Howdy hunters,

Welcome to our slightly belated weekly update.

New and (better) old stuff

On Wednesday we released a game patch with some new things, as well as improvements for old items. Nifty scopes for some of our old reliable rifles, enhanced functionality for the two person tree stand, new iron sights for the .243, .270 and .300 rifles, increased magnification for the spotting scope and more. You can find the full list here.

Battle of the classic rifles

We launched a pretty cool event which everyone seems to be really enjoying so far. A Classic Showdown. The whole community is divided into four teams and fighting against each other to have their chosen classic rifle named the best of the best. As you can tell, I am in team K98k (which is so going to win ;)). What about you? Have you picked your team yet?

New collectibles

This week we also dropped a bunch of lovely eagle feathers and ammonite fossils on Val-des-Bois, one of the reserves that hasn’t had any collectibles until now. Later we will be adding some cool stuff for you to pick up on the other two empty reserves – Rougarou Bayou and Whiterime Ridge. Stay tuned!

Scent hound update

We are starting the testing phase for scent hounds, together with selected people who applied for our closed beta session. If you haven’t received an email from us this time, please don’t be discouraged. Hopefully next time you’ll be more lucky!

There have been a lot of questions about the upcoming scent hounds, everything shall be revealed in due course. We are also planning our traditional pre-release livestream where you can watch them with your own eyes.

With the release of scent hounds we’ll be tweaking the behaviour of our retrievers, so they will become a little bit smarter (but not as smart as their sniffing brothers and sisters). All the dog equipment and accessories, since it is manufactured from a top quality super stretch material, will of course fit both types of dogs.

We also wanted to share with you a couple of sneak peek screenshots of the scent hounds. They are work in progress, but still – what a beauty!

Service disruptions

Over Tuesday and Wednesday night we had some problems which were caused by service outages experienced by our server provider Google. Please read the statement by our producer Philipp here.

Free species rotation

Finally, the next two animals in our free species rotation are Arctic Fox and Roe Deer. You can hunt them for free until Thursday 26 May, when they will be exchanged again with two other species. Guest players are now able to see animals they are allowed to hunt in the top right corner of the website once logged in.

That’s it from us for today.

Happy hunting!

Discussion

The Open Beta has started. Click here for a How To Guide on the Forum.

As we promised in our last status update, we are inviting everyone to try out the Polar Bear in our open beta. Come help us test the new ruler of the Whiterime Ridge!

Call to open beta testing – Start February 18th 2016

• The testing will take place on our beta server and will run for about a week (subject to change), starting from February 18th, around 16:00 CET. Please note that you won’t be able to create an account before that. If you already have an account from our previous open beta sessions, you will be able to log in starting from 16:00 CET (subject to change).
• From Wednesday until Friday we’ll be testing the “vulnerable” mode of the Polar Bear, after that – the special event mode.
• Players will be able to hunt all animals, regardless of whether they are members or not, and will receive 10 000 em$ for testing purposes.
• Please note that items you buy on our beta server with the aforementioned em$ won’t be transferred to your actual game account.
• After the end of the open beta your access to the server will be revoked.
• Testing on beta won’t have any impact on your actual game stats, hunter score, leaderboard positions etc.
• Because it’s a stress test, server hiccups are likely to happen, so your game could crash or get disconnected, response times might be longer etc.

How to participate in the testing:

1. Starting from tomorrow, February 18th, around 16:00 CET, go to https://www.thehunterbeta.com/ and create a new account/login to your existing one
2. If you are new to open beta – Download and install the beta game client from Downloads.
3. Hunt, hunt, hunt!

What we’d like you to pay special attention to while testing:

We will add the specific information before the open beta starts.

When testing on beta you are likely to see some historical testing data (competitions, leaderboards, players’ names and such). Please disregard that as this is dummy data randomly generated from our live server for testing purposes. There is also a chance that some icons and images are missing from the Beta servers so there is no need to report this.

Please report all your feedback in this thread.

Thanks a lot for supporting the game! 🙂

Features

• .303 British Bolt Action Rifle

• Added a new rare Kangaroo texture variation

Bug fixes

• Red Kangaroo model and texture tweaks

Discussion

Hello Hunters,

Here are a couple of news for you from the drizzly Stockholm:

It’s cloud o’clock

… at last. During our maintenance yesterday, as the final step of implementing a new server solution for theHunter, we moved our game server to the cloud. It’s been a long and rather complicated process and it’s not completely finalized yet, as we’re continuing putting out fires, smashing bugs and indulge ourselves in other exciting activities to ensure the game runs without a hitch. It will take a while once the new environment works as smoothly as intended; we’ll keep monitoring the server performance and resolve issues on the fly. As always, your help in reporting bugs is appreciated, you can do it in this thread, detailed descriptions are mostly welcomed.

We want to thank you for all your patience and support during this process of server move. To make it up to you for a downtime yesterday and game disrupting issues, we’ll be adding an extra day to all active memberships.

AMA with Björn

It’s time for a new ‘Ask Me Anything’ session and now it’s our game designer Björn who will be answering your questions. You can think of Björn as the director of theHunter who oversees the overall picture and knows game’s every nook and cranny. He is the guy to ask ”big” questions, like gameplay, environment, balance, story etc., but he is also able to give thorough replies to more specific inquiries.

Björn’s AMA thread will be unlocked for 48 hours, starting at 12 p.m. CEST on May 9th. All the questions will be moderated and supervised by the moderation team, the standard AMA rules apply.

Trailer competition reminder

In case you missed it last week, we have a trailer competition running, and it’s a bit less than one week left to submit your video. You can read the rules and enter the competition here.

That’s it for now, happy hunting!

Comments

From the thirty designs submitted to the competition only seven were chosen for the final voting round. However, some of the designs that for one or another reason didn’t make it are very good and deserve to be seen by the community. That’s why we’ve decided to put them together as Honourable mentions.

By Pastuh:

By TundraPuppy:

By MonacoSteve:

By Sayanel:

By CaptainMunch:

Halloween is over and many a player is scarred for life due to the horrendous Beast Bear(s). Luckily, many managed to work through their trauma and come out as winners. Speaking of, here are the top three contestants:
1. arcwolf

2. M4G1E

3. BEST85

Congratulations! All prizes and trophies will be distributed as soon as possible. If you are interested in the full final leaderboard: Here you go.

The store is getting a new addition this week: A new, awesome looking, heavily customized .44 Handgun. It has a more modern look than our previous .44 revolver but packs the same hefty punch.

Also, we have been working extensively on providing more payment possibilities. This work is finally done which opens up our store to pretty much every country in the world. One can almost hear the collective sigh of relief from the Mule Deer population at Logger’s Point.

Lastly, anyone interested in the new reserve? Of course you are! Here is a sneak peak:

As you can see, work on the new reserve is coming along nicely and we are sure you guys are going to love it once it’s released.

Happy Hunting!

Comments

You know what time it is.. that’s right, it’s Status Update time!

Yesterday we released a Game Update with what we call Mirror Trophy Shot. With Mirror Trophy Shot, members will be able to capture that precious moment with their avatars on the pictures.

More news; today we released a set of all new missions developed in cooperation with famous archer and avid bow hunter Laura Francese. We really hope you enjoy them!

Also, don’t miss out on winning the all new Laura Francese in-game Avatar! Submit your best trophy shot via the official theHunter Facebook page!

On Monday this week we released Wild Boar missions, which we know a lot of you wanted since the release of them on Hirschfelden. We are working on more missions, and if you behave we may release them soon.

Comments