Rats are the small end of hunting. One health, no attack, and back again in half an hour — they are the huntable you put around a granary or a cellar for atmosphere and a steady trickle of ingredients, not the one you build an expedition around.
The tutorial below is filmed on the deer, but the system — respawn points, security, range, the owner menu — is identical.
The numbers
- Health — 1
- Damage to you — none
- Notices you at — 15 metres
- Respawn — about thirty minutes
Two of those are worth dwelling on. One health means anything kills a rat, first time, every time. And fifteen metres is half the deer’s notice range, so you can get much closer before one bolts.
Thirty minutes against three hours is the real point: a rat comes back six times as often as a deer or a wolf. A cellar with a few rats in it is close to a renewable supply.
What it drops
Rats are the exception to the pattern. They drop no hide and no carcass — nothing for the tanner, nothing for the butcher. Everything a rat gives you is a body part:
- Rats tail — most kills
- Rats foot — up to four, on a good many kills
- Rats tooth — up to three, occasionally
Where it goes
Tails, feet and teeth are crafting ingredients, and unlike deer and wolf drops none of them feeds a system recipe. What colonists have invented for them is their own work and not ours to publish — but that is where they go.
If you are hunting for leather or for meat, hunt deer instead. Rats are for the ingredients and the CXP.
Rangers
A ranger earns 1 CXP for a rat.
That is the lowest in the game, and it is meant to be — a rat costs one hit and comes back six times as fast as anything else. Anyone can loot the body, ranger or not.
Party hunting does not apply here in any real sense. A rat dies to the first hit, so there is never a second hunter to share it with.
Setting one up
A rat you have just rezzed is black, like every huntable before its owner sets it up.
Left-click for the owner menu:
- Set point — set several around a barn, a cellar, a wharf. Each respawn picks one at random
- Set range — fifteen metres is where a rat notices you by default, and you can bring that in further
- Security — you alone, your colony, your group, or anyone in character with a HUD
- Hovertext and name
- On
Modifying it
Fully modifiable, with the same three rules as every huntable:
- Keep it near the original size. Range is measured from the centre of the root prim, so a scaled-up rat can end up with its own centre out of reach.
- Keep the core prim as the root when you relink. The scripts cannot live in a prim of your own.
- Name your copy the same. It has to be called
rat.
The product page is here: Rats — SL Colonies