The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Walkthrough - part 4 - Gallows Bog

This post has general tips and tricks for The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing played on the PC at Heroic Difficulty. For a list of all our Van Helsing posts, click here.

Part 4 - Gallows Bog
(Hunter, Heroic Difficulty)
Gallows Bog is still melee intensive, and the enemy mobs are much larger. Kiting is dangerous to do without having already cleared areas you can retreat to, as you can end up pulling a huge swarm. The Lesovik Shamblers are generally too dangerous/tedious to melee, so kite them.

• If you don't have much room to run, start running early and circle around your pursuers. The AI seems to not be able to quickly recalculate a switch from moving to attacking so this is actually a moderately safe thing to do.
• Also, some might break off to chase Katarina, who is better on Ranged in this tactic to try to break up the mob. Or, if her health is high, let her tank briefly while you shoot at range (preferably with a HP per hit weapon) or take out stragglers.
• Obviously, this works better if you still have health enough to wait for your healing trick cooldown, or if you have HP Regeneration items.
• Leshovik Shamblers hit an area right in front of them. When they start their big swing, you can just click behind them to run around and to safety. In this way, you can handle them without needing to retreat too far if you are tight on space.

Things are pretty obvious on this map except:

• Frog statues you can rotate: Face them at the big four-armed frog statue to summon two bosses. You can snipe one boss at a time to draw it away and fight it solo.
• You have to fight four bosses to get four skeletal hands to feed the Gluttonous statue.
• There are more hands later in the game, in a temporary Ink map. If you forget to use those skeletal hands there, you can come back to the statue here.
• Look for the dead goat by the river. You must have talked to the drunk in Markovna for the goat to be searchable.
• The bombs with red wires do not explode. Grab only those for the Explosives Expert achievement. You can zoom in to your current cursor location with "N".
• Crates: These can be really hard to spot, but don't contain good loot anyway.

Essence of Electricity
The soldier minions protecting the Essence of Electricity can be troublesome as it's a lot of them shooting at you all at once and with good range. Keep them clumped so you know where they all are, and retreat to heal. Or, you can wade right in, if you have a proper build:

Huge Vila Flock
There is a very large flock of vilas just to the west of the bridge to the north side of the river. If you are having trouble because of the massed electric shocks, try running in a zig-zag pattern. That is, instead of fleeing directly away from the flock, run diagonally or sideways, forcing them to turn. High HP Regeneration really helps here. Otherwise, if you are relying on HP per hit to recover, do hit and run. If you run far enough, some of the flock can get left behind and sometimes stop following.

Final Bosses
The bosses protecting the Ink Gate to the next level are pretty easy to defeat as there is a lot of room to move. The main problem is not having minions to kill to recover your Rage -- One reason why I tried not to rely on Bash and Crushing Blow to quickly tear down Health from a boss.

• The Alchemist can heal the others, so kill him first.
• Try to keep the Judge in view because his grenade launcher does a lot of damage. Instead of running out of the blast radius, run around to his flank or rear before shooting at the Alchemist. This way, the Judge has to turn, which takes a long time -- this is safer than trying to run away from grenades.
• The wolf that regenerates quickly will flee when its health is low. At that point, shooting it is easier. Remember you can shoot off-screen by simply holding down the attack button even when it has run off screen. As long as you still have it targeted, its health bar will be displayed.