Hunting and Skill Synergy

Problem: Hunting as of now does not link well with other skills.

Solution: Make the items collected usable for other skills.

One of RuneScape's most unique attribute as a MMO is there's no set path for your skills. You can choose to be a crafter one day and a slayer the next. Morever, the more diverse skills you have, the more useful stuff you can make. There are many player-made goods that utilize two, three, or more skills to complete, for example:

iron + coal ore -> steel bar -> steel arrowhead -> (1)

log -> arrow shaft (2)

chicken feather + (1) + (2) -> steel arrow

As shown above, even the making a simple arrow requires the use of FIVE skills to complete. This is call synergy. All the previous skills have been designed with synergy in mind, however, this synergy is lacking in the newest skill: Hunting.

This is a brief list of raw material created by Hunting:

various raw meats

various colored feathers

various animal hides

butterflies

new weapons, armor

misc for bolts, etc.

At first glance, it appears that Hunting is designed to synergize with cooking, fishing, fletching, and combat. However, both raw meat and feathers have previously established sources that's easier to collect from (chicken and fish ), more useful, and provide better exp. The new feathers can be used to fish new rainbow fish, but the rainbow fish is both slower than and heals less than lobster. The new bolt and animal hides appears useful for fletching and crafting exp, but neither can be player-made. The only way to create the new bolt and hide-armor is throw the shops. Because of this, every hunting ground we went, the ground is littered with raw webbit meat, feather, lion hides, claws, and teeth. No one find a use for them, so no one keeps them.

Essentially, none of products of Hunting interact with any other skill -- there's no SYNERGY

To alleviate this, I suggest the following:

animal bone -> sharpened animal bone -> (3)

lizard spine -> dried lizard spine -> (4)

ore -> bar -> crossbow shaft + (3) + (4) -> Hunter Bow (and upgrades)

claw, teeth -> sharpened claw, teeth + (3) + color feather -> Hunter bolts

claws and new bone can be sharpened

animal hide -> dried animal hide -> hunter camo

butterfly -> fed with herb -> enchanted butterfly + battlestaff -> enchanted battlestaff

This list is in no way exclusive, but compare it to the lack of skill synergy in Hunting at this moment, we can see that there's enormous room for improvement in Hunting.

Hunting is a great skill in many ways: it's fun, it's diverse, it's filled with new monsters and areas to explore. Why not make hunting even better by improving its synergy with other skills?