Tournaments and the Party Horn: Making Mousehunt Social

Mousehunt is a phenomenal game, and the fact that it is meant to be played casually (unlike a game like Farmville, which can take a great deal of time and attention to succeed in) is a wonderful aspect of the game. The game restricts how often one can hunt, so the player who sits in front of his/her computer for an hour, staring at the page to hunt as soon as the horn appears can only hunt five times an hour, and the player who is typing essays or in class can also only hunt a maximum of five times an hour as well.

However, even the most casual games can allow the most casual players to succeed. Mousehunt is no exception to this. All players who are active on the game and have friends who also play will notice that if a friend is in the same location as you, if you sound the horn to start a hunt you will gain ten points for each friend in the same location hunting with you. This continues for a full hour after you sign off of Mousehunt and Facebook, allowing your friends to help you continue hunting by sounding their respective horns.

After you reach Apprentice rank, you are eligible to form a party and enter tournaments. This is an extremely effective way to progress in the game in a fun way, working together with as many as three other Mousehunt buddies to hunt together. When you enter a tournament, you will notice a change in the horn that you're sounding- instead of being gold, it is now silver, and is labeled "party horn" rather than "hunter's horn." This horn starts the hunt for your entire party, regardless of locations (although activity is still a restriction). This is a very useful tool. You no longer have to cater your hunting towards the locations of friends in order to gain additional horn sounding while you are not logged on, as you will gain any horn sounding by any members of the party while actively involved in a tournament.

What I have been doing lately and freely recommend to all hunters is finding a party that includes active players and trying as hard as I can to be always entered in a tournament. Many tournaments are not expensive (1000 gold at times) and some last for as long as 72 hours at a time. 1000 gold is about 1/2 of an average mouse catch for any players who are at or above grandmaster level, and might be about two mouse catches for an apprentice level player. If you think that you will gain even just one or two more hunts, then entering a tournament is worth it simply for the party horn. If you are active and could gain tens of extra horns, then it is absolutely worth it, no matter how you look at it.

However, tournaments also have another reward, tournament tokens and champion chests. These items are given out to parties that succeed in tournament efforts, but have no use as of the time of this post. They are rumored to later be able to be redeemed for traps and bases, although that is idle speculation as far as I can tell. There is no penalty to hunters who don't finish with a high enough rank to obtain tokens, so the only drawback of entering a tournament and doing poorly is being out the entry fee.

Lately, Hydrogen Bond and I have been entering tournaments so that we always have the party horn up and going to reap the benefits. We often don't finish highly enough to get tournament rewards, but that isn't a big deal. The true value of entering tournaments is in the party horn- gaining hunts that I wouldn't get while I am logged off in Elub while Hydrogen Bond is in Derr is a big deal in my opinion. We try and enter tournaments that apply to where we are hunting at a given time, but the key is always being enrolled in one so that we have the party horn up to benefit the members of our group in their hunting.