Fearless leveling build for Bounty hunter

Bounty hunter is probably one of the easier classes to start with in Van Helsing mainly due to the classes ranged nature. Probably the Bounty hunters greatest weaknesses are low health and lack of good survival skills early on. While Haste is great for creating some distance between oneself and enemies it can still be fairly easy to find oneself in a situation where there's simply not enough room to move or get targeted by enemy skill that drags you in middle of a group or just roots you in place for few seconds.

Bounty hunters damage output in the early levels can also leave much to be desired. Spamming skills like poisoned shot will quickly drain all mana and while shoot with it's first mastery will help a little getting access to some capacitive essences and quintessence for weapon should be a priority to spam skills for reliably.

Later on skills like Ethereal empodiment, Sphere of timelessness, Missile vault and overall greater damage output can help to remedy much of these issues and Katarina's Spirit guardian can help with the low health.

## Levels 1-20

General gameplay here is to kill some enemies to get enough rage to summon Seekermatons with Seekermaton pack power-up. Against small groups start with Poisoned shot to apply poison and extra vulnerability and then pick the enemies off one by one with shoot. When in a pinch you can use Haste to gain some distance and possibly use the uncanny reflexes power-up for invulnerability if necessary.

Use Katarina as tank and distraction to reduce the amount of enemies you have to deal with at once. You should bind "switch Katarina's form" action to key or button that's easily accessible like so you can switch her to ghost form when she's about to die. She will regenerate health quickly in ghost form which will allow her to still soak some damage for you with spirit guardian and return to battle quicker than from her weakened form.

For ranged classes its good to know that if you hold down shift you will hold your position while attacking. If you instead just want to move to a position and there are enemies in the way you can hold down ctrl to just move to a position without attacking.

### Items

When it comes to weapons you should always use pistols for their high attack speed. Look for ones with high weapon damage and flat damage bonuses. You should also look for rings that offer more flat damage bonuses.
Try to keep your defense and resistances in check so that your damage reduction is at least around 50%. Since enemies scale with health and damage fairly quickly you should always check if shop keepers have better items for you. Don't forget to use Artifact forge to craft more powerful trophies as they can contain most enchants in the game including ones that hold multiple flat damage bonuses.

It's recommended that you kill the Nameless Wisp in Croakwood as it usually drops at least once capacitive essence (you can easily farm these). These will allow you to add essence capacity to weapons that have none and can be remove from weapon through dismantle item tab in Alchemy and re-used in any new weapon you may find. Having weapon with essence capacity will allow you to add Quintessence to the weapon which will drastically help with mana usage of poisoned shot.

Keep Katarina well equipped as well and maybe throw in some HP stolen per hit items and she will be formidable asset in battle not just as tank but by dealing damage as well. Your priority should be however to equip her with items with high defense and resistances and weapons with good weapon damage and some flat damage bonuses.

### Skills and ability points

Start by unlocking all the listed skills and their power-ups. Then you should first upgrade Shoot to level 5 since it'll be your main source of damage for a while. Second you should upgrade Seekermatons to level 5 to get more damage out of their vulnerability effect. Seekermaton pack power-up gives you up to 3 extra seekermatons which will last until you leave the map or re-summon them without the power-up. After these you can level up poisoned shot to level 5 which will be our main AOE attack. After these you should max out Seekermatons as it provides bonuses to both you and Katarina and increases critical hit chance against some targets by whopping 10%.

What about the other attack skills? Well Scattershot has poor enchantment modifier which is means it benefits poorly from flat damage bonuses which are our main source of damage early on. Problem with explosive shot is that radius of 1.5m in this game is just too little to frequently hit more than 1-2 targets.

As for ability points but half to Enchanted vitality and half to Spiritual Awareness. Damage bonus from advanced gunnery doesn't affect flat damage bonuses and the weapon damage early on is so low that percentage based bonuses barely affect the damage. Having more mana gives us extra shots with poisoned shot though and critical damage bonus applies to all damage. Enchanted vitality is mainly for more health to survive any sudden heavy or multi-hits on fearless.

As for Auras none of the ones early on are that great. Recklessness increases only physical damage (doesn't help with poisoned shot) and makes you more vulnerable to physical attacks, Clear shot damage bonus is really hard to maintain as all enemies need to be near the edge of the screen for it to trigger. Frenzied rush limits our ability to spend rage for more damage and crowd control.

Katarina will act as our main tank and help us deal with our low health through spirit guardian.

Katarina Level 15

### Perks

Ghost whisperer is great since not only does it reduce the lengthy duration which Katarina needs to recover from her weakened state but also increases her health regeneration. This allows her to tank more damage for us through spirit guardian and makes her overall better tank. Veteran Hunter perk is stable for most builds as skill-levels usually offer more bonuses than most perks.

* Ghost whisperer
* Veteran hunter

## Levels 20-40

Gameplan is fairly similar to levels 1-20 but we can now use Ethereal embodiment for survival and Ghostly mirage for extra distraction. Shoot will still be our main damage dealing attack but whenever enemies happen to line up nicely we can use Hex shot to deal damage to multiple enemies at once. Once you can 1-3 Quintessence to your weapon you'll get 2-6% of the damage dealt back as mana which will allow spamming Hex shot and Poisoned shot more often.

Killing Riddle Wisp in the dreadworks will drop extra capacitive essences as well. It can be good choice if you've already obtained Fifth Element with another character and do not want to farm capacitive essences using exploits.

### Items

If you killed the Nameless Wisp in Croakwood you should have at least 1-2 Capacitive essence use them to improve your weapons essence capacity. Then you should get some Quintessence either from Matthias in Secret Lair or from Dragan the shopkeeper in Markovna. To reset the shopkeeper inventory you can just teleport between Secret Lair and Markovna. It can take a few times for the essence to appear and it's possible (untested) that magic find affects shop keepers as well.

If you don't have any Capacitive essence you might want to prioritize weapons with 10 or more essence capacity.(or farm some). Using Quintessence this early isn't must but it can speed things by quite a bit simply by having more mana to play with. You'll get some of both eventually as they drop from monsters and Capacitive essence is occasionally sold by Matthias later in the game.

It's also important to do frequent shopping every few levels to increase weapon damage, flat damage bonuses, Defense and resistance. Be wary on how dodge affects the protection stat displayed when comparing items. Dodge is not bad stat to have but early on it's very unreliable way to reduce incoming damage. Also be on the lookout for items that increase critical hit chance as Hex shot synergies pretty well with those.

### Skills and ability points

Start by unlocking both Ghostly mirage, Hex shot and Ethereal embodiment. Then proceed to max out Hex shot since it'll become our default weapon attack for pretty much rest of the game. With weapon that has 2 Quintessence you should be able to spam Hex shot and Poisoned shot quite a few times before running out of mana. If you do run out of mana you can use shoot and mana potions to regain the lost mana.

Whenever you're unable to level Hex shot spend points to goliath slayer aura instead as it'll increase the damage you do against all special monsters. Leveling Poisoned shot is also a good alternative as it'll increase damage of both Hex shot and later on Poison blast. Leveling Ethereal empodiment to level 5 before 40 is recommended as well as it'll give you access to powerful Sphere of timelessness skill. Investing points to Haste will reduce cooldowns for both Sphere of timelessness and Ethereal empodiment.

Put half of your ability points to Enchanted vitality and half to Advanced gunnery. With higher weapon damage the bonus from Advanced gunnery starts to become more potent and we have enough mana to work with for the rest of the game.

We are focusing here mainly on making Katarina more powerful overall with more health, resistances and damage. Stroke of terror and Chillwave

### Perks

Scholarly ghost is one of the best perks in the game as it gives 6 more skill-points to work with Katarina. More attack speed from Gunslinger and more poison damage from Black widow just synergy really well with our skills.

* Ghost whisperer
* Veteran hunter
* Scholarly ghost
* Gunslinger
* Black widow or alchemist

## Levels 40 - 60

Gameplan here is vary between Poison blast and Hex shot. Poison blast is great for dealing AOE damage to enemies that have stacked near each other and leaves poison cloud to the point of impact that'll continue to deal damage and weaken enemies standing in it. It's also worth a mention that damage and effects from these poison clouds stack.

Hex shot pierce is great against enemies that just happen to line up nicely and with each shot making critical hits more frequent and hit harder this skill hits harder after every shot. Around level 60 Hex shot can deal around 6.5k damage on critical hits after making few shots which is not bad for skill that hits multiple targets.

Sphere of timelessness is not only great skill to get in some free hits it's also amazing skill for survival since you can stand still to wait out cooldowns for other skills and potions. The Timeless rush power-up is pretty powerful as it gives you 45% chance for action to be free. This can lead to situations where you'll randomly get something like 5+ extra shots when using the skill.

Finally we have access to few good auras so we'll be taking the Telekinetic aura and Invigorating hit. Invigorating hit is pretty broken as not only it regenerates our heath each time we score a critical hit but at level 10 with both masteries it'll also generate rage and replenish mana. Combine this with the fact that many of bounty hunter skills can increase critical hit chance and damage above maximum limit (50% for critical hit chance and 450% for critical hit damage bonus) and hit multiple enemies.

### Items

Now you should be looking to for items with enchants that give you 4-5% critical hit chance, critical hit damage bonus so you can get closer to the soft-caps of 50% and 450%. Prioritise defense and resistances for Gloves, armors, boots and capes and use Profane essence]] to increase defense even further. Generally you should try to keep total damage reduction near 50% for each damage type. Try to use Artifact forge to get yourself a trophy with damage increasing enchants like critical hit chance, critical hit bonus, flat damage bonus for 2-3 elements.

### Skills and ability points

Start by leveling up Poison blast as it'll be our main attack with Hex shot for pretty much rest of the game. After that you should level Sphere of timelessness. We are leaving Precision shot for later as it's not all the great early on and would require significant investment in terms of skill-points and gear. Instead we are going for Telekinetic aura and Invigorating hit. Invigorating hit.

Since most skills have diminishing returns after level 5 it's generally good idea to just improve them first unless there's something you absolutely want to max out. Here the most shiny skills are Death knell and Bane aura that have amazing synergy with our skills. Death knell occasionally gives us nice 20% damage boost when Katarina scores a kill and Bane aura not only slows down enemies but also makes them weaker to poison.

### Perks

Master hunter for extra skill-points and the flash for extra speed and attack speed.

* Ghost whisperer
* Veteran hunter
* Scholarly ghost
* Gunslinger
* Black widow or alchemist
* Master hunter
* The flash