Hunter Traits and Progression

By Scot·Updated August 11, 2026

Tactical Quick Answer

Hunt: Showdown runs two progression tracks side by side. Your Bloodline is the account rank from 1 to 100 that permanently unlocks traits, weapon variants, and cosmetics, while each individual hunter levels from 1 to 50 and loses everything on death. Traits split into permanent, burn, and scarce types, and Quartermaster, Greyhound, and Doctor are the highest priority picks for most builds.

Hunt: Showdown has two progression tracks running in parallel. Your Bloodline is your account-level rank that permanently unlocks weapons, items, and traits in the store. Your Hunter is the individual character you bring into matches, who earns XP, gains trait points, and dies permanently if killed.

Understanding how these two systems feed each other is how you progress efficiently and recover quickly from losing your best hunter.

Bloodline Progression

Your Bloodline rank goes from 1 to 100. As of the 1896 relaunch, all base weapons and their standard ammo are available from Bloodline rank 1. Ranking up your Bloodline unlocks traits, weapon variants, and cosmetic rewards.

How you earn Bloodline XP:

• Extracting from matches (flat XP bonus for surviving)
• Killing AI enemies (Grunts, Hives, Armored, Immolators, Meatheads)
• Killing enemy hunters
• Finding clues
• Killing and banishing bosses
• Picking up bounty tokens

Key unlocks by Bloodline rank:

Rank	Notable Unlock
1	All base weapons and standard ammo, plus Quartermaster and Necromancer
12	Fanning (critical for pistol builds)
36	Poacher and Vigilant
62	Poltergeist, the last trait any Bloodline rank grants
100	Prestige becomes available

warning

Trait unlock ranks move constantly. Fanning alone has sat at rank 87, 36, 17, 13 and now 12 across its patch history, and Quartermaster has moved between 24, 45, 51, 22 and now 1. Treat any rank number you read, including these, as a snapshot and not a fixture.

Note also that ranks 63 to 100 grant no new traits at all. They pay out Hunt Dollars only, so you have your full trait access well before you hit the Prestige threshold.

Weapon Variants: Instead of Bloodline rank gating, weapon variants (Marksman, Deadeye, Sniper, Precision, Silencer, Uppercut, etc.) unlock by earning XP with the base weapon family. Use the Winfield enough and you unlock its Aperture, Swift, and Marksman variants. Use the Nagant and you unlock the Silencer, Precision, and Deadeye variants.

info

Bloodline unlocks are permanent within a prestige cycle. Once you unlock a trait or variant, you can buy it for any hunter as long as you have Hunt Dollars. Losing a hunter does not re-lock anything.

Hunter Leveling

Each individual hunter earns XP independently. Hunter levels go from 1 to 50.

• Levels 1 to 50: Leveling grants upgrade points that you spend on traits for that hunter.
• Level 50: Your hunter is maxed and becomes eligible for retirement. There is no earlier retirement threshold.

When your hunter dies, their level, traits, and gear are gone. You start fresh with a new recruit.

Retiring Hunters

When a hunter reaches level 50 (the maximum), you can retire them from your roster. Retirement removes the hunter permanently but awards a flat 10,000 Bloodline XP bonus.

warning

Retirement is only available at level 50. You cannot retire hunters early. This is a deliberate change from older versions of the game. If you remember retiring at level 25, that option no longer exists.

When to retire:

• You want to push your Bloodline rank to unlock a specific weapon or trait.
• The hunter's current loadout is not worth keeping (cheap gear, mediocre traits).
• You need to free a roster slot for a better recruit.

When NOT to retire:

• The hunter has a strong trait build you cannot easily replicate.
• The hunter is carrying expensive gear you want to keep using.
• You are already at Bloodline 100 (retirement XP has no benefit unless you are about to prestige).

Maxing vs. Retiring

Strategy	Benefit	Risk
Max to 50	Bonus Bloodline XP on every match. Strong trait build.	Losing a level 50 hunter with 15 traits hurts.
Retire at 50	Flat 10,000 Bloodline XP payout. Frees a roster slot.	You spent many matches building this hunter only to delete them.

The best approach depends on your goal. If you need to push Bloodline XP fast, retire at 50 and cycle through hunters. If you have a hunter with a perfect trait build, keep them alive and farm Bloodline XP through match performance. Use the Death Cheat trait to protect high-value hunters during those final dangerous levels.

Traits

Traits are individual perks that modify your hunter's abilities. You spend upgrade points (earned from hunter leveling) to equip traits from the trait menu.

Traits come in four types, shown by the color of the Trait Spur: Regular (white), Burn (red), Scarce (blue), and Event traits that come and go with seasonal content. A trait can carry both the Burn and Scarce tags at once, and that handful is the rarest in the game.

Separately from those types, traits are grouped by role into Offensive, Defensive, Movement and Supportive. Some also carry a Solo or Catalyst tag, which unlocks extra effects under specific conditions.

Permanent Traits

Standard traits that stay with your hunter until they die. These are the backbone of your build.

Combat and Gunplay:

Trait	Effect	Priority
Fanning	Allows rapid hip-fire with single-action pistols.	High. Turns pistols into close-range weapons.
Levering	Allows rapid hip-fire with lever-action rifles and shotguns.	High for Winfield and Terminus users.
Bulletgrubber	Catches the ejected round when you interrupt a bolt-action or lever-action reload, saving ammo.	Medium. Prevents wasted rounds on long-ammo weapons.
Iron Eye	The current trait for scoped aiming. Iron Sharpshooter no longer exists, having been merged into Iron Eye back in Update 1.15, along with Iron Devastator and Iron Repeater.	Medium for long-range players.
Scopesmith	Keeps you in scope view after firing, instead of kicking you out of the sight.	High if you use scoped weapons. Note that it has nothing to do with scope glint, which is not a mechanic in this game.
Steady Aim	Reduces hip-fire crosshair bloom.	Medium. Improves snapshot accuracy.
Blast Sense	Highlights gunshots and explosions within 200m while in Dark Sight. Available from the start.	High. Turns audio guesswork into a visual read on where fights are.

Movement and Stamina:

Trait	Effect	Priority
Greyhound	Increases sprint speed.	High. Getting to clues, bosses, and extractions faster is always valuable.
Determination	Faster stamina recovery.	High. Pairs with Greyhound for sustained mobility.
Lightfoot	Reduces fall damage and noise from jumping/landing.	Medium. Good for vertical maps like DeSalle.
Gator Legs	Faster movement speed in water.	High on Stillwater Bayou. Low priority on dry maps.
Kiteskin	Reduces fall damage.	Low priority. Only relevant on DeSalle and Mammon's Gulch.

Utility and Awareness:

Trait	Effect	Priority
Quartermaster	Adds +1 Weapon Capacity, taking you from 5 to 6. Update 2.8 reworked it into this generic bonus and raised its price from 6 to 8 Upgrade Points.	Very high. Opens two Size 3 weapons, or a 4 and a 2.
Doctor	Fully heals a health chunk instead of partially healing it when using a Medkit.	High. Stretches your healing resources across longer matches.
Physician	Faster Medkit use speed.	Medium. Good in fights where you need to heal between exchanges.
Vulture	Lets you loot dead hunters even after they have been fully searched.	Low. Niche use for finding extra supplies.
Packmule	Extra item from ammo boxes and supply points.	Medium. Keeps your ammo and consumables topped up across the match.
Serpent	Interact with clues, rifts, banishable targets and abandoned bounty tokens from 25m, rising to 50m for solos.	Situational. Lets you grab bounties without entering the lair.
Vigilant	Highlights traps (trip mines, bear traps, concertina) through Dark Sight.	Medium. Prevents cheap deaths from traps in compound fights.
Witness	Reveals dead hunters and monsters in Dark Sight within 75m.	Medium. Reads where fights happened and which routes enemies took.
Pain Sense	Reveals bleeding, poisoned and burning hunters in Dark Sight within 150m. Renamed from Poison Sense in Update 2.1 with its scope widened.	High if you play aggressively. Tells you who is already hurt.

Update 2.8 raised several trait prices alongside the inventory rework. Quartermaster went from 6 Upgrade Points to 8, Frontiersman from 5 to 6, and Hundred Hands from 2 to 3. Budget for those before you plan a build around them.

Burn Traits

Marked in red, burn traits are consumed after a single use. Once triggered, the trait is gone from your hunter and you must spend upgrade points to re-equip it.

Trait	Effect	Notes
Necromancer	Revive a dead teammate at range through walls, or self-revive as a solo after a 5 second wait.	Extremely powerful in squad play. It is the one Burn trait that is not also Scarce, so unlike the rest you can simply buy it back.
Resilience	Revive with more health chunks restored.	Useful in trios where revives happen frequently.

Scarce Traits

Marked in blue, scarce traits cannot be purchased. You find them during matches from Trait Spurs on the map or as boss rewards. Update 2.8 gave the Spurs in Watch Towers, Hunting Towers, and other points of interest a chance to spawn a sealed variant of the trait, and it put a guaranteed un-sealed Catalyst Spur in every Military Supply.

Trait	Effect	Notes
Shadow	Reduced noise from movement.	Cannot be bought.
Catalyst	Unlocks conditional bonus effects on Beastface, Kiteskin, Vigilant, Pain Sense and Frontiersman when those traits are equipped.	Added to the core game in February 2026. It is a multiplier on traits you already run, not an intel tool.

warning

Ghoul, Conduit and Whispersmith are not Scarce traits. All three are ordinary purchasable traits, so you do not need to hunt for them in-world. And Tomahawk no longer exists at all, having been merged into Assailant in Update 1.15. Assailant is the current trait that improves thrown knives and axes, which is also what the sledgehammer-throw achievement needs.

Dual-Classification Traits (Burn + Scarce)

Some traits carry both the Burn and Scarce tags. They are consumed on use AND can only be found in-world, making them the rarest and most valuable traits in the game.

Trait	Effect	Notes
Death Cheat	Your hunter survives one lethal hit during the match.	Saves a fully-built hunter from permadeath. Cannot be rebought. Must be found again, and Update 2.8 slightly reduced the chance of a Hellborn dropping it.
Rampage	Increased fire rate after a kill.	Extremely aggressive snowball trait. One use per match.
Relentless	Reduced stamina cost on melee attacks after a kill.	Strong for melee-heavy builds.
Remedy	Gain health on a successful kill.	Sustain during chain fights.

Recommended Builds for New Players

The Survivor (Levels 1 to 30)

Focus on staying alive and extracting. Kills and bounties come later.

Priority traits:

1. Greyhound (run faster, escape fights)
2. Doctor (get more from each Medkit)
3. Determination (recover stamina faster)
4. Physician (heal faster under pressure)

Loadout: Vetterli 71 + Caldwell Pax. Cheap, effective, replaceable.

The Bounty Hunter (Levels 30 to 60)

You are comfortable fighting. Now optimize for boss kills and extractions.

Priority traits:

1. Quartermaster (carry larger weapon combos)
2. Fanning or Levering (depending on your sidearm)
3. Greyhound
4. Doctor

Loadout: Berthier + Uppercut or Winfield (with Levering) + Pax.

The PvP Fighter (Levels 60+)

You are hunting other hunters, not just bosses.

Priority traits:

1. Quartermaster
2. Fanning
3. Scopesmith (if using scoped weapons)
4. Bulletgrubber
5. Greyhound
6. Necromancer (burn trait, for squad play)

Loadout: Mosin-Nagant or Berthier + Uppercut. Bring Concertina Bombs and Fire Bombs for area control.

Prestige

Once you reach Bloodline rank 100, you can Prestige. This resets your Bloodline rank to 1, re-locking all weapons and items. In return, you earn:

• A reward at every one of the 100 prestige levels, not a single one-time payout. Most levels let you choose between +2,000 Hunt Dollars and a +10% XP boost, 11 levels offer a random Blood Bond skin, 17 grant an exclusive hunter or skin automatically, and 8 hand over 100 Blood Bonds.
• Profile milestones that track how far you have gone.
• The satisfaction of doing it again.

info

Prestige is optional. If you like having the full arsenal available and do not care about prestige badges, there is no gameplay benefit to resetting. Many experienced players sit at Prestige 0, Rank 100 permanently.

If you do prestige:

• Your Hunt Dollars reset to 8,000. Do not stockpile currency expecting it to carry over.
• Your contraband items and variant unlocks are wiped. You keep Legendary skins.
• Accept that your first 20 to 30 ranks after prestige will be rough. All base weapons are still available, but you lose your variant unlocks and need to re-earn them through weapon XP.
• Prestige goes up to 100 levels. Each prestige level has its own badge. Reaching Prestige 100 is an extreme long-term grind (thousands of hours).

The Hunt Dollar Economy

Hunt Dollars are earned through gameplay and spent on hunters, weapons, tools, and consumables.

Income sources:

• Extracting from matches (base payout scales with how much you did in the match)
• Killing enemy hunters (bonus per kill)
• Finding clues and banishing bosses
• Completing daily and weekly challenges

Spending priorities:

1. Recruit hunters with good starting traits (saves you upgrade points)
2. Buy weapons that match your playstyle and current Bloodline tier
3. Stock consumables (Vitality Shots and Antidote Shots are worth the cost)
4. Do not buy gear you cannot afford to lose. If one death wipes your bank account, you are overspending.

tip

If you run out of Hunt Dollars, use free hunters. The game always offers a few free recruits with basic loadouts. They have random (often mediocre) traits, but they cost nothing. Use them to rebuild your bank on budget runs.

Frequently Asked Questions

At what level can you retire a hunter in Hunt: Showdown?

Level 50, and only level 50. Retirement removes the hunter permanently and pays out a flat 10,000 Bloodline XP bonus. If you remember retiring at level 25 from older versions, that option no longer exists.

What are burn traits in Hunt: Showdown?

Burn traits are marked in red and are consumed after a single use, then gone from that hunter forever. Necromancer and Resilience are the two, and you have to spend upgrade points to re-equip them after every use.

How do you get scarce traits?

You cannot buy them. Scarce traits are marked in blue and come from Trait Spurs on the map or from boss rewards. Shadow and Catalyst are examples, along with the Burn and Scarce group like Death Cheat. Note that Ghoul, Conduit and Whispersmith are ordinary purchasable traits despite often being listed as scarce, and Tomahawk no longer exists at all since it was merged into Assailant.

Is prestige worth it in Hunt: Showdown?

It is optional. Prestiging resets your Bloodline to rank 1 and your Hunt Dollars to 8,000 and wipes unlocked equipment, traits and hunters, though your statistics, Legendary unlocks and Blood Bonds survive. Unlike a one-off reward, every one of the 100 prestige levels pays out something, usually a choice between 2,000 Hunt Dollars and a 10 percent XP boost. Many experienced players still sit at Rank 100 without prestiging.

Which traits should a new Hunt: Showdown player buy first?

Greyhound, Doctor, Determination, and Physician. That set keeps you moving, stretches your Medkits, and gets you out of fights you should not be taking while you are still learning the maps.

What to Read Next

• Weapons and Loadouts. Spending Hunt Dollars sensibly.
• PvP and Strategy. Dark Sight traits and their counter-play.
• Achievements. Progression achievements and prestige milestones.
• Tips and Tricks. Moving trait ranks, scarce trait sources, and what Prestige actually pays.

Did you know?

Retiring at level 25 has not been possible for years

Level 50 is the only threshold, and it is also the max level. Retirement removes that hunter permanently and pays a flat 10,000 Bloodline XP, which is exactly what makes Convalescent Home and its 25 retired hunters such a long grind.

All Hunt: Showdown tips and tricks