Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 Guide: Best Hero, Guns and Tips

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, and Auroch Digital has doubled down on everything that made the original Boltgun a cult favorite: chunky pixel-art gore, relentless hordes, and a soundtrack built to keep your trigger finger moving. The sequel adds a second playable character, a branching campaign, and four full Chaos god factions to purge. Here's everything you need to get through your first few levels without getting torn apart.

01Pick Your Hero: Malum Caedo or Nyra Veyrath

Boltgun 2 opens with a choice that shapes your whole run: play as Malum Caedo, a Sternguard Veteran of the Ultramarines, or Nyra Veyrath, a Celestian Sister of Battle. According to Auroch Digital, each character comes with "their own unique abilities, weapons, and play style," and that's not marketing filler — their starting kits and pacing genuinely differ.

Caedo is built for players who liked the first Boltgun's slower, tankier rhythm: he soaks hits, hits hard in melee, and rewards standing your ground. Veyrath is the faster, more aggressive option, built around closing distance and burning through packs of enemies before they can surround her. If you're new to the series, Caedo's sturdier kit is the easier one to learn levels with; if you finished the original Boltgun and want something that moves differently, start with Veyrath.

Neither character is locked permanently to a single playthrough save, so there's no wrong first pick — but the campaign is built around branching routes (more on that below), and replaying a branch with the other hero is one of the better reasons to go back through a level you've already cleared. Auroch Digital has pitched the pairing as two distinct ways to experience the same war, not a harder-mode/easier-mode split, so treat the choice as a style preference rather than a difficulty decision.

02Malum Caedo's Loadout and Playstyle

Caedo's signature weapon is a chainsword, the same close-range workhorse that defined the first game, now paired with new ranged options for the sequel. Expect a kit built around a lethal chainsword for melee executions, a shotgun for clearing rooms at close-to-mid range, and heavier bolt weapons as you progress. His toolkit rewards aggression in melee range specifically — charging into a cluster of weaker enemies with the chainsword is consistently faster than trying to kite them with ranged fire.

Early on, lean on the shotgun for anything still at a distance and save the chainsword for finishing blows or crowds that have already closed in. Ammo for heavier weapons is scarce in the opening levels, so don't be afraid to fall back on melee against trash enemies to conserve bolt rounds for armored targets.

Caedo's chainsword has a brief rev-up on its heavier swing, which makes it a poor panic button against something already in your face — use the quicker, lighter strikes for anything already in melee range and save the full revving attack for an enemy you can see coming. Against armored targets, closing the gap and using melee is often faster than chipping away with the shotgun from range, since Caedo's survivability lets him eat a hit or two on the approach.

03Nyra Veyrath's Loadout and Playstyle

Veyrath trades raw toughness for speed and area denial. Her signature tools are a crossbow for precise ranged kills and a flamer for torching groups of enemies in a single sweep, true to Auroch Digital's promise that you can "set them aflame with a torrent of liquid fire." The flamer is especially strong against the swarming, lower-health enemies that make up most of a level's trash — hold a choke point and let the fire do the work instead of trying to pick off fast-moving targets one at a time.

Because Veyrath is more fragile than Caedo, positioning matters more with her. Use verticality and corridors to control how many enemies can reach you at once, and keep the crossbow for anything dangerous enough to deserve a precise shot before it closes the gap.

Both heroes also pick up shared arsenal pieces as the campaign progresses, but their signature weapons set the tone for how each one plays. Here's how the confirmed starting kit breaks down before you factor in whatever you find mid-level:

Whichever hero you start with, both share Boltgun 2's broader arsenal of bolt weapons as you progress, so the signature loadout above is a starting-hours guide rather than the limit of what you'll be carrying by the campaign's later levels.

04Know the Four Chaos God Factions

Boltgun 2 pits you against enemies drawn from all four Chaos gods, and recognizing which faction you're facing tells you how to fight them. Nurgle's forces are slow but numerous and built to wear you down through attrition. Tzeentch's followers favor ranged, chaotic magic-style attacks that punish standing still. Khorne's Bloodletters and their daemonic Juggernauts charge in fast and hit hard in melee, and are best met with a chokepoint rather than open ground. Slaanesh's Daemonettes are quick and erratic, leaping around the battlefield in packs alongside Noise Marines, whose sonic weapons are some of the most dangerous ranged threats in the early game.

A simple rule carries you through most of your first run: use your shotgun or crossbow on fast, evasive Slaanesh and Tzeentch enemies before they close in, and save your flamer or chainsword for Khorne's melee rushers and Nurgle's tankier stragglers.

05How the Branching Campaign Works

Unlike the mostly linear first game, Boltgun 2 runs on a branching, single-player campaign where the path you choose determines which levels you see. Auroch Digital's own store description confirms "each branch featuring unique levels," taking you from the colossal interior of a hive city to the mangrove swamps of a jungle world, and eventually into the Ark of Omen itself. That means two playthroughs with the same character can look meaningfully different depending on the route taken.

If you want to see as much of the game's level variety as possible, avoid replaying the same branch back to back — alternate directions at each fork instead of always picking the path that looks safest. The game's optional navigation guide and automap are worth leaving on for your first run through a new branch, since they flag unexplored side-paths without forcing you to backtrack blind.

Your First Hours in Boltgun 2

1. 1Choose Malum Caedo for a tankier, melee-focused run or Nyra Veyrath for a faster, flamer-and-crossbow playstyle. Both work for beginners.2 min
2. 2Spend the opening encounters getting a feel for your hero's chainsword or flamer before pushing into tougher rooms.10 min
3. 3New Chaos factions telegraph behavior through design — pause for a second on an unfamiliar enemy to judge whether it rushes, floats, or shoots.Ongoing
4. 4Fall back on melee (Caedo) or your flamer (Veyrath) against weak enemies so bolt weapon ammo stays available for armored threats.Ongoing
5. 5At your first fork, choose a direction and finish that branch before circling back — each branch has unique levels worth seeing on a second run.5 min
6. 6Keep the optional automap enabled for your first run through any branch so you don't miss secrets or backtrack blind.Ongoing
7. 7Head into the final confrontation with full ammo across both weapon types rather than saving one for the whole fight.5 min

06Preparing for the Vashtorr Boss Fight

The campaign builds toward a confrontation with Vashtorr the Arkifane, the sequel's central antagonist, in a fight scored with an original track from guest composer Mick Gordon. Specific boss mechanics are still being documented by the community since the game only just launched, so treat any strategy here as provisional rather than a confirmed pattern. What is confirmed is the shape of the encounter: it's a dedicated final confrontation rather than a standard level, and it's built to be the loudest, most chaotic fight in the game.

Go in with full ammo reserves across both your light and heavy weapons rather than saving one weapon type for the whole fight — Vashtorr's arena is built to punish players who run dry on options. If you've been using Caedo's melee-heavy playstyle or Veyrath's flamer sweeps to conserve ammo through earlier levels, this is the fight to finally spend what you've been hoarding.

Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 - Official Launch Trailer, uploaded October 14, 2026 by Big Fan Games.

07Platforms and What's Still to Come

Boltgun 2 launched digitally on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, with a Nintendo Switch 2 version confirmed to follow at a later date rather than at launch. There's no physical release planned on any platform. The game is single-player only — Auroch Digital has stated multiplayer isn't currently planned, so any co-op or versus mode speculation you see elsewhere is unconfirmed.

If you're deciding whether to jump straight into the sequel, you don't strictly need to have finished the original Boltgun first — the sequel picks up directly after it story-wise, but the moment-to-moment shooting stands on its own. You can check current system requirements and pricing on the game's Steam store page before you dive in.

08Tips for Your First Few Hours

A few habits make the opening stretch noticeably smoother. First, commit to one character for your first full branch rather than switching — learning Caedo's melee timing and Veyrath's flamer range both take a level or two, and splitting your attention slows that down. Second, treat every new enemy silhouette as information: Boltgun 2 telegraphs faction behavior through enemy design, so a few seconds of watching a new foe before engaging tells you whether it's a rusher, a ranged threat, or something to kite.

Finally, don't sleep on the navigation tools even if you played the original Boltgun without them. With a branching campaign and more enemy variety than before, the automap saves time that's better spent purging heretics than retracing your steps through a hive city corridor you've already cleared.