Status Update 202

Hello Hunters,

This will be my very first Status Update for theHunter Classic, so we have a little premiere to celebrate today *drumroll*   

First of all I want to introduce you to our newest team member, Luna. She has joined the team as a back-end developer last week and will take over from Emil, who will be moving on to new adventures shortly. Here are a few words from Luna:


“Hello everyone!

I’m Luna Duclos, I joined the team last Wednesday and will be working on the back-end code for theHunter Classic. My background is in python, C#, Go and C++, mostly on games, though also on some less interesting projects before I’ve gotten in the games industry.

I’ve been mostly playing MMORPG (Currently FFXIV) and 4X (Currently Stellaris) games, so theHunter is quite new to me. I’ve gotten through the tutorials so far and am looking forward to diving into it more and meeting people in the community. I’ve been lurking the forum the past few days and people seem really nice and welcoming.

In my free time I play a lot of games, travel around Europe and attend occasional game and programming related fairs and conferences. Occasional skiing has been known to happen as well (though I’m quite rusty by now, it’s been a while).

I intend to focus primarily on improving the back-end code and develop some new cool features as things go forward, and hopefully not accidentally kill the live servers …” 🙂

luna


Of course, there should be no Christmas without presents and this one is from us to you to say “thank you” for yet another brilliant year. Our first ever and hence not-that-nice-looking weapon, the  Old .243 Bolt-Action Rifle has gotten a makeover. We have re-done the model and animation of the weapon. Skills and achievements earned for this weapon are unaffected by the changes and stay.  

SplashScreen_weapon_newfree


We have also added our fantastic Cable backed bow to all active bow competitions which should spice things up a good bit and give you ever more freedom of (bow) choice”.  

cable_back_bow_01


 

Right in time for the upcoming Turkey mission in the Holiday Event the Turkey equipment bundle is making a comeback to the store . It was gone for a while but we´ve decided to re-add it based on feedback of the community. – make a good use of it!


LIVE STREAM TODAY

22nddec

At 4PM CET Johanna and I will go live again for some Elk Hunting and also have a some give-aways which we will hand out in a Holiday raffle. You can watch us on Twitch.


Holiday season and the new year are coming closer with big steps. This means that for the next week there will be a bit less “noise” from us since it is also vacation time in Sweden. However, we´ll still make sure that the weekly Status Update comes out, however this time on a Friday.

The theHunter Classic Team wishes you and your loved ones happy holidays! 😀

Happy hunting!

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Status Update

Howdy hunters,

Welcome to another status update, second this week. Yes, a lot of stuff is happening here, and we believe that there is no such thing as too much communication 😉

Continuous work on game quality

Yesterday we released another game update, most likely the last this year, with a lot of bug and crash fixes, changes and tweaks to make the game more enjoyable for all of you. Following your feedback, Wolf permitted ammo has seen some tweaks and now corresponds to that of Coyote. You can find the complete list here.

Not everything is fixed, and we continue working on existing issues, including the launcher patching problem. The launcher is certainly a very special beast, and working with its code requires very meticulous work and patience, but it looks like we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and the problem will hopefully soon be fixed for those of you who have been plagued with full download after certain patches. As the holiday and vacation season is approaching, we probably won’t release the fix this year, but we are committed to doing it as soon as possible early next year.

Bits and bobs from the Holiday Season

Speaking about holidays, now is the perfect time to sum up 2016 and look back at what we have (or have not) achieved in the last year. Come join the discussion, we all are super curious to learn about your personal highs and lows!

We are also expanding our holiday clothing collection with three gorgeous theHunter inspired variations of our knitted items. You can get them as free bonus gifts in two time limited campaigns:

  • Recruit your friends to theHunter before the end of the year – we are adding these lovely items to our Recruit a Friend rewards, find more details here.
  • Renew your membership this weekend, before Monday, December 19th – here is the breakdown of the bonus gifts:

holiday_event_membershiptop

The Ultimate Bear Hunter event

bear_update1

As you know, our Black and Brown bears have recently received a thorough overhaul and now look so much cooler and more realistic, while sounding more dangerous. To give you an additional incentive to check them out and enjoy their new looks and animations, we are launching a small bear event with a special set of missions. The Ultimate Bear Hunter 2016, in which you will get to hunt all four of them in pursuit of a unique trophy. There is also a bundle in the store with some equipment that can come in handy for hunting all the different bears of the EHR. The missions and bundle will be available until the end of the year.

Adjustment of EUR em$ prices on Steam

This update only affects players located in Europe who purchase em$ via Steam. Today we made an adjustment to the em$ prices on Steam (in Euro/EUR) to adapt to the currency exchange development. Please note that prices on our website will not change, nor will localized Steam prices for other regions outside the European Union. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

That’s it from us for today, happy hunting!

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Status Update

Howdy hunters,

Last week was super busy and intense, with lots of things happening at Expansive Worlds headquarters. Here is a short wrap-up of the latest and greatest.

Closed Beta of theHunter: Call of the Wild

For one, we released the long awaited gameplay trailer and had a closed beta session for theHunter: Call of the Wild. It’s been tons of fun and your engagement was beyond what we expected, thank you! For all the details around the closed beta please check our official community hub on Steam. Later this week we’ll posting there a selection of best moments from the closed beta, created by participants.

Grey Wolves are here!

grey_wolf

Similarly great news, on Wednesday we finally released Grey Wolves onto Timbergold Trails! The release hasn’t been our smoothest one, which we had expected with adding such complex functionality and animal behaviour to a content-filled game of theHunter’s scale. Having said that, we jumped on the issues right away and fixe the majority of crashes in a hotfix patch the day after. The residual issues are being worked on and we are preparing a patch with the fix for the rest (delayed walking sounds, messed up bear sounds, disappearing tracks on Timbergold Trails, “invincible” wolves). We are also working on the launcher patching issue, unfortunately, we have no ETA on when it’s going to resolved, but we will keep you updated.

Old new Black and Brown Bears

brown_bear_new

And finally, another long, long awaited update! Our ugly ducklings, the Black and Brown Bears, have finally received an overhaul in terms of their coats, animations and sounds! The release ended up being a bit sneaky (unintendedly so), but hopefully a pleasant surprise nonetheless! Later this week we are going to make more noise about them, with some bear related events and sales. In the meantime, make sure to check this awesome forum thread by BucksNBuffalo where he put together a nice showcase of the different textures of the updated Black Bears.

black_bear_new

Movember results

November is all over as is our traditional Movember fundraising for awareness for men’s health. This year our community bought 962 moustaches for which we donated $1924 to the Movember Foundation. Thank you for this year, the engagement has been great, let’s do it again next year!

Movember_Sweden_-_Home_-_2016-12-12_08.53.38

Say hi to Stefan!

And last but not least, we finally have a new community manager! His name is Stefan, some of you have already met him on the theHunter Classic and theHunter: Call of the Wild forums, and here comes his official introduction:

StefanHello all,

My name is Stefan and I am the new Community Manager for theHunter. I have joined Avalanche last week and will take over the Community Management from Alena who is moving into a new role as Producer for theHunter Classic.

Originally I come from Germany, more precisely a small town in the Eifel Region near Koblenz and I am 32 years old. I’ve previously worked at Electronic Arts in Ireland since 2011 where I have been a FAQ Content Author, Team Manager and Community Coordinator for games like Battlefield, Crysis and Need for Speed.

PC Games have been my great passion since I started out with playing “Stunts” and “Raptor” on the 386 and 486 in my best friend’s room. As soon as I got my first PC I was helplessly lost and dreamed about working in the gaming industry, bringing the same joy and excitement to many people around the world. The gaming Community is a very important part of the overall experience for me which made it especially interesting for me to work in and with communities, eventually joining the theHunter team here in Stockholm.   

In my private time I enjoy outdoor activities like hiking, camping and kayaking as well as Olympic weightlifting and making music. I also have two wild little kittens, Lykke and Lovis, who keep me busy when I’m at home.

I am looking forward to meeting you on the forums, Steam or in game and exchange ideas, game experiences and have a good time together! 🙂  

Cheers,

Stefan

That’s it from us for today, happy hunting!

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Status Update

Howdy hunters,

Here comes your weekly dose of updates and general musings from the EW headquarters. Earlier this week we shared huge news about our new upcoming game, theHunter: Call of the Wild. If you somehow missed it, you can catch it all, including the breathtaking reveal trailer, in this post. Please note that the official forum for the new game will be on Steam, so make sure to join the community hub there, as well as  follow the official Facebook group and Twitter channel, to be in the loop of everything exciting happening with theHunter: Call of the Wild. This blog as well as forum.thehunter.com will remain mostly about theHunter Classic.There is an unofficial sub-forum dedicated to theHunter: Call of the Wild here for you to chat among themselves, but dev communication will happen on the official forum on Steam.

In the meantime, at theHunter Classic foundry things are humming too. For one, we are at full speed approaching the finishing line with the wolves, squashing bugs and tweaking behaviour. You can expect to hear more on those bad boys next week.

holiday_event_splashscreen

Secondly, our traditional Holiday Event is starting today and is going to run up until December 25th. We’ve prepared daily missions, competitions, sales, unique shiny trophies, and of course, prizes; with the crown jewel being this wicked .308 Bolt Action Rifle. You can find all the details in this forum thread.

And last but not least, we have two new additions to the dev team. Patrick Enz is our new game designer and David Mitchell, who some of you already know from being active in the community, is temporarily joining us to help out with developing some features. Give them both a warm welcome!

Meet Patrick

patrick_enzHello everyone! My name is Patrick Enz and I am working here at Avalanche Studios as theHunter Classic’s newly appointed lead game designer intern. Before this I was working as the AI and World Designer for the recently announced theHunter: Call of the Wild. I started my internship here roughly 3 months ago as a part of my education at The Game Assembly in Malmö, Sweden. Over there I went through 2 intense years, learning how to work effectively in teams and gaining the fundamentals of level design as a whole.

My favorite games are The Witcher 3, Mass Effect 2, Legend of Zelda Majora’s Mask and almost all of the Final Fantasy games as they made up much of my adolescence. I also jump around different MMO’s from time to time. Apart from my main interest of video games, I enjoy travelling to different countries and learning how different cultures around the world work. I also extremely enjoy warm humid climates and laying down by the beach in tropical countries as they are, in my opinion, the best means of relaxation.

I’m looking forward to working with theHunter team and the community and I’ll do my best to meet up with expectations! Well met!

Meet David

intro_davidHi everyone!

My name is David Mitchell, or as some of you may know me from the game and forum, “caledonianblues”. I’ve recently started working at Expansive Worlds on a consultancy basis, where I will be assisting the backend programmers and working on some new features and functionality.

I’m originally from the UK but have lived in Stockholm now for almost three years. I’ve been playing theHunter since 2010. I’m very passionate about the game and community, both of which I’ve grown to love and cherish over the years, and feel privileged to be able to work on such an exciting project. I have a background in artificial intelligence and software development and, whilst new to the gaming industry, very much hope to apply my knowledge and skills to this amazing game.

When not working (and not playing games) I write for a Linux technical magazine, and my passions include entrepreneurialism, martial arts, motorcycling and flying. After Christmas I will hopefully be adding snowboarding to that list, if I manage to survive the snowboarding vacation I managed to get talked into. You can still program with broken legs, right? 🙂

And a final note to those of you who can not retrieve their large equipment placed next to borders – right now, the only way for us to deal with it is to retrieve items manually. Please get in touch with our support and provide coordinates of your unreachable equipment and we will sort it out.

That’s from us for today.

Happy hunting!

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Status Update

Howdy hunters,

Long time no hear! Well, two weeks to be exact which, for some of you (and certainly for me) feels like a long time. Things have been pretty intense here lately. We’ve been planning the roadmap for the upcoming year as well as working hard on the wolves, overhauling our black and brown bears and our seasonal competitions, to name just a few things.

Wolves

wolves_forest_WIP

Wolves WIP

The client programmers have been head over heels in wolves. As we told you before, we wanted to do them properly, do them justice and portray them as the smart and iconic creatures they are, and this is what we’re committed to. Right now our Canis lupus are howling, interacting with each other and – oh yeah – feeding on dead animal carcasses when they’re feeling hungry. Everything still needs a lot of work and some polish, but we’re getting there. Stay tuned for more grey news in future updates.

Mid-November Madness
Our Mid-November Madness event is over. It was a marathon, I know, but you did it. Here are the final leaderboards from each of the divisions. Congratulations to the tenacious winners and everyone else who have managed to get a score on the leaderboard. This is quite an achievement in itself!

Thanksgiving

SplashScreen_thanksgiving2016

From Mid-November Madness straight into a Turkey fest! Because nothing can make your holidays better than hunting some gobblers in the EHR, right? 😉 We’ve prepared for you some tiered Turkey competitions, a set of lovely missions, and of course Thanksgiving inspired sales and a bundle for those of you new to Turkey hunting. (And do need I need to mention that popping by theHunter tomorrow would be a frugal idea? ;))

Here are the unique trophies you will get for placing top 10 in the competitions; the last one with a slightly disheveled Turkey can be won by completing the Special mission.

thanksgiving_gold_2016thanksgiving_silver_2016thanksgiving_bronze_2016thanksgiving_hematit_2016thanksgiving_special_2016

 

Holiday event
If Turkey hunting is not your cup of tea, wait for next week when we’re launching our traditional Holiday Countdown event, during which we will keep you busy throughout the whole month of December, until Christmas. More news next week!

Last but not least
I thought I should mention that no, we haven’t forgotten about your questions in the recent Ask Us Anything thread. We will answer them. I can’t give you an ETA, because I’m cautious about poking some people on the team right now, as they are ultra busy and slightly grumpy, but as soon as the holiday mood (and successful wolf release) makes them all happy and fat with gingerbread cookies, we’ll get the ball rolling on that one.

That’s it from us for today, see you in the woods and happy hunting!

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Status Update

Howdy hunters,

I am back in Stockholm to meet what apparently has been the worst snowstorm in over 100 years, with theHunter team fighting it through the snow to the office to create the most (amazing) realistic game ever created. It’s been a fun week.

Mid-November Madness

SplashScreen_midnovembermadness
The holiday season is (almost) upon us, and we will be kicking off next week with our Mid-November Madness event. It will be truly mad and not for the faint-hearted, so you might want to clear your diaries next weekend, just in case 😉 You can expect to hear more on this next week.

Wolf Gameplay
There have been a lot of questions about wolves so far, so I wanted to shed some light in this area. For one, whether they will come to any reserve other than Timbergold Trails. The answer is not in the beginning, but we are not excluding this as a possibility for reserves where it would make sense.

There are a lot of players contemplating whether wolves will be dangerous animals capable of attacking hunters. The answer is no.

As you know, wolves are highly social animals and this is the key to their success in the wild. This will be reflected in theHunter by the new group behaviour and AI, for example as our wolves will feature pack behaviour with different levels of hierarchy within their groups. Also, our wolf packs will communicate with each other via howling which will also work as a special call.

There will be more news to come on their game design which we will slowly share with you. As you can hopefully understand, it’s a totally new feature with tons of code to be written, and our programmers are really hard at work making this happen. We are super hyped about this but we are very much aware that features like this take a lot of fine tuning to be made perfect. And we want this to be perfect, so we are counting on your patience 🙂

.22 “Plinkington” wood

SplashScreen_weapon_22plinkington_wood
Yesterday we released our favourite small game rifle, .22 Plinkington, in a beautiful wood variation that was asked for from the beginning. We’ve also bundled it together with some great duck equipment and put it in the store at a very attractive discount – check it out.

Patching issues
Finally, we are aware of the patching issues with the web launcher which some of you are experiencing and we can assure you that we are treating this as a high priority and will do our utmost to get it fixed ASAP. We cannot make any promises on timescales, as we haven’t been able to pinpoint the source of the problem yet, but we will get there.

Happy hunting!

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Status Update

Status Update – November 03

Howdy hunters,

this week’s status update is again brought to you by Phil who – this time – will actually go on a short vacation trip over the weekend, hopefully also slurping drinks in the sun as our beloved Alena still does.

Enough chit chat though, let’s get to the far more interesting updates.

Movember

As mentioned on the forums, this year there will not be any fresh beards or facial hairstyles.
We decided to spend more time polishing the work on Timbergold Trails and to invest our efforts into core content, such as the upcoming Gray Wolf.

Of course, we will still participate in creating awareness about cancer and hopefully improve regular and early check-ups. Check out some of the team members trying their best at growing a mustache on Instagram.
And of course all existing beard styles are available in the in-game shop where we will give $2 per sold mustache to charity.

We want to thank everyone who supports this movement and of course encourage everyone to take this seriously. Don’t play it down – early and regular check ups play a vital role and it is up to everyone of us to make an effort.

Movember 2016

Gray Wolf

Last week, we officially announced the Gray Wolf and we are humbled by your feedback so far. It feels like we made the right decision to go for this amazing animal and we are closely observing any feedback. So don’t hold back and let us know what you think, hope for and more!

Last time we shared work-in-progress screenshots and this week it is time for some moving images! Still taken from early development, we were able to steal a short video from Morris and Moe showcasing animations. Let us know what you think!

Updates

As we move on with increasing momentum on the Wolf, it might get a bit quieter in the next weeks when it comes to updates. Of course we are still monitoring data, your feedback and more and will jump on issues as we identify them.
Here is a reiteration of yesterday’s game update with a sneaky addition (we are working on increasing the amount of possible clues on Timbergold Trails) and of course we are looking into a solution for equipment that was placed beyond the recently updated borders on Timbergold Trails.

Bug fixes

* Fix for pink texture error and crash near the reserve borders on Timbergold Trails
* Fix for Bighorn sheep odd animations on very steep mountains
* Fix for rare crash that can happen on client connection on certain reserves
* Issues with patching system that caused infinite download loop
* Crashes while patching to a newer launcher version
* Disabled the Halloween version of the Elk
* Disabled spook an animal contextual help

In progress:

* Shooting Ranges preparing to open
* Increased amount of possible clues on Timbergold Trails

There are more (way more) things in progress but here we only state what is close to completion within the next week(s)

Misc.

* Localization update

That’s it!

All the best from theHunter team and a snowy Stockholm!

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Status Update

Status Update – October 28

Howdy hunters,

this week’s status update is brought to you by Phil – who is not on vacation in Thailand, slurping drinks in the sun – but all the happier to write these words.

Let’s get right to it.

Timbergold Trails

It has been one week since the release of Timbergold Trails and we are thrilled about all the feedback that you left us. It makes us very happy that you enjoy the new reserve, animals and shared your feedback about the positive and of course the negative stuff as well.

We continue our work on fixing the initial problems of the patching system, border crashes and more and improved on the failed patch this Wednesday.

It will undergo more testing and will hopefully be ready for next week.

Timbergreywolf

Slightly tricky but all the more enjoyable from our end was the announcement of the next species in the EHR and it is finally happening. After seven years, theHunter will bring Grey Wolves into the game.

We will gradually share more news about this milestone in the upcoming weeks and like you to meet first screenshots, which is taken from early development.

Work in Progress Grey Wolf

Work in Progress Grey Wolf

Early Development

Early Development

Timberhalloween

It seems that the last patch brought even more uninvited guests than anticipated!
Honoring the yearly tradition, you can find a new beast variant of an animal in the game – at your own risk – next to spooky sales in the store and a mission to win a unique trophy!

Happy Halloween!

Timbercontextual Help

With Wednesday’s patch, we also introduced a new feature called Contextual Help.

Our aim is to help the newest of players to learn the ropes of theHunter.
As many of you know, it takes quite some time to understand and get good at this game. While we have an excellent, community-driven wiki, many video and text tutorials and divine support from all the experienced hunters on the forum, it can still be difficult to grasp what to do during your first hunts.
Enter the contextual help system which will give you hints based on what you do.
We have added the first hint, which tells player that running will spook animals.

More hints will follow in the future and as always, we would love to hear what you think about this.

Hint: You can turn off the feature in the launcher game settings and we will add a function to en / disable it from within the in-game settings as well.

(Thanks to killertut for reminding us about this 🙂 )

Timberupdates

And finally, to keep you in the loop, here is a selection of what is currently in progress on our end.

This list does not include everything as we don’t want to promise things that we can’t deliver (and this still counts for this list as well) but we want to reassure that we are continuing to work on your feedback.

Fixed:

  • Increased the chance of bighorn sheeps to start fighting which will increase the amount of clues on your HunterMate.

In Progress:

  • Infinite patching loop in launcher
  • Crash when updating from older versions of the launcher to current one
  • Pink textures and crash close to borders
  • Animals crossing the borders out of the reserve
  • Tweaking populations for how many animals you will encounter in the Timbergold Trails

That’s it!

All the best from a sickness struck theHunter team and have a great hunt out there!

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Status Update

timbergold_trails_1

Howdy hunters,

The wait is over, the 11th of the Evergreen Hunting Reserves, Timbergold Trails, inspired by the stunning Rocky Mountains, is here and should be downloading onto your PC as we speak.

A couple of quick points before you delve into this glorious fall environment.

  • There are five species currently residing in Timbergold Trails – Mule Deer, Grizzly Bear, White-tailed Ptarmigan, Bighorn Sheep and Rocky Mountain Elk. All five species will be on free species rotation until next Thursday, October 27th.
  • There are a currently some known issues with the reserve (you can find the detailed list in “In Progress” part of the Game Update). We will continue working on those as well as polishing and tweaking the reserve, we are planning to release a patch as soon as possible. So, if you encounter any rough edges, please don’t sweat it, just report them in the forum and we will jump on them!
  • We are running a promotion campaign until Monday, October 24th, during which time you will get Deployable Hunting Towers when buying 2000, 3000 and 5000 em$ – 1, 2 and 3 towers respectively. Hopefully they will come in handy in the vast wilderness of Timbergold Trails!
  • In the bundle section of the store you can find a special Timbergold Trails Release bundle with weapons, clothes and equipment, at 70% off!

Happy hunting in Timbergold Trails!

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Status Update

Howdy hunters,

Just a short update from us this week since it’s all hands on deck here in the studio as we near completion of the eleventh reserve of the EHR!

Rocky Mountain Elk

Meet the next new inhabitant of Timbergold Trails, the upcoming Rocky Mountain inspired reserve. The majestic Rocky Mountain Elk. All screenshots are work in progress and actual models may be subject to change prior to release.

-2016.10.13---15.35.24

-2016.10.13---15.27.50

Compound Showdown 2016

The results are in and it’s official, team Pulsar took the win. Well done and thank you to everyone who participated, regardless of which team you joined. The prizes and trophies have now all been awarded. We hope you enjoyed the event!

SplashScreen_compound_showoff_event_settled

Pre-release livestreams

You’ll soon get an opportunity to see Timbergold Trails with your own eyes. As tradition dictates, we’ve planned a series of pre-release livestreams. Once again, with the help of hunters from our wonderful international community, we’re able to offer the livestreams in three languages – English, German, Spanish and Italian! Here’s the video announcement of the English livestream, and below, you can find the dates, times and details of the streams in other languages.

English: Tuesday, October 18th at 19:00 CEST
Streamed by Pratze, joined by our very own JohannaS and HooCairs
You can watch it on this channel

German: Tuesday, October 18th at 21.00 CEST
Streamed by Pratze, joined by ForstHeld and Fape19988
You can watch it on this channel

Italian: Tuesday, October 18th at 21.00 CEST
Streamed by members of theHunterItaly (EBEALIEN, 682, LEO86, baluuto, NaNo666, DR4GON3RO) and joined by our Lead Programmer Roberto!
You can watch it on this channel (the link will be working at the time of the stream)

Spanish: Tuesday, October 18th at 22.00 CEST
Streamed by montero72, Juagarzo and metroid2.
You can watch it on this channel

Lock&Learn

There will be no Lock&Learn session this week, since Johanna is tied up with preparations for the upcoming Timbergold Trails pre-release livestreams. Normal Lock&Learn schedule will resume next week.

Holidays

I’m heading off on holiday from the middle of next week, so for the next 3 weeks it will be Philipp and Johanna that will keep you updated. I apologise in advance, but will not be able to respond to private messages or forum posts during this time

That’s it from us this week. We hope to see you all on the livestreams. Happy hunting!

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