One of my goals in SOTTR is to get all the skills. I wasn’t able to do that in the last two games (Although I got close.)

However, now that I’m in San Juan and backtracking for raids and side missions, it’s looking like there won’t be enough earnable XP to get all the skills before the final mission. Since there’s only a handful of skills left, I thought I could revisit the hunting areas and kill anything that moves (has anybody else felt bad about killing the innocent monkeys sitting in trees minding their own business?)

Wearing some of the specialized outfit combinations boosts XP earned while hunting, so I assume this is a viable plan. Does anyone know, though, whether predators like wolves and jaguars respawn? I’ve noticed that animals lower on the food chain, like deer or llamas, respawn, but I’m not seeing the predators. 

Is that the way it’s supposed to be? Once you kill all the wolves in a hunting ground, are they gone for good?

 

If the Kuwaq Yaku Eagle respawns, I'm sure the Jaguars and black wolves/fox looking thing do.  I'm not really all that sure tbh. I never really hunted in this game (compared to previous 2) due to there being so many caches and 15xp random mat boxes/jars. 

I spent quite a while shooting birds and eagles to farm XP and get money.  The eagles in Tupac Shakur spawn on every visit.  The jaguar in the first bit of Peru much less often and the condor even less often than that.  The Empress jaguar appeared a couple of times but since then Lara just goes into a crouch and that's it.  The wolves in San Juan seem to appear more or less every visit, too.  Bear in mind, though, that birds give 25 xp and are so very common and very easy so that is actually the most effective way of building up XP, wood and feathers spawn all over the place.  Jaguar fights much harder, very little reward, too, with eagle feathers giving more money.  Much easier to get XP early in Shadow than Rise.  I am assuming the above applies to harder difficulties, I've only done it on the easy setting, I'm about to commence the game at Deadly Obsession and skip the middle two.

6 hours ago, SpirantCrayon22 said:

I spent quite a while shooting birds and eagles to farm XP and get money.  The eagles in Tupac Shakur spawn on every visit.  The jaguar in the first bit of Peru much less often and the condor even less often than that.  The Empress jaguar appeared a couple of times but since then Lara just goes into a crouch and that's it.  The wolves in San Juan seem to appear more or less every visit, too.  Bear in mind, though, that birds give 25 xp and are so very common and very easy so that is actually the most effective way of building up XP, wood and feathers spawn all over the place.  Jaguar fights much harder, very little reward, too, with eagle feathers giving more money.  Much easier to get XP early in Shadow than Rise.  I am assuming the above applies to harder difficulties, I've only done it on the easy setting, I'm about to commence the game at Deadly Obsession and skip the middle two.

Yeah, I discovered the happy-bird-dying phenomenon, a while back. I just keep forgetting to use it. It’s a grind, but I’m bird-watching-killing right now. In fact, I need to test something w/ the bird hunts. You are absolutely right about how easy they are to kill (you can walk right up to and put an arrow through w/out  them flying away). You also mentioned that birds pay 25XP, which is absolutely right. However, in an effort to increase that amount, Lara changed into the specialized top and bottom, which are supposed to boost XP when hunting animals.

However, the boost isn’t working for me. IOW, even w/ the outfit, birds are still yielding 25XP. I wonder if shooting birds somehow not count towards the “animal hunting”boost.

If anyone is interested, the area around the the Hunting Grounds Base Camp (Kuwaq Yaku) , is teaming with all kinds of animals—especially birds.

FYI

I should have mentioned that the 25 XP is with the Explorer outfit so is already boosted.  Some animals get +10, birds get +5.

Yes, bit of a grind but as I wrote a bit easier than "Rise", where I really went mad with too much time on my hands and cycled the Wilderness section before moving into the Soviet installation so much I had bought all first-level skills, probably all second-level skills and even the head-shot-lock - triple-head-shots really made many following sections so much easier, even on the hard setting.