Web Of The Empress EVENT – Everything You NEED To Know! | Hunt: Showdown 1896

Hi guys, REX here! Update 2.5 is right around the corner, and with it comes one of the creepiest events we’ve seen in Hunt so far – The Web of the Empress! In this video I’ll break down the new monsters, the bileweaver’s nest, tarot cards, gameplay changes and quality of life improvements so you’re fully up to speed, so without further ado – let’s dive into it!

Let’s start with the new event: The Web of the Empress

1.1 – Bileweavers

The Corruption has brought forth a brand-new monster type: the Bileweavers. These spider-like enemies hatch from eggs and are weak on their own, but swarm together to overwhelm intruders. You’ll find them around smaller web-covered areas as well as inside the massive Bileweaver’s Nest compound.

1.2 – The Bileweaver’s Nest

Inside the nest, hunters can find the following exclusive rewards if they survive the swarm:

• 2 Scarce event-exclusive weapons, which I’ll cover later in this video
• 3 random tarot cards – which will also be covered shortly!
• Destiny’s Dial – a machine that gives randomized rewards like traits, buffs, and hunt dollars, like the fortune teller machine during the Post Malone’s murder circus event
• Scarce and Burn traits
• A full restoration kit, restoring all lost health chunks
• An ammo & tool resupply box
• A sealed cash register granting between 250 and 1000 hunt dollars
• A master clue, revealing all boss locations
• As well as the familiar 4-shot boon, XP boon and Dark Sight Boost envelopes

So yeah – high risk, high reward, and probably a hotspot for PvP. Probably not a hotspot for players with arachnophobia though.

1.3 – Tarot Cards

Tarot cards are the biggest new mechanic of the event. There are 12 in total, each a single-use consumable that grants a powerful effect, often with a tradeoff. Here are the available cards and their unique effects:

• The World: Reveals all boss targets
• The Moon: Grants 2 seconds of Dark Sight Boost
• The Garden: Fully heals and cleanses all damage-over-time effects for your team
• The Fool: Copies the last Tarot Card you used in the current mission
• The Tower: Kills monsters and damages targets in a 65m radius, but sets you on fire
• The Magician: Drops a Dark Sight Decoy at your current location but causes heavy bleeding. This decoy will show up as a hunter if an enemy team scans using dark sight boost, allowing you to throw them off! I can see this being particularly useful for solo players.
• The Devil: Reduces sway and spread for weapons until you’re downed, then destroys a health chunk. The effect does not work for shotguns.
• The Sun: Grants an increased health regeneration buff for 60 seconds.
• The Judgement: Doubles the duration of your buffs, but drops your health to 1
• The Hanged Man: Allows you to spectate the nearest enemy Hunter briefly. They’ll get a warning afterwards
• The Empress: Grants Catalyst, Necromancer, and one random scarce or burn trait. Traits are granted in the mentioned order and cannot exceed the maximum amount of traits. I imagine this card will be incredibly popular amongst solo players.
• The Chariot: Swaps locked and unlocked extraction points for all teams, destroying one health chunk. I’ll cover this in depth in a minute!

As mentioned earlier, 3 random Tarot cards can be found in the Bileweaver’s nest. They can also be found at some web-covered locations and acquired as part of the Dark Tribute rewards in the menus. The first dark tribute reward always grants 2 random tarot cards, while the consecutive 3 rewards grant 1. Tarot cards carried by enemy hunters may also be stolen by looting them if you have available consumable slots.

And just to make learning the cards easier, each tarot card has a tooltip that shows its effects when you inspect it.

1.4 – Locked Extraction Points

With this event, Crytek has added a central extraction point to each map – but it starts locked. The only way to open it is by using the Chariot card. On top of that, one other random extraction point will always start locked.

When a Chariot card is used, all extracts swap between locked and unlocked, but there’s a global cooldown of 5 minutes. The Chariot also can’t be used in the last 5 minutes of the match, and there’s a small status icon with a timer so you know when the global cooldown ends. Let’s be real, we all know what would happen without these limitations!

Now that we’ve covered the event mechanics, let’s dive into some gunplay & weapon changes coming with patch 2.5!

2.1 – New Scarce Weapons

Two new scarce weapons are added with this update, and can only be found in the Bileweaver’s nest – meaning you can’t buy them with hunt dollars:

• The Caldwell Homestead 78 is a long-barreled cousin of the Rival. This weapon packs a punch at medium range, kind of like a Romero double barrel.
• The Winfield Wildland is a modified Centennial with increased damage, a longer barrel, a larger magazine, and faster reloading through a swift mechanism.

Both are treated as brand-new weapon families.

2.2 – Melee Improvements

Melee weapons and attachments now have slightly increased reach, and hit detection is more consistent. These changes focus on melee attack swipes, and for the most part do not affect stabs, buttstock hits or pistol whips.

2.3 – General Weapon Balance

• The Mako is seeing reduced vertical recoil, improved weapon switch speed and shot animation to be more in line with other long ammo rifles.
• The Vetterli Cyclone is nerfed with 10% lower muzzle velocity and slightly increased reload time. This is a result of the weapon becoming a bit too powerful following the earlier update to body part multipliers.
• Throwing world weapons is now more consistent as they can now all kill hunters with a single throw. This should make the hammer throw achievement easier to achieve! Additionally, their damage to AI has been improved:
  • The Sledgehammer and Axe now one-shot Armoreds and Immolators
  • The Pitchfork one-shots Armoreds, while it takes two hits to kill Immolators
  • The Shovel require two hits on both.

3.0 – Gameplay Updates

• World weapons can now be thrown by default without the need for the Assailant trait. This is a long requested feature that I am very happy to see implemented and should make for some incredibly hilarious moments going forward!
• Thrown tools that can be picked back up now highlight in Dark Sight, which is also an amazing quality of life change!
• Weapons from boxes, towers, and saddlebags may now spawn with custom ammo, which should be significant both for restocking ammo, upgrading your weapons mid-game and especially for naked run challenges!
• Tool boxes now have a chance to give stronger consumables like regen shots, poison bombs, concertina bombs, and even dark dynamite satchels!
• Pickable lanterns can now ignite if damaged by fire, which I imagine will have some absolutely lit functionality!

3.1 – Powder Kegs

The Powder Keg acts like a mini red barrel, which can be picked up and deployed or shot directly, and it’ll explode after a short time. Like explosive barrels, fire damage instantly detonates the powder kegs!

On top of everything we’ve covered so far, this update brings a range of META and quality of life changes, as well as a new battle pass! Here are the most significant changes:

3.2 – Auto-select settings
A small but neat quality of life option has been added, as weapons, tools and consumables you pick up now auto-equip. All of these settings are ON by default, but you can toggle each individually if you prefer the old behavior.

4.1 – Bounty Clash

Tarot cards are now part of event item spawns in Clash. I think it will be very interesting to see how that plays out, and whether clash will be a good mode for farming cards for later use!

4.2 – Audio changes

Several audio fixes have been implemented.

• Hunter footsteps are now more consistent across surfaces.
• Shotgun slugs now have a unique firing sound
• The New Army pistol now sounds beefier
• Additionally, footsteps and fuses are easier to hear during loud fights.

4.3 – UI changes

The menus have been improved further!

• The home screen has been removed, which means the lobby is now the central hub.
• You can now switch between game modes directly, without reforming your party.
• A new Career tab has been added for progression details.
• The Last match stats and team details are now visible in the lobby.
• Duos can now search for a random third teammate when queuing trios – which I believe a lot of you have been wanting for a while!

Next up, some gear screen improvements have been made:

• Traits are now visible with your loadout
• You can now clear all traits with one click with a confirmation popup
• And finally, double-clicking now equips weapons instead of opening item details.

4.4 – Cosmetics & Battle Pass

• Cosmetic rarities have been simplified: everything is now Legendary or Mythic.
• Mythic items are event exclusives and show which event they’re from.
• The battle pass screen now lets you directly recruit hunters or apply cosmetics as soon as you unlock them.
• As always, this event brings a new battle pass which contains unique weapon skins, animations, charms, blood bonds and hunters!

Here are the new hunters featured in the battle pass:

• Stormseer, unlocked at level 1
• The Hanged Man, unlocked at level 19
• And The Empress, unlocked at level 38

And that wraps up the Web of the Empress update! This patch brings creepy new enemies, powerful tarot card mechanics, and a ton of quality-of-life improvements that should shake things up in the bayou. As always, I will leave a link to the full patch notes in the description as soon as they are available, so make sure to check those out if you want even more details!

If you found this video helpful, make sure to leave a like and drop a comment with your thoughts on the new Bileweavers and Tarot cards! Don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss future updates and mastery guides!

Thanks so much for watching, and until next time – I’ll see you in the bayou!