Competitions

## General Information

There are numerous competitions hosted by Expansive Worlds in order to bring a competitive element to the game. All species have their own specific competitions with their specific requirements and prizes.

The player joins competitions through navigating to the "Competitions" tab when logged in to the game account on the website, followed by clicking "Activate" for the chosen competition.

## Attempts

This is an addition to the competition system introduced in March 2013. The attempt system was designed to fight the problem with the so called "spawn mashing" (restarting over and over in order to minimize wasted time for searching for an animal).

For certain competitions a limited number of attempts are available. The number of attempts (game sessions) you have to get your entry into a competition is limited. Instead of joining a competition, you are now activating it. Every time you start a new game session at a reserve where there is a competition active, one attempt will be deducted. Once all your attempts are used up, no more entries will be registered for that competition. It is possible to deactivate (pause) a competition. While deactivated, no attempts are deNote that if you start the game and see the main menu, the attempt has already been deducted if applicable, even if you do not enter the reserve.

No attempts will be deducted from a competition in these cases:

* The competition is deactivated.
* The competition is single player and you started a multi-player game, or vice versa.
* You are hunting in a reserve where the animal for a certain competition does not exist. For example: You have a Whitetail Deer competition activated. No attempts will be deducted while you are hunting in Hirschfelden, because it is not possible to hunt WT in that reserve.
* You are hunting in another reserve than the current multispecies competition. For example: You have a multispecies competition activated for Logger's Point. No attempts will be deducted while you are hunting in Redfeather Falls, because it is not possible to add to the score of the LP competition.

How to use it

* The column "Attempts" displays how many game sessions you have left for each competition.
* Click the orange button [Activate] to activate a competition, BEFORE you enter the game. Competitions that are activated during your current session will not be active until you start another session. The red button will turn green when clicked.
* Click the white button [Deactivate] to deactivate a competition. The white button will turn orange again when clicked.
* Clicking these button should refresh the list of active competitions. In case of doubt refresh you competition web page with F5 to make sure all competitions are active/inactive the way you want them.
* Competitions cannot be activated while in the game. Any changes made while in the game will only take effect the next time a hunt is started.

So keep an eye on those attempts and make sure to activate/deactivate the competitions of your interest, so you do not miss a trophy being counted, or do not unnecessarily waste your number of attempts!

## Scoring

There are different types of "scoring" within competitions.

### Rack based scoring

The scores for rack based competitions are determined at startup of the game, by taking a random value between a min and max for each rack type. This means that the biggest buck in the game, will have a randomized score (say: between 220 and 245) when the game starts. No other factors have influence on the scoring, so it's a matter of chance how much a rack will score.

This goes for any rack scoring animal, including Mule deer, Whitetail deer, Blacktail deer and Elk.

### Weight based scoring

Weight based scoring (in general) takes the average weight of a certain amount of animals as a scoring method. Animal weights are randomized exactly like the racks, which means each animal has a random weight within a certain bandwidth (min/max). Most likely the weight has only one bandwidth per animal gender, while the racks have multiple bandwidths (the trophy Mule deer will have a higher bandwidth then a small racked Mule deer).

### Weight based scoring with additional scoring factors

Some competitions use the weight together with other factors for scoring, an example of this is the turkey scoring, which is based on weight, beard length and spur size.

### Distance based scoring

There are competitions that will require the longest shot, the shortest shot (no longer available), or an exact distance. The animal's score and gender does not matter unless specified. Use appropriate weapons to achieve the best results.
* If it is a longest shot comp and you took more than one shot, the shorter one counts.
* If it is a shortest shot comp and you took more than one shot, the longer one counts. These comps don't exist anymore though.
* If it is an exact distance comp (e.g. 75 Slug Championship) and you needed more than one shot, the shorter one counts.
* If you need to shoot an animal under a certain distance you can take as many shots as you like, as long as all are under the required distance.
* If you need to shoot an animal over a certain distance you can take as many shots as you like, as long as all are over the required distance.

### Mass killing competitions

Some competitions will add the weights or scores of all animals harvested over all the available attempts.

### Multispecies competitions

These competitions are score based and will require the player to harvest the best score for more than one species. However a competition entry will be listed in the rankings even just one species has been harvested that matched all criteria listed.