If you are playing with a controller, unplug it, restart the game and enter Dreadworks with keyboard+mouse. After you are in the Dreadworks, plug your controller back in and restart the game again. This way you should avoid the crash and be able to keep playing.



Is most likely caused by one service. See this guide to fix it:

http://gtm.you1.cn/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=549548369

These are tips outside the game, which you might not know about.



Do you want a specific screen resolution? But the game does not deliver? No problem!

1) Right click the game on Steam -> Properties -> Local Files tab -> Browse Local Files
2) Enter the Cfg folder
3) Create a new folder named Resolutions
4) Enter the Resolutions folder and create a text file
- name it CustomFullscreen.cfg if you want resolutions for Fullscreen mode.
- name it CustomNonFullscreen.cfg if you want resolutions for Windowed mode.
5) Open the file in any text editor and write down the resolutions you want like this:
CustomResolution00=1280x720
CustomResolution01=1024x768
CustomResolution02=whatever resolution you need
etc.

You can enter as many as you need.



Do you want the best graphics as possible? The high resolution textures are available as a separate DLC, so you have to add that before you can select them.

1) Open the Final Cut in your Steam Library
2) Notice that in the middle there is a DLC available
3) Check the checkbox in order to download the DLC
- the game will start downloading 7 GB of high resolution textures
4) When it's done, start your game and change the Texture Detail to High

Now you can enjoy the best graphics in your game.

These are ingame things that many people have actually missed.


This is the standard Gameplay Options screen from the main menu.



But when you open the same Options while in-game with a character, you get new Character-specific options to select from:




When you select your difficulty at the start of the game, you're not stuck with this difficulty forever! You can change it at any given time. This comes at no penalty, so whenever you feel like the monsters are too hard (or too easy), just switch to another difficulty, the results will show up instantly.




Did you just drop an awesome helmet, but it just looks so horrible? No problem. Change it into your favorite stylish hat!

Go to Saffi, switch to the last tab in her Enchanting window. Put your awesome bad-looking item in the top slot, put your useless but stylish item in the middle, and check the result in the bottom window. Also feel free to name your creation. The name will show up in multiplayer too if someone Inspects you.




Most of Katarina's behavior settings can be found on her character sheet, but there is one setting which you won't find there and that is Katarina's danger threshold.



By default, this is set to 30% of Katarina's health. When she goes down in health below that, she takes a potion. If her potion is on cooldown, she will disengage from combat and she will try to stay close to you (but she still stays in front to shield you).

I highly recommend lowering this threshold down to 15% - move the slider with your mouse. Apparently this is not possible with a controller. The reason for this is that Healing Potion in Final Cut fully restores your health (compared to only partial restore in previous Van Helsing games). Since Katarina has high enough health to sustain the damage, lowering the threshold will improve her potion usage.


In addition to manually powering up a skill using your mouse or keyboard keys, you can save a preset of powerups for all of your skills.



In battle, you can then invoke this Combo instantly by pressing Space.
Or you can select the Auto-powerup option in your Character-specific options and whenever you use a skill which was a Combo set up, it will automatically use that powerup Combo you set.

You can also use this Combo window to unselect a Combo. For example, if you want your Seekermatons to automatically summon 3 extra but you want Ghostly Mirage to last longer only when you manually set it, you can set 3 powerups to Seekermatons and 0 powerups to Ghostly Mirage, and Auto-powerup will ignore your Ghostly Mirage powerup.

This mechanic was in place ever since the first game, but it wasn't actually described anywhere. If you equip any items with + Magic Find % or + Gold Find % on your Katarina, only half of that value will be added to your Character Sheet. So giving your Katarina an amulet with +50% Gold Find will result in only +25% bonus.



You won't find this mentioned anywhere, but both Katarina's melee and ranged attacks are Arcane type damage. Using items with +10% to Ice Damage will therefore only increase the damage of any + X Ice Damage bonuses.



Final Cut has the level cap of 100. Katarina's level cap is 60. However that doesn't mean she can only use level 60 items, because Van Helsing's level is taken into account when equipping Katarina too, therefore you can equip a level 100 item on your Katarina.



There are several hard caps for important statistics in the game.

Cooldown Reduction is capped at 60%.
Critical Hit is capped at 50%.
Critical Damage is capped at 450%.
"Damage Reduction" is capped at 60%.

These caps can be raised by special items and some skills, you can recognize such stats easily: "+2% Max Critical Hit chance". Skills usually state that they raise the given stat "even above the maximum limit". For example, currently my Bounty Hunter is capped at 64% Critical Hit and 593% Critical Damage.

In case of Damage Reduction, this means only items and skills that actually state "Damage reduced by 10%" and similar, for example Katarina's Ghost mode gives 10%. Let's say you have 75% Damage Reduction from Defense and Resistances, so from 1000 damage you take only 250 damage.
You have Katarina in Ghost form giving 10% Damage Reduction. This 250 damage is further reduced by the 10% Damage Reduction, and here's where the reduction caps at 60%.



Sometimes you might see your Defenses steadily dropping down. This affects Defense, Resistances and Dodge, because they are subject to diminishing returns.
This basically means that if you want to have 50% damage reduction, you need a certain amount of Defense at level 50. But you will need a much higher amount of Defense to have 50% damage reduction at level 100. If you do not keep upgrading your gear as you level up, you will find your defenses insufficient and you might be in danger.



This is also a mechanic that's not described, but you can easily check it. It is caused by items that give you + Ice/Fire/Poison/Arcane Damage bonus. For example, an Elementalist will be using Energy Bolts, which is a basic Lightning attack. However he uses a Staff which grants + 5 Fire Damage Bonus.

If attacking a Werewolf resulted in 15 damage, that means your damage was actually composed of 10 Lightning damage and 5 Fire damage.
Attacking a Strongman Veteran would deal only 10 damage then, because this monster is immune to Fire damage, but the Lightning part of your attack still hits.
And it doesn't matter that your skill actually looks like Lightning - if you meet a Lightning immune monster, he will still get damaged by the Fire damage part.

And finally, there are several skills which deal more than one type of damage. The Elementalist for example has Ray of Destruction, its damage is divided into 20% Fire / 20 % Ice / 20 % Lightning / 20 % Poison and 20% Arcane.



The Perks you see in your selection are not all the ones available. Several Perks actually require you to perform a specific task to even unlock the given Perk. For example, there is an Alchemist Perk which reduces the Essence Cost of ANY essence you create/combine by 10%, so a +50 % Gold Find essence would only cost 45 Essence Capacity.

This Perk is not available and to unlock it, you actually have to perform dozens of Alchemy operations with your character - inserting, combining, boosting or extracting Essences.

Another kind of Hidden Perks are secondary-level Perks. For example, a the Resistive perk gives +10 all resistances, which is not exactly a superb bonus and many players might ignore it. However, when your level is high enough, learning the Resistive perk will unlock a Resistive II perk, which gives +10 % all resistances and that is much better.

All the Hidden Perks are character-specific, so you have to unlock them with every single of your characters.



The Adventure Mode offers you to play against waves of monsters with ever-increasing difficulty. This part of the game is different from the game you have been playing so far. You will encounter 4 waves of normal monsters and every 5th level there is a "boss" round. Most monsters can spawn in the arena, so you might encounter monsters and bosses you have never seen before, if you didn't complete the Story mode yet.

Secondly, the ever-increasing difficulty means that monsters' damage and health will keep upgrading and on boss levels you might get oneshotted at higher arena levels, so count with that and avoid getting hit.

Finally, for every boss round that you complete, you will gain a reward chest full of stuff at the end. Currently, to end the arena and receive the reward, you have to die, so it's a no-go for Hardcore. Any items that will drop here will be rounded to the nearest increment of 20. Therefore level 25 will receive level 20 rewards, while level 32 will receive level 40 rewards.

Unlike other ARPGs where skills deal damage themselves, in Van Helsing: Final Cut your damage is always based off your items, mainly off your weapon. If you check skill descriptions, you will see that every skill takes % of weapon damage as their base damage. That makes your weapon the most important item in the list. So if you're low on money and deciding between a nice armor and a better weapon, go for the weapon!

Since all character skills gain % of weapon damage as their base damage, it means even a level 1 skill can be quite useful if your weapon is good, so you should invest 1 skill point into every skill available at the start of the game and experiment with all skills. Then select what skill works best for you.

Many ARPGs force you to choose between health and mana, defenses and damage with your Stat points to spend. This is not true in Final Cut, because your points always improve two things at once. But in case of damage, your Stats improve the result by a percentage, and this fact makes your damage boost far better at the later stages of the game. Let's say your skill deals 40 damage per hit. Adding 5% bonus into 40 damage will give 2 extra damage per hit, which is nothing special. However spending the same amount of Stats into Health will give you +100 health or even more, so it's actually a good thing to bolster your Health early in the game.

The world of Borgovia is filled with mysterious creatures, ghosts, vampires and mechanical constructs, those will attak you in many different ways. So until you learn what can they do, it's never a bad idea to run around a little and observe their abilities. Enemies with powerful attacks usually have drawback to it, for example Kikimora Spiders throw big chunks of rocks at you, however you are able to see where those will land. Same with artillery and different aerial attacks. Behemoths and Strongmen have powerful attacks, but they need time to wind those up and during that time you are able to avoid those or pop an immunity shield. Most shooters pose a threat from afar, yet their bullets, fireballs and whatnot can also be avoided completely. So don't forget, keep moving.

Did you find items with essence capacity? Remember that alchemist you saved in Markovna? He comes with you to the Secret Lair, so it's time to use his abilities. The Alchemist can socket/insert essences that you collected into your equipment. You can recognize the suitable equipment with essence capacity by a small purple bar in the item icon:

->

When you insert essences, this bar will go bright, indicating an item is filled with essences. Different essences provide different bonuses, including Health, Mana, Defense, Damage bonus, Critical Hit, Mana Regeneration, HP stealing, Gold Find, Magic Find and more.

They also provide awesome bonuses that are very rare or cannot be obtained elsewhere, namely:

• Damage Reduced by X, in other words a flat damage reduction. Taking 20 damage from enemy attacks? With that essence you could be taking 10 damage from enemy attacks.
  
• HP regeneration. Ever wanted to stand your ground and smile while monsters try to destroy you? HP regeneration makes this possible.
  
• Mana per hit that makes every hit replenish your mana, which is just plain awesome.
  
• % Cooldown reduction, allowing you to use your cooldown based skills more often.

Yes, we have a Van Helsing item database! Big thanks to Abramoff for creating it.

http://tidbi.ru/VHFC/eng/index.html