These trap checks happen at random throughout the day and on average a player will receive 24 of these random checks per day. A hunter must have their trap baited and also have been active within 24 hours in order to have a chance of receiving a trap check. Once a player leaves the game for 24 hours they will stop receiving trap checks.''
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| − | ===A mouse is encountered===
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| − | ''Once a hunt is started, a hunter will then encounter a specific breed of mouse. The most significant factor affecting what breed of mouse they encounter is the location they are hunting in. Secondly, the type of bait a hunter is using can have a small effect on what type of mouse they encounter. For example, it is well known the scent of Brie and SUPER|brie+ can draw Burglar Mice in the area a little closer to a hunter's trap. Should you fail to attract the mouse you encountered then your bait has a chance of going stale based on your trap's cheese effect. The time you purchased your bait has no effect on whether your cheese turns stale.''
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| − | So let's look at this information. This means that BEFORE the mouse even looks at your cheese, the game has selected the mouse to come to your trap. So here is the first large misconception that people have about mice and cheese. Many people think that if you use a stronger cheese, you're going to see more GOOD mice as a result. That's a completely false assumption. If you're attracting a mouse to your trap every time using Swiss cheese, but the mice aren't the so-called "good" mice that you want to catch (such as the student mice in the Dojo), switching to Brie will NOT suddenly make more students appear.
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| − | To explain it from a mechanics point of view, our basic understanding of the mouse population is that the developers release a certain number of mice into the pool, and as mice are caught more mice are let into the pool. Mice such as the Mobster and Leprechaun are released once and then not replenished once they've been caught. This is why there can be one or two Mobster Mice still around from the last holiday that have not been caught yet- people will continue to see (and probably miss) them until they're finally caught and removed from the pool.
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| − | So let's go back to the example of using swiss vs. brie in the Dojo for a Student mouse. Let's throw out an example, for the sake of understanding (these numbers are NOT accurate) that there are 10,000 mice in the "pool" for the Dojo, and approximately 500 are student of the cheese belt, 500 student of the cheese claw, and 500 student of the cheese fang. That means that they may up about 15% of the Dojo's population.
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| − | So even with SB+, you're only going to see students 15% of the time, at best. USING BETTER CHEESE WILL NOT MAKE THEM APPEAR MORE OFTEN IF YOU ARE ALREADY ATTRACTING LOTS OF MICE.
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| − | Now, where this gets tricky is with the Black Widow and the Burglar. According to what we read above, if you use the "right" cheese to attract this mouse, the odds of them being encountered at your trap is slightly higher. We do not know exactly what those numbers are, but there is a much larger chance of seeing them when you use Brie and SB+, respectively. The Lycan and Moon Cheese seems to fall under this same situation.
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| − | We'll talk about the Nibbler, the Worker and the Monster further down.
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| − | Another tricky area on this is when you use special crafted cheese. White Cheddar has a low attraction rate, but what makes it special is that it alters the pool of mice that the game draws from. It takes out all of the white, grey and brown mice before picking which mouse will encounter your trap.
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| − | The same is true for the specially crafted cheese of the Meditation Room and the Pinnacle Chamber. If you use any cheese except the kind that's designed to attract that master, they will be removed from the pool. So someone using Brie in the Pinnacle Chamber can ONLY encounter Hapless mice because they're the only mouse in the pool, while using Rumble Cheese adds the Master of the Dojo to the pool without removing the hapless mice.
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| − | "So why do you see so many hapless without the specially crafted cheese, but so few with it? (by comparison)"
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| − | :We can assume that the number of masters FAR outnumbers the number of hapless in the pool in the MR and PC. Just like how when you stop using WC in the meadow, you see tons of white mice because they outnumber all other mice in the Meadow's pool.
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| − | ===The encountered mouse is attracted to the bait===
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| − | ''Once a mouse comes around a hunter's trap, it is then up to the specific bait the hunter is using to attract that specific type of mouse. Carefully read the descriptions of the various bait in the game to give hints about how effective they are at attracting certain types of mice, and in what areas of the game. It is important to make the distinction that bait has very little effect on the type of mouse you encounter and it has absolutely no effect on if you catch a mouse or not. The main job of a hunter's bait is to attract the mouse to their trap after it has been encountered. It is also worth noting that traps that have an attraction bonus will boost the attraction capabilities of the trap's bait in a positive way.''
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| − | NOW we get to the part where cheese matters, along with attraction bonuses. The game has picked out a mouse to encounter your trap- will that mouse then go to your trap, or just keep on going?
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| − | It's hard to say, and the ideas get tricky.
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| − | It's safe to say that every mouse seems to have a certain "attraction" threshold when it encounters a trap. That is, some mice take a, shall we say, greater incentive to come to the trap. If you put cheddar cheese on your trap and head to the Training Grounds, for example, most mice that you encounter will totally ignore your trap, which means all you will get is "failed to attract." This is because the mice in the Training Grounds generally have a high attraction threshold. Again, to use some arbitrary numbers, if we said that cheddar had an attraction of 1 and all of the mice in the training ground had an attraction threshold of 4, you won't have any luck, but if you use brie which DOES have the attraction threshold of 4, they are much more likely to come to your trap.
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| − | Now, these numbers are simplified to make a point. The example isn't perfect, though- obviously we all know that cheddar cheese CAN attract other mice; it's simply not very likely.
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| − | So to put it in more realistic terms: each cheese is given a certain "value" of attractiveness, and this value is then put up against the threshold of the mouse encountered. Depending on the differnce between the two numbers, the mouse is anywhere from 1-99% likely to be attracted to that cheese. So if you're using SB+ in the town of gnawnia, you'll attract a mouse 99% of the time. If you're using brie, you'll probably attract a mouse 80% of the time.
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| − | From the other side of the equation, if you attract a white mouse to the trap, you probably have a 70% chance or greater of attracting a white mouse that you encountered even with just cheddar cheese, and you can probably be 99% effective in attraction with white mice using brie cheese. Conversely, a Zombie mouse might only be attracted to cheddar cheese 10% of the time, while it's attracted to brie cheese 70% of the time. Between the variables of ALL of the mice in that area, you come up with a total attraction rate that you had. Maybe you attracted mice to your trap 75% of the time using swiss cheese, but the worker mouse that you encountered 3 times was attracted 0% of the time
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| − | :(Once again, these % numbers are arbitrary and not to be taken as a fact)
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| − | Now, again this is rather technical, isn't it. Equations have been written that attempt to mathematically explain the odds of catching a mouse, but so far none have been able to truly capture what happens. It's impossible to know how attracted certain mice are to certain types of cheese, because when the cheese fails to attract, you simply don't know which one you failed to attract.
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| − | The Mousoleum poses an interesting tweak on the mouse threshold, though. Radioactive Blue seems to work independently of the typical scale, because while it doesn't work as well as SB+ outside of the mousoleum, it's MUCH better than SB+ when in the mousoleum. However, it's not because you encouter less mousoleum mice- if that were the case, you'd be able to catch tons of mutated mice and zombie mice with brie and SB+ in the mousoleum, yet you dont; instead you get a lot of "failed to attract." This means that the mousoleum mice simply have a nearly impervious threshold for any cheese EXCEPT Radioactive Blue.
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| − | SO, here's what conclusions we can safely draw from this:
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| − | -The better the cheese you use, the more mice will be attracted to your trap. If you want to catch more mice, use a more expensive cheese. Of course, then you get into cost-effectiveness, but that's a whole other topic!
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| − | -You will experience different rates of attraction in different areas of the game. In the early parts where white, brown and grey mice are common, cheddar cheese will yield a MUCH higher rate of attraction than it does in the lab, where they aren't found at all.
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| − | Now, where does attraction bonus factor into this? Best we can figure, attraction bonus takes that % that's created after the cheese attraction and mouse threshold are compared and it's then multiplied in. So if the chance of the mouse coming to the trap is 50% and you have a bonus of 20% attraction, you take 20% of 50 (which is 10) and tack it on. That means that a 20% attraction bonus on a mouse with a 50% attraction will be 60%, NOT 70.
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| − | So, Mole in digby using marble? Definitely NOT better than using swiss; rather, it's even worse. Marble won't make you encounter a mole more often, and you'll attract it less than with swiss.
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| − | Now let's talk those mice I mentioned earlier: the Nibbler, the Worker and the Monster. The question is this- does using SB+ (or in the monster's case, RB) make the mouse become ENCOUNTERED more often, or is it simply ATTRACTED more often when it IS encountered. The answer to this is that we honestly don't know. Again, it's impossible to know which mice you're missing when you miss a mouse. Before you go saying that they MUST be just like the burglar, remember this:
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| − | 1) The Monster and Nibbler are not explicitly listed as being attracted by a certain cheese, just like the mousoleum mice aren't, so it could be either one.
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| − | 2) The worker's description leaves it open for interpretation. Does the fact that nothing distracts it from its work mean it won't encounter a trap, or that it won't be attracted once it's been encountered? It could easy be either one.
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| − | As for Maki, the newest cheese, we're not sure. It's supposed to attract students more often, but so far no one seems to be noticing an improvement over SB+. More on this as it is tweaked and tested. The guess is that it will increase the chance of encounters in the same way that brie attracts a burglar. (at least, that's what we're all hoping for)
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| − | ===Your trap versus the mouse===
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| − | ''Should a hunter successfully attract the type of mouse they encountered, it is now up to the statistics of their trap to determine if they catch the mouse or not. A more powerful trap has a better chance to trap a more powerful mouse, although the probability to catch a mouse is never 100% (so even a puny white mouse has a small chance to get away from the most powerful traps). Aside from power, a trap's luck rating also provides a chance to catch a mouse purely from luck. It is not uncommon for lucky traps to catch mice that are more powerful than the trap.
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| − | The hunter's title/level also plays a small role in their ability to catch a mouse. As players progress upwards through the hunter's ranks, their traps stats are boosted slightly providing an extra edge.
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| − | Weapons not only have power, but also a specific power type. Some mice are susceptible to certain power types, while others are resistant if not completely immune. A popular example is in the Mousoleum where the vast majority of mice are vulnerable to shadow traps while being resistant to physical traps.''
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| − | This section is much easier to explain than the previous two, because there's not a whole lot of argument about how things happen in regards to whether or not you catch the mouse.
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| − | In the same way that cheese has an attraction number and the mouse has a threshold, your trap has power and the mouse has a threshold (you can call it the mouse's power, if you want). Depending on the difference between the two, you get a % chance that you'll catch the mouse. The % determined also probably determines how the mouse is ranked in terms of "Challenging" versus "Very Difficult" or "Overpowering"
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| − | If you want to see some truly brilliant work that's been done on the matter, go to the NVMRC forum and become a member so you can read the work that Paul Humphreys has done on the subject:
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| − | :http://www.nvmrc.yuku.com/topic/427
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| − | Again, it's REALLY well thought out and gives you some great feedback on just how tough all of the mice in the game are based upon the massive amounts of research that has been done over the last year.
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| − | '''What about Luck?'''
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| − | :It's hard to say exactly what luck does. The most logical theory that has been presented so far is that after your trap fails to catch the mouse, it gets a second chance based on the luck of your trap. As for how much luck translates into what, it's hard to say. However, what all of the studies thus far have shown is that if you have a high power trap and you pit it against a high luck trap, the high power trap will catch most mice a higher % of the time. A study done here shows how the Snow Barrage, despite the higher luck, is no match for the ambush trap against assassin and student mice.
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| − | Now, I said most of the time. Where the speculation comes into play is against REALLY overwhelming mice (things like the monster and the master of the dojo). Do we even have a trap powerful enough to catch them more often than we would through ordinary luck? So far, the jury is still out.
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| − | What you CAN say for certain is that high luck is good, but generally speaking, don't lose out on luck for the sake of a LOT of power. So while it's a good idea to use the dehydration base instead of the explosive base, using the swiss army mouse trap instead of the mouse deathbot isn't a good idea.
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| − | Hunter's title caught me by surprise when I first read it- I've never seen any literature that compares ranks and their catch rates with mice. However, I also don't think that it's a commonly known fact that rank makes a difference, either. Perhaps we will see studies about it in the future; for now, we're left with his word that rank helps, so if you can't get the monster now, try ranking up and see if it helps!
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| − | It certainly would explain why Jennifer and Jesse, the only lord/lady in Mousehunt, are so much more successful at catching catacombs mice than the rest of us.
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| − | Lastly, weapon types. While we don't know exactly how "very effective" and "less effective" work. However, since a very effective trap does significantly lower the difficulty rating of a mouse on the "Mice" page in Mousehunt, the assumption is that it lowers the power rating on the enemy mouse. No one knows how much. One of the current studies is whether or not the bottomless grave, at 1500 power, is more able to catch shadow mice than the Obelisk of Slumber at 2100 power. The obelisk is more powerful, but the bottomless grave is "very effective". Does that increase in power outweigh the "very effective" nature of the trap? Hopefully we'll find out in the near future!
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| − | ===The outcome of the hunt===
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| − | ''The outcome of the hunt is fairly straight forward. Should you catch the mouse you will be awarded points and gold based on the type of mouse you caught as well as its weight. Heavier mice are considered weaker than smaller, quicker mice and are therefore worth less points, but more gold.
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| − | Should you attract (but fail to catch) the mouse, your adversary will always consume the one piece of cheese your trap was baited with. In some hunting locations, it is also possible for mice to steal additional pieces of cheese, as well as points or gold.''
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| − | There's no % chance that we know of for whether or not a mouse drops loot, nor is there a % chance for whether or not the mouse will steal additional things or not. Sorry.
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| − | ===Additional Reading===
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| − | http://mousehunt.peterstrategy.com/analytics - A concise form of these analytics.
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| − | http://mousehunt.peterstrategy.com/dynamics -A great illustration of all that we've talked about.
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| − | Thanks for reading!
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| − | ''Original found at [http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=ahwm9rm5zg9j_4dx9d35gb&hl=en]''
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