Way of the Hunter, a fairly new open world hunting from 9 Rock Games that really hits the spot for that immersive, slow paced hunting itch. Straight off the bat, there won't be any comparisons to The Hunter - Call of the Wild, i do not have enough time in that series to give a fair one. The game is pc/ps5 and xbox series x and s. No cross platform though.


The Current Maps

The game places you in one of two environments, Nez Perce Valley in the US or Translyvania in Europe. Nez is 142 square kilometres and Trans is 144. To compare, GTAV is 127km2, RDR2 is 194km2, Dayz is 225km2..so, it's a nice sized map. I'm 67 hours in and still have a lot to see, just on Nez. Both maps have their own look and feel, one is like waking up and having a steak and beer for breakfast, the other is toast and scrambled eggs. Nez is more rugged and gives off a wild man living in the hills hunting and living alone type of vibe in certain areas. Craggy rocky mountains, sloping fields with wild creeks and rapids, thick forests with high brush hiding fallen down trees and rocky edge drop offs where nobody will ever come to rescue you. Hence the steak and beer breakfast.

Transylvania feels softer and more comfortable compared, a bit touristy if you will with it's more rolling hills and broken down castles. Both maps have several swampy/marshy areas to wade through, hoping one will find a nice live plate of wings and drumsticks to sell through the in game shop. With my deadeye double barrel action at close range...i'll be lucky to bring home a bag of feathers and splintered bones.



Nez Perce





Transylvania







Animals, some are shared across the two maps but they both have their own unique types. Huntable species as follows.

Transylvania

Fallow Deer
European Hare
Roe Deer
Wild Boar
Greylag Goose
Wild Duck
Pheasant
Red Deer
Red Fox
Mouflon
Gray Wolf
Chamois
Eurasian Badger
Golden Jackal
Brown Bear

Nez perce

Elk
Mule Deer
Mountain Goat
Whitetail Deer
Moose
American Badger
Gray Wolf
Pheasant
Black Bear
Red Fox
Bighorn Sheep
Ross's Goose
Lesser Scaup
Wild Duck
Snowshoe Hare


So with the current two maps and species, what did 9 Rock want to achieve with this game/simulation? A basic round up from the devs -

"Our design philosophy was to create an authentic-feeling experience so that knowledge of players who have real-life hunting experience would naturally translate into our game when they pick it up.But we want to offer a chance to discover the beauty of nature and hunting to a broad audience"

The basic game blurb-

Become the new owner of a hunting lodge nestled among gorgeous habitats and rich animal populations. Explore vast open world environments and hunt with a premium selection of firearms. Enjoy the perfect hunt on your own or with friends in (up to 4 players) co-op.

Did they hit the mark? let's find out...




At the start screen you have the two maps and four options of difficulty to choose from





I would suggest Adventurer, it holds your hand enough until you find your feet, but, you still have an onscreen option to activate some settings to help whilst hunting. Further settings can also be gradually turned off if you wish as you progress. To change difficulty overall you can simply select your level at the start screen and continue your adventure, no new char needed.

You start in story mode (of which i won't give away more than the basics) that revolves around your trips to your grandads lodge as a kid and the characters you met many years ago. The first couple of hours or so is a tutorial explaining ethical hunting, gun tiers, how to use a scope, wind and scent, how to track etc. Once you have reached a certain point in the tutorial, coop opens up and you can dive straight in with a mate and go full open world hunting. Coop leaves story mode behind. At any time, even in the tutorial, you can wander off open world style and do your own thing, there is no rails here at all.


The Lodge is your starter area in Nez and Transylvania, here you have a laptop, gun and gear storage, a bed and a place for all those trophies you will earn. This is where you will also pick up your starter gun and get your first view of the shop and order system via the laptop.





You will be given a series of objectives through the tutorial, all of them money earners as well as helping you picking up the basic skills. It's a decently comprehensive tutorial without being heavy handed and as a normally non story driven gamer, i actually didn't mind the story side of it. Parts of it are done in a comic book type flashback style worded by a few of the different characters, it's fairly well done if a little cheesy. There is no in game microtransactions, all of the money is earned in game via orders placed through for particular types of meat, goose, deer, duck etc. You go and fulfill an order that comes in via the laptop, get paid once it's completed, buy stuff. Very simple, and no shop items are stupidly out of reach.

The shop email/order ui for all of this is well placed out and very easy to pick up.





The Map.




It's the traditional all blacked out until you have traversed it type of deal. As you get around there are plenty of points of interest like hunting stands, animal locations, feed zones, bush camps/rest areas and some other neat stuff, that you can find yourself. It is divided into several hunting sectors that need to be unlocked via an objective given by the title holder of the land. You can pay for a hunting deed via your laptop to unlock these areas but the objectives are will unlock them, plus you earn while you are doing an objective for the land owner. It's a no brainer. The above pic is also missing about another third of the map, top and bottom that i have cropped off.



So let's drill down a bit more on the map to show some basics.

Plenty of info to be had. The lodge in green, shooting range with the bullseye nearby, wind direction, weather and time. My char is the red arrow and shows the scent coming off him with the wind. I've unlocked most animal species in this area so they are shown, you will need to discover these for them to pop up. You can also see other cabins and camp sites around, all can be slept at although your car can only be retrieved at the Lodge or other cabins. The soft grey lines (borders) denote the licenced hunting areas.





In this map view you can also drop markers, blue for tracking of which you can drop multiple and red for exploration which you can drop one.





The tracking markers are handy but i generally stick to the exploration marker and just move it along as need be. You can drop and delete the exploration marker whilst in game as well, even when looking through scopes or binos. Wind direction is extremely important as animals will become alerted and spook if they pick it up. Flanking is a must.



So what else do we get in this screen.

The Encyclopedia, a brief run down of the game mechanics, most of which you will pick up doing story mode, but there is some stuff in there that will require some reading up on. The callers are one of them, the Elk caller being my favourite. Scared the crap out of my mate with it a few times on our hunt, fun stuff.







Firearms, yeah baby! The cool stuff. All organised in Tiers from 1 to 6, but one needs to take note of the joules/bullet energy as well. At closer ranges a lower tier gun can kill a higher tier animal but, you are not dropping an elk with a Steyr Scout, just like you wouldn't badger hunt with a .308 Monobloc. A big part side of the game is ethical kills and selecting the right gun for the job. This will affect your hunt rating, though it doesn't seem to be fully implemented yet except as a star rating when you check the hunt stats.

At the moment there is a good selection of rifles, scopes and shotguns with more to come. Remingtons, Steyrs, and a selection of over/under, two barrel and single barrel shotguns. Pump and break. They look pretty #%&*$# good as well, very nicely modeled. Ammo variety is a soon to be added option for those who like fiddling with that sort of stuff, the current ammo tab does still run you through some basics. Ballistics are also modeled, wind drift, bullet drop, energy over distance. Easy enough to adjust for in the lower modes as you get bullet impact points with hunter sense on, no hand holding in higher though.






We will visit some of the other tabs here in a minute, lets check out character perks first. Like most game perks, do a thing, earn a skill. These you will pick up fairly easily, walk so many kilometres, shoot ten deer from a deerstand, call ten deer with a caller and harvest them etc. I'm neither here nor there with most games with perks so i just let them fall where they will and collect them as i go. Here, they do mostly make sense though.

The more you hunt and stalk the more skilled you become and more proficient at your task. Better stealth and quieter/slower movement being two obvious and important perks to pick up. Getting 25% more speed from simply driving a certain distance and the like are the ones that get me, but hey, a faster Jeep is a faster Jeep! It is another small thing to work towards though as you move through the game.




Animals and feed zones, sleep times. In conjunction with the map this works great. Once you have found the actual feed, sleep and eat zones (called need zones) whilst out galavanting around you can then refer here for the animal snack and snooze times. The need zone that you come across on the map is general, they will not appear exactly there at exactly that time, but get yourself a nice camping spot within a half hour window of said time and keep your eyes and ears peeled.





Ok, away with the map UI stuff for now, that should be a good enough taster. Render distance. It's a hunting game so that's important. I shoot most of my animals from about 240 metres down to as low as i can creep, generally 70 metres in an ultra slow crouch, i like to be sure of my kill after a thirty minute stalk. The furthest i have spotted a critter so far and managed to measure it is 1.2Km. So any long range shooters will be kept happy with this. That's a white tail hopping up the mountain right in the middle of the red square. Doesn't translate so great in a screenie but easily seen in game when moving. I had zero plans to start lobbing big looping bullets at it.





Character movement. You start with a slow walk, a jog, crouch and prone. Perks let you crouch and walk even slower although you can ultra slow crouch when you are using binos or peeping down the scope without the perk. Overall you interact with the world very flowingly and i haven't had a moment where movement was any issue at all..except for the time we flipped into the rapids in the dark in the Jeep, but we don't mention that.


Graphics and general ambience. Very decent in most areas but still needs some love. I'm running everything maxed, 3440*1440 @144hz and averaging 90 fps. Rig is an older Z390-F, i5 9600k, RTX3080, 32gb ram. Trees seem to lose some their shape at certain distances, sort of splodgy, for want of a better word. I am also getting some tablecloth type artifacting when looking around quickly. Confirmed by my mate on his rig who also sees it. Both are not a game breaker in any way but i hope they manage to solve these two issues or someone comes up with a nvcpl workaround, like many users do.

The game can look spectacular in many moments though and when hunting it is extremely immersive. Blowing grass and slow moving trees, bees, butterflys, leaves all on the wind. Bursts of small birds flying out of bushes ahead of you, making one stop in their tracks lest the hunted animals spook. lovely flowing and burbling creeks that get slower to move through the deeper you go. Ground textures are well done, as are the grasses, flowers and many bushes that cover them.

Some textures may not be to everyones liking though. Looks like Bear is on the table tonight...or we are ending up on the road in a similar clump..





There are many varied animal and bird calls as well as the creak and snaps of a living forest that pulls you in as you slowly follow the trail and sounds of something moving within. The lighting, clouds and weather are top notch, reflections and shadows well done, the character, alas, a bit gimpy looking. His gloves are very nice though. Gives me some Dayz flashbacks. Speaking of, a lot of the team at 9 Rocks worked for Bohemia on Dayz..so there is a connection.

This pic shows off a lot of what i mentioned, nice lighting and shadows, a decent amount of atmosphere in a very simple shot, splodgy trees in the far distance.



and then you have some simply gorgeous views. Watching a sunrise or set happen while you are travelling or tracking can bring about some nice peaceful gaming moments. Standard sunny days and incoming storms, which although infrequent, are also well done.


















Sometimes it's just nice to explore with a mate and cool off after a long morning hunt.





Where it is all at is the hunting though, so, lets go see how hard it is to track and find a beast!

So the first thing is to pick an animal and then check out it's need zones. You can just wander off and find something randomly but let's use all the tools.

We will try our luck with a Mule Deer. At 9am they should be near a water source. Jump into bed and set the alarm for 8.30am!








I'll take my .243 Remington, right in the sweet spot for the amount of energy needed to take the Mule or Whitetail deer down without blowing them all over the landscape. Just in case i come across anything bigger like an Elk, Bear or Moose, i'll pack my .300 as well. Binos and callers equipped just in case.



One thing about the animals before we head out, and an important part of the game is herd management defined through the star and animal fitness system. Every male animal is star and fitness rated, but only some have a chance to become the sought after five star trophy animal, even lowley pheasants and Badgers.

Male deers; Moose, Elk, Whitetail etc can be judged by their antlers symetrical or non typical. From a 3 star onwards you can really see the difference in size. In lower difficulties you can simply use your binos and hunter sense, place binos on the animal from about 250 metres or closer and the info will be displayed in your hud. In Ranger mode you will not get that info, so it's all down to having the knowledge built on playing at a lower level first.

Females can only be judged by their fitness levels, which is where the callers available at the shop come in. Callers all have three modes, the first available when you buy, the other two are unlocked as you use them.

Call modes start at low fitness females, work up to low fitness males and then high fitness males. Range is about 200-220 metres. They are very handy to work the herds over time, mainly to weed out the low fitness females and low fitness young males to give more of a chance of the next gen coming through having better offfspring..so we can mount better heads in our trophy rooms. Everyone wants better head.

Back to the hunt. We head out from the lodge at a slow jog. I start scoping into the general area of the creek and further up i spot some Elk, awesome. Luckily i brought the .300. My wind direction is straight onto them so i need to flank off a bit to change that. I'll also drop a marker here as a starting point.







After moving around to get the wind more favourable i work my way to within 240 odd metres, well close enough for a shot with the .300. The joules/bullet energy meter is yellow which means it is within the range for an ethical kill. White means either too high or to low. The bino view, as mentioned above, shows the star rating of the animal, as well as it's composure. Calm, Alert or Spooked.

This one star mature adult male will never become a five star and also will not help in contributing to the herds overall genetics, so that's my animal pick.










Shot taken, the rest of the herd begins to flee as the Elk i shot struggles to turn. The animal movement, stances, bucking when shot etc are another thing that is very well done.



The poor bugger, lung and heart hit, dropped a couple of feet away from the shot.




Well, that was way too easy, and also a bit unexpected as i have not seen Elk there before. I'll harvest this Elk for a quick buck and attempt to track some Mule Deer.

Further on from where i have shot the Elk i come across signs of Mule Deer. Hunter sense activated will show these types of signs and give you the info. You will still see them without it activated though, it just won't be highlighted.




Another ten minutes of slowly working my way up the creek and towards the forest and i hear animal sounds up ahead. With hunter sense activated i can track the rough distance and origin. The in game directional noise is very good though and you can leave this off if desired, although, as a beginner to hunting games i find it helpful and not overdone.




Moving over the small rise i spot the herd of deer slowly ambling away from me. I'll keep tracking until i can get into a position for a nice side on shot. The 3 star in this pic is one i have been keeping a watch on for a few days now, hoping he will turn into at least a four and possibly a five star. Hoof tracks show i am on a well beaten deer path. These tracks are without the hunter sense on, with it on, they would be highlighted.








Over another small rise and the deer settle in to some grazing, one of the younger males jumping around like a maniac. The animal animations really are top notch. The older 3 star is more alert and keeps his head up looking around and surveying the landscape. I pick a one star male, a non trophy deer shown by his small non uniform size antlers. Kneeling, gun on my cheek, i draw my breath and take my shot...he bucks up as the bullet impacts and then bolts! I follow his initial run through the scope as the rest of the herd scatters madly.









Animals off to my right have also been alerted by the shot and are scattering away.





The sounds when animals panick run through the underbrush of the woods and forest are extremely well done. Also disheartening when they are the ones you have been tracking for some time. I head up to where i hit the deer to see what sort of result the bullet had. In Adventurer mode it's fairly simple to see how your shot went. In Ranger mode you will have to know what the different colours and amounts of blood mean. This example is a lung shot, so he won't be too far.




With hunter sense activated the blood will glow every four or so seconds, without , just a straight up blood trail. I'm using hunter sense for tracking less and less now, definitely makes it more of a challenge and doesn't look so gamey. I've also found myself doubling back to a previous stain several times to keep tracking, especially in thick high grass, across waterways and in forests.








After a small journey of 120 odd metres i find my kill under a small clump of trees.








Time to analyze the shot and the hunt. Right lung kill shot. Energy smack bang in the middle of what is ethical on the energy bar far right. Hunt time 17 minutes, deer fled 122 metres plus a bunch of other stats one can look into including antler points and head size. Being a one star i'll sell him, not worth the taxidermy for the lodge. Bad head.









My old mate the 3 star remains with his herd for a few more days at least. I think (from the reading and forum scoping i have done) it is every three in game days the deer will grow another level or die. The only way i will know it is dead...is by simply not seeing it again. That makes leaving a four star a bit of a risk, will it grow and become a nice trophy, or ..adios.






So, how did they do? For me, it's one of those games where as i'm about to log off for the night i say to myself ok, just a quick look over there at what that noise is... and end up saying goodbye to at least another hour. It's very easy to lose time wandering around the forests and fields, discovering what species is where, and at what stage it is at. I also love the slow pace of it all. I had my first five star hunt today which took an hour and a half, i wasn't chancing a dodgy shot in the thick brush of the forest. It was superb. Being able to influence the herds, and then keeping track of them over days and even weeks to see the results is very cool. Multiplay is a gas, and like many mp games has it's stupid fun moments and then the 'get your game face on' serious ones. Overall I'm totally sold on the the hunting experience 9 Rock has created and look forward to the two new maps and other features like rare furs, melanistic animals, bows, ammo types, online lodge trophies and more, that are in the pipeline for Q1 2023. Great game.

Great review!!!

I've played WotH quite a lot over the past month and really like it. With hundreds of hours in Call of the Wild, I have to say that WotH is the more realistic hunting game, CotW can sometimes feel a little arcadish.

The question is, if WotH can keep me interested in playing it. I've already finished the main quest and especially on the Transilvania map the number of side missions is limited. Moreover, most perks level up rather quickly and because of the limited number of guns and other equippment you soon run out of things to buy with the money you earn by hunting.

With more content and further improvements WotH will probably become my favorite hunting game. I really hope it's commercially successful and development continues.

I've done hardly anytime on Trans yet so looking forward to going Brown Bear stalking. I've also only snagged two 5 stars so far, Mule Deer and a Pheasant lol, so plenty there to keep me occupied for a bit. I love the chillness of it overall.

Nice review, Ajay! It looks like that sim has a great future with the additional features they have planned.

Thanks for taking the time to put all that together!

Great write-up and it seems like it's a fairly sophisticated and well thought out game!

Thanks guys. It is deep enough to warrant decent length game sessions, but not enough to annoy with incessant grinding or take one out of the game.

My mate and i had a cool session last night, stalked some wolves for about forty minutes to get a double kill and then pranged our jeep into a tree in the bottom corner of the map resulting in a long night time hike back the ranch with head torches on. Good session lol.

Very interesting! Do the animals ever have a potential to be dangerous to you if you end up in the wrong place?

I can't speak for this game but in theHunter:Call of the Wild I got mauled by a bear that I got too close to.

I'm picking this game up in the new year, it looks better to be honest. Getting maimed by another bear would just be the icing on the cake

You can be 'charged' by an animal after it has been shot but that's about it so far. Sometimes the animals will also run a bit and drop and then get up and do a bolter when you get close.

I was once charged by a wounded bear in WotH, but shot him before he reached me. I am still not completely sure if the animal AI really has an attack behaviour or if I was just standing in the bear's escape route, but to me it looked like the bear was heading straight at me.

Thanks for the reply!

Nice review Ajay, good presentation, images and quite thorough too. Top marks mate.

Can you expand on this? I'd like to have a better understanding of the best ways to cull the herds, which animals to take, which to leave. How many females should be taken, if any. How much pressure is too much pressure. How often should I be moving around to different parts of the preserve? Any random thoughts about how to approach this, no matter how small, would be good to read.

I picked this game up on the back of Ajay's first thread in the screenshot forum. I wrote there how I want to fill in something left open from my younger days, and that maybe WotH is the answer. It felt right when I got the first gun, which is a lever-action .30-.30. That is a spitting image of my first rifle, a Marlin. Tube magazine, hooded front sight, the checkering on the foregrip. I have a few hunting rifles (if you discount .22s). Several Marlin .30-.30s (one no scope, and two with different scopes), a Browning lever action .243, a Browning bolt-action .270 and a few more. 'Grandpop's Gun' was the perfect choice

First in-game purchase was the semi-auto 20ga shotgun for birdin'. I had a free 12ga shotgun, from DLC maybe? But I'm not much of a fan of side-by-sides. I think I'll get a .223 next for varmint and small game, the Steyr Scout. Which guns are others liking?

Started on Adventurer, did the tutorial, and then bumped it to Hunter when the tutorial was done. Ranger's probably the right way to play this game, but I can use the help with finding sign. I like how WotH handles weapon suitability to the animal, by energy. Different calibers and guns have different profiles, and matching one to the other is key. My first deer gun was that Marlin. But this is rather a 'brush gun' when it comes to hunting deer-sized animals. At long range it isn't appropriate. But around 100 yards and in it's good. But if you try to take a whitetail at 225 yards it probably won't do the trick and you'll have taken a low-ethics shot. The .243 with a higher velocity and flatter trajectory would be better at range. A player might assume the bigger caliber is for bigger game, but it's not that simple.

I remember a few years ago I picked up CotW for my son for his X Box. We spent a few hours playing the tutorials and learning the tracking, but I remember it as a bit dense, we kinda struggled with it, walking around wondering where to go. But in WotH I'm finding this better, and I've been able to find every target so far. I hope to never fail to find one. So far I quite like what this game offers. Obviously you should have an interest in hunting. be the patient sort and be able to forge your own path. The game has missions, but you'll need some sense of imagination and the ability to work out on your own. This game has a few things it is eager to impress upon the player (like hunting ethics) and I get it, but I felt the opening was a little too over the top in this, and the background story is unecessary. Disapproving father, dead mother. Why this? Anyway, hopefully that stuff is minimal moving forward. I suppose the devs felt it necessary to head off ethics complaints and show they are ethical and humane. It IS the right way to hunt, so I'll give it a pass. I just hope it isn't too heavy through the game.

I think a basic approach should be to take the one-star adults and one or two-star matures. At least as far as attempting to genetically influence the herd. So that's what I'll focus on and maybe before too long I'll start to see the effects. Maybe the occasional female too.

Played a few more hours and the ethics lessons keep coming. But the missions pay money so I can tolerate it. Did you ever play that game where you are a firewatcher? These missions have that vibe.

After eight hours I feel like this is a good hunting game, but there are a number of things I could do without. I'd rather it be you and your cabin, gear and the reserve. Hunting seasons, bag limits, rack minimums. Finding a way to fill your limits with the best trophies and kills. Which deer you take means something else if you can only take one, or more depending on the regulations. Cut out the story stuff and make it a hunting simulator only. The bones are there.

The woodsmanship side is pretty good. The need zones, the sign, the shooting and penetration models are good. The terrain is great. On Hunter the animals are suitably wary and alert. Concealment, wind and scent, movement all feel good. There's a story mission to take out a buck called Hollywood. I found him, with a small herd, but downwind. I took probably thirty minutes to circumnavigate this location to make an approach from the downwind side. Good stuff.

Like you stated, 1 star adults, 1 and two star matures all get marked for execution. Check your herds every three in game days to see whethether they have moved up a star and then just keep rechecking every two to three in game days. I have five or six on the go at once. Thin out the low genetic ones, male and female with your callers early on. You will start seeing more four stars fairl soon..and just hope they live to be a five.

So far i have five star whitetail, mule, elk, bighorn and goat. Waiting for two moose to go from four to five then i'm going to work some wolves and follow some bears. Birds, foxes, badgers are last on my list although i did pop a five star pheasant early on.

I haven't managed to pressure a herd yet, the same herds still appear in roughly the same areas. I use the mule and whitetail ones near the lodge as my guage for that.

Thanks, that's been my approach. It's a realistic concept, but the notion that we can affect this to a significant degree over the course of a few weeks is a bit of a stretch. It would take generations (which to be fair I guess it is, only the generations take days, not years). I read comments about low and high fitness females, but how do you see this before taking a shot?

You're right about the map being big. I have not been to Europe, but just sticking to the US map I have yet to uncover even a third of it. No helicopters or supercars like in Los Santos, which makes it feel way bigger than GTA.

I bought the .223 Steyr Scout to use to fulfill a mission for three-star badgers, but I have yet to see even one. It feels like sort of a test case for herd management. This mission was changed from four-star which must have been impossible.

I need a tier 6 rifle, something in the .300, .338, .350 class. Got a mission to kill a moose with no scope. Shot one with the .243 at 100 yards and it didn't even dent him.

I said I didn't want to lose any animals, but already have done. I should be careful with shots taken right at nightfall as those are hard to track.

I hope they keep adding to this game. I like it a lot so far, but it could use some expansion. ATVs, more weapons and calibers (how is there no .270?), more animals (grouse, woodcock, quail, big cats, coyotes, etc), maybe a camp mechanic. I think a game like this, aiming for the simulation side, could have zeroing mechanics. The player could need to take his weapons to the range and zero them in like you do. Add a real, working rifle range, and a trap range. The ability to build blinds and stands. It's odd that apparel is a non-issue. There are no camo mechanics. A working camouflage system would be good in a game like this. I think archery is planned and obviously that would fit perfectly too.

Do they have dev updates that roadmap what's planned?

Callers are what you are looking for regards high and low fitness. You will get a mission for that but could just purchase the deer one and test it out anyway.

Camps are there but you can only use them for sleep atm although they also give you an objective each as well, check the camp billboard maps. Range is there right next to your ranch that shows you zeroing basics..although no gun fine tuning.

I waltz around with the Remington 700 for the big stuff always equipped and then swap out the other slot depending on what i'm going looking for. The .243 is the normal for me for deers.

Roadmap and updates are normally a stickied post on the reddit sub. Updates are running about 1 per month atm and 1.21 should be releasing around the next week or so to stable-


1.21 will be bringing Vehicle radio, rare fur variations of several animals and new tasks, as well as improvements and fixes, and even more to Way of the Hunter.

(Develompent branch, Steam) Version 1.21 patch notes:

• Added: Vehicle radio

• Added: Animal’s fur rare variations

• Melanistic mule deer

• Melanistic roe deer

• Albino white-tailed deer

• Albino red deer

• (MP) Added: Host’s taxidermies appear in their multiplayer session

• Added: Loading screen tips

• Added: Additional objectives - Tasks

• 6 new tasks for Nez Perce Valley

• 5 new for Transylvania

• Tweaked: Improved Main menu UI

• Difficulty selection before starting a new game

• Difficulty selection in the main menu

• Tweaked: Character animations

• Fixed: Greylag goose and Ross’s goose sometimes T-posing in killcam

• Fixed: Missing teeth of animals in the inspect mode

• Fixed: Ambient sound volume increasing in UI

• Fixed: Vehicle physics - Players able to flip the car or throw it in the air with the character

• Fixed: Large animals sometimes not fitting in the hunting overview

• Fixed: Waterfowl getting stuck in a loop flying between two near-need zones

• Fixed: Environmental issues (Tree placed inside the rock, Misplaced water texture)

• (MP) Partially fixed: Opening the claim screen triggers respawn of dead animal bodies

• (MP) Fixed: Players not seeing gamer tags in the hunting map

• (MP) Fixed: Clients not able to hear some animal cues (squeaking)

• (MP) Fixed: Private areas behaving differently for client and host

• (MP) Fixed: Taxidermized animal from MP was not available in SP



Bow hunting and different ammo type selection is still a wip.

Thanks for all the info.

About the camps, I meant having a way to set up a camp anywhere, ala RDR 2.

The game takes you to the range straight off, but what I mean is how when you mount a scope to a rifle, you gotta take it to a range and fire groups and then dial/zero the scope for accuracy and range. It was always one of my favorite parts of the sport, but not the sort of thing you'd need to do repeatedly, just every time you swap scopes on any particular weapon. Busy work, I guess for most players, but the sort of authentic touch I would like to see.

There's a lot to like here. Everything to do with the hunting is good. And you don't have to drag your kills out of remote areas! On the other hand, everything to do with the 'narrative' is eye-rolling. I won't talk much more about this, point made, and others may like it just fine.

I was wrong, there is a .270 in the game, a pump rifle I think. I still need to buy a tier 6 rifle for big game. So far I've picked up the .223 Steyr Scout and the 20 ga semi-auto shotgun. A new medium scope and a couple callers. I should have bought a big game rifle first, but I didn't know how hard it would be to find three-star badgers haha.

My badger objective is still sitting in my not done list. I have not seen a 3 star in nearly a hundred hours..they can wait

I finally found one, shot it and it fulfilled a different objective so I'm still 0-for-three stars haha.

Things are falling in to place as I learn the game, it's nuances. Bought the Remington 700 (.300 Winchester bolt action) and the top scope. Fast traveled to the main lodge and had a look from the deck and saw some mulies some distance away to the west. Took the shot, 354 yards and took him down. This caliber really extends my ethical lethality zone. I've been referring to this chart. It might be out of date, and was obviously done before some of the weapons were added, but it gives a good rule-of-thumb type guideline to follow. I think the only thing that matters is the caliber, not the gun. So every .300 for example is equal ballistic performance.



Eventually I bought the Monobloc (.308 bolt action), because it's a good cover rifle. I mean, it covers both tier 5 and tier 6, so you can carry it and still hunt deer and big game, while leaving the second slot free for a small game rifle or a shotgun. It's not the top energy gun so moose have to be inside 500 yards, but taking shots that long is rare, still 150 yards beyond anything I've attempted. Most shots come inside 200 yards. But I have the Remington .300 for very long range. The Monobloc is pricey, but it gives better versatility to your general carry loadout I think. Still, I'm usually mixing it up and taking a different loadout each time out.

Got my first five-star, a red deer. I decided to check out the Transylvania map, and first thing I did was go around and 'meet' the landowners, opening up those crash pads and fast travel points. Still had the .243 at this point. After unlocking the last location, I fast traveled back to the Franz Ferdinand cabin. Came outside and walked around to the corner of the house facing the water. Two deer were trotting away on the other side of the road, about 250 yards and moving so I didn't take a shot. While watching them bound over the rise, a group of Red Deer ambled in to view from the right, with the five-star in among them. This is the only one I've seen so far and I took him out with the .243, which barely made it in to the ethical energy zone. A few more yards distance and it would have been out. I've only taxidermy'd two animals, my first buck (a two star mulie) and this red. 518 pounds is a big deer.





Way of the Hunter is quite challenging. Positioning for a good shot is key, and the animals are wary and highly alert. Not sure if animal behavior is tied to difficulty setting? Here, I get within 40 yards of a group of mule deer. I did not take a shot at this group. the males were young, and I don't take many females. They were allowed to ramble on. You can see they suspect something. But their state is still 'calm'. That can rise to alerted and then spooked.

I've now dropped a hell of a lot of time in to Way of the Hunter. I've had off work for a month, and I've spent quite a bit of it in the Nez Perce Valley. After doing the tutorial I bumped the difficulty to Hunter, which increases the animal senses and makes it somewhat more challenging than the default Adventurer. There's a 'Hunter Sense' mechanic that aids the player in highlighting things like sign and blood trails. It gives info on the animals like age, quality and alerted state. Ranger is the highest difficulty and I think probably the way the game should be played for the best hunting simulation. But you lose hunter sense so I've kept on for now in the middle.

With a two-weapon carry limit you can never be outfitted for all game you might encounter. There's no combination of two weapons that covers it all, so you have to prioritize. 95% of my time is spent stalking. I spent the first 30 or 40 hours exploring as much as I could, to discover as many camps and cabins as possible, which opens up fast travel points all over the map. Each day I check the wind direction, then travel to a camp or cabin where I can do a stalk upwind. The river valley that runs past Bear Den cabin (your main base) is a perfect spot. Fast travel to the camp near Rivermouth map label (the camps should have names) and stalk your way north between the railroad tracks and the river. But only when the wind is from the north. So the wind direction guides where I go, and which terrain I hunt. Opening up more fast travel points gives you more options to tailor your hunts to the conditions, game and terrain.

Mainly my approach has been to stalk with two Steyr rifles. I read the Steyrs are more accurate than the Remingtons, and if so I'm sure it's minor. But I mainly carry the SM12 (.300 Winchester) for bear, moose, elk and the Monobloc (.308 Winchester) for deer, mountain goats and bighorn. I completely buy in to the ethical hunting vibe, with every kill so far (aside from one pheasant with a .30-.30) having been a proper ethical match of cartridge to animal. So a loadout like this means there's no ethical way to take a variety of game you might encounter, like ducks, hares and fox. So you have decisions to make each time you venture out. In my case I just make special hunts when I'm going for those other animals, like a day out duck and goose hunting. But when that trophy moose saunters by there's nothing you can do about it. And anyway, there are many times when I choose not to shoot because the targets aren't the right ones.

I have all but one shotgun, and more than half the rifles, so I can mix it up and try different hunts. Like using a .22 for hares and the 16-guage over/under for pheasant. Or the .223 for fox and badgers. I've spent 80% of my time in Idaho. I've done enough in Europe to see most of the animals, but I prefer the North America hunting, and if I'm going to have any meaningful impact on herd management it makes sense to concentrate on one map. I've a long-term goal of 50 mounts in the cabin. The restriction is every one must be five-star. So herd management is key. I think I can see some effect over time of my efforts to cull the proper animals. There is somewhat of an uptick in quality, but I can also say that a couple of the five-stars I've taken were in no way the result of my efforts. Like the Red Stag was the only one I've taken, so herd management clearly played no part. I've taken five-star bighorn, whitetail, red stag and two pheasant. Saw a mulie and an elk but couldn't get a good shot. So to hit 50 will be a tough ask. My hunting log shows 120+ entries, with two being inadvertent roadkill. Five-stars are a very low percentage so far.

Compared to the hunting I've done, Way of the Hunter is considerably more productive haha. Most of my deer hunting was in northeastern Pennsylvania. A six-pointer was a real prize, an eight-pointer nearly the grail. Many hunters went their entire lives without ever taking a deer like this. But in the game there are a lot of them, and another group right over the next ridge much of the time. I can sort of rationalize that the area we hunt in the game is essentially a pristine reserve. There are no people, a few cabins, no traffic and no other hunters. Maybe in a set up like this the populations would be high, and anyway it's more fun to find animals than to spend most of the time looking. Ranger difficulty would put that in better balance, with animals then harder to actually pinpoint. Eventually I'll make this change, but for now hunter sense gives me a lot of insight in to how it all works and keeps the pace high.

A few screens

The view from Oracle Ridge.





I like the hunting, but I spend a lot of time just seeing how close I can approach the animals. A couple of does




Whitetails





My first five-star whitetail. Fourteen-pointer!