It’s that time again and as fate, or rather careful planning, has it this status update correlates with the release of a new patch that adds a brand new feature to the game that should put a smile on the face stats loving players everywhere.

Before we delve deeper into the mechanics of this new mathematical wonderland we want to recognize the work of our programming intern Robin that made this new feature possible as an introductory task while learning our tools.

Now lets get into what this new stat is all about!

Harvest Value

Harvest value is a new way to score harvested animals that focus on how the animal was harvested rather than how it looks.

The aim of harvest value is to reward practices that lead to less animal suffering and that prevent unnecessary trophy damage. This is achieved by balancing two new stats against each other; Wound Time & Trophy Integrity.

It’s important to note that harvest value does not in any way replace the regular trophy score nor CSS (which is derived from the regular score).

Wound Time

Wound time is the time from first wound to death. To gain high harvest values you need to keep this time as low as possible which in turn means less animal suffering. The best wound time results are achieved through proper shot placement using a weapon with enough penetration to damage critical organs such as the heart and lungs. As most of you probably know by now a penetrated heart in theHunter leads to instant death which in this case means the best wound time that can be achieved, 0.

Values range from 0-infinite seconds where 0 is awesome and more than 60 is horrible.

Trophy Integrity

The second variable to make up harvest value is trophy integrity. Trophy integrity simulates how damaged the trophy is. The real life counterparts are things like meat, pelt and antler damage which lowers the monetary value of the harvest. Note that we use a simplified method to calculate this which means that it is not directly translatable to all real life situations.

Trophy integrity is affected by weapon type, distance to target and species. The rule of thumb is that the less damage the target takes the higher the integrity value.

Values range from 0-100% where 100% is awesome and 0% is horrible.

Balance Game

To calculate the final Harvest Value we simply multiply the two. This means that the highest possible harvest values can only be achieved when maxing both of them. This leads to a balancing game where you need to find the optimal caliber with just enough damage to take down the target as quickly as possible.

High caliber weapons are thus not suitable for small game (bad integrity & good wound time) while they excel vs. big game (good integrity & good wound time).

Low caliber weapons on the other hand are not suitable for big game (good integrity & bad wound time) while they excel vs. small game (good integrity & good wound time).

That’s nice but what is the point?

First of all we have a couple of fun new stats attached to each score sheet that you can marvel at. While this is enough for many players we do not stop there, we also plan to include this as a new condition for things like new competitions, missions and achievements.