💣 Vanessa Powder Keg Build Guide – The Bazaar

Explosive, stylish, and devastating – the Vanessa Powder Keg build is one of the most thrilling ways to dominate a run in The Bazaar. This high-risk, high-reward strategy scales hard into the late game but requires a smart, flexible early approach to execute well. It lands itself in S-Tier on the latest Bazaar Meta Report.

🧨 [Day 1–4] Early Game – Establishing a Strong Foundation

Early on, you’re not committing to Powder Keg. You’re playing for tempo, staying healthy, and keeping your options open.

  • Play flexibly – don’t hard-force Powder Keg.
  • Key tempo items: Zoarcid, Trebuchet, Shark Claws – great early power.
  • Other strong openers: Double Barrel, Cannon, or any early Small Ammo weapons.
  • Try to win early rounds – or at least limit prestige loss.
  • Many players opt for the Gold and Income Start, giving you money to both build a board and stash strong items for later transitions.

🔁 [Day 5–9] Mid Game – Transitioning to Powder Keg

This is the planning phase. You’ll want to start picking up the core parts of your build, but you’re not online yet.

  • Look for Powder Keg from weapons dealers or medium shops.
  • IMPORTANT: Don’t put it on your board until it’s upgraded – Powder Keg at Silver is garbage! Try to hit Diamond.
  • Core mid-game skills:
    • Heated Shells: This one skill enables the whole build, allowing you to build around low-cooldown ammo items. It’s the fastest way to charge your Powder Keg. Luckily, this skill is part of the ammo skills pool which is a very small pool, so if you see the ammo skills vendor you can usually find it. If you can’t find it, Hot Spot, and Warm Hugs are good runners up. Pair two or three of these together and you’re cooking with fire.
    • Left/Right/Keen Eye, Inexorable, Tracer Fire: These skills are just some of the options to start building up your crit chance. You’ll need to reach 100% crit chance to one-shot your opponent (or have certain enchants–more on those later).
  • If you can’t find any of the burn skills above, you may need to consider items like Trebuchet, Lighter, or Pop Snappers to keep your burn going. Fiery enchantments on low-cooldown items like Uzi can also fill that gap if you’re able to find them.
  • Shop smart:
    • Prioritize Aila for weapons and Mittel for medium item rolls, even Quixel and Barkun for more chances to get Powder Keg to Diamond.
  • You may need to play hybrid while waiting for the full combo to come online.

💥 [Day 10–15] Late Game – Achieving Explosive Dominance

Here’s where it all comes together. Time to get Powder Keg online and blow your opponents away.

  • Core combo:

    • Diamond-tier Powder Keg + Heated Shells + 100% crit chance

  • Go for 100% crit chance with:

    • Crit items: Star Chart, Vanessa's Amulet, Spyglass, and Swashbuckle
    • Crit skills: Inexorable, Left/Right/Keen Eye, Tracer Fire, Static Acceleration

  • 🔮 Top-tier Enchantments:

    • Obsidian and Shiny: Best-in-slot – deal 100% HP without needing crit!
    • Deadly: +50% crit chance – excellent to help you reach 100% crit chance with half the effort! This can also be grabbed from the “Trade Health for Power” event, but the cost is a hefty 20% of Max HP. I still think it’s worth it for this build if you’re not already at or close to 100% crit chance.
    • Radiant: Stops Powder Keg from self-destroying, making it a repeatable explosive engine!
    • Burn or Poison: Helps clean up through shields/revive effects like Fiery Rebirth
    • The others usually aren’t too helpful and would be better used on another item. If you have to YOLO roll on a random enchantment and need to replace it later, don’t hesitate to do that. The right enchantment on this build can be a gamechanger.
  • Best supporting items:
    • Fast ammo casters like Dive Weights, Nesting Doll, Shot Glasses, Uzi, and even Revolver/Grapeshot. These all have quick cooldowns/multicast and more than 1 ammo, making them great choices for the final lategame build.
    • Holsters is a great item to help you cap off your build. Make sure you’ve got a good number of small burn/ammo items in the game and the haste at the beginning of the fight will help you get your combo off in record time–sometimes as quick as 2-3 seconds!

🎥 Gameplay Breakdown

  • Early game: Play for tempo with Trebuchet, Zoarcid, and Shark Claws.
  • Mid game: Look for Powder Keg and hold in inventory, start building up crit chance and supporting items and skills. Find Heated Shells or another burn engine.
  • Late game: Upgrade Powder Keg to Diamond and get it on your board. Get 100% crit chance online, look for a strong enchantment.
  • Watch for decision points:
    • When to
    • When to shop at Mittel vs. Aila
    • When to transition and commit to Powder Keg

Final tips

  • Weapon skills like Left/Right handed are good for the early and mid game, but aren’t necessary once you get Powder Keg online. Be ready for the mentality shift from prioritizing damage and weapon scaling to prioritizing items and skills that activate Powder Keg as quickly as possible.
  • Some games, you can go the entire game without seeing one Powder Keg. If it doesn’t seem to be showing up and you’re already on your last life, you may have to call an audible and play out a Multi-Weapon Vanessa build instead. In these cases, just try your best to get at least 4 wins and go on to the next game. This game has an element of chance after all, and this build isn’t guaranteed. Trebuchet, Zoarcid, and Shark Claws can probably carry you to 4-7 wins in a lot of cases anyway, and sometimes up to 10 if you move fast or highroll!

📣 Let us know what build you’d like to see next!