Thank you for making this, and for extending the deadline for me.
My Strategy:
After some thought and analysis, after reading everyone else’s research, and in the absence of a more specific evaluation function to optimize for . . . I’ve decided to go all-out on trying to bag at least one Crow That Breaks The Sky. They’re confirmed to be big enough to make the Hunters happy, they’re something Biologists have never seen before, and they’ve been slain 8 times in 260 weeks by a Hunter who wasn’t specifically trying. We have ten chances, and can improve on those odds significantly.
Thanks to simon, we know they’ll be in Scorchsand for day 6 and Thunderwood for the rest of our allotted span. The problem thus reduces to “what weapon and armor should the Hunter bring?” and “what should she do once she’s managed to catch one?”.
Three of the eight successes were achieved with a Windrider Crossbow; three more with a Stormblade. Considering how many weapons were available, that doesn’t look like a coincidence. Of these options, I like the Crossbow better: a (weak, possibly spurious) correlation suggests Bow-type weapons tend to work better against Avians in general, and common sense suggests using ranged weapons against flying enemies is a more robust idea than hacking at them with swords.
Armor type doesn’t seem to matter here. However, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Ground Greaves, on the (ridiculously flimsy) basis that:
.The other Legendary and potentially-Legendary monsters she fought (Bull-king of Heaven and Sliding Queen Shah) were only ever defeated while wearing Ground Greaves, suggesting they’re good for fighting Big Things.
.The Crow That Breaks The Sky has an element of ‘Something Weird’, and the weirdest possible element for a bird to use would be Stone, so Stone-type armor might help.
.The Crow That Breaks The Sky has been defeated once before while wearing Ground Greaves, so this choice probably doesn’t guarantee failure.
When and if she manages to get a Crow, I’d advise her to move to Scorchsand Shores, so she can try for a Raging Windrider. This is also something fairly large which Biologists have never encountered before, despite it being fairly common (possibly because it doesn’t leave tracks?): seems like another opportunity to please both clients (especially since Hunters can make use of its body to make more Windrider Crossbows).
My Final Advice to the Hunter:
Spend Week 6 in Scorchsand Shores, and Weeks 7-15 in Thunderwood Peaks. When and if you take down a Crow, go back to hunting in Scorchsand Shores. Use a Windrider Crossbow and Ground Greaves throughout.
(This strategy will probably benefit the Biologists more than the Hunters, so be sure to extract gold and apologies from them when they’re gasping in amazement at the new specimens you bring in.)
My One Mostly Irrelevant Piece Of Original Research That Doesn’t Piggyback On Anyone Else’s:
Weapons are (almost?) always made from the corpse of a specific type of creature. Aside from ‘Edged katana “Whisper”’ and ‘Rock-on-stick’, it’s fairly obvious which weapons match to which monsters. This doesn’t seem to be useful for our main task – I tried and failed to detect evidence of a “ha ha, I’m hitting you with your family’s corpses!” bonus – but since weapon elements are always the same as the element of the creature they were made from, this lets us fill in some gaps in the Biologists’ knowledge. Namely: Dull Vipers are Stone, Northern Badgers are Cold, and Macrophants are Lightning.
I’m afraid I didn’t intend for people to be able to add conditions to their plans. While something like that is completely reasonable I can’t find a place to draw the line between that and what would be too complex. The only system that might work is having everyone send me their own python code but that’s not fair on people who can’t code, and more work than I’m willing to do. Other answers haven’t included conditions and I think it wouldn’t be fair on them. I think my decision is that:
If you don’t get the time to respond with a time to move on from the Thunderwood Peaks then I’ll put it at a week (which I have chosen but won’t say here for obvious reasons) somewhere between 0 and 10 which I would guess best represents your intentions.
I’m really sorry about the confusion, I should’ve made that all clearer from the start!
Thank you for making this, and for extending the deadline for me.
My Strategy:
After some thought and analysis, after reading everyone else’s research, and in the absence of a more specific evaluation function to optimize for . . . I’ve decided to go all-out on trying to bag at least one Crow That Breaks The Sky. They’re confirmed to be big enough to make the Hunters happy, they’re something Biologists have never seen before, and they’ve been slain 8 times in 260 weeks by a Hunter who wasn’t specifically trying. We have ten chances, and can improve on those odds significantly.
Thanks to simon, we know they’ll be in Scorchsand for day 6 and Thunderwood for the rest of our allotted span. The problem thus reduces to “what weapon and armor should the Hunter bring?” and “what should she do once she’s managed to catch one?”.
Three of the eight successes were achieved with a Windrider Crossbow; three more with a Stormblade. Considering how many weapons were available, that doesn’t look like a coincidence. Of these options, I like the Crossbow better: a (weak, possibly spurious) correlation suggests Bow-type weapons tend to work better against Avians in general, and common sense suggests using ranged weapons against flying enemies is a more robust idea than hacking at them with swords.
Armor type doesn’t seem to matter here. However, I’m going to go out on a limb and say Ground Greaves, on the (ridiculously flimsy) basis that:
.The other Legendary and potentially-Legendary monsters she fought (Bull-king of Heaven and Sliding Queen Shah) were only ever defeated while wearing Ground Greaves, suggesting they’re good for fighting Big Things.
.The Crow That Breaks The Sky has an element of ‘Something Weird’, and the weirdest possible element for a bird to use would be Stone, so Stone-type armor might help.
.The Crow That Breaks The Sky has been defeated once before while wearing Ground Greaves, so this choice probably doesn’t guarantee failure.
When and if she manages to get a Crow, I’d advise her to move to Scorchsand Shores, so she can try for a Raging Windrider. This is also something fairly large which Biologists have never encountered before, despite it being fairly common (possibly because it doesn’t leave tracks?): seems like another opportunity to please both clients (especially since Hunters can make use of its body to make more Windrider Crossbows).
My Final Advice to the Hunter:
Spend Week 6 in Scorchsand Shores, and Weeks 7-15 in Thunderwood Peaks. When and if you take down a Crow, go back to hunting in Scorchsand Shores. Use a Windrider Crossbow and Ground Greaves throughout.
(This strategy will probably benefit the Biologists more than the Hunters, so be sure to extract gold and apologies from them when they’re gasping in amazement at the new specimens you bring in.)
My One Mostly Irrelevant Piece Of Original Research That Doesn’t Piggyback On Anyone Else’s:
Weapons are (almost?) always made from the corpse of a specific type of creature. Aside from ‘Edged katana “Whisper”’ and ‘Rock-on-stick’, it’s fairly obvious which weapons match to which monsters. This doesn’t seem to be useful for our main task – I tried and failed to detect evidence of a “ha ha, I’m hitting you with your family’s corpses!” bonus – but since weapon elements are always the same as the element of the creature they were made from, this lets us fill in some gaps in the Biologists’ knowledge. Namely: Dull Vipers are Stone, Northern Badgers are Cold, and Macrophants are Lightning.
I’m afraid I didn’t intend for people to be able to add conditions to their plans. While something like that is completely reasonable I can’t find a place to draw the line between that and what would be too complex. The only system that might work is having everyone send me their own python code but that’s not fair on people who can’t code, and more work than I’m willing to do. Other answers haven’t included conditions and I think it wouldn’t be fair on them. I think my decision is that:
If you don’t get the time to respond with a time to move on from the Thunderwood Peaks then I’ll put it at a week (which I have chosen but won’t say here for obvious reasons) somewhere between 0 and 10 which I would guess best represents your intentions.
I’m really sorry about the confusion, I should’ve made that all clearer from the start!
That’s fair. In that case, I’d just have her spend every day after the first in Thunderwood Peaks.
*after the first week