Stonewards Hunter: The Companion Kit and the 0.1.7 Buffs

The Hunter is an officially confirmed unlockable Stonewards character built around a Companion — a pet that fights alongside the player. Steam's official achievement list includes a "Hunter unlocked" entry, and Banana Tiger Studio's patch notes document repeated changes to the Companion in Hotfix 0.1.4 and again in Hotfix 0.1.7. That frequency is the key context for this guide: the Companion changed twice within the first ten days of Early Access, so early impressions, stream highlights, and launch-week tier chatter may describe a version of the pet that no longer exists.

As with every character page on this site, the rule here is strict: only what official sources confirm gets stated as fact, and the unpublished numbers — Companion damage, health, movement distance, status-effect percentages — stay unpublished. The in-game tooltips on the current build are the authority for exact values.

What the Official Record Confirms About the Hunter

Three layers of official evidence support the character:

• The Steam achievement list includes "Hunter unlocked," which is official platform metadata rather than community guesswork.
• The patch notes name "Hunter's Companion" repeatedly — buffing it in 0.1.4 and reworking several of its stats and interactions in 0.1.7.
• The achievements also include a "Companion damage ring unlocked" entry, confirming that Companion Damage is a supported axis in the Ring-upgrade system, not a one-off mention.

What the official record does not publish is a stat sheet: no base damage, no health pool, no movement speed, no Poison percentage. This guide explains the mechanics those numbers live inside, so you know exactly what to check in your own build.

How Do You Unlock the Hunter?

Open the Character Screen in your current build. Hotfix 0.1.6 (August 18, 2026) updated the Character Screen to show the missions required to unlock each character, making the in-game display the safest answer to this question.

Two unlock-system facts from the patch history are directly relevant:

• Character unlocks are shared in multiplayer since Hotfix 0.1.3 (August 12, 2026). Before that patch, progression including character unlocks was awarded only to the host; the fix notes state unlocks are now correctly shared with connected players.
• The unlock missions themselves are in-game only. Banana Tiger Studio has not published an external list of unlock requirements, and this guide will not repeat a third-party checklist that cannot be version-checked. If a guide quotes an exact Hunter unlock mission without naming the build it tested, treat it as unverified.

The Companion: The Hunter's Confirmed Core Mechanic

The defining feature of the Hunter is the Companion, and the official patch notes treat it as central enough to adjust more than once:

• Hotfix 0.1.4 (August 13, 2026) increased the Companion's Attack and Health — the first documented buff.
• Hotfix 0.1.7 (August 21, 2026) delivered a much larger rework, detailed below.
• Hotfix 0.1.5 (August 14, 2026) fixed an issue where dead players or companions could keep gates open — a small entry, but one that confirms companions participate in world interactions like holding objectives, not just combat.

A companion that fights, scales, and interacts with the world changes how the Hunter plays compared to the base dwarves: part of the character's power budget lives outside the player model. The official notes never describe the Companion as optional or cosmetic — every mention treats it as a combat entity with its own health, damage, and movement.

What Hotfix 0.1.7 Changed for the Companion

The August 21 patch touched the Companion from several directions at once:

• Mobility: the Companion now moves faster and can travel farther, loosening the leash that previously limited how it engaged enemies.
• Durability and damage: its health was increased and its damage slightly increased.
• Scaling: the Companion's Poison and Fire damage now scale with the player's Attack Damage — connecting the pet's output directly to the Hunter's own offense. Poison duration was reduced to compensate for the increased damage.
• Support: the Companion can now be healed — at the Fireplace with the relevant Fireplace upgrade, and by the Healer character.

The announcement does not publish the underlying numbers for any of these changes, so any specific percentage you read about the 0.1.7 Companion elsewhere is an estimate. What is verifiable is the direction: faster, farther, tougher, slightly harder-hitting, and — most importantly for build planning — scaling with your Attack Damage.

Companion Damage Rings: The Confirmed Upgrade Axis

Stonewards' official achievements include a "Companion damage ring unlocked" entry, and Hotfix 0.1.7's patch notes state that the amount of Companion Damage gained per Ring upgrade was increased.

Two conclusions follow from the official record:

1. Companion Damage is a real, supported upgrade path in the Ring system, not flavor text.
2. The 0.1.7 patch made each Ring investment worth more, in the same patch that made status effects scale with Attack Damage.

What remains unpublished is the exact amount granted per upgrade level. Ring values shifted in 0.1.7 for several other rings as well (Jump Height, Knockback Chance, Life Steal, Enemy Item Drop Chance, and Sprint Speed all had per-upgrade gains reduced, while Movement Speed gains increased), so any ring-value table written before August 21 is stale. The build guide covers how to reason about upgrade priorities under that volatility.

What the 0.1.7 Buffs Mean in Practice

Without inventing numbers, the patch notes support a few practical conclusions:

• Attack Damage is now a Hunter stat, not just a personal-damage stat. Because Poison and Fire damage from the Companion scale with the player's Attack Damage, gear and upgrade choices that raise your Attack Damage also raise the pet's sustained damage. The exact conversion rate is not published — but the direction of the relationship is official.
• The Companion is less likely to fall behind or die stupidly. Faster movement, longer travel range, and more health all push the same direction: the pet keeps up and stays in the fight longer. If your 0.1.6-era memory of the Companion is "it wanders off and dies," the 0.1.7 version is a different animal.
• A Healer on the team is a documented Hunter synergy. Hotfix 0.1.7 specifically fixed the Companion so it can be healed by the Healer — and the same patch improved the Healer's healing projectile collision and gave it a small area-of-effect heal. For co-op squad planning, that is a verified pairing, not theorycraft.

Anything more specific — a "best Hunter build," a DPS ranking, a tier-list slot — should come from current-build testing rather than inference from patch notes. The characters roster overview keeps the full squad context, and the two-player co-op guide covers how duos divide the mining and defense work a Companion-inclusive kit has to fit into.

A Note on Version Drift

The Hunter's Companion was changed in Hotfix 0.1.4, indirectly in 0.1.5, and substantially in 0.1.7. Three touchpoints in ten days means version awareness is not optional when reading about this character. A few habits protect you from stale advice:

• Check the date on any Hunter guide or forum post. Anything before August 21, 2026 predates the current Companion scaling.
• Check the build number if a post claims one. "Current" is a moving target in a game whose developer has stated updates will land weekly.
• Trust in-game tooltips over any third-party number, including percentages quoted from the 0.1.7 announcement — the announcement describes directions and relations, not full stat values.

Sources

• https://steamcommunity.com/stats/4502710/achievements
• https://steamcommunity.com/app/4502710/announcements/
• https://store.steampowered.com/app/4502710/Stonewards/