Update 6.0

Update 6.0 was released 2nd May 2019.

Version: v0.627
SteambuildID: 3782222
Client patch size: ~1.6 GB

Highlights

New Boss: The Assassin

Added new boss target: The Assassin
Agile attacks from unseen angles
Uses walls to navigate to shortcuts and fire ranged attacks from
Temporarily clones itself to try and open up an opportunity to attack

Developer Note: The Assassin is the product born from a lot of investigation into what bosses mean to Hunt in its current state, since the previous two boss targets were created, the game has shifted a lot to build a better core experience. With this in mind, we wanted to approach the issues that came out of the other bosses and see where we can build a benchmark that offers a few things; a challenge to new and old players, a balance between boss PvE engagement and the ever looming PvP, and something unique to set each boss apart. There were a lot of prototypes and concepts that we tried – for example the early stages didn’t have clones and relied on trying to lead the player into dead ends, but a lot of complexity was hidden so a lot of weird and wonderful ideas that worked on paper actually turned out to be unreadable and annoying to play. The Assassin will use its behaviors in specific ways to punish the unprepared and reward those who keep calm and pay attention to what is about to happen, and this is how the logic and behaviors settled for the final thing you can play today.

Book of Monsters

The Book of Monsters is the first in a series of new books for the Library that allows players to reveal more about Hunt's universe and backstory.
The book includes a unique unlock system that makes new pages available to players after completing the required gameplay challenges.
- Main entries unlock when the player kills a type of enemy for the first time
- Additional pages unlock by completing mastery challenges
- Challenges, become harder to complete with every mastery level

New Equipment

LeMat Mark II Revolver
- Re-imagining a classic: The LeMat Mark II is based on a vintage Civil War era caplock design, but modernized to load cartridges
- Single-action revolver with a second barrel that holds a single shotgun shell. This weapon uses a small inventory slot
- Combines the advantages of a mid-range handgun with the firepower of a shotgun at a point-blank range
- Can toggle fire-modes between primary and secondary ammo types
- Fires 9 rounds of compact ammo with additional 18 bullets
- The shotgun comes with 3 additional shells
- The weapon benefits from the Fanning trait, but fans at a lower speed due to its bulky size.
Lebel 1886 Bolt-action Rifle
- French bolt-action rifle design that set new standards to many upcoming rifles such as the Mosin Nagant, which would take inspiration from the Lebel in the following years
- Slightly dated and somewhat clunky to operate. What the weapon lacks with its lower rate of fire and less control, it makes up in ammunition capacity over its competitors
- Holds 9 long ammo rounds in a tubular magazine with one additional round in the chamber, but only comes with 5 extra bullets
- Unlike the Mosin Nagant, the Lebel rifle cannot be loaded using stripper clips and can only take one round at a time
- The weapon benefits from the Bulletgrubber and Iron Sharpshooter traits
Bomb Lance
- Custom large slot melee weapon that is based on whaling lances of the time, combining a long-reaching sharp blade with a built-in harpoon launching device
- Fires an explosive harpoon that can penetrates deep into the flesh before it detonates, tearing the target apart from the inside
- A successful hit with a Bomb Lance harpoon projectile can bring down the toughest of enemies without hurting the bearer as the victim's own flesh absorbs most of the explosion even at a short distance
- Comes with 5 additional harpoons
Alert Trip Mine
- Portable trip mine that comes in a pack of 3 and takes a tool slot in the inventory
- Can be placed in the world and when activated produces noise and light to warn of possible intruders and to disorient them
- A placed Alert Trip Mine can be picked up and re-deployed again by any Hunters (similarly to the Bear traps found in the world)
  - Concertina Trip Mine
- Portable trip mine that takes a tool slot in the inventory
- Can be placed in the world and when activated creates a mini razor-wire mesh that can block windows, doors and narrow corridors and causes Rending damage
- A placed Concertina Trip Mine can be picked up and re-deployed again by any Hunters(similarly to the Bear traps found in the world
Ammo Box
- Portable box that holds small quantities of both regular and special ammunition
- Can be placed in the world and allows a Hunter and their partner (or an enemy!) to resupply ammunition from it once, similar to the ammo boxes found in the world
- Takes a consumable slot in the inventory
- The Special ammo types include Nitro bullets as well as all types of Crossbow bolts

New Traits

Ghoul
- With the Ghoul trait, players instantly heal 50 hitpoints when looting a dead Hunter
Vulture
- The Vulture trait allows players to always loot dead Hunters they come across, even if they had already been looted by other players
Adrenaline
- Adrenaline enables players to instantly start recharging stamina when their health is critically low.

General Updates

AI

General AI
- Navigation improvements to prevent AI getting stuck while swarming around and/or traversing stairs; this included a re-balancing for smoother movement speeds while turning corners
- All AI types react to direct Bomb Lance harpoon hits
- AI spawn distance improvements
- Made AI more perceptive to Hunter movements
- Hellhounds no longer spawn as clue defenders
Butcher
- Reworked the boss fight behavior of the Butcher
  - Re-balanced target selection when fighting multiple players to reduce oscillations.
  - Butcher now takes more damage from shotguns and slightly more damage to the torso from compact ammo
  - The Butcher now moves at a slightly slower speed
  - Adjusted the frequency and accuracy of his ranged fire attack
  - The Butcher no longer drops on the knee after taking a large amount of damage, it now enters a ‘Frenzy mode’ instead
- Frenzy Mode
  - During Frenzy Mode, the Butcher receives a slight speed boost and charges forward chasing his target (matching the Hunter's sprint speed)
  - While charging forward, the Butcher performs continuous melee attacks, setting parts of the environment on fire
  - After some time, the Butcher drops out of Frenzy Mode and resumes his normal behaviour

Developer Note: We finally found the time to look into the existing bosses. Last update we focused on the Spider's locomotion and with 6.0 we now had a chance to look at the Butcher's core behavior. We wanted to make sure the Butcher feels more like a threat, but also making him easier to read and manage during the fight. For this, we wanted him to constantly switch from being the hunter to being the hunted, instead of giving players the chance to dominate the boss by forcing him on his knees as quickly as possible to deal extra damage. In order to help us make this work, we designed a new Frenzy Mode for the Butcher, replacing parts of his current behavior. This new Frenzy Mode allows the Butcher to remain mobile when taking damage, requiring players to keep moving more. We also tried to reduce frustration from his ranged fire attacks by making them less precise over distance and less frequent. With these changes, the Butcher can now be more effectively fought inside his arena without players constantly running outside, but also require them to move around a lot more inside the arena to avoid him during Frenzy Mode. If those changes work out well, we also plan to look into the Spider's behavior in a future update. Please tell us what you think!

Audio

Added a close proximity sound when near a red clue/rift that can be heard through walls to allow the detection of nearby players
Added an audio ‘whoosh’ to throwing items when in the air
Updated the Generator interaction audio timing to match its visuals
Improved fuse audio to increase readability in combat situations

Developer Note:There is now a very obvious tonal ghostly whoosh sound when throwing a fused item (also Firebomb & Hellfire Bomb) which should help you understand when the item is released.

We want to make the fuse audio to be as audible as possible, however we may tweak and improve it more in the future.

Increased audibility range of dynamite impact
Adjusted the Flash Bomb's audio timing to match its visuals

Gunplay

General
- Small special ammo packs now allow resupplying other special ammo types as well
- Slightly increased throw distance difference between regular throws and throws using the Pitcher trait (they are still close however!)
- Chaos Bomb is back to its eight second fuse timer before being triggered, to give players a chance to clear the area and time their next move
- Romero 77 has been removed from the random starting gear (only Romero 77 Handcannon and Caldwell 78 Rival Handcannon remains)
Shotgun tweaks
- Hunters take slightly less damage from shotgun shots to limbs
- Shotguns lose damage slightly faster over distance
- Shotguns keep a slightly higher min-damage over a longer distance (max distance remains the same!)
- Added new Toggle Fire-mode button (Default X) to allow changing between different states on some equipment (LeMat Mark II and Lanterns only for now!)
- Lanterns can now be toggled on/off while carried around (dropping them will still always turn them off and picking them up will always turn them on!)
Flash Bomb rework
- Full flash radius has been increased from 3 to 8
- Full flash time has been increased
- Players now only get a hit indicator for successful full flashes (partially flashing for a brief moment no longer registers as a hit to avoid confusion)
- Flash Bombs will produce a very minor flash up to 30 meters when looking at it (this is not strong enough to trigger a full whiteout effect)
Concertina rework
- Concertina wire now slows down entangled players, making it harder to run through them
- Increased initial area damage of the Concertina Bomb when it first deploys
- Slightly increased volume and size of the affected area when deploying a Concertina Bomb
- Concertina Bombs have a slight delay before they explode after touching down
- Concertina Bomb now properly attributes kills and displays "killed by" information on death screen

Developer Note: We have reworked the way concertina wire is spawned into the world to make it more useful as a physical blocker, covering a larger area and making it harder to simply run through it. These changes also gave us more flexibility to introduce other concertina-based items, like the new Concertina Trip Mine tool that affects a much smaller area than the Concertina Bomb.

Talon, Mace and Brawler weapon variants now have slightly less control and/or more recoil than their respective base weapons (use the weapon stats in the menu to compare them!)
Normalized and increased melee range across all weapons
- All heavy ranges except Bomb Lance, Cavalry Saber, and Bayonet variants are now matched
- All light ranges except Bomb Lance are now matched

Developer Note: To prevent the annoying and unreadable nature of the changes previously introduced, the focus has shifted from melee range to melee hit detection types. Instead of worrying how close you are to an enemy, you should worry about how to aim your weapon so that it can hit something that looks close enough (sledgehammer is a slim top-to-bottom swing, machete is a wide left-to-right swing etc.).

Hunters

Players react to direct Bomb Lance harpoon hits (triggering a delayed detonation that downs/kills the player instantly without causing damage in their proximity)
Doubled the amount of ammo received from looting players
Added additional Hunter outfit variations to the recruits
- 2 new Tier 1 outfits
- 4 new Tier 2 outfits
- 2 new Tier 3 outfits
Adjusted several player interactions
- Using Health stations in the world now is a hold interaction that lasts 2 seconds
- Looting players now is a hold interaction that lasts 4 seconds (same as revive!)
- Picking up world items (Sledgehammer, Lantern, etc) now is a hold interaction that lasts 0.3 seconds (same as looting other weapons)
- All hold interactions allow the player to rotate around freely while in progress with the exception of clues and rifts.
Burning or burned-out Hunters cannot be looted

Developer Note: This change is an attempt to introduce more choice into existing player actions. Now players will have to consider whether it makes sense to burn a downed player. If they burn them, they lose the chance to loot the body. If they don't, that player's partner might have a chance to go for a revive. Burning should no longer be the given default choice. This also goes together nicely with the above mentioned changes to player looting, which now takes just as long as a revive. Looting is just as risky as reviving, preventing players from looting a downed hunter quickly and then setting the body on fire anyways.

Poison Damage Rework
- Hunters cannot heal while poisoned
- Poison duration reduced from 20 to 10 seconds
- Mithrandatist trait poison duration reduced from 10 to 5 seconds
- Antidote shot now lasts the duration of a full match (around 60 minutes)
  - Spider deals 100% damage, but without poison effect after using an Antidote shot
  - Swarms do a fraction of their original damage and have no poison effect after using an Antidote shot
  - Poison clouds don't affect players at all after using an Antidote shot

Developer Note: Poison preventing to top-up health was something we had in mind for a long time, but couldn't really move forward with it due to some technical issues. Now that these issues are resolved, we were finally able to introduce the poison feature like it was always planned to work. The idea is that being poisoned is a shorter, but much more dangerous state, where players will have to be very careful as they do not regenerate any health and cannot use First Aid Kits, Vitality Shots or health stations in the world while affected by poison. On the flipside, the Antidote Shot becomes a valuable counter to poison damage in general. Reduced throwing distance for Decoys and Blankfire Decoys to match throwing distance of regular explosives Reduced throwing range bonus from Pitcher trait

Developer Note: The Pitcher trait has always been a controversial addition, with many players seeing this as a must-have and giving a massive advantage to throw grenades. While it still gives an advantage, the range bonus when using Pitcher has been reduced significantly now, giving a bonus of 25-30% more range depending on what you throw.

Traits

Ghoul trait added for 4 Upgrade Points (Unlocks at Rank 7)
Vulture trait added for 2 Upgrade Points (Unlocks at Rank 72)
Adrenaline trait added for 4 Upgrade Points (Unlocks at Rank 83)
Pitcher trait cost reduced from 7 to 5 Upgrade Points

Onboarding

Added Meta tutorial hints: Now a pop up will appear on newly visited screens of our menu with an explanation.
Addeed In-game tutorial hints: New, non intrusive hints will appear on the top corner of the screen to help new players in understanding the game flow and game mechanics.
Added Option to disable onboarding hints in the options menu
Added Option to disable hints in options menu
Disabled new players being able to search for a random partner until they reach Rank 3
Disabled new players being able to play Quick Play until they reach Rank 3

Store

New Equipment
- Lebel Rifle – Rank 52 - $387
- Lemat Revolver – Rank 80 - $133
- Bomb Lance – Rank 86 - $333
- Ammo Box – Rank 55 - $125
- Alert Trip Mine – Rank 30 - $45
- Concertina Trip Mine – Rank 82 - $90
Price Changes
- Hellfire Bomb increased from $25 to $50
- Concertina Bomb increased from $15 to $48

Performance

Simplified collision meshes to improve server performance
Improved view distances for world objects for better performance
Improved shadow casting of world objects for better performance
Concertina wire deployment checks are much cheaper and slightly faster now
Ongoing server side performance improvements
Fixed some minor memory resource leak

UI

Split the default mouse sensitivity into two parts: movement and Shoulder Aiming
Improved loading screen texts to increase readability

World

- Created new boss space level dressing
- Improved collision meshes of world assets
- Some color corrections on world objects
- Improved level dressing and theme in some areas of both maps
- Improved lighting of some interior spaces for better readability
- Updated some of the signs
- Fixed some bullet penetration issues
- Fixed some floating assets in the level
- Fixed wrong footstep sounds on object surfaces
- Level dressing tweaks for Quickplay game mode
- General improvements and polish on some world objects.
- Animal Traps can now be better de-escalated again when the player walks away from them
- Fixed issues of player colliding with invisible Butcher dressing objects
- Ammo markup pass in and around some compounds to improve their ammo propagation

Elevator mechanic/interaction has been streamlined

Developer Note: In order to make the elevator more useful, it can now be used from within the cage. The elevator will then simply move to its destination. From there you can repeat the action to return to its start position. The cranks are used to call the elevator to your position. If you plan your exit strategy for leaving a boss pit e.g. you might want to position the elevator the way you can use it later on.

Resupply station changes on both maps to improve its randomization
- NEW spots on Stillwater Bayou (4): Northeast & Northwest of Port Reeker, Northwest of Pitching Crematorium, North of Catfish Grove
- NEW spots on Lawson Delta (7): North & South of Fort Carmick, Southwest of Wolfshead Arsenal, Northwest of Iron Works, Northwest & Northeast of Maw Battery, Northwest of Golden Acres, Between Nicholls Prison & Windy Run
Generator feature and markup changes
- Only one generator per area is available now at the same time which means randomized position in some compounds
- NEW placements in Stillwater Bayou: Blanchett Graves, Healing Waters, Chapel of Madonna
- NEW placements in Lawson Delta: Arden Parish, Iron Works
Stillwater Bayou
- Alain & Son's Fish - Layout changes to improve approaches / satellite
- Alice Farm - Added additional ways of getting in and out of the Butcher barn
- Lockbay Docks - Anti-Camping pass: Deadend issue of the Boathouse / Attached side building has been tweaked
- Catfish Groove - Additional timber logs to flank
- Scupper Lake - Reduced density of high grass in the eastern area
- Port Reeker - Tweaked entrances of 'Fish factory' boss building by replacing the sliding gates with crank operated gates
- Port Reeker - Easter egg/Hidden room is inaccessible now to block it from being a camping spot
- Blanchett Graves - Eastern entrance of the basement has been reworked to provide more options / both clue have been re-positioned / new stairs to get up onto the church level
- Blanchett Graves - Layout changes to make the basement easier to read and navigate for the player / basement floor has been lowered by 0.5m to improve gameplay space for bosses
- Blanchett Graves - Northern wall of the church has been raised
- Healing-Waters Church - Added an interactive bell to the church tower
- Healing-Waters Church - Fixed invisible ravens around the northern part of the church
- Blanchett Graves - Removed Butcher from being spawned inside of the tree pit
Lawson Delta
- Fort Carmick - Added trenches to the surroundings of Fort, to provide better traversal options and more cover
- Lawson Station - New elevator at the tower to have shortcut bypassing stairs
- Bradley & Craven Brickworks - Anti camping: Additional way of getting into the boss pit
- C&A Lumber - Little pond south of the compounds has been tweaked in terms of cover and readability
- Windy Run - Anti camping: Sight blocker and terrain change have been added to the open fields

Quickplay

Improved region shrink in Quickplay to decrease the chance of having the wellspring in one of the center compounds

Bug Fixes

(Note: We have only listed the most important fixes and known issues due to space limitations. Please let us know if you face any bugs or issues, using our customer support site or social media and Discord channels)

Death by world fire now counts as suicide
Fixed an issue where eating grunts can get stuck when trying to go to combat
Fixed Bornheim No.3 audio to better fit its animations
Fixed an issue where the enemy player avatar was not shown on the death screen after getting killed with environmental traps
Fixed some issues for hold interactions
Fixed an issue where the partner inspector and Quick Play leave confirmation pop ups were not showing correctly
Fixed an issue where the Quick Play timer was stuck for late-joining players
Fixed an issue where the crows' alarmed state sounds were not moving with the crows correctly
Fixed some set up issues with the death event if self inflicted by the player
Fixed some animation issues for throwables
Fixed an issue that could occur when switching weapons or picking up a world item causing the mouse sensitivity to decrease
Fixed select issues for multiple weapons
Fixed a wall that blocked a staircase in Port Reeker
Fixed and tweaked the Butcher behavior
Fixed interaction point distance for a smoother experience
Fixed in-game partner inspector
Fixed water explosions
Fixed the damage value for when vaulting into a bear trap
Fixed an issue that allowed players to get trapped on top of an elevator at Stillwater Bend
Fixed some clipping issues with the Butcher’s corpse on non-horizontal surfaces
Hellhounds now follow their proper patrol paths again
Fixed an issue where the Meathead could spawn too many leeches and Dead leeches could block the player’s movement
Fixed an issue where the Meathead would sometimes become unresponsive in its ambient behavior
Further fixing of visual 'jittering and popping' artifacts
Fixed an issue where the AI would have a wrong orientation for a moment, when going into ragdoll
Fixed some AI navigation problems
Fixed an issue where the Spider would not always face straight upwards after dying, running the risk of not being able to interact with it to start the banishing
Fixed an issue where players could randomly disconnect from the server
Fixed a bug where inspecting a teammate would unintendedly accept currently selected mission
Fixed a bug where the mouse cursor would get misaligned when switching resolution in full-screen mode
Fixed an issue where switching weapons allowed skipping parts of their selection and cooking animations
Fixed an issue where Hunter’s pain audio was not playing in some rare circumstances
Fixed several locations where players could get stuck
Fixed some lighting issues for Foggy Time of Day
Fixed some instances where world items could not be picked up
We have improved some physics proxies to avoid shots getting unintendedly blocked
Fixed a bug where crows were not killed by lanterns
Fixed a bug that prevented masked Hellhounds from being part of a Hellhound pack
Fixed some areas that players could access unintendedly
Fixed an issue that caused the walls of Healing Waters Church’s basement to cull too early
Fixed some issues where AI could spawn in wrong places
Fixed an issue where stutters would not open by melee hits
Fixed a bug where swapping weapons did not work properly if the interaction was not held long enough
Fixed some other audio issues
Fixed some localization and text issues
Fixed a bug that prevented players from collecting both challenge rewards at the same time
Fixed an issue that caused the Yellow barrel’s fire patch to appear not completely visible
Fixed the position of the ammunition interaction point to avoid blocked items
Fixed some issues where the Meathead could get stuck
Fixed a bug where AI was jittering when running towards players
Fixed some more locations where players could get stuck
QUICKPLAY: Fixed a bug where the Wellspring counter did not update properly with high latency
QUICKPLAY: Fixed a bug where the HUD did not update properly after the Wellspring carrier disconnected

Known Issues

The client may crash in some cases
Players might encounter an infinite loading screen when loading missions
Players may encounter a ‘Failure Detected’ message while matchmaking
There are some rendering issues over long distances where some assets may not get rendered
There is a rare chance that Quickplay crates show up in Bounty Hunt missions (Without lootable items)
There are still some cases where AI does not navigate correctly
'Send Friend Request' only opens the Steam overlay instead of actually sending a friend request (Please manually add someone as a friend instead in the meantime)
Sometimes players might see assets streaming in after the start of a game
Sometimes players might not see the available missions (restarting the game fixes the issue)
Higher latency or bad network connections can lead to ammo issues
Sometimes Throwing knives do not work and disappear when hitting AI or players over large distances
AI might sometimes be seen in T-Pose when entering compounds

Developer Note: We are aware that some players might still encounter stutters and/or stalls, for those players we are preparing an environment in which they can test and send us their game.log files for us to investigate. An announcement will go out on our Discord (discord.gg/huntshowdown) later today when this environment is ready and the needed information on how to get there. Thank you for your patience