This year's online hunt will start at 12 noon on Saturday 18th December for Round 1, the second round will begin at 12 noon on Sunday 19th December and there will be a head start for the first few players to complete round 1.

A series of teaser questions will be available from 6pm Friday 17th December which must be completed before you can access the main questions.

You can now sign up to the hunt as follows:

1. Create or log in to your epic.LAN Account
2. Go to the Hunt Online site using this link which will automatically log you in.
3. Or if you have an epic.LAN account already, you can log in straight away at hunt.epiclan.co.uk using your normal epic.LAN account details.  
4. That's It! You're ready to start playing from 6pm on the 17th. 

Prizes

For the winning person (who may choose to work as part of a team), we can confirm that the prize will be

• 2 Tickets to any 2011 epic.LAN Event
• £50 Kustom Voucher

Congratulations to CyberDrac and Elsie who have both won a key to participate in the Battlefield: Play4Free closed beta after their names were pulled out of my hat. The correct answer was of course Battlefield: Vietnam (none of the entrants got this wrong!).

They're the lucky two that get to join the other thousand (or there abouts) gamers, including a couple of us from epic.TEAM.

The keys are working their way to you via the email address on your epic account! In addition to playing in the closed beta, both CyberDrac and Elsie will be able to feedback to the developers and have their suggestions worked into the final release.

13,608 visitors and 12,754 unique MAC addresses reconfirmed DreamHack Winter 2010 as the world's biggest LAN Party and Digital Festival in the world. The growing attendance also goes to show that increased home internet speeds are not having a negative effect on LAN events around the world, and it's not exactly as though Sweden doesn't have fast domestic internet.

Read more at Winbar's Dreamhack Winter 2010 Review.

See our other coverage at:

• The Dreamhack Diary
• Dreamhack Gallery

To reward those who have signed up and paid for epic.FIVE, you are eligible to compete for one of two available closed beta keys from Battlefield: Play4Free. The closed beta will run from Tuesday 30th November for a number of weeks (yet unspecified) and will provide the opportunity to shape the latest game from EA. Battlefield: Play4Free will be exclusive to the PC market and as such promises to be great!

All you need to do is answer the following Battlefield related question no later than 12:00 (midday) Tuesday 30th November 2010. If you're successful, a member of staff will notify you Tuesday evening by email with a copy of your key.

If you haven't yet signed up to epic.FIVE and wish to participate, just head over to the event page and confirm your place now!

So we've arrived at Dreamhack!

If you want to keep an eye on what we're up to, we'll be blogging, Tweeting, photographing and streaming from the LAN, so you can follow our coverage at:

• The Dreamhack Diary
• epic.LAN Twitter Account
• Dreamhack Gallery
• Webcam Stream

Woohoo!

epic.FIVE has just had a mention on the Official Team Fortress 2 Blog! Great timing too, as the first few teams begin signing up for their place at the LAN in February!

Watch this space too, as we have some more exciting news about the tournament to announce over the coming weeks.

Thanks to the TF2 guys for posting the details! We're looking forward to a great event with our first Team Fortress 2 tournament.

The first draft of the rules, maplist and format for the epic.FIVE £1000 Team Fortress 2 LAN Tournament are now available.

Working with our expert game admins, Tapley & Mole, we've come up with a slightly different set of rules which are essentially vanilla TF2 with medic unlocks, as well as an unusual twist on the usual Turbine gameplay, just for a bit of a change to other TF2 tournaments.

As this is the first draft, we would welcome any feedback from the community and prospective teams, you can do so via the epic.FIVE forums or over at ETF2L.

To take part in the tournament, you need to have a confirmed space at the event, so go and book your space now to be in with a chance of winning!

We're very pleased to confirm that UK LAN favourites, Kustom will be bringing along their LAN stall for your enjoyment and convenience at the epic.FIVE LAN Party in February 2011.

Graeme will be making his own epic journey down from Scotland to join us for a few days with some LAN party essentials as well as demonstration items for you to try before you buy, and as always you will be able to pre-order from the Kustom website before the event for free collection on site.

Not only will you get to have a look at the Kustom shop, but you'll also be entertained with a range of random games, and we're fairly certain to see another Armagetron marathon with plenty of wacky and wonderful game modes.

If you haven't grabbed your epic.FIVE seat, then book now to make sure you don't miss out on some of the great activities planned for the event!

UPDATE - These cancellation space have now both been filled.

Due to a couple of incidents of general fail, TWO spaces have become available for epic.lite 3 in a couple of weeks time.

So if you were one of the many people who missed out on the tickets when they sold out in record time, and you are able to join us from Friday 19th - Sunday 21st November then go and book a ticket for our final lan of 2011 now!

About epic.lite events

epic.lite is a relaxed, social event where even the epic.LAN staff team are there to enjoy themselves. There is no formal advanced programming, no heavily organised activities, and technically no "staff area". It's just a chilled weekend of gaming, some drinks and a load of fun! We promise that you wont see any tournaments at this event, so if that's what you're looking for, sorry!

Ho Ho Ho!

There are just 53 days left until Christmas but only 18 days until epic.lite 3 where we'll be having our mini Christmas with your very own set of presents and Santa won't mind if you open them early!

Our Secret Santa will be taking place during elite3 and the deadline for signing up to take part is this Thursday (4th November) at 12noon. To sign up simply go to your Event Booking and add the Secret Santa service.

You will then receive an automated secret mail over the following few days telling you who to buy for. The limit is £5 and remember to wrap your present and label who it is for before you get to the event. We'll let you know when you arrive where you can put your presents ready for our Christmas morning!

Happy Shopping!