World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap is essentially a Tower Defense game with very strong action-RPG elements, using the battle system and the controls from The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing series. You can choose your character from the three available classes (Mercenary, Sorceress or Marksman) and you will command your solitary hero through various maps, where you must build and maintain deadly traps to fight the swarms of monsters with the additional help of your character’s weapons and special skills.


The single player campaign offers 13 separate maps that you can all replay on various difficulty settings. You can fight your way through the maps of the whole campaign with the same character, leveling up your hero and gradually upgrading your traps.


If you are tired of the single gameplay, you can always switch to the cooperative mode or try the PvP matches.

World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap will lead you to a truly grim and violent fantasy setting, straight into the hidden regions of the Ink, the mysterious otherworld featured the Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing games. This is where a lost civilization built a chain of strongholds to keep the horrors of the otherworld at bay. These empty forts used to be the first line of defense in every cycle when the black heart of the Ink opens up for a while and discharges new hordes of monsters. They will try to break through to the ordinary world, but their only pathway leads through these underground mazes and silent forts, which are filled with ancient traps, magical wards, powerful enchantments and rusty machines… but sadly they have long been abandoned.


Now the next invasion is here and the fate of the world rests on the shoulders of some unfortunate souls who are in charge of these deadly labyrinths: The Sorceress, who has been trained to use the power of the Ink, the Mercenary, who foolishly accepted a new job that landed him here all alone, and the Marksman, who has only travelled here to hunt down legendary beasts, but now he also has to save the world.

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In-game controls:

: Move

: Activate skills

: Build traps and other interactions

: Drink health potion

: In-game menu

: Map / Wave info

: Character sheet

: Slow down game speed

: Increase game speed

: Zoom in

: Zoom out


In menus see navigation and button functions displayed below the menu panels.

Once you’re ready to play, press to enter the character creation window. Choose you character class, name your character. In the Main Menu select the Single Player option to begin your adventure.


The first battle

Your first assignment is the defense of the Darkmoor stronghold. Select it on the Campaign map to see details about this battle.


Select the difficulty level of the assignment, then start the battle. Later you can choose different game modes and more powerful tiers as well.

This section will teach you the most important aspects of monster slaying.

Battle basics

Battles in World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap are action RPG - tower defense hybrid skirmishes, where you have to fight waves of monsters with traps and your character.


Gates and paths

These nasty creatures come in swarms from the heart of darkness through the Chaos Portals and they try to reach the Gates and enter the real world. Gates are domes of blue energy on the pedestals. The red line that runs towards the gate shows the path the monsters will take to get there. Follow it using the and find a suitable spot to fight.


Gate points and dying

If a monster reaches the Gate (or if you die) it costs you Gate points. The green bar tracks how many you have left. The red bar shows how many monsters are left in the wave.


Rewards

Your mission on each map is to stop the incoming waves of monstrosities: depending on how successful you were in your task (considering your difficulty settings and the number of beasts that managed to get through your Gate), you earn Research points, which could be used to upgrade your traps later.


You earn Experience Points for killing monsters as in all ARPGs, and after you finish a map you receive loot crates.

In the upper right corner, you can see the Automap. The green bar below it show how many gate points you have left. The red bar shows how many monsters are left in the wave.


Your available quests are displayed below the wave bar.


The orb in the lower left corner displays your resources, while the Action panel in the lower right is dedicated to your fighting skills and abilities.


The Essence counter above the Action panel shows how much Essence you have available, to build or upgrade traps.


You can open anytime the Wave info and map panel by pressing the button. See more about it later.

Your character will participate in the battles with skills and abilities, but the traps will do the major part of the destruction. Traps are the essential, core elements of the game – you must use them to successfully defeat your enemies.


Traps come in many shapes, ranging from mechanical wonders to magical pillars and summoning sigils. You gain or unlock new basic trap types gradually, while you are playing through the maps.


Building Traps

Press when you are standing next to a mechanical pylon or floor cover to access the trap build menu. Choose an available trap and press to build it. After you built a trap you can improve it building the available upgrades. You can also sell a trap any time, and build a new one.


Trap types

The traps come in 5 categories and each category has allocated slots on the map. Traps that belong to a given category can only be constructed on their specific slots.


Build Cost

Building traps and upgrades costs Essence. You get a set amount before each wave and you gain some more by killing monsters. You also get extra Essence after each wave that you have defeated. If you sell a trap, you will fully regain the essence cost of it.


Damage Types

Most traps have a damage type displayed in their tooltip. This determines what type of creatures the trap is effective against.

Combat basics

Besides traps, you can fight monsters with your Hero.


Use the to move around in Deathtrap. Move near objects (traps, gates, items) you wish to interact with until they are highlighted. Press the to interact with a highlighted object.


To engage a highlighted enemy, activate one of your hero’s combat skills, assigned to one of the 6 available action buttons: , , , , and . You can bind any active skills to these buttons.


Hero classes

You can choose from 3 classes: Mercenary, Sorceress and Marksman. Each class offers different skills and powers to destroy your enemies, and a specific resource as well. It means that you’ll need to change your tactics from class to class.


Mana

The Sorceress activates her battle skills using Mana. This is a resource that regenerates continuously, but the rate of regeneration depends on the situation. Mana Regeneration Rate: Standing still the Sorceress regenerates at full rate (20/sec by default). Performing any action imposes a -40% penalty and any enemies nearby impose a further -50%. These modifiers are cumulative.


Rage

The Mercenary fuels his combat skills using Rage. This resource is generated by killing enemies (at a rate of 5/kill by default). This can be increased with skills and item enchantments.


Focus

The Marksman needs Focus, to activate combat skills. This resource does not regenerate on its own. To regain Focus, the Marksman must cloak himself which automatically happens when he spends 2 seconds without attacking and away from enemies.


While cloaked, enemies ignore the Marksman. He also receives +30% to his Movement speed, 4% Health regeneration and regains Focus at a rate of 10/second by default.


Health Potions

If you sustain damaged from the hostile attacks, you can quickly regain your health by drinking potions by pressing . Note that after drinking a Healing Potion you have to wait for some time before you can drink another one.


You can open the map and get detailed information about the next wave by opening the Wave Info window (press the ).


Map/Wave info

The map gives you an overview of the monster routes and trap locations. The list on the right shows the general monster composition of the next wave,and you can check which Monster Gate they are coming from.


Starting the wave

If you’ve familiarized yourself with your skills and built enough traps, open the Wave info with the button, then press the button to start the wave.

Neutral Creatures

Many levels have treasure chests that you can loot for extra items and gold. If you want to open them, first you must defeat their guardians who will drop the key for their chest. Note that you can only defeat the guardians during waves, when they are not in Ghost form.


Flying Enemies

Always pay special attention to flying enemies, because they don’t activate the ground traps so they won’t do any damage to them.


Game speed

If you find yourself in a tough situation, you can slow the game with the game speed buttons.

This section will teach you how to improve your monster slaying abilities, traps and equipment between the battles.

Experience

In World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap, experience grants you wisdom, and with wisdom comes a brand new solution to deal with those annoying invaders. The extended and detailed character development system offers you 100 levels to achieve and more than 50 Skills per class, which you can upgrade when you level up.


Skills

At first you can access tier one skills. You have to level up your character to unlock the second and the third tier. Each skill has 10 levels to upgrade and every active skill has two secondary skills (square icons), which grant further specializations. Also there are plenty of passive skills which can aid you in the battles.


You can learn new skills and upgrade them on the Skills window available on the Campaign map screen. Select a skill and press to increase skill level or press to withdraw the change. You can reset the selected skill (and its secondary skills) with the button, this will return your skill points but cost some gold.


Assigning Skills

You can bind your skills to desired buttons by selecting one of them and then pressing Y button. Note that you can only assign active skills to buttons, not passive skills.


Attributes

You character also has Health, Damage and Armor attributes, which are increasing automatically during levelling up, and can also be effected by the equipment of your character. Each hero class has one special ability as well: Mana, Rage or Focus.


You can check your character’s abilities and various statistics at the Character sheet window, available from the Campaign map. You can also access the Inventory and the Inventory

The traps that fill the vaults of these mazes are largely products of a lost civilization, the masters of magic and anachronistic weird technology. You can fend off the invaders with 25 basic traps and more than 150 trap upgrades. Battle upgrades can be built during missions to enhance traps, while general upgrades provide permanent bonuses once purchased.


Trap Points

You gain Trap Points depending on the difficulty level of the map and how successful you were in the battle. You can improve traps in the management phase between the levels, where you can buy all sorts of upgrades from your Research Points.


Unlocking traps

Traps can also be unlocked by completing various quests and achievements in the game world. E.g. by scoring a hundred critical hits, you can unlock the Archer Post; immobilizing your enemies 250 times rewards you with the Stasis trap; kill the Great Boglord and the Monster Cage is yours.


Upgrading traps

Trap upgrades can be accessed via the Trap Management window available on the map screen. Here you can improve your traps by purchasing battle upgrades or general upgrades for them. Press to spend points or press to withdraw them. You can reset the selected trap (and its upgrades) with the button, this will return your trap points but cost some gold.

World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap features detailed equipment mechanics, comprehensive loot system and highly customizable inventory. The basic system might be familiar from the ARPGs: each character has equipment slots for armor, amulet, weapon, ring and belt, plus 3 slots for Runes.


Items can belong to the following categories: normal, magic, rare, epic, ancient and godlike. The rarer the item, the more powerful it is, enchanted with more magic abilities. Runes, are used to boost traps, not the character.


After you successfully finish the last wave of a map, you will earn treasure chests that you can loot for items and gold. Many levels have extra treasure chests, but to open them, you must first defeat their guardians who will drop the key for their chest. In the Management Phase you can sell your items or buy new ones.


Inventory

You can access to the Inventory at the Inventory tab of the Character sheet. Press / to change equipment category. Each category has an equipped item slot at the top of the list, Runes has 3 equipped slots. You can equip or remove an item with , or press to move it to you Stash (not available during battles) as inventory space is limited.


Stash

Stash is a storage place which is bound to your profile, not you character. So you can use it to store valuable equipment which you don’t use at the moment, and you can transfer equipment between your different characters.


Store

This is where you can sell the items you collect during battles or buy new ones.


Keep an eye out for special offers which allow you to equip yourself with unusually stronger items. See more about it at the Special offer section.

You can experiment with artifact crafting, which gives you new ways to acquire deadly magic items. You can access the Crafting window from the Campaign map.


Crafting

Instead of buying items, you can forge new ones yourself, which requires gold and resources. Resources are basic ingredients of the new items. During your adventures you can find or purchase various recipes, which allow you to forge brand new items from the Resources. There are various types of Resources that all resemble different gems.


Select a crafting recipe on the Crafting tab at the left side of the Crafting window and press to craft it. Required resources and gold cost are displayed below the list.


Salvage

Resources can be found in battles, but are mostly gained by breaking down items. Select an item in your inventory list on the right side of the Crafting window and press to salvage it.


You can also salvage Dream Shards. You will get randomly either 10 Emerald, Ruby, Topaz or Diamond shard and some gold for each one.


Your available resources are displayed below the inventory list.


Ancient and Godlike Items

Sometimes you’ll be able to find unique, exceptionally powerful Ancient or Godlike items. These artifacts will go into you inventory as Tier 1 items, but you can upgrade them Tier by Tier by spending Gold and Resources. The ancient items can be upgraded till Tier 5 and the Godlike items till Tier 10. With each new Tier the artifact gets a bonus enchantment, making it even more powerful and unique.


Select a Godlike or Ancient item in the inventory list on the right side of the Crafting window and press to upgrade it.


The Ink, the fog-bound otherworld of Borgovia is the raw material of creation. Legends tell about how the crystallized essence of this impossible substance can turn dreams into reality. These Dream Shards are extremely rare, but those in possession of the unique crystals can achieve great deeds… and gain access to powerful items.


Dream Shards are in-game currency that you can use in Deathtrap to take advantage of the Special Offers and buy rare and powerful equipment for your character in the Store.


Special offers may contain Epic, Ancient and even Godlike items, which can be even more powerful after upgrading them with additional enchantments. You can salvage Dream Shards to other in-game resources, which can be used to upgrade your Ancient and Godlike items and craft new equipment. See more about it in the Crafting section.

Campaign

The single player campaign offers 13 separate maps, and after you finish them you can unlock 6 more Scenario maps.


Each map could be replayed on 4 different tiers, which means that after completing a certain map, you can go back later and replay the same map with a different setup that gives you a tougher challenge.


Quests

The single player campaign offers 13 separate maps, and after you finish them you can unlock 6 more extra map.


Campaign map

The campaign map displays the available missions and show how many Campaign Stars you have earned on them in different tiers. You can choose between the missions with / buttons.


Press to select a mission and open the Mission info window. Here you can read the mission details and check the available quests. You can choose a game mode with / buttons. Default setting is the Campaign, where you can choose the tier and difficulty of the map. Higher tiers will only be available, if you already completed all the missions at least one Star. Tier 2 maps can be played only on normal and hard difficulties, Tier 3 and Tier 4 only on hard difficulty!


See the Endgame section about the other game modes: Scenario and Endless.

Scenarios

The scenarios in the endgame offer a whole wide range of new possibilities. You can set up different parameters on the Mission Info window, to increase the difficulty of the map, which on the other hand provide more rewards as well.


You can play the same 13 campaign levels plus 6 unique scenario maps with tremendous extra possibilities to try new setups and farm resources.


Endless mode

The Endless mode provide a different kind of challenge. The monsters assault your gate in endless waves, each new wave is growing more powerful. You goal is to hold the gate as long as you can.


Your wave/score record is kept on every level; you can compete your previous result or with other players on the leaderboards.

Apart from the single player experience, World of Van Helsing: Deathtrap also offers a co-op gameplay option. First of all, all 13 maps from the single player campaign and the 6 extra map can be played together with up to 4 players.


In cooperative mode only those maps can be played together which are available for every client player and the host player as well. Only the host player can start battles at the Campaign map, and start new waves.


Your character’s progress remains continuous, and as you unlock the new maps, you’ll keep on progressing in both the single and the co-op campaign.

Cooperative maps have more Gates to defend and more Chaos Portals that spawn monsters – the actual number depends on the number of active players –, and as an added difficulty these monsters are stronger and the waves are bigger. In co-op gameplay mode all players will be able to construct every single trap they have already unlocked during their single campaigns.


You can also play Scenarios and Endless battles in cooperative mode.

Versus mode allows two players to engage each other in combat. The host player will always be the Defender and the other player will challenge the host as the Attacker. Each role has to rely on completely different gameplay styles to win the battle, but equally rewarding to play.


Defender

As a Defender, your task is almost the same as in the single-player campaign. You must prevent the invading forces from entering your Gates, and you’ll still need to use the traps and your hero to achieve this goal.


Attacker

As an Attacker, you start the battle as a Spirit who is unable to directly participate in the battle, however you can possess monsters and control them as if they were characters. This way, the Attacker gains access special monster abilities. When you control a possessed monster, you can choose your own pathway through the map, so this is your chance to sneak past enemy defenses.


In spirit form no one can attack you and you can move around much faster on the battlefield than the Defender's hero. Spirits also have access to four totems that can be placed on the map to provide a boost for the nearby monsters.


The leaderboards and the rank system lets you compete with other players.


You can access the Leaderboard window on the Campaign map. You can check various ranks and campaign statistics, compering you results to the top players or your friends.


Leaderboard types:


  • Campaign: various statistics of your Campaign e.g. Monsters Killed, Largest killing spree

  • Map score: the best single or coop scores on the Campaign maps

  • Endless: the wave records on different maps in Endless game

  • Versus: the players Rank in Versus games