Starting the Journey - Gnawnia

Novice

Welcome to MouseHunt! This is a fun game that you will surely come to love and cherish. It’s a simple game, a simple formula and just a lot of fun.

When you first launch the game, you are presented with a choice of trap: the glue trap or the spring trap. Let’s analyze what is best.

Tacky Glue Trap: 70 power, 40% attraction, 2 luck, stale cheese effect
High Tension Spring Trap: 75 power, 5% power, 20% attraction, 2 luck, no cheese effect

At first glance, it would appear that the way to go would be the high tension spring; after all, it has more power, the same luck, and better cheese freshness (more on this in a minute) rating than the tacky glue trap (all with the same base). However, appearances can be deceiving. The thing to remember about Mousehunt at the early ranks is that everything is based on attraction. While the High Tension Spring appears to be the better choice for the power, the Glue Trap will actually serve you better at the beginning of the game.

Easy decision: go with the glue trap.

As for the cheese, as mentioned in this example, stick with cheddar. Yes, it has a poor attraction rating, but your profits will be insanely low at this point if you use Swiss or brie cheese, and while you’ll make a profit with marble, it won’t be great enough to justify not using cheddar. Stick with cheddar exclusively throughout the novice ranking. (you start the game with 35 pieces of marble; you can either sell these pieces back to the cheese shop or use them, it’s your choice, but my recommendation is still the same: use cheddar for now).

At the novice level, you have access to the Meadow. There are 17 breeds of regular mice and 1 rare breed in the meadow. All 17 “regular” breeds can be attracted with normal cheese, but the Tiny Mouse has a special fondness for SuperBrie+. It is difficult to attract him without it, but not impossible. The one rare breed, the Black Widow, can be found almost anywhere, and it is important to remember that you do not hunt for the Black Widow, it simply finds your trap once in a blue moon, so don’t fret about it.

Next steps

Your first 5 hunts are scripted, and once they are finished, you’ll have around 2,200 gold; enough to buy the next base, the Wood Base with Target. It enhances your attraction significantly and is the base of choice to use for a long time. Why? Remember what I said: attraction is everything at the beginning ranks. Just like in the restaurant business – location, location, location…in Mousehunt, its attraction, attraction, attraction. Pair the glue trap with the target base, and viola! 60% attraction!

Not long after this, you’ll be faced with another decision. You’ll have enough points (2,100) to be eligible to purchase the next two traps very soon, so what do you choose – 500 pound spiked crusher or the Mary trap? Of course, attraction, attraction, attraction. But wait…the spiked crusher costs half as much! Ah! Decisions, Decisions.

The cost differential could be a huge factor for a very new player, though not as obstructive as it was when I played this level of the game almost 3 years ago. At this point of the game, the power bonus of the spiked crusher really isn’t that big of a deal compared to the added 6% attraction of the Mouse Mary trap. The decision isn’t as easy as the first, but it should be: Go with Mouse Mary and ride her…ride her good! Other guides will tell you that you’ll be able to get to higher traps faster with the crusher, but the statistics would prove otherwise: if you’re attracting less mice, you’re catching less mice, and making less gold.

This is pretty much it for the novice rank. Lather, rinse, repeat. If you manage to get enough points for the trebuchet, go ahead and buy it, but we’re not going to discuss it in this section.

Novice Tips and Things to Accomplish

• To maximize profits, only use cheddar cheese. Use marble to level more quickly. Do NOT use Swiss or Brie at this level.
• Buy 30 or more pieces of cheese
• Catch more than 6 different types of mice
• Upgrade your trap
• Sound the horn 25 times in one day
• Catch a Dwarf Mouse that has Plankrun’s Journal Pages.
• Catch a Mole Mouse (semi-rare).
• Complete an easy offer on the donate page (like installing a Facebook application) and you’ll get a few pieces of Super Brie+ cheese AND the lucky golden shield, which gives you +7 to your luck rating.
• Visit the forums, talk with other users. There are lots of people out there willing to help you.
• Don’t beg people for gold. You may find a friend who will be willing to give you gold for nothing in return, but do not expect this to be a common occurrence.
• Have fun! The best is just around the bin. 

Recruit

The Recruit ranking is relatively new to Mousehunt. In fact, the first 4 levels now used to only be two levels. We old timers were stuck at level two for what seemed like ages with nothing but brown, grey and white mice to catch! Fun times!

As a Recruit, you now have access to the Town of Gnawnia and a few new mice. For the most part, the Town of Gnawnia is very similar to the Meadow, but there are more profitable mice here. When you have the necessary points, 11,000, you’ll want to upgrade your Mouse Mary trap to either the Trebuchet or Rocketine:

My recommendation is to go with the Trebuchet. You’ll rarely have a piece of cheese go stale with this trap (paired with the Wood Base with Target), and the power will enable you to start catching those bionic and steel mice with more regularity.

If you manage to catch a Burglar mouse, you may notice that he’s dropped some new cheese that you cannot buy: Gilded Cheese. For now, just hold onto it. That cheese is used to attract (albeit rather poorly) the Master Burglar mouse who holds a crown jewel that gives you access to ultimately reach the King’s Gauntlet. We’ll talk more about the King’s Gauntlet much later in the FAQ (because while you CAN hunt there at lower levels, you won’t be able to go very far into the Gauntlet without traps that are found much later in the game).

My opinion is that you should NOT worry about catching a Master Burglar at this level of the game.

Recruit Tips and Things to Accomplish

• You need the Trebuchet to be successful going forward.
• Marble is acceptable to use
• Collect Guilded Cheese from Burglars but don't use it yet.

Apprentice

Once reaching this level, you’ll have access to the Windmill, another location with relatively weak mice that are ripe for the catching!

A new trap is probably available to you now, the Swiss Army Trap.

The SAMT is a great early game trap that will make mince-meat pie out of most mice in the region of Gnawnia. Once you have access to this trap, you should buy it and use it paired with the Wooden Base with Target.

Other than that, there is not much to do at this level but just catch mice and go forward. I’m sorry, I wish I had more to offer for you here, but the simple truth is, the entire early game is vastly different than from when I played, so other than general guidelines, there is not much I can offer. Just keep sounding your horn, save your gold, and when you level up to Initiate, come back to this page for some more help!

Initiate

Now you think you can conquer the world. Well, the world is a cruel, cruel place. And there are mice out there just waiting for you to get your hopes up. An additional area will open up for you to hunt in: the Harbor. You may notice a disclaimer when you enter the harbor: “Mice may steal supplies should you fail to catch them!” Don’t fret, it’s not that big of a deal, and you’re going to have to get used to it. You’re going to run into some mice that will steal your gold. You’re going to have some mice steal your cheese. It’s just how it works. You’ll catch many more mice, however, to more than make up for it in spades.

If you have been using the Mouse Mary trap exclusively and have not upgraded your trap to the Trebuchet or Rocketine, it’s time to make a switch. Some people will tell you to keep it because of the attraction, and seeing how much I’ve stressed this point, you’d think I’d agree. Problem is, the trebuchet and the rocketine alike are simply too powerful to ignore, and you’re going to need the firepower to catch the Pirate Mouse in the harbor. He’s a tricky bastard that needs to be dealt with accordingly.

We also need to upgrade our cheese. Cheddar was fine for the frail mice, but in the harbor, you need to upgrade to marble or even Swiss. Granted, it cost 5 times more than cheddar, but you’ll attract, on average, 17 more mice per 100 to marble than cheddar.

We also need to consider the next base, the stone base. Granted, you’ve had access to it for some time now, but have had little need for it in Gnawnia. Now you may want to consider it. It has a nice 10% power bonus, but it also has no attraction bonus. For collectors, of course buy it, but it can honestly be skipped; later in the game, you’ll be able to buy the bamboozler base which makes the Stone Base obsolete.

Next Steps

You’ll continue in the harbor for awhile, catching mice, hoping to snag a rich pirate mouse here and there. You’ll also want to catch a granite mouse that has the map piece to the Calm Clearing, which is located in The Whisker Woods. You can’t travel there until you are a journeyman, but you need to get this map piece to progress further into the game.

There are many varying opinions on how to handle the latter stages of the apprentice level. Some people will tell you to keep plugging away with the Swiss Army trap which will cut through many mice, improving your stats further. Let me offer you an alternative: if you’ve been playing this game up to this point, you probably enjoy it. You probably also waste real money on stupid things, like eating at Chipotle 4 times a week; instead, eat there 3 times a week and donate $10 to the developers in return for 500 Super Brie pieces of cheese.

Now, I’m not saying you have to do this; it’s just what I did. I felt like supporting the game that I was playing for free. If you are completely against this, by all means, hunt with the Swiss Army trap because it’s what you’ll use FOR A VERY LONG TIME. I instead donated $$$, got SB+ cheese, sold it in the marketplace, and made a boat load of gold in return, enough to buy the Force Field trap, which is much, much better than the rocketine, trebuchet, or the Swiss army trap.

The only reason I say buy it IF you donate is because the cost of the FF: it is in the 240,000 gold range. That’s a big chunk of change, more so than you probably have. You’re going to need other traps eventually anyway, so unless you have a friend in Mousehunt who will give you gold, I would not buy the FF unless you have the extra cash. It’s more than worth it in my opinion, however.

You may have also noticed that there is a store in the harbor: the General Store where you can purchase the Dehydration Blueprints, salt, and curds & whey. At this point, you don’t need any of them. We’ll visit the general store before leaving the harbor once you’ve reached journeyman.

Other Initiate Tips:

• While you can craft the white cheddar cheese, it's mostly worthless.
• Before leaving the harbor once you make it to journeyman, buy the dehydration blueprints, 500 salt, and 300 curds and whey from the general store. 213 salt and the blueprints will be used to create the very useful dehydration base.
• Stay patient. Initiate is the rank where most mousehunters give up and go back to Mafia Wars. There is precious little to do besides hunt in the harbor, but it DOES get better.
• As mentioned in the first point, wait until you’re a journeyman to craft the white cheddar cheese which is used to hunt the mole mouse in the meadow. More on this in the next section.

Journeyman

Congratulations! You’re moving on up and becoming an expert mousehunter. Now what, you say? At this point, we’re not so much concerned about traps; whatever path you chose at the end of Apprentice will be the path you’ll take in journeyman. If you donated $10 and sold off some Super Brie to make some gold, you probably have the Force Field (or DeathBot, but the FF is better). If you didn’t do this, and that’s perfectly fine, you should be hunting with the Swiss Army trap. Now, where to go?

Before we decide where to go, we have to decide what to hunt with. You’ve been using (or should have been using) marble cheese almost exclusively up to this point. It’s time to switch to Swiss. Whatever tactic or strategy you’ve been doing so far (which may have even used White Cheddar, though I said don’t craft that yet), give it up; it is Swiss from here on out until we get to a point where we want to use Brie. Swiss will attract 15%-20% more mice than marble. That is a huge number.

Now, you’re probably wondering about this whole crafting thing, what it is, and what is this fuss I’ve made about white cheddar. Well, you know how I said to buy the salt and curds in the store? Ok, go ahead and go to your crafting page in your inventory. There yet? Good. Journeyman can successfully craft 2 ingredients. Now, you can craft salt and curds together to create white cheddar. Some people will tell you to use this to hunt the mole mouse in the meadow. Personally, I don’t like doing this. White Cheddar is mostly useless. Craft it only if you want to have some of the cheese to mess around with.

Ok, we’re finally ready to leave the Harbor! Go to the Meadow (use Larry!). Buy 200 or so pieces of Swiss (or whatever you can afford) and go to the Mountains. If you have the extra gold, you’ll want to buy the explosive base as well.

The Mountains

The Mountains are not too dissimilar from the Harbor, though you’ll see fewer frail breeds of mice here. Steel, dwarf, granite, and bionic mice are seen much more frequently, and you’ll start collecting loot from them as well: brie alchemy potions (for transforming any of the other basic cheeses into brie…for a price), splintered wood, and the item you need the most, the map to the laboratory. The map piece is dropped by a ninja mouse, and this mouse will be a tough adversary, but you should catch one eventually.

You are going to want to switch your base as well now. Since you’re no longer using Marble cheese, you don’t need the added attraction bonus that the Wooden Base w/ Target provides; your Swiss cheese will do just fine on its own. Equip your Explosive Base with your Swiss Army Trap or your Force Field trap and watch the fur fly.

One note of consideration: the mountains contain the Abominable Snow Mouse, one of the hardest mice to catch at this point of the game. Some people have tried using White Cheddar so they don’t catch the frail mice, but this is just a losing proposition. The best way to catch it is to use Force Field with Explosive Base coupled with Brie cheese. This is still a tough task to pull off, considering that even with this setup (and the mouse’s strength only being moderate against you), you will only catch 1 every 200 catches, if that. That’s a lot of cheese to go through. So let's help you catch this sucker. How do we do that?

Charms!

You may have noticed the Charm Shoppe in the Mountains already and wondered what that was all about. Or maybe you're just really smart and figured it out. As you guessed, charms add bonuses to your trap. You need a conduit first. Buy it. Then purchase some power charms, which add 120 power + 1% power bonus!


Pine Conduit: 3,000 gold
Power Charms: 200 gold each

Now you have a better chance to catch the Abominable Snow Mouse. The attraction charm is also useful here and sells for 300 gold, adding 5% attraction. The Luck Charm adds 1 Luck and sells for 400. That one is a little over priced if you ask me however. The Prospector is an interesting one however, adding 200 power and 1% power bonus plus the ability to catch more gold and diamond mice. At 450 gold though, it's overpriced for its benefits (at this point).

Once you're done playing with charms, head back to the Meadow and restock your cheese. It’s time to graduate from Gnawnia (for now) and head to the Calm Clearing. The FAQ will pick up in the Whisker Woods section!