Prey goes to a hunter - ultimate game guide

Game guide on several aspects at once. If you want to add some information, let me know, I will make changes.

Russian version is here:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2821274263

I wish I was a hunter
In search of different food,
I wish I was the animal
Which fits into that mood,
I wish I was a person
With unlimited breath,
I wish I was a heartbeat
That never comes to rest.

Franka Potente

No Intro Logo

There goes a million logos when you start the game. For those who tired of it, there is a fan mod:
disk.yandex.ru/d/IAfNmrTMGukjEg
If someone does not trust my link, you can download the same thing on nexusmods website, where it is given for the registered ones only.

Unpack the archive and put the "dropzone" folder into the game folder:
***\Steam\steamapps\common\theHunterCotW

Then, in Steam itself, go to the Game Properties and in General - Launch Options register this:

--vfs-fs dropzone --vfs-archive patch_win64 --vfs-archive archives_win64 --vfs-archive dlc_win64 --vfs-fs.

Or if it doesn't help:

--vfs-fs dropzone --vfs-archive archives_win64 --vfs-fs.

All characters must be filled in, including dashes and dots.

Previously, thanks to the mod, the game simply loaded with a gray screen. Now there will still be 2 logos, but in any case it is better than 4 and this even reduces loading time.

Realism?

● Are all these reserves real or not?
These are fictional locations. Perhaps that is why their names are so redicolous even for their native languages.
Hirschfelden, Yukon and Mississippi are real, but precisely the shown territories do not exist.

● Are the weapons real?
Those exact brands do not exist, but most of the guns are simply renamed real ones while maintaining their characteristics. So the M1 Iwaniec Veteran (from the Smoking Barrels set) is the M1 Garand from the real world. Solokhin MN1890 is Mosin M44. And so on. Very convenient: you renamed it, you don't pay for license.

● Why no human characters in the game?
Human models can only be found in multiplayer. If you seen them, you noticed their quality is much lower than quality of environment and animals. Authors did not pull out this component and probably cut this part of the content before release, although the plot shows that meetings with people were expected. But it takes to make each model different, to animate the face. But laziness.

● How is the game time going?
Time is compressed by about 4 times compared to real one. For a game, this is very close to realism. For comparison, in Euro Truck Simulator 2, time and space are compressed 19 times.

● Do animals get tired?
In real life, it is quite possible to drive the beast down. But in the game they do not get tired and can run forever. However, your character does not get tired either, so we can assume everything is fair.

● Do animals heal?
Yes. If you inflict a slight wound and do not hit any organs, and the blood loss is marked as "very low", the animal will often survive. These situations are especially noticeable if you are playing with a Bloodhound. He goes after his prey, it says "follows the blood trail", but then the caption changes to "stalks the prey" (the wording may be different, I play in a different language). That is, the dog is chasing the same animal, but it has already recovered. Personally, in such a situation I give up the pursuit – the beast may already be half the map away from us.

● Do animals hunt each other?
There is literally an achievement in the game that states the goal is "get a lynx when it is eating or hunting." This means that the phenomenon exists, but only as an imitation. Predators can scare herbivores and sometimes chase them, but there are no attack animations in the game. Just for comparison – in the ancient "Assassins Creed 3" this exists, although hunting there is only a content of third-rate importance.
In some discussions there is unverified info that a predator can come to eat prey of yours.

● Why the background birds in Hirschfelden?
In the old version there were unhuntable background animals. There were squirrels on the starting maps, and weasels in Taiga. But they were removed, because background animals constantly distracted attention, players were wasting cartridges on them. But the birds were decided to keep. They actually can be killed with shot, but you will never find bodies because they fall through the ground. Background animals no longer appeared in dlc maps.

● Are there trains or just railways?
At least in Yukon the train is real. It goes at 8.10 a.m. If you stand in its way, you obviously get wasted.

● Can a train run over animal?
I made a check with a cheat, teleporting animals to rails in front of oncoming train. It passed through them making no harm.

What DLCs to buy - reserves / maps

All maps are available for free in multiplayer. You may get the impression that there is no need to buy maps (except perhaps campaigns, i.e. dispatcher tasks). But in online game you will be kicked or disconnected every 10 minutes. Perhaps it is even made on purpose so that you have the desire to just buy so not to have such problems.

The maps are listed in order of release. Keep in mind that the quality of textures, interiors, and environments in general increases with novelty, while the quality and duration of campaigns are constantly decreasing.
If you really want a good story, then there is only one map with a decent plot – Vurhonga. There is everything: family, mistakes of the past, drama, poachers, struggle against furious nature, mysticism and even a couple of interesting moments at the mechanic level. There are also pretty good stories in Cuatro Colinas and Sundarpatan, but they are in some ways repetitions of Vurhonga.
All other campaigns are pressing E on highlighted items, indistinct detective stories about no clue whom, listening to offensive racial stereotypes and mocking another character named G. Baden, who is being made an idiоt because a person with that name annoyed the director of the studio, and he offers you to pay money to listen to how he pays back. Almost always side plots with the Badens are unnatural, filled with malice, they pause the rest of the plot and end with the brutal death of these characters. It is not surprising that almost no one goes through campaigns here.

▪ Medved Taiga – Siberia, the only fully winter map
It was the poorest map in the game, but at the end of 2022 the number of species was replenished to 8, so it became pretty normal. The campaign is filled with wildest racial stereotypes: a woman pretending to know Russian words is worried that she cannot dance Kalinka, sends you to pray over a sleigh, to bring down Chuchunya and a radioactive mutant bear (which do not exist). Western people, you should know that nothing said about Russia is correct here. Staying on this map for a long time causes a unique experience – existential crisis and inner fear.

Also keep in mind that devs tried to fill the first paid map to full capacity with garbage grind content, so there are 7 whole achievements for collecting artifacts, cave paintings, antlers, Nenets memorials, travel notes, etc. Almost no one has taken these achievements so far. There is no crap like that on any other map.

However, here is the biggest campaign: 32 main missions, 50 additional.
Map boss – albino bear.
In the middle of campaign a quick-firing Grankin gun is given.

▪ Vurhonga Savanna – South Africa
You can see a lot of complaints from players this is not SUCH Africa as in your dreams: there are no giraffes, elephants and hippos, and mostly category B animals walk around. But they are all unique, and atmosphere is still amazing. Gotta take. After all, we are all from Africa.
Very good campaign. A story about family, mistakes of past, poachers and spirits.

14 main missions, 46 additional.
No map boss.
For in-game money an OP class 9 King gun is bought. Monstrous power.

▪ Parque Fernando – South America
Almost a continuous forest, and it is very difficult to find an animal in glittering trees. Only 8 species and 3 of them are deer. Puma, water buffalo and blackbuck are unique.
The campaign is about fixing up an old woman's hotel and listening to her crime stories. Also a tonn of racial clishe.

16 main missions, 39 additional.
Map boss – puma, it has a funny "silver" status.
In fact, the only map for which you not gonna get a unique weapon, just two skins for a pistol and a rifle which are already in the store.

▪ Yukon Valley – Alaska
Very beautiful, but the seasons change here as if by magic. No really unique animals, all of them are more or less reskins of what you see on free maps.
The campaign is a fight for the environment and dispersal of illegal tourists.

10 story missions (this is really not enough), 42 additional ones.
No map boss.
An excellent rifle for big prey is given (classes 7-9). But it has many substitutes.

▪ Cuatro Colinas Game Reserve – Iberian Peninsula
This map looks good, but the problem is that almost all of your hunting here is goats and rams, 5 species. The rest of animals are duplicates and reskins. No large animals (level 7-9). There are no lynxes, badgers, brown bears, although these are specifically animals of this region in real life.
However, this is the second best campaign after Vurhonga. And really the best dispatcher-chan, you believe in her emotions and her story. She is also mentioned later in Te Awaroa, she and Hunter began to travel together, so they may have something personal.

14 story missions, 55 additional. This is the last map with a bunch of missions.
Bosses of the map: 3 Iberian wolves, in different places.
Long-range (200 m) Martensson rifle is given. The problem is that the coolest skin is given for completing all tasks of Don Miguel, and they are almost impossible to complete. 0.4% of players received the achievement and the skin.


Cuatro Colinas was the last map for which the authors actually worked on campaign. A dramatic and at the same time understandable main campaign, with dangers, emotions, poachers, stories about mistakes of past, with a bunch of missions, with a whole team of quest givers. In subsequent maps, it all went downhill: additional missions dissapeared, and the campaigns either turned into cute excursions, or it’s not clear what the story is all about.

(continue)

It shamely doesn’t fit into one paragraph, so I had to split it up


▪ Silver Ridge Peaks – Rocky Mountains, America
The mountains are good, but this map has very big problems with tiling (box-like ground textures). The only one of old maps that did not receive additional animals at the end of 2022. There are no hunting tasks in the campaign, but in one mission you need to clean up bears' crap. Completely incoherent plot. Don't even waste your time.

15 story missions.
No map boss.
Traditional bow is given. But it has analogues.

▪ Te Awaroa National Park – New Zealand
In case you didn't know, there are no native mammals in NZ at all – this is a continent of birds. All mammals were brought here by human, so do not be surprised that in the game you will feel a certain deja vu. But the map is colorful, pleasant and the animals are not bad. The campaign is more of an excursion without a plot, but it's not terrible, I generally liked it.

16 missions.
Boss – lone piebald moose.
Good midi rifle is given.

▪ Rancho del Arroyo – Mexico
Animanls are not bad, there are peccary piggies, but it is difficult to hunt small things in the bush.
The campaign is rubbish, you need to sort out the man in squabbles of his family. It has nothing to do with hunting. A lot of running back and forth to the rancho itself.

12 missions.
No map boss.
For completing a rapid-fire 5-round shotgun is given. Not bad, but there are better analogues.

▪ Mississippi Acres Preserve – America
Fogs and swamps. The only unique feature is alligator hunt. But you must understand this is the hardest, most undetectable and unkillable animal in the game. Hunting it is running for hours in vain after a cheater animal that simply mocks you. They do not live on land and simply disappear in water.
The campaign is a vague detective story in which the villains laid out all the evidence in front of you. It's not terrible and has some interest, but overall it's like some teenage wonderful story.

12 missions.
No map boss.
Class 1-2 riffle is given.

▪ Revontuli Coast – Finland
Northern lights, hills, ponds. 19 species of animals which is 2-3 times more than usual. But to be honest 13 of them are birds (some are very similar) and 6 animals, of which the raccoon dog is unique. So this dlc is mainly about bird hunt, and mammals will please you no more than in Taiga. In the campaign, there is no hunting at all, no problems, no conflicts, no nothing here, you just have to go around the forest along the path and see the sights. Rubbish.

12 story missions and 4 big side missions where all the hunting is packed.
No map boss.
Does not give us any weapons, instead it includes a water layout blind (which is shi to be honest).

▪ New England Mountains – This is not England, but America
For a long time it remained the worst map. Stylistically, it's stupidly Hirschfelden + Layton lake. There is no a single unique animal, only duplicates. And almost all of them are class 1 and 2, i.e. this is a small game map. A super short campaign where you clean up trash and listen to a boring audiobook about a wonderful father-son relationship.

7 story missions (yes, just 7!), 10 additional ones.
No map boss.
The weapon is disgusting Curman 50 rifle, single-shot, with a ramrod, terribly slow reload.

▪ Emerald Coast – Australia
Envinment is between Africa, Rancho and Fernando. The animals themselves are good, but there is almost NO campaign: stupid delivering of two gifts, look around the zoo, find a couple of tracks, and that’s it!!

No map boss.
Zagan Varminter rifle is similar to the starting Docent, a little more powerful but has lesses magazine and accuracy.

▪ Sundarpatan – Nepal
Suddenly, this is one of the best maps! It dawned on the authors that they had been releasing empty trash in recent years, and they decided to go back to the roots. Therefore, it has everything we love in old maps: a good campaign with personal drama, poachers, ghost, normal extra missions. At the same time, the good stuff from new maps have been preserved: two dispatchers and the absence of annoying Badens. The only downside is that it's "Jaws 15", i.e. everything is already very familiar.
10 unique species and 3 returning. The highlight of the room is the Bengal tiger. In real life, tiger hunting has long been prohibited; there are only 3,000 Bengal ones left. Previously, the game adhered to the rule of reflecting real environmental laws, but apparently the long buck is taking its toll.

9 story missions and 9 additional ones.
No map boss.
The weapon is a single-shot antique with almost no scope, also with smoke, trash in general

▪ Salzwiesen Park – Germany (again)
And just when we had time to rejoice, the authors rolled out the final stage of content degradation: a small map WITHOUT ANYTHING. Stylistically, this is the same Hirschfelden. Only it is really small. And there is no game above class 2. The authors have finally said goodbye to such things as plot and missions, the entire content consists of "hello, come in, bye", I'm not exaggerating. The first time, the warden doesn't even have a face. There are only two unique species and these are just reskins of a duck. The only thing worse than such a map is a hammer to the face.

No campaign. No boss.
The weapon is another hoe for point-blank shooting.


Summary

You are unlikely to need all of this. Personally I recommend:
- Vurhonga – campaign, gun, unique animals
- Cuatro Colinas – campaign, gun, bosses
- Revontuli Coast – if you are interested in rich bird hunting, but there is almost nothing else
- Sundarpatan – campaign, unique animals

The rest are either not unique enough, or they have a lot of problems, or they don't give you enough of new experience.

What DLCs to buy - weapons

Just keep in mind that almost every pack sells 3 weapons, but among them there is only one nail of the number, the other two are just fillers. So each pack you buy is mostly for the sake of one item.

✔ Weapon Pack 1 – small rifle, bow, crossbow
- Virant Express rifle is one of the few non-shotguns that kills rabbits with prey check (because level 1 bullets). It has amazing 10 shots magazine, and it shoots almost silently.
- The bow is practically useless. Yes, aesthetics, but it's just a shooting stick, its distance is minimal, it doesn't zoom in, it obviously doesn't have multishot, the arrow flies slowly.
- The crossbow has a monstrous killing power, but also works at a very short distance. Players ask "why does this ancient weapon has that much power". This is because an arrow weighs many times more than a bullet, it has a huge momentum.
Summary: 1 good, 1 useless, 1 situational weapon

✔ Weapon Pack 2 – pistol, rifle and hybrid gun
- The Mangiafico pistol fires shots like a shotgun. 6 charges. Good against small animals, but not unique. Gives points to shotguns, not pistols.
- Grelck is the only hybrid weapon in the game that uses two sets of cartridges: shotgun and rifle. Switched by R long press. The problem is that you have to recharge it all the time, you'll get sick with it soon and unable to really play with it.
- Solokhin MN1890 – a copy of real Mosin. While other barrels have available cartridges with either poor penetration or poor expansion, Solokhin does it all – its cartridges are bad in both (penetration 15, expansion 17). At the same time, classes are 3-7, but this is trolling, because to kill class 7 (bear) with such characteristics... Even vs class 3 it has almost all the characteristics lower than free Docent.
Summary: 1 good, 1 doubtful, 1 useless

✔ Weapon Pack 3
- Eckers Prestige rifle for classes 4-8 is a replacement for the free 270 Huntsman, with improved performance, but it has a lot of analogues that are even better: Sporter from Te Awaroa, Martensson from Quatro Collinas, Zarza-10.
- Vasquez Cyclone blowgun for classes 2-4 – range 50 meters. What's the point that they won't hear you if you have to shoot from it point-blank? That means we need to forget about this weapon as a bad joke.
- Andersson pistol for class 1 – totally the same as Virant rifle but noticeably lighter.
Summary: 1 bad copy, 1 useless, 1 good copy

x Wild Goose Chase Gear – gun and goose bait. DO NOT BUY. The reviews are extremely negative, the dlc is broken, the weapon has a free analogue.

x Duck and Cover Pack – weapons, bait and cover for the duck. DO NOT BUY. Similarly, the dlc is not working, the ducks do not spawn and do not react to the call. You can hunt ducks without it.

✔ High-Tech Hunting Pack – night binoculars (useless as all binoculars), night sight for rifles and OP bow
- I refuse to consider binoculars for any kind of content at all, it's not even serious.
- The night sight is quite a useful thing, fits almost any rifle and is one of a kind. You won’t be able to play with this holographic greenery for a long time, but in general the thing is effective and will come in handy in story night missions.
- Koter CB-65 – the main thing in the pack. This is the best bow in the entire game. It has a wide arsenal of arrows and kills any animals almost instantly, there are arrows with light beacons, so that prey will flash in the night. But most importantly, by pressing E, the bow simultaneously determines distance to target and creates a range-adjusted front sight, which makes it a unique weapon. Once you get used to it (you can practice at the shooting range), it will be impossible to miss from it.

x Smoking Barrels Weapon Pack – two rifles and a shotgun from the 19th century
- Hudzik .50 Caplock Terra is a very strange rifle. One shot, extremely long reload time, smoky exhaust, and you also need to use the zeroing skill. However, the cartridges are long-range and have both good penetration and expansion. In my opinion, the obliqueness of the rifle itself (low accuracy parameter) does not allow its own cartridges to show their potential.
- M1 Iwaniec Veteran – a typical rifle for medium prey, also oblique. It does not represent anything special against the background of the above-named F.L. Sporter .303 and other analogues.
- Miller Model 1891 Rancher – a point-blank shotgun that differs little from the standard Caversham Steward. Yes, it is a little lighter, it has not 2, but 3 rounds in a clip, slightly better characteristics of cartridges, but in general this is an unnecessary double.
Result: 1 difficult to use, 2 doubles

(continue)

x Modern Rifle Pack – three modern Zarza rifles
Almost the entire spectrum is covered: classes 1, 2-4, 4-8. All have a 5-round magazine.
- The one that is small is immediately inferior to Virant rifle.
- The medium one is just a duplicate of a bunch of analogues.
- The large one is a real thing, has the highest characteristics for its classes. However, over time it has become less relevant, since a number of classes are now closed in a more convenient way, and its row (some medium, some large) began to be perceived as something vague.
Result: 2 doubles, 1 good

x Assorted Sidearms Pack – three unnecessary pistols
Just pass right by. One pistol must be reloaded after each shot, the other two only fire point-blank.

x Hunter Power Pack – three unnecessary rifles
- Tsurugi LRR .338 – an oblique analogue of a Yukon rifle. Almost the same characteristics, only heavy and lame.
- Malmer 7mm Magnum – wide coverage of classes 4 to 9, but the killing characteristics are not enough for the top of this row. Also absolutely oblique, and only 3 rounds in the magazine. Garbage.
- Olsson Model 23 .308 – unremarkable rifle with a standard coverage of classes 4-8, has many analogues, which were mentioned above. Very similar to F.L. Sporter and Zarza-10. It has slightly more damage, but noticeably less accuracy and a smaller magazine.
Result: 2 thrash, 1 double

✔ High Caliber Weapon Pack
- Arzyna .300 Mag Tactical – an improved analogue of 300 Canning Magnum from Yukon, classes 7-9. For hunting big game from a distance this is a good solution.
- .45-70 Jernberg Superior – pistol. One charge, short distance (75 m). Just pass right by.
- Strandberg 10SA Executive – oblique gun (accuracy 30) for point-blank shooting (25-50 m). For classes 4-7 it offers to shoot buckshot with a penetration of 5! Some kind of joke.
Result: 1 good, 2 trashy

✔✔ Ambusher Pack
- Quist Red Pro Electronic Caller – universal decoy for any animal. Advantages: calls anyone by your choice, and 2 species at once, quacks itself without our participation, you can stand aside from it. Disadvantages: only 200 meters, not 500, and heavy (weight 3.5).
- Moradi Model 1894 – very powerful, multi-charge, with huge class coverage (3-8), but short range (50 meters).
- Stenberg Takedown Recurve Bow – yet another bow. It kills any game in one fell swoop, but only at point-blank range (20 m).
Result: 1 is a must, 1 limited, 1 double

✔✔ Hunters' Choice: Bolt-Action Rifle Pack
- Vallgarda .375 – the most powerful long-range rifle for classes 7-9, however, it is inconvenient: small magazine, huge recoil, you will like it at first, but quickly get tired of it.
- Johansson .450 – absolutely oblique rifle for classes 4-7.
- Fors Elite .300 – now pay attention! The characteristics are good, but nothing fantastic. However, this rifle has an atypical coverage of classes: 3-6 (there was one like that before, but with poor characteristics). In general, now you can close the weapon row differently. Not 1, 2-4, 4-8, 9, but instead 1-2, 3-6, 7-9. We get a more expedient row and save space.
Result: 1 good, 1 super, 1 trash

x Rapid Hunt Rifle Pack DLC
I haven't personally checked, but based on wiki data...
- Hansson .30-06 – oblique, slow, heavy and also a double, not a single plus
- Perry .308 – absolutely the same, they repeat each other, they are both for classes 4-8, why?
- Quist Reaper – this is a close analogue of Fors Elite, only heavier and slightly worse in everything. The only interesting thing about it is that it has unusual and wide range of classes 2-6, so you need it unless you have a 1-2 class gun from Mississippi.


SUMMARY
Years ago, when not all of this existed, I advised taking Pack 1 + 2, or 3 + High-Tech.
But for now, focus your attention primarily on what is marked with two ticks.

What DLCs to buy - misc

● Hunting houses:

▪ Trophy Lodge Spring Creek Manor – Classic European style hunting estate.
▪ Saseka Safari Trophy Lodge – African style hotel, it is physically twice larger.

This content is far from mandatory, and there are questions about it. Houses cannot be rebuilt somehow, they are the same for all players. Yes, you can place your trophies in them, but to be honest, few people will go to your house to look at your merits. You can’t go out of the houses to the courtyard, there are no activities there. It seems that the content is necessary in its idea, the hunter should have a trophy house. But the authors forgot to fill it with meaning.

● Trifles:

▪ Tents & Ground Blinds – fast travel tents, essentially deployable bases for comfort. It's wrong that they are sold separately, but yes, you need to take it.
▪ ATV Saber 4X4 – 4-wheel moto. It is mandatory to buy, without this it will be just bitter to play. Maintenance-free, they can be replaced indefinitely.
▪ Treestand & Tripod Pack – portable tree-stands. Sitting on them, you are invisible, but this does not mean animals will hurry towards you. Dubious content for those who find it interesting to sit still for an hour.


Summary

It is not necessary to take all the content, it is not always working, sometimes it is redundant or duplicate.
You need to take ATV, tents and house.
Do not take trifles and bird hunting. In general, a lot of in-game problems have been noticed with birds.

Recommended gun-class-dlc layout

Previously I described only one type of loadout, but with release of new weapon DLCs, a second, more convenient option has appeared.
In each class, select one of the guns.

- layout 1, 2-4, 4-8, 9

This layout was good at the time, but its problem is that to cover a full row you needed as many as 4 guns, but our inventory is not elastic, so for such a layout you have to sacrifice something. Years ago we simply had no alternative.

Button 1:
- Shotgun pistol Mangiafico from Weapon Pack 2
or
- Any shotgun, but this variant is worse as they have only 2 charges

Button 2:
Class 1
One of these:
- Virant rifle from Weapon Pack 1 – silent shooting
(also this pack includes a crossbow, about which I tell later)
- Andersson pistol from Weapon pack 3 – almost the same, but lighter, maximum rate of fire
- Kullman rifle from Mississippi, for classes 1-2 – maximum range (150 m instead of 100)

Button 3:
Classes 2-4
Free Docent rifle. There is no need for a paid replacement. Seriously. This starter weapon, even after many years, is the best for its classes, it is at the same time long-range, light, multi-charged (6 rounds), with good penetration (20) and perfectly accurate with and without aiming. All of its analogues are either heavy, or oblique, or single-shot, or weaker, or shoot only at point-blank range.
Only Zagan Varminter rifle from Australia is comparable, but it has a smaller magazine and a bit unnecessary excessive penetration power.

Button 4:
Classes 4-8
You need one of these, they are similar but each is better at one thing:
- Martensson from Quatro Collinas – maximum range and accuracy but low blood loss
- F.L. Sporter from Te Awaroa – good expansion / blood loss without sacrificing penetration
- Eckers from Pack 3 – more damage, but poor accuracy, less magazine and heavy
(you can do without Pack 1 with it, because there is also a replacement for small game weapon, but in general this option is worse)
- Zarza-10 from Modern Rifle Pack – almost everything is high, but the accuracy could be better
(this pack contains almost the entire range of weapons)
- you can play with 270 Huntsman for free, but all its characteristics are lower

Personally, I chose Martensson, because the game only awards you with good trophies for accurate kills to organs, and death from blood loss is a botched frag, it does not make sense.

Button 5:
Class 9
One of those:
- Sundberg 454 pistol – free, covers classes 4-9, monstrous power but 50 meters and pretty lame
- King gun from Vurhonga – severe damage but 50 meters only
- Any crossbow with heavy arrows – severe damage but 30 meters and slow reload

In general, it can be seen that weapons from the packs are mostly needed for class 1. The rest of the row is covered by free weapons or the ones from the map DLCs.

- layout 1-2, 3-6, 7-9

In this newer version the row changes, because there is now a weapon with an atypical coverage of classes 3-6 or 2-6, and this makes the layout more convenient.

Key 1:
Class 1
- Mangiafico shotgun from Weapon pack 2
or
- any shotgun

Key 2:
Classes 1-2
- Kullman rifle from Mississippi – maximum range (150 m instead of 100)

Key 3:
(this weapon is optional, but we can now afford it, since one slot is freed up)
Classes 2-4
Any shotgun with buckshot. Animals of these classes are small, it is difficult to hit them with a rifle, so we use the advantage of area damage.

Key 4:
Classes 3-6
- Fors Elite from Hunters' Choice: Bolt-Action Rifle Pack – excellent weapon, completely covering the middle range of classes.
or
- Quist Reaper 7.62x39 from Rapid Hunt Rifle Pack – almost the same, slightly higher damage, 5 instead of 6 charges, heavy, with a bad hip shot, but covers classes 2-6 instead of 3-6. This gives the opportunity to choose another small-bore rifle for Key 2, more specialized for class 1. But this is already a matter of taste.

Key 5:
Classes 7-9
- 300 Canning Magnum Frontier rifle from Yukon for classes 7-9 – long-range, but less damage
- Arzyna rifle from High Caliber Weapon Pack, for classes 7-9 – an analogue of the previous one, but stronger and more convenient, the best option
- Valagarda rifle from Hunters' Choice: Bolt-Action Rifle Pack – even stronger, but inconvenient

FAQ - Basics

● Opening the map, base, replenishment of ammunition
At the beginning you need to open at least one hunting base. Open the map, find the observation deck (binoculars icon), climb it. Part of the map will open. Find house sign on the map. Visit it, touch the flag. Now you have a base with a store, where you can take ATVs, dogs and tents (if you bought the DLCs).
The Ranger starter rifle has free ammo, but its penetration power is 15, i.e. very low. It is better to buy good cartridges with a breakdown of 30 for in-game money.
You can teleport to strongholds (as well as set up tents), but this only applies to visited houses, their icon is white. Green house icon is where you haven't been yet.

● How to open the whole map?
Towers individually give not so much revival of map areas. But when all the towers on the map are taken, it will be fully opened.

● How to restore health?
The store sells first aid kits. But it is expensive to spend money on them and it takes space to carry them. Also health is regained with sleep. Sometimes it's easier to just die and resurrect, there are no penalties for this.

● How to earn?
- The game has some hot spots. Select Hirschfelden and head west to the lakes. Bison are found there, they almost always go in herds and are rather slow. With a good weapon, you can fill up the entire herd and become a rich man.
- Money is given not only for the animals, but also for completion of plot tasks. Assignments come down mainly to visiting places, finding tracks, killing and photographing certain animals. Often completing the tasks is money for nothing.
- You can also earn some money on Hunt Club tasks. This is a semi-working mechanic that has not left beta since 2021 and does not have any interesting design, you just look at the menu while on any map, you see a hunting club in one of the bottom lines, and sometimes it says whom and how to shoot. This can be done both in single-player and online, many tasks will require you to play on a specific map. Sometimes tasks can be completed in parallel, so at the beginning of July there were two tasks per day: hits in the heart and ethical kills of moose, plus a weekly task for animals with a rare color. So I was shooting moose in the hearts and some of them were a rare color. Continue to visit this menu and collect rewards as you complete this stuff. But there are not always tasks.

● How to level up?
Experience is given for killing animals and for completing dispatcher tasks. And for visiting places of interest that are marked on the map. Therefore, it makes sense to go around points on a typewriter, collecting stats.
Leveling here is extremely slow and is designed for hundreds of hours. The maximum level is 60. For each level, 1 point is given, alternately in Skills and Skills, starting from level 37 – 1 point per 3 levels, a maximum of 22 points in each branch. Note that both categories have subcategories. Between leveling stalker and ambusher categories I advise to keep the first as a priority, although ambusher has some important things.
Upgrading the weapon tree is rather strange: you can choose between upgrading pistols, rifles, etc., but the skills of one often extend to everything. So reloading a pistol on the run gives this to all weapons.
There are very few points, so think about what to spend them on. There are frankly unnecessary abilities. Ignore green abilities, take only "zeroing", any other green is garbage.

● Does the difficulty of the beast mean prey status? (silver, gold, etc.)
Not really, there is a very curved dependence. Each species has its own default difficulty, and it rather describes the size, and individuals vary from it. That is, a duck or a rabbit is almost always difficulty 1, and if you come across an individual with 4, then it will probably turn out to be a diamond. For the nilgai, which is a medium beast of class 6, the diamond turned out to be difficulty 5, i.e. average. But all sorts of bulls, having a difficulty of about 5, easily turn out to be silver, and to get a diamond, you have to look for a whole legendary one. That is, the larger the beast, the higher status you must find to get the maximum trophy. However, this only sounds like something scary; in reality, difficulty means few. It is easier to kill a whole herd of bulls than to find and shoot one puma. There is nothing particularly difficult about a high-ranking lion, but finding and shooting a small raccoon dog or jackal is really hard.
In general, this system is incorrect, it indicates high difficulty for large and often herd and slow animals, i.e. those who are easiest to hunt. But the real difficulty is small size, speed, stealth.
Well, once I killed the legendary Tibetan fox, although it didn’t cost me anything: he just walked through the open area, not seeing me, and I slayed him with one shot. So what makes him legendary?

FAQ - Weapons

● Donate weapons give imba?
It's arguable. This is not the kind of game in which flat damage decides – it matters what the cartridge was, where the shot fell, whether the kill met the standard, and whether you even found the body. Therefore, most of the barrels in the game are not distinguished by power, but by a subtle combination of parameters. The thing is, with just the starting weapon, you won't be able to kill most animals at all with passing the check. For example, there is no a single free rifle that cleanly kills rabbits – this is the prerogative of shotguns. But the paid Virant rifle satisfies this requirement. Also, the game simply does not have free weapons for effective alligator hunting (level 6, but survivability is much higher), and bull-cannons will overwhelm the prey check, and the solution here is only donated. Yes, it's not good.
Some paid guns have situational advantages: the crossbow has a monstrous killing power, although a very short distance, the bow and blowgun are almost silent and do not frighten the beast, the Grelck gun carries two types of cartridges, etc.
Some donated barrels have something more or less similar among free ones, but they are unlocked after many hours of play and cost in-game currency, while the player receives donated weapons almost immediately – they can be picked up at the very first hunting base.

● Why are some weapons unavailable?
Weapons are unlocked as you level up. In addition, you need proficiency points for a certain type of weapon – they are issued for killings from this type.
Some barrels are story-locked, so almost every dlc-reserve has a weapon assigned to it, usually a good one.

● How to choose weapons and ammo?
Animals are ranked by level from 1 to 9, where 9 is the largest and strongest, they are almost indestructible for default weapons. Each weapon and ammo is designed for one or more levels of animals. In fact, we have a mini-game here: cartridges of certain levels are available for each weapon, and our task is to close the entire numerical series with them. For example, you should have weapons with ammo classes: 1, 2-4, 4-8, 9.
Note that in this example animal of class 4 (boar, ram) can be killed with two barrels but a more powerful one is preferred.
Class 1 (rabbits and birds) always stand apart, their cartridges never fit anyone else.
Your row may be stacked differently, but if you want to be ready for clean prey of all classes, the row should be stocked. You need to carry 3-5 barrels, all should be for a different occasion, and not duplicating each other.

● Polymer vs expansive cartridges
You don't have to understand cartridges and calibers in real life, just buy cartridges compatible with this gun (there is a "compatible" button in the store when entering your weapon).
Cartridges are divided into those that have high penetrating power (usually polymer tips), and those that have high expansion, i.e. they expand in the prey's body.
Penetrating cartridges are designed to pass through bones and affect multiple organs, but with relatively little blood loss. With these cartridges you expect to kill the beast quickly with a well-aimed hit in the heart, lungs, less often the liver.
Expanding cartridges enter the body worse, but cause more serious blood loss. This way you can shoot anywhere and just chase down a prey that is about to die.
However, the game only rewards you for hitting important organs, not bleeding prey. Therefore, the choice of expansive cartridges is fundamentally wrong by the very rules of the game. Always take only piercing ones, and the higher the indicator, the better.
Bear, moose, bison and lion require ammo with a piercing rating of 30 or more.

● Where to shoot?
Forget headshots. These are not humans, they have brains the size of a walnut, there is almost a solid bone there. In addition, the head is small, you will not get it. And it is forbidden to damage it for most animals, because the head is a trophy, and in this case you will be left without a bonus.
A shot in the spine (breaking the mane) is effective, but is not considered clean. You can hunt like this only for money, for example, bison is well farmed. But you can not do this for the trophy.
The ideal would be a hit in the heart, but it is difficult. It is not somewhere in the center of body, but at the very bottom of chest. The problem is that it is covered from the sides by legs, so such a frag is possible mostly from an ambush, when animal is coming towards you. This happens rarely.
Therefore, shoot AT THE RIBS. This is a reliable option. So you hit lungs or liver. The beast will run, but not far.
A shot in other places can also put them down, but the cause of death will be blood loss, i.e. a bad fragment, and the beast can go very far, depriving you of a chance to find the body.
Killing a running animal on bum point is usually a bad option, because a bullet that hits the ass may not reach the main organs, and there will be no clean kill. But for example the imba King gun is capable of this – it breaks bulls along.

● What is the maximum kill distance?
My record was 412 meters, shot across the lake and killed oh deer.
Got the maximum killing range achievement for this – 400 meters, i.e. it is possible, although it is difficult to achieve this on purpose. You should just be lucky with this – I looked at a good cross just in time and had a lucky shot.

● Should we use buckshot?
This is a larger version of shot. The first and main thing – in real life it is very effective, but in the game buckshot is nerfed. There are calibers for medium-large classes of prey, but the killing power itself is low, the charges do not penetrate deeply and do not touch the organs of, for example, a wild boar. It will simply run away, or you will not get a clean trophy. The range is minimal. In addition, it shoots inaccurately: you will touch the head, horns and lose the trophy.
Nevertheless, buckshot is effective against classes 2-4, for example raccoons, kitties. They are small, it is difficult to hit them on the run with a rifle, you need a spread.
And since this is a game about realism, I will say that in real life I would never use buckshot. It would cause suffering and a long death of the animal, besides, the skin would be completely ruined. I clarified the question with the AI: in reality, buckshot is used by hunters against roe deer and wild boar, but they shoot it within 25 meters, and in many regions this is considered an unethical hunting method.

FAQ - Mechanics and subtleties

● Is it possible to hunt at night?
It's possible, but rather annoying. For night hunting, you need to turn on the head lantern – L. It does not scare animals, this is a game convention. On the Medved Taiga map, night visibility is quite good because of the white snow. On other maps, it is better not to go night, unless on assignment. Game night on any map lasts from 19 to 5, you can keep this in mind when going missions.

● Why is sleep becoming more expensive?
Because you use it too often. No need to abuse this mechanic. I advise just to use sleep to skip nights.

● What are the purple spots on the map?
These are the "death zones". Officially called "hunting pressure". They appear when you kill an animal. There is an opinion that other animals will bypass this place, but practice does not confirm this. The death zones have two purposes.
Firstly, this is a hint – a spot appeared means the escaped animal died. Though the spot does not help much to find prey, because it appears where the animal was mortally wounded, and not where it actually died. And do not believe the one who says that the zone appears around the place of the shot, I specifically checked by shooting across a lake – it appeared on the other side.
Secondly, the death zones are able to close the points of need. The more you kill in one place, the brighter the spot. You can kill up to three animals in one place, but if you kill the fourth, the zone will become very bright and all the need points in it will disappear. This is done so that you do not get fat in an ambush in one place. By the way this is an argument against playing ambusher style.
The zone does not disappear with time. Instead death zones disappear when new ones appear.

● What is the arrow on the compass?
This is the direction where the wind blows your scent. If in the direction of the beast, then you will be noticed.
An interesting observation – if a broken ATV starts to smoke, then the smoke will go exactly in the direction of the wind. Such a detail was not too lazy to do.

● Why doesn't the animal go for the decoy?
In order for the beast to react, you must not run after it, but sit in ambush. The indicator under the compass should show that you have zero noise and visibility and your heart is not breaking. The wind should not blow from you to the beast. And even all this is not a guarantee. When developing into an assailant, there are skills that first increase the effectiveness of baits (smells), and then decoys. Keep in mind that not every animal has decoys at all, for example, there are none for predators, and a "wounded deer" only works for a black bear.
In general, all this is extremely inefficient. I played with different people with a microphone, and neither I nor any of them had a single case when hunting with a decoy would show any sane result. And even if she worked, she is boring and uninteresting, few resort to her, you can only see this if on YouTube.

● What happens if you kill on water?
Just wait, river flow will bring the body to you. This applies to any type of prey if it ends up at a depth inaccessible to the player. Body floats in the direction from which the shot was fired, and not in the direction where you are now.

● I bought a duck hunt dlc, doing everything right, but the duck does not fly to the bait.
DLC about duck hunt is buggy. Ducks do not see the bait model and do not hear how you quack there. This has already been noticed by a bunch of bloggers, this is reflected in the reviews. You do not need to buy it at all.

● Does it make sense to hide behind trees?
Yes. Stealth is one of the important mechanics in the game. Even just standing next to the barrel, you make yourself almost invisible. The indicator below the compass will immediately show the change in visibility status.

● Is it possible to crush an animal with a car?
Nope. Physics of the game works in such a way that any impact with a beast is considered damage, i.e. you will die yourself.
However, a bison and a bear can be overtaken, jump off the car and send a fiery hello. With a deer, however, this will not work – too nimble.

● Can you hit another player with a car?
No. Car will crash into him like he's a pole. You can't hit his dog either.

● What if I kill any animals with just the most powerful gun?
You fail the check and dishonored will be your trophy. Killing with wrong ammo will greatly lower the loot level, so you can turn diamond into silver. In addition, some of the campaign objectives are explicitly worded so that you must get clean prey.

● How long do dead bodies stay?
Information about this varies on the Internets. Some argue that the bodies remain until you close the game session, others say the body must be picked up within 1 real hour, otherwise the points for it will be reset to zero. Some say that bodies can disappear due to a bug. Also previously there was a bug when they were becoming invisible and only a dog could find them, now this bug seems to be fixed. In any case, enough time is given to collect them, and they will not disappear due to your death. But personally, I do not recommend to wind kilometers somewhere and return after a long time. I had situations when I couldn't found lying bodies at the right place.

● Where are the delayed trophies that were not stuffed right away?
To see them, you need to visit a house (for some time now everyone has at least one free mansion). Inside the house, you can call up a submenu with set aside animals and either make stuffed animals out of them or destroy them. This menu is quite small, it will quickly overflow, so it is worth overwriting more successful trophies on top of old ones, the level of production is indicated in numbers.

● Is it possible to leave hunter's house with a cheat?
You can’t leave Spring Creek Manor, the script will immediately return you inside the house, like in a horror movie. But you can escape Safari Saseka, there is a large map with vegetation around it, but nothing interesting there – no animals, no objects.

● Does every species have a great ones?
No. For most species maximum level of the beast is diamond, and even this is very rare. In the end of 2024 only 8 species had great individs: white-tailed deer, red deer, fallow deer, moose, black bear, tahr, red fox and pheasant.

● Badman's flight
If you were riding an ATV and flew from a cliff, the most important thing is not to get confused and press the space bar in flight. Then you land with little or no damage in situations where you might otherwise die. I have not tried flying from a huge mountain yet, but it saves me from a decent hill. While the record is 63 meters, took off only half of health.

● How to replay the campaign?
The game itself does not provide for this, unless you create a new character. But some stories (especially in old dlcs) are worth experiencing again. Here's what to do:
- In Steam, go to the game properties. "Enable syncing of saves with Steam Cloud" - off.
- Go here:
C:\Users\[user]\Documents\Avalanche Studios\COTW\Saves\[our numeric code]
and move the file somewhere that stores the campaign stats - missions_missiondata_adf

The information about the completion of ALL maps will be cleared. Therefore, I suggest saving this file in another place, and when we finish the replays we need, we return the file to its place with replacement. It is interesting that other progress (levels, money, achievements, map exploration, trophies) are stored in other files, so our stats will not suffer from all these actions.

Active skills - a show of non-working mechanics

When you upgrade skills, some items are green. This means they do not work all the time, in the menu select one of the abilities with the right button and click "activate". Then it will appear next to the compass and you can turn it on with the F key.

This is a wonderful example of how the authors tried to implement some mechanics, having absolutely no idea how it would be played (no way). The presence of additional active abilities sounds cool for any game, but there is no minimum convenience and expediency of using them. There is just ONE useful among them – Zeroing, all the rest are junk of no worth. I tested them all so you don't have to.

✔ Zeroing (in the rifles category)
The situation is: at a long distance the bullet starts to fall, so when you aim at a distance of 300-400 m, you need to keep the scope a little higher, and you are not sure how much. The zeroing skill means that the character will adjust the shot himself. Let's say the beast is at 300 range and you choose to zero in on 300 – now you'll hit exactly where you're aiming. But there are problems:
▪ What if the beast is 250 or 400 m away? Now your correction is wrong again, and you have to think whether to keep the scope lower or higher relatively to this already.
▪ And you can't choose to zero in on those specific values because it's only available at 75, 150 and 300.
▪ And 300 is bought for the second skill point. For the first one you get only 75 and 150. But wait a minute! At such a meager distance, the bullets don’t fall anyway and zeroing is not needed there!
But in general, you can use this.

Previously, there was another necessary skill Ranger (in the pistols category), to see the distance to the target by pressing. But since there could only be one active skill, it could not be used together with zeroing. Fortunately, the authors realized that this was some kind of absurdity, made this skill passive, and now the distance is shown simply when the target is selected. That is, we simultaneously see the distance and know what zeroing to set.


Review of delusional abilities

After a point is wasted on the active skill, in the same place of menu you need to right-click on it and activate it. Then the skill will be displayed in the lower right corner of the interface and will be activated by the corresponding button. The strongest problems with usability follow from this: you could buy a lot of skills, but you can use only one, and to change them you have to go into the interface every time. That's why it makes no sense to spend points on more than one ability.

x Weather Prediction (skill – stalker)
On indicator the game time starts to scroll at intervals of several minutes and an icon is shown what the weather will be like. The next 4 hours of game time are covered. The information is displayed 3 times in a circle, then disappears, so you have to remember everything or quickly write it down on a piece of paper! The next time the forecast can be called not soon. And this information is meaningless anyway, because weather has almost nothing to do with it. Well, yes, you may have stealth in fog and rain, but it is impossible to build hunting tactics on the purposeful use of this situation.
Recovery time: 10 minutes, real ones, not in-game minutes!



x Wind Prediction (skill – stalker)
Same but about wind. Next 4 hours are scrolled 3 times showing how the wind arrow will change. Yes, this can make a difference when using decoys, but then again – it's almost impossible to use it purposefully. For example a herd will go from there, which I'm waiting at the feeding place, and the wind will soon change in that direction, so I need to go over there so that the bait blows off like this – no one will just do it. You will not find such videos on YouTube even among the top players. They don't use it, it's unreliable, it doesn't work.
Recovery time: 10 minutes



x Startle Call (skill – stalker)
The game already has a whistle to the animals, so I'm puzzled why they made another one. Well, yes, the default whistle immediately scares them, but this one works a little more complicated, but why not make this whistle instead initially?
I checked with a cheat on forcibly teleported animals, sitting under a bush. It works like this: from the sound, the beast goes into the "wary" state for a few seconds, freezes, then gets scared and runs. Yes, this moment can be used, HOWEVER the sound does not work this way on animal that is already frightened and running. This only affects animal that is calm and does not see you. This means the skill is dаmn useless.
The only way to use it is to stop a simply walking "migrating" beast in its place. But you can easily hit this one on the go. This skill is literally not needed for anything, it does not help you, it interferes you.

x Keen Eye (skill – ambusher)
You climb the tower, press the button and get several signs about the detection of need zones, they are plotted on the map. That's all. The zones can be found anyway, just by running next to the tower. In addition, most players do not really use this zone information itself. Usefulness is minimal.
Recovery time: 30 minutes, people! There are whole games that last less.



x Windage (rifles)
Expanding the horizons of the meaningless! This skill is only needed to show you the wind speed in the active skill window when aiming! You will never use this information.

x Tracershot (guns)
We press the button – after a shot from a gun (not rifle), smoky stripes will remain in the air, which will show the shot trajectory. During the hunt itself, this is not needed for anything at all. This can be used when shooting in empty place to evaluate the spread of shot or buckshot, but this is not necessary either. Just shoot at the ground, and everything will be clear by shot marks – aha, approximately such an area is affected. And that's all you need to know. Why do you need these smoky streaks? There is nowhere to use it.




x Boomstick (guns)
We press the button – and the gun fires from two barrels at once. But what's the use? Gun is almost always used for shot or buckshot, they already have a wide spread, and you don’t need to increase it, at least at the cost of wasting a magazine and a skill point. In addition, for prey check you need to hit the beast with no more than two shots, but with this ability you will use up both hits at once, and it is not certain that at least one of them will be fatal. Thus you sacrifice the necessary for a very dubious advantage. It's better to just take the second shot yourself, having the opportunity to aim again, rather than shooting two at once in vain.

Control tricks

This is not explained anywhere in the game, and not everything is written in the key menu.

Enabling 3rd person view is not the case in the main game mode. However, when driving a car, it turns on by C.

To highlight the outline of a beast look at it through binoculars and press E. Please note – it is through binoculars only when you are low-level. And it will be possible to do through a sniper scope when you level up this ability. This action is called "DETECT". This will be in many tasks of dispatchers.

Clicking on the mouse wheel instantly removes and puts on the sniper scope. You need to remove it if the beast is close.

Long press R means switching ammo type. To do this, of course, you need to pre-purchase them, pick them up from the warehouse, and also load them into a gun in the menu if it allows. However there is only one gun with this option.

There is a button for a short breath hold – this will reduce sight shaking for a few seconds.

The animal can be whistled to scare it away. It's not clear what this feature is for, but it's there. Possibly to keep an extra beast away from you when you're stalking another at a greater distance.

If you have a dog dlc, then the dog is called by another whistle, the animals do not hear it, this is a game convention.

Bugs and inconveniences

● Can't interact with landmark
The object's "hitbox" height is set incorrectly. Jump up and press interaction while jumping.

● Can't activate a base in the story, because it was already opened in multiplayer
Move away and teleport to this base.

● Story animal escaped
Restart the game, return to the right place. The beast will spawn again.

● High reload parameter – is it faster or slower?
It's funny, but authors themselves have not decided on this. The slowest reloading Hudzik musket has a stat of 5/100, while the fast reloading Miller Model 1891 shotgun has a stat of 69/100. And that could mean higher is better. However, for the Grankin Gun with a fast reload the parameter is indicated as 10/100. Thus, you do not need to read this value, you have to check reload personally. But in thehuntercotw wiki all this data is correct: higher is better.

About dogs

There are 3 breeds to choose from. You can only walk with one dog at a time, each one is leveled up separately. Dog has two lines of leveling: overall and main. There are 30 levels in overall leveling and they increase by themselves if the dog even just walks next to you, but for real activities and interactions the process speeds up a little. About half of the skills you can choose seem completely pointless. Maximum level will be achieved in one full day of play (from morning to night). Leveling up the main characteristic is slower and depends entirely on completing the direct task. But this task is different for breeds.

▪ Bloodhound – takes a trail, finds shot game (of any class) by following the trail of blood and calls you to it. But you do almost the same thing yourself, following trails or spots on the map. Sometimes it seems that the dog simply duplicates the existing mechanics and is not particularly needed, and this is true at some point, on some maps and locations it only slows down the process and generally requires a lot of attention. Bugs exist: dog can stupidly get stuck in stones or a couple of trunks, stopping the search process. But for example, in African bush, it really helps out, especially when you need to find several bodies. There are simply situations when you cannot find the prey with your eyes, but the dog, having picked up the scent, will not lose it.

▪ Labrador Retriever – searches for a shot BIRD. That is, it is limited not just to class 1, but to half of the class, because ignores bunnies. Brings game to the player, including from the water, because can swim. But why, if water already brings you bodies? Such severe limitation makes this dog useless. She won’t even call you for other prey. If you take it, then only on Revontuli map, which is almost entirely dedicated to birds. Its muzzle is more pleasant, but... authors, have you ever seen a Labrador?

▪ German Shorthaired Pointer – unlike the previous ones, it looks for live animals and points at them. But without a high level it is almost ineffective, because it starts highlighting prey only from level 25. The gameplay with it is slow, you have to sneak a lot, you often catch yourself thinking that without a dog you would have done everything yourself a long time ago. And yet, it is not devoid of sense.

Also, all breeds warn and growl if there is an animal nearby. And they can get the skill of protecting player from a predator.

Previously, the usefulness of dogs could be assessed as low, because they simply duplicated part of the mechanics. But you need to scratch them constantly, but their love for you is still rapidly falling, so you do everything in vain. The gameplay turns into spam of identical animations of interaction with a dog. It constantly rustles nearby, and now you do not know whether it is an animal or the dog. In addition, in multiplayer dogs often glitch and disappear. However, at the end of 2024, the dogs were improved and now, at a high level, in addition to the main role, they also perform the second role you selected from another breed. But it does not receive a second skill scale, i.e. the second role will be limited. I think that the best dog will be a pointer with the second option of bloodhound. It is in this combination because:
- labrador is generally useless, there is nothing to consider here,
- the property of a labrador in another dog that cannot swim will become even more meaningless,
- pointer is effective only with pointer skills (it can highlight),
- bloodhound's ability with the search for prey does not need to be reinforced with skills, so it suits as 2nd role.

About devices

● Rangefinder
NOT NEEDED. Don't even buy it. The function itself is extremely useless (it’s faster to just shoot the prey by eye than to measure the distance to it while it's walking away), but everything becomes even more ridiculous with the fact there are binoculars with a built-in rangefinder, and it is absolutely obvious that you need to buy this one. It is not clear why such binoculars are not the only option. In addition, there is a skill that allows you to see the distance to the target without any device.

● Binoculars
It's funny, but it's not really needed either. Its only use is to complete tasks with the wording "spot an animal", in the game, detection is not just to meet or kill, but to look at the beast through binoculars, press E and thus highlight its outline. At the beginning this can only be done with binoculars, but when pumping the ambusher branch, already at the third stage, you can take a skill that does the same in a sniper scope, and it is stupidly more effective. After that, the binoculars are thrown out of inventory into the warehouse and are never used again. Because you do not need to switch back and forth between weapons and binoculars and carry extra cargo in your inventory.

● Callers and smell decoys
They are not available for every animal. They work in a limited radius (from 150 to 500 m for different ones). They last from 25 to 90 seconds. They act only on those animals that are calm, and not alarmed or frightened, i.е. they didn't see you, didn't hear you, didn't smell you. So, you need not to exceed the pulse, sit in ambush for a long time, follow the direction of the wind. You can't just run and quack with them. In addition, there are reports from players that sometimes decoys on the contrary scare away target animals. And most importantly, at the beginning, the decoys have extremely low efficiency at the level of game mathematics, and in order for them to really work, you need to pump 5 points into the smells (Scent Tinkerer and Dazed and Confused) and 5 into the callers (Fatal Attraction, Who's deer, Hill Caller). Not all of these skills are a must, but at least 2 points in Fatal Attraction must be invested. All this paints a picture of low utility. Yes, there are high players who can sit for 2 hours at night with infrared binoculars near the feeding area and wait for a herd with a diamond beast, and then call him with a decoy and kill him without warning with one shot. But it's very specific gameplay that most players do not want.
Personally, I completely ignored the whole decoy thing for a long time, but when the automatic Caller Pro came out and was also improved in late 2024, the ambush took on a new meaning.

Animal classes

The most common prey in the game is numerous types of deer, they fall into classes 2 to 7. This means that there is not one weapon for all types of deer, and the task is divided into deer 2-4 and deer 5-7.
18 species of animals were reclassified in March 2024. In general, the changes were logical, increased realism, but some look quite ridiculous, for example, the demotion of bobcats to class 2. In general, the classes were previously more or less easy-to-remember communities, but after the update, all pigs, goats, bears and others dispersed into different classes. Now these are the only classes that are easy to remember:
1 - all birds, all rabbits and hares
2 - small dogs and cats
9 - all types of bulls, lion, tiger
For the rest, you can just look the wiki table:
https://thehuntercotw.fandom.com/wiki/Animals

It is also worth noting that previously different weapon layouts were suitable for different maps, because on some there were no birds at all, on others there were other gaps in classes, but now the distribution of animals in the reserves has become more uniform, so that you can go to any map with more or less one layout. Weapons for classes 8-9 remain optional (since class 9 is there only on 6 maps, and class 8 is almost empty).

Approach to some animals

● Ducks and geese
Until the end of 2022, they (like birds in general) were only on some maps, but after a big update, at least one bird species appeared on every map. Various types of geese and ducks are found on most maps (except Medved-Taiga, Cuatro Colinas, Silver Ridge Peaks, Rancho del Arroyo), they often fly over the player screaming and casting shadows. I personally watched a couple of times as a flock spawned out of thin air right above my head. You probably tried to shoot them down many times, but nothing worked. For a long time I believed this was fundamentally impossible, because the flying bird is invulnerable and represents another game object. And sometimes this is true: if you cannot highlight the outline of a flying bird, then it is a decoration, this also happens. But in Sundarpatan I finally managed to shoot down a flying goose (which had an outline) twice. So yes, it is possible, but only if the bird is no more than 50 meters away from you and a number of other subtle conditions meet. We are forced to shoot the bird only with the smallest bullets, and they instantly lose speed and are blown away by wind, so such a frag is extremely difficult. You'll waste too much ammo trying this, it's not worth it.

Our task is to put the birds on the ground. They very rarely land on their own. We need to lure them. To the question "with decoys or models" the correct answer is yes! Because separately these things almost do not work. And although I am absolutely not a fan of sitting in ambush, I found the ideal formula, which – attention – even with all the converging stars, gives the most minimal result:
- All the characteristics of decoys and lures must be leveled up, and there are quite a lot of them.
- We are located under the territory where they often fly (yes, they are constant, more or less)
- We’re setting up a tent, because we need a whole base, without running back and forth
- We put a tripod, on it we, against all common sense, are invisible, plus one of the skills strengthens our baits next to tripods and treestands.
- We arrange 20 toys of the type of bird we need (less – it doesn’t work well, more – it doesn’t enhance it).
- You can quack into the decoy yourself, or you can buy for real money a dlc with auto-quack Quist Red Pro Electronic Caller. As for using both – I tried, in my opinion, it's only worse.
- If there is a dog, then order it to lie down.
And then SOME of the flying birds will begin to circle over our place, and some of those will begin to ground. We knock them down on the ground or water with shot. 2-3 birds at a time is a good result.

● Turkeys and partridges
These are easy birds, they are rather slow, noticeable, noisy, often fly at you themselves, sit on the road near the ATV. At night you can find turkeys that just stand on the ground and do not react (apparently, sleeping). Don't shoot them while they're on ground, it's considered foul play. Wake them up with a whistle or a stray shot and shoot them in flight.
The funny thing is that even in flight turkeys and partridges leave traces behind them as if they were not flying, but walking. This is a game convention.

● Rabbit
If someone does not know, then a hare is a loner and runs, and a rabbit is a family and digs holes. Meeting with rabbit goes like this: you hear his nervous running somewhere nearby and this takes you to a clearing where 2-3 mounds-burrows are visible. Rabbits will cut a couple of circles next to you and hide in these holes, after which they can no longer be reached from there. You have just a few seconds. During this time, you can wreck 2-3 of them, do not aim too much, shotgun expansion usually helps.

● Boar and other pigs
They are die-hard. Use only rifles and only penetrating cartridges and try to kill immediately, in the organs. Shooting anywhere and hoping for blood loss makes no sense – they will run so far away that you won’t find them.

● Bear
I don’t know how it goes irl, but in the game there is no more cowardly beast rather than bear. You will not have situations with him when he rushes at you, rears up and wants to break you and you bravely pierce his chest from a gun. He doesn't even have an attack animation, and the only damage he can do to you is just to butt you up. Bear is very shy and quite fast. When he sees you, he will always run away.
Personally, I only managed to catch up with the fleeing bears because at a certain moment they decide to turn back. Basically, bear needs to be brought down from a distance when it does not see you. Or catch up on a car, jump next to him and shoot him into the side.

● Bison
Great animal. It almost always travels in herds. If you met such a herd – consider yourself lucky. Because with proper skill and good weapons, you can shoot them all. In a similar situation, a herd of deer will quickly run away, you will not take more than 1-2 from the herd. But bison are not faster than you, and besides, they tend to run some distance and stop. And as if this is not enough, they have a strategy that is to our advantage: the retreating herd sometimes sends one of them to cover this retreat, the bully puffs and goes attack, therefore it receives an injury incompatible with life in the face area.

● Alligator
Dwells on Missisipi map. Before Australian croc release, this was the only semi-aquatic animal in the game and the only reptile. It can be found almost along the entire length of the river, except for northernmost part, but the fat places are: very middle of the river (where the largest bends) and lakes at top right. There are few of them on the left coast of map, but there are definitely gold ones.
This is the hardest beast in the entire game. Even just meeting him is luck. It is armored, tenacious, inconspicuous, it is covered by bushes, and branches and slush hand you over in his range, he perfectly hears you at a distance greater than the distance of an effective shot, he almost does not sit on land and lives in water where access is closed for us. Also, there are no baits for it (corresponds to reality, alligator baits are prohibited). And before, from all of the sudden, all this was class 6, i.e. forbidden for powerful weapons. But fortunately in spring 2024, class was changed to 7, making it available for some real guns.
Gator literally has ability to disappear as a game object – he dives. And even if the wound finishes him around the time of the dive, you will not get the body. There is a small chance to kill it in shallow water, but in general it should be caught on the shore, usually from 9 to 12 in the afternoon. Shoot either brain (between eye and ear) or neck. Less likely to be lucky with a shot in lung. Players have noticed that it is absolutely useless to shoot at liver.
Arrange hunting places with tents in advance – you will need to teleport a lot between shores.
You can use, for example, such weapons: F.L. Sporter .303 Burnished (from Te Awaroa), M1 Iwaniec Veteran (from Smoking Barrels, inferior to the previous one), ZARZA-10 (from Modern Rifle Pack). In any case, you need to use a polymer cartridge, i.e. with high penetration.

About multiplayer

In this game multiplayer is not of great importance, the experience in it is almost no different from a single game. The only difference is that you will finally meet human models. Its main purpose is to be an advertisement for paid reserves. You can play on them online, but do not flatter yourself, because here you will find continuous lags, crashes and disconnections, besides, the host will kick you simply because he can. It's all designed to get you pushed around with it, and then you get a healthy urge to go and pay some more money to play comfortably. However, a few tips:

Press i, there you will see the score of the game and the value of players' pings.

Keep a distance of 500 m or more from other players so as not to recapture their prey. This is not a game where you have to stick together. You will be kicked for approaching without warning. Although sometimes it happens that two people can agree on joint actions in a chat, for some reason.

If you are playing with friends, then the eam tactic you can try is to surround a certain area from different sides, driving beasts to the center. In ancient times, something similar was done on royal hunt. Or maybe someone has deployed a very good ambush base and he lands entire flocks of ducks, which he cannot then shoot alone.

You seen how in a multiplayer game the beast runs frozen on place? There is a cheater in the game. There is no anti-cheat here, so the unscrupulous can arrange this. Tell the host in chat, and if he is a normal host, he will do what he should. Although the host himself may be the cheater.

If the host exits, host status goes to another random player, possibly you. But there is no message about this, so you can find out about your host status only by clicking on i and seeing a crown next to your name. Or look in multiplayer options, there will appear menu of players on the right. If the outgoing host was the only one who bought this map, then a countdown of 15 minutes begins, after which you will all be kicked out. However, sometimes you are lucky, and during this time another owner can connect, then the countdown will be reset.

When a new reserve is released, players have themselves a task of opening the entire map. It takes a very long time to do this in single, so it makes sense to walk around for online sessions – kind people sometimes set up teleport tents around the map so that people can quickly complete this.


Answers to some questions:

● Is there any point in being a host? Why let everyone in?
The point is that other players can open up areas of need for you. They will do the scouting, but the session is yours, and the finds they made will stay with you. It's not like they want to actively do it, but players already have a habit of picking up grass that just gets in the way.

● Is it possible to complete additional campaign tasks online?
Some yes, but mostly no. In general, there is no online task menu, but there is some leakage of statistics, which may be counted. This is an obvious flaw; the authors simply did not think about the issue. So in Sundarpatan, I was credited with kills from an ancient arquela online, after which I had to go back to the map in single player and get a mark of completion. But in Revontuli I got a golden crested duck online, but then didn’t get a mark. In general, you should not rely on collecting tasks online.

Do I need to register in Apex Connect?

No. Absolutely not. First of all – it is NOT REQUIRED for online play and no one understands what exactly it does. This is a left hand trinket attached to the game for an unknown purpose. Authors often publish posts with the content “Whoever registers will get some skins.” In 2024, ads were very frequent and intrusive, devs literally fought with their community and almost ended their reputation, which was not the best anyway. At the same time, while luring us in, they don’t tell us why this is really needed and what this registration gives. And since they so badly want to drive us there, manipulating us and hiding the goal, then we must resist it. You don't need these skins anyway, there's no place to look at them in the game, and you can't even get close to each other in multiplayer. What and how will you brag? Spam with obsessive demands for regis causes hate in the comments every time. The consensus among players is as follows:

1. This is data mining. Your data is collected for sale to third parties. It's not enough for publishers that you've already paid for the game. If you want more spam in your mail and phone, go register.

2. All your actions will be monitored. Of course, this is not real life with some dangerous conspiracy, but in games tracking the player’s actions has always been done not in order to make better for you, but so that the publisher understands how to make more money on you. For example, a publisher will see that people are getting a lot of fun from some place in the game, but are not paying money, and then this place will stop working.

3. Over time, any publisher who runs a donation dump comes to the idea that they can detach their shop from Steam so as not to pay a commission, and then become “launch tycoons” themselves. Some manage to create their own launcher, and then the same thing happens: hatred, loss of players, reputation, a dead launcher exists for several years, the company suffers losses, and then either collapses or stops doing bullshift, closes the launcher and returns to Steam. The publishers of The Hunter are trying to go into such own sailing, clearly overestimating their strength. If you fall for it, another launcher will appear (as if we don’t have enough of them), the game may disappear from Steam, and then quietly die.

[Ocean Echo]

Most likely it's intended.

[Occam's Racer]

Was on the Siberia reserve, observed reindeer being chased by a bear. Not sure if is normal, just thought I'd mention that bears appear to show hunting behavior at times, just no vocalizations.

[Fred Burst]

When i first started, unironically i used the Ranger for alot of kills, with poly you could honestly take down Elk in Layton. Nothing crazy, silvers and golds, but generally you would need to be pretty quick with a follow up shot to make sure your not following your hunt for kilometres on end

[Ocean Echo]

We really have different experience in this game.

[Occam's Racer]

Yeah. Heart shot from face on.

[Ocean Echo]

Ranger??? vs moose?

[Occam's Racer]

Not the solokhin, the ranger .243.

[Ocean Echo]

Springbok dies easily from whatever. But slaying a moose with Solokhin - don't joke this way.

[Occam's Racer]

Springbok. That said, I tend to try to position myself for a clear shot at the chest so I can hit the heart, so that might be why I have less trouble with penetration and expansion. Can take a moose in one shot with the 243 that way. Not that it helps the harvest check.

[Ocean Echo]

I really tried it. Found it almost unable of killing. Also the digits speak for themselves. Who was your diamond?