Savage, nightmarish monsters roam the Louisiana swamps, and you are part of a group of rugged bounty hunters bound to rid the world of their ghastly presence. Banish these creatures from our world, and you will be paid generously—and given the chance to buy more gruesome and powerful weapons. Fail, and death will strip you of both character and gear. Your experience, however, remains in your pool of hunters—called your Bloodline—always.

Hunt’s competitive, match-based gameplay mixes PvP and PvE elements to create a uniquely tense experience where your life, your character, and your gear are always on the line. At the beginning of each match, up to five teams of two set out to track their monstrous targets. Once they’ve found and defeated one of these they will receive a bounty—and instantly become a target for every other Hunter left on the map. If you don’t watch your back, you’ll find a knife in it, and your last memory will be of another team of Hunters walking away with your prize. The higher the risk, the higher the reward–but a single mistake could cost you everything.

Early Access development means constant updates, and Crytek have released another big one for their Early Access online multiplayer bounty hunting game, Hunt: Showdown.

One of the stars of Update 4.0 is the Quickplay game mode, which is designed to offer players the option to play a game of Hunt with a shorter match length—and different gameplay. In a Quickplay match, ten solo players race against the clock to find and activate wellsprings of energy—win and keep both Hunter and loot, or perish.

Players will also find a slew of world improvements—from bug fixes to readability tweaks for both maps—and daily and weekly challenges added by popular community request. On the weapon front, gunplay changes for Update 4.0 center around unifying the feel of weapons so that it is more consistent and fluid overall, and the game’s audio has also seen a lot of developer attention, with improvements and bugfixes across the board.

In conjunction with the new release, Hunt: Showdown will be on sale for 25% off on Steam from December 13th at 10 am PT/ 1 pm ET/ 7 pm CEST to December 19th at 10 am PT/ 1pm ET/ 7pm CEST.

Highlights

• Quickplay – With this update, we are introducing our first new game-mode, Quickplay. This is an alternate way to play Hunt designed for solo players only with a chance to earn free Hunters. Close the rifts and absorb the Wellspring’s energy in a race against time and other Hunters. It’s your only chance for salvation.
  
• Challenges - This update introduces a variety of daily/weekly challenges, complete the challenges and receive in-game rewards. The challenges are available via the Bloodline Screen.
  
• Gunplay changes - With this update, we are introducing our first set of Quality of Life improvements to gunplay, this includes faster and normalized animation timings across the arsenal for weapon cycling, grenade throwing and aiming down sight after selecting a weapon.

Quickplay

• A streamlined, solo-only experience with no boss targets or extraction phase. Instead, damned Hunters race to find and close four Rifts, activate the Wellspring, and absorb its energy. Winner keeps their Hunter; the rest are killed.
• At the beginning of a game, players are given the chance to save their soul by activating the Wellspring - a mysterious source of supernatural energy.
  • Instead of a boss target, players must search for Rifts using Dark Sight.
  • Close 4 Rifts (a similar process to finding Clues in Bounty Hunt mode) to start the absorption of the Wellspring’s energy. Each closed Rift grants the player one random trait.
  • During Quickplay, players have to manually locate supply points. The points only show up on the map for players that have already discovered them.
  • The first Hunter to close four rifts activates the Wellspring. They begin absorbing its valuable energy and become everybody's target.
  • The longer that Hunter stays alive, the more Wellspring energy they absorb.
  • The moment that Hunter is killed, his killer gains control of the Wellspring and starts absorbing its remaining energy instead. This continues until there is only one Hunter left or the Wellspring is depleted. Any Hunter who absorbed energy from the Wellspring will receive that amount worth of Bounty at the end of the mission - even if they died.
  • Once dead, you can spectate your opponent until the game ends
  • If the carrier dies from AI or by his own hand, whoever interacts with the corpse first, becomes the new target and continues absorbing Wellspring energy.
  • Whoever is the last to control the Wellspring when it runs dry will survive and save the soul of their Hunter. Everybody else is consumed by fire when the Wellspring implodes.
  • The winner - the Soul Survivor - can keep their Hunter, all scavenged equipment, and traits and can recruit him into his Bloodline.
• Each round, players receive a free (but tragically, damned) Hunter, who they can try to save over the course of the match.
  • The Hunter comes with a random outfit up to the recruitment tier the player has unlocked in his Bloodline.
  • There are five random outfits to choose from, if none is selected one will be picked at random
• Before the match, players can choose one of four early-game equipment presets:
  • A random starting pistol
  • A random shotgun
  • A random melee weapon
  • A fully random weapon from any of the above
• Currently the player statistics screen only displays Bounty Hunt mode statistics, Quickplay statistics will be added in an upcoming update.

Challenges

• The challenges are rated in tiers (1 to 3) linked to the Bloodline Tiers with increasing difficulty.
  • A player at Bloodline Rank 50, who currently is in the middle of Tier2, will only receive Tier 2 challenges.
• The rewards will be drawn randomly from associated reward pools.
  • Rewards are decoupled from the player's personal progression, which can lead to new players getting limited access to mid or even end-game equipment occasionally.
  • Reward pools are split by quality from the lowest (Bronze), to medium (Silver), to the highest (Gold).
• Players can track the progress of their current challenges on the map while playing.
• Weekly challenges will run for 7 days, daily ones for 24 hours. If a challenge is not completed when the time runs out, it is replaced and the progress alongside with the potential reward is lost. Challenges will reset at the same point in time globally, which results in the following reset times:
  • Weekly Challenges reset every Monday.
    • UTC - 07:00
    • US West (Los Angeles) - 00:00
    • US East (New York) - 03:00
    • SA East (Sao Paulo) - 04:00
    • EU Central (Frankfurt) - 08:00
    • AP Central (Singapore) - 15:00
    • AP East (Sydney) - 18:00

Gunplay changes

• This iteration of quality of life improvements include:
  • Faster (de-)select animations of all weapons to make the gun cycling process quicker.
    • Grenades will now be swapped faster than sidearms, and sidearms faster than rifles, crossbows and shotguns
    • One-handed melee weapons will now be swapped at the same speed as sidearms, sawn-off weapons at the speed of rifles
  • Shorter preparation animations to allow faster and more standardized throwing times for grenades.
    • For example, previously items like the Hive Bomb took a lot longer to throw than Fuses or Dynamite Sticks.
  • Improvements to allow players to transition from shoulder aim to iron sights much faster after selecting a weapon.

 

General Updates

AI
Hellhounds

• Added the ability to dismember the body of Hellhounds on death (similar to other AI)
• Added Hellhound Mask variants to the game. Now one member of a Hellhound pack can spawn with a metal face plate that absorbs headshot damage.

General

• AI can now be killed silently with headshots or melee attacks to the head, suppressing any revealing death sounds they normally make
• The Butcher and Meathead now take slightly less explosion damage (i.e. Frag Bomb can no longer kill a Meathead, but a Dynamite Stick can)

Audio

• Pass on equipment select/deselects audio to match new timings and expected audible range.
• Fixed issue with occlusion not working properly.

Gunplay

• Melee range improvements:
  • All melee swing attacks now have a constant range throughout their animations (except Fists/Dusters/Brawler)
  • Increased range on all Knife melee attacks
  • Increased range on all Throwing Knife melee attacks
  • Increased range on Rifle Buttstock light melee attacks
• Medium bullets no longer penetrate brick
• Quad Derringer exhausted melee attacks now chain more consistently with the animation
• When a player starts a mission without a weapon in the first equipment slot, any weapon in the second slot will be automatically selected by default on mission start.
• Re-selecting a single-action revolver after having interrupted its shooting so the hammer couldn't be pulled back after the shot will reset the weapon to it's ready state.

Performance
Developer Note: Performance has and continues to be one of the largest (and most complex) issues we are working on in Hunt: Showdown. You guys have been pushing us hard on this topic (as you should!) and we want to give you a heads up about the coming weeks and months in this regard.

With the arrival of update 4.0 and Quickplay we wanted to provide as much content as possible for you to enjoy, and give feedback on, over the holidays. As a result, some of you may experience lower performance or frame drops for a period (which we are continuing to investigate).

Given the nature of how important performance is to you all, we want you to know that in the coming new year we will be dedicating a large portion of time and resources to improving this for all our users. Thank you for your continued patience and support.

Hunters

• Added an in-game prompt at the start of a round to encourage players to press and hold E in order to use Dark Sight to locate clues.

Meta
Limited Arsenal Capacity

• From this update onwards, the size of the Arsenal will be limited. The limits are based on the item’s type:
  • Contraband items: 1 for each item (This is a hard cap that can never be exceeded.)
  • Non-Contraband items:
    • Weapons: 5 for each weapon
    • Tools: 5 for each tool
    • Consumables: 10 for each consumable
  • With the exception of Contraband items the limits are soft-caps and can be exceeded by receiving rewards or un-equipping items.
  • The only effect the limits have in practice is that players are not able to purchase further items after reaching the limits.
  
  Developer Note:
  With this update,we are (for the first time) introducing new inventory limitations. The new limits do not apply to currently owned equipment for the time being, however in the upcoming updates all owned equipment that exceeds the new limitation may be automatically sold and their money equivalents will be added to the player's account.

Economy Changes

• Increased Bloodline start capital from $3000 to $4000.
• Reduced money reward for empty Bloodline ranks from $1000 to $200.
• Reduced money reward for unlocking a new Tier from $5000 to $1000.
• Reduced money reward for endless Bloodline loop from $666 to $200.
• Reduced XP needed for endless Bloodline loop from 8000 to 5000.

Mission

• The map's region rule set for shrinking has been modified to be more randomized in the greyed out sectors. The greyed out sectors may not always be adjacent from each other (This also makes locating the boss's lair to be less predictable in Bounty Hunt)
• Lawson Delta can now have multiple bounty targets present

UI

• Adjusted the after death screen to displays the correct icon for fist kills
• Additional information has been added to Error message 0x30001
• Additional information has been added to the ‘user banned’ error message

World

• Several bugs fixed on Lawson Delta
• Replaced and improved a large amount of level placeholder assets (Lawson Delta)
• Improved landscape to streamline compound approaches (Lawson Delta)
• Improved player leading and cover in some compounds (Lawson Delta)
• First detail dressing pass in some compounds (Lawson Delta)
• Adjusted and repositioned some player spawn-points in Stillwater Bayou to prevent early spawn kills.

Bug Fixes

• Changed the weak and normal vitality shots to use the same animation
• Fixed an issue that caused the butcher to get stuck in the Prison POI sometimes.
• Fixed an issue where Solo players would not load into a mission, but get a message about a matchmaking problem.
• Fixed an issue that could prevent players from stopping bleeding if they still had a throwing knife or crossbow bolt stuck in their hunter model.
• Fixed an issue that made it possible for the butcher to take damage from hellfire bombs, although he's immune to fire.
• Fixed an issue that could lead to wrong placement and behavior of dog- or chicken-cages.
• Fixed an issue that caused dark sight being too dark when used right after or during the vaulting process.
• Fixed an issue that caused weapons in the second slot not being displayed correctly on hunters in case their first weapon slot was empty.
• Fixed some inconsistencies for ammo looting, depending on how many ammo the player had left in the weapon.
• Fixed an issue that prevented players from taking damage if they went inside dog cages.
• Fixed navigation issues in several places on Lawson Delta, that prevented AI from moving properly.
• Fixed several lighting issues on Lawson Delta.
• Fixed a number of places where players could get stuck on Lawson Delta.
• Fixed some collision issues (missing or invisible collisions) on Cemetery and Lawson Delta.
• Adjusted view distances for some vegetation assets.
• Fixed Meathead attack variation selection process.
• Fixed Meathead behavioral glitches when player is not reachable.
• Fixed issues with Meathead sometimes spawning too many leeches.
• Fixed issue where the Meathead would miss melee attacks because it preferred an overhead strike instead of a straight forward stab.
• Fixed Butcher exploits related to players that are in unreachable positions in the arena.
• Fixed a bug where the Butcher could be pulled out of its downed state when taking damage.
• Fixed navigation issue with the Butcher when players were on another floor.
• Various server side fixes for crashes in AI (logic and queries).
• Fixed issues where AI could get stuck behind obstacles, corners and/or closed doors.
• Fixed an issue where AI would not attack players that were hiding 'inside' the corpse of a Meathead.
• Fixed a bug which caused Hellhounds to be able to attack through walls
• Fixed an issue where a Grunt's movement would be interrupted while in the aware state when a target's location was updated.
• Fixed an issue that caused the Grunt, Armoured and Hive to turn slower than intended in some cases
• Fixed an issue where equipping a weapon only in the secondary weapon slot, would cause the Hunter to equip it as default instead of fists in their primary slot
• Fixed an issue which resulted in 1-handed melee weapons not being attached to the hunter correctly when not equipped.
• Fixed an issue which resulted in fists not having an icon in the UI/HUD.
• Fixed an issue which resulted in the 2nd pistol of a two-pistol loadout being attached to the chest instead of the hip holster.
• Fixed an issue which caused deaths by impact damage from consumables and tools to show as melee instead of ranged attack kills.
• Fixed an issue which resulted in the camera moving down when a hunter got off the top of a ladder.
• Fixed an issue with the first aid kit not always replenishing health even if the progress bar was full.
• Fixed a bug where the boss icons did not turn transparent, if all tokens had been extracted.
• Fixed an issue where certain in-game banners, like "XZY has picked up the bounty!" were not shown in some cases
• Fixed a bug that caused the wrong summary screen to display in cases where a Hunter died during a mission if the player was prestige 1 - 50 and any Rank below 15
• Fixed LOD issues on the Nagant buttstock (affects Precision, Deadeye and Officer Carbine variants)
• Disabled all Depth of Field effects on default weapon poses to fix issues with DoF getting stuck after using ladders
• Aiming with a melee weapon will no longer stop sprinting
• Flares are now destroyed properly by explosions
• Reverted a change to Vetterli dry shot chaining to fix an issue preventing ADS
• Corrected issues in tooltips for Doctor Trait and First Aid Kit.

Other Fixes

• Fixed some smaller UI issues.
• Fixed some animation issues.
• Fixed some minor Art issues on Cemetery and Lawson Delta.

Known Issues

• The cursor may get stuck in previous client window dimensions after changing the resolution.
• Mouse cursor may become invisible when using Alt-Tab while loading into the game
• Closing doors right next to AI can cause them to get stuck.
• Some assets might appear as low resolution / low poly , even on high settings.
• Kills on grunts, armoreds and hives achieved through indirect damage, do not count towards challenge progress.
• Completed challenges do not appear as "completed" on the map screen.
• Hunter's coat sometimes clips through Hunter's front after revival.
• Quickplay : A hunter that was not killed by another player will still draw bounty from the Wellspring until the bounty has been manually picked up by another player.
• Quickplay: The values shown on the leaderboard and drained counter are sometimes not in sync.
• Quickplay: Consumable slot in Quickplay is handled as slot 'Tool 2' in Key Customization instead of 'Consumable 1'
• Quickplay: In rare occasions, player are able to join quickplay session with normal Hunters instead of Quickplay ones
• With high latency, players have to press F longer than the progress circle indicates for a complete pick up animation to play
• Ammo counter sometimes shows 0 despite having full ammo after picking up a weapon or switching between weapons with different ammo types. (Switching between items or reloading the weapon resolves the visual problem.)
• Memory consumption may increase after each mission played

Even in death, you will be able to progress among the ranks of Hunters via your Bloodline. Though one character may die, their experience will be transferred to your Bloodline, where it can be applied your other Hunters. If you make it off of the map alive, you will be able to use the money and experience you earn to kit out new Hunters and prepare for the next match. If you die, you lose everything but your experience.

Dark Sight allows Hunters to see into the veil between worlds, making that which cannot be seen by mortal eyes visible to those who have been initiated. Use Dark Sight when you are tracking monsters, and a ghostly light will guide you toward your next target. Dark Sight also marks players carrying a bounty, making them more vulnerable to ambush while trying to escape.

Hunt: Showdown is now currently available via Steam Early Access, priced at 29.99 EUR/USD and 25.99 GBP.