Hunt: Showdown 1896 Trait Guide: Best Perks to Unlock First

Traits are where most of your power in Hunt: Showdown 1896 actually comes from. A naked hunter with a Winfield and no perks fights at maybe 70% of what that same hunter can do with 10 or 12 points of traits bolted on. The catch is that Upgrade Points are tight on a fresh hunter, so the order you buy stuff in matters more than most people think. Blow your points on the wrong perks and you're stuck grinding AI kills to afford the good ones.

This breaks down how the whole system works, then ranks what to grab first at each stage of the Bloodline. Every cost and unlock rank here comes straight off the official wiki, so the numbers are current.

How the Bloodline Trait Tree Works

The Bloodline is your account-wide progression. It runs from Rank 1 to Rank 100, and every rank along the way unlocks something: a tool, a consumable, a trait, or a pile of Hunt Dollars. Traits are the big ones. Some are available at Rank 1 right out of the gate, while others don't show up until your 40s, 50s, or beyond.

There's no literal tree with branches, so don't overthink the shape of it. Think of it as one long store that slowly restocks as you level. What actually holds you back is currency.

That currency is Upgrade Points, and here's the part that trips people up: they belong to the individual hunter, not your account. You earn them by leveling that hunter in a match, looting Upgrade Point envelopes lying around the map, and through a couple of smaller sources like the Dark Tribute and the retaliation bonus (that's the 2 points you get for killing and looting an enemy who killed you earlier in the same match). A brand new recruit starts with a small pool of points to spend, usually around 10-ish depending on how they were recruited, and that pool is basically your starting budget.

A hunter can hold up to 15 traits at once, which sounds like a lot until you realize a mid-game build eats points fast. The good news is nothing is permanent. Regular traits can be sold back from the menu for their cost minus 1, and traits that only cost 1 can be pulled off for free. So a 5-pointer refunds 4 if you swap it out. That refund loop is why cheap traits are so good: a 1-cost perk is effectively free to try and free to drop.

| Thing | What it means | | --- | --- | | Bloodline Rank 1-100 | Account level, decides which traits you're allowed to buy | | Upgrade Points | Per-hunter currency for buying traits and healing chunks | | 15 | Max traits one hunter can carry | | Cost minus 1 | Refund when you remove a regular trait | | Trainee Mode | Hunters don't die on loss until you hit Bloodline Rank 15 |

There are also trait types beyond regular. Burn traits do their thing once and then burn away, and scarce traits can only be found in the world, never bought. Both mostly come from Trait Spurs, those little charms scattered around the map that show up in Dark Sight within 25m. White spurs give regular traits, red ones burn traits, blue ones scarce. Kill a Meathead, Brute, or Ursa Mortis and you're guaranteed a spur drop, Rotjaw always drops a scarce one, and Hellborn coughs up a burn trait. Grabbing a spur on the way to the boss is basically free points, so get in the habit of yanking them when you pass by.

Two more labels worth knowing. Solo traits gain a bonus effect when you queue alone, and Catalyst traits get an upgrade if you're carrying the Catalyst trait (which itself comes from The Empress tarot card). The solo boosts especially are a big deal, and a few of them show up later in this guide.

Last thing: prestiging at Rank 100 resets your unlocks and you re-earn them all again. Your Hunt Dollars also get reset to 8,000. It hurts the first time, so know what you're signing up for.

Best Traits for New Hunters

At Bloodline Rank 1 you already have access to a surprisingly deep bench: Adrenaline, Bloodless, Bulwark, Dauntless, Determination, Doctor, Ghoul, Lightfoot, Magpie, Necromancer, Packmule, Quartermaster, Salveskin, Blast Sense, and Hornskin all unlock immediately. You can't afford all of them on one hunter, so here's the buy order that tends to work.

Determination (1 point, Rank 1). Stamina recovery kicks in after about 1.5 seconds instead of 3. That's it. It sounds tiny and it is tiny, but for a single point it's on every hunter you'll ever run. Sprinting, melee swings, heavy attacks, all of it recovers faster.

Magpie (1 point, Rank 1). Picking up a bounty token gives you three short buffs at once: antidote, stamina, and regeneration. If you're playing solo it doubles your Dark Sight boost too, so a token gives 10 seconds of boost instead of 5. One point for that is a steal, especially in Bounty Clash where tokens change hands constantly.

Adrenaline (1 point, Rank 1). Hit critical health and you get 20 seconds of unlimited stamina. It's a get-out-of-jail card for the moments when you're one hit from dying and need to sprint for cover or win a melee scrap. Cheap insurance.

Dauntless (1 point, Rank 1). Lets you defuse thrown explosives by interacting with them, working on anything with a fuse within about 3 meters, even mid-air. Nine times out of ten you'll never press the button. The one time a dynamite stick lands at your feet and you calmly snuff it, the point pays for itself.

Those four one-pointers cost 4 total and cover stamina, bounty, panic, and bombs. Start there on basically every recruit.

Then your first real purchase:

Greyhound (2 points, Rank 3). Doubles your full sprint duration, from roughly 34 seconds to roughly 67. For 2 points this is probably the best value trait in the entire game. Rotating between compounds, running down a fleeing hunter, escaping a bad fight, it all gets better. Buy it first, every hunter, no debate.

Bulwark (2 points, Rank 1). Cuts explosion damage in half and drastically shortens flash bomb blindness. One catch: frag bombs ignore it, since their damage comes from shrapnel rather than the blast. Still worth 2 points in a game where half the lobby carries dynamite.

Bloodless (3 points, Rank 1). Bleeding won't escalate from light up to medium or intense. Light bleed is annoying, intense bleed is a death sentence if you're out of bandages. This keeps the worst version off your back.

Serpent (4 points, Rank 14). Interact with clues, rifts, banishes, and abandoned bounty tokens through Dark Sight from 25 meters away, no touching required. Solo players get 50 meters. Ever had a token sitting in the middle of a wide-open field with three teams watching it? Serpent just takes it from behind a rock.

A quick shopping list for your first few hunters:

| Priority | Trait | Cost | Why | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 1 | Greyhound | 2 | Double sprint for pocket change | | 2 | Determination | 1 | Faster stamina regen, always on | | 3 | Magpie | 1 | Free buffs on every bounty pickup | | 4 | Dauntless | 1 | Bomb insurance | | 5 | Bulwark | 2 | Half explosion damage | | 6 | Bloodless | 3 | Caps bleed at light | | 7 | Serpent | 4 | Grab objectives from safety |

That's 14 points for a core kit that works on any weapon, any mode, solo or team. You'll usually be short of that on a fresh recruit, so work down the list and fill gaps as you earn envelopes.

Movement and Stamina Traits Worth the Points

Movement wins fights in Hunt more than aim does, honestly. Whoever repositions first usually gets the first shot, and the stamina system punishes you hard for mismanaging it. So the movement category deserves real spending.

Greyhound got covered above and it stays the anchor. 2 points, doubles sprint. Nothing else in the category touches that price-to-payoff ratio.

Lightfoot (5 points, Rank 1). Silent vaulting, falling, and ladder climbing, plus quieter movement through noise traps like broken glass and crows. At 5 points it's a real investment, and whether it's worth it depends on how you play. If you like third-partying compounds or sneaking through occupied buildings, this is your trait. Jumping isn't silenced anymore, note, that got patched out a while back. Also worth saying: sound in Hunt travels absurdly far, and a loud vault tells everyone within 50 meters exactly which window you're coming through.

Surefoot (6 points, Rank 20). Sprint while holding a primed throwable, a first aid kit, or a consumable shot. It came over from event traits and went up in price because it's genuinely strong. Cooking a dynamite stick at full sprint is a nasty angle, and self-healing on the move keeps you in a fight instead of hiding in a corner bandaging. Kind of expensive, kind of a luxury, but aggressive players love it.

Kiteskin (1 point, Rank 51). Significantly cuts fall damage, and with Catalyst stacked you straight up can't die from falling. One point. The unlock rank is the only barrier. Grab it the day you hit 51 and never think about it again, it removes a whole category of embarrassing deaths (roof drops, silo falls, that one ladder in every compound).

Gator Legs (3 points, Rank 56). Faster walking and sprinting in deep water, and less noise while crouched in water. Very map dependent. On DeSalle with all its swamps and rivers this is decent, on dry maps it's a dead slot. Save it for the third or fourth hunter once you know which maps you actually like.

Adrenaline and Determination live in other categories on the wiki but function as stamina traits. The pair together costs 2 points and covers both ends of the stamina loop: recovering faster after spending it, and getting a 20 second burst when you're nearly dead. Cheap and always useful.

Vigor (3 points, Rank 57). While Dark Sight is up, health and stamina regenerate at double speed. Since you're popping Dark Sight constantly anyway, this quietly refunds a ton of passive regen over a match. Late unlock, fair price, solid pickup once available.

One practical note on stamina: the sprint cap and recovery numbers changed over various patches, but the current split is roughly 34 seconds of full sprint (67 with Greyhound) and about 3 seconds before regen starts (1.5 with Determination). Those two traits together make your hunter feel completely different, and they cost 3 points combined. There's no reason to skip them.

Combat Traits for Aggressive Players

This is where personal weapon taste matters, because the offensive traits are mostly tied to weapon families. Don't buy Fanning if you don't run revolvers. Sounds obvious, but people do it constantly.

Fanning (8 points, Rank 12). Faster fire rate when fanning single-action revolvers, both one-handed and two-handed now. This is the classic brawler trait and it's been a meta staple forever. 8 points is steep, but if your playstyle is "push the boss lair and win the 10-meter fight," nothing else doubles your damage output like landing two quick fan shots. The spread bloom got increased a while back, so it rewards practice, and the old crouch accuracy bonus is gone. At close range it still deletes people.

Levering (7 points, Rank 6). The Winfield version of Fanning: faster hip fire on lever-action weapons. After the Update 2.0 buffs the rate of fire and spread are both noticeably better, and the price jumped from 4 to 7 to match. If you're a Winfield or Terminus player, this plus Iron Eye is your bread and butter.

Iron Eye (3 points, Rank 9). Stay in iron sights between shots on bolt, lever, and pump weapons. It merged three older traits (Iron Sharpshooter, Iron Repeater, Iron Devastator) into one package. What it really buys you is follow-up shot speed, since you skip the re-aim animation after every trigger pull. 3 points for that on a Romero or a Lebel is cheap.

Scopesmith (2 points, Rank 22). Same idea for scoped weapons: stay zoomed after firing. Another merger trait (Deadeye, Marksman, and Sniper Scopesmith rolled into one). Anyone running a scope sits at long range trading shots, and re-scoping every time gives away timing and position. Two points, no reason not to.

Steady Aim (2 points, Rank 30). Weapon sway gradually settles while you're scoped or using aperture sights, stabilizing over about 3 seconds. That settle time got cut from 12 seconds to 3 in Update 2.2, which turned this from filler into a genuinely good pick for long-range hunters.

Hundred Hands (3 points, Rank 16). Bow main? This is your trait. More damage at full draw, less sway while holding it, and you can use arrows in heavy melee attacks. The damage bump is 10%, which won't wow anyone on paper, but the sway reduction is the real draw (pun intended) for holding shots on moving targets.

Bolt Thrower (3 points, Rank 32). Faster reloads on crossbows, bomb launchers, and bomb lances. Narrow, but the bomb lance crowd swears by it, and switching ammo while empty uses the faster animation too.

Pitcher (4 points, Rank 61). Longer throwing range on anything using the aim helper. Every dynamite, frag, and choke bomb goes further. Comes late but turns throwables into actual long-range weapons instead of "toss it and pray."

Martialist (2 points, Rank 28). Katana only: sheathe it and unleash a stronger first strike. If katanas aren't your thing, skip it entirely. If they are, it's 2 points for a better opener on every melee duel.

Quartermaster (8 points, Rank 1). This one got reworked in Update 2.8 and now grants +1 weapon capacity, meaning you can pack a third gun (or a bigger second weapon depending on slots). For aggressive players who burn ammo fast or want a rifle plus shotgun plus sidearm, it opens up loadouts that plain hunters can't run. The 8-point price stings on a fresh recruit, so it's usually a mid-Bloodline pickup once your point income is steady.

A sample aggressive build around Rank 20-30 might look like: Greyhound (2), Determination (1), Adrenaline (1), Magpie (1), Iron Eye (3), Levering or Fanning depending on your guns (7-8), Bulwark (2). That's 17-18 points, achievable by level 20-ish on a hunter if you're looting envelopes, and it covers movement, defense, and your weapon of choice.

Situational Traits to Save For Later

These are the ones that are fine to skip early. Not bad, just narrow, expensive, or outclassed until a specific condition shows up.

Doctor (9 points, Rank 1). Doubles how much a First Aid Kit heals. It's available from the start and it's the single most expensive regular trait in the game. The heal matters in long matches, no question, but 9 points buys you Greyhound plus Bulwark plus change. Most players are better served by cheap healing habits (Vitality Shots, ghoul stacking) early on. Buy it later when your hunters regularly live long enough for it to matter.

Physician (5 points, Rank 45). Bandage faster, first aid kits only. Pairs with Doctor for the medic playstyle, and by Rank 45 you'll know if that's you. Solo or duo players who fight a lot tend to rate it higher than the raw numbers suggest, since the bandage animation is when you're most vulnerable.

Conduit (5 points, Rank 38). When your team grabs a clue or closes a rift, you get 50 HP and 3 minutes of unlimited stamina. Solos get double: 100 HP and 6 minutes. Great in theory, but it procs off teammate actions in a team, meaning everyone needs it for full value. If you mostly play trios with a regular group, coordinate and grab it together. Solo, it's honestly borderline core, so adjust accordingly.

Vigilant (1 point, Rank 36). Traps and enemy beetles glow in Dark Sight within 25 meters, doubled with Catalyst. For a 1-point trait this is quietly amazing, and the only reason it sits in this section is the Rank 36 gate. The moment you can buy it, buy it. Walking past a concertina mine you didn't spot is such an avoidable way to get killed.

Vulture (2 points, Rank 24). Looting a dead hunter always pays Hunt Dollars, even when your pockets are full. Money-focused players and Bounty Clash grinders get more out of it than anyone. Two points, casual pickup.

Mithridatist (2 points, Rank 40). Drastically faster poison recovery. Spider mainstays and hive swarms make this relevant on some maps and matchups, but plenty of matches go by without poison ever touching you. Keep it in the maybe pile.

Resilience (3 points, Rank 4). When a teammate revives you, you come back with up to full health (150) instead of one chunk. Team-only value; solos get nothing since Necromancer's self-revive already triggers a full restoration. If you run duos or trios it's a fair 3 points. If you solo, skip.

Necromancer (4 points, Rank 1). A burn trait, so it vanishes after one revive. In a team you revive downed partners from 25 meters through Dark Sight. Solo it's the self-revive, full health restoration and all, after a 5 second wait. Whether that's worth 4 points plus a trait slot that burns away is genuinely debatable. Solo players who push hard tend to say yes.

Frontiersman (6 points, Rank 47). Each tool gets one extra use (two if you're solo with Catalyst). It also adds a magazine to the Quad Derringer (+4 shots) and Pennyshot (+2). Strong on tool-heavy builds chokes, trip mines, decoy heavy kits. Six points means it competes with your combat traits, so it usually waits until your gun perks are locked in.

Gator Legs and Vigor from the movement section both live here too, given their late unlocks and map or playstyle dependence.

Then there's the scarce and burn stuff you can't buy at all. Shadow Leap (scarce) lets you channel a monster from 50 meters through Dark Sight and teleport to it, killing it instantly. Remedy (burn) restores your team's health chunks by interacting with a trait spur from 25 meters away. Both are world finds, so don't budget points around them. Just know what the blue and red spurs do when you spot one, because passing up a Shadow Leap spur on a big map is a small tragedy.

The short version of all this: your first points go to Greyhound and the 1-cost defensive trio, then your weapon's combat trait, then whatever the map and your mode demand. A cheap kit you actually use beats an expensive kit you're still saving for.