The Incredible Adventures of Van Helsing - Walkthrough - part 7 - Borgova (to Secret Lair Defense mission)

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 7 - Borgova
(Hunter, Heroic Difficulty)
We previously discussed the Dreadworks where Van Helsing initially arrives in Borgova. This post discusses the rest of Borgova, until the defense of the Secret Lair.
By the time you finish the defense of the Secret Lair, you should pick up a weapon with Heal +3% of Damage done or better. Mobs get increasingly both big and tough, and your area effect attacks will help you keep your health up with this type of enchantment. If possible, get one of these for each weapon.
Because Katarina does not have damaging area effect attacks, she will does not benefit from this as much as a weapon that returns a flat amount of HP per hit.

Rookery

• Look for a white rat that is not targetable. Chase it and swing your sword at it to make it drop a Rat Liver. Eating this plus the Chicken Egg from Markovna gets you the Well Fed Achievement.
• Get the Mutant Bait from a crate near Arkady. Fish with it to get a Mutant Fish. If you or Katarina eat it, you get -10 HP. Drop it near the cat nearby the fishing line that Katarina mentions, to get a random Rare.
• MouthBeasts can use grapple more than once. On this map, you can usually pull the faster moving rats away from them first.
• Arkady sells a mask that gives +250 Poison Resistance. Great against the Spitters nearby.
• The Puddle of Goo gives -20 Poison Resistance permanently.

Lost Ink

• You can get 3 bones here, which have the same function as those in Gallows Bog. You cannot return to this Ink location, so if you forget to give the bones to the statue here, you can still use the one in Gallows Bog.

Sewage Plant

• Don't fully ascend stairs you start at: A cutscene will start and after that forced cutscene, Van Helsing can get swarmed.
• Instead, go up far enough to draw the attention of some foes and slowly pull them one small group at a time (e.g. with the Lightning spell) until the courtyard above the stairs is clear, then go up for the cutscene.
• If Katarina is at the bottom of the stairs, her Ranged mode bolts might get obstructed and not hit any targets. Switch her to Ghost mode, which will make her pick up loot from the first killed target. She will then be further above the stairs (hopefully), whereupon you can switch her back to Ranged for support fire.
• Clear the bridges of domovoi first. After that, proceed VERY cautiously because there are two big mobs that can easily end up being one huge mob.
• It is useful to have strong HP Regeneration here because you can temporarily flee and recover your health before stopping to fight the mob or kite them. The Dreadknect are the main issue because they can shoot at you while you flee. Keep moving and they should not be able to hit you, or not that often.
• You may want to clear the Lord of Domovoys and his Veteran Domovoi mob last because you need room to run and keep him off-screen.
• Try to string the Veteran Domovoi along the bridges. You can then zap the lot of them with Lightning and paralyze them with the Thunderstruck power-up. This keeps them from scattering all over the place, making it hard to run to a clear spot. Once they are paralyzed, let them have it with some sort of (preferably area effect) ranged attack.
• If the Lord of Domovoys is on-screen or near enough, he can hold Van Helsing in a bone cage and the domovoi bombs will blow him up. Ethereal Embodiment is a good way to get out of trouble. Before the Trick ends, any nearby bombs should have exploded. While the trick is active, enemies treat Van Helsing as if he weren't there, so domovoi won't plant any more bombs during that time.
• If you run far enough, the Lord of Domovoys may stop chasing and in that way you can trim down the domovoi till none are left.
• Ethereal Embodiment is also another way of possibly getting out of trouble.
• You can track the location of the Lord of Domovoys by looking for his red dot on the map -- bosses are marked by red dots.
• Help the beggar to the northwest for access to "The Hideout" ink location in the northwest corner. Between the beggar and the ink gate is a building with green light inside. Listen for a clue to get Essences in the southern part of the map.
• Help the beggar to the north for an epic hat if you give the selfless (middle) answer.

Abandoned Research Station

• The Prototype Electric Generator Plans are in the same chambers as the red button to push. To the north there is a brown, bulb-like machine. There is a crate behind that machine.
• The Ink Gate button has limited uses.

The Hideout (Ink)

• The toughest part here are the champion attacks. There are so many enemies that you really have to pay attention.
• Listen for Baroness frost bombs and move away.
• Be careful of the Baronnesses' stronger attacks which can wipe Van Helsing if several of them end up using their attacks at the same time. Otherwise, just kite the stronger groups until they are strung out or trimmed down to manageable numbers.

Industrial Zone

• Hookbeasts
• Near the starting area are two Hookbeasts. They can ram and fling Van Helsing back. Until you clear the vodyanoi, do not get behind it, or Van Helsing can be flung into more monsters further away, drawing them into the fight.
• Continuously hitting them stops them from charging, apparently. But their regular melee attack is still very powerful.
• Rush and run around to side or behind, forcing it to turn before it can attack. Bash/Crushing Blow it quickly a few times to reduce health quickly.

Secret Lair Defense

• Use Grind-O-Pit at the chokepoints before the two rooms, and put Wolves near the rooms to slow enemies down so that the Grind-O-Pit has a chance to work and you can rush Van Helsing about. Put a couple in the back as backup against stragglers.
• Grind-O-Pits CANNOT open if an ally is standing on them (but you can run over an open one). Use this to your advantage if you can tank, by standing on one until a lot of enemies are around you, then step off it and watch all the enemies, no matter how powerful, get swallowed up and instantly killed.
• Put some wolves fairly close to the Grind-O-Pits. They don't have to survive--they just need to get the enemies to bunch up so they all get sucked into a pit when the wolf finally gets killed.
• Put some wolves further back to engage stragglers that slip through so that you have time to get to them.
• Enemies often turn to engage Van Helsing, so race for them if they are close to the lair.
• There are to spawn points that are fairly close to each other. If you are down there, you can shoot both groups and that way try to draw them to Van Helsing instead of having them advance up separate corridors toward the lair. A couple of Grind-O-Pits nearby will help a lot.
• Breda's entourage of wolves typically rush ahead, so lure them away from Breda and to Grind-O-Pits for an automatic kill.
• Breda can throw bombs for almost 500 damage and use death rays for 80 damage per tick or about 400 per second. Use hit and run, and use wolves as distractions. Watch for his special-attack animations and try to keep your distance. If you have a lot of trouble with sudden-death damage from Breda, temporarily reassign stats to Body.

Werewolf on the Run

• This mission is available from the alchemist after defending the Secret Lair.
• If you get the Notes before talking to Anton, he vanishes, which means you don't have a store to sell items until you exit the map.