Best Hive Scum build in Warhammer 40K: Darktide

The best Darktide Hive Scum build for my money isn't about melee at all. Just like the Arbites before it, the Hive Scum class can be extremely strong in close-quarters, bashing enemies with his Crowbar or chem-laced Bone Saw to apply DoT effects. But does it feel different? Not really. Where the Hive Scum truly shines is as a dual-wielding gunslinger.

This is all thanks to one of the strongest abilities I've seen in Darktide—Enhanced Desperado. It was so strong in fact, that Fatshark nerfed it while it was still in early access, but it's decent even now. This state makes you immune to ranged attacks and gives you infinite bullets. Why yes, that is rather good for the first class to get dual-wield ranged weapons in the game.

If you want a melee-based Hive Scum, the leveling is very straightforward, culminating in the middle of the three trees. However, if you want something a little more fun than the pure melee carnage we're all used to, here's my favorite ranged build for the new Hive Scum class.

The best Darktide Hive Scum build

As mentioned, it's easy to put together a super strong Hive Scum melee build, but is that interesting? Not really. My favorite build for the Hive Scum and the one that's most enjoyable, turns them into a John Wick-esque gunslinger with infinite ammo and strong dodge-based survivability.

This build centres around Enhanced Desperado—a strong combat ability that lets you enter a state with infinite ammo, immunity to ranged attacks, and faster sprint. This has a short-ish cooldown (that you can make even shorter with your stim) and you can prolong it for a while simply by killing highlighted enemies.

The rest of this build focuses on enhancing your ranged attacks and damage, getting you an additional charge for your RPG blitz ability (which also does massive damage), and I've also recommended my favorite Hive Scum melee weapon you can fall back on if you do somehow find yourself out of bullets.

Best Hive Scum weapons and relics

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These are the weapons, blessings, perks I recommend for Hive Scum, but you can, of course, use whatever you enjoy while leveling to unlock these. I've also included my recommended Stimm Lab setup for the Hive Scum (this being the consumable stim they can take to grant buffs).

• Melee weapon: Crowbar
  • Blessing 1: Limbsplitter (+X% strength on your first attack every 4 seconds)
  • Blessing 2: Unstoppable Force (Fully charged heavy attacks ignore enemy hit mass and have +X% damage)
  • Perks: Melee crit chance, melee crit damage

While the Bone Saw is also a very good weapon (especially if you want something that can instantly apply DoT chem toxin to enemies), the Crowbar feels a lot more reliable damage-wise. It's quite similar to the shock maul, i.e. a fast-hitting club that can easily deal with most enemies in melee. If you use its special action, you'll spin it around, swapping to a single-target moveset where you embed the pointy end in enemies and wrench it out.

In this build, the crowbar is really your last-ditch backup, so I suggest Limbsplitter and Unstoppable Force, ensuring your fully charged attacks will kill just about anything as long as you whack it in the head in special attack mode. Especially as The Sweet Spot will give you +15% weakspot damage on top of this.

For perks, crit chance and crit damage will still be useful, as Hyper-Critical instantly kills human-sized enemies if their current health is less than two times the amount of damage of the critical strike, but as mentioned, you'll mainly be using your guns in this build.

• Ranged weapon: Dual Stub Pistols
  • Blessing 1: Speedload (+X% reload speed for two seconds after a close kill. Stacks five times)
  • Blessing 2: Sustained Fire (+X% damage on second, third, and fourth shots in salvo)
  • Perks: +X% damage (Carapace Armoured Enemies), ranged critical hit chance

Having played around with the Hive Scum's ranged weapons, the Dual Stub Pistols are definitely where it's at, both in terms of performance and style, letting you blast away to get a lot of close-range kills while you stack various modifiers. Since you'll be burning through bullets (and reloading grants you bonuses with Unload), Speedload is an obvious pick for more bullets per second.

While you could take Terrifying Barrage to suppress enemies on a close-ranged kill, I much prefer Sustained Fire. This gives you a bit more DPS on the higher difficulties when dealing with tougher targets. You might also consider Hit & Run, which gives you immunity to attacks on close-ranged kills, but I'd point out that Enhanced Desperado already gives you immunity to ranged attacks, Vulture's Dodge gives you immunity on ranged crits, and you also have melee immunity while sliding thanks to Slippery Customer.

For perks, you could take reload speed, but honestly, +X% damage against Carapace Armoured Enemies makes a world of difference. The only enemies your Dual Stub Pistols will struggle to kill are Crushers and Maulers, due to their armour. The Weakpoints in the Armor skill will give you 15% rending (armour-piercing) while in Enhanced Desperado, and this additional damage (plus Sustained Fire) will let you more reliably gun them down if you repeatedly hit 'em in the head.

You'll also want ranged crit chance, since procc-ing ranged crits has a variety of bonuses in this build, most notably, Vulture's Dodge, which gives you immunity to all attacks for one second when you land one.

In terms of relic bonuses, besides the usual health, toughness, and wounds, I recommend combat ability generation on all three for more frequent Enhanced Desperado uses, and sprint efficiency, so you can be even more mobile while gun-fu-ing your way around enemies.

• Stimm Lab: Kalma V

For this build, I recommend the lower right path in the Stimm Lab, going Kalma I, II, III, IV, and then V, each of which give you cooldown regeneration when you consume your stim. This will give you 50% increased cooldown regeneration when active, which added to the 12% combat ability regeneration on your relics, makes 62%, letting you use Enhanced Desperado more frequently.

Best Hive Scum talent and keystone levelling path

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Here are the talents I recommend picking up for the Hive Scum, though you may want to vary the order slightly when you get to those last three trees.

Hive Scum build playstyle

Now you've got the build above, here are my tips for playing both it and the Hive Scum in general:

1. Enhanced Desperado is strong

This ability is really the core of the build. Infinite ammo and complete immunity to ranged attacks let you come in clutch in most situations, whether it's reviving downed teammates, assaulting a bunch of Reaper Ogryns, or even using its enhanced sprint speed to quickly carry an objective.

While the Dual Stub Pistols have a big ammo reserve, you'll want to use this ability to mitigate the massive amount of bullets you'll be pumping out. Thankfully, if you get low, you'll always have Pickpocket to refill your ammo reserves up to 20%, which should be around 50 bullets for the Dual Stub Pistols.

2. Dodging is key

This isn't a build about blocking or pushing; instead you'll want to dodge lots. Thanks to Nimble, your dodges are extended by 25% and time dodging by 50% which also makes you very survivable in melee. You also get an additional dodge when you have a ranged weapon out, thanks to Moving Target, and you get melee immunity while sliding thanks to Slippery Customer. All this makes movement your primary means of survival.

If you're in a sticky situation and Enhanced Desperado has run out, simply keep dodging, sprinting, and sliding till its cooldown is over.

3. Use the Crowbar's special weapon action

As mentioned, I don't actually use my melee weapon much in this build, but when I do, I use the special weapon action to flip the Crowbar around and bury a fully charged attack in the head of whatever's coming at me. With the setup above, it'll deal a big chunk of damage. If you're just dealing with regular enemies, then regular bashing will be enough.

4. The Dual Stub Pistols' special weapon action is for long-range

This is especially useful against snipers. The special weapon action on the Dual Stun Pistol spins each gun, shrinking the crosshair as it does. If you fire when the crosshair is at its smallest, you can hit enemies that are very far away, such as snipers or other elites and specialists.

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