...
Browse GamesSteam news
Full Steam announcements and update articles for this title.
Fixed missing auto-aim on Advanced Combat Doctrines when shooting targets moving sideways.
The initial section of the Chasm Station HL-16-11 mission has some navigational issues that might cause enemies to navigate unpredictably.
Hotfix 1.12.2 is now being rolled out on all platforms. This hotfix is focused on the Skitarii class, and it also has some features and tweaks to improve the general Darktide experience.
Reduced the unlock requirement for the Pro-Trader (5) Penance from 100,000 salvage to 20,000 salvage.
Vanguard Enemies:
Sweep priority between head and shield hitzones have been equalized; this change will make it so less of the hits that visually should have hit the head will be consumed by the shield instead.
Tweaked the Weakspot damage multipliers as follows:
Dreg Vanguard 0.5 → 0.75
Scab Vanguard 0.5 → 0.65
Change to Damage over Time type damage behaviour. The initial hit will inflict stagger as expected, but the DoT damage itself will not contribute to the impact required to ”open” the shield.
Reduced the unlock requirements of the following Skitarii Penances:
Curse of Malfunction: 500 → 75
Corpuscarian Disciple: 5000 → 1500
Voltaic Warrior: 5000 → 2500
Fixed an issue where the ‘Voltaic Emitter’ Ability could be obstructed by terrain, and improved the consistency of the Weapon Malfunction of Voltaic Emitter.
Fixed the ‘Heretical Artefacts’ coherency buff reducing rather than increasing the coherency radius.
Fixed an issue where Skitarius-specific height scaling where not applied in Mission Lobby and End of Round menus.
Fixed an issue where hogtied players could be moved to another respawn location when an alive player was right next to them.
Fixed an issue where the game would crash when trying to set keybindings in the options.
Fixed an issue where using the Skitarii ‘Chordclaw Strike’ Ability would not consume a Capacitance Charge after starting to sprint while aiming the ability.
Vanguard Enemies:
Fixed unaligned Stagger settings for post-broken shield state; all stagger animations should now play correctly.
This issue did not affect the enemy while the shield was active.
Fixed an issue that made it very hard to make a Vanguard enter its heavy Stagger state.
Fixed an issue where the Skitarii ‘Veteran Skitarius” Penance could fail to track progress if the player joined an already ongoing mission.
Fixed an issue where the Skitarii ‘Voltaic Resistance’ upgrade Talent for the ‘Integrated Refraction Emitter’ Blitz could fail to generate any Arc lightning when expiring.
Fixed an issue where Ability cooldown could not be decreased when the cooldown was paused while an Ability was active. E.g. Psyker Psykinetic's Aura with Scriers Gaze.
Fixed an issue where the Phosphor Blast Pistol could display an incorrect animation status if a reload was interrupted at a very specific timing.
Fixed an issue where the 1st person camera position for Ogryn operatives would scale incorrectly depending on the Height value of the character.
Fixed an issue where Poxbusters could fail to be staggered by melee Pushes in some situations.
Fixed a missing variable in the description for the Skitarii ‘Advanced Combat Doctrines’ Ability Mortis Trials legendary buff.
Fixed Skitarii ‘Progressive Plating Matrix’ Talent buff icon using the wrong image.
Fixed Hive Scum ‘Speedloader’ Talent showing in the Tactical Overlay without description while active.
Fixed an issue where smoke from Veteran ‘Smoke Grenades’ was difficult to see under certain lighting conditions and video settings.
Added missing Vanguard localisation text.
Fixed a crash that could occur when calling in a Valkyrie Airstrike on Expeditions missions.
Fixed an issue where chat bubbles would appear below Skitarius characters instead of above them in the Mourningstar hub.
Fixed an issue where the Lens Colours could incorrectly blend between eyes on Skitarius Body 1.
Fixed visual issues with Thrice Blessed Eye of Admonition (Scorched Ironmantle/Mordian Pride/Darkweald Battleshade).
Fixed a visual issue with Mordian Cap with Psykana Collar.
Sometimes hogtied (respawned) players will be moved to a later respawn point despite the Strike Team not having moved past their area.
Fixed!
No loadout is equipped after Personality Scourging as DLC classes
Happens on Hive Scum, Arbites, and Skitarii.
Hive Scum specific issue:
When personality scourging as Hive Scum, the headgear is changed to the chosen gang’s starter headgear (instead of the headgear equipped by the player).
Skitarii specific issue:
When personality scourging as Skitarii, all loadouts are unequipped AND all loadouts get a yellow exclamation mark, pointing to some error with the backpack slot.
Changing the equipped backpack resolves the issue.
Fixed!
The initial section of the Chasm Station HL-16-11 mission has some navigational issues that might cause enemies to navigate unpredictably.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Hotfix 1.12.1 is now being rolled out on all platforms. This hotfix has a couple of bug and crash fixes, including a fix that solves the issue where Skitarii Deluxe Edition cosmetics weren’t immediately available at initial character creation.
If you bought the Deluxe Edition of the Skitarii DLC, the Deluxe cosmetics and customization options should now be available when attempting to create a new character immediately, without having to enter the hub or restart the game.
Fixed an issue where Skitarii characters could not equip starter gear from other Forge World origins.
Fixed a crash occurring when an Arc Grenade targets an enemy that died from another source before spawning the Arcs.
Fixed a rare crash when using the Skitarii Integrated Refraction Emitter Blitz.
Fixed an issue where players received notifications multiple times for penance rewards and when purchasing new cosmetics.
Fixed some crashes that could occur when deploying the Skitarii Servo Skull.
Fixed a bug where the new Vanguard Enemy would be locked in a stagger animation when hit with a Soulblaze attack.
Skitarii Deluxe Edition cosmetics and customization options will only unlock once you enter the hub for the first time.
As a workaround, please enter the hub with one of your existing characters before making your Skitarii to create it with Deluxe Edition customization options (or you can create your Skitarii and then change the customization options at the Chirurgeon).
Fixed!
Sometimes hogtied (respawned) players will be moved to a later respawn point despite the Strike Team not having moved past their area.
No loadout is equipped after Personality Scourging as DLC classes
Happens on Hive Scum, Arbites, and Skitarii.
Hive Scum specific issue:
When personality scourging as Hive Scum, the headgear is changed to the chosen gang’s starter headgear (instead of the headgear equipped by the player).
Skitarii specific issue:
When personality scourging as Skitarii, all loadouts are unequipped AND all loadouts get a yellow exclamation mark, pointing to some error with the backpack slot.
Changing the equipped backpack resolves the issue.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Darktide’s third Class DLC is out now! Rising above the shackles of the flesh, the Skitarii have been rebuilt with the divine augments of the Adeptus Mechanicus to best serve the Omnissiah, as an impossibly efficient tool of war.
Arm your Skitarius Alpha Primus with deadly Adeptus Mechanicus weapons! Rip your enemies apart with melee weapons such as the Mechanicus Power Sword, the Paired Transonic Blades or the Arc Maul. Decimate the enemies of the Omnissiah at range with weapons such as the Arc Rifle and the Mechanicus Phosphor Blast Pistol, or assassinate them with precision with the Galvanic Rifle.
This class also features a unique talent tree layout built for extreme versatility, and unique customization options! See under the robes of the Adeptus Mechanicus, choose from four distinct personalities and even customize your voice!
Hadron has been granted access to an ancient Adeptus Mechanicus facility in the wastes outside Tertium. This Alpha Primus Shrine grants her the ability to upgrade veteran Skitarii warriors into Skitarii Alpha Primus: elite combatants with access to a vast array of specialised weaponry and blessed with superior combat protocols, allowing them enough freedom to operate alongside warband strike teams.
As a Skitarii you have a wide variety of options in how you wish to customize your talent tree. It is the first Talent Tree that starts from the center, and lets you expand your build in any direction. You will have more nodes to choose from than from any previous Class.
Let us quickly go through the more impactful choices you can make in the Talent Tree.
Your Abilities are powered by your Motive Engine. You have 3 Base Charges. Abilities require at least 1 Charge to be activated, and can spend up to 3 charges.
Generate 2% Capacitance each second. At 100% Capacitance you generate 1 Charge and the Capacitance is reset. You also generate 2% Capacitance on Kills, increased to 4% on Elite and Specialist Kill.
Voltaic Expander
Your base Ability. Uses up to 3 Charges.
Unleash an Electric Discharge around you. Enemies within 6m are Electrocuted for 2s, Stunning them and dealing damage
Using the ability at 2 charges extends the Range to 9m. Using the ability at 3 charges extends the range to 12m.
Voltaic Emitter
The improved version of Voltaic Expander. Uses up to 3 Charges.
Unleash an Electric Discharge around you. Enemies within 12m are Electrocuted for 2s, Stunning them and dealing damage.
Using the ability at 2 charges or above causes Ranged Enemies within 30m to have their weapons Malfunction for 12s.
Using the ability at 3 charges or above makes your attacks Electrocute enemies hit for 2s, dealing damage.
Chordclaw Strike
Perform a Powerful Heavy Melee Attack using a Chordclaw. The Attack is a Guaranteed Critical Strike and has +50% Rending. Uses 1 Charge.
Advanced Combat Doctrines
Spend 25% Capacitance and Swap to your Secondary Weapon. Your weapon locks onto enemies close to your targeting reticule, granting you inhuman accuracy. You gain -90% Spread and -60% Recoil for its duration.
While active, you drain 10% Capacitance per second, and an additional 1% per shot. The drain is paused while reloading.
The Ability is disabled if you switch from your Secondary Weapon, if you reach 0% Capacitance and 0 Charges, or if you reactivate it. Only usable if you have at least 1 Charge available.
When you have created your Skitarius, you will be accompanied by a Servo-Skull. If you choose, you can improve it in different ways.
The base Servo-Skull.
Equipped with a Laspistol it will shoot at your enemies, and you can order it by double-tapping your Tag input. If you encounter a Data Interrogation minigame, you can also double-tap your Tag to have your Servo-Skull solve it for you. You can empower your Servo-Skull by using your Blitz Ability Input. For 8s it gains +100% Fire Rate, +25% Damage, its attacks apply 1 stack of Burn (Max 8), and causes the target to take +15% more damage for 5s.
16s Cooldown.
Artificer Servo-Skull
The Improved Servo-Skull. The previously temporary bonuses of your Servo-Skull are now made permanent.
Medicae Servo-Skull
You have an additional Servo-Skull equipped with Adapted Medicae Syringes. Target a Knocked Down, Hogtied, or Netted Ally to inject them. The injection Revives them, as well as granting them +75% Toughness Damage Reduction and 20% Toughness per second, for 5s.
4 Charges. Charges are shared with the Purgator Servo-Skull.
Purgator Servo-Skull
You have an additional Servo-Skull equipped with a Flamer. Target an Area to deploy it. Use your Primary Action to switch between a Dispersed or Focused Fire Mode.
4 Charges. Charges are shared with the Medicae Servo-Skull.
If you don’t wish to bring your Servo-Skull along, you can choose to swap it out for one of the following Blitz Abilities.
Arc Grenades
Throw an Arc Grenade, creating an electrical explosion that Arcs 4 times, prioritizing Armoured and Specialist Enemies, dealing massive Damage and Impact.
Charges: 3.
Integrated Refractor Emitter
Surround yourself in a shield that absorbs all incoming Ranged Damage. Lasts 8s. Upon activation and again when it ends, cause an electric explosion around you, applying Electrocution to enemies within 5m.
Charges: 3.
Resurgence
You and Allies in Coherency regenerate 25% Coherency Toughness regardless of enemy proximity.
The upgraded variant increases the Coherency Toughness percentage to 50% and increases your Toughness by +25.
Foe-Render Creed
Gain +25 Toughness. You and allies in Coherency gain +15% Cleave and 7.5% Rending.
Ammunition Deposit
Gain +25 Toughness. You and your Allies have +10% Ammo Reserve. This effect is deactivated if you die.
Redline Capacitors
Spending or gaining a Charge grants +5% Toughness Damage Reduction and +5% Capacitance generation for 12s. Stacking 4 times. Stacks decay one at a time. Additionally, you have +1 Max Ability Charges.
Power Overload
Kills by you and allies in coherency grant 1 stack of Power Overload. Elite and Specialist enemy kills grant 2 stacks. Max 30 stacks. Reaching max stacks causes an overload and reset to 0 stacks.
The overload grants you and allies in Coherency +15% Damage and +15% Toughness Damage Reduction, for 8s.
Flensing Protocols
You have up to 6 stacks of Flensing Protocols. Each stack grants +2.5% Damage and +2.5% Toughness Damage Reduction. Taking damage removes 1 stack. Can only occur once every 1s. Elite and Specialist kills restore 2 stacks and restore 15% Toughness.
To read more about the Skitarii Talent Tree and Abilities, you can read our previous feature highlight.
You can begin playing around with builds using the Gameslantern Builder.
Overview
Absorbing voltaic energy in its coil with each swing, the Arc Maul is capable of releasing hi-intensity Arc lightning.
Even while not activated, this rod still has respectable Damage and a good amount of Stagger potential through its multiple Relentless and Strikedown attacks, ideal to control both hordes and larger enemies.
Additionally, each swing of the Arc Maul applies a 5s Electrocuted debuff on each enemy hit.
Against Electrocuted targets, the weapon gains a +10% Damage bonus and triggers additional Arc lightning jumps.
Weapon Special
When the weapon is not activated, Special charges are gained slowly over time and much faster upon hitting enemies in melee.
When at least one Special charge is stored, performing the Special action activates the weapon.
The attack chain is not disrupted by the activation, allowing to continue the combo.
While the Arc Maul is activated, successful attacks trigger an Arc lightning discharge on the first enemy hit by each sweep, consuming a Special charge.
Arc lightning deals a large amount of Damage and applies the Electrocuted debuff, and can jump up to 2 enemies if the previous target was already Electrocuted.
Arc lightning Damage and Impact values increase after each jump.
Additionally, a unique Push-attack is available while the Arc Maul is activated.
To read the full breakdown of this weapon, check out the full post on our forums!
Overview
The exquisitely crafted and religiously maintained power weapons of the Adeptus Mechanicus don’t suffer from the common failings of other similar instruments used in the Imperium, providing instead a constant disruption field which can be channeled momentarily into devastating Energised strikes.
The moveset of this weapon features multiple stab attacks and a flow rich in quirkyness and personality, inviting rigorous precision and study from its wielder.
Weapon Special
The Mechanicus Power Sword’s energy core can store up to 6 Special charges, which are replenished over time with a short cooldown after any is used.
Each available Special charge provides a stack of +4% Melee Strength to all attacks, both standard and Energised (max +24% at full Special charges).
Pressing the Special input consumes a Special charge and initiates the next attack in the combo chain, granting it Energised properties.
Energised attacks have enhanced offensive properties, with in particular higher Damage and better Armour Damage Modifiers against all enemy armour types.
If the Special input is released immediately, the weapon will perform a Light Special attack; if the input is held, the weapon will enter the windup for an Heavy Special attack.
If this windup is maintained for a longer period of time, the Mechanicus Power Sword will accumulate up to 4 stacks of +12.5% Melee Strength (max +50%) for the following Heavy Special attack. The animation during the windup, alongside the visual and sound effects, can be used to recognize when the maximum amount of stacks has been reached.
To read the full breakdown of this weapon, check out the full post on our forums!
Overview
The Transonic technology is a secret heavily guarded by the Cult Mechanicus, for in the hands of a skilled warrior these blades can cut and pierce through enemies like they weren’t there, leaving only a gory, sliced mess.
The Paired Transonic Blades are a dual-wield weapon combining a long Transonic Blade with a nimble Transonic Razor, and they can be adapted to face any kind of opposition by rapidly switching their resonant attunement between two modes: Slayer and Dueller.
Each attunement mode is targeted against a specific set of armour types, gaining enhanced offensive properties towards them (Damage, ADMs, Cleave). However, the performance against the non-attuned armour types will be diminished.
Additionally, entering each mode will switch to a different moveset, with an ample selection of Vanguard, Assassin and Strikedown attacks.
Finally, through the Special action it is possible to switch attunement during a combo, seamlessly continuing the attack chain in the new mode.
In Slayer mode, the Light and Heavy chains consist of mostly Vanguard attacks with enormous Cleave, while the Push-attack grants access to a short Strikedown chain.
This mode is enhanced against the Unarmoured, Infested and Maniac armour types.
In Dueller mode, the Light and Heavy chains consist of mostly Strikedown attacks with high Damage and Finesse properties, while the Push-attack grants access to a short Vanguard chain.
This mode is enhanced against the Unyielding, Flak and Carapace armour types.
Weapon Special
Activating the weapon Special while not in an attack combo will swiftly toggle the current attunement between the two modes, and then return to the idle position.
If the Special input is pressed while in an attack combo, the weapon will instead toggle the attunement while entering a stance with Block properties.
If an Attack input is chained from this stance, a unique powerful followup attack will be performed.
(The Special followup attacks’ properties depend on the mode that was just entered)
To read the full breakdown of this weapon, check out the full post on our forums!
Overview
Unleash the power of Adeptus Mechanicus Arc weaponry. A heavy electrocuting, slow firing but fully-automatic rifle. High magazine capacity but slow reload speed.
The Arc Rifle shares the Arc mechanic with the Arc Maul and Arc Grenades. Shooting a target will deal damage and mark the target with the Electrocuted debuff. If a target is hit while already Electrocuted, an Arc jump will be triggered to damage an additional target within proximity.
Primary Fire
Slow rate of fire, fully automatic
Secondary Fire
Braced stance with lowered mobility but iIncrease accuracy. Enables shots to Arc to an additional target.
Special
Bash with the Arc coil of the weapon; useful to push away close enemies.
To read the full breakdown of this weapon, check out the full post on our forums!
Overview
The Galvanic Rifle is an accurate and high powered semi-automatic rifle, with a small clip. In the right mechanical hands it can deal a great amount of damage.
Very effective when hitting weakspots.
Primary Fire
Shoots from the hip. Accurate at first shot but builds up spread when shooting quickly. Has good spread recovery so pacing your shots is advisable.
Secondary Fire
Aim down sights for pinpoint accuracy at the cost of mobility.
Special
A forward Thrust with the weapon, which can interrupt attacking enemies.
To read the full breakdown of this weapon, check out the full post on our forums!
Overview
A mighty fine pistol. Used by the Skitarii to mark high priority targets. Limited ammunition but packs a good punch.
The Phosphor sticks to enemies, slowly and painfully burning through armour and flesh:
Hitting a target causes a minor Phosphor splash. Targets affected by the direct hit or the Phosphor blast are more susceptible to damage and have reduced hit-mass, allowing attacks to Cleave through them more efficiently.
Primary Fire
Shoots from the hip, with decent accuracy but a fair amount of recoil.
Secondary Fire
Aim down sights for improved accuracy at the cost of mobility
Weapon Special
Bash with the grip, to quickly stagger enemies in melee range.
To read the full breakdown of this weapon, check out the full post on our forums!
To celebrate the release of this new class, the Commodore’s Vestures will see a new rotation of Premium Cosmetics with tons of goodies, including a brand new Regimental Bundle - the Mordian Iron Guard!
Drilled to perfection, uniforms crisp and medals gleaming, the Mordian Iron Guard pride themselves on their immaculate appearance and strict, disciplined drills. This isn't all show, though. These fierce warriors have gathered a reputation for efficient and effective warfare. It just doesn't hurt that they look good while doing it.
There’s also the Ecclesiarchy Faithful bundle coming with the same rotation, and plenty of other cosmetics! Make sure to check them out!
As the Battle for Tertium rages, more and more converts and zealots flock to emergent Imperial cults, throwing themselves at the enemy with curses on their lips.
That’s all for today!
Praise the Omnissiah!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
We’ve just released a major new update, containing tons of changes and fixes, alongside some new enemies! The long-awaited Skitarii DLC class release later today, as will a new live event to go along with it!
The Admonition have been sighted gathering relics and sacred effigies and doing…unnatural things to them. Strike teams have been tasked with retrieving these stolen artifacts and returning them to Tertium's clerics.
Starting from later today, at 14:00 CEST, players can participate in the event by joining missions with the ‘Relics in Ruins’ modifier to recover relics from the cultists. Once back in the Mourning Star, visit Sire Melk to deliver your recovered relics, and choose which faction to give them to.
The Adherents of Saint Messelina, which will bestow players with an increased coherency radius, alongside boosted attack and movement speed.
The Scourge of the Faithless, which endows players with increased damage, burn damage and burn duration.
Participating in the event will reward players with Ordo Dockets, Plasteel, Diamantine, and this brand new Portrait Frame!
A new threat approaches…
Human melee bruisers equipped with breakable shields, these new enemies will bolster the enemy hordes and make them tougher to crack!
The Scab variant is equipped with a harder more durable shield that will last longer, but comes in more scarce numbers, while their Dreg equivalents are more numerous but only equipped with scrappy handmade shields that are more prone to breaking
Even without the shield, these vanguards are stronger than their non-shielded counterparts.
As part of our ongoing balance commitment continuing on from the previous reduction to Ogryn enemies (and at the time, specifically the Crusher), with the release of the Vanguards we’ve reduced the amounts of Bulwarks throughout the missions.
The Packmasters have moved beyond the wastes of Atoma to reinforce their brethren in Tertium
Packmasters will now appear outside of Expeditions, across the other gamemodes starting from Heresy level difficulty and up.
Improved mobility: the Packmasters will now have an easier time keeping up with a retreating player
The amount of Pox Hounds spawned with the Packmaster has been changed to be based on the difficulty, with an increase of the armoured version at higher difficulty levels.
A brand new Mark has been added to the Plasma Gun, the Mk III! Available to the Veteran class and the (releasing today!) Skitarii class, this Plasma Gun variant has less focus on piercing through enemies in favor of devastating explosive power. Give it a try!
This update also sees an injection of new content into the Expeditions game mode, as well as various quality of life changes and reworks of certain systems!
New time of day: Dawn
New Expeditions level content, including:
New Scavenge Zone
New Sites of Interest, with electric hazards!
New Deadsider Sanctuary.
Reworked how Tech-Remnants are shared.
Players no longer have a personal Tech-Remnant pool. Instead, Tech-Remnants picked up by a member of the strike team are added to the team’s shared pool.
Whenever a player dies (does not apply to bots), the team’s pool is reduced by 25%.
This only happens if the team has more than 100 Tech-Remnants.
50% of this value is dropped at the spot where the player died.
The team can retrieve the remaining 50% of the deducted value if they rescue the player that died.
If a hog-tied player is teleported to a Deadsider Sanctuary, the Tech-Remnants attached to them are lost.
For each alive player missing from the Valkyrie at the moment of extraction, 25% of the pool is reduced in the End of Round screen.
Improvements to the Auspex:
Sites of Interest, Scavenge Zone exits, and extraction points can now be marked on the Auspex by up to four players.
Data Reliquaries show up on the Auspex once they’ve been picked up for the first time.
Hog-tied players are displayed on the Auspex.
Pressing the equip button for the Auspex while already equipped will now switch back to the previously equipped weapon or item.
The Auspex map does not start in focused mode if the player is moving while equipping it. You can unfocus the map by sprint or dodging.
Added more respawn points to all Scavenge Zones.
Improved Ordo Docket and Experience rewards for failed runs.
The Title awarded for completing the Prologue can now be equipped by all Classes.
The displayed title will change according to the Class it's equipped on:
The original classes keep "Reject"
Arbitrator displays "Deputy"
Hive Scum replaces the current "Reject" with "Juve"
Skitarius displays "Tech-Warrior""
Poxbursters:
Changed targeting behaviour to make them more predictable. They should no longer be able to change targets while in their lunge state.
They should now always enter their explode state after being staggered by a Push from a Melee Weapon, even if they weren't in their lunging state.
Poxburster explosions triggered by navigation issues (e.g. failing to climb over terrain), or other non-player related events, should no longer cause damage; they will still knock players away if caught in them however.
Poxbursters will only initiate their lunge when facing the player, to prevent poxbursters jumping around corners.
Instances of "Cyber-Mastiff" terminology in the Operative view have been changed to use the term "Companion".
Ogryn Borovian Mk III Delver's Pickaxe
Sprint will now be allowed during the windups for the Light 3 and Heavy 2 attacks.
Blaze Force Greatsword
The weapon Special 'Warpshock Slash' projectile can now trigger the 'Blazing Spirit' weapon Blessing.
Reframed the camera used to preview Accessory cosmetics to better show the top of them.
Slightly reframed the camera used to preview Head cosmetics to better show taller headgear (especially belonging to Arbitrators).
Updated the posing and framing of cosmetic icons and player portraits to center and straighten the head of the character.
Updated the camera framing and positioning and added support for Zooming when inspecting Companion cosmetics.
Smoke Grenades - Veteran Blitz
Updated the visual effects of the smoke cloud to be less obscuring and to more clearly show the affected area.
Updated item notifications to present item type in addition to rarity, and to align the visuals with item names and rarities presentation in the inventory.
Ogryn - Point-Blank Barrage Max Cooldown 80s -> 60s
Ogryn Ripperguns
Changed the calculation for "on continuous fire" Blessings to give a stack for each 8% of Magazine spent instead of 10%.
Affects the following Blessings:
Blaze Away
Inspiring Barrage
Cavalcade
Dev Note
This is to avoid these Blessings counterintuitively having a stronger effect on lower Ammo stat values, due to the scaling of the magazine size.
Bloodletter Blessing
Changed behavior so that Bleed stacks will be now applied on each damage instance of Special active attacks, instead of only the initial hit.
Affects the following weapon families:
Heavy Eviscerators
Assault Chainswords
Assault Chainaxes
Dev Note
The Heavy Eviscerator version of this Blessing has a lower Bleed stacks value due to the Cleave properties of its Special active attacks, allowing it to spread Bleed on multiple enemies. This however caused the Blessing to be less effective in delivering its bonus when actually ripping into an enemy. Note that the total Bleed stacks are still capped
Tenderiser Blessing
Updated the bonus from general Strength to Melee Strength, and changed the value scaling from +10/15/20/25% to +15/20/25/30%
Affects the following weapon family
Ogryn Cleavers
Added two new controller button layouts (Alternative 6 and Alternative 7), with access to the Special input on bumper/shoulder buttons.
Added a new feature to Zoom Out when inspecting your Weapon while on a mission. This lets you view your character in Third Person."
Added the info for past Live Events to the events tab in Sire Melk menu.
The party invitation notification now requires the player to hold the button and confirm the party request to be able to accept an invitation during a mission.
Changing keybindings now notifies the player if the new binding key is already in use, and asks for confirmation before setting the binding.
Commodore's Vestures now uses a category and sub-category selection to better handle navigation and different store pages.
Updated all items acquired externally to show their source, similar to items from Penances, Class DLCs, Commissary, and Commodore's Vestures.
Updated the character selection screen to correctly show the actual selected height for each character.
Expeditions:
Dead players will no longer respawn until the Deadsider Sanctuary is reached if the exit event has been started or if the timer has run out
Blocked off out of bounds areas in some Scavenge Zones
Players and enemies now drop loot on their last ground position if possible, to avoid it getting lost in pits, being stuck in air, etc.
Data Reliquaries dropped on the ground in the Valkyrie during extraction now correctly count for the penance gain
Fixed an issue that caused Medicae stations in Expeditions to display as empty even though they had full charges
Fixed an issue that caused Medicae stations to consume Scrap from the wrong player
Fixed an issue where more than four players could be displayed inside the Valkyrie in mission intro loadings
Fixed an issue in which lightning strikes could damage players during the extraction cinematic.
Dark Communion - Fixed an issue where sound would not propagate correctly through the archway leading to the end event cathedral area.
Clandestium Gloriana - Fixed an issue where enemies could appear covered in snow/frost effects also in the initial Void areas.
Tenderiser Blessing - Fixed an issue where the HUD icon for the Blessing would not appear in server-hosted environments, and added a counter to the icon displaying the remaining empowered attacks.
Tweaked handling of Loadout presets under specific cases to avoid having a preset deselected due to mismatch when opening the inventory.
Fixed an issue that could display an incorrect last wave in Mortis Trials if a player joined mid-match.
Fixed an issue where the Personality Scourge would return an error by wrongly detecting no changes when modifying an Arbitrator character.
Fixed an issue in the Expedition Map Selection screen where the Play Button sometimes would show as being disabled when selecting an unlocked node while Private Game is enabled.
Fixed an issue where the ‘Enemies Within, Enemies Without’ Zealot talent would fail to display the correct number of stacks.
Fixed an issue where the 'Power Up' Psyker Penance would not count kills from 'Kinetic Flayer'.
Fixed an issue where the 'Perfectionist' talent could refund Cooldown multiple times on the same attack.
Fixed an issue where players could get instantly downed or killed by a Captain's Shield exploding.
Fixed issue where the 'Penetrating Flame' Blessing would show incorrect values in its description.
Fixed an issue where the bash animation of Dual Autopistols could play twice if transitioning to braced during a bash.
The ‘Long Bomb' Veteran penance can now be completed only using the intended Frag Grenade.
Fixed an issue where bots sometimes would remain stuck in crouching state.
Fixed an issue where the Data Interrogation minigame in Power Matrix HL-17-36 would not stop the alarm sound when finishing the minigame.
Fixed an issue where the Talent Tree tooltip for the selected Blitz, Ability and Aura could clip through the bottom of the screen.
Fixed an issue in the start area of Dark Communion where bots would not help players when in a hangledge.
Updated the description for the ‘Inspiring Barrage’ and ‘Cavalcade’ weapon Blessings with more accurate values
Fixed an issue where enemies would attack the player when leaving the Meat Grinder.
Fixed an issue where the 'No respite' weapon Blessing would not apply its damage bonus.
Fixed an issue where the player could get stuck in a hangledge or fall onto a part of the ceiling below without dying in the Theatre of Castigation in Mortis Trials.
Fixed an issue in the character creator where the camera would snap to a new position when changing height.
Fixed a rare crash that could occur if a character would not have a height defined.
Fixed an issue that caused multiple people to be able to interact with the same Data Interrogation minigame.
Multiple minor bugfixes in Adventure Mode:
The following missions have had player collision added or adjusted:
Excise Vault Spireside-13
Comms-Plex 154/2f
Chasm Station HL-16-11
Smelter Complex HL17-36
Hab Dreyko, Chasm Logistratum
Silo Cluster 18-66/a
Vigil Station Oblivium
Magistrati Oubliette TM8-707
Relay Station TRS-150
Enclavum Baross
Dark Communion
Fixed unreachable items and chests in the following missions:
Excise Vault Spireside-13
Warren 6-19
Comms-Plex 154/2f
Consignment Yard HL17-36.
Munitorum Issue Mk III & Command Cap - Fixed hair masking for when these cosmetics are equipped.
Reduced clipping on Smiter Power Maul.
Zealot Hooded Krieg Mask (Rictus) - Added missing voice effect.
Ogryn Vostroyan Hat - Fixed visual bug where the neck clipped through the headgear.
Heavy Battlegear (Moebian 110th, Greysteel XXXXL) - Fixed an issue where armour clipped through the character’s shoulders.
Krieg Greatcoat (With Psykana collar) - Fixed baked shadowing behind the leather pouch.
Fixed headgear masking for Human Hair Style 7.
Blessed Memento Mori - Fixed offset to players back & other visual bugs.
Detio's War Plate - Fixed backpack offset.
Skitarii Deluxe Edition cosmetics and customization options will only unlock once you enter the hub for the first time.
As a workaround, please enter the hub with one of your existing characters before making your Skitarii to create it with Deluxe Edition customization options (or you can create your Skitarii and then change the customization options at the Chirurgeon).
Sometimes hogtied (respawned) players will be moved to a later respawn point despite the Strike Team not having moved past their area.
No loadout is equipped after Personality Scourging as DLC classes
Happens on Hive Scum, Arbites, and Skitarii.
Hive Scum specific issue:
When personality scourging as Hive Scum, the headgear is changed to the chosen gang’s starter headgear (instead of the headgear equipped by the player).
Skitarii specific issue:
When personality scourging as Skitarii, all loadouts are unequipped AND all loadouts get a yellow exclamation mark, pointing to some error with the backpack slot.
Changing the equipped backpack resolves the issue.
The initial section of the Chasm Station HL-16-11 mission has some navigational issues that might cause enemies to navigate unpredictably.
That’s all for now!
Praise the Omnissiah!
We’ll see you later today on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Rising above the shackles of the flesh, the Skitarii have been rebuilt with the divine augments of the Adeptus Mechanicus to best serve the Omnissiah, as an impossibly efficient tool of war.
In case you missed it, check out the reveal trailer here.
This is part of an ongoing series of feature highlights focused on the upcoming DLC class: The Skitarii.
In our previous highlight we talked in depth about the design of the class itself and its talent tree. This feature highlight will focus on the arsenal available to Skitarii in Darktide, exploring the design philosophy behind the unique weapons and talking about what existing weapons they have access to. We’ve interviewed our Game Designers Erik and Matteo for this!
“I’m Matteo, I’m a Game Designer specializing in Weapons. My favourite class is Psyker, and I make a sick tiramisú.” ~ Matteo
“I’m Erik, a Game Designer also specializing in Weapons. My favourite classes are Zealot and Psyker. I can confirm that Matteo makes a sick tiramisú. I can't cook or bake but I'll make you a perfect 'Last word' cocktail.” ~ Erik
As always, the first thing that went into the development of the Skitarii’s weapons was sitting down and choosing what options from the source material’s arsenal to include. The Adeptus Mechanicus has a very rich and varied set of weapons that are unique to them, many of which are specifically Skitarii weapons, too. So there were definitely a lot of possibilities to choose from, especially on the ranged side.
“So we needed to say, okay, if we have to choose a subset of this, what are the ones that we say are unique, diverse, and capture the gameplay fantasy of the Skitarii the most.” ~ Matteo
“We both look at not just what’s available in the lore - what they actually use in the tabletop and in the universe - but also what type of gameplay slots we’re trying to fill, what weapons we have on the existing classes, what type of role we want this class to have...” ~ Erik
After deciding on these options, the design team goes through several iterations of implementing ideas, trying them out, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and so on. This is especially true of the Arc weapons, which use and enable a brand new mechanic unique to this class, the Arc mechanic.
If you missed our explanation of how the Arc mechanic works for Arc weapons and talents, check out the previous Feature Highlight here!
At the same time, a couple of the non-Arc weapons coming with the Skitarii exist in a similar thematic space as some of the existing weapons in Darktide, and so we took great care into carving a unique gameplay space for them so that they stand out even from those.
For all weapons, the Weapon Designers worked closely with the Class Designers to make sure that the class’ abilities and its weapons synergized and supported each other well.
With all that said, let’s take a look at the brand new weapons, which will be exclusive to the Skitarii class.
The Arc Maul is a powerful blunt weapon that can electrocute enemies and trigger the Arc mechanic. Since other classes already have access to similar weapons in the form of Shock Mauls, we wanted to make sure that this weapon felt and played very differently from those.
Normal attacks will electrocute the enemies. Hitting enemies also starts building up charges for the weapon’s special attack, up to a maximum of eight.
Activating the weapon special will switch to an amped up state where attacks will drain charges and trigger an Arc effect with each attack until you either run out of charges or manually deactivate the mode.
“So the loop is that you hit enemies to electrocute them and accumulate charges, then you activate the weapon and hit them again to trigger an Arc.” ~ Matteo
Beyond its special mechanics, the Arc Maul is a relatively safe weapon with strong stagger and crowd control properties, but it relies on the Arc mechanic for most of its damage.
As an added bonus, this weapon deals more damage with all attacks when hitting a target that is already electrocuted.
Our second dual-wield melee weapon for Darktide, the Paired Transonic Blades are composed of a short Transonic Razor in the off hand and a longer Transonic Blade in the main hand.
Using the Weapon Special, this weapon can switch between two ‘attunements’, which give the weapon two different movesets, each specialized to deal with different types of enemies.
“This makes the weapon very versatile, and probably one of the most complex weapons we have in Darktide.” ~Matteo
The default moveset is attuned to most effectively deal with unarmoured enemies, featuring wide, sweeping attacks that can easily cleave and mow through hordes. The second attunement specializes in eliminating armoured enemies, and the moveset switches to a more single target, high damage set of stabs and vertical attacks that easily pierce through Flak and Carapace.
While you can switch between modes when idle, pressing the Weapon Special in the middle of an attack chain will allow you to perform a unique attack as part of a transition into the other mode, letting you switch seamlessly in the middle of combat.
“It’s a weapon that players can immediately play with; you don’t need to study hours to understand it. But the more you play with it, the more you find different ways to approach the situation in a more efficient manner. It’s also a really cool looking weapon, hehehe.” ~ Matteo
Power weapons are a very iconic melee choice for Adeptus Mechanicus as a whole, and so we definitely wanted to give the Skitarii their own version of this weapon. To differentiate them from the existing Darktide Power Swords in gameplay, we leaned into the fact that the Skitarii’s version is much better maintained and looked after than the requisitioned ones our other classes have access to.
As such, the Mechanicus Power Swords are considered to always be in an active, low power mode and are a powerful weapon even without using their Weapon Special. The weapon will start with 6 charges, which can be spent by pressing the Weapon Special to perform a single, high-powered powered attack (a tap will perform a light attack, while holding the button will perform a heavy attack). Each Special Attack consumes one charge, which recharges over time.
However, holding onto these charges also provides a passive buff to the weapon’s normal attacks, which is the source of the weapon’s power.
“So the idea is that the player can say ‘Okay, I’m not using the charges so the weapon remains at maximum strength because it has all the stacks’ or ‘I’ll spend the charges to immediately get a strong attack but momentarily reduce the strength of the weapon’.” ~ Matteo
The Special Attacks are empowered versions of the normal Mechanicus Power Sword moveset, sharing animations and chained actions. Said moveset is also very different from the existing Power Swords, featuring a bigger focus on thrusts and stabs.
The Galvanic Rifle is a powerful, semi-automatic precision rifle that fills a niche that hadn’t been covered in Darktide’s arsenal yet. Each shot deals relatively high damage and can do a good job at piercing through armour, although it has a low ammo count.
“I wouldn’t call it a sniper, but definitely a precision weapon.” ~ Erik
While you can run and hipfire it with decent accuracy (although with strong recoil), the weapon excels when aiming down sights and landing weak spot hits, such as headshots. It is a simple, but elegant weapon that feels extremely satisfying to shoot with.
“It behaves like you would expect it to after looking at it, and I think we got it to an interesting gameplay spot as well. It’s a simple design, but extremely effective!.” ~ Erik
The Skitarii Alpha Primus’ Arc Rifle in Darktide is a high ammo, heavy, slow firing ranged weapon that shoots bolts of lightning. Unlike the Psyker’s Smite Blitz, these are not sustained streams of electricity but rather quick, instant bolts that hit their target and dissipate. While it has a high ammo capacity, reloading it takes longer than most weapons, so be careful not to waste your shots!
“With the other Skitarii weapons being relatively low ammunition, we wanted to make the Arc Rifle like a slow firing heavy machine gun, but with Arc properties.” ~ Erik
Each shot will apply an electricity effect like other shock or Arc weapons, and when hitting an already electrocuted enemy it will Arc to a nearby enemy (which will also electrocute it, or Arc again if it’s already electrocuted!). This means that it takes prolonged, sustained fire on a horde of enemies to really build up the damage as the electricity spreads, but becomes unstoppable once it’s properly enabled.
“It’s a gigantic hand cannon is what it is.” ~ Erik
The Phosphor Blast Pistol is a powerful and unique ranged weapon. While it has a limited ammo capacity and isn’t all that accurate, it excels in both damage and support. Each shot of hot-white phosphor blasts deals high damage to the target and then splashes Phosphor to enemies nearby.
“It does a fair amount of damage, it’s not weak by any means, but the support utility is what makes it super interesting.” ~ Erik
Both the initial target and the enemies in the splash zone will suffer a powerful debuff from the lingering Phosphor compound, which makes them not just take more damage from all sources, but attacks will also cleave through them more easily.
“It’s got a super cool effect where you can see it actually burns pieces of the armour off and exposes the flesh on some enemies.” ~ Erik
Beyond looking gnarly, this effect also helps communicate to your teammates which enemies are debuffed by the Phosphor Pistol, encouraging them to take advantage of the situation.
On top of all of these brand new weapons that we’re adding for the Skitarii class, this update will also see the release of a new mark of the Plasma Gun! Available to both the Veteran and Skitarii classes, this Plasma Gun variant will have less focus on penetrating through enemies and terrain, and more on devastating explosions, which will trigger when hitting most enemy types.
Beyond that, the Skitarii class will also have access to the following weapons that can already be found in Darktide’s arsenal:
Infantry Autogun
Braced Autogun
Vigilant Autogun
Heavy Laspistol
Plasma Gun Mk II
Quickdraw Stub Revolver
Shredder Autopistol
Assault Chainsword
“Devil’s Claw” Sword
Shock Maul
Power Falchion
Combat Blade
“The Dual Transonics! It’s a design idea that I’ve had for a while, it kinda builds upon the Hive Scum’s Crowbar and Bone Saw \ It’s basically two movesets in one weapon, and I think it turned out extremely nice, so yeah.” ~ Matteo
“I’m gonna say the Galvanic Rifle and the Arc Maul. Ping and bonk.” ~ Erik
That’s all we have for today! We hope you enjoyed this early look at the Skitarii class’ weapons!
The Skitarii Alpha Primus class will be available on the 23rd of June, but you can already wishlist it now.
Praise the Omnissiah!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
Rising above the shackles of the flesh, the Skitarii have been rebuilt with the divine augments of the Adeptus Mechanicus to best serve the Omnissiah, as an impossibly efficient tool of war.
In case you missed it, check out the reveal trailer here.
This is part of an ongoing series of feature highlights focused on the upcoming DLC class: The Skitarii.
In our previous blog we went over the Skitarii’s unique character creation features! This Feature Highlight focuses on the design of the class’ gameplay, going over its core principles, abilities, talents, and unique mechanics! We’ve interviewed Design Director Victor and Game Designer Gunnar to get their insight.
“I’m Victor, I’m the Design Director on Darktide. I’ve been at Fatshark for 17 years, working as a designer in different ways.” - Victor
“My name is Gunnar and I am currently a Game Designer, but I started at Fatshark in 2018 as a Gameplay Coder on Vermintide, and a few years ago I switched to become a Designer instead.” - Gunnar
For the sake of doing this class justice, we spent a lot of time working on various concepts and ideas, finding a balance between the options available in the lore and what works in a game like Darktide.
“Even way before Arbites, we started thinking about something like this. But, over time, it has evolved into what it is today, which is a Skitarii Alpha Primus, something completely new.” ~ Victor
Working on other classes first also allowed us to get used to that workflow and formula, so we’re more confident both in being able to craft a great class and also in pushing the boundaries of class’ gameplay design.
The Adeptus Mechanicus’ unique cybernetic nature gave us a great opportunity to work outside the box, to represent how removed they are from your typical human. You’ll see that there’s unique elements even in core aspects of the class, such as how Ability Cooldowns work or even the talent tree itself!
When talking Adeptus Mechanicus, or even just Skitarii, there’s a ton of ground to cover in terms of abilities and tools to explore. This both gave us tons of inspiration, but also a lot of ground to cover in terms of what to implement and how to best represent them in-game, which was an everpresent guidance during development.
We tried to incorporate as many elements of the Skitarii and the Adeptus Mechanicus as a whole as we could fit, to give everyone the chance to play around with their favorite part of this beloved faction.
“We want to for sure fulfill the fantasy of what it is to be a Skitarii. So when we’re thinking of abilities and playstyles, or different types of builds, we’re always trying to fit that within the Skitarii theme. While there are a bunch of other cool things about the Adeptus Mechanicus, we don’t want to lose the Skitarii just to chase those.” ~ Gunnar
On top of that, the design team for the class and the talents is in constant communication with the design team for the weapons and blessings, making sure that everything works together smoothly, that there’s synergy, and that both areas support each other to create a strong design pillar for the class.
Before we get into the talents and overall gameplay, we wanted to break down the new, unique mechanics coming with the Skitarii. These are features that are exclusive to this class and affect core aspects of how the class plays, whether it be through its Abilities, Talents or Weapons.
While most classes’ Combat Abilities function on a strict Cooldown, where you either have your Ability available or you’re waiting for it to refresh, the Skitarii’s Ability depends on Capacitance Charges. Having a single Capacitance Charge enables you to use your Combat Ability from the get go, but accumulating multiple Charges empowers your Ability!
This means that the Combat Abilities that the Skitarii has access to have devastating potential even with little talent investment, but require patiently accumulating Capacitance Charges to access it. With the exception of the Chordclaw Strike Ability (more on that later), activating your Combat Ability will consume all available Capacitance Charges to empower it.
“They’re not just being recharged through cooldown, as it is on existing classes. \ You will generate the most Capacitance through your actions. Both through killing basic and Elite enemies as a baseline, but also through other talents that will allow you to generate more Charge by doing specific actions.” ~ Gunnar
You’ll find that many of the talents in the Skitarii’s talent tree also synergize with this mechanic, such as by triggering effects when gaining Charges or by giving you different ways to charge your Capacitance.
The Servo Skull is the default Blitz available to the Skitarii; a floating companion that can provide aid in combat by shooting at your enemies, or even complete Data Interrogation minigames for you on your command. Similar to the Arbites’ Cyber-Mastiff, you can direct your Servo Skull towards a particular enemy or Data Interrogator by double pinging it, and it’ll comply.
“It is super nice in those events, where you can just send your Servo Skull to complete the Data Interrogator and keep doing what you’re doing.” ~ Victor
“Currently it takes more than what it would take a good player to do it manually. So it’s a trade-off; it’s slower, but you can continue fighting.” ~ Gunnar
However, why just stop at one? By investing more talent points into the Blitz, you can unlock additional, more specialized Servo Skulls to accompany you! You’ll be able to add a Servo Skull with an integrated flamethrower to focus on more firepower and cleansing of heretics, and one with Medicae functionality, to better support your team! You can even take both, if you’re willing to spend the talents.
Concept art of the three types of Servo Skulls.
While the primary Servo Skull is controlled with your pings, the Flamethrower and Medicae Servo Skulls are commanded with your Blitz input, depending on whether you’re targeting an enemy or an ally.
“So if an ally is knocked down, or netted, or hogtied, then you can revive them using your Medicae Servo Skull.” ~ Gunnar
Of course, since it is only one of the three Blitzes available to the Skitarii, the Servo Skull is not as key to the class’ identity, but it is nonetheless an iconic piece of gear that we think really helps sell the player fantasy of playing a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus.
And, also! Your primary Servo Skull is customizable! There will be a variety of skins to change the appearance of the initial Servo Skull to suit your preferences, available by obtaining the relevant cosmetics!
Concept art of Servo Skull cosmetics.
Deluxe edition cosmetic for the base Servo Skull.
Unique to certain Skitarii weapons and talents is the Arc mechanic, an effect that interacts with the pre-existing Electrified state on enemies! How it works is that the weapons and talents that have an Arc effect hit an Electrified enemy, the electric attack will immediately jump to the nearest enemy, dealing damage and also electrifying them!
If, instead, the attack hits an enemy that isn’t Electrified, it will Electrify them, so that follow up attacks can trigger the Arc!
“So the more enemies that are affected by it, the more it will bounce, basically. Or, arc!” ~ Victor
This creates not just an interesting gameplay loop for yourself, but it can really take off with teamwork! Multiple Skitarii bearing Arc weaponry can build off of each other’s electrified enemies, and while other classes cannot trigger Arcs, someone like a Psyker could still Electrify enemies to set them up for a Skitarii’s Arc weapons to capitalize on.
And if you’re curious about said weapons, keep an eye out for the next feature highlight, where we cover the Skitarii’s arsenal, including the new Arc weaponry!
The Skitarii is a very versatile class that is designed to be able to fill many niches, both in terms of gameplay and of Adeptus Mechanicus’ player fantasy. The class is extremely flexible, and it is up to the player to decide how to build their Skitarii and what aspects to focus on.
“So you can slot into pretty much any role that you can find in Darktide, but you might not be the best at it.” ~ Gunnar
To support that, the Skitarii has a unique layout to its talent tree: Rather than going top to bottom following different branches, this class’ talent tree starts from the center, and allows players to expand outwards in different directions, taking a cog-like shape. This gives an incredible amount of flexibility to the talent tree and allows players to pick exactly what they want with as little restrictions as possible. You can even opt to not pick any Blitz, Combat Ability or Aura talents if you’d rather focus your talent points on other things!
We’ve been experimenting with different layouts for a while (even as far back as when we first reworked the talents in Patch #13!), and after six successful classes, we were confident enough to push the boundaries of what works for a talent tree in Darktide to try this out. Skitarii’s design as a flexible jack-of-all-trades, as well as the ‘modular’ nature of an Adeptus Mechanicus’ mechanized bodies, gave us the perfect opportunity to implement this type of talent layout and deviate from our norm.
This flexibility also means that this talent ‘web’ doesn’t have as much of a hard emphasis on pre-existing archetypes or playstyles, as opposed to the existing classes in Darktide. Nonetheless, the design behind most of the talents can still be considered to support one of four themes that players can follow and build towards.
“\ you will be able to take some from that section, some from that section, some from that section… It’s more open in that sense, but if you look at \ more as a map, different sections of that map are themed in different ways.” ~ Victor
This layout of talent tree can perhaps look a bit daunting for newer players, since there’s no easy paths to follow. We suggest that if you feel lost, you take a look at the available Blitzes or Combat Abilities and focus on pathing towards them. The talent nodes near them are bound to have good synergy with each other, which can hopefully make initial builds more intuitive.
While we can’t show you the entire talent tree right off the bat, we can show you a sample of some of the talent nodes available in each of those four themes that we mentioned.
These talents allow you to improve your melee combat capabilities or trigger from being in the thick of the melee. Some examples:
Electro-Strike Conduit: Melee Critical hits Electrocute the first target hit.
Target-Neutralization Feedback: Weakspot kills grant Stun and Suppression immunity for a short duration.
Uncapped Arrestor: Successful Melee Attacks grant a stacking bonus to Attack Speed for a short duration.
These talents allow you to improve your ranged capabilities or otherwise synergize with ranged combat. Some examples:
Ammunition-Restoration Pod: Replenish 1% of your Ammo Reserve every 15 seconds.
Rad-Sink: After not shooting for at least a second, gain increased damage on your next shot.
Gunsmith: Gain increased reload speed. Additionally, after not shooting for a few seconds, reload a portion of your magazine from your Ammo Reserve each second.
These talents give you boosts to your character and squadmates, or help you aid them. Some examples:
Salvation Doctrine: Gain increased Damage Reduction and Revive Speed while reviving an ally.
Power Overflow: When at full Toughness, a portion of your excess Toughness Replenished is distributed to each ally in Coherency.
Protectorate Protocol: Incapacitated Allies in Coherency have increased Damage Reduction. If you free them, gain Stun Immunity and increased Damage Reduction for a short duration.
These talents synergize with the Skitarii’s unique Arc mechanic, either taking advantage of it or helping enable it. While these talents are not necessary to make good use of Arc effects and weapons, players who want to specialize in them can do so with these talents. Some examples:
Voltaic Burst: Staggering enemies with a Push applies Electrocution, dealing damage and stunning enemies on a cooldown.
Weakness Analysis Doctrine: Gain increased damage for a short duration when hitting any enemy suffering from Electrocution, Soulblaze, Burning, Bleeding, or Toxin.
System Shock: Electrocuting an enemy applies 4 stacks of Brittleness to them.
Unleash an electric discharge around you, stunning, electrifying and damaging enemies near you. With multiple Capacitance Charges, the effect is improved, such as by also disabling the weapons of enemies in a nearby area!
Perform a powerful, heavy melee attack using a Chordclaw. This Ability does not consume multiple Capacitance Charges, allowing you to store multiple to perform several attacks in succession.
For a short duration, your weapon locks onto enemies close to your targeting reticule, granting you inhuman accuracy.
You are accompanied by a Servo Skull that can shoot at enemies or complete Data Interrogations. Further talents allow you to bring specialized Servo Skulls.
Throw an Arc Grenade, creating an electric explosion that Arcs several times.
Surround yourself in a shield that absorbs all incoming Ranged Damage for a short duration.
You and allies in Coherency regenerate 50% Coherency Toughness regardless of enemy proximity.
You and allies in Coherency have +10% Ammo Reserve.
You and allies in Coherency gain increased Cleave and Rending.
Gain increased Toughness Damage Reduction and Capacitance generation whenever you spend or gain an Ability Charge. Additionally, you have +1 Max Ability Charges.
Killing Elites and Specialists grants Flensing Protocol charges, which increase your damage and Toughness Damage Reduction. Charges are lost when taking damage.
Killing enemies grants stacks of Power Overload. When reaching the maximum amount of stacks, trigger an overload, which improves the damage and Toughness Damage Reduction to you and allies in Coherency for a short duration.
“I guess… fifteen? We’ve been working on the Skitarii since before Hive Scum was released, and during that time it was just… Me and a few coders prototyping, trying things out… and back then, we were throwing everything at the wall and doing all sorts of weird iterations.” ~ Gunnar
“And this time around we had the talent tree up and running, in some form, very early on. \ Earlier than we’ve ever had it before when building a class.” ~ Victor
“I think the Chordclaw is really cool and super satisfying to use. Even the first version that we got in - I was already in love. That’s gonna be my go-to when we release it, for sure.” ~ Gunnar
“I really like the weapon-disabling one \, it’s super cool. It’s one that at face value maybe doesn’t sound super powerful, but in the right situation it’s a life saver and really powerful. Like, with how the game works, it actually is very, very powerful.” ~ Victor
“I think the talent tree layout has been really enjoyable to work with, since it’s a bit different to what we already have. So trying to come up with different configurations that work with different types of weapon setups has been very enjoyable.” ~ Gunnar
“I would say the Servo Skulls, seeing that coming together has been super cool.” ~ Victor
That’s all we have for today! We hope you enjoyed this early look at the mechanics and the talents, as well as a glimpse into what goes on when designing a new class!
Stay tuned for the next feature highlight, which will focus on the Skitarii’s weapons, coming soon!
Praise the Omnissiah!
The Skitarii Alpha Primus class will be available on the 23rd of June, but you can already wishlist it now.
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Rising above the shackles of the flesh, the Skitarii have been rebuilt with the divine augments of the Adeptus Mechanicus to best serve the Omnissiah, as an impossibly efficient tool of war.
In case you missed it, check out the reveal trailer here.
This is part of an ongoing series of feature highlights focused on the upcoming DLC class: The Skitarii.
In our previous highlight we went over the overall vision of the Skitarii’s visual design! This feature highlight focuses on unique options available to the class as far as character creation and customization goes, from unique physical options to voice modification! We’ve interviewed our Associate Art Director, 3D Technical Artist, and Sound Designer to get you all the details!
“My name is Lucas. I am the Associate Art Director on Darktide and I’ve been involved in overseeing the art delivered in the production of the Skitarii class, working closely together with the different disciplines in our production development team. \ As a huge Warhammer fan myself, getting the opportunity to explore something from the Adeptus Mechanicus faction was very exciting. ~Lucas
“My name is Erik Lindqvist, I’m a Senior Technical Artist at Fatshark. I’ve been at the company for about 10 years, mainly working on Vermintide and Vermintide 2, and now I’ve also been leading work on Skitarii on the Technical Art side.” ~ Erik
“I'm Ola, I'm the VO Designer at Darktide. I'm in charge of wrangling all the VO we record, processing it and getting it to play in the game. Sometimes I show up to bother Matt and the actors with strange requests in a recording session. Other than that I like to get my fingers in some UI code on occasion (Personality Scourge and this upcoming Voxcaster Tuning for example).” ~Ola
“When we started talking and discussing about how we’d go about presenting this class, a lot of our ideas went naturally to the character creation of it.” ~ Lucas
While Arbites and Hive Scum fit quite comfortably using the base ‘human’ body as the core classes, the same isn’t true for the Skitarii. Due to their cybernetic nature, there were a lot of visual aspects we wanted to represent that warranted a brand new body type to go with it.
But this also gave us a unique opportunity to show something rarely seen in other Warhammer: 40,000 media, which is how they look under the robes and the hood, something that the entire Art team was eager to work on.
“There wasn’t really an established visual reference for what a Skitarii looks like underneath the robes and armor, so that was a mystery which we needed to solve. The idea of them being flesh fused with machine raised a lot of questions. And because this was such an interesting hook for us to think about, it naturally evolved into a focus for the class!” ~ Lucas
Because this is rarely depicted, we found most of the relevant information (and inspiration!) in written narrative mediums – books, lore excerpts in codices, and so on. While we always collaborate closely with Games Workshop when bringing all aspects of Warhammer: 40,000 to life in Darktide, this was especially true when working on the Skitarii character creation.
“I don’t think we left any ideas out. It was more the other way around, that we added ideas as we went!” ~ Lucas
We worked extensively on concepts and design, shaping together the look of these seldom explored facets of the Adeptus Mechanicus. Things like how their bodies look after such extensive modification, the type of scarring left on their flesh after all the assignments and environmental hazards they’re often subjected to. How exactly it looks where machine meets flesh.
As you might expect, many of the customization options available to the Skitarii are very different from our other classes, in part because of the fusion of man and machine, but also because they’ll be almost completely covered up once you’re done. We had to figure out how to let you add your personal touch in ways that would still be visible under those bulky robes, after all!
“The character creation flow became very different. We cannot use skin colors, we cannot use faces in the same way, to express the character. So we need to find something else.” ~ Erik
Like our other classes, you’ll get to pick from several background options to shape your character’s history, and you’ll get to tweak their height (although they are on average taller than the regular human classes!). Additionally, you’ll also be able to pick your Skitarius’ Forge World of origin, which plays a similar role as the Hive Scum’s choice of Gang, such as altering your starting cosmetics!
One of these Forge World options, Branx Minor, is linked to Atoma itself!
Their natural eyes have long been replaced with bionic upgrades, giving you several color options to choose from! There will be a primary and a secondary lens color option, and of course you can pick the same option for both to have the lenses look the same. Not only that, but these colors will show up no matter what headgear cosmetic you end up using for your Skitarius!
“And that is a bit different depending on the headgear. Some only have two eyes, so you’re basically picking the right and the left eye. Some have smaller diodes and things, as well. Some only have one, so then there’s only the Primary that’s showing.” ~ Erik
The Skitarii’s arms, legs, hands and feet have been upgraded with cybernetic replacements, and during character creation these will also be customizable! You will be able to choose different models for the arms and legs, and you will also get to pick from different metallic textures as the Primary and Secondary metals, including a separate setting to handle the oxidation level.
These customizations will also remain and be visible no matter what cosmetics you’re using, giving you more freedom to craft a unique look. And of course, the arms and hands will also show up in first person!
The Skitarii class will have access to four distinct personalities, something only the Ogryn class can match! But, taking advantage of the Skitarii’s cybernetic nature, we added the ability to customize how the voice itself can sound!
The voice modulation system found in certain headgear cosmetics gave us a solid starting point for the feature, but we pushed the concept further, giving the player different ways to tune it to their heart’s content and find the perfect sound.
There are three different settings that you can gradually tweak to modify the base voice of the chosen personality. As you play around with these dynamic parameters, you’ll get to listen to the changes in real time through the example voice lines playing from your chosen personality, or even switch personalities to hear how specific setups sound on all the voices!
As you might expect, one of these parameters controls the pitch… among other things! While there is some correlation with increasing this slider to make the pitch higher, or decreasing it to make the pitch lower, it is not so straightforward. There are various effects being influenced by this parameter, purposely making the pitch shift unpredictably in certain ranges, and sometimes making the normal, unmodified voice shine through.
The second parameter is a delay effect, which can sound like multiple voices at once, or like the voice has an almost immediate echo. Like with the pitch parameter, modifying this parameter is not as straightforward as it might seem, affecting not just the intensity of the effect, but also other sound effects linked to it to create some unpredictable variations.
“You will hear stuff change as you move this around, but our goal is also to… You know, we want you to stumble into something that sounds cool, rather than necessarily be like ‘Oh this goes up and this goes there’, you know. \ We modulate it along the way so that different aspects of each effect comes in and out to get as much variance as possible.” ~ Ola
The final parameter modifies the distortion on the voice, with various different crunching effects modifying and distorting the sound. Once again, we wanted to make players experiment, so as you move the slider along you’ll notice that certain aspects of the distortion lower in intensity while others pick up, varying independently to create unique sounds as you explore the possibilities!
“There is always a built-in effect on the voices, so they will never sound fully human. \ Even if you skip through the character creation and don’t mess with any of the dynamic settings, the character will still sound like a Skitarius.” ~ Ola
“I do think that going deeper into what the character creation of the Skitarii looked like, and exploring the character under the suit, was especially interesting to me.” ~ Lucas
“I think it’s interesting to work on something this mechanical. It’s a different process! In some ways it’s more complex, because you have to make things mechanically work.” ~ Erik
“I think the class itself is really cool, there’s a lot of fun stuff you can do in regards to voice for the class. But this \ is definitely, for me, the stand out fun feature. It’s been super fun tweaking these effects and having these moments where you go ‘ohh, this sounds really cool, this sounds really cool, let’s try that, oh that also sounds really cool!’.” ~ Ola
That’s all we have for today! We hope you enjoyed this early look at the character creation of the Skitarii class!
Stay tuned for the next feature highlight, which will focus on the Skitarii’s game design and talents, coming soon!!
Praise the Omnissiah!
The Skitarii Alpha Primus class will be available on the 23rd of June, but you can already wishlist it now.
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Last week we revealed the new Skitarii Alpha Primus class to the world. We are so excited for these specialist warriors of the Machine-God to join the fight on Atoma, bringing their wargear and combat expertise to the fight against the heretics!
Today we are joined by Matte and Lucas, our Art Director and Associate Art Director, to chat a bit about how we visualised this new class in Darktide.
Take it away guys!
“As a huge Warhammer fan myself, getting the opportunity to explore something from the Adeptus Mechanicus faction was very exciting”
Lucas
We already touched upon the fact that the entire Darktide team has been waiting for a chance to add an Adeptus Mechanicus themed class to the game for a long time, and for many of us this really is a dream come true. The ritualistic elements of this faction, combined with their technology is something we find really interesting, and getting to pour all of our combined knowledge and ideas into this has been such a fun journey. It’s been great to collaborate together with Games Workshop to make sure we get the look and feel of these warriors just right.
We realised early that if we are doing an Adeptus Mechanicus class, it would be represented by the Skitarii, as they make the most sense, both for the power level of the Inquisitorial Warband, but also from a good gameplay experience perspective.
“I think this is the closest we have been to the core of Warhammer 40.000 for a class in the game”
Matte
Since the Skitarii are so iconic for Warhammer 40.000, we knew that this would be an immense task to represent in the game. Not only did we want to honor the lore, but we also wanted to make sure that the class ticked all the boxes, being represented correctly and fun to play!
Skitarii headgear concept
Skitarii backpack concept
One of the most interesting (and important) parts of the Skitarii is the blend between human and machine. The Skitarii are at their core humans, but they have been augmented by bionics to better suit the battlefield conditions they are faced with. Their limbs have been upgraded to mechanical ones, and their faces are covered in different optical enhancements and other gruesome details, all to make them better warriors. We thought a lot on how to represent this, and we hope that when you get to see the coming reveals, you can see how much care and consideration went into this.
Bionic arm concept
The bionics themselves have been very fun to work on. Since we have always hoped to bring this class to the game, we have consciously not added too much of these to the cosmetics of the other classes. We felt that if we ever get the chance to visualise the Adeptus Mechanicus as a player class, that was going to be the time to go all out on this. And that time is finally here!
“This has been a project long vision for the team, and I was excited for us to finalise this class”
Matte
Another really cool thing to work on was their iconic weaponry and adding some of them to the game. It is always a challenge to take something from the tabletop game and bring it to life. The weapons are front and center in Darktide, so it’s something we take great pride in trying to figure out how to represent in the best way possible.
Phosphor Blast Pistol firing & reload concept
Together with Games Workshop, we always try to make the weapons believable, especially the ranged ones. A lot of work goes into trying to figure out how parts move, how the reload mechanism works and how the weapon acts as you pull the trigger. Not to mention the sound and VFX of the shots.
The weapons of the Adeptus Mechanicus are works of art, and we spent a lot of time making sure that this is also shown. The blend between high-tech, ornate wood work and fine metals make them really stand out. We thought along the lines of making them feel both archaic and advanced at the same time.
Galvanic Rifle Concept
One good example of this is the Galvanic Rifle. We took the existing concept art, the look of the miniatures themselves and then mixed this with references of how historical weapons work and sprinkled the advanced technology of the Adeptus Mechanicus on top. This all blends together to make the weapon you will see in the game. It’s a long process to get everything right, but a very rewarding one when it’s done.
“There is also the gameplay aspect of it, we want to make sure the weapons look and act in a way that makes sense for the player while using them”
Matte
Another huge task was to visualise the room where you will create your player character. It’s the inner sanctum of the old Adeptus Mechanicus facility that Hadron Omega-7-7 has gotten access to, and it is here standard Skitarii are upgraded into the Alpha Primus variant.
Skitarii Alpha Primus character creator ideas
There is so much detail that has gone into this. First and foremost we wanted the mood of it to be just right. In the center there is this giant machine, the main component of the upgrade process, but the room is also filled with censer smoke and candles. We really tried to nail the feel of this being both a machine and ritual chamber.
Skitarii human parts concept
It is here you will see the full display of the gruesome nature of the Skitarii. Suspended in the middle will be a disfigured torso and head that is the core of your character, and you get to pick the mechanical limbs and other details for it. We wanted it to feel like you are creating your very own Skitarii.
“The hood, the face and the bionic limbs are so iconic”
Lucas
Much of this will then be concealed by the hood and robes of the Adeptus Mechanicus when you are done. And since you also get to pick what Forge World your Skitarii initially came from, these come in some different colors to tie it all together.
Forge World color variations (Mars, Ryza & Branx Minor)
That’s as much as we will go into today, all in all this has been a very challenging, but rewarding, process for us, and we have so much to share with you in the upcoming weeks!
If you want to know more about the character customization, make sure to tune in next week as we will really deep dive into this. But for now, this is us signing off.
The Skitarii Alpha Primus class will be available on the 23rd of June, but you can already wishlist it now.
Thanks to Matte and Lucas for sharing their thoughts and experience on the visual design of the new class, and thanks to all of you for reading!
Praise the Omnissiah!
See you at the Mourningstar!
- The Darktide team
Together with Games Workshop we just revealed the next class coming to Darktide as part of the Warhammer Skulls showcase! If you missed it, no worries, you can watch it here.
The Skitarii Alpha Primus is coming to Darktide on June 23rd!
We asked Juan and Victor, our Executive Producer and Design Director, to sit down with us and walk us through the new class at a glance. Following this we will have a series of Feature Highlights, deep diving into the different parts of the class, leading up to the release!
Take it away guys!
We have known from the start that we wanted to add some form of playable Adeptus Mechanicus presence to the game. We also know that players really resonate with Adeptus Mechanicus, our Tech-Priest Hadron Omega-7-7 being a good example.
Many of you might ask why Skitarii, and not the more recognisable Tech-Priest? For us this really came down to two things. The first being that Tech-Priests don’t really operate on the strike team level of Darktide’s warband. The Skitarii are a better fit. They are the frontline warriors of the Adeptus Mechanicus, and we knew we could weave them into the scope and narrative of the game way better. “You don’t often see Tech-Priests run around in larger groups”
-Victor
The second reason is that we felt the Skitarii was not very explored in the medium of video games. We saw this as an opportunity to delve deeper into, and we ended up working together with Games Workshop to find the best representation of these concepts for Darktide. The Skitarii that you will play in the game are called “Alpha Primus”, and they are a bit different from the standard Skitarii that you see go to war under the banner of the Adeptus Mechanicus in bigger battles. These specialist warriors can operate with more autonomy, and are more suited to the gameplay experience of Darktide.
The Alpha Primus is a favoured soldier of the Machine God, blessed with mental and physical augmentations beyond those of their fellow Skitarii.. If you’ve played Darktide recently you probably have been out in the Deadside to help Hadron Omega-7-7 finding Tech-Remnants. The success of these discoveries has led to several Forge Worlds deploying their forces to aid the battle for Tertium. Hadron has now been given the whereabouts of an old Adeptus Mechanicus facility that can upgrade a Skitarii Veterans into the more elite Alpha Primus variant.
The Skitarii Alpha Primus carry out delicate or specialised missions for their Tech-Priest masters, making them well suited to assist the Inquisitorial Warband. Their mechanised brains are force-loaded with advanced tactics, combat data and weapon proficiencies, freeing them to operate more independently from their fellow Skitarii.
This also let us, in collaboration with Games Workshop, to really come up with cool abilities and talents for them. As we said in the introduction, we always wanted to do this class. It was top of the list when we looked at what to add to the game years ago, it has just taken some time to really hone in how to make sense of them being part of the Mourningstars ongoing struggles on Atoma.
“We have been working on this for a long time, in parallel with other classes, and we wanted to make sure that we got all the intricacies, abilities and weapons right. We hope it will be worth the wait”
-Juan
We knew going into the making of this class that it would take longer than other classes. We needed the time to explore how the class would fit, both on the level of the larger universe of Warhammer 40,000 and on an implementation level for Darktide itself. The team has now made two classes, and we learnt a lot during this time. All of these learnings have gone into making the Skitarii Alpha Primus the best it can be!
There are some really cool unique things we have added to this class. But we won’t go too deep into this today, as we will cover all of this in future Feature Highlights, but let’s look at it from a top down perspective!
The Skitarii Alpha Primus comes with a completely new set of weapons. You will be able to wield Arc weapons, Phosphor Blasters, Transonic Blades and high-powered Galvanic Rifles.
“The Arc mechanic is really cool. It can hit several enemies if they are affected by the Arc condition, energy will arc between them. Good for handling hordes” - Victor
There are so many iconic weapons here, and it has taken us some time to really materialise them into the game. Many of these we had to figure out how to represent from the miniatures and art of Warhammer 40,000. Many ideas and iterations later, we are now really happy with how this entire arsenal came out in the game!
You will also be greeted with a new sight when you go into the Skitarii Talent tree. It’s quite different from the other classes , as it is now a wheel (or a cog if you will) that starts in the middle and you will be able to customize your play experience by going in different directions, instead of the normal top down progression that the other classes have. This makes the Skitarii Alpha Primus easier to really “make your own”, and have them fit several roles in the Inquisitorial party. The Skitarii also comes with a Servo-Skull that hovers around and aids them as they fight.We will go deeper into this mechanic in a later Feature Highlight, but a small teaser is that you will be able to have different configurations of this, one of them being a Flamethrower!
“The character creator is quite unique from what we have seen before on Darktide”
- Juan
The nature of the Skitarii, being enhanced warriors with mechanical limbs and covered in armor, wrapped under their signature robe and cowl, also made us really have to think of the character customization. It is a unique experience compared to the normal process, as you will go through the process of being upgraded to an Alpha Primus. Picking the limbs you want and even being able to use a voice modulation on top of the voice acting! This quickly became one of our favorite things with the class, and it also adds a lot to the customization.
This class has been a labor of love for us. We are such big fans of the Adeptus Mechanicus lore, look and feel in Warhammer 40,000, and we can’t wait for you all to experience this first hand! That will have to do for today. There is so much we could talk about, but we don’t want to spoil the upcoming Feature Highlights too much.
Next week we will be back with the Feature Highlight for the Visual Design of the class, so stay tuned! In the meantime you can wishlist the Skitarii Alpha Primus now and we hope you are as excited as we are uncovering more about them as we journey towards release on June 23rd!
That’s all for today!
We'll see you on the Mourningstar,
The Darktide Team
Hotfix 1.11.7 is now being rolled out on all platforms. This hotfix only contains the following change:
Fixed an issue that could cause players to disconnect when another player left a mission right when said mission failed.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Patch 1.11.6 is now being rolled out on all platforms, and while you wait for it to download you can read the notes below!
This patch contains extensive balance changes, focused on Carapace Armoured enemies, particularly Ogryn Crushers. These enemies (and the tools used to counter them) have become a central part of the current meta. As we lower how frequently these threats appear, we’re also adjusting the most dominant anti-Carapace options.
In case you missed it, check out last week’s dev blog (you can find it just before this post in our Steam announcement section) where we go into more detail on the reasoning behind these changes.
Beyond that we also have a bunch of bug and crash fixes, and a few minor tweaks.
Reduced Ogryn Crusher spawn amount
~35%
Due to how spawning works, this number isn’t exact and is more of an average result over the course of a mission.
This affects ambient spawns, Horde spawns and Event spawns
Havoc Changes:
An additional ~15% reduction in Ogryn Crushers, Bulwarks and Reapers
Rotten armour
Armour override has been changed from Carapace to Infested -- This allows for a greater diversity of weapons to be brought to a Rotten Armour mission
Lowered the amount of Rotten enemies spawns
Ogryn
Increased the height at which the Ogryn is able to Vault over obstacles. This puts him at a similar level as the Human Classes and will hopefully smooth out how you traverse obstacles while playing as our favorite Big’Un.
Veteran
Split talent 'Demolition Stockpile' into different replenish timers for each Blitz
Krak Grenades from 60s to 90s
Frag and Smoke Grenades unchanged at 60s
Hive Scum
Boom Bringer
Max charges from 3 to 2 (With ‘Extra Pouches’, from 4 to 3)
Chem Grenade
Max charges from 3 to 2 (With ‘Extra Pouches’, from 4 to 3)
Chem Toxin DoT
Damage per tick while at max stacks changed from 440 to 350
Uncanny Strike
From Rending to Brittleness
Blaze Force Sword, Combat Blade, Duelling Sword, Sapper Shovel
From 12/16/20/24% Rending per weakspot hit (max 60/80/100/120%) to 2/4/6/8 stacks of 2.5% Brittleness per weakspot hit (5/10/15/20% per weakspot hit; max 40%)
Shivs
From 4/5/6/8% Rending per weakspot hit (max 20/25/30/40%) to 1/2/3/4 stacks of 2.5% Brittleness per weakspot hit (2.5/5/7.5/10% per weak spot hit; max 40%)
Melee Rending Blessings
From Rending to Melee Rending
Opportunist
Bladed Momentum
Sapper Shovel
Damage profiles (against 1st target of the attack)
Heavy Relentless ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.4 to 0.5
Heavy Relentless ADM vs Flak armour, Maniac, Unyielding from 0.75 to 0.8
Heavy Relentless Damage from {110,225} to {125,250}
Heavy Relentless Impact from {10,20} to {12,20}
Heavy Special Sticky second Damage instance ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.5 to 0.6
Heavy Strikedown ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.4 to 0.6
Heavy Strikedown ADM vs Flak armour, Maniac, Unyielding from 0.75 to 0.8
Heavy Strikedown Damage from {125,275} to {145,295}
Heavy Strikedown Impact from 15 to {12,20}
Light Vanguard ADM vs Carapace armour from 0 to 0.2
Light Vanguard ADM vs Flak armour from 0.75 to 0.8
Light Vanguard damage from {80,160} to {85,170}
Light Relentless ADM vs Carapace armour from 0 to 0.2
Light Relentless ADM vs Flak armour from 0.75 to 0.8
Light Relentless damage from {55,120} to {70,140}
Light Strikedown Damage from {95,180} to {100,190}
Light Special Sticky initial and second instance ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.4 to 0.5
Pushfollow attack ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.25 to 0.35
Pushfollow attack ADM vs Maniac from 0.5 to 0.75
Damage profiles (against secondary targets of the attack)
Heavy Relentless and Heavy Strikedown Damage scaled up on all targets
Blaze Force Sword
Damage profiles ADM vs Carapace armour (against 1st target of the attack)
Light Vanguard from 0.01 to 0.2
Light Strikedown Stab from 0.25 to 0.4
Light Assassin Uppercut from 0.25 to 0.35
Damage profiles ADM vs Carapace armour (against secondary targets of the attack)
Heavy Vanguard from 0 to 0.1
Obscurus Mk II Blaze Force Sword
Slightly delayed the active window for the Light 2 uppercut attack to make it easier to hit weakspots.
Shivs
Weapon Special
Direct hit Damage from 190 to 235
Finesse boost from 1.2 to 1.6
ADM vs Flak armour (near) from 0.5 to 0.6
ADM vs Flak armour (far) from 0.25 to 0.35
Mk I damage profiles
Crit boost curve on most profiles lowered by around 0.15
from around 0.8/0.7 to 0.65/0.6
Duelling Sword
Heavy Strikedown
Finesse boost from {1.1, 2.1} to {1.0, 2.0}
Crit boost curve from 0.5 to 0.4
Heavy Stab
ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.5 to 0.4
Finesse boost from {1.2, 2.4} to {1.1, 2.2}
Crit boost curve from 0.5 to 0.4
Inferno Force Staff
Direct hit ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.25 to 0.35
Damage over Time effects
Burn ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.1 to 0.2
Soulblaze ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.1 to 0.25
Soulblaze damage (at max stacks) from 250 to 255
Added automatic file integrity checks to the launcher after crashes caused by corrupted game files. If corruption is detected, the launcher will prompt Steam file verification to repair the game install.
Reduced the time of Expedition capture zone objectives.
Made the ‘Scavenged Kantrael Mk XH’ helmets equipable for both Veteran & Zealot.
Fixed a crash that could occur when having the inventory open while transitioning into a mission loading screen.
Fixed an issue where voice chat information would show with the team panel HUD visible when in a mission.
Fixed the Veteran ‘Survivalist’ Aura not going into cooldown when other players kill an enemy.
Added a Hud Icon to ‘Desperation’ to more clearly show its effect.
Fixed an issue where objects would end up slightly below the ground in the Expedition extraction.
Fixed an issue with themes not being applied correctly in expedition game mode.
Fixed an issue that caused players to die when joining while the team was at the exit of a sanctuary
Items sold in the Expedition Sanctuary can now be marked/pinged by players.
Fixed issues that caused zone progression to not display properly after hot-joining, there are still other issues that cause this that we are investigating.
When hot-joining an expedition, players might enter the mission as dead if it happened while the existing players were leaving a Sanctuary.
Fixed!
Players can use some of the new grenades while inside a Sanctuary. Please be nice to the locals.
Some of the new items found in Sanctuaries can’t be tagged.
Fixed!
Some textures can bug out when playing on AMD GPUs.
Players can hot-join private matches if they enter matchmaking through Quickplay. Fix worked on and coming in future hotfix.
Fixed!
\ Some level and enemy textures can take a while to load, leaving a low-quality texture visible until it finishes loading.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Next week’s patch will come with some balance changes that we have been working on for a while now. Balancing the gameplay experience is important to us, and we have been following the discussions around this topic. Today we will look at just the upcoming balance changes in the patch, the rest you will get in the normal patch notes when it drops.
In the coming update we’re taking the first step in a broader effort to improve both performance and combat balance.
First, some background on this.
Over time, as we’ve expanded and improved weapons, talents, and introduced new classes, the overall player power has increased in the game. To maintain the intended difficulty, we have increased the enemy density and spawn rates of elites, and while this has kept the game intense, it has also introduced new challenges for us. As difficulty rises, enemy count increases, and in especially enemy dense scenarios this often impacts performance and stability. At the same time, as we rely on an increased number of strong Elite enemies to scale the difficulty, we also narrow down the range of effective player loadouts. It’s important to us that you can use your favourite loadouts in as many scenarios as possible, and not box players in too much.
Our long-term goal is to bring these elements back into better alignment. We want to preserve the intensity of the combat, while making it more stable, more readable, and more supportive of different builds and loadouts. This means toning down the most extreme of enemy scenarios, while also addressing a small number of player power outliers that have been shaping our encounter design.
This update focuses on Carapace Armoured enemies, particularly Ogryn Crushers. These enemies (and the tools used to counter them) have become a central part of the current meta. As we lower how frequently these threats appear, we’re also adjusting the most dominant anti-Carapace options.
This change is a first pass at reducing the amount of Ogryn Crushers across the game. Do note that the value below is an average across multiple missions, and any single mission may still have fewer or more Crushers (still lower than before though) based on the specifics of the run.
This is to maintain a healthy variation in the randomized spawning system, with the goal of keeping every mission fresh and exciting.
With that being said, we are gonna continue to monitor post patch and adjust accordingly.
Enemy Spawns
Lowered Ogryn Crushers spawn amount by around 30% on average
This affects ambient spawns, Horde spawns and Event spawns
Havoc
An additional ~15% on average reduction in Ogryn Crushers, Bulwarks and Reapers
‘Rotten Armour’ Modifier
Armour type override has been changed from Carapace armour to Infested
Dev Note: This will allow for a greater diversity of weapons to be brought to a Rotten Armour mission
Lowered the amount of Rotten enemies spawns
Dev sidenote: In the last few patches, we have been tweaking the limits of the amount of enemies that are allowed to be spawned at the same time. This is to ensure that the performance of the game is better during higher tension moments where there might be an extreme amount of enemies spawning.
As we are lowering the amount of Carapace Armoured enemies you will encounter, to maintain balance we are also tweaking some of the strongest anti-carapace tools.
Split talent ‘Demolition Stockpile’ into different replenish timers for each Blitz
Krak Grenades from 60s to 90s
Frag and Smoke Grenades unchanged at 60s
Boom Bringer
Max charges from 3 to 2 (With ‘Extra Pouches’, from 4 to 3)
Chem Grenade
Max charges from 3 to 2 (With ‘Extra Pouches’, from 4 to 3)
Chem Toxin DoT
Damage per tick while at max stacks changed from 440 to 350
The ‘Uncanny Strike’, ‘Opportunist’ and ‘Bladed Momentum’ weapon Blessings provided a relatively easy way to gain a large amount of Rending, which could then be applied to any outgoing damage from the player, and not just to damage coming from their Melee weapon or towards the enemy that was being hit to trigger the Blessing.
‘Uncanny Strike’ was changed to apply Brittleness to the enemy being hit instead, allowing the player to still reach a considerable bonus (40%) but only after repeatedly striking the specific enemy in melee.
‘Opportunist’ and ‘Bladed Momentum’ were changed to apply their Rending bonus only to Melee attacks, instead of any offensive effect.
Note: Brittleness is a debuff applied to a specific enemy which increases their damage taken, while Rending is a buff that applies to the player’s outgoing offensive effects.
Both are effective only against the Flak, Carapace, Unyielding and Maniac armour types.
‘Uncanny Strike’ Blessing
From Rending to Brittleness
Blaze Force Sword, Combat Blade, Duelling Sword, Sapper Shovel
From 12/16/20/24% Rending per weak spot hit (max 60/80/100/120%) to 2/4/6/8 stacks of 2.5% Brittleness per weakspot hit (5/10/15/20% per weakspot hit; max 40%)
Shivs
From 4/5/6/8% Rending per weak spot hit (max 20/25/30/40%) to 1/2/3/4 stacks of 2.5% Brittleness per weak spot hit (2.5/5/7.5/10% per weak spot hit; max 40%)
‘Opportunist’ and ‘Bladed Momentum’ Blessings
From Rending to Melee Rending
The Rending buff from these Blessings will only affect Melee attacks, instead of any attack/effect
Since Psyker Blaze Force Swords and Veteran Sapper Shovels were affected significantly by the changes to the Uncanny Strike Blessing, we raised their offensive properties with a particular focus on their performance against Carapace armour. These changes will increase the baseline effectiveness of these weapons, allowing also for more competition and variance in the Blessings slots.
Sapper Shovels
Damage profiles (against 1st target of the attack)
Heavy Relentless ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.4 to 0.5
Heavy Relentless ADM vs Flak armour, Maniac, Unyielding from 0.75 to 0.8
Heavy Relentless Damage from {110,225} to {125,250}
Heavy Relentless Impact from {10,20} to {12,20}
Heavy Special active second hit ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.5 to 0.6
Heavy Strikedown ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.4 to 0.6
Heavy Strikedown ADM vs Flak armour, Maniac, Unyielding from 0.75 to 0.8
Heavy Strikedown Damage from {125,275} to {145,295}
Heavy Strikedown Impact from 15 to {12,20}
Light Vanguard ADM vs Carapace armour from 0 to 0.2
Light Vanguard ADM vs Flak armour from 0.75 to 0.8
Light Vanguard Damage from {80,160} to {85,170}
Light Relentless ADM vs Carapace armour from 0 to 0.2
Light Relentless ADM vs Flak armour from 0.75 to 0.8
Light Relentless Damage from {55,120} to {70,140}
Light Strikedown Damage from {95,180} to {100,190}
Light Special active initial and second hit ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.4 to 0.5
Pushfollow attack ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.25 to 0.35
Pushfollow attack ADM vs Maniac from 0.5 to 0.75
Damage profiles (against secondary targets of the attack)
Heavy Relentless and Heavy Strikedown Damage scaled up on all targets Blaze Force Swords
Damage profiles ADM vs Carapace armour (against 1st target of the attack)
Light Vanguard from 0.01 to 0.2
Light Strikedown Stab from 0.25 to 0.4
Light Assassin Uppercut from 0.25 to 0.35
Damage profiles ADM vs Carapace armour (against secondary targets of the attack)
Heavy Vanguard from 0 to 0.1
Obscurus Mk II Blaze Force Sword
Slightly delayed the active window for the Light 2 uppercut attack to make it easier to connect with weakspots
With Chem Toxin now dealing less damage, we have increased the effectiveness of the Shivs’ Weapon Special direct hit properties, to weigh up for any missed breakpoints.
Specifically for the Mk I version**,** the bonus from Critical Hits was lowered, maintaining the huge offensive spike potential of the weapon but in a more contained way.
Weapon Special
Direct hit Damage from 190 to 235
Finesse boost from 1.2 to 1.6
ADM vs Flak armour (near) from 0.5 to 0.6
ADM vs Flak armour (far) from 0.25 to 0.35
Mk I Damage profiles
Crit boost curve on most profiles lowered by around 0.15
from around 0.8/0.7 to 0.65/0.6
While affected by the Uncanny Strike changes, the Duelling Swords’ Heavy attacks still remained an outlier in effectiveness, especially because of their extreme Finesse (Weakspot and Critical Hits) scaling. We have slightly lowered those properties, while maintaining the high mobility and overall ease of use of the weapon family.
Heavy Strikedown
Finesse boost from {1.1, 2.1} to {1.0, 2.0}
Crit boost curve from 0.5 to 0.4
Heavy Stab
ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.5 to 0.4
Finesse boost from {1.2, 2.4} to {1.1, 2.2}
Crit boost curve from 0.5 to 0.4
Alongside the changes to Soulblaze (details just below), we are giving a small buff to the Carapace armour direct hit effectiveness of this Force Staff, allowing it to still be valuable against the heavily armoured targets in a mixed group of enemies.
Direct hit ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.25 to 0.35
Since the ease of gaining global Rending was significantly lowered due to the changes to Melee weapon Blessings, we have increased the Armour Damage Modifiers of specific Damage over Time effects against the Carapace armour type, and overall slightly raised the damage of Psyker’s Soulblaze.
DoT effects
Burn ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.1 to 0.2
Soulblaze ADM vs Carapace armour from 0.1 to 0.25
Soulblaze Damage per tick while at max stacks changed from 250 to 255
This update is the first step of many to improve both gameplay balance and technical performance. In future patches, we will continue refining enemy compositions, adjusting outlier weapons, and improving those that have been falling behind. Darktide is at its best when combat feels intense, responsive, and fair. These changes are aimed at supporting that experience, reducing unnecessary extremes while expanding the number of ways players can succeed.
There are plenty of other mechanics and enemies that we can improve, such as the high density of Ogryn Bulwarks. We’ll talk more about our shielded enemies in the near future.
We’ll be closely monitoring feedback and performance data as these changes go live, and will continue to iterate based on this! Please let us know what you think of these changes after you’ve had some time testing them out next week.
That’s all for today.
See you on the Mourningstar!
The Darktide Team
Hotfix 1.11.5 is now being rolled out on all platforms, and while you wait for it to download you can read the notes below!
This hotfix fixes several bugs and crashes, and introduces an update to our implementation of AMD FSR.
FSR update: Upgraded our AMD FSR implementation and implemented an option to switch FSR version.
We hope this improves the situation with FSR crashes, but will continue to monitor.
Fixed an issue where the Veteran Smoke Grenade effects would not be correctly removed upon leaving the smoke cloud area.
Fixed an issue where the Ogryn 'Light Em' Up' talent failed to correctly stack Burn when using weapons that spawn projectiles (e.g. Grenadier Gauntlet).
Fixed an issue where the Zealot 'Perfectionist' talent didn't consistently refund cooldown.
Fixed an issue where the Dreg Tox Bombers and Scab Bombers would not use their long range overhand throw correctly.
Fixed an issue where the Zealot 'Scourge' talent would not trigger consistently on melee hits that killed the enemy.
Fixed a crash that could happen if a Veteran player triggered a large amount of buffs from the talent tree in a short period of time.
Fixed an issue that was causing enemies to spawn too early at the start of some missions.
Fixed issue where game occasionally crashed when players tried to open expeditions menu while the game is force closing menus for other reasons
Fixed issue where, upon player death, the screen transitions to a blank view instead of showing the expected death and UI
When hot-joining an expedition, players might enter the mission as dead if it happened while the existing players were leaving a Sanctuary.
Players can use some of the new grenades while inside a Sanctuary. Please be nice to the locals.
Some of the new items found in Sanctuaries can’t be tagged.
Some textures can bug out when playing on AMD GPUs.
Players can hot-join private matches if they enter matchmaking through Quickplay. Fix worked on and coming in future hotfix.
\ Some level and enemy textures can take a while to load, leaving a low-quality texture visible until it finishes loading.
We are investigating increased GPU crash rate related to reenabling of FSR frame gen on AMD Radeon RX 9xxx gen.
This patch introduces an update to FSR that we hope will improve the situation.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
After the clamour and chaos of the Rumbling Giants attack, the streets of Tertium feel eerily quiet. Don't let your guard down, though, the Heretics may be low in number, but Wyrmwood agents report the troops present show unnatural resistance to injury…
Complete missions with the Indomitable Incursion condition to make progress in the event! These missions will see a much lower number of enemies… because you will be facing nothing but Elites, Specialists and Monstrosities!
This condition will only be available in Heresy, Damnation and Auric difficulties.
This event is LIVE NOW until May 10. The rewards will be Ordo dockets, Plasteel and Diamantine. Those who complete the last tier of the event will receive a cosmetic insignia.
Patch 1.11.4 is now being rolled out on all platforms, and while you wait for it to download you can read the notes below!
This update has some minor tweaks and Hive Scum balance changes, and several bug and crash fixes.
On top of that…
As the Deadside and its climate is very volatile and unstable, the long range sensors of the Mourningstar struggle with updated information about enemy movement and the general lay of the land. This means that the Expedition Map will update on a regular basis, presenting new challenges and setups to explore.
With this update we begin our first Expedition Map rotation for the Expeditions Game Mode! Starting later today, the existing nodes have been wiped and replaced with a new set of unique nodes, complete with a new modifier and environment condition to keep things fresh!
The new grid points will have to be unlocked from the new starting node, as you begin another cycle of gathering Tech-Remnants and unlocking grid points. As Tech-Remnants are linked to each Expedition Map rotation, you’ll all start again on equal footing!
One of the nodes is special! To unlock it, the community as a whole must gather 200,000,000 Tech-Remnants total! Each member of the Strike Team is counted separately for this requirement, meaning that a team of four that extracts successfully will add their Tech-Remnants gathered to the pool four times at once.
The ‘Live Events’ view now displays information on past live events.
The Personality Scourge menu now evaluates if no changes were performed and notify the player in the final step.
Quickplay matchmaking will now be disabled when selecting Private Game from the additional matchmaking options.
Hive Scum talents 'Adrenaline Smiter' and 'Splash Damage' now count kills from attacks that latch on to enemies.
Hive Scum talent 'Street Tough' can no longer be triggered by Specialist melee attacks, like the Pox Hound pounce.
The message shown in the Expedition menu while matchmaking should now better reflect why you cannot start another mission.
Players no longer receive damage from being slammed into walls by a sand storm.
Fixed the issue that sometimes caused the Expedition to be considered failed when extracting successfully.
Fixed an issue where certain Curios could give less Stamina than what was displayed in the description.
Fixed an issue with long item descriptions getting cut when inspecting items.
Fixed an issue where several Commodore’s Vestures items stated that they were obtained from the Commissary.
Fixed an issue where Psyker’s 'Smite' animation would behave incorrectly when entering the 'Scrier's Gaze' stance ability while channeling.
Fixed an issue that was causing enemies to spawn too early at the start of some levels.
Fixed an issue that caused the timer to be showing as ticking down when hotjoining into a Sanctuary.
Fixed the VFX on decoding-skulls which caused them to look stalled (red) when they were actually progressing (blue).
Fixed an issue that caused objective markers to remain on capture zones after completion.
Fixed it so a capture zone's objective marker is shown before the players get to it.
Added a pushback for the door opening of the expeditions extraction Valkyrie to avoid players getting stuck in it
Fixed issue that caused the server to crash when players hotjoined during the extraction phase.
Fixed crash that could occur when an Arbites’ Cyber-Mastiff pounces on an enemy.
Fixed a sound issue on the Auspex that caused players to crash.
Fixed a bug where the amount of items on stock in a Sanctuary would be incorrect for players that hotjoin an Expedition.
Fixed a crash that could occur when a Valkyrie Bombing Run killed a Pox Burster
Players should now be able to directly swap to their Blitz from any wieldable Expedition items bought from the Sanctuary.
Fixed issue where Sand Vortexes would get stuck in the extraction area
Fixed issue where players on a dedicated server could sometimes be softlocked inside a safe zone because the airlock door to go out would never open.
Fixed an issue where certain hairstyles acquired from owning Vermintide 1 and 2 were displayed as black instead of their intended colours.
Fixed an issue where certain Vostroyan head gear cosmetics looked broken when moving around the Mourningstar.
When hot-joining an expedition, players might enter the mission as dead if it happened while the existing players were leaving a Sanctuary.
Some of the new items found in Sanctuaries can’t be tagged.
Some textures can bug out when playing on AMD GPUs.
\ Some level and enemy textures can take a while to load, leaving a low-quality texture visible until it finishes loading.
We are investigating increased GPU crash rate related to reenabling of FSR frame gen on AMD Radeon RX 9xxx gen.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
This patch comes with a couple of bug and crash fixes. We are continuing to work on solving the rest of the known issues list for the next patches.
Patch 1.11.3 is now being rolled out on all platforms, and while you wait for it to download you can read the notes below!
Fixed an issue that was causing enemies to spawn too early at the start of some missions.
Fixed a crash that could happen when a large amount of enemies spawned with additional visual effects added to them.
Fixed a crash that could happen while being inside the tornado on Expeditions.
Added extra checks to prevent successful Expeditions missions to sometimes register as failures.
When hot-joining an expedition, players might enter the mission as dead if it happened while the existing players were leaving a Sanctuary.
Players can use some of the new grenades while inside a Sanctuary. Please be nice to the locals.
Some of the new items found in Sanctuaries can’t be tagged.
Some textures can bug out when playing on AMD GPUs.
Players can hot-join private matches if they enter matchmaking through Quickplay. Fix worked on and coming in future hotfix.
\ Some level and enemy textures can take a while to load, leaving a low-quality texture visible until it finishes loading.
We are investigating increased GPU crash rate related to reenabling of FSR frame gen on AMD Radeon RX 9xxx gen.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
A merciless wilderness, an endless irradiated desert, and countless secrets waiting within! Expeditions will take our Warband farther from the Hive than ever before!
This is the second dev blog about the Expeditions game mode, delving into the principles behind its visual design and how they combine to give Expeditions their own unique visual identity.
“My name is Mattias and I’m the Art Director on Darktide, previously on Vermintide. \ I started here in 2008 and basically I’ve been a part of every project that we’ve done here, first as a Concept Artist but then during Vermintide 2 I stepped into the role as an Art Director.” ~ Mattias
“Hi, my name is Lucas, I’m an associate Art Director on Darktide. I started out on Expeditions as Senior Environment Concept Artist and I have helped out increasingly on the environment art.” ~ Lucas
“I’m Marco, I’m a Senior Environment Artist and I’ve pretty much been part of Expeditions since the beginning, more or less.” ~ Marco
Visual design is a key element of all aspects of Darktide. Things have to not just look great, but to also mesh cohesively with the rest of the game, and each element’s visuals must properly convey the essence and characteristics of that element.
One of the guiding principles behind the visual design of Expeditions is crafting a look that, even at a glance or off of a single screenshot, players can tell that it’s Expeditions (rather than a normal mission), while still staying true to Darktide’s overall visual identity.
One of the most distinctive aspects that sets this game mode apart is that Expeditions takes place outside the Hive. While we got close to being there in the latest operation, No Man’s Land, that mission still took place in the outskirts of Tertium. This is different, we’re travelling far from home into irradiated wastelands, with the Hive City of Tertium acting as an imposing, but distant landmark on the horizon.
“We have done zones that are creeping further and further towards the edge of the Hive, but this time we wanted to go fully outside and explore what that’d look like.” ~ Lucas
The wastelands we’ll be exploring in Expeditions are a hostile, irradiated desert. While we wanted that to be clearly portrayed, we didn’t want to stick too close to real life deserts or even the kind of sights in The Hourglass mission zone; we wanted to make it look distinct, otherworldly, and aggressive. This is not a normal desert, after all!
As an example, we have these crystal formations sprouting from the ground as part of the terrain. We like to think of it as the surface out here having this dormant substance that crystalizes when exposed to air. Some of it probably reacted like this while excavations happened, some of it might come from the ground splitting up. All in all it gives a very unique “feel” to the areas we will see in Expeditions.
“It’s also something that we wanted to read very easily, to form the silhouette of whatever geoform that we’re building. So it’s sort of a visual tool to help us tell the players that it’s Expeditions” ~ Mattias
While it’s a big open desert, players will still run into man-made structures here and there; long-forgotten buildings that have since turned to ruins merged with the bedrock and terrain.
“My idea was to kind of try to tell the story that it’s hard to understand what was there first, because the timeline is so long. \ It is also trying to portray the idea that it goes deeper than the surface.” ~ Mattias
We wanted to take the opportunity to show traces of what used to be there as a form of visual storytelling. Abandoned mining operations, excavation sites, even traces of structures older than Hive Tertium itself. Atoma has a longer history than its current Hive City, after all.
“So there used to be ‘more’ there, but now it’s buried by rock and dirt, creating a new natural landscape.” ~ Lucas
Like with No Man’s Land, a lot of the buildings (or what remains of them!) were inspired by Warhammer 40,000 terrain kits that keen eyes might spot and recognize! We picked the pieces that would fit the environment and level design intention the most, which also sometimes meant mixing and matching between the buildings, both to make the most out of them and to not overuse one or the other.
Still, ruins and structures are only a small portion of the terrain in Expeditions, the merciless desert and natural geography dominates most of the landscape you’ll be traversing in it.
All of this is combined with the more open nature of Expeditions, providing both a visual and gameplay contrast to normal missions found in Darktide’s other game modes.
“I hope that everyone will be happy to see a big shift from what they are used to playing in Darktide. \ it will be a big departure from what people are used to, even from No Man’s Land.” ~ Marco
It’s not just the enemies and the locations that change every time you embark on an Expedition.
To add to the replayability of the game mode, each run can feature different Environmental Conditions and start at different times of day, letting you get a fresh look even on locations you’ve already visited.
“We’re kind of building the network and the foundation of what we think it should look like, but every run is its own thing. \ We try to give the player as many different experiences as possible.” ~ Mattias
Beyond visual flair, these can heavily impact gameplay, as the weather can get quite brutal out in the wasteland…
“I think the idea sprung naturally from us being outside. That opens up a lot of possibilities that we can delve into. It felt like an interesting avenue to explore that could drastically change the worlds you play in.” ~ Lucas
Expeditions differ greatly from typical Darktide levels, both on the types of environments and assets used, and the level design & layout created for it.
The open nature of the maps required a completely different approach, especially as the engine wasn’t originally meant to handle these kinds of huge, open levels. Both gameplay and art were exploring uncharted territory for a Tide game, and a lot of work went into optimizing the terrain assets and their use, to maintain performance while still delivering on this vision.
Players can see much farther into the level itself, which means that the terrain in the distance, which normally would just be backdrop elements, is now actually playable and visible up close.
“It’s a lot easier to control that in an interior space, especially if you don’t have a sun. \ So there's a lot of back and forth, what works, what doesn’t work, ‘hang on, we have to rethink this’, and stuff like that. So that was quite an undertaking which we hadn’t really expected when we started out.” ~ Marco
Additionally, the environment and open layout required its own considerations for how to best fill it out, to sell the idea of this abandoned desert while keeping things interesting.
“When you make a classic adventure mission, for instance, you have more control over what the player is going to see and when they see it. So here it’s more like, how can we make a cool canvas that the players themselves can direct themselves through.” ~ Marco
Concept sketches - exploring chests
Another aspect of setting Expeditions outside the Hive was actually Hive Tertium itself. The structures of such Hives are so inconceivably massive that they presented a creative challenge: How to do the enormity of the Hive in the backdrop justice, while also making it look credible.
“One of the biggest challenges with this is to portray the Hive in a believable size. \ How does it look when you’re standing at the foot of a mountain that is the size of a small continent and reaches out into lower orbit? It’s a very hard thing to portray, visually.” ~ Mattias
“You have to use a lot of creativity to get the shape you’d expect of a Hive city but still have this atmosphere and depth to it. \ That was tricky to get right, but I think we landed in a good spot.” ~ Lucas
Concept sketches - Sanctuary door
“I think it’s challenging-slash-exciting to not just be the first to \ what the Hive looks like on the inside, but also how it actually looks standing next to it. \ And that is very exciting, to be creating that.” ~ Mattias
“For me I can say right away that the most fun was sculpting the rocks and the natural environment stuff, because we don’t really do a lot of that in Darktide so it’s fun to do something different than what we usually have. And it’s also nice that we could kind of use some of that stuff in No Man’s Land as well!” ~ Marco
“And for me it was working on the concept and matte painting for the Hive City, getting it to look just right, together with the Technical Artist Vargek and Lighting Artist Gustav.” ~ Lucas
That’s all we have for this dev blog! We hope you have a blast playing Expeditions, and exploring this brand new environment that we’ve crafted for you guys!
Let us know what you think of Expeditions in the comments, and thank you for reading this dev blog!
We’ll see you in the Mourning Star,
The Darktide Team
Patch 1.11.2 is now being rolled out on all platforms, and while you wait for it to download you can read the notes below!
This patch adds some small quality of life changes to Expeditions and fixes several bugs, unintended effects and crashes.
Added sound effects for the Expeditions Auspex marker.
This should make it more noticeable when a teammate marks a point of interest during an Expeditions run!
Made it easier to perform some of the jumps necessary to complete certain Sites of Interest when carrying a battery.
Ranged enemies will now have a much harder time hitting players that are disabled by a sand vortex.
Fixed the issue related to AMD’s FSR 3.1 frame generation.
Fixed an issue where the Veteran talent "Field Improvisation" awarded Blitz charges when obtaining ammo in a Deadsider Sanctuary.
Sand vortex visual effects are now synced up for hotjoining players, preventing issues with "invisible tornados".
Dead players are no longer counted for the exit & extraction event zone half team requirement.
Meaning, if the rest of the team is dead, you can now do these events on your own
The Data Harvester penances should now count Data Reliquaries retrieved by your team-mates as well, as intended.
Fixed an issue where Psyker’s 'Malefic Momentum' talent only had its duration increase for the Warp Damage.
Fixed an issue where the Plasma Gun primary fire base Cleave was lower than intended.
The effective Cleave value should be slightly above 18.
Fixed a rare crash occurring on the Mourningstar when interacting with a Cyber-Mastiff.
Fixed an issue where the Ogryn's 'Steady Grip' talent did not replenish Toughness while shooting.
Fixed an issue where the Ogryn's 'Big Friendly Rock' no longer always killed Corruptor Eyes in one hit.
Fixed an issue where the Psyker’s 'Psykinetic's Aura' talent did not localize into languages other than English.
Fixed an issue where the Hive Scum’s 'Channelled Devastation' talent failed to correctly calculate the player's total Critical Hit Chance in some situations.
Fixed an issue with the tech priest by the Expeditions terminal where his face clips through his mask.
Fixed the bomb drop sound and adjusted the explosion sound effects and limits.
Fixed an issue where the world would load in a very low resolution state upon entering a Deadsider Sanctuary when joining a session in progress.
Fixed an issue with players getting killed if they’re outside the airlock when it closes while there are still bots inside.
Fixed a mismatch between Expedition grid node names and their associated greek letter symbols.
Fixed an issue where some items in Expeditions missions were unreachable.
Fixed several navigation issues in Expeditions missions.
Ensured the same mission name is shown across the in-mission Tactical Overlay view, the mission invite popup, and the ready-up screen.
Fixed wrong node icon shown in post-mission screen.
The game now shows an error popup when engine components fail to load, in order to help diagnose issues.
Fixed an issue where the wrong text string was displayed on the Expeditions mission board.
Polished some explosions and fixed up visual errors with Valkyrie barrel run.
Fixed a crash that when a player notification for dropped Tech-Remnants triggered when the player’s name was no longer accessible.
Fixed an issue that caused you to lose access to the Auspex after interacting with a decoder.
Fixed an issue that sometimes caused the timer warning popups not to trigger.
Improved the accuracy of the timer to avoid it jumping in time
Fixed an issue where the Valkyrie engines could still be heard after it leaves.
Fixed a crash when smoke grenades are thrown at a sand vortex.
Fixed an issue where the expedition Fire-Support Valkyrie sometimes failed to move.
Fixed an issue where the departing insertion/mission start Valkyrie did not move smoothly.
Blocked access to Expeditions Quickplay matchmaking when players are in a private party.
Fix for crash when opening the inventory when player has used mods to save loadout data using icons that are not considered valid
Tweaked voice effect for all cloth headgear to better match the material.
The Play Expeditions event is no longer only 0 days long, but will show the correct end time, which is March 31st.
Fixed an issue where the Frame reward from the Pro-Trader (3) penance was using the wrong visuals.
Fixed an issue where Ogryn characters’ right knee would clip through their clothing while kneeling.
Fixed an issue where Cyber-Mastiffs would not show up during the ready-up screen.
Vostroyan Chain Hood with Psykana Collar - Fixed black texture spot in the back.
When doing an Expeditions Auspex Puzzle, players can lose access to their Auspex if they cancel the minigame by swapping weapons. Players can recover their Auspex by attempting the minigame again and cancelling normally.
Note: If another player completes the minigame before you recover your Auspex, you will lose access to your Auspex for the remainder of the Expedition, which will hinder navigation and will make it impossible to perform Auspex Puzzles.
When hot-joining an expedition, players might enter the mission as dead if it happened while the existing players were leaving a Sanctuary.
Rarely, when hot-joining an Expedition, the entire team might disconnect from the mission.
Some texture anomaly can occur when hot-joining an Expedition while players are in a Sanctuary. Fixed!
The Expeditions grid map names don’t match with the Greek symbol associated with them. Fixed!
Players can use some of the new grenades while inside a Sanctuary. Please be nice to the locals.
Some of the new items found in Sanctuaries can’t be tagged.
Some breakable walls in Expeditions can be walked through even without breaking them.
Some textures can bug out when playing on AMD GPUs.
When disconnecting from a mission, the camera can flicker until the loading screen shows up. This should be solved in an upcoming hotfix.
Players can hot-join private matches if they enter matchmaking through Quickplay.
Some barrel explosion animations can trigger more times than intended. This is only a visual issue.
\ Some level and enemy textures can take a while to load, leaving a low-quality texture visible until it finishes loading.
The description for Psyker’s “Psykinetic’s Aura” ability is missing localization in some languages. Fixed!
When respawning, ammo count on the HUD can show incorrect numbers.
In Expeditions with tornadoes, sometimes players can be spun around and taken for a ride even with no tornadoes nearby.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
This hotfix is addressing some crashes and bugs in the latest game mode, Expeditions. We are still working on fixes for the Known Issues list, and we aim to deploy another hotfix early next week! In the meantime, please keep sending in Crash Reports, as these help us immensely in solving issues. Patch 1.11.1 is now being rolled out on all platforms, and while you wait for it to download you can read the notes below!
Changed unlock requirements to go from Grid Point Alpha to Beta from 3000 to 1500 Tech-Remnants.
Fixed an issue where hot-joining other players in the Sanctuary resulted in a crash.
Fixed an issue where enemies ignored doors when pathfinding towards players.
Fixed an issue where throwing a Smoke Grenade as Veteran inside airlock while loading into Sanctuary caused a crash.
Fixed an issue where players could get stuck in the Sanctuary after hot-joining a session.
Fixed an issue with stock not being accurately shown for items.
Fixed an issue where players transitioning into the second or later Sanctuary instead ends up in a previous Sanctuary due to it not being despawned.
Fixed an issue where players stuck in the sandstorm was not thrown out, forcing a leave to progress mission.
Fixed an issue where leaving the game while having the Salvage/Tech-Remnants popup window active caused a crash.
Fixed an issue where Data Reliquary doesn't count as extracted if it is present in the valkyrie but not carried by a player.
When hot-joining an expedition, players can crash if the rest of the team is inside a Sanctuary. Fixed!
When doing an Expeditions Auspex Puzzle, players can lose access to their Auspex if they cancel the minigame by swapping weapons. Players can recover their Auspex by attempting the minigame again and cancelling normally.
Note: If another player completes the minigame before you recover your Auspex, you will lose access to your Auspex for the remainder of the Expedition, which will hinder navigation and will make it impossible to perform Auspex Puzzles.
When hot-joining an expedition, players might enter the mission as dead if it happened while the existing players were leaving a Sanctuary.
Rarely, when hot-joining an Expedition, the entire team might disconnect from the mission.
Some texture anomaly can occur when hot-joining an Expedition while players are in a Sanctuary.
The Expeditions grid map names don’t match with the Greek symbol associated with them.
Players can use some of the new grenades while inside a Sanctuary. Please be nice to the locals.
Some of the new items found in Sanctuaries can’t be tagged.
Some breakable walls in Expeditions can be walked through even without breaking them.
Some textures can bug out when playing on AMD GPUs.
When disconnecting from a mission, the camera can flicker until the loading screen shows up. This should be solved in an upcoming hotfix.
Players can hot-join private matches if they enter matchmaking through Quickplay.
Some barrel explosion animations can trigger more times than intended. This is only a visual issue.
\ Some level and enemy textures can take a while to load, leaving a low-quality texture visible until it finishes loading.
The description for Psyker’s “Psykinetic’s Aura” ability is missing localization in some languages.
When respawning, ammo count on the HUD can show incorrect numbers.
In Expeditions with tornadoes, sometimes players can be spun around and taken for a ride even with no tornadoes nearby.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Today’s update is quite big. We are introducing Expeditions, our new game mode, to Darktide. You will be able to venture on missions outside of Hive Tertium, and fight your way through more open landscapes than we usually have inside of the Hive. With Expeditions we are also introducing the Ogryn Pack Master, a new Monstrosity, and his companions, the Armoured Pox Hounds. On top of this we are also implementing a number of balancing changes, with various refinements to both core game classes and the DLC ones, Arbites and Hive Scum. We have also made some balance changes to weapons.
Finally we have also added a bunch of quality of life improvements and bug fixes. Patch 1.11.0 is now being rolled out on all platforms, and while you wait for it to download you can read the notes below! Let’s get right to it!
A new game mode that can be accessed through the Expeditions Menu terminal, on the left side of the Mission Board. The players’ objective in the mode is to explore a sequence of Scavenge Zones in search of Tech-Remnants.
Scavenge Zones have randomly-spawned elements in them, so no two runs are the same.
Scavenge Zones are much more open and sandbox-like than regular Darktide missions.
The choice of when exactly to end a run is in the players’ hands - they can go to an extraction point and call a Valkyrie to come pick them up.
In-between Scavenge Zones, the players can visit Deadsider Sanctuaries - safe zones in which they can trade Salvage (an in-run currency found while exploring) for helpful items.
This includes completely new gadgets, like grenades that summon artillery strikes.
Each run has a time limit, since the environment outside of Tertium is heavily polluted.
Players start with 15 minutes on the clock.
Entering a Deadsider Sanctuary regenerates 5 minutes (still capped at 15).
After running out of time, the players start gaining corruption.
The corruption gain is slow at first and ramps up over time.
Corruption won’t build up past 1 HP.
During a run, the players can access their auspex to discover Sites of Interests - places that contain large quantities of Tech-Remnants.
The Expeditions map is a custom menu through which players access Expeditions - similar to the Mission Board for regular missions.
It presents the players with a map consisting of several nodes.
Each Grid Point is a unique configuration of Expeditions, with different randomization parameters.
This includes environmental modifiers like the Dust Vortex, and enemy modifiers like Hunting Grounds.
By extracting Tech-Remnants, players unlock more of the nodes on the map. The map will be changed at regular intervals, to ensure the mode stays fresh.
Expeditions are accompanied by Penances that reward players for engaging with the mode. These come with new cosmetic rewards, including a new set of cosmetic items for each of the four base classes, in two color schemes.
To accompany the release of the mode, players can take part in a new live event - Deadside Patrol. Starting today until April 6, playing Expeditions and extracting Tech-Remnants from runs will advance your progression in the Deadside Patrol event. Different tiers of the event will reward Plasteel, Diamantine and Ordo Dockets, and the final tier will award players with the following portrait frame:
New monstrosity in the form of a Ogryn wielding a shocking prod that will afflict any players hit by it with higher Stamina cost and lower Stamina regeneration for 10 seconds.
The Pack Master and his hounds will initially spawn exclusively in the new game mode Expeditions.
New Armoured version of the Pox Hound, this dog is a bit slower and heavier than its unarmoured version; it will only show up together with the Ogryn Pack Master.
Dev Note: “Hey guys. This update sees a new layout for Hive Scum’s talent tree. We felt that the old version had some snags and a general sense of friction to it, so the whole thing has been redesigned to be more cost effective and dynamic.” - Teodor, class designer.
New layout added for Hive Scum Talent Tree.
Hive Scum Talents
Dev note: “We are also cleaning out a few lesser picked talents and replacing them with new ones or moving them somewhere else. We want the Hive Scum tree to feel as cohesive as we can, and this should be another step in the right direction, without losing the explosive feel of the class.”
One of the two +25 Toughness Boost nodes has been removed. Hive Scum’s Base Toughness has been increased from 75 to 100 to compensate.
New Class Iconics:
Hive Scum now has +1 Effective Dodges by default, and the ‘Moving Target’ talent has been removed.
The talent ‘Like the Wind’ has been removed from the Talent Tree and is now active for Hive Scum by default.
New Talents:
Alley Rat +50% Dodge Distance.
“This talent acts as a twin to ‘Nimble’. They are mutually exclusive to one another and only one of them can be picked. As our most mobile class, Hive Scum should have plenty of customizability when it comes to how to dodge and move about.”
Street Tough When taking Melee Damage, knock all nearby Enemies around you backwards and gain +10% Movement Speed for 3s. Can only trigger once every 8s.
Channelled Devastation Each 1% of your current Critical Hit Chance grants a stack of +0.5% Melee Damage. Stacks 30 times (up to +15% Melee Damage).
Splash Damage Killing an Elite Enemy with a Melee Attack infects up to 10 enemies within 4m of the target with 2 stacks of Chem Toxin.
“Similarly to the Chem Grenade, this talent is also capped at 2 stacks of toxin, and only adds stacks up to that value.”
Virulent Strain When infecting an Enemy with Chem Toxin, increase their damage taken by +10% from all sources for 5s.
Removed Talents:
‘Loose Formation’.
‘Untouchable’.
‘Gang Tough’.
Dev Note: “We have changed how ‘Toxic Renewal’ works. The issue with the old version was that it was pretty easy for your kills to become swallowed by the toxin instead, which would deny the talent. This new version, while fundamentally different, should allow for good Toughness control while dipping into the toxin spreading archetype of the class.”
Toxic Renewal Replenish 1% Toughness every 1s for each Chem Toxin infected Enemy within 15m, up to a maximum of 10 Enemies.
Dev Note: “‘Pickpocket’ has been in the talks a lot lately. While a near infinite ammo source can become problematic, it is also a talent that the run-n-gun playstyle of Hive Scum greatly benefits from. So, we are making some targeted changes, leaning into Scum's usual deliberately aggressive and up-close playstyle for the bonus to take effect.”
Pickpocket Killing an Elite or Specialist Enemy with a Melee Attack while Ammo Reserve is below 20% will refill it to 20%.
Castigator’s Stance
Damage Resistance from 80% to 70%
New: Increase Strength by 20%
Writ of Execution
Max Stacks from 10 to 6
Damage per stack from 5% to 7.5% (max from 50% to 45%)
Duration from 10s to 12s
Blessed Armament
Cooldown from 1.5s to Once per attack
Nuncio-Aquila
Stun Immunity changed from during Ranged Secondary Fire only to Stun Immunity at all times
Terminus Warrant - Reworked
Dev Note: Terminus Warrant has since the release of Arbites been one of the least popular keystones across all Classes. In this update we're trying to bring in changes that make it less difficult to get value out of.
New Description reads: Ranged Attacks grant stacks of Melee Justice for each Enemy Hit (max 20), Weakspot hits grant 3 stacks. Wielding your Primary Weapon spends your Melee Justice stacks to grant you +10% Melee Strength and +20% Toughness Damage Reduction for 12s.
Melee Hits grant stacks of Ranged Justice (max 20). Wielding your Secondary Weapon spends your Ranged Justice stacks to grant you +10% Ranged Strength, +50% Ranged Cleave and +50% Suppression for 12s.
Writ of Judgement
New Description reads: Spending 20 stacks grants +10% Melee and Ranged Attack Speed, as well as +10% Crit Chance for 12s.
Terminal Decree
New Description reads: For each stack you spend, replenish 1% Toughness to you and Allies in Coherency.
Obstinate
New Description reads: Spending 20 stacks grants you +33% Ability Cooldown Regeneration, for 12s.
Dispense Justice
Removed
Force of Will
Toughness from 10% to 7.5%
Base Passive
Dev Note: Although his movement is a bit clumsy, he tries his best, and should be rewarded for it by making him hurt a bit less.
New: While Dodging and for 0.25s afterwards, you have +50% Damage Resistance.
Point Blank Barrage
Dev Note: Point Blank Barrage was left in the dust and forgotten by many, but with the release of Expeditions, we've stumbled upon a new and improved version, with some Ammo to spare!
Duration from 10s to 12s
New: When Point Blank Barrage ends, replenish 50% of Ammo spent to your Reserve.
Indomitable
Will now always stagger enemies hit.
Go Again
Cooldown replenished from 2.5% to 2%
Frag Bomb
Now always kills Human-sized enemies (non-Captains)
Big Friendly Rock
Now always kills Specialist enemies.
Steady Grip
From ‘... while bracing your Ranged Weapon’ to ‘... while bracing or shooting your Ranged Weapon’
Mobile Emplacement
From ‘... while bracing a Ranged Weapon’ to ‘... while bracing or shooting a Ranged Weapon’
Dedicated Practice
Weapon Swap Speed from 20% to 35%
Slam
Cooldown from 1s to 0.75s
Crunch
Damage from 15% to 30%
Telekine Shield
Dev Note: The Telekine Shield has long dominated Psyker builds, and more specifically the Telekine Dome. To add some more variety, we're trying to incentivize choosing the Wall variant by making it wider, and making the Bolstered Shield talent more easily available.
Base Size increased by 50%
Cooldown from 45s to 40s
Telekine Dome
New: Cooldown increased to 60s.
Swapped positions of Bolstered Shield and Enervating Threshold
Bolstered Shield
Removed: Cooldown reduction.
Psykinetic’s Aura
Cooldown Regeneration from 60% to 50%
Malefic Momentum
Duration from 8s to 10s
Get Back in the Fight! - Removed
Dev Note: Get Back in the Fight! was seldom picked, and even then with little success. With the changes to Plasma Gun this new Talent should come in handy:
New Talent: Withering Fire
Effect: +50% Ranged Cleave.
Executioner’s Stance
Duration from 5s to 6s
Enhanced Target Priority
Outline Duration from 5s to 6s
The Bigger They Are…
Duration from 8s to 9s.
Voice of Command
Cooldown from 30s to 40s
Only in Death Does Duty End
No longer increases Cooldown
No longer decreases Radius
Infiltrate
Cooldown from 45s to 40s
Damage bonus Duration from 5s to 8s
Zealous
New: 0.15s Stamina Regeneration Delay Reduction.
Impassable
Block Cost Reduction from25% to 50%
Riposte
Damage from 3% to 5%
Stacks from 5 to 3
Punishment
Minimum hits requirement from 3 to 2
Dev Note: The differences between the two marks of Shivs were not large enough, leading the Mk I to outperform the Mk III even in its intended multi-target niche.
Improvised Mk I
Lowered base Cleave for Light attacks to {1.0, 3.0}, from {3.0, 5.0} for Light 1 / Light 3 and {2.0, 4.0} for Light 2 / Light 4
Improvised Mk III
Heavy Vanguard 1st target damage from {90,160} to {95,170}
Heavy Vanguard 1st target impact from {4,8} to {5,9}
Dev Note: While the Crowbar secondary stance provided good control and damage, it was often hard to use its attacks effectively in more involved situations.
The changes aim to lower the penalty when canceling out of a stuck attack, while also increasing the reward in damage when completing it. We are also slightly increasing the speed of the Special mode change action, to allow it to be weaved more easily into high-paced gameplay.
Stamina drain on canceling a stuck attack from 0.2 to 0.05 (lowered)
Damage for Heavy stuck attack second instance from {120,240} to {130,260}
Special mode change time scale from 1.1 to 1.2 (sped up around 10%)
Dev Note: The Thunder Hammer provides great damage when empowered, but was often lackluster when unempowered, especially against the Maniac type enemies. This would lead to situations where it was unable to have good options when faced with common enemy compositions.
Raised Armour Damage Modifier vs Maniac for multiple profiles:
Lights 1st target from 0.5 to 0.75
Lights other targets from 0.5 to 0.6
Heavy Relentless 1st target from 0.5 to 0.75
Heavy Relentless other targets from 0.5 to 0.6
Dev Note: The Heavy Sword is intended to have a weakness when it comes to the more heavily armoured enemies, and especially the ones clad in Carapace armour. However, this created a situation where spamming the Special attack was too often the best course of action, leading to a very one-dimensional gameplay experience.
In this update we are tweaking the Special attack, lowering its immediate damage output but making it a stronger opener for the following attacks thanks to a small Brittleness on-hit debuff.
The unique Light attack performed after the Special was also improved, with additional direct offensive properties but also making it able to cleave more easily through all armour types, including Carapace.
Finally, we reworked the Bladed Momentum blessing to provide a smaller maximum bonus that is in turn much easier to maintain.
Alongside the above changes, we also took a pass on the overall weapon family, cleaning up some rough edges and polishing several attack hitboxes and ranges.
Check out the post in the forums for the full list of changes, here!
Dev Note: The Power Falchion is a very reliable and easy to use weapon, but was lacking a little oomph when it came to its activated attacks. We are giving them a gentle bump to bring the family more in line with the other power weapon options.
Increased 1st target damage over all the Special active profiles by around 5-10%
Dev Note: The chain timings and input buffering for both Light and Heavy attacks on the Mk XV Heavy Eviscerator were particularly unintuitive, causing situations where attack chains could be dropped in an annoying fashion.
Thanks to player “SpookySkeleTOM” (among others) for bringing this to our attention!
Tigrus Mk XV
Raised the buffer time for the Start Attack input
Lowered the chain timing to Block for the Heavy 1 and Heavy 2 attacks
Increased the chain timing to Unwield and Special activate for the Heavy 1 and Heavy 2 attacks
Dev Note: We had been a tad conservative when reworking the Paul Special with the introduction of a cooldown, but we think that the big man can be allowed more explosions on their bonking stick.
Special activate cooldown period from 8 to 6 (total Special cooldown from 12 to 10)
Dev Note: We are tweaking the Primary and Secondary fire of the Plasma Gun to encourage the use of both in different situations, instead of defaulting to the former in almost all cases.
The base Cleave of the Primary fire was significantly lowered, while still remaining top tier in the ranged arsenal (for comparison, the Stub Revolver Mk IIa has a base Cleave value of 6.5, while the Boltgun Mk IIb has 3). The newly introduced ‘Withering Fire’ Veteran talent can also be slotted in to significantly improve the Cleave of both the Primary and Secondary fire.
Conversely, ammo usage scaling for the Secondary fire was improved, allowing the weapon to consume less ammo when releasing either partially or fully charged shots.
Primary fire base Cleave lowered from Infinite to 18
Secondary fire base Cleave unchanged at Infinite
Secondary fire Ammo usage scaling improved from 5-9 to 1-8
Wield action time scale from 1.0 to 0.85 (slowed down)
Dev Note: The Infantry Lasgun’s are receiving upgrades in a few different aspects. To support it being an Infantry weapon, All marks get increased magazine capacity and ammo reserves. The Mk IIb is also getting a recoil reduction to support it utilizing its faster fire rate. Additionally, all marks will receive a minor increase to their hitscan radius, meaning that the hit registration will be more generous with close misses.
Check out the post in the forums for the full list of changes, here!
Dev Note: The Twin-Linked Heavy Stubbers are receiving an upgrade. The primary change is a reduction in maximum spread, allowing players to sustain fire more effectively. Additionally, the damage output and Armour Damage Modifiers have been slightly increased.
Check out the post in the forums for the full list of changes, here!
Dev Note: Attack strength interacts mainly with Talents that check for Light or Heavy attack types. We are increasing the attack strength of the Rippergun Special from Light to Heavy, allowing it to gain a larger benefit from Ogryn Talents like ‘The Best Defence’ and ‘Batter’.
Special bayonet attack strength from Light to Heavy
Dev Note: The Dual stubs landed a bit in the shadows of other options so we have increased some aspects to support a Run N Gun playstyle. Mostly focused on spread reduction but they also will receive a slight buff to base Damage, Special damage and Armour Damage Modifiers.
Check out the post in the forums for the full list of changes, here!
Added Quality of Life change to prevent Talent Trees from fully resetting when their layout receives changes in an update.
The Talent Trees will now try to rebuild themselves as best as they can if the Layout has seen changes. This might not always produce complete builds, but in such cases you will be notified in the UI that your Tree requires some manual help.
Penance track extension
We have extended the Penance track by 500 points, with accompanying new rewards.
Some Penance Descriptions specified that they could only be achieved by using the Base Abilities of the Class, which caused some confusion. We've added the Upgraded Ability variants to the descriptions as well.
Added a new custom, in-house made font called "Mono Tide"! Which is used in the Mission Board.
The Weapon preview in the Inspect screen now keeps rotation when changing between weapons or cosmetics.
Added some small improvements to navigation and presentation in the Marks, Weapon Cosmetics and Crafting screens.
Hive Scum Penances
Lowered the unlock requirements for the ‘Enhanced’ penance from 2600 to 1500, and for the ‘Brutal Bludgeons’ penance from 1000 to 650."
Pacing - Havoc
Increased hard terror point limit from 60 to 90 while playing Havoc
Elite enemies always allowed to be apart of an terror event in Havoc regardless of the events rules
Fixed a rare crash occurring when loading into one of the Mortis Trials theatres.
Fixed an issue where Barrels explosions could break the Stealth of Zealot and Veteran.
Fixed an issue with Psyker’s ‘Lightning Speed’ talent incorrectly affecting Ranged Attack Speed.
Fixed the Psyker ‘Souldrinker’ talent not triggering properly when enemies die with Soulblaze.
Fixed an issue where player portraits might appear off-center.
Fixed an issue where controller scrolling on text chat wasn't working.
Fixed a crash that might happen when changing tabs in the weapon cosmetics screen if connection with Fatshark services was temporarily interrupted.
Fixed an issue where the Critical Bonus stat of the Atrox MK II Tactical Axe was not applied correctly for the Light 3 and Special 2 attacks.
Fixed an issue where the description of the ‘All or Nothing’ weapon blessing showed a value representing the bonus obtained for each stack, instead of the maximum obtainable amount. Note that this is only a display change.
Fixed an issue where Heavy stab attacks for Duelling Swords could cause excessive dismemberment of enemies.
Fixed a minor Level Art issue in the Clandestium Gloriana mission.
Fixed a crash that could happen when ignoring the mission vote pop-up while being in a pause menu.
Fixed a rare crash related to Stimm unloading when transitioning between levels.
Fixed the missing description for the ‘Warp Expediture’ talent buff in the Tactical Overview.
Fixed the missing description for the ‘Out Of Pocket’ talent buff in Tactical Overview.
‘Benediction’ must now be equipped for the 'Test of Faith' penance to progress.
Fixed an issue with the color being incorrect on the ‘Cyclopean Pain Hood’ headgear.
Fixed a pitch black texture under a book in the ‘Krieg Vigil Greatcoat (Krieg 143rd)’ cosmetic.
The ‘Stygian Mk II Flak Helmet’ headgear no longer clips with beards.
The ‘Purloined Flak Helmet’ no longer clips with beards.
Fixed the hair and ear clipping issues with the ‘Command Cap’ headgear.
The ‘Bakkan Scrier's Cowl’ headgear no longer clips with beards.
Fixed the clipping issues with faces on the ‘Bakkan Scrier's Cowl’ headgear.
Fixed the hair clipping issues on the Ogryn headgear, ‘Bodyguard Cap’.
Fixed the clipping issues on the Ogryn headgear ‘Mark IX Brute Pattern rebreather (XXXXL)’.
The ‘Agripinaa Mk Flak Trooper Helm’ Veteran headgear no longer clips with beards.
Fixed the clipping issues on the Ogryn upperbody cosmetic, ‘Militarum Heavy Battlegear (Protectus pattern IX)(XXXXL)’.
Fixed the black textures on the Zealot upperbody cosmetic, ‘Scavenged Militarum Battlegear (Cadian 802nd)’.
Removed the black texture spot on the gloves of the Veteran upperbody cosmetic, ‘Heavy Flak Armour (Relic of Cadia)’.
Fixed an issue with the ‘Antax Mk III Conclave-issue Tactical Helm’ headgear having an unintentional red visor.
Fixed the clipping issues on the Veteran headgear, ‘Arges Pattern Augmetic’.
Fixed a bug where trinkets were not displaying correctly on certain Ogryn weapons.
Fixed a bug where trinkets were not displaying correctly on the Godwyn-Branx Pattern Bolt Pistol (Fire Wastes Camo).
Fixed a bug where trinkets rotated wrong on the Heavy Laspistol (Adamantine Inferno).
And last but not least, make sure to tune into Twitch and check out our partner streamers to unlock some exclusive cosmetics! If you haven’t linked your Twitch account to your Fatshark account yet, check out this article.
When doing an Expeditions Auspex Puzzle, players can lose access to their Auspex if they cancel the minigame by swapping weapons. Players can recover their Auspex by attempting the minigame again and cancelling normally.
Note: If another player completes the minigame before you recover your Auspex, you will lose access to your Auspex for the remainder of the Expedition, which will hinder navigation and will make it impossible to perform Auspex Puzzles.
When hot-joining an expedition, players might enter the mission as dead if it happened while the existing players were leaving a Sanctuary.
When hot-joining an expedition, players can crash if the rest of the team is inside a Sanctuary. Potential solve in the next hotfix.
Rarely, when hot-joining an Expedition, the entire team might disconnect from the mission.
Some texture anomaly can occur when hot-joining an Expedition while players are in a Sanctuary.
The Expeditions grid map names don’t match with the Greek symbol associated with them. Unplayable, we know.
Players can use some of the new grenades while inside a Sanctuary. Please be nice to the locals.
Some of the new items found in Sanctuaries can’t be tagged.
Some breakable walls in Expeditions can be walked through even without breaking them.
Some textures can bug out when playing on AMD GPUs.
When disconnecting from a mission, the camera can flicker until the loading screen shows up. Potential solve in an upcoming hotfix.
Players can hot-join private matches if they enter matchmaking through Quickplay.
Some barrel explosion animations can trigger more times than intended. This is only a visual issue.
\ Some level and enemy textures can take a while to load, leaving a low-quality texture visible until it finishes loading.
The description for Psyker’s “Psykinetic’s Aura” ability is missing localization in some languages.
When respawning, ammo count on the HUD can show incorrect numbers.
In Expeditions with tornadoes, sometimes players can be spun around and taken for a ride even with no tornadoes nearby.
Dev Note: We are working on several fixes for these known issues, and we aim to add them to the next few hotfixes.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Experience Darktide Like Never Before: Players are tasked with venturing into the desolate plains of Atoma Prime with a new mission objective: scour the planet for Tech-Remnants and investigate sites of interest on the map. Even the strongest reject can only survive the polluted air for a limited time - stay as long as you dare and call the Valkyrie for extraction when you choose. No two runs in Expeditions are the same, the badlands are unpredictable and each successfully completed excursion unlocks further missions.
The War Has Expanded Beyond the Hive: Every moment spent outside the Hive alerts Chaos Spawn and monstrosities of players’ presence, drawing them closer. Load outs must be adapted to the open ruinous environments. Enemies can attack from every direction and aren’t confined to the claustrophobic frenzied battlegrounds within Tertium. Squads must choose when to fight, or flee, and adapt strategies to survive one of Darktide’s deadliest challenges yet. Expeditions is not for the faint of heart and is available for players midway into their character progression.
New Threats: The environment is as toxic and deadly as the chaos that infects it. With twisters, lightning storms and a polluted atmosphere, peril lurks around every corner! Safe zones are scattered throughout the map… but they are fleeting sanctuaries. Step outside and hazards surround you once more from every angle. Forcing squads to move quickly, think tactically, and survive the unforgiving expanse of Atoma Prime!
More Fire Power. Fewer Survivors: Having the right instruments of destruction can mean the difference between extraction…and extinction! The new game mode introduces an arsenal of new items alongside modified and supercharged versions of existing ones in the Dead Side Sanctuary. The obliterating Modified Grenade can wipe all enemies in the vicinity…but draw more to the squads’ location.
The Ogryn Pack Master Approaches: This monstrosity is uncharacteristically quick for an Ogryn! He can be found roaming the derelict plains of Expeditions Mode with his pack of Pox Hounds and Armoured Pox Hounds. A challenging adversary for the Arbites, who players will notice his unique and savage interactions with, isn’t a stranger to handling unruly hounds… Eliminating him quickly is wise as he will continually call his hell hounds to the battlefield, but his vocal nature gives players an advantage to spot him quickly.
The Secrets of the Sands are Waiting: The Beyond the Hive update is loaded with new dangers and discoveries - read the dev blog here for a deeper dive into the Update. Expect more information soon!
We are very close to showing off our new game mode, Expeditions, to the world. The trailer will be live tomorrow, but before that we wanted to take the opportunity and talk to all of you about what will go down in this new mode. It’s called Expeditions for a reason. It’s time to leave the protection of Hive Tertium and venture outside! There have been reports that the enemy is gathering Tech-Remnants for unknown, but surely nefarious purposes out there. This is something quite unheard of as we thought that the only thing that awaited us outside the Hive City was a swift death to radiation (or worse!). This seems to be quite untrue, and as the Mourningstar’s forces prepare to venture out and fight the enemy and take these Tech-Remnants for themselves, it will fall on you and your team to take on this new challenge. With us today we have gathered a sage council of game developers to talk us through what this game mode is all about. Without further ado, let’s introduce our level artists Roberto and Kaneda, our game designer Rafał and last, but not least, Victor our Design Director.
Take it away guys!
“I’ll say this. Expeditions is the biggest injection of new content in the game since launch”
~ VictorIn this new game mode you and your team will go outside Hive Tertium to retrieve important Tech-Remnants. When you play the Expeditions game mode you will do it through several runs, with each run using a set of randomised variables that make up the map you will play on. A run will most likely be between ten to thirty minutes, depending on how far you will go. Being outside of the protection of Tertium is nasty business, and the radiation and pollution means you can’t stay there for too long. So you will either reach the end of the run and extract in a Valkyrie, or you might opt to leave early and take what Tech-Remnants you secured with you to safety. If time runs out and you die, you get nothing. It’s a high risk, high reward. After a run is done you will unlock new parts of a map depending on how much Tech-Remnants you bring back. And the more you unlock the more interesting missions you can embark on.
Making a map set truly outside the Hive is something we thought about for a while now. We played around with areas close to the edge before, but this is the first time we are truly outside. This new setting lets us do plenty of cool things for the game. First and foremost is the vast open space that lends itself perfect for the new mission structure. The Valkyrie will land in what we chose to call a “Scavenge Zone”, and the moment you exit you can use a new feature on the Auspex, letting you find several Sites of Interest.
“There will be spaces that you wouldn't see inside the hive, cool tunnels through mountain sides and sneaky paths and such. We want to reward players for exploring the map”
~ Rafał
There is no set path like in the other game modes in Darktide, so it will be up to you and the team to decide how to traverse the zone, and in what order to get to the different Sites. As you move around the map you will then scavenge for both the Tech-Remnants and Salvage.
A run can, and most often will, cover several “Scavenge Zones”, and in-between them you will find Sanctuaries that let you spend the Salvage you’ve found to heal up, resupply and get your hand on some new toys. Here we have some really cool new explosives, and an item that even let you call in the Valkyrie for supporting fire!
The Sanctuaries will also be the place where you will meet the Deadsiders, people living in the badlands outside the Hive. They might be a bit wary of new faces, but we thankfully have Swagger here too, and he will help smooth things over.
After you are done preparing in the Sanctuary, you continue into a new zone and keep going until you either opt to extract early, or you get to the final zone and the Valkyrie that ends the run.
The nature of the Sites of Interest will be different too. Sometimes it’s based on defeating enemies and other times they can be quite puzzle-like. Collaboration will be key to solve these sites quickly, but sometimes you might even want to split up. However, that can also backfire if you all of a sudden need to run back to save someone from your team, that will eat up a lot of precious time.
While the Auspex will show you all the major Sites of Interest as you start the mission, you should still keep your eyes open. There will be smaller things not showing up in your scan that might very well be worth your time.
We also wanted this game mode to be very replayable. This really comes into play with how these maps are created. While not truly procedurally generated, they are very randomized in their composition.
Different Sites of Interest can show up in different spots with different enemies. The runs themselves can also have different modifiers and effects. So it should feel quite unique every time you go for a new run outside Tertium.
We wanted to take the randomness of combat in Darktide and apply it on the entire play experience really. To add to this we also changed what we call the “main path”, one of the core systems of Darktide.
This is the system that normally checks how far the players are into a mission and adjusts enemy spawns accordingly.
“The more you fight, the more you will attract the enemies attention, and the harder the run becomes”
~ RobertoFor Expeditions we had to rethink this completely as you can now decide in what order you want to tackle objectives. Normally in Darktide we have what we call the “main path”, a system that tracks the linear progression of the player, and spawn enemies accordingly. But due to the open nature of Expeditions’ mission structure we had to think outside of the box.
This was quite the challenge, but we have built a new system that takes into account the actions taken by the player, and sets the challenge accordingly. Your decisions matter a lot as the system will track how long the run has been active and how many things you have done, among other things. We really wanted each run to feel different.
Breaking away from the “main path” is quite exciting for us, since this system has been in place since the first Vermintide. We are used to thinking in a very linear sense when designing combat encounters, with enemies usually spawning either in front of or behind the players. When playing Expeditions, this is also changed!
“Unlike the traditional missions inside Tertium, the more open map lets us have enemies that attack from all directions, both on long and short range”
~ VictorEnemies will not just spawn and attack the players in waves, but they can be found roaming around and this adds tactical depth to the missions set out here. Are you in a hurry but clearly see that a monstrosity is lurking around between you and the objective you’ve set your eyes on? Maybe it's better to run around it. But that will eat away at your precious time.
One of these roaming threats will be the new Ogryn Pack Master we introduced you to last week! He and his Armoured Pox Hounds will do their debut in Expeditions.
Open terrain also changes how to tackle enemies. All of a sudden, enemies with long range weapons in a good position can be quite tricky, sniping away at you.
This new environment will also mean that you might want to tinker with your setup. The loadout you’ve come to love for fighting hordes in cramped spaces inside the Hive City might not be the best way to fight enemies in open spaces. And the enemies with long range weapons might prove harder to face outside when a good sniper position is very advantageous.
“If players end up with new loadouts saved specially for Expeditions, then we have succeeded”
~ Rafał
Runs are also part of a bigger mechanic. Before you embark on a run, you will be in front of an Expedition map with Grid Points. Bringing back Tech-Remnants will unlock more and more for you to explore. Unlocking more also lets you get to crazier modifiers.
We wanted a game mode with a degree of success during missions. Even if you opt to extract early, the Tech-Remnants you bring back will count towards unlocking new Grid Points.
“The nature of this setup also makes this game mode very good for those of us that have a busy schedule. If you find yourself in a position where you need to round off a run quickly, you can leave with the Tech-Remnants you have!”
~ VictorThe climate outside of the Hive is very volatile and unstable, causing the long range sensors of the Mourningstar to struggle with updated information about enemy movement and the general lay of the land. This means that the Expedition Map will update on a regular basis, presenting new challenges and setups to explore.
“The risk vs rewards is something we really wanted to push greatly. It’s up to the players to decide how far they want to take it. It’s up to them not really up to us like in a normal mission”
~ KanedaExpeditions is something you will start playing halfway through the progression journey with a character. They are challenging so getting some good gear and talents will help a lot in these runs.
We see this game mode as something you play in parallel with the rest of the game, it is not replacing Adventure mode. In addition, Expeditions come with its own Penances, and we cooked up some really cool cosmetic sets for you to unlock too!
All in all, from the layout of the more open maps, to the nature of the run and with the progression layer, we hope that this will prove a fun way to experience Darktide.
There are way more things in Expeditions, but we can’t cover them all in this blog. You will be able to play this new game mode yourself very soon, so stay tuned on our social media channels for more information!
In the meantime, as always, thank you for reading this dev blog. See you on the Mourningstar!
- The Darktide TeamToday we have a treat for you all, not one, but two new enemies are on their way to make a debut in Darktide! We have braved the mad laboratory lair of Jonathan, our Game Designer in charge of these new creations. Take it away!
“Hello! My name is Jonathan and I have been told I am not good at making enemies in real life, so I took it as my mission to make them for the game instead. Jokes aside, I work with stuff relating to enemy behavior, pacing management and general enemy combat design.”
We have two new enemies to talk about today, both of them being themed to each other. You might have already seen them in the new teaser video here. Let’s shine the spotlight on them, one at a time, starting with the…
Have you ever wondered who takes care of all those Pox Hounds running around in Tertium? Well this might be your answer, introducing the Pack Master, an Ogryn monstrosity (yeah you read that right) that packs a serious punch! The Pack Master ticks two boxes for us, one is the fact that we wanted to add another monstrosity to the enemy roster for some while now, and the other is the fact we have wanted to make a monstrosity that is a bit less daemonic or mutated. The game hasn't had a new monstrosity in ages, so it was about time.
Making him an Ogryn also lets us have a monstrosity with interesting voice lines that are not just guttural roars or chaotic screams, but instead a guy who likes to talk while he battles the players. He has some really cool reactive voice lines depending on what happens around him. He will for example react when you take one of his hounds down or when one of them manages to pounce you or someone on your team.
But you are not here to read just about his “lovely” personality, you wanna know what he brings to the fight right!
“He is very fast for an Ogryn. Very fast and very heavy, and he will keep up with you!”
The Pack Master is a fast and heavy bruiser type of an enemy. He won’t have any problem charging into the fray, his big shocking prod ready to bash some agents of the Imperium. He is a melee fighter that will do his utmost to get into your face. This weapon also applies a debuff to players, so getting hit will not just hurt, but also leave you with a speed reduction and slower dodge replenishment.
Additionally, what makes him extra scary is that he will be joined by Pox Hounds to help him in combat. Depending on the situation, he can bring along either normal Pox Hounds, the new Armoured Pox Hound (more on that in a bit) or a mix of the two. He is called the Pack Master for a reason! It will also be important to take him down as quickly as possible, since even if you get rid of all of his hounds, he can still spawn in new ones as long as he is alive.
Another interesting thing is that you will find him roaming, so you will be able to hear him as he walks around. You can use this to your advantage and prepare to take him on. Having all of those hounds around him makes him a pretty good tracker, so hiding from him might prove very hard.
“Oh and he sees through stealth! This is a big one. You can't hide from him, he will see you and just keep up his attack.”
Finally, before we move the spotlight to his canine friend, we should give a fair warning to all Arbites players out there. This guy is used to having unruly dogs around him, so you should probably think twice before you send your Cyber Mastiff his way. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.
“Yeah we do have a new cool animation for when a Cyber-Mastiff attacks the Pack Master and he just…”
With those words of warning, let’s proceed to the…
So this is a new Pox Hound with, you guessed it, armour. This enemy is what we could call a sidegrade to the normal Pox Hound. All that armour is giving it more health than the already existing hound, so it’s harder to take down, but at the same time all that metal makes it slower than its less iron clad cousin. If you manage to block this enemy in midair you can stagger it, and if you do, you might want to circle around and attack the unarmoured weak spot on their backs for some extra damage. We hope that this new variant will give even the most seasoned Pox Hounds hunters a new challenge!
“Best thing is to stagger them and then circle around and hit them in the… yeah, haha”
The armoured variety will be part of the Pack Master’s pack, so you will only encounter these hounds when he is around.
Hope this little teaser has made you ready to fight the Pack Master when he and his new armoured friends enter the fight in Darktide. They will both appear in the next update, and while we’re excited to share more, we’ll dive into the details when the time is right!
So for now we will have to leave this as just a teaser! Keep your eyes on our community space and social media channels for information when we are ready to talk more about this!
In the meantime, as always, thank you for reading this dev blog. See you on the Mourningstar!
- The Darktide Team
The traitor's latest onslaught threatens to shake the very foundations of the hive if you don't get down there and stop them. Wyrmwood agents report unprecedented destruction, with hordes of ogryn conscripts, massive explosions and numerous sightings of giant, monstrous creatures.
To make progress in the event, complete missions with the Rumbling Giants condition.
This event is LIVE NOW until March 17. The rewards will be Ordo dockets, Plasteel and Diamantine. Those who complete the last tier of the event will receive a cosmetic insignia.
Patch 1.10.7 is currently rolling out across our platforms. In the meantime, you can read the notes below.
We are currently investigating some minor errors that caught our attention, and we wanted to take the opportunity to implement changes to easier track these issues in this update.
This is not impacting the game, but it means that the patch size is a bit bigger than normal.
Fixed an issue introduced in Patch 1.10.6 that caused damage calculations to use an incorrect value for what was considered “Far Range”.
Fixed a bug where Forge's Bellow would not trigger a shout when exiting Rampage!
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Patch 1.10.6 is currently rolling out across our platforms. In the meantime, you can read the notes below.
This patch comes with adjustments to the Hive Scum talents, both to polish some interactions and improve on underused ones. It also includes some general cosmetics and bugfixes.
Developer’s note: “Hey guys. Hive Scum is getting a few changes in this update. This time, we’re targeting some general talent quirks and bringing them a bit more up to snuff. The Stimm Lab is getting the bigger changes, with a rework on one of its branches. Cheers.” - Teodor, class designer.
‘Stimm Lab’ Has gotten a buff on durability related talents (top left branch):
Any ‘Toughness Regeneration’ buffs have been swapped for ‘Toughness Replenishment’ (the original buff was only active while in coherency outside of combat. The latter modifies the amount of Toughness gained instead. This change should make the talents way more active and useful).
‘Barrage I-IV’ now grants 6.25% Toughness, +5% Toughness Replenishment and +4% Damage Reduction each (note: the Toughness gained from Barrage is not affected by its own Toughness Replenishment bonus. That bonus is applied to Toughness gained during the duration of the Cartel Special itself).
‘Tank’ now grants +30% Toughness Replenishment instead of +20%.
‘Regain’ now grants 5% Toughness every 1s for the duration of the Cartel Special, instead of 25% in one go.
Talent changes:
‘Cheap Shots’ now grants +15% Strength against both medium and heavy staggered enemies, and +10% against light staggered enemies.
‘Nimble’ is now properly labeled as granting Dodge Speed. The bonus to dodge windows is also now a flat bonus instead of a multiplicative bonus. This means that, yes, it is applied to dodges against ranged fire, but won’t be as effective as when dodging against melee attacks, due to not having the default values that those types of dodges have.
Dodge Speed bonus changed from +25% to +0.15s.
‘Rampage!’ no longer makes the player “exhausted” after use, the ability now simply ends.
‘Channelled Aggression’ no longer requires the duration of Rampage to be above a certain threshold. It is now active throughout.
‘Unload’ now refreshes itself if triggered while active, and can be triggered by activating Desperado.
‘Pocket Toxin’ now infects enemies with different amounts of Chem Toxin depending on the equipped Blitz:
Blinder/Blackout: 3.
Boom Bringer: 6.
Chem Grenade: 10 (note: the talent adds stacks of Chem Toxin on explosion, meaning that the Chem Grenade grants them on its initial blast. The stacks added by the area of effect remains the same).
‘Chem Grenade’:
Now has an appropriately sized explosion radius that matches the visuals. There’s no real notable gameplay change, but it does mean that it can now properly benefit from ‘Pocket Toxin’.
Duration reduced from 20s to 15s to better align with similar Blitz abilities, like the Immolation Grenade.
New, more elaborate talent description.
Fixed terminology in some places:
‘Ranged-’ and ‘Melee Attack Immunity’ talents are now properly rewritten as ‘Counts as Dodging’, to convey how they actually work, and highlight that they also trigger dodges (which can interact with other talents in the Hive Scum tree).
‘Dodge Extended’ has been properly rewritten as ‘Dodge Speed’ (Dodge Speed does increase the length of the dodge, but the main benefit is the increase in speed).
Fixed an issue where the looping shooting sound for the Ogryn Twin-Linked Heavy Stubbers restarted on every bullet shot.
Fixed an outline issue when using the Desperado ability near Dreg Ritualist enemies in the Dark Communion mission.
Fixed an issue where damage from Needle Pistol Toxins didn't trigger effects from the Hive Scum Talents 'Speedloader' and 'Vulture's Mark'.
Fixed text formatting of objectives for Hive Scum's basic training step for the Ability.
Pyre Blade: fixed an issue where the VFX was not spanning the full length of the blade.
Antax Mk III Conclave-issue Tactical Helm: fixed the red visor.
Commando Beret with Augmetic Implant (Green): fixed some visual issues.
Pugilist Armour (XXXXL) (Tread Lightlies): fixed some clipping and physics issues
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
Today is a small update to fix some missing weapon description texts. Patch 1.10.5 is currently rolling out across our platforms. In the meantime, you can read the (very short) notes below.
General Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue that caused the item description on some weapons to not display correctly
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
The Cartels have opened their vaults, granting access to enhanced stimms to help fight the rising tide.
Dismayed by the state of the city, and keen to show their worth, the Cartels’ chemists have cooked up a special batch of enhanced stimms and distributed them throughout Tertium. These are particularly effective against the recent spate of Pox Gas attacks that the Admonition has unleashed on the populace. Get out there and put them to the test.All available Stimms (including the Cartel Special) have been enhanced by the Cartel’s chemists, improving their effectiveness while also granting stacks of Pox Gas resistance.This event will start today and run until 16th of February. Progress in the event will reward Ordo Dockets, Plasteel, Diamantine, and a brand new insignia frame at the last tier!This patch comes with several technical improvements that we hope will increase stability and network performance in the game. It should also improve playing on slower and/or unstable network connections. In addition we also improved memory usage to help performance on lower-end devices.
We will continue to work on improvements, and we urge you all to keep sending in crash reports, as they really help us to find further solutions.
Patch 1.10.4 is currently rolling out across our platforms. In the meantime, you can read the notes below.
General Bug Fixes
Several improvements and fixes to stability and network performance.
Improved memory usage to increase performance on lower-end devices.
Fixed a bug where the Mission Board and the Special Assignments would have mismatching ordering on the campaign missions
Fixed an issue that was causing the server to crash when players would step in specific locations in several missions.
Fixed a memory leak when generating player portraits for UI presentations.
Fixed an issue where the second damage instance of multiple-hits Heavy attacks on the Chirurgeon's Mk IV Bone Saw was not using the correct profile when having the Brittleness coating applied.
Fixed a crash which could happen when another player disconnected just as Rampage! ended.
Fixed an issue that was causing the Stimm Supply to get stuck in the player's hands after trying to place it.
Fixed crash that could happen if the player leaves missions while particle effects still are active.
Fixed an issue that could happen when a player left the game from the menu causing the slot for another player to join to be locked for a certain amount of time.
Fixed "Well Oiled Killteam" penance not progressing.
Fixed an issue that was causing the last blessing point for the Shredder Autopistol to remain unspent.
Fixed an issue where the Auspex Drill penance wouldn’t track towards completion.
Fixed a lighting issue where the light would turn from dark to very bright.
Fixed an issue where the mission’s fog would disappear completely when using a stealth ability.
Fixed an issue where certain language fonts had issues rendering correctly on the Aquila Purchase screen.
Fixed bug where when using a controller and starting a campaign mission from the Special Assignments view would also start the debrief video.
Reverted an unintended change introduced in 1.10.3 that made weapon specific dodge linger time affect incoming ranged attacks.
Reverted an unintended change that allowed dodge stats from talent trees to also impact incoming ranged damage.
Cosmetic Fixes
Fixed color name in item title of the Hive Scum Hood (KHAKI) to the correct color.
Fixed graphical issue where the white skull decal did not show up on the MK IVM Pot Helm With Gas Mask (XXXXL).
Fixed headgear clipping with the ears on some faces - Steel Legion Flak Helmet (Parade Polish).
Fixed deformation issue with implant - Commando Beret With Augmetic Implant (Green).
Fixed clipping issues with face - Athonian 98th Pilgrim's Warhelm (Red).
Fixed issue with backpacks clipping with the cloak - Athonian 98th Fatigues.
Rolling Bones trinket now shows as expected when showcased in the UI screens.
Fixed clipping with strap and head on Slasher Hivescum Headgear
Fixed distortion in Commando Beret with Augmetic Implant (Green).
Fixed clipping issue with leg armor on Krieg Vigil Greatcoat (Krieg 143rd).
Fixed physics on Votarist's Pot Helm with Rebreather
Fixed clipping issue with leg armor on Imperius pattern Psykana garb.
Additional Changes
Corrected the penance conditions of some missions with misgiving information.
Arbites' Remote Detonation now has the correct icon in the HUD.
Fixed an issue where Dual Autopistols didn't have shell casings ejected from the weapons when firing.
Fixed muzzle smoke for Dual Stub Pistols and Stub Revolver moving in unintended directions.
Fixed an issue that was causing Dual Stub Pistols magazines to cast unintended shadows when they ejected.
That’s all for today!
We’ll see you on the Mourningstar.
– The Darktide Team
About
This page aggregates Steam news feeds, patch notes, and developer announcements for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, sourced from official Steam community posts.
Major updates, balance changes, and seasonal events often correlate with player-count spikes — cross-reference announcements here with the live charts on the main Warhammer 40,000: Darktide statistics page.
Articles link back to Steam for full changelogs. SteamScope refreshes news entries as new posts are published to the game's Steam hub.