Hello Hunters,

How is everyone’s week going? Today’s Status Update is a smaller one, however Graham just shared with me the most amazing bow hunting video I have seen in ages, and I just have to share it with you guys! Be warned though it does contain real hunting footage, so if you prefer to keep your hunting fix virtual, DO NOT CLICK here: Video.

New Transport

So last week we gave you an image of some camouflage, which was from one of the paint jobs that are available on the vehicle, here is your second clue!

Community Discord Server

We have re-launched the Official Discord Server with lots more channels, including text channels where you can all talk! This should make it a lot easier to find other players who want to go for a hunt. We have also set it up for Community Content Creators to be able to show their videos easy, as well as promote up and coming streams. This will now also be a place we will be posting official information.

This week we have also added a new section for Fan art, Memes, Real life hunting and Photography. To join up, click here!

Ask a Developer!

Currently on our Facebook and Instagram you can ask the Developers some questions. Once a week, one question will be selected and answered by a member of our team, all you have to do is find the post that has the above image and then leave your questions in the comments.

Today’s question comes from alex_the_tazy_artist, who asked on Instagram “Favorite reserve on Classic?”

Today I thought it would be fun to ask some of the team! Here are their replies!

Josh : “Whiterime Ridge, it’s really pretty”

Patrick: “Timbergolds, hands down”

Linus: “Hirschfelden, or however you spell it :P”

Beth: “Bushrangers Run, I love the wide open space and barren look”

Martin: “Hemmeldal, it reminds me of my cabin in northern Sweden”

Henrik: “Piccabeen Bay, because of the Water Buffalo”

Greg: “Hemmeldal for life”

Make sure to head over and let us know what you would like to know. A friendly bit of advice is to make sure they are questions, “I want to see X’ Is not a question and makes it hard for anyone to answer.

Known Issue(s)/Fixes

Scope and zooming issues: Players have reported that after using scopes or optics, different aspects of player controls have been freezing up, we are currently investigating this issue. If you are experiencing this bug please send us your feedback as we aren’t yet able to reliably reproduce the problem (which makes it much more difficult to fix).

What’s bugging you the most?

We are still working on the list and working out which ones are achievable to fix. Once we have a more solid list, we will let you know what you can expect in the near future.

Rare and Trophy of the Week

These Weekly competitions are super popular. The Trophy of the Week gets selected on Monday’s and Rare of the Week gets selected on Wednesday’s.

So, if you have shot a rare or high scoring animal from this week and want a chance to win, then share them in the correct thread on our forum, don’t forget to mention the score! Rares go into this thread and trophy animals into this one. We currently don’t have a competition for Non-Typicals, but they go into this thread.

This Weeks Winners

The ‘Trophy of the Week’ is MONSTER MOOSE!! which was shot by ‘Gostwind ’ and scored 224,528! If you are wondering what many consider a trophy Moose, it is anything over the 200 scoring mark.

And the ‘Rare of the Week’ goes to ‘CaptainTomLV’ for this Melanistic Bison a very nice harvest, congratulations, a great Trophy Shot!.

Free Rotation

This week all Duck species are free to hunt, look our Rougarou Bayou!

Have a great week all,

Discussion

Hello Hunters,

Today’s Status Update is not a long one, but it it good nonetheless! We talk about the Summer Fiesta, The new Drilling Rifle and some UI changes that we have made.

Summer Fiesta 2018

The 2018 Summer Fiesta has been running a week now. At least three people have already completed all the mission packs, congratulations! Like I mentioned last week, they are no easy feat!

The Weightsaver Lottery is looking very close, only 8kgs separates the top 10 positions. Dall Sheep and Reindeer are the first two animals in the lottery and today Wild Boar have been added to the list.

This week the ‘Summer’ competition starts, the entry requirements is the combination of your heaviest Sambar Deer, Roosevelt Elk and Rusa Deer. Good luck!

16GA/9.3x74R Drilling Combination Gun

Today we break more boundaries as we release the previously impossible 16GA/9.3x74R Drilling Combination Gun. I have fallen in love with this gun and it really is the ‘Swiss Army Knife’ of the gun world, as it’s ethical for every species in the EHR!

As well as the Birdshot and Buckshot, the 16GA barrels have also been strengthened to take 16GA Slugs! Picking between either the 9.3x74R or the 16GA is as simple as clicking your middle mouse button. Remembering to do that is another challenge, I shot a goose yesterday, midflight, iron sights with the 9.3x74R, sorry Doc!

The gun takes the current ‘2-6x32mm Slug Scope’ or the brand new 3-18x44mm Rifle Scope. People often ask for a look at the new reticles, so here it is:

Now, in order to get this gun to work in game, we have had to remake the UI screen (the inventory Screen) to accommodate the extra ammo slot. So when you start up your game today, it may look a little different than usual. So make sure to take a minute or two and familiarise yourself with the new layout. The major change is that we have split the equipment off into its own tab and here you can also equip any dogs you own. The new layout also opens up room and gives us the chance to add extra slots for any features that may come along in the future.

New Animal

Currently we are working on a new animal for the EHR, when this new animal is set free, it will be released into Hemmeldal. Watch this space.

Known Issue(s)/Fixes

Projectiles not registering after 500m. A fix for this is currently being tested and we will release it to you as soon as it passes.

Golden 10 GA not displaying in gun racks. We have fixed this issue and will be included in the next patch.

What’s bugging you the most?

I just wanted to touch on this to let you all know, your feedback has not gone to waste. We are currently trying to reproduce many of the issues and we are hoping to present to you all many good fixes in the not too distant future.

Rare and Trophy of the Week

I had a question come to be via PM in the forums this week. “TK when are the Trophy and Rare of the week selected?” Very good question and I thought I would add the information to the Status Update! Trophy of the Week gets selected on Monday’s and Rare of the Week gets selected on Wednesday’s.

So, if you have shot a rare or high scoring animal from this week and want a chance to win, then share them in the correct thread on our forum, don’t forget to mention the score! Rares go into this thread and trophy animals into this one. We currently don’t have a competition for Non-Typicals, but they go into this thread.

This Weeks Winners

The ‘Trophy of the Week’ is this Grey Wolf, which was shot by ElCorderoDeDios and scoring 16,890! If you are unsure of what many consider a trophy Grey Wolf, it is anything over the 16 scoring mark.

And the ‘Rare of the Week’ goes to ‘Fish Attack’ for this Leucistic Grey Wolf with a score of 15.354 congrats!

I have heard some prizes have not been allocated, can you please send me (Treekiwi) a message in the forums if you are missing some prize em$. I can get it all sorted for you 🙂

Free Rotation

This week’s free rotation lets our guest hunters test their skills against Wild Boar and Black Bear. Good luck and have fun!

Have a great week all,

Discussion

Hello Hunters,

I hope you are all enjoying the new Magpie Geese, the statistics are sure showing that you do! We have pulled some figures in and if you can guess how many have been shot as of today 10am CEST, you can win yourself 700em$, closest answer wins, and because you guys like a challenge, I am not going to give you any hints at all. Leave your guesses in the discussion thread, good luck!

.17 HMR-HV Ammo and 6x20mm Vintage Scope.

Today we release the new HV ammo and a brand new 6x20mm Vintage Scope for the .17HMR. Both these new additions give the .17HMR a little extra something special and will help to secure the gun as many people’s favorite secondary carry along gun.

If you want to see how the new ammo and scope perform you can join myself and Graham in tomorrow’s stream as I will be putting them through their paces. 4pm CEST, tomorrow, www.twitch.com/expansiveworlds.

theHunter: Classic Player Survey 2018

It is the last week to have your say in the annual player survey, don’t miss out to have your say in the future of this amazing game. Just for participating you have a chance to win yourself 1000em$, so don’t miss out! Click here to participate in the Survey.

Albino Ambition #2

It might have been a little over shadowed with last week’s release of the Magpie Geese. But we have updated both the Mule and Blacktail Deer Albino skins and if you happen to shoot one of the new ones, make sure you post it here for your chance to win some sweet prizes! It will run for a whole month and we will be picking one winner every week. Good luck!

What’s on the Lathe?

New Gameplay Enhancement

Last week I showed you all this image below as the first in the series of hints as to a HUGE new game play improvement that is coming soon.

Now here is your second clue and image.

Known Issue(s)/Fixes

Missing Rabbit/Hare sign. We have received reports of ‘roaming tracks’ and other signs missing for all the Rabbit/Hare species, we are looking into it and will have a fix out for it as soon as it is resolved. But just to put your mind at rest, the animals ARE still in the game and can be harvested if shot.

Missing Hunter Score. This was caused by both the .300 and .300 carbon being merged by mistake. We are looking into a possible fix and will have more information to you as soon as we have a solution.  Sorry!

Shark Tooth Fossil Fix. We have implemented a fix today server side that should stop the endless calculation loop of the Shark Tooth Fossils.

Magpie Goose Steam Achievement. Steam achievements have now been corrected and working as intended and with correct images.

Rare and Trophy of the Week

This competition has become so popular that we have decided to make it a permanent feature and it’s here to stay for the foreseeable future!

So, if you have shot a rare or high scoring animal from this week and want a chance to win, then share them in the correct thread on our forum, don’t forget to mention the score! Rares go into this thread and trophy animals into this one. We currently don’t have a competition for Non-Typicals, but they go into this thread.

This Week’s Winners

The ‘Trophy of the Week’ is this nice White-tailed Ptarmigan which was shot by Lowby. It has a great score of 463, congratulations! If you are unsure of what many consider a trophy Ptarmigan, it is anything over the 400 scoring mark.

And the ‘Rare of the Week’ goes to Cogsy666 for this Albino Magpie Goose. An amazing trophy, congratulations and I am sure it has been added to your amazing Rare collection!

Free Rotation

This week’s free rotation, which changes tomorrow, lets our guest hunters test their skills against Red Fox and Turkey. Good luck and have fun!

Have a great week all,

Discussion

Hello Hunters,

I trust everyone is well and that all your shots have been on point. I have been looking through the forum and there have been so many amazing animals harvested, well done team!

Feta Be Accurate! – New Feral Goat Competitions.

Get it??? Feta? Like goat cheese and ‘better’?… I crack myself up… Anyway I am pleased to introduce to you all the new pack of goat competitions, they are now part of the regular competition cycle, there are 7 unique competitions and 11 in total:

Competition Details:

• Biggest Feral Goat (Starter, Intermediate, Elite).
• Top Feral Goat (Starter, Intermediate, Elite).
• Outsmarting the Goat – Highest scoring Feral Goat with a shot to the brain.
• Right on Target – Longest shot Feral Goat with any Crossbow.
• Stealthy Job – Highest scoring Feral Goat with any Bow.
• Loud and Clean – Highest scoring unspooked Feral Goat at 100% Harvest Value with any ethical shotgun.
• Weigh it Well – Heaviest out of your first 6 harvested Feral Goat shot with a SxS shotgun.

Seeing as Feral Goats are a species that I have shot thousands of in real life, I am super excited about these competitions and you can watch me try my best at today’s competition live on stream this afternoon, 4pm CET www.twitch.com/expansiveworlds

What’s on the Lathe?

I mentioned last week about a new style of competition that we are working on, this is still happening, but it has just been pushed back a week, so check the forums early next week for your chance to enter. But here is a little more information to mull over:

• The competitors will compete live on Twitch.com.
• Competitor numbers will be limited to four.
• Anyone can enter and competitors will be drawn randomly.
• The event will last two hours and consist of two, one hour competitions.
• Competitions will be Handgun themed.
• The winner gets a currently unreleased item.

Smarter Than The Average Bear?

There has been some confusion over recent bear changes, mainly I think it is around peoples’ expectations of how they think they should be. So let me try to explain what has changed with them.

The original Grizzlies and Polar Bears were missing some stages in the AI cycle, which is where all the confusion starts.

Let me explain. In their original super aggressive state, they were missing a stage in their AI, the ‘look and listen’ stage that happens when you get within range of an animal. Because the bear was not running any ‘surrounding checks’, this was allowing users to run straight up to the bear. Then once you got up to the bear there was the chance that it charged you or fled.

We added the ‘look and listen’ stage back to their AI, but they had an issue which meant as soon as you went into the ‘look and listen’ range they automatically went to ‘fleeing’, which is why nobody could get close to them.

So now the bears are alert, like they should be in real life. But like all animals in the game you can now stalk them and if you get close enough to them, they will either attack or flee. So they are actually working as originally intended now and not too easy to kill like they were on release.

But if we now compare bear species, Grizzly and Polar Bear are much more likely to charge rather than flee than the other species. If you want to do tests I would try walking around, not running. Like mentioned in the last status update Grizzly Bears are not as aggressive as people think and only attack when startled or they have cubs, but if you run around in the woods and they hear you, they will avoid you.

I hope this helps to explain what was fixed and why it has been fixed. It is now finally working as intended. It should be fun working out how to hunt them now. I hope you enjoy the added realism.

Albino Ambition

Today we enter week three of this competition. But this week’s winner is Fegenhampe for this amazing Whitetail that actually makes the Super Rares Gallery, scoring 175.707. Congratulations.

But I also must congratulate Jonatas_Vitor for this amazing Moose, It must look amazing in your trophy lodge.

There are still two weeks of the competition left, for more details and the correct post to enter them head Here.

Rare and Trophy of the Week

The new weekly social media competitions are going well and it’s great to see so many new people coming into the forums. If you have shot a rare or high scoring animal from this week and want a chance to win, then share them in the correct thread on our forum, don’t forget to mention the score! Rares go into this Thread and trophy animals into this One. We currently don’t have a competition for Non-Typicals, but they go into this Thread.

This Weeks Winners

The ‘Rare of the Week’ is this amazing melanistic pheasant which was shot by felipepipo. A beautiful rare that many of us can only dream of harvesting! Congratulations.

And the ‘Trophy of the Week’ goes to piomarvado for this very nice Whitetail and trophy shot. It has an impressive score of 188.543. Great stuff!

Detailed hunt analytics

Do you spend a lot of time looking at your hunt history? Or are you a profile stalker that enjoys looking into other players’ hunt histories? Either way, UHC has created a great tool that allows you to dive deep into the stats behind any hunt, and we think you’re going to love it. Meaningful data, graphs, charts, heatmaps and interactive harvest maps are just some of the cool features on offer with the UHC Expedition Analyser. Whether you just want to look at your hunts in more detail, or look at hunts from the pros and figure out the best spots for finding animals, this tool has something for everyone.

To read more about this feature click here. To get started, all you have to do is create a UHC account. It’s fast, simple and FREE, and UHC offers a bunch of cool members features, including personal best data, competition hosting, free TeamSpeak servers and even a chance to earn em$ through participation!

www.uhcapps.co.uk

Free Rotation

This week’s free rotation lets our guest hunters test their skills against Coyote and Red Kangaroos. I have a feeling, treestands, scent eliminator and quick reflexes are need this week!

Best of luck out there and I hope you all have a good weekend!

Discussion

Features:

• Functional sunglasses – Sunglasses and tinted glasses now have an actual effect. It can be turned off in the gameplay settings and / or toggled on the fly with help of Z key (default)
• New sunglasses – Round, Ace and Speed
• New trophy shot filters – Warmth and Glacier

Changes

• Eyewear and facewear now have different inventory slots, so you can have both glasses and a scarf / moustaches on at the same time
• A new pose for pheasants added to the Trophy lodge
• The sound should be lower when inside the Trophy lodge when it’s raining
• Reindeer is now placed on large wall plaques in the Trophy lodge (please note that all your previously mounted reindeer are re-set to Trophy manager)
• The top large wall plaque in the Trophy lodge now has a slightly lower position to accommodate for larger antlers
• A new trophy pose added for reindeer, small adjustments made to red deer and elk poses – should eliminate / make better antler clipping
• Filter and sort buttons added to the Trophy manager, as well as tooltips to the various buttons in the Trophy lodge selector and editor (now you can hide your trophies)
• Fix for swapping trophies in the Trophy manager
• New soundmix fix for the bear moaning sound (bears should now sound less loud)
• Two more large bird platforms are added to the Trophy lodge
• Help button added for when inside of the Trophy Lodge
• Change to the roaming animals AI which should eliminate the situations when players are not able to catch up with roaming animals (bears, deer, goats, wild board etc.)

Bug fixes:

• Fix for Happy Camper, Blazing Orange, Army and B&C scarves showing as green in the camo app
• Fix for the 16GA white barrel issue
• Fix for rabbits and hares always showing “roaming” tracks
• Fix for the game crash / freeze during the trophy shot
• Fix for distance calculation on the map
• Fix for wrong distance showed for mineral feeder position
• Fixed an issue where the harvester would get a trophy instead of the person who killed the animal

In progress:

• Graphics issue on WRR
• Digging into slow loading times for inventory

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

Welcome to another, slightly belated, status update from us at theHunter Classic team.

Baiting overhaul – review
Last week we released a baiting overhaul together with brand new mineral feeders for Feral Goats. We’ve been closely watching the conversations and metrics around this big update and are happy to see that the baiting has been reinstated in its realms again. Awesome. You can see a video from HooCairs comparing hog baiting after the update to the old days here.

As always, we filtered all the feedback we received through the internal sieve of game design, technical and resource limitations and what not, and there will be some minor changes to the system: for one, we will be increasing the amount of feeders / barrels per reserve, after the next patch you will be able to place four of those. We think that this will be especially beneficial in Bushrangers Run, but also in Settlers Creek.

Secondly, we are currently testing a slightly different penalty system, which has probably been the most discussed aspect. While we won’t get rid of it completely in order to balance the benefits that baiting offers, we’ve decided to try to find a compromise and make the penalty a tiny bit more forgiving and dynamic. More details about this in the next game update.

We saw that some people complained about the goat mineral feeders not yielding enough goats. The attraction radius of those is smaller than that of bear barrels and pig feeders by game design, which means you have to be very careful about the location of your mineral feeder to find that perfect spot yielding you tons of different-horned trophies.

16 GA Shotgun & Comp 16 Gauge Lockdown

This week we saw the release of our new unique shotgun. The 16 GA side-by-side. It’s a gorgeous piece of weaponry which the team has poured a lot of love into, starting from the design by Patrick, followed by the 3D model by Mattias (who you should have seen in our Lock&Learn yesterday), excellent animations by Moe, sound by Greg and client code by Patrik. Oh, and there are two multispecies competitions running right now, in case you want to level up your new shotgun AND compete for some fame and glory.

New species? Again?
Yes! Our animal team has been on a creative streak lately and we’ve been working on yet another new species. It’s been one of the most requested animals for Whiterime Ridge and we’re now certain that we are bringing this guy (or gal) to your arctic landscapes hopefully very soon. Now, who shall that be? 😉

Hunt-a-thon Winners
Last week we ran a competition Hunta-a-thon to win theHunter Call of the Wild. 646 players have gotten their scores on the leaderboard and, as promised, we raffled 5 copied of theHunter: Call of the Wild and 5 theHunter: Call of the Wild T-Shirts amongst them. And the winners are:
*Free games:*
seagull653
sleepycarp
OldMM1966
Nimrodfuchs
Ande644m

*T-Shirts:*
MaxJorma
abstandshalter
m0nngis
LongBowDano
Velja1234

We will be in touch with the winners to discuss the logistics. Congratulations and thank you everyone who took part!

Goodbye to David and Dick
Finally, we are sad to announce that our support manager and long-term veteran David Lucas aka NAOutdoors, has left the team and will not work with theHunter anymore. David has been with the game since the very beginning, he is an absolute veteran of theHunter and we can truly say that it won’t be the same without him. Thank you David, for everything, and happy hunting wherever life leads you!

Today is the last day of another long-term team veteran, animator Dick Sjöström. He has shared with us his first and last commit on theHunter:

*First Submit (Rangefinder):*
Changelist: 324121
Date Submitted: 2010-06-09 16:38:12

*Last Submit (XXX – something exciting yet secret):*
Changelist: 1189820
Date Submitted: 2017-04-07 09:49:24

Thank you Dick, for your wonderful scent hound animations, among others, and the bottomless well of honesty and one-of-a-kindness.

On a final short note, as yours truly will be away for vacations in the next week and around Easter, our community manager Stefan will take over the status update for next week and let you know what’s cooking.

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters and huntresses,

Time for another status update!

New landing page & sign-up is live

Yesterday we released the new landing page and sign up process which will hopefully make it easier for new players to join theHunter family and get started with hunting. It didn’t go as smoothly as we had planned (as many of you know) and we are still experiencing some issues with launcher and browser access. You can read more about these issues and how to solve them in the interim, on your end, in our producer Philipp’s post here. We are continuing to work on fixing the remaining issues and will keep you updated in the respective forum thread. Thank you for bearing with us!

The mystery of the .243 Carbon Rifle

Many of you noticed (some within nanoseconds) the non-buyable but sleek-looking .243 Bolt Action Rifle – Carbon in the store, and started speculating as to what was going down. Well, I’ve got two pieces of news for you. One good and one bad. In keeping with tradition, let’s start with the bad. It won’t be buyable. The good news however, is that you can get it for free by verifying your email via Settings. If you do that, in addition to the rifle you will also receive 3 membership days (which will be added to existing memberships) as well as some other items, including a ground blind. Please note that you can only receive those rewards once, even if you change your email address afterwards.

Win the Beretta backpack from My Hunting Shop

Today we’re launching a new competition in collaboration with one of our partners, My Hunting Shop. An online marketplace for all things hunting and outdoors. The competition will take place on Hirschfelden and will last for 15 days, and the winner will receive the super awesome Beretta Modular Backpack 35 l, kindly supplied by My Hunting Shop, sent directly to wherever you live. You can see the bigger brother of our prize backpack “in action” in the video below, and I bet it’ll make you want that bad boy! Top three players on the leaderboard will also get unique trophies. So, go activate the competition and make sure to check My Hunting Shop, they’ve got a bunch of cool stuff there.

Rockies update

As the work on the new reserve continues, we thought it would be a good time to name our baby. So as tradition dictates, we delegate this task to you, our creative community who not only always know better but are brilliant at these things. Think of such masterpieces of names like Whiterime Ridge and Rougarou Bayou.

The rules are the same – come up with a great name that would fit with the existing EHR reserves nicely and represent the uniqueness of the location we showed you in the screenshots and video before. We are looking forward to your creative outbursts – share them in this thread!

Warning! The following announcement may be too graphic for some computers 🙂

On a final note, throughout the development of the new reserve, a lot of time has been spent debating the question of low graphic settings. Each reserve we have made to date has supported low scene complexity. This means every tree, shrub, rock and so on, requires a low-poly model to be created. As everyone knows, graphics technology has advanced leaps and bounds since the release of theHunter, and this is an area that continues to develop rapidly. Unfortunately we cannot afford to be held back by older hardware or system configurations any longer, and we have taken the hard decision to release this reserve with medium, through to very high graphics settings only. It is hoped that this decision will assure a more aesthetically pleasing and polished gameplay experience for the majority and, from an internal development perspective, optimise and streamline the process of creating new reserves and associated assets.

That’s it from us for today.

Happy hunting!

Discussion