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This article is about the Hunter activity. For the Fremennik achievement, see Big Game Hunter (achievement)

Big Game Hunter is a Hunter activity with requirements ranging from level 75 to 96 Hunter and from level 55 to 76 Slayer. It is a non-combat, single-player activity where players hunt dinosaurs with boss-like mechanics.

Big Game Hunting 101

Provided that a grace of the elves is being worn, Seren spirits can appear during the activity.

Map of Big Game Hunter

There are nine different species of dinosaur to hunt on Anachronia, shown in the table below. Each species is found in a separate "arena", which is a fairly open space in the overworld. Arenas are spread out around Anachronia, as shown on the map. Dinosaurs exist as non-interactive NPCs in the overworld arenas and can only be interacted within encounters. Players must have certain level requirements in Hunter and Slayer for each dinosaur, both of which can be boosted. Each dinosaur also requires a specific bait to be lured and caught. Experience values in the table below are based on the experience gained after completing the hunt when skinning the corresponding dead dinosaur. Keep in mind that when facing multiple dinosaurs in one encounter, the experience rates are higher.

Players can begin an encounter by clicking on the bait pad at one of the nine arenas with the appropriate bait in their inventory. When the encounter is started, the player enters a new instance of the arena, and one to three dinosaurs spawn. Typically, only a single dinosaur will spawn in an instance, but there is a 1/16 chance of two dinosaurs being spawned in the encounter, and a 1/160 chance of three dinosaurs being spawned. If an encounter is failed, the next encounter is guaranteed to only have a single dinosaur.

The objective is to kill the dinosaur(s) by reducing their life points to zero. Each dinosaur, regardless of species, has 90,000 life points. Players reduce life points via a mechanic unique to Big Game Hunter: firing poison-tipped wooden spears from terrain objects known as scorpions. The player must avoid the dinosaur(s) during the encounter; if they stay too close to the dinosaur for too long, the dinosaur will notice them and flee. The encounter can end in one of three ways:

The player successfully hunts and kills all dinosaurs. The player is caught by a dinosaur. The player leaves the encounter instance by using the "Leave" option on the bait pad, walking outside of the arena, teleporting away, or otherwise being removed from the instance.

Whenever a player kills the dinosaur(s), or leaves the encounter, a counter is advanced; being caught by the dinosaur will not advance it. After the counter reaches between five and seven , the species being hunted will go into hiding, and the player must wait an hour until they can hunt them again, unless they use a dinosaur lure to reset the cooldown immediately. Additionally, only one species of dinosaur can be active at a time; if a player wishes to hunt another species with one already active, they will be prompted to send the first species into hiding when they attempt to start an encounter with the new species.

The arena instance will remain throughout a session (across multiple encounters) until the player leaves. In each session, the dinosaurs will have random resistances and/or weaknesses to the different kinds of poisons, and tall grass in which the player can hide will spawn randomly. These random features remain constant from encounter to encounter, throughout that session, until the dinosaurs go into hiding, even if the player leaves the instance and later returns. They will be rerolled at the start of the subsequent encounter, even if the player never leaves the instance.

The main objective of an encounter is to kill the dinosaur(s) by reducing their life points to 0, but many different tasks are necessary to achieve this. Some of these tasks can have time reduced unlocking quick traps. The following table sums up all available activities, materials required to perform them (obtained during the hunt), the correlating experience points granted to the relevant skill, as well as the time taken to perform each action:

Activity Skill Experience Time taken (without quick traps) Time taken (with quick traps) Materials required Cutting jungle logs 1-99 Varies (Woodcutting drops) N/A N/A Cutting jungle vines 1-99 Varies (Woodcutting drops) N/A N/A Creating wooden spear 10 4 ticks (2.4 seconds) N/A 1 jungle log Tipping spear with poison 1-120 5 ticks (3 seconds) N/A 1 spear Build scorpion 250 10 ticks (6 seconds) 7 ticks (4.2 seconds) 1 jungle log, 1 jungle vine Arm scorpion 250 10 ticks (6 seconds) 7 ticks (4.2 seconds) 1 poison-tipped spear Build pressure plate 250 15 ticks (9 seconds) 10 ticks (6 seconds) 1 jungle log Place bait on pressure plate 250 4 ticks (2.4 seconds) 2 ticks (1.2 seconds) N/A Poison - weakness (30,000 damage) 150 N/A N/A N/A Poison - normal (15,000 damage) 100 N/A N/A N/A Poison - resistance (7,500 damage) 50 N/A N/A N/A Skin dinosaur See above 10 ticks (6 seconds) N/A N/A

Materials required for a hunt can only be gathered and prepared during an active encounter; however, any unused materials in the player's inventory (including jungle logs, jungle vines, wooden spears, and poison-tipped wooden spears) are retained between encounters as long as the player does not leave the arena instance or log out. When starting a new encounter, after the dinosaur has been killed or has fled, all progress made during the previous encounter will be lost (the pressure plate and any scorpions built are destroyed, and any spears loaded into the scorpions are lost). Therefore, gathering resources and preparing poisoned spears before building traps will help avoid losing materials if spotted. Gathering more resources than needed for one hunt can also be advantageous.

Big Game Hunter takes place in instances, which are near copies of the overworld arenas of the dinosaurs. The locations can be viewed in § Dinosaurs. When a player starts a Big Game Hunter encounter, a unique instance of the arena is created for that individual player, and as such, Big Game Hunter has no player-to-player interaction. In an instance, the arena has many interactive features (unlike the overworld, which has very few). These features are core mechanics of the activity, with each arena having the same general set of features. Their placements are randomly generated for each new instance, although instances can be re-used for multiple encounters.

Since the Big Game Hunter encounter areas are so large, in addition to the nature of this activity requiring players to be able to observe as much of the region as possible, it is recommended that players adjust their graphics settings during this minigame to accommodate for a medium or greater draw distance (or enable the "Far" draw distance setting on the mobile client). (Basically, make sure that the camera shows as big an area as possible.) More restrictive draw distance settings ("Low" or "Near") may make evading dinosaurs and locating resources more challenging.

Bait pad [ edit | edit source ]

The bait pad is where an encounter is started. Starting an encounter requires having the appropriate kind of bait in the inventory. Starting an encounter creates a new instance of the arena for the player to hunt in and immediately spawns 1-3 dinosaur(s) to begin the encounter. Once the dinosaur(s) in an encounter have been hunted or fled, it can be used to spawn more dinosaurs, provided the player still has bait. It can also be right-clicked to end the encounter.

Bait box [ edit | edit source ]

There is a "Pile of planks" bait box hotspot by the main stairs just east of the base camp lodestone, immediately south of the lectern which can be used to store increasing amounts of bait. Bait may be noted when placed inside the base camp box; but at each individual arena bait must be unnoted to be put in the boxes. Each tier of bait boxes only needs to be built once; the construction, upgrades, and inventory apply to all bait boxes across Anachronia.





Tier Resources Time to complete (in hours) Other requirements Unlocks Wood Vines Leaves Hides Stone Clay Tier (Sleeping quarters) 0 1 2 3 Tier 1 500 0 0 500 0 0 1.67 1.11 0.56 0.28 Town Hall (tier 1) Unlocks access to a bait box on Anachronia. Has a capacity of 5 for each bait. Tier 2 5,000 0 0 5,000 0 0 N/A 11.11 5.56 2.78 Town Hall (tier 1) Unlocks access to a larger bait box on Anachronia. Has a capacity of 15 for each bait. Tier 3 100,000 0 0 100,000 0 0 N/A 111.11 55.56 Storehouse (Tier 3)[a 1] Unlocks access to a larger bait box on Anachronia which acts as a deposit box. Has a capacity of 50 for each bait.

^ Has an actual requirement of Town Hall (Tier 1) but due to the resources required to build it, the Storehouse is required in practice.

Tier 3 dinosaur meat can not be stored in the box as it is not used to bait other dinosaurs.

Trees and vines [ edit | edit source ]

There are always two trees and two jungle vines around the edges of the arena. The locations of the trees are the same as in the overworld, but the jungle vines only appear during the encounter; these too are also static spawns. Logs can be fletched into spears and used for constructing scorpions and the pressure plate. Vines are only used for scorpions. With a Tier 1 Hunter Lodge at the base camp, players have a 10% chance of gathering an additional log or vine.

Players have a 75% chance of receiving an additional log/vine per cut with 99 Woodcutting and the crystal hatchet.[1]

Tall grass [ edit | edit source ]

There are anywhere from 0 to 2 patches of tall grass in each encounter. Walking into a patch of tall grass allows the player to avoid detection by any dinosaur(s) present, even if the player is within the dinosaur's detection radius. Standing in tall grass does not reduce the current detection level while the player remains within the dinosaur's detection radius, but the detection level will decrease as normal once outside of the radius.

Poisonous frogs [ edit | edit source ]

The arena will also have three colours of around six or seven poisonous frogs each: sky-blue, golden, and phantasmal (red). If the Tier 3 Hunter Lodge is constructed, only two frog variants will be present. Using a frog repellent removes one of the frogs from the encounter until the next time the dinosaur species goes into hiding, which can be combined with the Lodge to leave only one colour.

The spawns of each colour of frog are in the same location from encounter to encounter. Once spawned, however, they may wander in a small radius. Frogs are used to tip wooden spears with poison of their corresponding colours. Once their poison has been applied to the spear, the frog will turn green and be non-interactive for a few minutes until their poison replenishes, at which point their colour changes back to normal.

Pressure plate [ edit | edit source ]

Near the centre of the arena is a pressure plate hotspot that can be built with a single jungle log. Once built, the player can place bait on the pressure pad to lure the dinosaurs. At least one scorpion must be built and armed before the pressure plate can be baited. A warning will be issued if not all three scorpions are built; however, this warning can be toggled off (Option 2 will toggle off the warning). Once the bait is placed, a cutscene appears where the dinosaur eats the bait and triggers the trap, which can be skipped when the player has successfully hunted five dinosaurs. Once the cutscene is over, the player is moved a safe distance away from the dinosaur.

In encounters with multiple dinosaurs, one dinosaur is killed at a time. It must be skinned before the plate can be used again, but there will be no need to rebuild the pressure plate.

An unarmed scorpion that has been constructed upon a pile of rubble, awaiting ammunition.

There are three scorpion hotspots that can be constructed from piles of rubble around the pressure plate. Each one requires one jungle log and one vine. Once built, each scorpion can be armed with poison-tipped spears. The ammunition can be retrieved at any time before baiting the pressure plate if a mistake was made. It is recommended to right-click to arm them with a specific colour of ammunition rather than having to pick one using the crafting interface.

When the scorpions fire, generally one of them gets destroyed in the first attempt, and the second ends up getting destroyed in the second attempt. When baiting a new dinosaur out, all built scorpions are destroyed. In encounters with multiple dinosaurs, all three scorpions are kept intact after each dinosaur kill.

Dinosaur movement [ edit | edit source ]

The dinosaurs will move in a set pattern around the arena. This pattern often follows a circular shape. There are additionally two special occurrences which will affect a dinosaur's movement pattern, but these can only occur in encounters with a single dinosaur. In encounters with two or three dinosaurs, these can't occur until all but one dinosaur are successfully killed.

When multiple dinosaurs are in a single encounter, the detection radius decreases, and the dinosaurs go in a set pattern of their own and do not roar, meaning they will not reverse their tracks. When one dinosaur remains, it acts as normal.

If the dinosaur steps on the player, any interaction will be interrupted, and they will be bound for a few seconds. Freedom and Anticipation can be used to prevent or escape the bind.

The dinosaur can roar randomly, disabling its detection radius for several seconds and stopping its movement. When the dinosaur finishes roaring, it will immediately begin to move in a reverse pattern of its previous one. Subsequent roars will once again reverse the pattern, and a roar may occur any number of times during an encounter. This only occurs when one dinosaur is active in the encounter.

In tier 2 and 3 dinosaur encounters, jadinkos can randomly spawn from the ground in single encounters.

During this period, the dinosaur's detection radius will be disabled and movement will stop. When the dinosaur resumes movement, it will head directly towards the jadinkos to eat them. After eating one or more jadinkos, the rest will immediately disappear, allowing the dinosaur to resume normal movement. A dinosaur sometimes roars shortly after eating a jadinko. If it does, it does not trace back the path it took to get to the jadinko; instead, it follows its normal set path in the opposite direction.

Each dinosaur has a detection zone surrounding it. The detection zone is visible on the ground as a coloured circle, and also on the minimap; however, the minimap is not reliable. When the dinosaur has not noticed the player at all, the zone will be blue. If the player is inside the circle, it will turn green, then yellow, orange, and finally red. If the player remains in the circle for too long while it is red, a cutscene will play and the dinosaur will flee and destroy traps, forcing the player to restart the encounter again. When this happens, the next encounter will only have one dinosaur.

It takes a total of 6 seconds (10 game ticks) within the circle before the dinosaur detects the player, after which a cutscene plays showing the player escaping. With a Tier 2 Hunter Lodge at base camp, players are given an additional 2.4 seconds (total of 8.4 seconds or 14 game ticks) before the detection happens when the detection ring is red.

Hiding in the tall grass will hide the player from the dinosaur and prevent the player from being detected, but will not reduce the dinosaur's alert level if the player is within the detection range. The walls of the arena are generally not safe, and sometimes the dinosaur may linger for more time than expected, resulting in it detecting the player and fleeing. Some arenas, however, have safe areas around the edges, particularly at the exits, in which the player can safely stand. Some areas are safe only when the dinosaur is moving in particular pattern(s).

When a dinosaur roars or jadinkos are spawned or eaten, the detection zone around the dinosaur will be temporarily disabled and disappear. During this time, the player can freely move as closely as they like to the dinosaur without being detected. When the detection zone reappears, however, it will be the same colour as it was when it deactivated. Baiting the pressure plate resets the detection timer.

Poison damage [ edit | edit source ]

When a spear is fired from a scorpion, it will inflict damage based on the colour of poison. One colour will deal 30,000 damage, another colour will deal 15,000, and the last colour will deal 7,500. This means that three hits from the strongest poison will kill a dinosaur instantly. The poison damage is rerolled every time dinosaurs go into hiding. At the start of their next encounter of a new session, the player will need to start fresh to work out which poison is the dinosaur's weakness.

Activities and timing [ edit | edit source ]

Cutting logs and vines act as normal woodcutting, and normal boosts to cut rate and double cut chance apply, including from the lumberjack auras, perfect juju woodcutting potion, and nature's sentinel outfit. Additionally, the Tier 1 Hunter Lodge gives a 10% chance of a double cut. Fletching wood into spears is done as with normal fletching.

The remaining activities each have a progress bar that appears over their hotspot, trap, or frog that they are done on. Progress is retained if the activity is interrupted, and is accounted for separately for each activity. Items required to perform the activity must be present in the inventory. However, the items are not consumed until the activity is complete, allowing the player to make progress towards multiple activities at once without the items required to complete all of them.

If a player begins arming a scorpion by left-clicking on it, a crafting interface will pop up to select the colour of poison to use. As an alternative, the player can right-click to select a specific poison type and skip the crafting interface. Once arming has begun, left-clicking the scorpion will continue where the player left off if they still have the spear of the type they wanted to arm. The player does not have to restart the arming process if they no longer have the spear type they wanted to arm in inventory.

All dinosaurs are guaranteed to give some dinosaur bones, hides and scales, and their respective raw meat; all dinosaur types also have separate secondary drop tables. Hides will commonly be damaged.

Along with these 100% drops, a secondary table roll is always guaranteed from each dinosaur. Most of this table is generally consistent across all dinosaurs, with a few drops unique to that dinosaur's tier - for example, tier 1 dinosaurs can drop ciku seeds, tier 2 dinosaurs have guarana seeds, while tier 3 dinosaurs have drops like raw rocktails and uncut dragonstones.

All dinosaurs have a 1/101 chance of dropping a dragon mattock, with an equal drop rate across all tiers.

The tier 3 dinosaurs have unique drops of their own - the superior long bone, tribal fin and volcanic fragments from the pavosaurus rex, oculi apoterrasaur and malletops respectively. These three components are required to create the terrasaur maul, a tier 80 two-handed melee weapon effective against ranged opponents.

While hunting, a player may receive compacted hides, a reinforced dinosaur pelt, or a dinosaur rib bone, resources used in upgrades of the Anachronia base camp.

In addition to the drops listed above, all of the Big Game Hunter dinosaurs have a 1/50 chance of dropping one of the following totem pieces:

In encounters with multiple dinosaurs that are successfully cleared additional experience and loot is obtained from the next dinosaur skinned in line from that encounter. For example, in a double encounter, the second dinosaur will yield double experience and loot compared to the first dinosaur. As such, in triple encounters, experience and loot is tripled respectively.

Tier 3 dinosaurs are unique in the fact that the multiplier applies differently to their unique drops - they are not multiplied, but the drop rate is drastically increased instead, making them more common in double and triple encounters.

There are several coloured texts for drops received; blue for secondary commons, green for 100%, orange for unchecked dinosaurs and terrasaur maul pieces, and purple for special drops, such as a dragon mattock or totem pieces.

Obtaining the Terrasaur Maul Pieces [ edit | edit source ]

The following table shows the paths that are required for obtaining parts of the terrasaur maul.