One year ago we released the first dog in theHunter: the jolly and rather unruly Retriever. It was a huge success and not too long after its release, players were taking their dogs with them regardless of whether they were out hunting waterfowl or deer. Soon however, it became evident that the Retriever, despite being fun to bring along on a hunt, was a retrieving specialist and not too much use when stalking deer or other animals. With the Scent Hound, you’ll get a loyal and disciplined hunting partner that you can take with you wherever you go.

Why a Scent Hound?

We saw that there was a need for a hunting dog that could cover aspects of the hunt that the Retriever was never intended to. This new dog needed to be a companion, but also serve a purpose other than simply being a pet that followed the player around. One game aspect that is time exhaustive and frustrating and also goes against hunting ethics, is animals that go unharvested due to the difficulty in finding them when they flee from the hunter after a poorly placed shot. It felt natural therefore to add a dog that would be a loyal friend out on the field, but also an aid to the player in finding those injured animals.

Impact of the dog on the game

Much like the Retriever, the Scent Hound is more of an experience and a convenience, as opposed to a game-changing addition to theHunter. The dog has no real impact on missions or competitions either since the stalking and shooting is still done by you. However, with this dog, the days of not finding animals are over.

How it works

Taking a dog with you on a hunt is simple: Just drag it out from the lodge or tent inventory and place into the dog slot in your own inventory. It will spawn next to you once you close the inventory screen. If this is the first time you bring your dog with you, you will be prompted to give it a name (choose wisely as it’s not possible to rename your dog – at least for now). Once you leave the lodge or tent area you won’t be able to un-equip the dog (try putting a Scent Hound into a backpack and see how that goes). You can access a set of dog commands by pressing the “V” button. While holding “V”, simply select the command you want to give your dog by moving the mouse in the relevant direction and confirming with a left-click. Play around with the different commands and see how your dog behaves. It’s a lot of fun!

To track a wounded animal you’ll need to walk up to a blood track, ID it (left-click on the track with the HunterMate) and then hold “V” and select “Track”. The Scent Hound will move to the selected track to get its scent and then it will start tracking. It can track blood tracks and fleeing tracks of an animal, but not water tracks. When the dog has found the dead animal it will stay by it, baying and barking so you can easily pinpoint the location. When can a Scent Hound fail with tracking? Well, there are basically two scenarios. The first is that the dog simply got distracted during tracking. It may have caught the scent of another animal or the distance between two clues was too far. The second scenario is that the animal being tracked just got brushed by a projectile, bled for a few minutes then the bleeding stopped. In this case the dog cannot continue the tracking.

Experience

When you first purchase a dog, it’s already a capable Scent Hound. It should perform its tasks without any fuzz, most of the time. But if a dog does not understand a command, a small icon with a question mark is shown. If the dog understands the command then an icon with an exclamation mark is shown. If the dog is too far away to be given a command, the icon to the right will be shown.

More experience will make your Scent Hound hone its skills as a tracker, finding clues that are farther apart and finding them faster. Your dog has 50 levels and each new level comes with a skill increase or a small gift. Levelling up is fairly quick in the beginning but will slowly become tougher and tougher. You can see your dog’s experience and level in the right corner of the screen when you bring up the command menu, as well as its stamina state.

Stamina

Each performed command reduces your dog’s stamina. This doesn’t have much impact on how long your dog can work with you, but a lower stamina means it gains less experience, such as a tired dog learns a bit less than a well-rested one. Letting your dog mind its own business will regenerate its stamina.

Skills

On your dog’s profile page you’ll see two sets of icons. One set governs basic dog skills, called Loyalty skills, the other set is specific to Scent Hounds. The number in the upper left corner shows which level your dog is at on that particular skill. Each skill starts out on level  1. All Scent Hound skills have a maximum of 3 levels, but some of the Loyalty skills have more. For information on what each skill does, just hover the mouse over the skill icon.

What about those darn rascally Retrievers?

We have reviewed the Retrievers as well and increased their skill levels across the board. They will be better at understanding commands and be a little bit quicker at finding and retrieving birds than before. They will still be quite rowdy when on the move but they will perform their duties in a much more stable manner.

Special release events

To celebrate the release of our scent hounds we’ve prepared some tasty offers that you’d be barking mad to refuse. If you buy a dog before Tuesday, June 7th 12:00 CEST you’ll get a 20% discount and receive a cherry on top –  free Founder collar!  Please note that the free leather collar offer is only available in the Bundles section in the store. You can however buy dogs separately in the Dogs section.

Also, Daniel has created a special package of dog missions for you to hang out with your new buddy and try to win this gorgeous trophy. These are time-limited missions, and you have until Tuesday, June 7th 12:00 CEST to complete them.

We’ve also released three new winter vests for your dogs in the variety of colours – they will keep both your scent hounds and labs warm and toasty.

Now it’s time to go and make use of that heel command – happy hunting with your scent hounds!

Discussion

Whiterime Ridge

The new reserve is (as you probably already knew) cold. You will need to use the free Arctic clothes (grab your set for free here) or your hunt will be quite short and miserable. Do remember that the clothes you wear will not matter if for any reason you up in the icy waters of Whiterime Ridge. Water will cause your body temperature to drop rapidly and, if you end up in the water, you will need to fast travel to a lodge for some defrosting.

As far as your old clothing go, check the item descriptions in the store for info on how good they are against the cold. Some have no protection, others offer some. Bear in mind that very few of the old pieces of clothing will fully protect you from the savage cold of Whiterime Ridge.

Another thing to bear in mind is that this reserve is huge. Exploring Whiterime Ridge is quite an undertaking. It is a good idea to bring a tent to your first expeditions to make the exploration easier and to find your own perfect hunting spots.

Bison

The Bison is huge, powerful and very grumpy. Hunting it is not the greatest of challenges as it is quite fearless. The real challenge is in shot placement. If you mess up you will have a long tracking session ahead of you. The bison is the heaviest animal in the Evergreen Hunting Reserves and it can take a lot of damage. This is also the reason why some weapons, such as the Longbow and the .50 Cap Muzzleloader, are excluded from the list of permitted weapons. They simply lack the penetration to instantly kill a bison. It might have been all well and good in the time before ethical hunting but not in this day and age.

Snowshoe Hare

This is the prey for the expert hunters! They are small, fast and extremely well camouflaged. They behave much like Cottontail Rabbits but prove more of a challenge due to their excellent camouflaged fur.

Arctic Fox

Here is another challenge! For much of the same reason as with the Snowshoe Hare, the Arctic Fox boasts excellent camo (plus all the elusiveness you should already know from encountering their red sisters in Hemmeldal). That is, as long as you don’t encounter the blue furred variety.

Sitka Deer

The Sitka is much like its close relative, the Blacktail. They have smaller antlers and are a tad more chubby, helping them to cope with the cold weather. Other than that, they go about their business in a similar manner to what you might expect from other deer species in the EHR.

Since the early days of theHunter there has been an important part missing in the hunting experience: Dogs. It has been brought up as a possible feature for the game countless times but circumstances where never quite right. Until now.

With adding dogs to theHunter we have two different roles for them in mind. First, perhaps the most important one, is to add to the immersion of the game. Having a dog with you who reacts to the surroundings and to yourself is something that intensifies the hunting experience. What we want to give you is the experience of the hunter and the dog – a companionship going back in time to as long as some ten thousand years or more. If we could even slightly tap into that ancient human-canine bond the hunting immersion would increase significantly. This is what we’ve tried to achieve here. So not everything about the dog has to do about gameplay: It is more an enhancement of the hunting experience.

Second role that the dog plays is, obviously, an aid to the hunter in the game. In real life it is an arduous task to go fetch a downed mallard through waist deep water. The task may not be as tough in theHunter but the dog will at least let you focus on the shooting.

Why retriever (or a specific dog type at all)?

When we were looking around in the different dog threads over the forums and asked our trusted hunting experts, the first dog type that would come up in almost all cases was a bird retrieving dog. Our decision to make one was solely based on this. Many has also suggested a more “multitalented” dog that could, for instance, track as well as retrieve. Although we considered making dogs that could do multiple tasks, it quickly became obvious that it developing an easy-to-use interaction (GUI) system for a dog that could flush, retrieve, track and partake in driven hunts would be impossible. It was also difficult to find a suitable breed to base such a multitalented dog on. So, we decided to focus on specialized dogs instead.

Impact of the dog on the game

The retriever is much more of an experience and a convenience addition rather than a game changer. You won’t have to zip around fetching a whole bunch of birds; you can let your dog do the work while you keep an eye on the skies. The dog has no real impact on missions or competitions either since the hunting is still done by you.

How it works

Taking a dog with you on a hunt is simple: Just drag it out from the lodge or tent inventory and place into the dog slot in your own inventory. It will spawn next to you once you close the inventory screen. If this is the first time you bring your dog with you, you will be prompted to give it a name (choose wisely, as it is not possible to rename your dog, at least for now!) Once you leave the lodge or tent area you won’t be able to unequip the dog (try putting a labrador into a backpack and see how that goes). You can access a set of dog commands by pressing the V-button. While holding V, simply select the command you want to give your dog with the left mouse button. Play around with different commands and see how your dog behaves – it’s a lot of fun!

Experience

When you first purchase a dog, it is inexperienced and a bit rowdy (same as in real life). It may have some issues obeying and following commands, but the more time it spends out hunting with you, the better it gets at understanding what you want it to do. If the dog does not understand or chooses to ignore a command, a small icon with a question mark in the bottom left corner is shown. If the dog understands the command then an icon with an exclamation mark will be shown. Better experience will also make your dog calmer and more focused – it will make less noise, ignore other dogs more easily and be less prone to bark at animals close by. Yes, your lab will spook other animals but who wants to see a dog walking through a group of Whitetails who leisurely continue with their grazing? Your dog has 50 levels and each new level comes with a skill increase or a small gift. Leveling up is fairly quick in the beginning but will slowly become tougher and tougher. You can see your dog’s experience and level, as well as its stamina state, in the right corner of the screen when you bring up the commands menu.

Once your dog reach level 50 it will be the perfect hunting companion: Quiet, focused and efficient. It’ll do everything but shoot the birds for you.

Stamina

Each performed command reduces your dog’s stamina a little. This doesn’t have much impact on how long your dog can work with you, but a lower stamina means it can gain less experience, such as a tired dog learns a bit less than a well rested one. Letting your dog mind its own business will regenerate its stamina.

Skills

On your dog’s profile page you’ll see two sets of icons: one set governs basic dog skills called Loyalty skills, the other set is specific for retrieving dogs. The number in the upper left corner shows which level your dog is at on that particular skill. Each skill starts out on level 1. All retriever skills have maximum 3 levels but some of the Loyalty skills have more than that. To get information about what each skill does, just hover the mouse over the skill icon.

Make sure to watch this short tutorial video to see it all in action.

Now go and do it!