Hunt for seven species of Egyptian wildlife. Follow their tracks, lay traps, learn their migration patterns and join with other hunters to capture four members of each species.
French:
Chassez différents types d'animal en utilisant différentes méthodes. Plusieurs personnes et des outils/pièges sont nécessaires pour chaque méthode. Apprennez à suivre les trâces des migrations de chaque différente espèce.
German:
Die Jagd auf sieben Arten der ägyptischen Fauna. Folge ihren Spuren, lerne ihre Wanderwege kennen, lege Fallen und schliesse dich mit anderen Jägern zusammen, um vier Tiere jeder Art einzufangen.
Visit a University of Body to sign up for the test. You will be given a list of seven animals to capture. Each animal must be captured four times (for a total of 28 captures) in order to pass the test.
The statistic associated with this test (yet to be determined) will go up by one for every four animals captured.
Some animals appear in groups. In this case, each animal captured must be from a different group--i.e., you must find four distinct groups to complete your requirement for that animal.
German:
Besuche eine Universität des Körpers, um dich für den Test einzuschreiben. Du erhältst eine Liste mit 7 Tieren. Jede Tierart muss viermal gefangen werden (insgesamt müssen also 28 Tiere eingefangen werden), um den Test zu bestehen.
Die mit diesem Test verbundene Eigenschaft (noch nicht festgelegt) erhöht sich um eins für je vier gefangene Tiere.
Manche Tierarten erscheinen in Herden. In diesem Fall muß jedes gefangene Tier aus einer anderen Herde sein und du mußt vier verschiedene Gruppen finden, um die Anforderung für dieses Tier zu erfüllen.
Falcons roost in trees. At any given time, there are seven falcon's roosts in Egypt--i.e., seven randomly chosen trees which contain a roost.
To find a falcon, drop a rabbit and wait. Approximately five minutes later, a falcon will swoop from the sky and grab the rabbit. The falcon may be observed heading in one of the eight compass directions. This is just a message in the main channel: "A falcon swoops from the sky, seizes a rabbit in its talons, and flies off to the north." This direction will point the way towards the closest roost.
For the purposes of calculating the direction and the closest roost, a random adjustment of +-50 coordinates is applied to the location of each roost each time a falcon appears. This prevents the behavior of falcons from being purely deterministic--you can't determine the exact line on which a roost falls by calculating the exact coordinate where the falcon's path changes from one direction to another.
If multiple rabbits are sitting in the same area, only one is taken at a time. (To prevent 50 messages about falcons from showing up at once.)
A falcon's tree is found by running around and dropping rabbits to triangulate on its position.
Hunters get a menu option on trees (assuming they have one-click turned off) allowing them to climb the tree and check for falcons. Checking will take 30 seconds (no running while climbing) to discourage people from just blindly clicking on every tree in Egypt.
Once a roost has been found, the hunter collects credit for the find and the falcon moves to a new randomly selected tree.
Every time the season changes, all falcons move to new trees. (This keeps a roost from being permanently stuck on an unreachable tree.)
There are seven packs of fennecs in the desert. They are shy creatures, and hide when people are around, but may be caught by carefully-placed traps.
Each pack has a location. Packs migrate nightly--they will move 250 coordinates in a randomly-chosen direction. Fennecs only live in the desert; if their migration would take them onto non-desert terrain, a new random direction is chosen until an appropriate destination is found. (To prevent an infinite loop, give up and leave the fennecs where they are after about five tries.) In addition, fennecs are shy, and will never come within 250 coordinates of a caravan stop, school, or university.
A trap costs 1 rope and 4 boards to build. The design of a trap is a very personal thing; only the builder of a trap can successfully extract a fennec from it without the wily creature escaping. (i.e., no trading traps.) Traps must be built on sand.
Every night at midnight, any trap built within 250 coordinates of a pack will capture a fennec. (If there are multiple packs within range, the trap captures a fennec from the closest pack.) The trap must be checked within three Egyptian days (one real-world day), or the fox will escape.
Traps decay and fall apart after one Egyptian month (30 in-game days).
Any trap within 1000 coordinates of the fennecs will not catch one, but signs of their presence will be visible. (i.e., you check the trap and are told "your trap is empty, but you see signs of fennecs in the area".) This gives people an idea of where the fennecs appeared, so they don't have to check every trap every night.
Each fennec pack is slightly different, and described by a different adjective: ruddy, brown, furry, short-haired, pygmy, sharp-toothed, and bushy-tailed. A hunter will receive credit for catching a fennec from a given pack only once--passing the test will require finding four different packs.
Hippos, unlike fennecs and falcons, are not hard to find. Like sheep, they show up standing around. Unlike sheep, they stay where you find them until the season changes. When the season changes, the hippo population is replenished and the existing ones move around. New hippos will never be placed within 30 coordinates of any road or building.
Hippos always appear near water. The population is large enough that there is no difficulty at all in finding one.
Hippos are dangerous. (Seriously! Lots of people say they're the most dangerous animal in Africa.) You cannot approach within more than 7 coordinates of a hippo--attempting to go closer will stop you and give a message in the main channel: "The hippopotamus looks dangerous. You'd better keep your distance."
Note: Need to poll people to see if this is acceptable; some people were very opposed to the earlier proposal of hippos trampling anyone who approaches. Note that hippos will always spawn some distance from existing buildings and road; they'll be a potential navagation inconvenience, but they won't keep you from entering your house or visiting a university.
Get a group together when you go hippo hunting. You'll need all the help you can find.
Start by throwing lassos at the hippo. (Menu option: click the hippo, click "throw lasso".) It'd be nice if the game engine could show the lasso extending from your hand to the hippo's neck, but this isn't important. (Lassos cost one rope to make.)
Once a hippo has been lassoed, it will try to escape. Every fifteen seconds, the hippo will turn to point in a random direction. To keep the hippo from escaping, someone behind it must pull on their lasso two times. (Three times?) Lassos are on a 45-second endurance timer, so you'll need to have two different people pull once each, unless you've got some pretty good endurance food present.
If you don't restrain the hippo in the fifteen seconds before it turns again, it escapes. Hippos have short tempers and resent people trying to catch them--anyone who had a lasso on the hippo is trampled. Being trampled gives you a 60-minute endurance timer.
You need to keep the hippo restrained for seven minutes (just about long enough for that good endurance food to wear out) to capture it. Everyone who had a lasso on the hippo gets credit in the capture.
The radius of danger around the hippo is large enough that someone on one side of it will not be able to run to the other side in time to restrain it. Thus, you must have a group of people with members on every side ready to act.
Crocodiles lurk in the water. Once every week, the server will place crocodiles at random spots around Egypt. All water within a certain radius of these spots will be considered crocodile-infested. You cannot fish in crocodile-infested waters: "You spot crocodiles in the water; it's too dangerous to fish here!" (You can gather water, however.)
Drop a chicken on the ground near the water in a crocodile-infested area to attract a crocodile. The animal will show up (replacing the now-eaten chicken) within a few minutes.
Two people are needed to catch a crocodile. Both should throw a lasso at the animal. The crocodile will then attempt to attack the hunters. Every fifteen seconds, a message is seen in main chat: "The crocodile lunges towards <player name>!" The other hunter should then pull on his lasso to restrain the croc; failure to do so results in the first hunter being mauled before the croc escapes back into the water. Pulling on your lasso while the croc is approaching you also results in your being mauled and the loss of the croc.
(Note: The crocodile model doesn't actually move during any of this, other than perhaps to turn towards one of the players. There is no need to animate the animal.)
The endurance timer for restraining a croc is only 15 seconds--they aren't as difficult to restrain as a hippopotamus. Two people with no food should have no problem. (Which is a good thing, since only two people may rope a croc at the same time.)
Once a croc has been restrained for five minutes, it is captured and the local waters become safe once again. Both hunters get creadit for the capture.
There is one very large flock of flamingos in Egypt. Every day, they move to a new random location on the shore of some body of water. Catching a flamingo, once you have found the flock, is easy--just toss a lasso at one.
There are about 50 birds in the flock, and their numbers are replenished nightly when they move to a new location. A hunter may receive credit for only one flamingo per day--no catching four birds in the same location all at once.
Note: this animal is dramatically more difficult to implement than the previous ones. I'll be surprised (but happy) if it proves to be technically practical.
Gazelles appear in small herds. Gazelles will move away from any character who approaches them, at a rate slightly higher than the maximum running speed attainable by a player. Gazelles cannot cross water or steep terrain, but will attempt to run around it. A gazelle may only be caught by either driving it into a cul-de-sac of water or steep terrain, or by encircling it with several hunters.
Once a hunter has successfully come within a short distance of a gazelle, it may be easily captured by using a lasso on it. Only the person employing the lasso gains credit for the capture. (However, since gazelles appear in herds, a group of hunters can all gain credit by capturing several gazelles in short order.)
It would be very interesting if gazelle herds obeyed some form of population dynamics, with each herd replenishing its numbers through breeding and declining through hunting. Responsible hunters would leave a few animals in a herd, to allow it to regenerate; irresponsible ones would eliminate herds, leaving scarce populations for those who follow them. Game control laws might prove necessary. (If a system like this was implemented, care would need to be taken to ensure that responsible hunting would leave more than enough gazelles for everyone--remember that this is not intended to be a particularly difficult test. In addition, the population of herds should replenish itself through migration from outside Egypt, to prevent gazelles from ever going extinct.)
The Ancient Egyptians domesticated many different types of animals - sheep, cattle, goats, pigs, geese and later horses. Mostly they used the animals to supply milk, wool, meat, eggs, leather, skins, horns, fat, and manual labor. The cow was sacred to many goddesses, including Hathor, Bat, Isis and Nut. Bulls were sacred to Re as they had a strong connection with solar imagery to the ancient Egyptians. Cattle were branded with red-hot irons by the great estates belonging to the pharaohs, the rich owners and the different temples.
The cattle in Egypt were, in the Predynastic Period, a long horned variety of cattle, but a thinner short-horned variety became the norm during the Old Kingdom onwards. The cattle were used for sacrificial purposes as well as being draft animals.
Herdsman tended to the cattle, and grazed them in the Nile valley during the winter months, but they generally moved the cattle to the Delta during the hotter, summer months. The cattle seemed to often be called names relating to the goddess Hathor - "Golden One", "Shining One" and "Beautiful" are some examples.
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Although cattle were raised, beef was a luxury item because much of the meat of the cattle was used for religious ceremonies and offerings. Pork, on the other hand, was eaten regularly but was not used in the Egyptian religion. Goat meat, too, was eaten throughout Egypt, and even by upper class Egyptians. The skin of the goat was used as water containers and floating devices.
Here's where to add additional ideas for animals.