Hello hunters,

I want to begin with an update regarding the game crashes and issues which many players are experiencing, most notably those running the game on Windows XP and Vista. Our programmers are working flat out to resolve the matter (which has been given the highest priority) but unfortunately it is proving more difficult than we had hoped. It would really help us if you could provide a detailed game crash report in this thread (please make sure to provide all the details we are asking for in the description). We realise it is not the responsibility of the community to assist in this manner, but our aim is to get the situation under control as fast as possible and your cooperation will assist us in doing so. If you are experiencing any other bugs or issues, we have a bug forum for you to report those. Bugs posted in general threads disappear in the midst of thousands of post very quickly, so we are asking you to follow the bug reporting guidelines to help us find and fix the bugs. Thank you very much for your patience and support!

We want to extend our gratitude for the fact people are sticking with theHunter during these turbulent and frustrating times. To show our appreciation we will be giving everyone, regardless of whether your game has been impacted or not, a hard-hitting gift, more on this next week. People who were not able to play the game at all will be compensated on an individual basis at a later point, once the problems are fixed.

Once again, thank you for your continued loyalty and patience. We appreciate it very much.

Halloween event

Despite the fact some of you are having troubles with the game, we thought that it would be unfair to deprive the rest of the players of the traditional Halloween event. This year’s event consists of a special mission pack with a unique trophy for those who complete all the missions. The event starts today and will run throughout next week, until November 8th. A special Halloween bundle will also be available during this time. Please note that this event was created and implemented by team members who are not involved, and cannot assist in any way, with bug fixing. Good luck!

Movember 2015

This year we’re repeating last year’s success charity event where we, together with our community, joined the Movember movement. This year we’ll be raising funds for cancer research and awareness for men’s health again. Last year we collected $1776 in donations, let’ see whether we can beat this number this time.

In addition to our last year’s moustaches which will become available again, our artists have created another four funky ones – in styles Walrus (on the picture), the Bat, Artisan and Showstopper. Same as last year, they will cost 300 em$ and we will donate $ 2,- for every moustache purchased in our store during November. You can track our progress by the Movember ticker on the theHunter main page. TheHunter Movember campaign will start on Monday, November 2nd, and will run throughout the whole month

If for some reason you don’t want to buy a moustache but still want to take part in this charity event,  here is the link to the Expansive Worlds page on the Movember foundation site, where you can make a donation directly. Money donated via our Movember page will go directly to the foundation.

That’s all for today.

Happy spooky hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

The wait is over. The tenth Evergreen Hunting Reserve, Whiterime Ridge, is here. With its 5 inhabitants and vast landscape for you to hunt, explore and enjoy!

Following the feedback after the pre-release livestream (you can catch the replay here), we’ve made some changes and applied some fixes, and also updated the ethical weapons list for the bison. You can read all the details in the Whiterime Ridge Release Notes. If you encounter some issues in game, rest assured we are working on ironing out those as soon as possible. (Check the In Progress part of the Game Update).

A couple of short things before you jump into the snowy vastness. With the introduction of 4 new species we are starting a new, 18th season. That means a new chapter and a new opportunity to fight for a position on the leaderboard!

Today we are also introducing some new achievement levels. There will now be an achievement for 1000 harvests of all weapons and species except waterfowl. For waterfowl (geese and mallards) a new achievement for 4000 harvests, and a new total animals achievement for 32000 harvests. Time to wipe the dust off that crossbow you maxed out ages ago and give it some fresh love 😉

For the attention of players with retail boxes who downloaded the game from the DVD – you will have to download the whole game again (the download will be initiated automatically). We apologize for this inconvenience.

Now go explore and make sure to tell us what you think!

Happy Whiterime Ridge hunting!

Discussion

PS One more winner of our Hunterscore raffle is lowby – congratulations, the rifle has been added to your account, same is for two other raffle winner, fr_bugs and Shotoenth.

Hey hunters,

Hope all is well on your side of the globe! Here at EW we are settling in in the new office (more on this below) and adding a final touch to Whiterime Ridge, as it’s almost ready – that close! – for you to set your feet in.

The starting five

As you already know, Bison, Sitka Deer and Snowshoe Hare will be residents of the new reserve. Time to reveal the last two members of the starting five – they are our good ol’ Moose and a new species Arctic Fox.

The Arctic Fox is based on the Red Fox but with nice, silky and – oh my! – so fluffy fur. On the pictures you can see the snow white animal but don’t be surprised when you come across another common variation – blue, which is simply stunning.

Some of you may wonder why Moose and not Caribou was chosen as One of the old guard for the sub-arctic reserve. Well, the reason if the existing Reindeer’s migratory behaviour and the shape of Whiterime Ridge where such gameplay wouldn’t be possible. In order to put Caribou into it, we would have needed to reprogram animal’s AI which would not be feasible at this moment.

Pre-release livestreams

Next week you’ll get a chance to see Whiterime Ridge with your own eyes during our traditional pre-release livestreams. This time, with help of hunters of our international community, we are able to offer it in 5 languages! Here’s the video announcement of the English and German livestreams and below you can find the dates, times and details of streams in other languages.

Times and dates of the pre-release livestreams:

English: Monday, October 5th at 19:00 CEST
Streamed by Pratze, joined by Killertut and aljona
You can watch it on this channel

German: Monday, October 5th at 21.30 CEST
Streamed by Pratze, joined by ForstHeld and Killertut
You can watch it on this channel

Italian: Monday, October 5th at 21:00 CEST
Streamed by members of theHunterItaly (beke87, 682, DiCy, LEO86, baluuto, scartuccio)
You can watch it on this channel (the link will be working at the time of the stream)

French: Monday, October 5th at 21:00 CEST
Streamed by Valentin992, joined by Aquila_Foios, Florian18, oscar2215
You can watch it on this channel

Spanish: Monday, October 5th at 21:00 CEST
Streamed by members of theHunterSpain (Metroid2, cibermax, juagarzo)
You can watch it on this channel

Hope you’ll be able to make it to one of these snow feasts!

Graphics Update

For the last months we’ve been working on some graphics improvements which will be implemented together with Whiterime Ridge. I’ll write a bigger, more detailed post with release notes later, but here is a sneak peek of just two improvements of many.

This shot shows the higher accuracy of the terrain lighting (the small hill to the right was previously lit incorrectly) as well as the updated lighting model.

This shot shows the improved shadowing of the grass for high and very high shadow settings.

Hunters’ new home – The Night Owl!

Last week, together with our mother company Avalanche Studios, we moved into new shiny headquarters with such a cool name the Night Owl. In case you want to come by and say hello (and you totally should!), our new address is Västgötagatan 5, Stockholm.

To make our office space looks truly theHunter’esque, we of course threw some some stuff around. Here’s a small collage of theHunter artifacts – do you know what they are and what relation they have to EW? The first person who will get all of them correctly (in forum thread replies) will receive something nice 😉

Game issues

Last Friday we experienced a server outage which lasted for about 8 hours and affected the majority of players. As a compensation for this lack of service we’ve added 2 days to all active memberships. You can read a more detailed statement on this here. We are very sorry about this.

And yet another persistent issue that has been plaguing many bear barrels and hog feeders in  the last weeks – inconsistent and incorrect bait amount has been being displayed in the launcher and in game. We have been looking into this but were not able to pinpoint the cause of this problem yet. We’re continuing to investigate and after the issue is fixed, we’ll find the way to reimburse you for the lost bait if any.

Raffle winner

The lucky winner of our .45 – 70 Lever Action Rifle raffle is Fr_bugs! He was picked by the script from 2000 hunters who have increased their Hunterscore by 10 in the last week and will receive the rifle at the Whiterime Ridge release.

That’s it for today!

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello there hunters,

Whiterime Ridge with its snowy deserts and howling winds is creeping into the EHR and from what I’ve seen so far it’s promising to be a totally different hunting experience. Tough, lonely (bring a friend on your journey) and somewhat contemplative. Well, at least that’s my perception, hopefully you’ll be able to make up your own mind very soon. In the meantime, let me introduce the third inhabitant of this frozen realm (the one that is jumping). Extremely cute and fluffy, meet the Snowshoe Hare.

As you can see from this render, it’s remodelled after our old bud, the Cottontail Rabbit. However the Snowshoe has much larger paws, is able to hope better on the snow crust and has leaner body covered with lovely fur. Otherwise the AI and gameplay are very much the same as that of the Cottontail, only they are more difficult to spot due to their outstanding camouflage ability.

Like all the Br’ers Rabbits of the EHR, the Snowshoe Hare will be free to hunt.

There have been oodles of questions regarding cold weather and how our existing clothes will perform in Whiterime Ridge, so let me tackle them here. For one, all items of clothing in the store will receive an additional characteristic – Weather Protection. This will determine how long you will be able to stay alive without collapsing in the harsh sub-arctic environment wearing that particular item. In jeans and a t-shirt you will not last long at all, whereas for example a trapper outfit will give you more time. There will be special clothes in which you will able to hunt for an unlimited period of time. A basic set with no camo will be given out for free at the release, similar to the basic clothes you get when you join theHunter. If you want additional camo, a Sneaky 3D Arctic Winter outfit will be available in theHunter Store. Now, to the Sneaky 3D Winter Forest outfit. It has camo which will work in Whiterime Ridge forest areas but its weather protection won’t be enough to hunt in it for an unlimited period of time.

Over the weekend we are running a special Whiterime Ridge Warm-Up Marathon where you get a chance to win yourself some Sneaky 3D Arctic Winter clothes. Read the details here.

Now, to the winner of our raffle-daffle we announced last week before the double XP weekend. Over 500 hunters increased their skills by 5 levels but the lucky winner is Shotoenth! He will receive the beautiful .45-70 Lever Action Rifle at the Whiterime Ridge release.

For the rest of you, please do not despair, here is a new raffle for you. We will choose another hunter who will get the .45-70 for free amongst those who will have increased their hunterscore by 10 points from today, September 24 until October 4th. To make this task a tiny bit easier for guests, from today until the end of Monday, September 28th, Whitetail Deer, Black Bear, Roosevelt Elk, Feral Hog and Moose will be free to hunt.

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hey all hunters,

Another week has passed and here’s  what we’ve been working on. The upcoming reserve is occupying most minds and PCs here in the office, as it has been the case for the last months. Whiterime Ridge is slowly getting its mesmerizing look and feel while getting rid of bugs, and there are already four new beautiful animals running, thumping and jumping in it. Today we are presenting you the reserve emblem – it’s snowy peaks and the mighty bison, surprise, surprise 🙂 Hope you like it!

I am getting a lot of questions about the release date on social media and forum, so let me address it here –  it’s getting closer, but we can’t tell you when it’ll happen just yet. For one, we don’t want to make any promises before we are absolutely sure that we can deliver on them, plus, you know us – we like making surprises 😉 Here is a little something that might savour your waiting a bit – the Whiterime Ridge desktop background (click to open in full resolution).

Cold or very cold?

You probably have wondered what the deal was with forgotten Hannes’s gloves he mentioned in the status update last time – well, the thing is Whiterime Ridge is cold. Very cold. It is so cold in fact that you will quickly consider abandoning your favourite jeans and t-shirt look for spiffing new super warm arctic clothing!

But what happens if you waltz out into the sub zero wilderness wearing nothing but a Happy Camper tee, ye olde basic pants and that fresh looking Football Jamboree cap you bought? Well, after a while you’ll start to notice your breathing becoming strained and it will be difficult to keep your weapon still when aiming. Perhaps you’ll find that your trigger finger does not completely obey your will. After a while you will succumb to the cold and collapse into a sad little frozen pile. No worries though: The EHR Rescue Helicopters will quickly find you and take you to a lodge where hot cocoa and blankets will have you back out there in no time! Now, if you have not learnt your lesson by then, the whole process will repeat itself. It may be a great way to score some free hot cocoa but it is a poor way to hunt.

To cut to the chase, you’ll have to bring your arctic clothes when hunting or the hunt will be quite short. And, naturally, we will provide you with a free set of arctic clothes at the launch of the reserve. This is not purely out of the kindness of our hearts but more a way to cut down on the cost of hot cocoa 😉

Level up for the cold

To get your blood pumping and let you hone your hunting skills for Whiterime Ridge, we are throwing a double XP fest this weekend – from now until Monday morning CEST all the skill experience points you earn when hunting will be doubled. Don’t miss it, this is a rare opportunity!

And a cherry on top – if you increase ANY of your skill (be it tracking, spotting or weapon) by 5 levels from September 18th, noon CEST, until September 24th, noon CEST, you will get automatically enrolled into a little raffle – we will randomly pick one person who will get the .45 -70 Lever Action Rifle , excellent for the Bison and other mighty beasts of EHR, at the release of Whiterime Ridge (this rifle will appear in the store in the future). The winner of the raffle will be announced in the next status update.

That’s it for today.

Happy levelling and hunting!

Discussion