Howdy hunters,

The wait is over. The tenth Evergreen Hunting Reserve, Whiterime Ridge, is here. With its 5 inhabitants and vast landscape for you to hunt, explore and enjoy!

Following the feedback after the pre-release livestream (you can catch the replay here), we’ve made some changes and applied some fixes, and also updated the ethical weapons list for the bison. You can read all the details in the Whiterime Ridge Release Notes. If you encounter some issues in game, rest assured we are working on ironing out those as soon as possible. (Check the In Progress part of the Game Update).

A couple of short things before you jump into the snowy vastness. With the introduction of 4 new species we are starting a new, 18th season. That means a new chapter and a new opportunity to fight for a position on the leaderboard!

Today we are also introducing some new achievement levels. There will now be an achievement for 1000 harvests of all weapons and species except waterfowl. For waterfowl (geese and mallards) a new achievement for 4000 harvests, and a new total animals achievement for 32000 harvests. Time to wipe the dust off that crossbow you maxed out ages ago and give it some fresh love 😉

For the attention of players with retail boxes who downloaded the game from the DVD – you will have to download the whole game again (the download will be initiated automatically). We apologize for this inconvenience.

Now go explore and make sure to tell us what you think!

Happy Whiterime Ridge hunting!

Discussion

PS One more winner of our Hunterscore raffle is lowby – congratulations, the rifle has been added to your account, same is for two other raffle winner, fr_bugs and Shotoenth.

Hey hunters,

Hope all is well on your side of the globe! Here at EW we are settling in in the new office (more on this below) and adding a final touch to Whiterime Ridge, as it’s almost ready – that close! – for you to set your feet in.

The starting five

As you already know, Bison, Sitka Deer and Snowshoe Hare will be residents of the new reserve. Time to reveal the last two members of the starting five – they are our good ol’ Moose and a new species Arctic Fox.

The Arctic Fox is based on the Red Fox but with nice, silky and – oh my! – so fluffy fur. On the pictures you can see the snow white animal but don’t be surprised when you come across another common variation – blue, which is simply stunning.

Some of you may wonder why Moose and not Caribou was chosen as One of the old guard for the sub-arctic reserve. Well, the reason if the existing Reindeer’s migratory behaviour and the shape of Whiterime Ridge where such gameplay wouldn’t be possible. In order to put Caribou into it, we would have needed to reprogram animal’s AI which would not be feasible at this moment.

Pre-release livestreams

Next week you’ll get a chance to see Whiterime Ridge with your own eyes during our traditional pre-release livestreams. This time, with help of hunters of our international community, we are able to offer it in 5 languages! Here’s the video announcement of the English and German livestreams and below you can find the dates, times and details of streams in other languages.

Times and dates of the pre-release livestreams:

English: Monday, October 5th at 19:00 CEST
Streamed by Pratze, joined by Killertut and aljona
You can watch it on this channel

German: Monday, October 5th at 21.30 CEST
Streamed by Pratze, joined by ForstHeld and Killertut
You can watch it on this channel

Italian: Monday, October 5th at 21:00 CEST
Streamed by members of theHunterItaly (beke87, 682, DiCy, LEO86, baluuto, scartuccio)
You can watch it on this channel (the link will be working at the time of the stream)

French: Monday, October 5th at 21:00 CEST
Streamed by Valentin992, joined by Aquila_Foios, Florian18, oscar2215
You can watch it on this channel

Spanish: Monday, October 5th at 21:00 CEST
Streamed by members of theHunterSpain (Metroid2, cibermax, juagarzo)
You can watch it on this channel

Hope you’ll be able to make it to one of these snow feasts!

Graphics Update

For the last months we’ve been working on some graphics improvements which will be implemented together with Whiterime Ridge. I’ll write a bigger, more detailed post with release notes later, but here is a sneak peek of just two improvements of many.

This shot shows the higher accuracy of the terrain lighting (the small hill to the right was previously lit incorrectly) as well as the updated lighting model.

This shot shows the improved shadowing of the grass for high and very high shadow settings.

Hunters’ new home – The Night Owl!

Last week, together with our mother company Avalanche Studios, we moved into new shiny headquarters with such a cool name the Night Owl. In case you want to come by and say hello (and you totally should!), our new address is Västgötagatan 5, Stockholm.

To make our office space looks truly theHunter’esque, we of course threw some some stuff around. Here’s a small collage of theHunter artifacts – do you know what they are and what relation they have to EW? The first person who will get all of them correctly (in forum thread replies) will receive something nice 😉

Game issues

Last Friday we experienced a server outage which lasted for about 8 hours and affected the majority of players. As a compensation for this lack of service we’ve added 2 days to all active memberships. You can read a more detailed statement on this here. We are very sorry about this.

And yet another persistent issue that has been plaguing many bear barrels and hog feeders in  the last weeks – inconsistent and incorrect bait amount has been being displayed in the launcher and in game. We have been looking into this but were not able to pinpoint the cause of this problem yet. We’re continuing to investigate and after the issue is fixed, we’ll find the way to reimburse you for the lost bait if any.

Raffle winner

The lucky winner of our .45 – 70 Lever Action Rifle raffle is Fr_bugs! He was picked by the script from 2000 hunters who have increased their Hunterscore by 10 in the last week and will receive the rifle at the Whiterime Ridge release.

That’s it for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello there hunters,

Whiterime Ridge with its snowy deserts and howling winds is creeping into the EHR and from what I’ve seen so far it’s promising to be a totally different hunting experience. Tough, lonely (bring a friend on your journey) and somewhat contemplative. Well, at least that’s my perception, hopefully you’ll be able to make up your own mind very soon. In the meantime, let me introduce the third inhabitant of this frozen realm (the one that is jumping). Extremely cute and fluffy, meet the Snowshoe Hare.

As you can see from this render, it’s remodelled after our old bud, the Cottontail Rabbit. However the Snowshoe has much larger paws, is able to hope better on the snow crust and has leaner body covered with lovely fur. Otherwise the AI and gameplay are very much the same as that of the Cottontail, only they are more difficult to spot due to their outstanding camouflage ability.

Like all the Br’ers Rabbits of the EHR, the Snowshoe Hare will be free to hunt.

There have been oodles of questions regarding cold weather and how our existing clothes will perform in Whiterime Ridge, so let me tackle them here. For one, all items of clothing in the store will receive an additional characteristic – Weather Protection. This will determine how long you will be able to stay alive without collapsing in the harsh sub-arctic environment wearing that particular item. In jeans and a t-shirt you will not last long at all, whereas for example a trapper outfit will give you more time. There will be special clothes in which you will able to hunt for an unlimited period of time. A basic set with no camo will be given out for free at the release, similar to the basic clothes you get when you join theHunter. If you want additional camo, a Sneaky 3D Arctic Winter outfit will be available in theHunter Store. Now, to the Sneaky 3D Winter Forest outfit. It has camo which will work in Whiterime Ridge forest areas but its weather protection won’t be enough to hunt in it for an unlimited period of time.

Over the weekend we are running a special Whiterime Ridge Warm-Up Marathon where you get a chance to win yourself some Sneaky 3D Arctic Winter clothes. Read the details here.

Now, to the winner of our raffle-daffle we announced last week before the double XP weekend. Over 500 hunters increased their skills by 5 levels but the lucky winner is Shotoenth! He will receive the beautiful .45-70 Lever Action Rifle at the Whiterime Ridge release.

For the rest of you, please do not despair, here is a new raffle for you. We will choose another hunter who will get the .45-70 for free amongst those who will have increased their hunterscore by 10 points from today, September 24 until October 4th. To make this task a tiny bit easier for guests, from today until the end of Monday, September 28th, Whitetail Deer, Black Bear, Roosevelt Elk, Feral Hog and Moose will be free to hunt.

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hey all hunters,

Another week has passed and here’s  what we’ve been working on. The upcoming reserve is occupying most minds and PCs here in the office, as it has been the case for the last months. Whiterime Ridge is slowly getting its mesmerizing look and feel while getting rid of bugs, and there are already four new beautiful animals running, thumping and jumping in it. Today we are presenting you the reserve emblem – it’s snowy peaks and the mighty bison, surprise, surprise 🙂 Hope you like it!

I am getting a lot of questions about the release date on social media and forum, so let me address it here –  it’s getting closer, but we can’t tell you when it’ll happen just yet. For one, we don’t want to make any promises before we are absolutely sure that we can deliver on them, plus, you know us – we like making surprises 😉 Here is a little something that might savour your waiting a bit – the Whiterime Ridge desktop background (click to open in full resolution).

Cold or very cold?

You probably have wondered what the deal was with forgotten Hannes’s gloves he mentioned in the status update last time – well, the thing is Whiterime Ridge is cold. Very cold. It is so cold in fact that you will quickly consider abandoning your favourite jeans and t-shirt look for spiffing new super warm arctic clothing!

But what happens if you waltz out into the sub zero wilderness wearing nothing but a Happy Camper tee, ye olde basic pants and that fresh looking Football Jamboree cap you bought? Well, after a while you’ll start to notice your breathing becoming strained and it will be difficult to keep your weapon still when aiming. Perhaps you’ll find that your trigger finger does not completely obey your will. After a while you will succumb to the cold and collapse into a sad little frozen pile. No worries though: The EHR Rescue Helicopters will quickly find you and take you to a lodge where hot cocoa and blankets will have you back out there in no time! Now, if you have not learnt your lesson by then, the whole process will repeat itself. It may be a great way to score some free hot cocoa but it is a poor way to hunt.

To cut to the chase, you’ll have to bring your arctic clothes when hunting or the hunt will be quite short. And, naturally, we will provide you with a free set of arctic clothes at the launch of the reserve. This is not purely out of the kindness of our hearts but more a way to cut down on the cost of hot cocoa 😉

Level up for the cold

To get your blood pumping and let you hone your hunting skills for Whiterime Ridge, we are throwing a double XP fest this weekend – from now until Monday morning CEST all the skill experience points you earn when hunting will be doubled. Don’t miss it, this is a rare opportunity!

And a cherry on top – if you increase ANY of your skill (be it tracking, spotting or weapon) by 5 levels from September 18th, noon CEST, until September 24th, noon CEST, you will get automatically enrolled into a little raffle – we will randomly pick one person who will get the .45 -70 Lever Action Rifle , excellent for the Bison and other mighty beasts of EHR, at the release of Whiterime Ridge (this rifle will appear in the store in the future). The winner of the raffle will be announced in the next status update.

That’s it for today.

Happy levelling and hunting!

Discussion

Hello hunters,

Welcome to this week’s status update. Today we wanted to let you take a deeper look at the upcoming sub-arctic reserve with another series of short behind-the-scenes interviews with our devs.

But before we get into the nitty-gritty, the new reserve has finally been named –  Whiterime Ridge! It was slightly adapted from the original suggestion by bowhunter93 “Whiterime Peaks”, which we also liked but the rough sound of “ridge” has ultimately won us over. Plus, we also have a beautiful ridge of mountains in the new reserve. “Rime” means frost formed on cold objects by the rapid freezing of water vapour in cloud or fog, which you’ll see a lot in our new sub-arctic reserve. All in all, we thought that this name suits the new location perfectly and it harmonizes with our existing reserve names. As a thank you to bowhunter93 for this great suggestion, they’ll receive a cool new rifle for free, for hunting bison (once released).

A couple of words about suggestions; there have been a lot of cool sounding names in the Inuit language (I personally liked Tatanka a lot) but like it was also the case with the Australian reserve, we opted out of giving an EHR reserve a name in one of aboriginal languages. The reason is that we have to be cautious when naming our locations and it’s actually difficult to prove what those words actually mean.

Now, to the behind-the-scenes. This time our producer Hannes, game and level designer Daniel and environmental artist Sandra, will tell us a bit more about how the new reserve is being born.

Behind the scenes – Sub-arctic reserve

Hannes, producer

Q: This is your first reserve as a producer of theHunter, right?

A: Yes it is, fingers crossed!

Q: Every producer is different and, with you launching your first reserve in theHunter, the community must be curious how you produce, how you tick?

A: For me producing is to choose, and to be able to do that I need a strong vision in my head. When I started on the EW team I was pleasantly surprised how the theHunter team work together. What I’ve brought on board (at least I hope I’ve done ;)) is the vision implemented in the best possible way. Striving for collaboration without prestige with an ear listening to the end users. It’s all about nourishing, strengthening and refining that vision during the hell of production. And every day I am working with a vision strong enough to survive a couple of fights in the pit.

Q: Are there any differences to the production of, let’s say, dogs?

A: No, a great vision and an exciting goal always have to be present.

Q: What excites you most about the upcoming reserve? What are you looking forward to the most?

A: I love when the environment is harsh and unforgiving… So, I have to say holding my breath aiming at a mighty bison and noticing that I have cold shakes after having forgotten my gloves in the warm cabin.

Daniel, game and level designer
Q: Why a sub-arctic reserve in the first place?

A: Well, the main reason is that it was the most requested type of reserve in the last survey. It also seemed like a really cold reserve was missing from the EHR.

Q: Are there going to be any gameplay novelties in this new reserve, similar to climbing in Val-des-Bois, or absolutely dry weather, like in Bushrangers Run?

A: Yes indeed. The reserve is going to be cold, around -35°C (-13°F), and this will affect the gameplay.

Q: You are not only the game designer, but also the level designer for this reserve, right? Can you tell me more about what we can expect in terms of terrain?

A: I’ve tried to create a feeling of vastness in this reserve. That and remoteness. It will hopefully feel more like an untamed wilderness than any other reserve.

Q: How will leaving tracks work in the new reserve?

A: All animals, including dogs and players, will leave a trail of tracks behind them in the snow. These are purely visual and are not trackable with the Huntermate. They will also fade away after a certain time.

Q: What excites you most about the upcoming reserve? What are you looking forward to the most?

A: I’d say the hunting. Hunting is always our first priority when making a new reserve and it is going to be really fun and challenging to hunt in this reserve.

Sandra, environmental artist

Q: What was the most fun part for you to work on this reserve?

A: The most fun part for me was just making the models and then actually seeing it all put together in the reserve.

Q: And the most challenging one?

A: Trying to make believable environment with the time and resource restraints that we have.

Q: What types of vegetation will we see and what made you choose those particular types?

A: Looking at subarctic biomes we chose to use mostly conifer trees (both deciduous and not).

Q: How was it to work with snow? Is it going to be different from the snow in Hemmeldal?

A: Well, Hemmeldal wasn’t really packed with snow, was it? This reserve is! It’s much less forgiving than other types of terrain, our biggest issue has been to make everything blend together but still give some variation and the right feel to it. Still working on it!

Q: What was the biggest challenge with the forests?

A: For me as an artist, giving it a convincing feel. Everything from making the trees, i.e. how many variants and how they will look, to making a forest with interesting silhouettes and enough variation for it to be believable.

Q: What inspired you? Did you use references from a specific area of Alaska or other sub-arctic regions?

A: We looked mostly at Alaska, which was the largest inspiration for this reserve, but we of course looked at things from other areas of the world that we found interesting. Main goal for me is always making something that looks and feels interesting and fitting it into the world that we’re trying to create.

Q: What excites you most about the upcoming reserve? What are you looking forward to the most?

I want to shoot me some bison!

That’s it today, happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

It’s time for a short (but aesthetically pleasing ;)) update from us on the upcoming sub-arctic reserve. The work has moved into the beta-testing phase and yesterday the whole EW team have been roaming the snow covered plains searching for the mighty bison and some other critters. I’ve sneaked a couple of screenshots for you during my expedition. Things will probably change a lot before the release, as everything you see is very much work in progress. But you can already feel the cold!

We’ve also got some news for those of you who are wondering what other animals will live in our own Sub-Arctics. Except for bison, there’ll also be the Sitka Deer for you to hunt. Sitka is a smaller, cuter and chubbier brother of the Blacktail Deer, and their looks, behaviour and gameplay will remind you of our old acquaintances quite a bit. Here are the screens of two sneaky does I’ve just spotted:

That’s it for this short update, we are back to testing and happy hunting to you all!

Discussion