Note: This guide has not been updated since April 2026 and probably does not reflect all the changes Blood Hunt mode got during its existence.
This is a second reincarnation of PVE mode in Marvel Rivals. First one was Marvel Zombies in 2025.
The basic idea is the same — small heroes pool, teams up to 4 players, clearing waves and dealing with bosses. But this time there are more things you can tune for the next run.
Difficulty levels
Basically there are three introduction levels: Normal, Hard, Extreme. Then there are 160 Nightmare levels. Every time to clear Nightmare X, you open the next 5 difficulty levels after that.
Normal
Clear waves on your way to Capwolf.
Hard
Clear waves on your way to Capwolf, then clear waves on your way to Ratatoskr.
Extreme
This time you are not only clearing waves and killing bosses, but you also is able to compete hidden objectives. If you complete all three of them, you will encounter Kingpin as a fourth boss.
The objectives are shown in the top area of the screen as keys. When an objective is completed, its hey becomes gold; black when failed.
So, it goes in this way:
- Clear waves until you reach the bridge with a barrier at the end.
- Destroy the barrier in 90 seconds to complete 1st hidden objective.
- Defeat Capwolf.
- Clear the wave in a train.
- When the train arrives, you will need to defend the area and survive. During this, find and destroy Bloodclot Buds (1 per player in the match) to complete 2nd hidden objective. The buds are small red bush-like trees.
- If the 2nd objective is completed, the next map will be “The Treehouse” instead of “The Path”.
- Defeat Ratatoskr.
- Clear waves until you reach two towers with a bridge between them, where you will need to destroy 4 Blood Crystals. Do it in 120 seconds to complete the last hidden objective.
- Defeat Dracula.
- If all the hidden objectives are completed, encounter Kingpin and defeat him too.
Nightmare 1-19
First four phases — defeat all enemies or defend the area and survive.
5th phase — defeat one of the bosses: Capwolf, Ratatoskr, Dracula, Kingpin.
Nightmare 20-160
First four phases — defeat all enemies or defend the area and survive.
5th phase — defeat one or two of the bosses: Capwolf, Ratatoskr, Dracula, Kingpin. In case of two bosses they may be the same or different ones.
Enemies
Common
Usually they are easy to deal with. The most annoying ones are Pustule Fiends. They run in groups and detonate when KO’d. This detonation can easily kill you, so the strategy is similar to the same types of enemies from Marvel Zombies — kill and run.
Elite
The big ones with shown health bars.
There are two most annoying ones — Royal Bloodguard and Darkhold Cultist:
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The first one is a big guy with a big sword. When he runs at you, he knocks you into the air. On low levels it may kill you. On higher levels it actually helps when you have a ranged build, because you can deal damage from the air.
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The second one is a druid-like guy that sucks your health and slows you down. Just go away while damaging him. Go in circles if you need to.
Capwolf
Easiest boss.
His gimmick is a mark he puts on one of the players. When he does it, he prioritize attacks against this player. To avoid it just be far away from him (although it works for a ranged build only).
When he launches into the air, you can see where he will land; there is a circle on the ground.
When he loses around half of his HP, he eventually starts “charging” an attack. You need to deal as much damage as possible during this charge. If you do, you interrupt the attack and Capwolf will be easy to kill after that.
When he is close to death, he gains a shield and begins regeneration. Break the shield and he will lose all the regenerated HP.
Ratatoskr
Easy one if you have ranged build.
Avoid blood-stain zones she leaves on the ground.
Deal as much damage as possible during her enraged state to knock her out of it.
When she charges a leap and goes into the air, she will land of the one of the players (the landing area is visible on the ground). It works kind of like s Psylocke ult. If you go all together into the circle, the damage will be split among you. Although it’s impossible to do in random queues, so just make sure she jumps on somebody but you.
Dracula
The most difficult boss to deal with.
His gimmick is a “Bloodstain”. He marks players when they take damage. The more number near the mark, the more Dracula will heal himself during one of the phases. So there are two goals with him:
- Avoid taking any damage from Dracula.
- Deal as much damage as possible to Dracula.
During the fight there are several phases that are switching one after another depending on the amount of damage Dracula got:
- The first phase is where he marks players, then “charges” his regeneration. Deal damage to him to prevent the charge and knock him into the “Weakened” state. Also avoid his shockwaves to partially clear marks from yourself.
- The second is when he creates a big sword in the middle of the battle area. They both deal damage with “sword waves”. During this Dracula disappears than teleports near one of the players, charges and dashes forward. If he misses, he is stunned for a moment.
- The third one is when both of them — Dracula and his sword — disappear. Instead a multiple flying swords appear and track players. On the top of the screen you will see counter like “Blood summons: 0 / 5”. When you kill the amount of swords it shows, this phase will goes away.
- If Dracula is damaged enough, there will be a final phase, where he says something about the stones. You will see two chained stones in the center of the battle area. Destroy them to prevent Dracula from healing back to the full HP.
- During the time you attack the stones, you will be continuously damaged. Make sure you save some healing ability charges up to this point.
- When stones are destroyed, there will be a sunlight zone in the middle of the area. If you go there, you will gain invincibility. Although it’s usually easier to just keep damaging Dracula.
Kingpin
He is only difficult when there are players in the lobby who do not understand how his “charging bubble” works.
There are multiple phases during the fight:
- The first one is when he punches, shoots big laser, and Wolverine-like grabs players. Just keep damaging and try dodge his attacks.
- The second one is when he “freezes” players. This freeze “moves” players into different realm, where they need to fight their shadows. Kill all the shadows to escape this realm and continue the fight.
- The third one is when he starts charging in a bubble around him. This bubble pushes you away, but you need to go inside, and deal the damage directly on Kingpin. This way you will prevent the charging and will be able to kill the boss right after that. If you do not prevent the charging, all the players will be killed.
- Well, actually, not killed, just got too much damage. On Nightmare 160 he deals 10k damage. Although on that level Kingping’s grab + punch deals more.
- If you play Jeff, you can avoid being killed by “bubble pop” using your ultimate.
Gear
During the run you will get tons of items. You can either use them or destroy. When you destroy them, you get currency you can use to forge new items.
Gear is more important than Traits.
Collecting gear
- Most of the time the items will be picked up automatically. Although on the first three difficulty levels it sometimes does not work (e.g. after boss fight, or when you‘re fighting in the elevator). So make sure you collect everything.
- Only you can see your items, so no need to hurry, nobody else will tough them.
- Most of the items you get are for your currently picked hero. Only a small portion is for other heroes. So, it’s nearly impossible to farm gear from your high level hero to your low level hero. It’s easy to forge it.
Wearing gear
- Make sure the gear you wear boosts the traits you picked. There are two types of gear for every slot, which relates for two types of traits. If you mess with them your build won’t work properly.
Traits
It’s your skill tree.
- You get one skill point every level. You can use it for stats upgrades (purple ones), or for ability upgrades (yellow and blue ones).
- You can reset skills any time.
- There are two profiles for every hero, so instead of resetting your current build to experiment with a new build, you can change the profile at the bottom of the screen and do it there.
- Small purple upgrades on the left side of the big purple upgrades are free when you unlock them. They change your abilities behavior.
- Basically you want either full yellow or full blue build. One of them is ranged, while other one is melee.
- For most of the purple traits you need only one point to progress on the tree. In other words, you can put one point into the purple trait, than 1-3 points into the yellow/blue traits connected to it, then one point into the every next purple traits until you reach the next yellow/blue traits. This way you get ability upgrades faster.
- Some purple traits require you to spend more points on other purple traits. In this case prefer spending them on your weak spots. E.g. max damage or max health.
Arcana
General buffs. There are two types of them:
- Permanent ones you can set in the event menu.
- Just upgrade what you like, it does not matter.
- Temporary ones you can pick during a run.
- Pick damage on bosses or total damage. If your build is melee, pick close-ranged damage. Otherwise pick damage reduction (e.g. dodge, block, etc.).
Stats
Total output boost
It’s a multiplier for all of your damage.
It has diminishing returns. E.g. let’s say your current total damage is 100. If you have 1 point of total output boost, it increases your total damage to 200. If you have 2 points of total output boost, the total damage your have is 275. 3 points → 350, etc. In other words, the “boost to damage” conversion is not linear, it’s curved. All the numbers are made up to explain what the “diminishing returns” means.
Critical hits vs. Precision hits
Basically both of them are “hits with higher damage”. Precision hits are just super critical hit. By default precision hits are more rare but deal more damage. However on higher levels you can flip the numbers the way you like.
When you damage enemies, white numbers are regular hits, red numbers are critical hits, yellow numbers — precision hits.
Builds
Two things to remember:
- Choose one type of the Traits (melee or ranged) and build everything around them. Do not mix, it works only on very low levels.
- You may not need all the traits of certain color maxed out. Sometimes you may even not need some traits at all. It’s okay to spend points on purple abilities instead of not that useful yellow/blue abilities.
Jeff the Land Shark
Yellow build (melee) is based around Hide and Seek ability (dive), while the blue build (ranged) is based around his primary fire. Both builds use bubbles to increase the damage output.
On lower levels blue build feels better because it’s easier to deal with enemies and avoid damage. You do not need much damage mitigation. Also, bubbles work on blue build in a way that you spit them, “boost” them with your primary, then they pop. It helps to deal with hoards of enemies, but it’s much harder to use them against bosses.
On higher levels it’s harder to make blue build to work, because the damage is not enough. On yellow build you can use your ultimate (with “Big Fish Frenzy” trait) to boost the damage and your size (which increases the collision with enemies), but you can not do the same on blue build.
Solo run
Since you can start solo and leave with no penalty, you can pick the levels you like. If you’re this kind of person, then...
- Prefer the timer-based levels, because they are faster than count-based. Every time you kill a bunch of enemies, timer will skip a second or two.
- If you got Dracula as a final boss, consider reseting if you do not want to spend too much time with him.