After recruiting Ulfar in Rogue Trader, you’ll note that he is like Yrliet and Marazhai, in that he will require heavy weapons or specific Astatres-labeled gear. The most notable thing about this is that you can get a lot of gear for very specific builds from many traders. In addition, due to you getting Ulfar in the middle or later stages of the Chapter 3, Ulfar has the vast majority of his talents locked-in up to level 30. It means you only have a little room to play around with his builds. So, the aim of our Ulfar Build guide in Rogue Trader is to list a few potential builds you can run for funsies and the type of items you want to look for. We’ll also recommend certain skills and talents you want to grab to round out your Arch-Militant and Exemplar to get the build you want running.

Ulfar Builds in Rogue Trader¶

Okay, so from what we have found so far, there are some good item synergies for Ulfar using a mixture of Burst Fire, Flamer, and melee weapon-type playstyles. We’ll separate them as follows using these links:

• Ulfar Melee Bleed Build
• Ulfar Burst Fire Build
• Ulfar Flame Build

Be aware that each of these builds will require you to be in a spot where you have a lot of Profit Factor and a lot of cargo to dump into the Explorers or Drussian trade factions, depending on what you do. Sadly, most of the Astartes gear is locked behind these two traders, so it’s hard to give Ulfar a dedicated build on your team without a few key items.

The most likely build you will be going for is the melee build since you get a few key items just for playing the game normally, and it is the build that utilizes most of the locked-in Soldier and Arch-Militant options you cannot repec out of.

Ulfar Melee Build¶

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Use Go for the Throat to close in on key enemies after consuming movement, and pinning them in for attacks of opportunities as they are forced to flee.

The Ulfar Melee build takes advantage of the base of the melee Soldier and Arch-Miltant traits already selected in the build that you cannot change without using Toybox. You have a lot of skills to get you up close and serve as a tank, and you even have Kick and its talent upgrade to get control of the map. However, once you collect the items we list below during Chapter 4, you’ll gradually turn more and more into a Berserker with a lot of critical strike damage. The items we recommend looking at are as follows:

• Bladewings - Requires Drussians Rep 24 and allows the wielder to spend all their movement points to move to a cell within range. This movement does not trigger attacks of opportunity and performs a melee cleave attack.
• Greaves of the Black Archon - Every time the wearer scores a crit hit with a melee weapon, they restore (agility bonus/2) Wounds and gain +2 MP. You also get +15% Crit damage.
• Fury Incarnate - When under the effects of Reckless Rush, you gain 50% Critical Hit and Crit damage. However, enemies who hit you also have 50% hit chance and damage bonuses.
• Singer of Fearsome Sagas - Unlocked via his companion quest in Chapter 4 and offers a Power Axe weapon with the ability to make a target bleed using a single attack or cleave attack.

Essentially the aim of the build is to get Ulfar into melee range, using the combination of the Bladewings movement effect for a free cleave attack, followed by the use of his special Astartes skill, Go for the Throat or by using a single weapon attack using his melee weapon. Both grant ways to increase crit damage and his Versatility stacks. Combine it with Greaves of the Black Archon, and then you have a reliable way of getting Wounds back in the frontline, and then using excess Versatility stacks to either give you tankyness with Cautious Approach. Additionally, the Fired Up Soldier talent also helps your crit damage for even more damage output using this style of play.

You also want to take advantage of Ulfar’s Death World Talent. The Trusty Weapons talent grants bonus crit as long as you are using Axes, Hammers or Lasguns. Since you’ll be using this build with the special Power Axe from his quest, that’s a 15% crit chance, and the bleed attack will trigger Brutal Hunter to raise it to 25% crit chance. When adding that with Fury Incarnate, you get 75% crit chance just from your items and talents alone. You can get to 100% easily from Weapon Skill, ally crit buffs, or other items. Any bonus crit chance is then converted into more crit damage so Ulfar should be critting almost all of the time using these techniques and items. Just be aware this build cannot come online until mid to late chapter 4 due to the requirements of specific items.

As for other must-have talents, check out the following:

• Critical Versatility
• Always Ready
• Tough as Steel - Exemplar
• Power Weapon Expert
• Revel in Slaughter
• Flesh Wounds - Exemplar
• Fired Up
• Blood Haze
• Revenge - Exemplar Talent

These talents essentially find ways to improve your survivability, especially the first two Exemplar talents. Revel in Slaughter is a Soldier skill you want to simply increase crit damage once you’re eligible to use it in combat. Revenge is also a great Exemplar skill because when you lose Wounds in combat, it increases your melee damage. Since you’re playing a berserker-type build and taking lots of wound damage, you increase your damage easily and can mitigate lost wounds through Flesh Wounds and Tough as Steel.

Ulfar Burst Fire - Bolter Build¶

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You can start Burst Firing enemies using Ulfar’s starter gear, but move onto more powerful guns as you progress through Chapter 4.

The Ulfar Bolter build is your bog standard Space Marine, using Bolt guns to strip away at enemies, and essentially serves as an Argenta Rapid Fire build, albeit a bit more scuffed. However, there are some perks to the build arriving from unique items for Ulfar.

• Emperor’s Justice - An Astartes helmet sold by the Explorers for 120 Profit Factor and requires rank 28 reputation with them. The item grants all burst fire rounds the ability to be automatically dodged by allies.
• Annihilating Astartes Bolter - Requires level 34 with the Explorers and 160 Profit Factor.

It is worth noting that you will find a lot of improved Heavy Bolters, and other forms of Bolter-type weapons as you go through Chapters 4 and 5, so don’t sweat too much about the Annihilating Astartes Bolter. You can even get the Improved Heavy Bolter from the max rank of Drussians and use the spare on either Ulfar or Argenta.

Essentially the aim of the game is to use your Bolter to deal ranged damage, overpenetrating when possible, and then using the Rapid Fire and Burst Fire combo to shred bosses, similarly to Argenta. Albeit the difference here is that you don’t need to worry about using Controlled Shot as you’ll likely be using the Emperor’s Justice Helmet. This means you have an Extra AP to spend however you like, and you’re automatically in the good books of your Assassins and Vanguards if you’re running a melee-heavy comp. Alternatively, you can use the Crusade Plate Helm, which is another Astartes Helmet unlocked via the Drussians at level 23 that grants 50% damage bonuses to heavy weapon, but you can no longer crit. It’s handy if you’re running damage builds and want to give your ballistic crit items to a sniper or another character.

After that, you’re essentially looking to improve your damage modifiers, using Muzzle Velocity, Cataclysm, and other Arch-Militant talents that increase your stacks of Versatility for those bonuses. Take a better bolt weapon for single target and Overpenetrating attacks when you don’t need to drill an enemy with a Burst Fire attack.

Ulfar Flame Build¶

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For those determined to get some Flamer experience on the field, Ulfar has some decent Flamer synergy thanks to a purchasable helmet.

The Ulfar Flame build takes advantage of the unique Astartes helmet to make a very strongly increasing burning build, fitted with some supportive passives to make him a great map controller. This is another later game build since you’ll need the Profit Factor and Rep from the Drussians to get these two key items, yet, if you’ve garnered enough Profit Factor and reputation, you’ll likely be able to do it earlier in Chapter 4. To do this, you’ll need two key items from the Drussian traders:

• Virtue of Contempt - Requires 22 Rep with Drussians and 81 Profit Factor. A headpiece that enables the Astartes to double the amount of burning a target receives.
• Judex - From the Drussians, this flamer grants the Agonising Flames and Burning feature. Enemies hit with Agonising Flames must pass a Willpower Resistance test (10) at the start of their turn. If the target fails, they run to a random ally and inflict burning equal to the target’s burn level. It also inflicts Agonising Flames on that ally too.
• Anatomist’s Amulet - Level 4 amulet from the Kasaballicca trader that grants +2 stacks of either Toxic Burning Bleeding or another DoT when you apply the appropriate effect.
• Seal of the Purifier - A ring that grants momentum whenever two targets are hit with an area attack.

Your game plan is to burn as many targets as you can using Judex. Do a large AOE attack using the Flamer, and then Run and Gun and go again with the flame attack. This will put four stacks of burn, and those four stacks of burn enable you to spread those stacks about easily. The next time you get a turn, either through Bring it Down! or some other form of bonus turn, you can push that to six. Allow that target to run off and spread those stacks like wildfire.

In addition, you can get some pretty neat skills from the Soldier tree when you start accessing the Exemplar Archetype to buff the build. Take a look at Concentrated Fire for better hit chances. While in the Arch-Militant tree, you can also grab Devastating Attack and then inflict blind on enemies as your burn counts as this debuff for the sake of the skill. Blinding means enemies hiding in cover or at the back affected by burn have increasingly difficult shots, which helps serve as a support tool for the team.

You can also take a mixture of Solder and Arch-Militant talents to make burning builds better, such as Tenderize and Ingenious for the burning blind enemies, and Fired Up to increase any crits your burn attacks do. Exemplar traits that are good for the build are defensive ones, since Ulfar is a 2x2 base and is easier to hit, this means Tough as Steel and Flesh Wound are good options for your build. As for more aggro, Cataclysm is likely a good option for the build since you’re hitting a lot of enemies using the flamer we recommend.