Table of Contents
Learn how to play Vanessa in The Bazaar with this in-depth hero build and strategy guide!
The Basics
Vanessa was forced to be a Weapon master in December, but the early 2025 patch is pushing the pirate to make another switch. Indeed, with Pygmalien being back to some strong Shield builds, and Dooley still able to rely on Brick Buddy to build a solid barrier, Vanessa has a hard time piercing through those defenses. Plus, the level up rework has limited the amount of loot items one can get, reducing how big we can boost a weapon, limiting the power of the One Weapon Build overall.
Last, Dooley's Bellelista build feels much stronger when it comes to weapon builds, so Vanessa needed some fresh ideas to be competitive.
Fortunately, Vanessa got one of her old friends back in Pufferfish, and is once again able to rely on Poison damage to find her way in PvP battles.
Naturally, the return of the cutest red ball in the ocean will press Vanessa to find Haste items to surround it. Yet, the current metagame also emphasizes on charging items, and Vanessa got a few strong ones of her own. As such, the solid shield builds we mentioned for Pygmalien and Dooley might have limited the power of weapons, they have noting on Vanessa's own Shield arsenal.
At the core of this new builds are Pearl and Turtle shell, which you can then surround with various options, depending if you want to focus on shield, healing, poison, or disruption. I personally also consider Astrolabe to be a premium item you always want to grab, as the items works with both Pufferfish or your shield items.
Here are some of the items you could use to complete your build:
For those who enjoyed the weapon builds in the previous, they aren't completely dead. They simply need to be super gimmicky in order to produce enough damage to pierce through the current shield builds. For example, this player completely bullied me during a run.
I could mount a lot of shield, but not enough to tank 264810 damage after eight seconds.
However, while this image is impressive, the average match for a Weapon Vanessa is closer to this one, illustrating well why the Shield and Poison build should be prefered at the moment.
Early Stages
Off the nine items I mentioned in the previous section, six start at the bronze rarity and the other three at silver, meaning we can quickly find most of what we need to make a great build. Plus, apart from Waterwheel, all the items are small or medium, so we naturally want to target those merchants. Also note that seven of them are Aquatic items, so that is another target to keep in mind.
The one thing this build struggles with in my opinion are the first PvP fights. Indeed, without much damage outside of Pufferfish, and that one isn't charging fast enough at the Bronze rarity. You really need to rely on building a massive amount of shield and winning through the storm to get a PvP win.
As such, while the early games can be crucial to secure at least the first threshold and make sure we don't look any ranks, I believe Vanessa needs to be played with the long game in mind.
So what can we do early to set up that long game the best ? First, build our gold stack through economic items to make sure we can visit merchants to find the items or skills we need.
Then, we can focus on encounters that will cover our weaknesses, depending on the items we managed to find or not. For example, if we don't have Seaweed in our build, we might lack some healing against other poison builds. As such, picking up extra regeneration would be nice. Same for some more shield if Turtle Shield isn't around to buff our Pearl.
Otherwise, with the reduction of loot items with the level up reward now being mostly skills, we won't get as many opportunities to buff our Pufferfish. Then, I like to visit the Artisan Dunes as often as possible to get that two poison gain from the Craftman.
Let's close this section with the monsters we want to battle with Vanessa during the first days:
- Day 1 : Viper for Poison buffs, but be careful as this one is losable. Banannabal is also good for Duct Tape, which can be buffed through Turtle Shell later on, and this one is a guaranteed win.
- Day 2: Covetous Thief has a decent skill in Pickpocket to build gold, and can be beat through outshielding its damage. Rogue Scrapper can give us Barbed Wire for a source of damage if Pufferfish isn't around, or we haven't found haste items yet. This is one is the elite, so don't pick unless you get a solid start.
- Day 3: Rogue Scrapper should be more manageable now and still offers a few good rewards. Otherwise, Eccentric Etherwright is the best pick, but you need to be able to contain the damage from Force Field, either through breaking their shield, or building enough of your own.
Racking Up PvP Wins
The second part of your run is actually easier to navigate with Vanessa than the other heroes because you really only have two possibilities to pick from: Improve your poison damage or improve your resilience. Basically raw power, either on the offensive or the defensive side.
Ideally, we want to grab as many skills as possible, as they are the best way to grow our overall power outside item upgrades. Enchantments are another way to bolster the contribution of an item, but these are even rarer than skills. There is a guaranteed one on level 10 we definitely want to go for, and we need to level up to grab skills, making experience gains our primary target.
Depending on how fast our build is once entering this phase (we're aiming for most of our charging items to trigger constantly), we'll target Haste or raw power skills.
While you can't impact the skills offered to you during level up or from merchants, here are the monsters I would target to get specific skills:
- Day 4: Flanking Toxins (only if you got Waterwheel) from Techno Virus or Time to Tinker from Boilerroom Brawler
- Day 5: Any Skill from Gorgon Noble or Augmented Defenses from Trashtown Mayor
- Day 6: Toxic Friendship from Zookeeper. Paralyzing Rush (if you have slow in your build) from Dire Mosquito. Crashing Waves (If you have a weapon) from Loan Shark. Exposing Toxins from Enclave Weeper.
Don't pick Lich even though all the skills are incredible.
- Day 7: Revitalizing Toxins from Viper Tyrant. Bonk from Thug. Fiery Rebirth from Radiant Corsair, a fight fairly simple with a good shield build as this elite has no scaling.
- Day 8: Wandering Shoal is our go-to here, especially if we have some Slow items in our build.
- Day 9: Pick the elite if possible. All four have something good for you.
- Day 10+ : Pick the elite for maximum experience, except Void Golem. Caltrops are very difficult to beat.
Closing Words
At the moment, Vanessa rewards your ability to optimize a build more than being a flexible pilot, since there aren't many builds you can shoot for. Mastering Vanessa will mostly come down to understanding how to maximize the power of your items, especially the Haste and Charge mecanics.
This lack of flexibility might not sound appealing, but it means that Vanessa is often an easier character to learn than Dooley or Pygmalien (at least when it comes to the amount of game knowledge you need). Indeed, you should quickly realize after a few runs you have to go for the Shield and Poison build, or improvise with what you got, hoping for manageable opponents at the end of each day.
I hope this guide was helpful, and I wish you luck in The Bazaar! If you have any questions or if you're looking for coaching, feel free to reach out on Discord @den_ccg.
Good Game Everyone.
