Hunt: Showdown 1896 Beginner Guide: Tips to Survive Your First Contracts

Hunt: Showdown 1896 will punch you in the mouth for your first ten matches or so. That's normal. The game runs on sound and information more than raw aim, and new players give away both constantly without realizing it. Once you understand the loop (find clues, kill the boss, banish it, get out) a lot of those "random" deaths start making sense. Here's how to get through your first contracts without going broke or rage quitting.

Choosing Your First Hunter and Starting Loadout

Free hunters first, always

When you open the Hunters tab you'll see two options: hire a legendary hunter for 100 Hunt Dollars, or recruit a free hunter. Take the free one while you're learning. Free hunters come with weaker gear and one basic trait, but they cost nothing, so losing one doesn't sting.

Legendary hunters are purely cosmetic except for one thing: they start with 10 trait points instead of basically none. That's nice, but not worth 100 dollars while you're still dying to crows and glass. Save the paid recruits for when you're extracting semi-regularly.

A simple starter build

Don't chase the meta yet. You want one gun that works at medium range and something for close quarters, plus healing. A solid cheap setup looks like this:

• A lever action rifle like the Ranger 73 or Winfield M1873. Both hold plenty of compact ammo, fire fast, and have forgiving iron sights.
• A Conversion pistol as your sidearm. Cheap and reliable.
• A knife for AI and for finishing downed hunters.
• A First Aid Kit. Non-negotiable.
• Choke bombs in a tool slot. They put out fires on teammates and have PvP uses too.

For consumables, keep it boring: a small vitality shot, a small regeneration shot, and whatever else feels useful. That whole kit runs cheap enough that you can bring it match after match without watching your balance tank.

One ammo tip worth knowing early. High Velocity rounds on your rifle make bullets travel faster, which means less leading your shots at distance. Full Metal Jacket on the pistol lets you punch through thin cover. Both cost a little extra and both are worth it.

Health chunks matter more than you'd think

Your hunter has 150 health split into chunks. Small chunks are 25, big ones are 50, and the first bar is always big. Playing solo? Run three big chunks, because fire damage burns chunks away permanently and big ones take longer to cook off. In a team, go with small chunks instead. Getting revived with only 50 health missing versus 25 missing is a real difference, since plenty of guns in this game deal over 100 damage to the torso.

Traits for your first few points

If your hunter has trait points to spend, Necromancer (4 points) is the pick. In a team it lets you revive teammates from a distance using Dark Sight, and solo it gives you one self-revive. It's a single-use burn trait, so you'll re-buy it after each match that you use it, and it's still worth it. After that, Vigilant for a point (shows nearby traps in Dark Sight) and Vulture for two (extra Hunt Dollars from looting dead hunters) are both friendly to new players.

Reading the Compound Map and Clue Locations

How the map actually works

Every Bounty Hunt map is split into 16 compounds, and one or two boss targets spawn in random ones. Your job in the first phase is to narrow down where the boss is hiding. You do that by finding clues, and after three clues the exact lair location gets marked for you.

At least one clue sits in each compound, though its exact spot within the compound is random. Some compounds can spawn two clues at once, so always sweep a compound properly before leaving.

Dark Sight is your best friend

Press E (by default) to flip on Dark Sight. It's free, unlimited, and it's the core skill of the whole game. In Dark Sight, clues glow as a blue shimmer, and distant ones show up as faint blue sparks way off in the direction you should be heading. When you grab a clue, the map greys out chunks that can't contain the boss, so you can literally watch the possibilities shrink.

One detail that trips up new players: once a clue has been taken, it looks different. Other hunters can read that too. So if you roll into a compound and the clue is already grabbed, someone was here before you. Slow down.

Reading the color signals

The game quietly tells you when company's around. Clues glow red in Dark Sight when enemy hunters are close, roughly 25 to 30 meters out. Same deal at the boss lair itself: the boss icon flashes white when nobody else is near and red when hunters are within about 50 meters. That's a free safety check before you commit to a boss fight. Use it constantly.

Moving between compounds

This is where beginners die. The space between compounds is full of sound traps: crows that scatter, chained dogs, horses, chickens, and broken glass on floors. Every one of those is a free ping on your position for anyone holding still and listening.

Crouch-walking makes no footstep noise. Save your sprint for open ground you've already checked, or for when you just don't care who hears you because a fight already kicked off. Water is loud too, especially on Stillwater Bayou, so plan routes around the deep stuff when you can.

Oh, and if you hear crows go off and you know you didn't touch them, stop moving. Someone else is close. Listen for footsteps and get ready, because they may not know exactly where you are either.

Deal with AI quietly

Grunts, Hives, and the rest of the zombie crowd aren't hard, but shooting them is. Gunfire carries across half the map. Knife them instead. Poison also kills AI silently if you've got poison bolts or bombs.

One hard rule: never shoot an Immolator with fire or hit it with blunt melee. It explodes and takes a chunk off you. Use stabbing weapons only. Those things will chase you down faster than you can sprint, so don't ignore them either.

Banishing the Boss Safely

What banishing does

Once the boss is dead, you interact with the body to start the banish. It's a channel that takes a couple of minutes (shorter for wild targets like Rotjaw), and while it runs, a lightning column marks the location for every single player on the map. Everyone now knows where you are and roughly what you're doing.

When it finishes, the boss drops bounty tokens. Teams grab two from a boss, solos can only carry one. Those tokens are your ticket to the real money and XP.

Set up before you start the channel

The banish is your prep window, but only if you use it. The mistake almost every new player makes is standing in the middle of the boss room waiting. Don't. Before or during the channel:

• Reload everything and top off from ammo boxes if the compound has them.
• Pick your defensive positions. You want to hold an angle on the doors and windows people will actually push through, not sit in the open.
• Trap the obvious entrances if you have concertina or gas bombs. Doorways and ladder bottoms are the spots. Don't go overboard though, good positioning beats traps most of the time.
• Check the boss icon in Dark Sight. Red flash means someone's within about 50 meters and probably coming.

Pick your fights with the lair layout

Lairs vary a ton. Some have one chokepoint entrance that's a dream to defend. Others have six windows and three doors, and holding those is kind of a nightmare. If you get to choose when to kill the boss, look around the compound first and think about which room you'd want to be stuck in for two minutes.

Grab the token and use the boost

Here's the part newcomers waste. The moment you pick up a bounty, you get Dark Sight Boost: 5 seconds per token where you can see nearby enemy hunters as orange silhouettes through walls. As a solo with the Magpie trait that doubles to 10 seconds. On top of that, when enemy hunters get within about 75 meters of you, the edge of your screen glows orange even without activating anything.

That boost is for scanning for the people camping the exits. Pop it as you leave the lair, not later. Knowing there's a team crouched behind the fence outside is worth way more than saving it.

Defend or bail

Sometimes a team shows up mid-banish and you're outgunned or out of position. You can actually just leave. The token only appears when the channel completes, and a stolen banish still finishes on its own if you started it. Better to retreat, reset, and ambush the team that's now stuck standing next to the body. Dying in a bad hold helps nobody.

Extracting Without Getting Third-Partied

Why the run out is the most dangerous part

Extracting is where the whole map converges on you. Extraction points sit at the map edges, and once you're carrying a bounty, other hunters can track you. They'll see lightning bolts on their map and lightning strikes in Dark Sight pointing your way. You're the shiny target now, so plan the exit like it's the boss fight, because often it is.

Don't take the obvious line

The most common rookie death is beelining from the lair to the nearest extraction in a straight line across open ground. Anyone who's been watching the banish column knows exactly where you'll come from.

Instead, swing wide. Use tree lines, ditches, and compound cover even if it adds distance. Check your map and pick a route with cover most of the way. A slightly longer walk through the swamp beats a 40-meter dash across a cleared field with a Sparks somewhere out there.

Pick your exit on purpose

Maps have multiple extraction points along the edges. Before you leave the lair, open the map and actually choose one, then choose a backup in case the first is being watched. Then use your Dark Sight Boost on the way out to check whether anyone's posted up near the route.

Solo players get a small edge here: you're quieter, you only need one token, and you can afford to move slow and let the teams fight each other. If you hear a third party forming somewhere between you and the exit, let them. Two teams shooting each other is the best noise cover in the game.

Small stuff that saves runs

• Heal before the run, not during it. Standing still mid-fight with a First Aid Kit out is how you die with full heals in your pocket.
• Don't loot every body on the way out. Looting hunters with the Vulture trait is good money, but kneeling next to a corpse in the open after a fight is prime sniper bait.
• If you're in a team and someone goes down on the exit run, choke the body before reviving if there's any fire on it, and drag revives behind cover. A revive in the open is a free double kill for whoever's watching.
• Getting to the extraction and leaving is always an option. Chasing a second bounty or one more kill when the exit is right there is greed, and Hunt punishes greed pretty consistently.

Managing Bloodline XP and Hunt Dollars Early

Two progressions, one death

Your hunter and your account level up separately. The hunter earns XP and trait points from whatever they do in the match. The Bloodline is your account-wide rank, running from 1 to 100, and every rank unlocks a tool, consumable, or trait, or pays out some Hunt Dollars.

Here's the good news for new players: hunter XP feeds the Bloodline, and so does dying. You keep account progression even when the hunter is lost. Clue XP pays out whether you live or not. So even a terrible match where you grab two clues and get shotgunned in a bush still moved your Bloodline forward. The game is built for you to lose hunters, so don't treat every death like a failure.

Where the money comes from

Hunt Dollars flow from objectives: clues taken, boss kills, banishes, bounty extractions, cash registers, looting hunters, and bonuses for playing solo against teams. The big payouts are locked behind extracting alive, which is why surviving the run out matters so much for your wallet.

Cash registers are free money sitting in buildings. Grab them when you pass through. And with the Vulture trait, looting downed enemy hunters pays a decent chunk, so fights actually fund your next loadout.

Beat gear fear by spending

The number one economy mistake at low rank is hoarding. Players save their good guns for "when it matters" and run junk forever, then quit with a pile of unused Hunt Dollars. Unspent money does nothing for you. The game expects hunters to die and budgets accordingly, and budget loadouts genuinely work, since headshots kill no matter what the gun cost.

If you do run your balance down, free hunters are the built-in floor. You can always play at zero. Soul Survivor mode is also free to enter and risk-free, and winning it lets you keep the hunter plus everything you scavenged. It's a solid way to rebuild when you're broke.

Don't prestige early

At Bloodline 100 you unlock the option to Prestige, which resets your rank, hunters, money, and unlocks for a reward like cosmetics or bonus Hunt Dollars. Ignore it for now. It strips away tools and traits you're still learning to use, and it adds nothing for a beginner. Plenty of players never prestige at all.

What to actually unlock first

Rank unlocks come at you in a fixed order, so you don't pick, but you can pick what to use. Early on, lean on the cheap, flexible stuff: lever action rifles, the Conversion pistol, basic tools. Grab gun oil from workbenches while holding a weapon family you like, since it unlocks the next variant in that line and hands you a free copy of it. Free copies of unlocks are real savings, and you can sell expensive ones you don't want for extra dollars.

Play your first few hours like tuition you're paying yourself. Free hunters, cheap loadouts, three clues every match, and one clean extraction whenever you can get it. That's the whole game plan, and it'll carry you to a healthy Bloodline rank with money in the bank.