Prey hunts can feel a little confusing at first, especially if you are new to WoW or have not looked into the Prey system yet. The target appears, runs away at around half health, and the objective does not always make it clear what to do next.
The most important mechanic to remember is that traps scattered around the hunt area quickly fill the hunt progress meter. Interacting with these traps advances the hunt far faster than simply chasing the prey across the entire zone.
Once the progress meter fills, the prey’s final location appears on the map, and you can defeat it to complete the hunt.
Click Traps to Fill the Hunt Progress
After starting a prey hunt, you will fly to the marked prey area on the map where the quest takes place. Traps are scattered throughout the hunt zone, and interacting with them adds a large amount of progress toward revealing the prey’s location.
In many cases, interacting with around 10 traps is enough to move the hunt forward and reveal the final target.
At first, it may feel like traps are difficult to find. After interacting with a few, however, more traps appear nearby. It quickly starts to feel like they are everywhere once you begin moving through the surrounding area.
Once the first prey objective is complete, it is usually faster to stay within the initial hunt zone and focus on interacting with traps until the progress meter fills.
The Prey Escaping at 50% Is Intended
During the hunt, the prey will occasionally ambush you in the area. When this happens, you can fight it briefly, but the target becomes immune and escapes at roughly 50% health.
This behavior is intentional and will happen multiple times before the final stage of the hunt.
Each ambush adds progress toward revealing the prey’s location, just like interacting with traps does. Once the progress meter fills completely, the final location appears on the map, and the prey can be defeated normally.
Ambush versions of the prey can be handled quickly with the traps you collect in the area. You can carry up to five traps, and using one removes most of the ambush target’s health instantly. This helps a lot if other enemies are attacking at the same time.
You may also encounter patches of blood mist in the hunt area. Walking into the mist reveals the prey again. Click on it so the encounter can continue.
Randomized Hunts and Great Vault Progress
After completing the four Hard hunts shown on the map, you can continue running hunts by talking to Astalor and selecting the option to begin a randomized hunt, then choose Hard difficulty again. These hunts can be repeated and are commonly used to reach the weekly crest caps.
A typical farming loop looks like this:
- Complete the four Hard hunts on the map
- Start randomized Hard hunts from Astalor
- Continue until reaching the weekly crest cap
Prey hunts also count toward the World Content row in the Great Vault once the weekly vault unlocks in Midnight. Because of that, many players already plan to combine them with other activities to fill the row more efficiently. One common approach mentioned in the community is completing four Prey hunts and four Delves to finish the vault progress for the week.
Once you understand how the system works, Prey hunts become much quicker. Instead of chasing the prey across the entire zone repeatedly, stay in the initial hunt area, interact with traps to fill the progress meter, reveal the final target, and move on to the next hunt.
For more updates on World of Warcraft: Midnight, visit our WoW news hub.
