Update 1.4.8 Test Server

## Highlights

### Additional Looting Options

This update brings a new looting opportunity to keep an out for on your treks through the Bayou. As with everything loot/ammo related in hunt, the “rule of two” applies to these new items.

The following items are now scattered throughout the world:

* Envelopes that can contain one of the following:
	+ 1000 Hunter XP.
	+ 500 Bloodline XP.
	+ 3-6 Upgrade points.

* Small bags:
	+ <25 Hunt dollars.
	+ <3 Blood Bonds.

* Trait charms:
	+ These items will instantly unlock a random trait for your Hunter.

* Blueprints:
	+ These items will unlock the next available item unlock available for the currently equipped item (e.g holding a weak vitality shot while collecting the blueprint will unlock weak stamina shot.)

* Meatheads:
	+ Trait charms have a chance to drop from killing Meatheads.

**Developer Note:**

*Looting in Hunt has always been an exciting experience. Whether it is desperately looting a dead hunter for extra supplies or trying to sneak those thousands of Hunt Dollars out while using a budget loadout, the action has always evoked the primary emotions that Hunt is built around. With this addition, we have 2 aims:*

* We want to add more value to the specific Hunters you use when ranking up (improve the risk/reward balance that we have always tried to keep prevalent in Hunt: Showdown).
* Allow for more opportunities to explore the map and ensure there are benefits to doing so.

Additional traits have been available in quickplay for a while, but we wanted to find a good way to tie acquiring traits in to Bounty Hunt and we feel this is a good way to achieve that goal. The main difference in bounty hunt is that the charm drop shows which trait will be unlocked, so you can decide if you want to collect it, unlike in quickplay where the traits are randomly given for investigating clues. Each charm will contain a different trait, so it is up to you if you want to take one or leave it to your partner(s) (“rule of two” applies to trait charms also). This method also means that meatheads are a much more worthwhile investment in terms of time vs reward.

These new ways of levelling your hunters will mostly benefit new and low rank/newly prestiged players, as many of the traits will not be available to purchase at that early stage.

### Watch Towers

A new addition to the landscape of the Bayou; Watch towers have now been added in several locations.

* Hunters will have a chance to find supplies such as ammo/ health or weapons at the watch towers, though it will contain less than you find at the regular supply points.
* Make sure to check the top of the tower when you pass by as there will always be something to find.

#### Lawson Delta:

* Watch tower added on top of the Bunker between Sweetbell Flower and Fort Carmick

#### Stillwater Bayou:

* Watch tower added in the swamp between Pitching Crematorium and Lockbay Docks.
* Watch tower added to the hillslope north of Healing Waters.

#### Hunting towers:

* Hunting towers have also received an upgrade. Hunters will have a chance to find either an ammo box, health station or weapon in the tower.

### Winfield M1873 Musket-Bayonet

* An elongated variant of the Winfield M1873 with a Bayonet and a slightly larger magazine
* Holds an extra +2 rounds in the elongated tube magazine
* Levering shoots at a slightly reduced rate of fire than other Winfield M1873 rifles

### Nagant M1895 Officer Carbine Deadeye

* An Officer Carbine variant with a Deadeye scope.
* Reduced shoulder aim accuracy due to the mounted scope.
* Recoil is harder to control in ADS due to increased zoom.

### Vagrant

* Legendary Winfield M1873C Silencer
* A vagrant known as the tin-man rattled around the city with a large bag of cans, harmless until a malicious Hunter threw them into the bay. Able to save but a few, he decorated his Winfield M1873C Silencer with the remainder, and set out for revenge – silent as a whisper.

### Death Letter

* Legendary M1895 Nagant Officer Brawler
* Death pens no warning of His coming, and for Hunters and soldiers alike, the sound of gunfire is the only correspondence foretelling their demise. This Nagant’s personalized engraving appears to reference an old Civil War ballad written by one who would later become a Hunter - delivering his own dark tidings with each deadly shot, death incarnate.

### DeSalle’s Silence

* Legendary Sparks LRR Silencer
* The favored Sparks LRR of the elder DeSalle brother, a man whose business ventures would not have been as successful without the occasional enforced silence.

## General Updates

### Gunplay

#### Concertina bomb

* Explosion delay decreased to ~0.5s (previously ~1.5s).

#### Melee changes – Hatchet, Talon, Heavy Knife & Machete

* Slightly changed the attack angle of the Hatchet and Talon attachments to ensure hits are more reliable.
* Slightly changed the attack angle of the Heavy knife to ensure hits are more reliable.
* Slightly changed the angle of the normal attack for the Machete to ensure hits are more reliable.

#### Antidote shots

* Antidote shots no longer reduces the damage taken from poison-based attacks (e.g spider bounce, stings from the Hive Swarms
* Poison cloud damage remains unchanged and will reduce damage by 100%

**Developer note:**

'Up until now, if you were attacked by the spider or a hive while an antidote shot was active, the physical damage that was caused was also reduced. We felt that this was a little unbalanced especially in instances like the spider frenzy, which made it possible to tank the spider far more effectively than intended so with this change, the physical damage will from attacks such as these will be applied as normal while still ensuring you remain poison free after an interaction with a spider or Hive.

### Hunter

#### Trait Rework: Ghoul

* New description: “Killing grunts at close range restores a small amount of health”.
* Health will be granted only if you instigate the damage, you do not have to land the killing blow to benefit from the health gain.
* Restores 5hp per kill.
* Price increased to 7 points (this is subject to change based on test server feedback).

**Developer note:**

*In our opinion, Ghoul is a trait that has a lot of untapped potential (as well as a low pick rate) and could use some attention. We wanted to ensure that the trait remains true to its theme of replenishing health from the dead, however we wanted to make it less situational. In the past, players could only benefit from it if they dared to loot a hunter in combat, but in most instances that was not the main goal of looting in a fight (the main goal usually getting another consumable or tool charge to benefit the fight).*

We wanted to turn the Ghoul trait into something that is more versatile and offer it as a more of a tactical option through any stage of the game. The trait can now help to preserve your health items for the important PVP fights later in the round and as a result should help hunters be less reliant on searching for health stations throughout the match.

#### Interaction Outlines

* Option added to the menu to allow you to customize the highlighting outlines of interactable items (doors, windows, etc.)
* This option does not alter the UI prompts from showing in the top right corner of the screen when in range of an interactable object.

The options are as follows:

* All: Current behaviour – all interactable object are outlined frequently.
* None: Turn of fall outlines for interactable objects and partner outlines.
* Exclude Door and windows: Similar to “all”, but doors and windows will no longer be highlighted (does not affect other interactable objects)

**Developer note:**

*This change is meant to address two long standing requests from the community. Some have wanted to remove more UI elements from the game to be able to record cinematic content more efficiently.*

For others, it has always been hard to track opponents behind doors or windows in certain lighting conditions. We understand that our veterans know where every accessible door and window are so we want to provide them with the option to forfeit interaction highlights for a better overview of what is going on behind the doors/windows.

### Bounty Hunt

#### Banishing a Boss

* Initiating the banishing process with now restore all lost health chunks as well as replenishing all your health.

**Developer note:**

*Previously, it was unclear to a lot of players as to what was restored by the banishing process. To remove some of the ambiguity that came from using different health chunk set-ups we have made it so that all health chunks are restored, and your health pool is refilled. So, if your team starts the banish, you are in back in the fight – no questions asked!*

#### Dark Sight Boost

* Investigating a clue while carrying a bounty token will now restore 1 second of Dark Sight Boost. We hope this will encourage Hunters to be more inclined to run the gauntlet if there is a second target.

**Extraction Points**

* Changes made to ensure that all extraction points will not spawn next to each other. One extraction point will always be at least 500m away from the other two.

**Developer note:**

*We like challenging rounds as much as the next person, but we must acknowledge that certain randomly generated elements in the game such as the location of extraction points, can lead to unfavorable situations for those that want to focus on objective play.*

With this change, we want to eliminate one of the most extreme cases that limits potential exit strategies. The available extractions may still be in roughly the same area, however, setting the distance of one to at least 500m will give better options to extract so that you may live to die another day.

#### Leaderboard

* Player will be shown on the leaderboard only if they meet all those conditions:
	+ Logged in within the last 30 days.
	+ Have at least 100 kills in Quickplay or 100 Kills or Assist in Bounty Hunt.
	+ Didn't opt out from showing their stats publicly.
	+ Not banned.
	+ Played at least 50 hours.

### Meta

#### Unlock Rank Changes

* Duster is now available at Rank 1 (previously Rank 20).
* Spyglass is now available at Rank 1 (previously Rank 24).
* Machete is now available at rank 24 (previously Rank 12).
* Nagant M1895 Officer is now available at Rank 12 (previously Rank 36).
* Winfield M1873 is now available at Rank 20 (previously Rank 42).

**Developer note:**

*In preparation for update 1.5, we are moving around some items so that we can evenly distribute the unlocks before adding the new unique Winfield M1876 and M1887 that were teased in our most recent blog post. In addition to this, some items have been moved to Rank1 to allow for more variety in the early levels and more choice when it comes to selecting preferred melee tools.*

The Nagant officer family now unlocks shortly after the Caldwell Pax, which give players more choice when it comes to assembling balanced loadouts as well as adding more quality weapons around those ranks rather than having a focus on the quantity of weapons available (example combining single shot rifles or shotguns with a rapid-fire handgun and vice versa). The same applies to the Winfield, which is now sitting between the Martini Henry and Sparks LRR unlocks.

#### Faster Progression: XP Overspill for Equipment Unlocks

* XP earned during a mission with any piece of equipment will now overspill into the next unlock within that equipment family.

**Developer note:**

*Due to some technical issues. The experience from the last hit, that resulted in the death of an AI would not carry over (overspill) into the next unlock, but all XP after this was applied as normal. This has now been resolved and any overspill XP will be applied correctly going forward.*

e.g. player requires 10 XP to unlock the Romero handcannon. Killing a Hive grants 20 XP, which will unlock the weapon and open the next unlock gate, but that extra 10 XP was lost.

#### Price updates

* Nagant Officer Carbine is now $155 (previously $80)

#### New Weapons added

* Added Nagant Officer Carbine Deadeye for $211
* Added Winfield Musket-Bayonet for $137
* New Legendary Weapons added
* Added Legendary Winfield M1873c Silencer “Vagrant” for 200 Blood Bonds
* Added Legendary Nagant Officer “Death Letter” for 200 Blood Bonds
* Added Legendary Sparks LRR Silencer “DeSalle’s Silence” for 400 Blood Bonds

#### Roster

* Added new possible name variations for Hunter recruits

#### Miscellaneous

* Tweaked a calculation tied to the texture streaming memory budget to improve the game's performance.
* Improvements made to the overall game stability and fixed multiple issues that was causing a memory leak with the renderer.

## Bug Fixes

### AI

* Fixed an issue with the pathfinding for some AI that could become stuck on corners (Meathead, Butcher, Grunts).
* Fixed an issue that resulted in caged dogs not taking damage from a burning player.
* Fixed an issue that meant players could receive damage from caged dogs while standing directly beside the cage.
* Fixed an issue that resulted in crows and ducks reacting incorrectly to the sounds of the Silenced Spark LRR as if it were the regular Sparks LRR.

### Misc

* Fixed an issue where deployable items such as the Bear Trap could be placed on concertina wire.
* Static (unlit) lanterns will now make a sound when shattered.
* Choke bombs will now extinguish Alert trip mine flares.
* Fixed an issue where lanterns in boxes were difficult to interact with.
* Fixed an issue that resulted in Decoy fuses not being resupplied while having the Decoy resupply trait.
* Fixed an issue where explosions would not influence farm bells (ding!)
* Fixed an inconsistency in the exhausted state melee damage for the Mosin Nagant Obrex variants.
* Fixed a crash that could potentially occur when shutting down the game.
* Fixed an issue that could result in being attacked by an immolator during the “waiting for players” stage when spawning in South-East Lawson Delta. (they just wanted a hug!)
* Fixed a rendering issue where certain geometry would flicker in an out at specific points in Healing Waters Church.
* Fixed an issue where players could become stuck on some bunkbeds in Wolfshead Arsenal (no sleeping on the hunt!)
* Fixed an issue that could cause a player to become stuck at a hut by the river near Arden Parish.
* Fixed a spot in Catfish where hunters could become stuck.
* Fixed an issue where a hunter could vault through a roof in Sweetbell Flour.
* Fixed an issue where AI would pop in too close to a Hunter in Fort Carmick.
* Fixed a number of issues that resulted in not being able to pick up hammers and axes.