Hunt: Showdown 1896’s Halloween event for 2024, Harvest of Ghosts, celebrates the scariest time of the year with glorious skins, some overdue quality-of-life changes, and exciting (and potentially controversial) gameplay mechanics. Here is everything you need to know.

As with all previous events, the pledge point and pact systems have returned. Hunters can earn pledge points by banishing bosses, looting hunters, collecting 30 in-game event points, or winning a Soul Survivor match.

In turn, pledge points unlock special sealed rewards like bonus hunter experience, shot boons, health bar recovery, cash registers, and master clues. There is also a new Sealed Trait, which rewards a random Burn or Scarce Trait, like Shadow Leap or Relentless.

As before, pledge points are not required to pledge to one of three pacts: The Wilderness Pact, The Pact of Omens, and The Smuggler’s Pact.

The Wilderness Pact returns, offering the Surefoot and Beastface traits for those who prize mobility and stealth:

• Surefoot allows hunters to sprint while using first aid kits, consumable shots, or while priming throwables. Hunters also move faster when crouched; and

• Beastface lets hunters go unnoticed by all wildlife and will not break branches when walking or running over them.

  
  

The Pact of Omens brings two new traits to the game: Blast Sense and Pain Sense, which reveal more information on enemy player locations:

• Blast Sense is an entirely new trait that allows hunters to see the direction of gunshots while in Dark Sight; and

• The eternally useless Poison Sense has finally been reworked into Pain Sense, which allows hunters to highlight enemies who are bleeding, burning, or poisoned in Dark Sight. Obtaining Pain sense with The Pact of Omens will also enable hunters to highlight enemies who are low on stamina.

  
  

The Smuggler’s Pact contains some powerful (even controversial traits) for this event with Gunrunner and Greyhound:

• Gunrunner allows hunters to carry two large slot weapons, making it an even more powerful version of Quartermaster; and

• Greyhound allow hunters to sprint faster while carrying a bounty.

Of all these traits, Gunrunner may prove to be controversial. It is a throwback to the early days of Hunt when the Quartermaster allowed you to carry two large slot weapons, and ammo pools were not limited between weapons.

I have expressed my reservations to the devs about the potential for abuse of this trait; I am sure a lot of people are worried about having teams of double Avto or Nitro in high-ranking lobbies. But, they will be monitoring the situation and will make changes, if necessary.

The skins in Harvest of Ghosts are some of the best Halloween-themed skins we've seen yet. Harvest: Day, Dusk, and Midnight may not be the most tactically sensible skins, but they certainly are intimidating. I am partial to Midnight, but that’s just because I am deep and mysterious. What about you?

The blood bond skins for this update are even better, with a Little Red Riding Hood-themed skin and a knife-throwing ballerina. I don't have any more information at this time. I want… I need… I will possess them.

There are several new weapons in Harvest of Ghosts that provide more options for the very long and short range.

There is a new medium-ammo rifle that comes standard with a scope, the Maynard Sniper. It does 144 damage with a drop range of 160 meters and a muzzle velocity of 560 meters per second. It has a relatively slow rate of fire, capable of firing at only 11 rpm, slightly slower than the Sparks Sniper at 13 rpm. The Maynard can carry both high-velocity and dumdum custom ammo.

The Bomb Lance is getting a baby brother in the form of the Bomb Launcher. The Bomb Launcher is a medium slot weapon and comes with all the same ammo as its older sibling, but lacks its powerful melee capabilities.

The Bomb launcher is now the base weapon for the Bomb Lance weapon line, and both weapons are receiving Harpoon ammo. This new custom ammo does 260 damage and is retrievable, similar to the standard ammo for the Bow and Crossbow.

The Auto-4 Shorty is a shortened version of the Auto-5 shotgun, formerly known as the Crown & King. It requires a medium slot and takes the same custom ammo as its larger counterpart. Even with its wider spread, it still provides devastating firepower at close range.

The Rival 78 Mace expands the Rival 78 shotgun weapon line, providing more blunt melee damage as a medium slot variant.

The Centennial Pointman is this patch’s strangest addition to the arsenal. It is a Centennial shorty with a mid-to-long-range marksman scope. It’s weird. That's all you need to know about it.

The game is also receiving the Hunt version of a Claymore mine: the Dark Dynamite Satchel. This placable mine can be remotely detonated via Dark Sight. It makes a humming sound and can be attached to walls and floors. It does 3,000 damage and has the same blast radius as the Big Dynamite Bundle. It can be deactivated with the Dauntless trait.

The humble Hand Crossbow is getting a powerful custom ammo addition in the form of the Revive Bolt. The Revive Bolt doesn’t do any damage, but it instantly revives downed teammates. It will also heal wounded teammates and, maybe, enemies as well. Further testing is required here.

To help with recent ballistic changes (e.g., bullet drop), scopes now have a thicker vertical line on the bottom of their crosshair. If a hunter fits exactly between the center of the crosshair and the top of the thicker vertical line, then they are at the weapon's drop range.

If a hunter is larger than this distance, aiming for the head will result in a headshot. If a hunter is smaller than this distance, then placing them in the center of this space results in either a headshot or an upper body shot.

After doing some testing of my own, this is a substantial buff to scoped weapons. More exploration and explanation on this feature is definitely required; stay tuned.

Several traits have received changes:

• Conduit now gives solos the same map progress as two clues instead of one when investigating a clue;

• As previously mentioned, Poison Sense has been reworked as sense Pain Sense, allowing hunters to see enemy hunters who are bleeding, burning, or poisoned in Dark Sight. Its cost has been increased from one skill point to three;

• In addition to not making noise when climbing ladders, Lightfoot now reduces noise when crouched. This applies to solo players only;

• Berserker is now permanently in the game as a Scarce Trait and can be randomly found in the world or dropped after killing Meatheads; and

• Bulwark gets a debuff (for some reason) and will now no longer protect you from a Bomb Lance stick.

Melee weapons received rework:

• The Throwing Spear has been nerfed:

  • The base throw damage has been reduced to 200, damage to the leg has been reduced to 110, light attacks now do 70 damage, and heavy attacks do 147;

  • Damage dealt from pulling out the spear has been reduced;

  • The light melee attack speed has been reduced; and

  • The throwing velocity has been reduced to 40 meters per second;

• Hunters can no longer sprint while aiming unless they have the Surefoot trait

• All melee weapons have had their damage and stamina buffed, except the Katana, which had its stamina consumption increased; and

• The throw rate and accuracy of the Throwing Knives have been increased.

Other minor changes:

• All bounties are worth $125 Hunt Dollars, regardless if they are the big bounty, small bounty, or the wild target;

• The rarity of some legendary skins has been adjusted;

• Beetles now spawn in Soul Survivor;

• Blueprints now only give one weapon unlock instead of three; and

• Some compounds were reworked on Mammon’s Gulch.

Okay, so let’s be honest: the relaunch of Hunt in the late summer of this year did not go well, mainly due to the UI. But I am happy to say that the UI changes for this patch are very good.

You can now do most things with your left hand while playing with a mouse and keyboard. The space bar acts as the select button, most of the time, which makes kitting out a hunter much less painless than before.

There still is some optimization and bug-fixing to do. I still would like to have the option to remap the keys, and see some more streamlining, especially in the equipment screen, but this is a very positive step in the right direction.

Okay, let’s get into the beating heart of the patch. After what seems like an eternity, we finally have a new game mode!

Bounty Clash is almost identical to Hunt’s main core game mode, Bounty Hunt, but is designed to be much faster and more intense. Like Bounty Hunt, Bounty Clash is a 12-player match with a combination of solos, duos, and trio teams, but it only takes place in one compound, and the boss is already dead inside the boss lair. Teams have 15 minutes to secure and extract with the bounty token at the extract points marked on their compass and map.

I was concerned to read in the patch notes that “Your MMR will still be taken into account when matching you against other players but will not be affected by the outcome.” This could lead to some rampant smurfing. If this does occur, hopefully, Crytek will make the necessary changes.

That said, I am very glad to see a new mode being added. The last time Crytek changed Hunt’s formula was almost six years ago when they introduced Quickplay, now known as Soul Survivor. I anticipate that we will see even more experimentation around Hunt’s intense and thrilling gameplay.

Overall, this is shaping up to be one of the better Hunt: Showdown 1896 events. Bounty Clash will be available from 16 to 20 October and every Friday to Sunday afterward until the end of the Harvest of Ghosts event, which runs from 16 to 25 November.

I'll be streaming it this week on my Twitch channel, GameswithDeath. As well as later in the month when the Drops Event starts. Enjoy, and see you on the other side.