Dev Update #23 - Hunting Preview

Hey Everyone!

We’re back from our Winter break and we’re more excited than ever to be working on new content for Melvor Idle 2. Our last update before the break featured a small preview of the next Major Update, and this week we’re following up with a deeper dive into our next Skill!

We’re still getting back into the swing of things, so we’re not promising a release date yet, but we’re hoping to launch this update very soon. As usual, we’ll follow it with a survey to get your feedback - we hope you’ll help us start off 2026 with a bang!

🐾Hunting Preview

Let's dive into the next Skill arriving in Melvor Idle 2 - Hunting.

Hunting is a relatively simple Skill on the surface, but it does require some preparation before you can really dig into it.

Hunting's purpose is to provide an active method of obtaining some important resources used around the game, as well as feeding directly into Beastcrafting.

Some other notable Item drops from Hunting include Herb Seeds, Bones, and items found within Ranching.

There will be 33 Animals upon release of the Skill.

Preparation

Hunting requires Traps to be created within Crafting. There are 7 different categories/types of Traps, each with 3 tiers of increased quality for more efficient Hunting.

Different Animals require different types of Traps. For example Wild Chickens require Snares, while small birds require Small Bird Catchers. Hunting will tell you what type of Trap is required.

Core Mechanics

Hunting Animals is an automated 3 step process - Surveying, Tracking & Trapping. Think of it like a single interval broken down into 3 separate stages before receiving your rewards.

Surveying

Before you can Hunt an Animal, you need to actually find one. This is done via Surveying.

It's pretty simple - you will survey the area until you come across tracks for the Animal you are Hunting. Once you spot your first set of animal tracks, you will automatically begin Tracking.

Tracking

Now that you have spotted your first set of Animal Tracks, it's time to follow them until you locate the Animal itself.

There's slight RNG to how many tracks you need to follow before coming across the Animal. Hunting will tell you how many Tracks are required before finally reaching the Animal on this step.

Once you have tracked the Animal, it's time to attempt to Trap it.

Trapping

This is where the Traps you prepared earlier come into effect. Now that you have located the Animal, you need to Trap it.

Trapping an Animal is not guaranteed, as there is a chance you could fail to trap it. If you fail to Trap an Animal, it will "flee", leaving tracks as it runs away. If this occurs, Hunting will automatically return to the Tracking step, adding a few more required tracks to the process until you find the Animal again. This process repeats until you successfully Trap the Animal.

When you successfully Trap the Animal, you'll be granted Item & XP rewards. Hunting will then automatically return to Surveying to repeat the process.

One Trap is consumed on every Trap attempt. It is possible to acquire Trap Preservation chance.

Hunting Tools

Animals have a specific type of Hunting Tool that is used during the Hunting process. These are similar to how Woodcutting Axes work, where its automated and requires no equipping/unequipping on your part. Hunting automatically uses the required tool.

Each Tool can be upgraded in the Shop, providing bonuses to Animals that use this Tool only.

There are 4 types of Tools. Hunting tells you what Tool an Animal uses.

Item Rewards from Animals

Each Animal drops a selection of possible Items, but not all of them are guaranteed on each successful Trap.

Item drops have an individual percent chance to drop. On each successful Trap, each Item is rolled individually to determine if it drops, and how many you receive.

Hunting shows you this information before beginning to Hunt.

Animal Levels

Animals in Hunting can be levelled up individually, with a custom XP curve designed just for Hunting.

You gain XP for the respective Animal by Tracking & Trapping them.

Increasing the Animal Level will:

• Provide bonuses to Hunting for that respective Animal. Bonuses include interval reductions and increases in Trapping success chances.

• Increase the average Animal size & weight (See next section for details)

The maximum Animal Level is 20.

Animal Stats (Size & Weight)

When Trapping an Animal, you will see the following Stats:

• Size of the Animal

• Weight of the Animal

• Overall percentage value of the stat (Important)

• Rank of the Animal (A, B, C etc).

The overall percentage will be applied to the final Item Quantity and Hunting Skill XP you are rewarded (Eg. Skill XP * Overall % = Final Skill XP granted).

As mentioned above, increasing the Animal Level will increase the average size & weight of the Animal, eventually allowing you to consistently hit above 100% overall percentages.

Hunting Bait

Hunting includes a Bait mechanic to help you Trap animals, but it works slightly different to how Fishing Bait functions.

Each Animal has a preferred type of Bait they like. Using this specific Bait while Hunting will grant you "-10% Trapping Interval".

Hunting will tell you what the Bait is, and provides a simple toggle to enable/disable its usage.

One Bait is consumed per Trap attempt. Bait is created in Cooking.

Rare Animal Species

While Hunting, there is a small chance to come across a Rare Species of that Animal. Most Animals have 2 or more possible Rare Species that you could come across.

Rare Species have the ability to drop plentiful items or unique rare items (see below).

Collectable Items

Hunting includes the first iteration of our planned "Collectable Items" feature. These are rare Items that can be located in various Skills.

Collectable Items will eventually be stored within the Construction Skill. We plan to have Collectable items across the entire game.

In Hunting, these only come from very specific Rare Species of Animals as a possible drop.

Hunting Journal

There's a lot of stuff to keep track of in Hunting, so we have included a Hunting Journal to combine all of this important information in one section.

The Hunting Journal contains the following information:

• All Animals and their Animal Levels + Best Overall Stats.

• All possible Rare Species, hidden with a "?" until you find it.

• All possible Collectables, hidden with a "?" until you find it.

• A list of what bonuses are provided to you per Animal Level.

Synergies with other Skills

There are some planned synergies with other Skills. Not all of these are implemented, but here's some information on what is currently on the table.

Ranching

There will be two new Animals added to Ranching when Hunting releases - Elk & Caribou.

Before you can use them in Ranching, you'll need to Trap the specific "Tame" rare species of the respective Animal in Hunting.

Trapless Training via Strength or Agility

We have plans to implement "trapless" training methods for some Animals, which will have a Strength or Agility level requirement to do so. This will allow you to bypass the Trap preparation requirement for some Animals, and simply Trap them with the sheer force of your huge biceps, or by simply being fast as heck.

Construction

Apart from the Collectables, we also have plans to implement passive Hunting training methods such as construction of Bird Houses for passive Bird trapping, or Tree Netting for passive Butterfly trapping.

There are also plans for some minor environmental manipulation through the construction of Watchtowers, which will increase the speed and efficiency of Hunting.

Hunting Preview Conclusion

I hope you enjoyed this preview of Hunting. The next Major Update is not far away at all! Stay tuned for more information on when you can get your hands on this Skill.

🏋️ What the team have been working on 

Here’s what the team has been working on since our last post! Prat and Tapi both took plenty of time away, while Malcs and Coolrox were working for part of the break.

Development

Malcs:

• Finalised Hunting Skill, adding all required miscellaneous features like Mastery Guild Tasks, UI improvements, and bug fixing.

Coolrox:

• Continuing to work on the systems for Combat! 

  • The passives system is now feature-complete, pending internal testing

  • XP Calculations for combat encounters are now functional

  • Automatic and manual eating have been implemented

  • Ammo consumption for Ranged, and Rune consumption for Magic are working, along with Imbuements (which are similar to the Auroras in Melvor Idle). With these, the mechanical aspects of all 3 combat styles are complete.

  • The Combat Loot system (Enemy Drops + Dungeon Rewards) has also been implemented

  • Other fundamental core mechanics for Combat encounters have been completed.

  • Loadout system (Equipment sets) & toolbelt system mostly been complete.

• As you can see, this is a lot of progress on Combat. There’s a lot here to test, refine, and iterate on - but we’re getting much closer to combat being ready.

Game Design

Prat:

• Now that he’s back, he’ll be picking up where he left off:

  • Resuming his testing for Hunting, Beastcrafting and Thieving

  • Continuing to work on Astrology!

Artwork

Tapi:

• Pet artwork for current Pets have been completed.

• Has moved back to Crafting & Hunting artwork.

Conclusion

While a lot of the team was away, we’ve still made some pretty significant progress over the last few weeks! We’re looking forward to bringing you the next major update very soon - and we have lots more in progress to follow that. Please keep your feedback flowing, it’s always incredibly valuable to us! And as always, we’ll be hanging out in Discord chatting about the game - make sure to join us there.

- Althalus & Malcs