How to Find a Hunt: Showdown 1896 Trio in 2026

Hunt: Showdown 1896 is decided by sound and patience, and both are team skills. A trio that calls out a flock of crows, holds an angle and pushes together will beat three better shooters who play like strangers. And because every death is permanent, a bad teammate doesn’t just lose you a match. They lose you a Hunter. Random fill will put three people in a lobby. A team you trust with your Hunter is harder to find, so here’s how to build one in 2026.

Why a standing team beats random fill

Random fill gets you into a match. It doesn’t give you someone who waits for the revive instead of running in, or calls the gunshot from the south before you walk into it. In Hunt, one player who pushes a compound alone, or leaves with the bounty while you’re still downed, costs the whole team.

A standing team gets better every match. You learn who holds the long angle and who plays close, you stop arguing about when to leave, and you start reading the same sounds the same way. Hunt rewards that more than almost any other shooter, because most fights are won before anyone fires.

Agree on these before the first match

• Mics. Hunt has proximity voice chat, and team chat reaches your teammates wherever they are. Use it. A team that calls sounds out loud plays a different game from one that doesn’t. Agree on push-to-talk or open mic so nobody broadcasts their position to the enemy.
• How hard you push. Some teams want every fight on the map. Others want the bounty and the exit. Agree which kind you are, because one player hunting other teams while two play for the bounty gets everyone killed.
• Who calls the sounds. Crows, ducks, dogs, chains and glass all give away a position. Agree that whoever hears it calls it with a direction, every time.
• When to leave. Decide before the banish whether you’re extracting straight away or fighting the teams that come for you. Leaving a teammate downed so you can extract ends a team faster than anything.
• Risk to your Hunters. Some players bring cheap Hunters and gamble. Others bring their best and play carefully. A team that agrees on stakes avoids most arguments.
• Schedule. A team only works if people show up. Pick one regular night and stick to it before adding a second.

Duo or trio?

Hunt lets you play solo, as a duo or as a trio, with up to three players on a team. Solos and duos can choose to face trios or stay in lobbies capped at teams of two.

• Duos are easier to schedule and easier to coordinate. Two players covering each other is the classic way to learn Hunt.
• Trios have more firepower and more chances to revive, but need more agreement. A trio where one player always goes their own way is effectively a duo with a liability.

If you’re new to playing as a team, start as a duo with someone reliable and add a third once you have a rhythm.

Split the jobs

Three hunters doing the same thing is how teams lose fights. A simple split that works on most maps:

• Point. Leads the way into a compound, clears close angles and makes the calls on when to push.
• Overwatch. Holds a long angle with a rifle and calls movement the others can’t see. Doesn’t wander off to loot.
• Support. Carries the tools and consumables the others need, revives, and watches the team’s back. The Necromancer trait lets this role revive a downed teammate from a distance, once per match.

Rotate the jobs between sessions so nobody gets stuck in one role, and a team where everyone can play every role holds together when someone can’t make it.

Platforms and crossplay

Hunt: Showdown 1896 is on Steam, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. Crossplay is split:

• PS5 and Xbox players can team up with each other.
• PC players team up with other PC players. PC and console are separate.

There’s no setting to turn crossplay off. Crytek has asked players whether they want one, but hasn’t added it. So when you look for teammates, look on your side of the split. Since Update 2.7, a lobby invite code keeps a party together after the mission, so you don’t have to regroup between matches.

There are no private matches or custom lobbies in Hunt, so you can’t arrange a match against a set team. Every fight is with whoever the matchmaker finds.

What’s new this October

Blood Testament Chapter 2 began on 6 October. It brings back the Inferno time of day, with fires across the maps, and adds the Flame Rifle. The All Hallows’ Cleave community event begins on 13 October. It has five stages that players unlock together by completing objectives, with two new Tarot cards and a new tool, the Long Derringer, along the way. The same day, Bileweavers return to 20 new compounds, joined by the deadlier Bloodweavers, which only appear under the Blood Moon.

Hunt is also a PlayStation Plus game of the month from 6 October to 2 November, so a lot of new console players are looking for teammates right now.

Where to look in 2026

The usual places for Hunt players are Discord servers, subreddits and random fill, and they all have the same gap. There’s no good way to find regular teammates who match your platform, your schedule and how you like to play. A “LF1 trio, EU, PC, mic” post gets buried in minutes.

That’s the gap PaxJax fills. Instead of starting over every night, you can:

• Filter hunters by game, platform, region and schedule, so the people you find are on your side of the crossplay split and online when you are.
• Jump into Hunt: Showdown game chat to find players who are online and looking right now.
• Send an Invite to Play directly, so getting a team together takes one tap.
• Save a standing team with a Looking-for-Team profile, so the same duo or trio comes back next session instead of starting from scratch.

Find Your Hunt: Showdown Trio

Turn one good match into a standing team

When a match goes well, because someone called the crows, held the angle and picked you up when you went down, don’t let those players disappear. Add them, note who works well together, and invite the same people next time. After a few nights together, you’ll have a team that wins fights before they start.

The teammates worth keeping are the same on every map. They call what they hear, they wait for the revive, and they don’t leave with the bounty while you’re still down. Find two of those and the bayou gets a lot less scary.

Ready to find your team? Find Hunt: Showdown players & trios on PaxJax →