Any level ยท run preparation
Building a Loadout You Can Lose
Pack a raid kit priced against what you can rebuild tonight, using Combat Bags, loadout presets, share codes and the tavern brew before you ever queue.
Price the run before you pack it
Every kit decision comes down to one question asked before you open the warehouse: if this run ends badly in the first ninety seconds, what have I lost? Carried loot goes. Gear on your body goes. What sits in Pip's Pouch is the secure part, and its upgrades arrive as time-limited vouchers that expire whether you use them or not, so the pouch you had last week may not be the pouch you have tonight. The full breakdown of what survives is in what you lose when you die in a raid.
The answer changes what you bring. A run to learn a route, a run to gather materials for a camp level and a run where you intend to fight other hunters have completely different acceptable loss figures, and the mistake almost everyone makes early is packing the fight kit for the material run. Decide the purpose first and let it set the budget.
Replacement matters more than price. If losing this set means you cannot queue again tonight without grinding, the set is too expensive for the run you are about to do. If you can rebuild it from your warehouse in five minutes, you will play better, because you will make decisions based on the situation rather than on panic about your helmet. Assemble the whole thing in the loadout planner so you can see the cost in one view.
Keep the cheap kit genuinely cheap
Most experienced players run at least two standing kits. The cheap one is deliberately unremarkable: low-rarity armour, one decent weapon, and socketed jewellery carrying the affixes that matter most. It works because necklaces and rings carry no class requirement at all, so the same socketed pair follows you across characters and stays the one considered part of a kit that is otherwise disposable.
The expensive kit is what you take when the run has a reason to justify it: a boss you intend to kill, a ranked-relevant extraction, a squad night where a wipe is unlikely. It is not what you wear because you happen to own it. Gear that never leaves your character is not a trophy; it is the thing you are about to lose while doing something routine.
Between the two, keep a rebuild pile: enough spare pieces in the warehouse to reconstruct the cheap kit twice without shopping. Since equipment has no upgrade path and no salvage system, spare gear you were never going to wear is either a rebuild part or auction fodder, and the pile answers which. The equipment database is the fastest way to check whether the spares you are holding fit the class you play.
Combat Bags are a floor under a bad streak
Combat Bags are preset kits handed to you rather than assembled. They come in four tiers, Novice, Advanced, Pro and Elite, plus a custom variant. Each one is consumed when you enter a map. They come free from sources including Scavenger Squad expeditions, which run on a timer with no run risk at all.
Their real use is not the gear quality. It is that a Combat Bag lets you queue after a bad night without touching your rebuild pile. Three deaths in a row is the point where players start making bad decisions with good gear; a stack of bags means those three runs cost you nothing you had to farm. Treat them as your floor and keep a few unspent rather than burning them the moment they arrive.
The custom variant is worth setting up once you know what your cheap kit looks like, because it turns "rebuild the disposable set" into a single click. What a Combat Bag will not do is carry your gems, so the affix layer is still yours to solve.
Presets, share codes and what they do not carry
The loadout system includes a build share code that imports an equipment and gem configuration in one click, and it can go further by buying the missing pieces off the auction house for you. For copying a known-good setup, or handing your squad the same kit before a coordinated run, it is the fastest tool in the game.
There is a limit to trust here. Players report that the share code does not bring talents and skills across, and this has not been confirmed either way for the current patch. Assume it does not until you have checked: import the code, then open your talent and skill screens and verify them by eye. A build that looks right in the gear panel and is wearing someone else's talent spend is worse than one you assembled slowly yourself.
Whatever the code does or does not include, verify the same sequence as the rest of the build: weapon, skills, talents, then gems. That chain is set out in how the build system fits together, and the eight-point talent budget that has to be re-checked after every import is in talent points and weapon branches.
The gems are the part you cannot afford to lose
Gear is replaceable; a well-matched gem set often is not, because the socket rules make a specific gem hard to find and there is no way to fuse, upgrade or break down what you own. Losing a fully socketed set to a routine death is the loss that stings, and it happens to people who moved gems into their good armour and then wore it for a material run.
Two habits fix most of it. Keep the affixes you rely on in jewellery where you can, and keep a duplicate set of cheap Tier I gems permanently in the disposable kit so it is never fully naked. Pull gems out of anything you intend to sell, since the auction house lists gear and gems separately and a piece sold with gems in it takes them along.
Remember that gem effects switch off when the item holding them hits zero durability. A kit that is technically alive but broken is a kit with no affixes, which is a quieter failure than dying and easier to miss. Check condition as part of packing, not as something you notice mid-fight.
The brew is part of the loadout
Victory Wine is drunk at the tavern before you enter a map and lasts for that run only, which makes it the one layer of your affix setup you can tune per raid. Four brews exist, gated behind Tavern levels: Mortal Tonic gives two affix slots and costs nothing at all; Hero's Ale gives four in exchange for Malt and Hops; Warblood gives six for Hops and Wild Berries; Gods' Brew gives eight for Wild Berries and Crystal Nectar.
The slot limits differ in a way that matters. Mortal Tonic and Hero's Ale allow only one of each affix, while Warblood and Gods' Brew allow up to two of the same, which is how players push a single affix higher for one specific run rather than spreading thin. No reliable figures for how each brew scales have ever been published, so plan around slot counts and those limits rather than around numbers you read elsewhere.
The advice that changes outcomes is unglamorous: drink something every single time. The free tier costs nothing, and the players who skip it are almost always the ones who forgot the tavern step rather than the ones who weighed it up. The Victory Wine planner lists the brews, their Tavern gates and their materials so you can keep the ingredients stocked.
Consumables that earn their slots
Supplies are the cheapest power in a loadout and the most commonly under-packed. Healing comes in three grades: Minor Healing Elixir, Healing Elixir and Potent Healing Elixir, with Heather Nectar alongside them. Bring enough that you can commit to a fight, but not so many that you have no room for what you came to collect.
Beyond healing, pick tools that match the run's purpose rather than filling space. Eye of True Sight and Eye of Scouting buy you information before a fight starts. Shadow Dust, Silence Dust and Windcaller Wings buy you an exit. Throwing Dagger, Throwing Axe, Frostbite Trap and Firegrease Jar buy you damage without closing distance. On a material run, most of that is dead weight and the space is better spent on capacity for loot; on a contested run, an escape tool is worth more than another elixir. The item database covers what each one does.
Leave real space. The single most avoidable loss is arriving at the thing you came for with a full bag, which turns a successful run into a sorting problem under pressure.
The sixty-second check before you queue
Run the chain in order and it takes under a minute. Match your weapon to its talent branch and skills, check that the gems are in the gear you are wearing, and repair anything whose affixes might switch off. Put anything you cannot afford to lose in the pouch, leave space in the bag, and make sure your brew is active.
Then ask the exit question before you go, not after: what ends this run? A specific objective, a full bag, or a timer you set yourself. A loadout built to a purpose and a run without a stopping condition still ends the same way, and the fastest way to make an affordable kit unaffordable is to stay for one more chest.
Save the configuration in the loadout planner once it passes, so the rebuild after a loss is a click rather than an evening. If you are still deciding which pieces deserve the sockets you are carrying, work through gear rarity and what to upgrade first.