In *Hunt: Showdown*, your choice of weapon determines your playstyle for the match. These days, many players prefer to equip a melee weapon, such as a cavalry saber, a machete, a bayonet, a stock claw, an axe-sprayer, or a dagger. Melee weapons naturally offer many advantages; all of them deal high damage, and even the knuckle duster—which has the lowest damage—can take down a player with just three punches. Below, we’ll provide a detailed analysis and tips on melee weapons in *Hunt: Showdown*.
Here are some advanced tips for melee enthusiasts, shared with all you blade masters
What is a “Sword Guy”?
Nowadays, many players like to equip a melee weapon, such as a cavalry sword, a machete, a rifle bayonet, a rifle butt claw, an axe-spray, or a dagger.
Melee weapons naturally have many advantages—all of them deal high damage. Even the brass knuckles, which have the lowest damage output, can take down a player with just three punches.
However, hunters who carry melee weapons cannot all be lumped together as “Blade Men.” Those who carry melee weapons aren’t true Blade Men; they are essentially Gun Men, with the blade serving merely as a secondary tool. In most fights, they’ll still choose to use guns rather than melee weapons.
True “knife guys” are hunters who use knives as their primary weapon. They do carry guns as well, but their choice of firearms is generally quite casual—for example, the Guntan, the silenced 1873, or the Spark.
For them, however, firearms are merely tools for closing the distance. After all, if two Mosin-Nagants are engaged in a firefight from fifty meters away, it’s difficult for a “knife guy” to simply charge through by relying on positioning alone. This is where the gun comes into play: return fire while advancing, and once you close the distance to 10–20 meters, switch to your knife and charge.
Knife Men generally have a high death rate and face many natural enemies: shotguns, fully automatic Mosin-Nagants, rapid-fire weapons, and the Mauser C96 are all particularly troublesome for them.
The “Machete Man” isn’t a particularly strong playstyle; its only real advantage is that equipping one is very cheap—it won’t cost more than 1,000 yuan at most.
For players looking to boost their K/D ratio, the “Machete Man” isn’t a good choice. For beginners just starting out, it’s not a good choice either. Killing with a machete is easy, but becoming an excellent, fun “Machete Man” isn’t that simple.
I’ve been playing for a long time, but I’ve only managed a few pure knife-only map clears like this. Of course, I’ve gotten four-kills and six-kills quite often—after all, with eight players total, there’s always a chance one or two squads will be weak.
My knife-wielding teammate is also an excellent and experienced player; aside from the screenshot below, all my other knife-only map clears were completed with him.
Here are some tips and techniques for playing the Blade Master:
First, it requires high skill
The Blade Master isn’t that easy to play. You need to be very familiar with the map and have excellent positioning to ensure you can charge through a hail of bullets to the enemy’s face and take them down.
Movement and positioning are the soul of the Blade Master, but the mechanics aren’t difficult—it’s simply a matter of frantically dashing and drifting left and right while holding down the AD keys, and jumping once or twice when necessary to keep your vital areas out of harm’s way.
The key to positioning is the rhythm of your left-right drifts. Remember not to be too predictable, or you’ll be easy to read and get taken down. Also, when facing shotguns, increase your drift amplitude—shotguns are extremely dangerous, and a single misstep can get you killed instantly.
The best way to take down enemies as a Machete Man is through ambushes. Of course, I’m not a big fan of ambushes; I prefer charging head-on.
Some strategies for the Machete Man:
Ambushes are a crucial part of the game, but remember to always search nearby spawn points at the start—otherwise, getting ambushed yourself won’t be fun.
When attacking with the Machete, pay close attention to the terrain. Complex and open areas are ideal. The most annoying scenario is when the enemy runs behind a fence to attack you—trying to get around them leaves you vulnerable, and climbing over the fence is practically suicide.
Complex terrain is where the Machete truly shines; the more intricate the layout, the better. This allows you to move in and out of sight like a ghost, while also severely limiting the damage output of the enemy’s long-range weapons.
Generally, a knife-wielding player using a stealthy playstyle will hide in the grass or around a corner, waiting to ambush opponents. Once they approach, the player charges in for a strike. Whether it’s a corner ambush or a grass ambush, these attacks are nearly impossible to defend against. Whether you’re wielding a shotgun or a 999, once you’re caught off guard by a close-range strike, your chances of counter-killing are extremely slim.
Choosing Ranged Weapons for the Blade Master
There’s not much to say here. If you’re playing the Blade Master, you probably don’t care much about long guns anyway. Personally, I recommend bringing a high-damage ranged rifle like the Spark as your long gun; the Mosin-Nagant works too, though it’s so overpowered that it’s actually kind of boring to use. The Spark allows you to effectively close the distance and engage a Gunner at 50 meters. Of course, your aim has to be solid. The Spark deals high damage—a chest shot at 50 meters does 149 damage, and even at 100 meters, a chest shot still does around 120.
Since you’re aiming to go melee, you need to have a good understanding of other weapons. As a result, Blade Men’s marksmanship is generally not too shabby—at the very least, it’s above average.
Personally, I prefer crossbows. I start using a hand crossbow at level 50 and switch to a crossbow at level 70—it’s an excellent weapon. At 20–30 meters, a chest shot from a crossbow is enough to instantly kill a hunter at full health. Plus, it’s cheap, and you can recover the bolts after a kill.
With its ability to instantly kill and its silent strikes, this is the best choice for a Blade Master.
“That fool didn’t even know where the damage came from until he died.”
