The Most SATISFYING Rifle! Sparks Mastery | Hunt: Showdown 1896

Intro

Hi guys, Rex here!
The Sparks is the second most powerful rifle in Hunt: Showdown, only beaten by the Nitro Express.

This rifle hits like a truck, dealing a whopping 149 damage!

Because of this insane damage, the sparks will oneshot to the torso if a hunter has lost a health chunk OR if they are missing any health at all.

The sparks fires long ammo and has four special ammo types.

FMJ ammo reduces the bullet speed but increases penetration power and damage retention over distance.

Incendiary long ammo sets hunters on fire up to 40 meters away with the first hit, unless they have the salveskin trait, in which case it takes two hits instead. One thing worth noting is that these bullets cannot penetrate surfaces at all.

Third, we have poison ammo – which inflicts the poison effect on impact. Poison impacts your hearing and vision and prevents you from healing for as long as the effect persists. Additionally poison ammo, like incendiary, will not penetrate any surface.

Finally, the new subsonic ammo greatly reduces bullet speed but makes your shots a lot harder to hear from a distance, especially when fired from a silenced weapon.

When you’re playing the sparks, you may want to consider taking the brand new “fast fingers” trait, which allows you to prepare 3 extra bullets between your fingers for faster reloads.

The sparks has three main variants: the regular sparks, the silencer and the sniper rifle.

I played all three variants over a few streams, and this video features the best rounds.

At the end of this video I will give you my thoughts and recommendations for the sparks, but without further ado – Let’s dive into it!

Thoughts & Recommendations

After having played the sparks for a few days, my experience was roughly as expected.

I am a huge fan of the sniper variant, in fact it is probably one of my favorite weapons in the entire game.

Not surprisingly, my sniper rounds went really well and I thoroughly enjoyed it.

As for the regular sparks, it’s not something I typically play, especially since I have played solo for most of my playtime. I found it quite hard to make it work for me, but I was able to get some decent kills and rounds with it overall.

I mostly played regular ammo for the sniper, and a mix of regular and incendiary for the other two variants.

The reason for this is that when I snipe I am almost always going for headshots, and hence fire ammo doesn’t feel necessary.

The benefit of fire ammo aside from being able to set hunters on fire is that you char some of their health on impact, making them a oneshot to the torso following the first hit, and for this reason it is very powerful on this weapon, especially for the regular and silenced variant.

I don’t feel like poison ammo is worth it in comparison to regular or incendiary ammo, as it is very easily countered by an antidote shot, and subsonic reduces to velocity so much that I find it very hard to use and not really worth it for this weapon.

Similarly, FMJ doesn’t feel worth it given the massive velocity reduction and lower drop range, but for regular sparks gameplay on close to medium distance it could be really good for wallbanging.

What do YOU think about the sparks, and what is your favorite sparks variant? Let me know in the comments, and until next time – I’ll see you in the bayou!