Board Thread:Suggestions forum/@comment-28970036-20180414102509

Hawks, kestrels, the smaller kind of eagles...

Falcons could be "lifted" from their stand, or the already existing cages and with a right click set to fly into the air, where they'd fly around in a spiraling radius out from the player till they found something to catch like a rabbit or smaller birds and they'd bring back the item drop to the player.

When one first captures a falcon they must stay with it for a long time to "break it's spirit" to reflect the real life method of gaining obedience from them in which a falconer would sit with the bird for days on end till it would accept a master. Taming a falcon as you might other birds is not an option as they lose their predatory instincts and are rendered useless for hunting.

NPCs may have falcons they use in their daily lives, for example, being a biased Dorwinrim and getting frustrated at pests such as rabbits and small birds that will steal my grapes, I would like to see vintner guards with falcons taking out the occasional bird.

Given it is strange to have a falcon as a non-item when it's on a stand, in a cage or "attached" to a player and the player may forget about the falcon, perhaps the falcon would follow them in the air and naturally target small animals while they were tracking the player rather than a spiral search?

There are options for this but it would be a wonderful thing to see, on top of that, if rodents spawned, imagine all those open feast tables that would be subject to theft from vermin. Even for orcs rat meat might be an interesting menu widening option.

So the companion suggestion is rodents, voles, mice, rats, imagine the big gnarly rats that live in mordor!

A good semi-lore example is Tolkien's in the works character that didn't make it to the final draft of Beren and Luthien, the prince of cats kept a few giant mice or rats that wandered round his halls so he could hunt them. While the big ole' evil kitty isn't cannon, it's a suggestion such things exist in Tolkien's world, and where giant talking hounds exist, I'm certain that the odd rodent might also. Would also be interesting to see the odd farmer out in bree keeping a cat to keep those rodents at bay! Cats are somewhat besides the point but clearly Tolkien had a mind for them to exist in some way in middle earth however if that is to be taken as part of the suggestion then I would say Elves shouldn't have cats, perhaps hunting hounds to respect the early versions of Beren And Luthien.

This post started with a focus on falconry and expanded somewhat, so perhaps it should simply be hunting animals...

So in terms of birds, my idea having expanded somewhat in my rambling...

Hawks, kestrels, eagles, anything I might forget, owls would be cool, even if simply in the wild, maybe they're harder to tame, perhaps for hunting birds there could be an extra tree bit, that is to say a more shaped branch they could sit on along with new items such as a falconry stand, so in the wild you would see birds sitting on these little branches.

Cats as a hunting animal would not follow the player to hunt and insstead would wander a radius, sometimes sitting and lazing around, every now and then if they see a rat or some other rodent, a vole perhaps, THEY POUNCE. (Drop is dropped at the nearest door because they're cats of course, I can see people putting droppers at their doors because of this mechanism, that'd be hilarious!

Hounds are brilliant companions, they cannot fly but will follow you as a wolf does, however, they will take initiative running out from the player and tackling deer or elk, perhaps rabbits and take the meat back to the player, different hounds will be suitable for different game, perhaps some hounds can handle more than others, some might be best for keeping away other wild predators, good god I came up with something else, I'm now suggesting foxes as an example of a wild predator, lotr wolves could be a seperate entity and be more aggressive and attack livestock... Oh god, it sounds good, maybe I'll regret it, who knows...

You know what, I think that pretty much wraps it up, we all know about Huan the hound, but people like their animals, there could even be NPCs that you can "buy" animals from however I believe the focus should be on breeding as oppose to purchase, so the price of a good animal should be way up with horns to summon troops, perhaps these NPCs could also sell snares for catching rabbits and like other traps for rodents, okay, I'm stopping I swear, wait, what about... no okay, let's let people comment, see where this goes... 