Howdy hunters,

Here is a short status update from us.

The beginning of a new era

Today starts the new, 17th, season in theHunter, yay! The 16th season has been a long and luscious one, with 4 new species and one reserve added. We’ll be celebrating the beginning of a new era with a free species hunt. Two of the four animals released during the 16th season, Canada Goose and Alpine Ibex, will be free to hunt from the official start of the 17th season and throughout the whole weekend. We’re also running a weekend sale on all goose-related items in the store, including extra discounts on goose decoy bundles and the popular Canada Goose Starter bundle. It’s a good day for those of you who have been dreaming to set up a second (or a third) goose spread on Hirschfelden.

Turkey fest is coming

On Monday we’re kicking off yet another holiday event – Thanksgiving in theHunter. There will be lots of turkey challenges in all forms with varying difficulty levels. Stay tuned for more!

TheHunter quiz – results

We received 1110 responses to the quiz announced in the last status update, out of which 788 people answered all 30 questions and 74 got all of them correctly. With this project we mostly wanted to get hunters to use the wiki more actively by showing how much valuable information about the game one can find there. On the other hand, I hope that the quiz was enjoyable and useful also for those of you who wanted to test their ”raw” knowledge of the game, without digging into any extra sources.

Here are the names of the 5 winners of the em$ draw, randomly chosen out of 74 people who answered all questions correctly.

• StriderBurp
• kestuxx
• foresterjoe
• Krystal
• Cogsy666

The detailed results of the quiz can be found in this thread.

Break Action vs. Bullpup

And last but not least, on Wednesday we released a shiny new 7mm Break Action Rifle. The earlier released Bullpup of the same caliber divided the community into two camps, with a lot of people asking for a 7mm rifle with a more traditional hunting design, so we decided to do something about it, plus such a rifle has been a long time community request. So here it is. And in order to solve the community dispute, we’ve thrown in a small challenge – two identical competitions, one featuring the Bullpup, the other the Break action. Let’s see which one wins 😉

That’s it for today, more news next week!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hey you hunters,

It’s status update time and here’s what’s been cooking up here in our corner of the world:

Events, events, more events

The Nordic Father’s Day last weekend turned out to be a ball and a hell lot of reindeer got shot. Although there’s been a fair deal of frustration here and there, mostly attributed to the elusive trio of 450’s, overall, the event was a success, with as many as 1266 hunters having completed the first mission, 402 the second, and 504 the third.

Now, the ongoing Mid-November Madness is a different kind of hoopla. We know that a lot of you have love-hate relationships with the 100% harvest value requirement, but we thought it’d be rewarding to add in an extra challenge, calling for some additional thinking over the choice of weapons. Fame and glory as well as this unique trophy set will be a reward for top 10 hunters in each of the 9 divisions – well worth a hassle.

There’ll be more events in the weeks to come, don’t get lost in the wild and be sure to follow our news and updates.

How well do you know theHunter?

During some 6 years of theHunter’s existence (in fact, the first forum member registered almost exactly 6 years ago), the game has spawned a truly colossal wealth of knowledge, stories and personal anecdotes.

So, here is a small quiz for you to check just how well you know the game and all its nooks and crannies. No worries, no theHunter myths and anecdotes this time, only hard facts and publicly accessible knowledge. The quiz was prepared by our awesome Wiki team who are doing an excellent job collecting and storing all theHunter know-how for the generations of hunters to come. Thank you guys, your work is invaluable!

The quiz consists of 30 multiple-choice questions (only one correct answer per quesion). If you answer 100% of the questions correctly, you’ll be automatically entered into our final em$ draw, during which we’ll randomly pick 5 people and award them each with 1000em$ (don’t forget to enter your theHunter name at the end of the quiz form if you want to be a part of the draw). You can submit your answers up until Sunday, November 16th, midnight CET, the correct answers and lucky draw winners will be announced on Monday.

Take the quiz

Interview with Björn

Our game designer Björn has recently been interviewed by the website GameStakers. He has shared some behind-the-scenes information about the development process and tips on how to succeed in the game. You can read the whole piece here.

New interns in town

This week we’ve welcomed two new interns to the theHunter squad: Pär joined our game design team and Carl-Oscar the programming team. Read their intros below and give them a good welcome in the forum.

Pär

Hello Guys and Gals,

My name is Pär and this Monday I started my game design internship here, at Expansive Worlds.

The first game I’ve ever played was probably Alley Cat, an old DOS game. My interest for games grew quickly and I started playing pretty much any game that my parents allowed me to. My favourite genre is and has been RPG ever since I played that first Diablo game. It did not take long until I dreamed of making my own games.

Gaming is still a pretty big part of my life, whenever I find the time for it. My free time I mostly spend on either side projects or with my girlfriend whom I have been together with for 9 years.

It took quite a while before I actually started following my dream and began to work my way up to become a game developer. When I was about 21 my girlfriend found a game development educational programme in Stockholm, which I did not even know existed at that time. I am originally from the northern part of Sweden but as I got into that programme, I relocated to the Stockholm area. Now I have been through 2 different educational programmes which finally led me to Expansive Worlds where I hope and believe I will fit right in.

Carl-Oscar

Hello out there!

My name is Carl-Oscar Lönn and I’ve just joined Expansive Worlds as an intern. I will be a part of the Client Programming team to bring you new content.

I am originally from the Swedish city called Trollhättan, this is where my beloved family lives. There I studied game development and found my calling, programming. After I was done with studies I went to Falun to further develop my skills at Playground Squad.

When I am not working, I like being at home, playing games and having a cup of tea. I also like to get out and do some geocaching. Sometimes I don’t feel like doing it on my own, but my father often keeps me company.

It feels great to get this opportunity to be a part of the team, so I will give it all and I hope you’ll have a good time hunting.

Happy hunting from the rest of the EW team!

Discussion

Hey you hunters,

It’s been only a couple of days since our Movember campaign took off, and we’ve already sold 888 moustaches, worth  $1776 in donations. (Can you guess which moustache has been the most popular one?) Thanks for your support everyone and don’t forget that you can also donate directly via our official Movember page.

On Friday we’re kicking off a new event, this time it’ll be a small tribute to the Nordic Father’s Day. Now we know that honouring fathers happens on different dates around the globe, but we had to choose one, so we picked the second Sunday of November, using our privilege as a Scandinavian company 😉 Father’s Day in theHunter will feature good ol’ muzzleloaders and Reindeer, to add a Nordic feel. The best thing, Reindeer will be free to hunt throughout the whole weekend. Check back tomorrow to make sure you don’t miss any details!

On Monday we’ll be announcing yet another hunting spree to help keep you occupied and fend off the November blues. It’s going to mad, but more on this later.

This week we finally got a new front end developer. Magnus, joining the EW team. Read his intro below and say hi in the forums!

Hello everybody. My name is Magnus Eckers, and it is a great pleasure to be able to introduce myself as a new member of the fantastic theHunter team. Starting this week I will be taking on the role as a front-end developer.

I am a father of two children, who is doing their job well – keeping me happy and ensuring that I have a total of zero time for other activities. Despite this fact, I try to find time for some of my interests which, besides gaming, includes music, movies and beer.

I have always been passionate about computer games, ever since I got my hands on my first computer; the wonderful Commodore 64. Having worked as a web developer in other fields for 14 years, I finally felt that it was time I took the chance to work as a computer games developer.

I’m excited to start doing my best to bring great contributions to the magic that is created here at Expansive Worlds.

If you like, hit me up on twitter (@beingeckers).
I hope to be seeing you in-game!

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

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

Pumpkin collecting and slaying the mysterious beast of the Settler Creeks are at their height and, judging by your feedback, you have been enjoying the Halloween missions. There are 3 days left till the end of the event, and it’s about time you hit those missions, if you haven’t done it yet, because your trophy gallery won’t be complete without this malicious pumpkin. You’re competing only with yourself, so there are no excuses 😉

We’ve prepared more hunting fun for you in the months to come, so stay put, the EHR will soon be brimming with events. Speaking about which, we’re proud to announce that:

TheHunter goes Movember!

Movember (moustache + November) is an annual event in which people around the world grow moustaches during the month of November to raise awareness of men’s health issues, in particular prostate and testicular cancer. This year theHunter’s joining the Movember movement! In collaboration with Movember Foundation, we’ve organized a special event to raise funds for cancer research and awareness for men’s health, together with you, our community.

Specially for Movember we’ve created a bunch of dandy moustaches for your avatars. You will be able to choose between three different styles – rollie, hulk or magnum, each of them available in two colour variations. They will cost 300 em$ and we will donate $ 2,- for every moustache purchased in our store during November. There’ll also be a Movember ticker on the theHunter main page where you can track in real time how much money our community have raised. TheHunter Movember campaign will start on Monday, November 3rd, and will run through the whole November.

Here is the link to the Expansive Worlds page on the Movember foundation site, where you can make a direct donation, if for some reason you don’t want to buy a moustache but still want to contribute. Money donated via our Movember page will go directly to the foundation.

That’s it from us for today, happy Halloween hunters!

Discussion

Hello Hunters,

It’s time for another status update from us. With the Halloween just around the corner, we’ve prepared a special scary event for you which starts next week, so don’t miss our Monday update!

Spot a Dev – winners

We had a blast during the Spot a Dev last week, thanks to everyone who participated and submitted their images with captions! Here are the pictures that the team has chosen as the winners:

1st place: 3000em$ and a deployable hunting tower go to SoldierofGod for this meta picture:

2nd place: 2000em$ and a deployable hunting tower go to Knut for this witty newspaper:

3rd place is shared between misskiki68 and TheFredster, both players will receive 1000em$ and a a deployable hunting tower:

Honourable mentions:

Tod1d:

and caledonianblues:

Weekend of double experience

This weekend you’ll have a great chance to quickly improve your tracking, spotting and shooting skills by doing half as much work as normally. Starting from tomorrow at 15:00 CEST until the end of the weekend all the skill experience points you earn when hunting will be doubled.

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

Discussion

Hello hunters,

It’s time for our weekly status update. The things go well in the office, we are busy preparing some special stuff for the upcoming holiday season and starting to dread the Swedish winter darkness which is creeping upon us. To have some fun, we’re announcing a new event:

Can you spot a dev?

Last Spot a Dev was heaps of fun, both for us and the community, so let’s do it again! At different times from Thursday through Friday the members of the EW team will be running, hunting and sometimes hiding in the EHR. Track down one of them, take a picture or screenshot as a proof and post it in the competition thread along with a funny (or serious) caption. At the end of the event we’ll pick pictures we like the most and their authors will receive some em$ and a deployable hunting tower. Make sure to read the competition rules in this thread, they’ve changed a bit since the last Spot a Dev.

For you to know who to look for, here our latest team photo, minus our recent additions Simone and Anders and our oversee support manager David:

Ibex competitions

On Tuesday we released 7 ibex competitions, which are now a part of our regular schedule of the 256 alternating unique competitions. That’s a hell lot of challenges for all you competitive hunters.

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

Discussion

Hello hunters,

It’s status update time and today we’re happy to tell you that the Expansive Worlds’ crew has grown, again! Three new team members have joined us to work on a side project, not related to theHunter. What’s it about, you’ll all find out when the time is right, as for now – please meet our new artist Simone, animator Dick and client programmer Anders. Get to know them in the intros below and say ”Hi” in the forums.

Dick

Great to see you all again!

My name is Dick Sjöström and some of you might actually remember me from a few years ago

because I worked for Expansive Worlds when theHunter was re-launched. The Moose and the Bear were some of the animals I worked on, I think it was in 2011? Can’t remeber exactly, as years seem to fly by in warp speed now, when I’ve got a son and family.

Anyway, I was sucked up by Avalanche Studios and had to leave Expansive Worlds but I knew I would be back one way or another, and here I am. Although I’m just here temporarily to help out with some bits and pieces, while I’m currently in-between projects, I hope to be able to get a few small (or maybe big, who knows ;)) animations in. Well, wait, and you’ll see!

Oh, maybe I should have said that? Yes, I’m an animator and before joining Avalanche and Expansive Worlds I worked on various games here, in Sweden, and abroad. But I must say that community driven games like theHunter have always been the most fun to work on.

And I also have to say that I’m really amazed at all the new content that has been added to theHunter, it really feels like a new game for me. The team has done some amazing work (especially multiplayer!) but a big ”thank you” goes to you too for helping us to make the best hunting game.

Happy Hunting everyone and see you soon!

Simone

Hi everyone,

My name is Simone Corso and I am a new member of theHunter crew. I moved to Sweden from Italy to join the Mad Max team here in Stockholm two years ago. I am a character artist and quite new in video games development, in fact before taking this amazing job I have been working as a freelancer for movie industry and cartoons. I also worked as a teacher giving lectures on Maya and Zbrush, which is quite an interesting experience I would say.

I like swimming and lifting weights at the gym during my spare time and of course play video games and watch a lot of movies which is the primary source of inspiration for my work.

I am super excited to work on this project and I’ll give my best to make this game awesome!

Anders

Hiya!

The name’s Anders Moberg and I’ve joined the team here at Expansive Worlds as a junior programmer. Very happy to be here!

I’ve got my origin from way down south, the city of Malmö. It’s where I grew up and attended ”The Game Assembly” to try to make my dreams of working in game industry as a programmer a reality. Through an internship, I got the opportunity to work at Fatshark on ”War of the Vikings” and its DLC.

Having interest in music, film, animation and arts at large, I can easily pronounce video games as the biggest interest in my life. And thus, I’m very happy to be able to serve Expansive Worlds and its passionate community to the best of my abilities!

P.S. My favorite game made is Metroid Prime.

The new .22 ”Grasshopper” Pistol

Today we released a new weapon that has been suggested and requested by the community for a long, long time – the .22 ”Grasshopper” pistol, specially designed for hunting birds and small game. Following the introduction of the ”Grasshopper”, the ethical animals list for .357 revolvers will be adjusted. From now on it won’t be permitted for mallards, geese, pheasants or turkey, since, as many of you have pointed out in the past, it’s too large a caliber for birds. The reason why birds were on the ethical list before is that we simply didn’t have a handgun option for them, which has changed now. Enjoy “grasshopping”!

Val-des-Bois will be less full now

Many players have touched on the fact that the new reserve seems to be more densely populated than the rest of the EHR. Following this discussion, we’ve made some re-evaluation and slightly lowered the numbers of Roe Deer, Red Deer and Red Fox on Val-des-Bois due to overcrowding in the lower part of the reserve. The narrow shape of the valley pushed animals together too much which indeed resulted in a less realistic animal population, compared to other reserves.

TheHunter went viral

Recently theHunter has been enjoying a lot of attention on Twitch and YouTube, which is really cool! In the last week a bunch of popular gaming channels have made videos of theHunter with total combined views of almost 3 million. You can check some of the videos on these channels: SergeantMerrel, TheDevildogGamer, jacksepticeye, SeaNanners Gaming Channel, CriousGamers, TheRPGMinx.Thanks for spreading the word about theHunter everyone, we love what you do!

That’s it for today, happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

It’s been a week since Val-des-Bois was released and from the feedback we’ve gathered so far you seem to love it, and so do do we! There have been lots of nice videos and live streams shared in the forums and social media, thank you everyone for doing a great job showing the beauty of Val-des-Bois. Here are a couple of our favourite community videos:

By Aryvuel

By yakuza8183

Ask me Anything with Andrés and Danny

It’s been a while since our last AMA session with NAOutdoors, so now, when we’ve come down from our Val-des-Bois release madness, we thought it’s time to to do it again, since you’ve probably built up lots of new questions for us. This time it will be a double AMA with our client programmers Andrés and Danny – don’t miss your chance to pick their brains with tough questions about the physics, performance and logic of the game, as well as other trickeries. Andrés is also one of our team veterans and has been working on theHunter the longest, he allegedly has heaps of secret game knowledge, so make sure to ask the right questions 😉 Please note that, although Andrés and Danny are our ”bug fixers”, they will not be able to reply or comment on specific bug reports and questions like: ”Why isn’t X bug fixed yet?”, please use our bug forums for such queries.

Andrés and Danny’s AMA thread will be unlocked for 48 hours, starting at 9:30 CEST on October 3rd. All the questions will be moderated and supervised by the moderation team, the standard AMA rules apply.

All theHunter goodness in your inbox

This week we’re launching our own newsletter. It will be sent out weekly and will be packed with news and updates, special campaigns and promotions, interesting tidbits from our community and other goodies. If you want to keep up to speed with everything going on about theHunter but don’t have time or energy to regularly check our news feed, forum and social media, this is definitely something for you. To receive our newsletter, enter your email in the form below and hit ”Subscribe”. You can unsubscribe any time and we promise not to send you any junk, only great stuff!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hey all good hunters,

Val-des-Bois is released!

Amazing news – our new reserve Val-des-Bois is finally released! It is the 8th of the Evergreen Hunting Reserves with the total combined area of approximately 75 km² – pretty mind blowing, huh? The new reserve comes with a whole bunch of breathtaking views and unconquerable peaks for you to master. We know that there are a lot of questions and speculations going on about how exactly climbing works, so Björn put together some notes for you explaining all the ins and outs of the new feature, make sure to read them before challenging those ridges. During the preparation for the pre-release live stream, our community member HooCairs has also made a short video showing how climbing and fall damage works:

Free roe hunt until the end of the week

We want all our players, both members and guests, to get the feel and thrill of hunting in the new reserve, so we’re kicking off the release of Val-des-Bois with a free roe deer hunt which will last up till Sunday midnight. No memberships or licenses will be required and .243 Bolt Action Rifle is permitted for roes.

Alpine Ibex hunting tips

The biggest hit of Val-des-Bois is of course the new species, the Alpine ibex. Hunting Alpine Ibex will perhaps be the most difficult hunting in theHunter so far. They are wary and quiet animals who blend in well in their native Alpine environment. The Alpine Ibex do not call like other species in the game, for this reason there are no callers available, which makes it one of the species that require pure “spot and stalk” style of hunting. It is possible to get audio clues from the Ibex but these are sparse (and are never calls). To make things even more complicated, the Alpine Ibex are skilful climbers. They can climb almost vertical cliff faces with ease, so going after them will require a great deal of knowledge of the area: some steep surfaces may be possible for you to climb, others will lead to a quick drop down to harm. Wise hunters always bring a first aid kit along when hunting Ibex in Val-des-Bois. It will be tempting to fire at an Alpine Ibex high up on a mountain wall but it may have unfortunate consequences: there is a risk that the animal will get stuck where you can not reach it to harvest. When hunting Alpine Ibex, there should be a lot of planning going into every shot to avoid losing that great trophy. After all, that is what makes hunting Alpine Ibex worth it: those magnificent horns!

Re-watch the live streams

Many of you have already seen some bits of Val-des-Bois and Ibex hunting during our pre-release livestreams on Monday. Despite some technical problems on our side which caused the delay of the English live stream and for which we apologize, it became a fantastic community event. As many as 3 000 unique viewers, with 650 people simultaneously at the peak time, watched the English live stream! Huge thanks to everyone who helped to organize this event, participated in the chat with their questions and simply watched. For those you who missed it or just want to re-watch it at your own pace, here are the links to the replays in all languages the live stream was offered in:

• English
• German
• French
• Brazilian Portuguese
• Italian

Personal Bests are back & New languages added

And the last two pieces of news from us for now: today we’re finally bringing back the missed by many Personal Bests feature, which received a complete overhaul. Plus we’ve just added two new languages – Romanian and Hungarian, which means that now theHunter can be played in 19 different languages. Thanks to our awesome translators for their extraordinary job, there is more to come!

Ok, we won’t be holding you any longer, Val-des-Bois is calling! 😉

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hey hunters,

Today the status update is almost completely dedicated to Val-des-Bois, as the release is just around the corner. There has been a lot of speculation as to what animals will populate the new Alpine terrain, and it’s about time we satisfy your curiosity. Alongside our long-time residents Red Deer, Red Fox, Roe Deer and Brown Bear, we’ll be welcoming the Alpine Ibex – the 20th species in theHunter’s species family and the fifth animal of Val-des-Bois. Ibex are known as amazing climbers, so you’ll find them on high plateaus of Val-des-Bois. If lucky, you can even see a couple of high-tempered bucks clashing horns here and there.

Here are some screenshots of the new somnolent-eyed animal (click on pictures to open them in full resolution):

The ibex is also featured on the emblem of the new reserve, here it is:

To solace your waiting for the release of the new reserve and give you a chance to have a look at all the beauty it hides, we’re arranging pre-release community livestreams of Val-des-Bois. The streamed hunts will take place on our beta server, so some things will still be WIP, but hopefully you’ll be able to get the feel. The stream will be offered in four languages: English, German, French and Brazilian Portuguese and will be organized completely by our community members.

For more information check the dates and times for all streams below and watch this awesome announcement video by our community member Pratze, who will be streaming the English and German hunts:

Times and dates of the pre-release livestreams:

English: Monday, 22nd at 18:00 CEST
Streamed by Pratze, joined by TOD1D and caledonianblues
You can watch it on this channel

German: Monday, 22nd at 21:00 CEST
Streamed by Pratze, joined by HooCairs and Killertut
You can watch it on this channel

French: Monday, 22nd at 21:00 CEST
Streamed by Aruvyel, joined by Vinivici
You can watch it on this channel

Brazilian Portuguese (will be available as a pre-recorded video): Monday, 22nd at 19:00 BRT
Made by XandyBecas
You can watch it on this channel

Hope you’ll be able to make it to one of the streams!

And for last I’ve saved a mind blowing fact: the total combined distance theHunter players have walked in EHR, from the creation of the game until today, is astounding 59 116 593 km, which is longer than the minimum distance from the Earth to Mars. That’s some decent walking there hunters, keep on hiking! 😉

Happy hunting!

Discussion