Naturalist TIP: How to deal with buggy spawns

[zPhoenix]

Yes, the game is extremely buggy and animals don't always spawn where they are supposed to. 

 

But you can use the game's bugs and bad design to your advantage if you are having trouble getting your samples:

 

• Stock up with the max sedative rounds.
• Go to the place where the animal was supposed to spawn.
• If the animal (or one of a set you are looking for) is not there, go about 100-200 yards/meters away somewhere where you have no line of sight and wait for about a minute.
• Return and you'll likely find a different set of animals there.  You can usually tell it is a fresh animal because it will have more than 1 star (it goes down to one star when sedated due to all the shots).
• Shoot, take your samples.
• Go away 100-200y/m again and repeat the process until you are out of ammo.
•  
• DO NOT turn in all of the samples at once.  Only turn in samples that you have an excess off (for example more than 3) or those that don't have a stamp in the book.
• Once a category has stamps for all of its animals you can turn in the category (from the book... yeah, go figure, but that is where it is).
• After turning in a category set the stamps get erased, time to turn in one of each from your pouch.

 

If you are an old player this is all obvious, but for new naturalists this is quite obscure.  I hope this helped.