Hunt: Showdown Bloodline Ranks and Unlock Order

The three tiers

Rank 1 to 33 is Tier I, 34 to 66 is Tier II, 67 to 100 is Tier III. The tiers no longer change hunter recruitment the way they did before the 2.0 update; they now mostly matter for the first-time achievements.

What unlocks, and when it matters

Early ranks hand out the tools that fix beginner problems. Throwing knives at rank 2 give you a silent way to kill AI. Beastface at 3 stops animals from panicking as easily. Resilience at 4, Levering at 6, Iron Eye at 9, Fanning at 12, Serpent at 14 for reaching clues and rifts through walls, Scopesmith at 22, Vulture at 24 for extra loot from bodies, Bulletgrubber at 26 so a partial reload does not eat a round, Gator Legs at 56 for water, Silent Killer at 60 for melee without noise. Later ranks add the specialised consumables and the ammo types, and by the sixties you have everything that changes a fight.

Trainee mode is the real beginner window

Until you first reach rank 15, you are in Trainee mode: your hunter is not permanently lost if they die or fail to extract. That is a protected window of roughly the first dozen hours, and it is the correct time to take fights you would otherwise avoid. Players who spend Trainee mode hiding in bushes arrive at rank 15 with no fighting experience and immediately start losing hunters permanently. Players who spend it taking every fight they can reach arrive at 15 knowing what a shotgun does at four metres.

How bloodline XP actually accrues

Everything you do gives hunter XP. Hunter levels pay bloodline XP at milestones. If the hunter dies, half of the accumulated XP goes to your bloodline and the hunter is gone. If the hunter survives, the XP stays on the hunter up to level 50; past 50, everything flows straight into the bloodline instead. At hunter level 50 you also unlock retirement, which converts the hunter into 10,000 bloodline XP. That is the fastest single source in the game and the reason a level-50 hunter is a decision rather than a trophy.

When to retire and when to keep going

Keep playing a level-50 hunter while they survive, because every match adds bloodline XP directly. Retire them when you are close to a rank threshold and want the payout guaranteed, or when the loadout has become expensive enough that losing them would sting. Past rank 100, every additional 25,000 bloodline XP pays another 1,000 hunt dollars, so the counter keeps running. Traits are the other half of rank progression, and the trait rankings explain which ones are worth the points once they unlock. The prestige page covers what happens if you choose to reset.