Hello hunters,

Here is a short status update from us.

Summer Fiesta

The first tier is almost over and the amount of participants has been incredible. So far 8 669 unique players joined the competitions, they’ve used 184 863 attempts in which they harvested 157 793 animals with a total score 13 204 448. Looks like despite summer doldrums the competing spirit is strong with the hunters of EHR 😉 The competitions of the second tier start tomorrow and in order to be able to enroll in those, you need a bronze ticket, one per activation. You can get two for completing one of the “hard” Fiesta missions, one for placing 1 – 4 in any of the competitions in the Tier 1 or buying it in the store. You can check all the rules of the tournament here.

There has been a lot of discussion about the Bushrangers Runners mission, most of you still find it extremely difficult, even after we’ve removed the same hunt condition. Well, those missions have been designed to be extra-challenging, so only very determined hardcore hunters will complete them. Having said that, to spice it up a notch, we’ve decided to introduce a special prize that will be given to the first person completing the Bushrangers Runner mission (and posting about it in the Summer Fiesta forum thread) – they’ll be able to pick any item in the store, including premium but excluding non-released items, and get it for free.

Dog trophy shot contest – Winners

There have been lots and lots of really nice trophy shots submitted for our contest. All dogs were just beautiful, but here are our favourites:

Category Yellow Labrador – Mrmr123 & Abood

Category Chocolate Labrador – baluuto & Shiva

Category Black Labrador – Magnayen & Socke

Category Fox Red Labrador – ArchMaster & Easy

Runners-up are Sqwee, Beren666, SeelenfresserMiles, InSani7y, HooCairs, Villkatta, Mungo667, Pittie, alborith, TrophySeekerFilms, Gostwind, invisibleinsect, they’ll receive a medium pack of dog treats for their buddies.

Congratulations to the winners, please send me a PM and tell me a prize of your choice.

Load outs are published – time to vote!

We’ve finally came to the final voting phase of our load-out competition announced back in spring. Man, this has taken me a while to go through over 60 submissions, plus the dog release and holidays got in the middle, sorry about that. Anyway, the qualifying load outs are now published and ready for you pick the best of the best. To remind you of the rules, the winners will be chosen for each of the 9 reserves and they will be featured in our store alongside their creators’ names, similarly to the winning set-ups. You can find the polls (one per reserve) here. Please note that the voting is anonymous and soliciting votes is not allowed. Let’s make it fair. Good luck to everyone!

That’s it from us for today.

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Howdy hunters,

Welcome to our weekly status update! Let’s start with some doggie news, shall we?

Community Choice Lab

Today we are releasing an all new variation of our Labrador retriever – Fox Red. This variation has not been our first choice, because it is not that common in real life, although it’s hands down stunning. We received several requests for it and thought – why not? So here you go – the Fox Red Labrador is now in the store. You can buy it separately or in a special bundle, together with a bunch of dog goodies, including a pack of hot new Dog Treats (more on this further down)! This bundle offers a 30% discount and will be available until July 21st midnight CEST.

With the Fox Red Labrador we’re also introducing a new item category in the store – Community Choice. This category contains content inspired by or exclusively requested by community members.

Treat ‘em good!

Dog Treats, in different variations, have been brought up consistently since the release of the Labs. No wonder. There is nothing more common when training a dog than praising them with yummy bites when they perform well, and we’ve always wanted to have this interaction in theHunter as well. Now you can find different sized packs of dog treats in the store (both for em$ and gm$) and here is how they work:

Dog Treats are a means to reward your dog after performing a command successfully. They work similarly to camping supplies in the way that you equip them by placing in your backpack (not in an equipment slot). After your dog performs the command, you can give them a treat by using the middle selection in the dog command menu. The dog will eat the treat and get a small XP bonus based on a percentage of the XP awarded for the successful command performed.

The “Give treat” option is only available:

• When you have treats in your backpack
• After a successful command has been performed by the dog (but not TOO long after)
• When you are close to your dog

Dogs in trophy shots

Another addition that many of you have been looking forward to is the elaborate functionality for having dogs in trophy shots. Before now, when entering into a trophy shot mode, you had to wait for your dog to come around and then hurry up to take that picture before they changed their mind. Those times are over. Now you can grab your buddy when in the Edit mode (although they might get slightly confused), change their stance, place them wherever and however you feel like next to your downed animal – give them the place in your trophy shots that they deserve.

When trying out the new function, you may want to take part in our special competition – Trophy Shot Competition – Dog Edition. The rules are simple – take a trophy shot with your dog on it and post it in this thread. One winner will be chosen in each lab coat category (including the new Fox Red one) and they will receive a hefty prize of their choice (you can find the details in this post). When picking the winner, we’ll be looking at the composition, general aesthetics, but also the quality of the trophy animal. (Tip: If you want to brush up your trophy shot skills, check this super valuable video by HooCairs on how to take better shots).

Dogs’ spooking revised

After you’ve updated the game with today’s patch you’ll also see some changes in the way different animals react to your dog. Dog spooking has been reworked so that its effect can be different depending on the species. Generally, the retriever is less spooky when it comes to the species it is specialized for, while other species, such as Turkey, are much more easily spooked by dogs. When in a blind, the dog is near to invisible to all animals.

These changes do not completely nullify the spooking effect introduced in the last patch. You still have to use the dog strategically, learn to give them the right commands to control them when out on a hunt. Though discipline comes with experience, any dog has a potential to behave unruly and naughty, no matter how high their level is. So, learn to use the commands right and you can bring your dog with you on any hunt.

What are your thoughts on the dogs?

It’s been one month since we released the Labs and we are eager to hear what you think. We of course have gathered some great feedback via forums and social media, but we are looking to hear thoughts and opinions from more of you, when it comes both to the evaluation of the existing dog but also in regards to the future breeds and features you would like us to introduce. So, we’ve prepared a short Dog Survey (shouldn’t take you more than 5 minutes). It will be open until 25 July noon and we’ll randomly pick 3 people who will receive 1000 em$ from us (don’t forget to add your theHunter name in you want to participate in the draw.)

Take the survey

Fiesta update

The Fiesta event has exploded and is in full swing. We are really happy to see such an amazing response. There was a problem with non-typical Whitetail and Mule Deer counting for competitions of Tier 1 which has now been corrected, and a bunch of people have found the Bushrangers Runners mission incredibly difficult, so we’ve decided to change the requirements a bit to make it easier. Now you don’t have to complete all of the objectives in the same hunt.

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

Discussion

Hello hunters,

I am back, and so are our weekly status updates and newsletter (coming right into your inbox starting with next week onwards). Phil and Pär have been doing a great job keeping you in the loop about new releases and patches (and even a competition of a questionable quality), sweet, but now back to serious business! 😉

In the last week we had some server issues, which affected people trying to join each other’s multiplayer games, plus trophy shots were not getting uploaded to the gallery. Those were fixed on Wednesday. The current bug which makes guests’ dogs visible in a ground blind is also resolved and we’re releasing a patch with a fix for it, alongside more bug fixes and goodies, next week.

After the last patch some people got upset that their dogs barking started spooking animals which hadn’t been the case before (this was a bug). It was our bad for not being able to fix it right at the release and for that we apologize, however, we said in the release notes that the dogs would have a spooking effect, as this is the only realistic way to go with handling a hunting dog in a game such as theHunter. Having said that, we’ve listened to your feedback and will continue tweaking and fine-tuning dog’s visibility and noise effect on different animals to find an appropriate balance.

Summer Fiesta 2015

It’s today that our last year’s favourite Summer Fiesta is making a comeback! We’ve taken the inspiration for this year’s event from the idea of the Ultimate theHunter championship by our community member and acclaimed competition creator caledonianblues. When first announced, it was highly anticipated by the community but unfortunately never took place, so, with the permission of caledonianblues, we have taken the idea and Pär has elaborated it into something truly grand. This will be the largest official event we’ve ever had, by the time period, the amount of missions, competitions, trophies and prize pool (over 36,000 em$). We’ve tried to cater to both competitive and non-competitive hunting souls by dividing the event into a tournament and missions, so we hope you’ll be able to join! The three tournament winners, alongside some pretty awesome prizes, will become happy owners of the new, yet unreleased, premium weapon – 7mm break-action rifle “Bouquetin”. You can find all the rules and rewards in this forum post and if you have any questions – ask away!

The Fiesta starts today and we are kicking it off with a free species hunt for all the animals featured in the competitions of the first tier (Roosevelt Elk, Moose, Whitetail Deer, Brown Bear, Feral Hog, Canada Goose, Pheasant, Red Fox, Mallard Duck, Mule Deer). They will be free to hunt for all guests until Monday morning, July 13th.

That’s it for today, in the next weeks’ status updates you can expect to hear more about our loadout competition, great debate and the dog survey.

Happy hunting!

Discussion

Hello hunters,

One week has passed since the dogs were released and it’s time for a postflight analysis. All in all, our labs have been a huge success. Both the devs and the community love them and we feel that we’ve achieved something very unique and special. Having said that, persistent game crashes following the release rained a bit on the dog parade, but from what we’ve seen and heard, people have still managed to spend some quality time with their hunting buddies. All major game crashes were fixed on Monday and, to compensate you for lost game time and membership money, we’ve decided to prolong all the events, sales, missions and memberships respectively. Here are the adjusted deadlines:

• Bird fest (free Pheasant, Mallard and Goose hunt + bird equipment bundles) – until 22 June 21:00 CEST
• Dog 20% discount + dog / founder collar bundles – until 19 June 21:00 CEST
• Dog missions – until June 24
• Non-typical Mule Deer missions – until June 24
• Non-typical Blacktail missions – until June 25
• Extra membership days – 5 will be added to all existing memberships

Our apologies to those of you whose weekends were affected by the crashes. We’ve discussed the matter internally, learned some valuable lessons and we’ll take measures to avoid a repeat of this incident.

Naming your dog

We’ve been monitoring dog naming stats and wanted to share with you some interesting stats on the most popular names. The good ol’ Rex is topping the charts with 88 labs having been called this name. Here are the top 10 most popular names:

1. Rex 88
2. Max 53
3. Rocky 44
4. Jack 43
5. Buddy 39
6. Bella 37
7. Duke 36
8. Lucky 30
9. Charlie 29
10. Sam 27

We’ve also started to receive reports of offensive or inappropriately named dogs, so we wanted to remind everyone that dog names should be in compliance with our terms and conditions, paragraph 3, which means you may not use sexually explicit, harmful, threatening, abusive, defamatory, obscene, hateful, racially or ethnically offensive language when naming your dog, otherwise we’ll have to rename it and you will be prompted to pick a more appropriate name.

Our awesome voice artists

Tomas Sibo, sound designer, with the voice artists

Voice artists

We thought it’d be cool to introduce you to our three exceptionally talented voice artists who gave their voices to all the labs in theHunter. Please meet Oskar (yellow), Smilla (black) and Sacke (black). We met these three guys during a field recording in the north of Stockholm with the help of Marilois, who works in the working dogs society. With a wireless microphone attached to the dog’s head and with shotgun overhead mics (like this) we recorded audio material such as navigation, commands, barking, searching and many different presence sounds.

“Own limit” for items

After releasing bird equipment bundles last week we’ve been getting a lot of requests to remove the “own limit” for items, which was preventing people from buying bundles if they already owned one of the included items in their inventory. We’ve had an internal discussion about this and decided to take some action. So, starting from next week, you will be able to buy multiple items in the store, be it in a bundle or otherwise. Next to each item you’ll see the quantity you own highlighted in red. Please note that with the “own limit” removed you will now be responsible for taking conscious decisions about what to buy and in which quantity, since we don’t provide refunds for multiple items bought. We’re looking into the possibility to manage duplicate items.

Great debate – Let’s take it to the polls

Our first stab at a community debate with the topic “Realism vs. Fun” is over and it has been a blast! The contenders Knut and TundraPuppy have fought all the way through and the community contributed immensely. Great job, everyone! There is an ongoing poll right now to judge who is the winner – so, go cast your vote! I am going to prepare a short recap for everyone later, but you can always read the full debate here. We are planning to hold more debates in the future, so if you have a good suggestion for a topic or want to become involved, give me a shout.

Pim for president

Last week EW’s own Pim Holfve was appointed CEO of Avalanche Studios! You can find an official announcement here. As Pim will be moving to his new role heading up the whole studio, our producer Hannes will take over production at theHunter. We’re planning to organize an AMA with Hannes in the next months, so you will get a chance to get to know him better.

Summer break

On a final note, several team members, including me, are leaving tomorrow for summer holidays. The weekly status updates and newsletter will be taking a two-week break also, and will be resumed week commencing July 6. In the meantime the remaining team members will keep you posted about eventual game updates and releases via this blog, banner images in the launcher and the website, and our official Facebook and Twitter.

See you in two weeks and happy hunting!
Discussion

Howdy hunters,

The time has come and our beautiful Labrador retrievers are finally here!

Before rushing to the store to get yourself a new hunting buddy, make sure to read the release notes carefully and watch the accompanying tutorial video. As you must have seen in our pre-release livestream, your lab comes with new features and new gameplay, so this info put together by our game designer Daniel which covers commands, skills, stamina and more tips and tricks about your lab will sure come in handy. Right now your labs will help you retrieve Canada Geese, Mallard Ducks and Pheasants, but, following community suggestions we’ve also decided to add rabbits to the list of retrievable species. This’ll be implemented further down the line.

We’ve prepared a tasty offer that you’d be barking mad to refuse. If you buy a dog before Wednesday 17th 12:00 CEST you’ll get a 20% discount and receive a cherry on top – an exclusive leather collar which won’t be available in store afterwards. Please note that the free leather collar offer is only available in the Bundles section in the store. You can however buy dogs separately in the Dogs section. If the leather collar is not your dog’s cup of tea then there is an array of multicoloured collars available to suit every lab coat.

While we’re on the subject of special offers, we have another one for you – since this is a bird retrieving dog, there’s a sweet deal for those of you who haven’t indulged in the fine art of bird hunting yet – until the end of the weekend you can buy everything needed to hunt Mallards, Geese and Pheasants, at a very generous discount. These three species will also be free to hunt until the end of the weekend – real bird fest!

An important note; although we’re releasing the dog today, in the next weeks we will be closely watching your feedback and further tweaking, fixing and fine-tuning our retrievers, so we’d really appreciate it if you could share with us everything and anything about your new dog. We’ve created a special forum for all dog-related discussions in which you can report anything good or bad, and we’ll make sure to jump on bugs and issues on the fly. In a couple of weeks we’re going to release a short survey focused on dogs for you to share your feedback on the Labrador retriever and make suggestions for future breeds.

And last but not least – Pär has prepared a special package of 6 dog missions for you to hang out with your new buddy and try to win this lovely trophy (will be released a bit later today). These are time-limited missions, and you have until Wednesday 17th at 12:00 CEST to complete them.

I won’t hold you any longer. Now it’s time to … Sit! – Get out the blind! – Fetch!

Happy hunting with your dog!

Discussion