Best Zealot Build for Darktide 2023

Warhammer 40K: Darktide has come a long way since its launch, and so for those getting back into the game, here is the best Zealot build going.

The Bleed Crit Build

This build is the strongest — if not one of the best — in Darktide for the Zealot. It revolves around stacking bleed on enemies while scoring lots of critical hits. With the fast rate at which you’ll be attacking your enemies, crits and bleeding will be applied rather often, allowing you to deal extra damage to monstrosities and tough opponents.

Like with any build, you have the freedom to tweak things how you wish to make the build better serve your personal playstyle. So, I’ll be going over the essential perks and optimal loadout to achieve this build for your Zealot.

Related: Warhammer 40K: Darktide — How to unlock and use the Flamer

The Perks

For this build, you will essentially want every talent that increases your crit chance, melee damage, and relates to bleed. In the early build, Scourge, on the right side, is crucial. This will set the build-up, allowing for your critical melee hits to inflict bleed. Also, if you hit a bleeding opponent, you gain +10% critical chance for three seconds. This stacks three times. With a fast melee weapon, all it takes is one critical hit to allow you to inflict bleed and critical hits on other enemies around you.

Also, the talents on the left side in the early game are great to have as well, as they’ll boost your melee damage.

For your abilities, choose Shroudfield, as alongside other bonuses, you’ll gain +100% chance to your critical hits, allowing you to dish out damage and bleeds like crazy.

In the late game, you’ll generally prefer the right branch, as the Keystone Blazing Piety is the best for this build. It increases critical hit chance by +15% when in Fury.

With the above must-haves, alongside other melee-boosting talents, your build will be dishing out critical hits and bleed like no one’s business, which is effective against larger monsters.

The loadout

For this build to be super successful, you’ll need a fast weapon. The more hits you can perform, the more critical hits you’ll be dealing, which will snowball into mass bleeding.

The Combat Knife or other light melee weapons are great for this, as the slew of critical hits will make up for the bigger damage output by heavier weapons. If you wish to go for a heavier weapon, I’d recommend the chainsword.

As for your ranged weapon, choose whatever you’re most comfortable using.

Other Darktide guides