Hunt: Showdown Update 2.1 is now live and here are the details

A new patch for Hunt: Showdown has been released on the live servers. The patch was already being tested on the test servers and it actually received many positive feedback. As a hardworking team, Crytek devs have introduced another brilliant update with many new items. The game still has many missing parts. But with these updates, it has become more and more complete.

The new patch introduces new weapons like crossbows, throwing knives, silenced weapons (Winfield and Sparks LRR), a Combat Axe and Specter 1882 Bayonet shotgun. Moreover, a new time of the day is introduced: the Fog. This new time of the day offers a more close-mid ranged combat oriented gameplay where you can’t see beyond the thick fog.

As a huge fan of the game, I had the chance to test the new equipment and I can easily say that they all feel awesome. Crossbows have added a new taste to the game with a close-combat ranged preference and they are pretty silent. If you are a stealthy player, you will love them for sure. They can also be used as weapons with unlimited ammo if you are careful about picking up the projectiles after you launch them. In addition to the crossbows, you can also equip throwing knives on your tools inventory slot and use them as silent weapons. They are pretty useful and so much fun if you ask me.

Moreover, this new patch also changes a lot about the current meta. Consumables like vitality shots are harder to use and they have different variants now. Also, two new crossbow oriented traits are available. A new spectate mode is also introduced for you to stay focused on the game even if you die. You can now watch your partner playing if you want to. Last but not least, some performance issues and bugs were also fixed. Here is a video to get an idea:

And here are the update details fellas:

• New stealth weapons:
  • 3 new crossbows – Old school crossbow, Hand crossbow and Poison crossbow.
  • Silenced weapons – The Sparks LRR and Winfield now have additional variants with mounted silencers.
  • Throwing knives – A new tool, allows for stealth kills even if you bring the big guns.
  • Specter 1882 Bayonet – A versatile pump-action shotgun variant that works great in close quarters.
  • Combat Axe – Similar to the Wood Axe World Item (except you cannot throw it). A cheap, medium sized weapon that packs a punch.
• Vitality shot changes – Added new variants: weak and normal variants. Injecting a shot now takes longer.
• Retrieving projectiles – Crossbow bolts and throwing knives can be retrieved from bodies and walls to be used again.
• Fog time of day – A new fog setting that shows off the swamps of Louisiana in all its foggy glory.
• Spectator mode – The ability to continue watching the action through your teammates eyes after being downed/incapacitated or the death of your own Hunter.
  While spectating your partner, a message will be displayed in cases where your body is burning and after being burned to indicate you are dead

New equipment

With this update we are adding a number of additional weapons and equipment to aid Hunters in stealthy game play. This will be great for solo players, who now have more options available to them, if they choose to remain in the shadows. For teams, it is also much easier now to come up with combos that compliment your loadout, adding a silent option for those times when being loud is just not an option.

• Crossbow – Large weapon that can kill a player with a well aimed hit from a single bolt. Cannot resupply from ammo boxes, but bolts can be retrieved.
• Hand Crossbow – Medium weapon that is a great companion as a sidearm. Works the same as its larger cousin.
• Poison Hand Crossbow – Uses poison-tipped bolts that burst on impact. Very powerful against most monsters and can distort the view of other Hunters.
• Sparks LRR Silencer – Large weapon with an attached Silencer and reduced damage. Stronger sway makes for harder aiming, similar to the effect of the bayonet attachment.
• Winfield M1873 C Silencer – Same as the Sparks LRR Silencer, but has more ammunition and fires the weaker Compact Bullets at reduced damage.
• Throwing Knives – Pack of six throwing knives that can be used at short range and retrieved after use (watch where you throw them).
• Specter 1882 Bayonet – Variant of the first-ever pump-action shotgun that comes with an attached bayonet for improved handling in melee combat.
• Combat Axe – New early game melee weapon that occupies a Medium Slot. Very cheap, but a powerful option for new Hunters.
• Weak Vitality Shot – Little brother to the Vitality Shot that heals 50 health, costs much less than the standard Vitality Shot.

New traits

• Bolt Seer Trait – Highlights Bolts and Throwing Knives for better visibility.
• Bolt Thrower Trait – Reduces the time to reload Crossbows.

Fog

With this update we are introducing a new setting – Fog time of day. This setting challenges players with reduced visibility while facing the dangers of the swamp.

Freeze/stalls

• With this update, we are introducing a potential fix to the 3-5 second freezes/stalls issues that has been occurring for some of you

AI

• Meathead and The Butcher
  • Improvements made to prevent instances where the AI would become unresponsive.

Audio

• Improved consistency of bullet impacts and ricochets.
• Improvements made to the audio of the new silenced weapons.
• Improvements made to the audio of the Dark Sight Boost transition
• Improved consistency of indoor and outdoor gunfire.
• Improved water footstep sounds.
• Improvements made to audio occlusion to reduce the sound bleeding through the terrain of underground areas.

Gunplay

• Improvements made to the responsiveness of hit registration.
• Improvements made to the hit validation system to reduce the number of false negatives. We will continue to monitor and tweak these to improve overall hit registration
• Improvements made to the reliability of throwing axes and hammers with the Tomahawk trait
• Improvements made to the melee hit detection for the following:
  • Dolch Precision
  • Romero Handcannon
• Improvements made to the Cavalry Saber animations.
• Improvements made to the Knife animations.
• Flare Pistol shell speed increased from 50 to 75 meter per second.
• Changes made to the functionality of the Antidote Shots after use:
  • Prevents further poison effects from reapplying while active.
  • Prevents damage from poison clouds.
  • Reduces the damage of Hive swarms, Spider pounce and the Poison hand Crossbow.
• Thrown Wood Axes and Sledgehammers fly slower and lose damage faster.
• Improvements made to the Wood Axe to make the follow-up melee attacks more reliable.
• Derringer reload now consumes all remaining loaded bullets and will always insert 4 fresh rounds.
• Basic single-action revolvers can now fan slightly faster than the heavier Uppercut and Chain pistol variants.
• Improvements made to the occlusion behavior of explosions particularly relating to how they wrap around corners .
• To distinguish between the weak and standard Vitality shots, the standard syringe now is a bronze color.
• Increased the animation length of injecting shots from 3 to 5 seconds.
• Reduced the damage of the Nitro express in relation to leg shots.
• Reduced the damage of compact bullets in relation to the lower torso and arm/leg shots.
• Projectiles now have the correct mass value attached (this will make impacts with physical objects more believable).

Hunters

• Lowered the stamina consumption rate while running. Hunters should now be able to sprint for longer distances.
• All recruits are now equipped with the Weak Vitality Shot instead of the standard Vitality Shot.
• Lowered the Dark Sight boost timer from 15 seconds to 10 seconds.

Meta

Store

• Comparable weapon and equipment stats have been reworked and use a more granular rating system.

New equipment:

• Crossbow – $280 (unlocked at Rank 70)
• Hand Crossbow – $210 (unlocked at Rank 51)
• Poison Hand Crossbow – $240 (unlocked at Rank 68)
• Sparks LRR Silencer – $260 (unlocked at Rank 74)
• Winfield M1873 C Silencer – $100 (unlocked at Rank 54)
• Throwing Knives (Tool) – $25 (unlocked at Rank 24)
• Specter 1882 Bayonet – $105 (unlocked at Rank 59)
• Combat Axe – $4 (unlocked at Rank 5)
• Weak Vitality Shot (Consumable) – $15 (unlocked at Rank 1)

Equipment rank changes:

• Vitality Shot – Unlocked at Rank 15 (previously Rank 1)

New traits:

• Bolt Seer – 2 upgrade points (unlocked at Rank 63)
• Bolt Thrower – 5 upgrade points (unlocked at Rank 84)

Price changes:

• Vitality Shot price increased from 25$ to 75$

UI

• Equipment selection improvements:
  • Consumables are now easier to stack.
  • Equipped item is now sorted in the correct place on the list and the list will center around this weapon.
• Mission selection now supports different missions per region ( not all regions will have the same missions going forward).
• Updated icons for the syringes for better readability.
• Improvements made to the readability of weapon comparisons in the Hunter and store UI for weapons with a damage value exceeding 100
• Added separate mouse sensitivity sliders for Iron sights and Peephole (Nitro scope).

World

• Explosions will now cause doors to break open if they are not fully destroyed in the blast.

Other

• Improvements made to particles effects to reduce performance costs

• Fixed a bug that could cause barricaded doors to open due to explosions (even if the explosion was not blowing up the door)
• Fixed an issue that could potentially cause a server crash during gameplay
• Fixed a bug that that could result in weapons not being attached to the character when spectating
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Death screen to display being shot through a wall when you were shot through a window
• Fixed a bug that could cause the bear trap to trigger immediately if placed on top of explosive barrels
• Fixed a number stats and information for some weapons in the shop/Arsenal (display issues only)
• Implemented a number of animation fixes
• Implemented a number of minor audio fixes
• Fixed a bug that was resulting in weapons dealing more damage than intended resulting in one hit kills with body hits
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Boss icons to disappear if the bounty successfully extracted
• Fixed a number of instances that would result in not being able to collect the bounty in certain instances
• Fixed a bug that would cause the compass to disappear by entering/leaving the menu (pressing esc)
• Implemented a tentative fix for an issue with matchmaking. In some instances, partnered players were placed into different matches.
• Fixed a bug that caused the “Mute VOIP on death” option to be inverted
• Implemented a number of animation fixes
• Implemented a number of localization fixes
• Fixed a number of instances where a player could become stuck in the environment.
• Fixed a bug that was often preventing the bullet impact audio from playing.
• Fixed an issue that was resulting in the splashing sounds from wading in water being too loud.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the Dark Sight Boost icon to remain on screen even after the timer had run out.
• Fixed a bug that allowed fire to damage the concertina wire.
• Fixed a bug that in some cases would case the AI’s knockback to not animate correctly.
• Fixed some of the weapon specific poses in the loadout and recruitment menus.
• Fixed a bug that would block players vision when switching weapons while holding a Mosin Nagant.
• Fixed a bug that would cause a player to stand up while bandaging when the Caldwell pistol is equipped to the hunter.
• Fixed a number of minor animations for various weapons and equipment.
• Fixed a bug that would cause the Flare pistol to not be more accurate when crouching.
• Fixed a bug that would cause your hunter to be slowed down while using the Derringer in ADS.
• Fixed a bug that was causing a delay when the leaving ADS with the Derringer.
• Fixed an issue with the Nitro Express Rifle penetration settings where players and AI were often receiving more damage than intended.
• Fixed a number of bugs that would cause tools to interrupt animations too early.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the Wood Axe and the Sledgehammer to not correctly reset the stamina regeneration delay.
• Fixed a bug with the concertina bombs aim helper not adjusting correctly when crouched.
• Fixed a bug that would cause hunters to trigger bear traps from underneath a building.
• Fixed an issue that would allow a player to start an unavailable contract by selecting different region.
• Fixed an issue with the Communication slider in the audio options. This now correctly effects the output volume of in-game voice comms.
• Fixed a bug that was causing the “kill the boss” notification to appear repeatedly during a boss fight (it will not only appear once after first finding the boss.
• Fixed an issue that would result in the meathead and Butcher continuing to deal damage to players after it’s death when near the corpse.
• Fixed an issue that would result in the Meatheads corpse blocking player movement.

• Melee hit detection for Talon weapon variants is now more consistent with the animations.
• Melee hit detection for one-handed pistols is now consistent with the animations.
• Melee hit detection for two-handed pistols is now consistent with the animations.
• Melee hit detection for the Bear Trap is now consistent with the animations.
• Melee hit detection for the Concertina Bomb is now consistent with the animations.
• Melee hit detection for Romero Handcannon is now consistent with the animations.

• Terrain can sometimes render over knives and bolts if they lie flat on the ground.
• AI will sometimes not perceive footsteps and may not react/attack the player.
• Some UI elements are not aligned correctly with the mouse cursor when the resolution in-game is set to 1920×1200.
• AI may becoming stuck when navigating through certain areas.
• Hunter heads may snap back and forth if too close to other entities or pieces of geometry.
• Hive swarms are able to attack players through solid walls and small lattices.
• Oil pools are invisible.
• Vegetation and other similar geometry may disappear and reappear depending on their distance from the player.
• Some melee attack animations may not be in sync with the hit impact/marker.
• AI (ragdoll) can sometimes be exaggerated after being killed.
• Crossbow bolts and throwing knives may sometimes not be collectible after landing in specific certain areas.
• Names for the Butcher and Spider might sometimes be mixed up in the after match summary report.
• Butcher may become unresponsive at times.
• Grunt AI doesn’t always follow their idle behavior properly and therefore might appear static sometimes when observed from a distance.
• We are aware of the issue that bounty bonus for random missions is currently not granted to players
• Some localization errors (lines showing as @_____).
• Bounty lightning in dark sight might get stuck over boss location and doesn’t follow the bounty carrier. The lightning effect on map however is always at the correct spot.

After each patch, the game becomes more and more fun to play. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can get it on Steam and start hunting. More information about the game can also be found on the Steam page.

Enjoy the new patch fellas and stay tuned for more!