Back 4 Blood characters guide: weapons and abilities for all the cleaners
Get to know the Back 4 Blood characters
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Knowing what Back 4 Blood characters can do is essential if you don’t want to become a zombie appetizer. Each cleaner brings several unique abilities, two starting weapons, equipment, and their own personality to spice up the horde-slaying action.
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While you’ll need to experiment to see which of the Back 4 Blood cleaners fits your playstyle, this guide should put you on the right track and give you an overview of all the characters. Finding someone who suits what you want to do is one of the joys of the game.
Starting weapons are often discarded for better loot, so your primary concern will be the abilities that buff up you and your team. That, or you can just pick the personality you think is the coolest.
Here’s everything you need to know about the characters inBack 4 Blood, including the first expansion, Tunnels of Terror.
Back 4 Blood characters
Who are the original Back 4 Blood characters?
Meet the original cast of Back 4 Blood characters, all of whom are available to play with the core game.
Doc
Doc is a close friend of Mom, and you can see why with how little tolerance she has for nonsense. Her confidence is a perfect match for her close friend, and as a doctor and a pragmatist, she’s a valuable resource for Fort Hope in the ongoing apocalypse. And, finding the positives in the undead terror, she’s ecstatic she doesn’t have to worry about her student loans anymore.
Doc is there to keep your team healed up and recover from mistakes. Her abilities let you heal more health with healing items, and make your team more resistant to Trauma (damage to your max health).
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Starting weapons
Primary: UMP45 - an accurate low recoil submachine gun
Secondary: Beretta M9, Semi-Auto - low damage semi-auto with a big magazine
Mom
The tough-as-nails second in command of Fort Hope, Mom is still haunted by the death of her son Jason, who was also a cleaner. She acts like a mother to pretty much everyone, in her own weird, irritated-biker sort of way.
Mom is all about survival, as she gives the team an instant boost of temp health when someone goes down. She also doubles the speed of revives, which is a huge boost to recover from worst case scenarios. She’s a great pick if you like being the hero and helping out your allies.
Starting weapons
Primary: Ranch rifle - a slow-firing high damage assault rifle
Secondary: The Belgian - a high damage single-shot double-barreled shotgun
Evangelo
Evangelo is the kid of the group, and the youngest of three brothers. In fact, he’s only just completed his first mission when the game starts. While he’s a fun-loving optimist, he’s also a bit of a nervous talker, and he’s always nervous, so you’ll get to experience a lot of his personality pretty quickly.
Evangelo is a speedster, helping himself and the team keep moving forward and outrun problems. His ability to break out of grabs himself means he can move off from the group with a bit more safety.
Starting weapons
Primary: Uzi - a low damage and high rate of fire submachine gun
Secondary: Machete - a big blade with a wide sweeping attack, one of the better melee options
Hoffman
Somewhere between likeable and caricature, Hoffman is a doomsday prepper and conspiracy theorist who boarded himself up with his mother. Now he’s out in the world, full of paranoid wisdom and pockets full of grenades.
Hoffman is an amazing asset to the team, keeping everyone’s critical ammo supply topped off, and packing additional explosives. He’s a great choice to pack cards onto to help your item economy throughout your runs.
Starting weapons
Primary: Tac-14 - a pump-action shotgun with huge damage but only 3 shots
Secondary: M1911 - a standard semi-auto pistol with moderate damage
Holly
A risk-taking daredevil, Holly is a bottomless well of positivity – as long as she’s not around Hoffman. Her bright clothing matches up with her attitude, since she’s always spinning even the worst and weirdest situations on their head for a happy perspective.
If you like bounding around at top speed and focusing on melee, Holly is where it’s at. Kills give her stamina so she can keep sprinting so long as you play aggressively, and her boosted damage resistance will help cover up for your mistakes.
Starting weapons
Primary: 870 Express - a pump-action shotgun with good damage and an 8-shot magazine
Secondary: Bat - a sturdy piece of lumber with a sweeping attack
Walker
A quiet former Army Ranger, Walker slots into the leader role of the cast and he considers everyone at Fort Hope to be his second family.
Walker is an all-around boost to the team and himself and an excellent choice if you’re learning or just want to focus on your basic zombie-killing fun, since he’s not too complicated.
Starting weapons
Primary: M4 Carbine - an automatic assault rifle that’s a good all-arounder
Secondary: Glock 23 - a semi-auto pistol with a big magazine
Jim
A local to the Finleyville area, Jim is an outdoorsman and hunter. He’s another former member of the military and a sharpshooter to boot. He is focused on taking back the land his family helped cultivate from the horrors that have overrun it.
Jim slots perfectly in for the precision shooter. With his bonus damage, he can take down bosses and Mutations with deadly accurate fire.
Starting weapons
Primary: M1A - a semi-auto sniper rifle that’s a great balance of magazine size and fire rate
Secondary: 357 Magnum - an accurate and high powered revolver with only six shots
Karlee
Karlee survived on her own, looting from the ruins and hiring out to any settlement she ran across to do runs for them. She’s blunt, and a bit of a mystery to everyone around her, but she’s decided to throw in more and more with Fort Hope since things seem to be getting worse.
Karlee has all-around benefits, helping her achieve objectives faster, pick people up quicker, catch Mutations early, and get your team into stashes. She’s a great character to build around during a run, as her abilities are universally useful.
Starting weapons
Primary: AK47 - an automatic assault rifle with powerful damage and range
Secondary: Tec 9 - an automatic machine pistol with excellent rate of fire and magazine size
Who are the Back 4 Blood DLC characters?
The first expansion to Turtle Rock’s spiritual successor to Left 4 Dead, Tunnels of Terror introduces two new Back 4 Blood characters. Even if you don’t own the expansion you’ll see them in your games when others play them, so it’s good to get an understanding of what they do for you.
Heng
A survivor and immigrant, Heng owned a restaurant before everything went downhill. He’s somewhere between optimism and wisdom, with some amusing quips always at hand about the unsanitary nature of the apocalypse.
Heng is the man for stacking the deck for item drops and helping your item economy with additional accessories and chance to keep them when using them.
Starting weapons
Primary: RPK - a full-auto light machine gun with high damage.
Secondary: Hatchet - a melee weapon with quick overhead swings
Sharice
A firefighter and first responder during the initial stages of the apocalypse, Sharice has been in the middle of the chaos for longer than nearly anyone else. She seems likely to have a bit of a past to haunt her.
With additional Trauma resistance, Bolstered Health, and Makeshift Armor plate drops, Sharice is a tough, able to withstand a lot of punishment and pass that on to her team. Combined with her fire axe, she’s a great pick for being the first to wade into the undead for your team.
Starting weapons
Primary: UMP45 - a full-auto SMG with great accuracy and low recoil.
Secondary: Fire Axe - a melee weapon with heavy overhead swings
Sarah (She/Her) is a contributor and former Senior Writer for TechRadar Gaming. With six years of experience writing freelance for publications like PC Gamer, she’s covered every genre imaginable and probably a few she made up. She has a passion for diversity and the way different genres can be sandboxes for creativity and emergent storytelling, and loves worldbuilding. With thousands of hours in League of Legends, Overwatch, Minecraft, and countless survival, strategy, roguelike, and RPG entries, she still finds time for offline hobbies like tabletop RPGs, wargaming, miniatures painting, and hockey.
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