Our latest hotfix (1.4.12) is out now on Steam and the rest of our platforms will follow. You’ll find the patch notes below!
Fixed an issue where ammo crates would still spawn in Maelstrom Mission C-I-VI.
The tooltip for the Stopping Power stat has been updated to reflect that it affects damage as well.
Fixed an issue that caused the canteen on Psyker “Shroudwrap Carapace” cosmetic upperbody to be warped.
Announcing Unlocked and Loaded - Update (September 26, 2024)
Heyo Devoted Rejects,
We’re excited to announce the next free update coming to Darktide - Unlocked and Loaded - will be releasing on September 26, 2024.
https://youtu.be/69zI8J5nnZU
Unlocked and Loaded will include the overhaul to itemization, a new mission with a new objective, and improvements to social features.
Itemization Overhaul:
Unlock Your Potential: With the itemization overhaul, players will master their weapons over time, unlock blessings, weapon marks, and perks, and tinker with their gear to increase its Power. This overhaul will help players carve a clear path to get the weapons and gameplay they want. (More dev blogs on this soon and the next Q&A blog will be released this week!)
New Mission:
Time’s running out! Players will race against time and repel heretics in this shorter high-octane mission in which players’ strike teams are the only thing standing between a barreling freight train and Tertium. (Did you see the end of the teaser trailer?) (We’re also working on a dev blog for this mission, too!)
New Social Feature:
Team-up against Chaos: As Darktide is made to be enjoyed with others, our new Group Finder features will make teaming up with like-minded players easier. Before embarking on a mission, players will be able to form groups and band together to wreak havoc among the ranks of the heretics. You can form groups based on language, difficulty, mission focus, and more.
Those words have lodged firmly in my mind. There have been endless words and fanatical ramblings – enough to last several lifetimes – and most are just background noise. That statement, though… it carries weight. Enforced inactivity leads to a degradation of body and mind and so I must keep both active. The first comes with physical recovery. The other will hopefully come from committing some of my myriad thoughts to this journal.
How long have I been here? Days, certainly. Weeks, perhaps. Months? Possibly. I no longer know. There has been much pain, but I know that pain must be endured so that the body may be reshaped and that is what is happening. There is pain, at times excruciating, but I endure. I must endure. Because if I don’t, who will there be left to dole out retribution for my loss? Rodin’s death at the hands of the warband will not go unpunished and must be addressed. I swear it.
I have so many questions that have no answers. Who brought me here? Why was I spared when he was not? What happens next? All I seem to have are questions and time to think about them. What is time, really? When you get down to it, I mean. Is it even a real thing? Is it just a construct of a social system that has an obsession with its own mortality? What other species counts down the seconds to its own oblivion in the way that the Imperium of Mankind does? Such limited scope. Such narrow vision. Entropy is an inevitability: why bother wasting an existence waiting for it when you could be living?
It seems I have a second chance, including the opportunity to think and come out with the same foolish rhetoric of my new companions.
It’s ridiculous. I’m a fighter. A soldier. I’m no orator or scribe given to flights of fancy. But things change. People change. I should be dead, but I am not. They talk to me earnestly of the Grandfather’s gift, of what I will become to them, but I fail to see the appeal. These people brought me here and I will play their game. For now, at least, we are travelling the same way, flotsam and jetsam borne ever-onward by the unrelenting tide of time.
There are choices ahead but I will not be distracted from my core objectives. I will avenge my brother and I will pay my debt to these people. Once those duties are discharged, what happens next remains to be seen. Thoughts of the way forward don’t burden me, neither am I afraid of them. He always said to me that there was no fear that cannot be overcome, no belief that cannot be challenged, no hope that cannot be dissolved in the acidic bile of truth. No, there is no fear.
There is something, though. Trepidation, anticipation, excitement… the breath you draw before you dive, not knowing if you’re going to surface after you hit the water. The step off the cliff-edge, trusting that the fall is not going to smash your body to smithereens. The thrill of continued existence against all the odds. It’s invigorating and gives me strength and purpose to do what must be done.
I have already survived against all likelihood. I will endure and I shall not falter. My brother, you will not be forgotten.
Falter not, wither not.
Take a breath and jump.
Herald of Admonition
Rolling blackouts are plaguing sectors of the hive. Worse, we’ve heard reports of someone, or something lurking in the darkness. We need devoted rejects to get down there and sort this mess out.
Play and complete missions with a new Special Condition, “Terror in the Dark” to earn rewards. This condition will only be available during the event!
This event will start on Thursday, August 15 and run until Thursday, August 29. The rewards will be Ordo Dockets, Plasteel and Diamantine.
Note: This event is only available on the normal board on 3/4/5 difficulties (regular malice, heresy and damnation).
Hotfix #45 (1.4.11) Patch Notes
Heyo Everyone,
As promised yesterday, here is hotfix #45 (1.4.11). It is live now on Steam and it will shortly go live on our other platforms.
Fixes
Fixed a server crash issue related to a player taking damage from a projectile or the environment when they were dead or knocked down.
Fixed an issue in the Orthus Offensive special assignment where one of the twins could double spawn.
Known Issues
We have a known issue of certain blessings (like Shattering Impact) showing an undefined text description. The cause has been identified and we’re working on a fix for this, as well.
We also have a known issue of certain advanced circumstances not working properly (e.g. No Ammo modifier). We are working on a fix for this. In the meantime, we're going to disable these on the mission board.
Hotfix #44 (1.4.10) Patch Notes
Heyo Everyone,
Note: As a heads up, this hotfix includes routine updates to our audio software, which resulted in a chunkier sized update compared to normal.
New In-Game Event: Herald of Admonition
Rolling blackouts are plaguing sectors of the hive. Worse, we’ve heard reports of someone, or something lurking in the darkness. We need devoted rejects to get down there and sort this mess out.
Play and complete missions with a new Special Condition, “Terror in the Dark” to earn rewards. This condition will only be available during the event!
This event will start on Thursday, August 15. The rewards will be Ordo Dockets, Plasteel and Diamantine.
Bug Fixes and Changes
Weapons
Branx Pickaxe
Tweaked the animation for the Heavy 1 attack windup when chained from the Heavy 2 attack to be more aligned to the actual attack being released.
Fixed an issue where the Light 4 attack was receiving an incorrect scaling from the Cleave Damage stat.
Performance
Improved performance in the Clandestium Gloriana mission.
Mission
Minor fix for subtitles in a VO at the start of Enclavum Baross.
Cosmetics
Fixed issues with the mouthpiece deforming improperly when using certain faces when the Veteran “Metalfab 97 Worker’s Mask” headgear was equipped.
Fixed an issue with the Lasgun “Accatran Pattern Mk IV Lasgun (Betalis Night)” weapon skin where the 3D ammo display would not update appropriately.
Back from Summer - Next Hotfix Update
Heyo everyone,
A quick message from us to say we’re back from summer break and we’ll have our first hotfix coming next week! The plan was for it to come this week, however we hit a technical snag we need to iron out first. 🙏
We’ll see you next week!
- The Darktide Team
Darktide 101: Voice Over Recording & Rules - Dev Blog
Heyo Everyone,
Welcome to the next installation of our Darktide 101 dev blog series. We’re interviewing devs working on Darktide to share what it’s like to create the game.
For today’s blog, we’re talking about Voice Over Recording and VO Rules. Have you ever been surprised by a piece of dialogue you’ve never heard before? Have you ever wondered what it’s like in the booth when recording your favourite lines? Today, you’ll get to find out how it works.
Runtime Dialogue System and VO Rules
Our first topic is written by our VO Design guru, Ola. Take it away, Ola!
Darktide's VO system was built off of the way VO worked in our two previous ‘Tide titles, with a lot of additional bells and whistles.
This VO system is a context-aware system, where we send queries to see if we can play something and it will return results based on what the current status of the game is.
We track many many different contexts for this purpose. Some examples include:
How much health and ammo do the players have?
Are there other players or enemies nearby? If so, how many?
Is the combat intense?
What previous dialogue has played and how long ago was it?
What weapons do you have equipped at the moment?
Which players are in the game?
Which mission are you in?
What trust level* do you have?
(* Trust level is based on the player level 1-30.)
Based on all of these contexts, we set up dialogue rules. These are buckets of VO lines, and when the system finds a match, it prioritizes it based on the amount of contexts it has hit. The more specific a line is, the higher priority it has to play.
We currently have around 90,000 voice lines in the game spread across a total of 6,000 rules. (For context, Vermintide 2 has approximately 39,000 voice lines.) Some of these rules are insanely rare. Part of this is by design. But part of it is that with such a large amount of rules requiring different combinations of contexts, some are bound to be very rare.
The idea is that even if you have played the game for a very long time, you should still feel that from time to time you come across lines you've never heard before. Our player character personalities also play a big part in this. Many lines vary from personality to personality. Therefore, some lines will only ever play when both of those personalities are present in a game together. And as we have 21 personalities, this creates many combinations that take time to discover.
Our most common VO rule is a rule that’s activated when Newly Infected assault players. This rule has been played 70,000,000 times in the last 30 days (at the time of writing this).
It has the following requirements:
For that specific enemy to not have played their assault rule* in the last 8 seconds.
For all newly infected to not have played their assault rule* in the last 4 seconds.
(* Assault rule refers to a rule that plays a voice line when an enemy is attacking or running toward the player.)
Our most rare rule is a bonding conversation between the female Savant Psyker and the Ogryn Bodyguard, where the Savant complains that the Bodyguard tends to get in the way due to his size.
In comparison, this rule has only been played 19 times in the last 30 days.
It has the following requirements:
Have at least one friend nearby;
No enemies nearby;
For the tension to be decaying (meaning combat has just taken place);
To have the female Savant Psyker present in the game;
To have the Ogryn Bodyguard in the game;
For there not to have been a banter conversation within the last 140 seconds; and
The Savant Psyker to have triggered the “friendly fire” VO on the Ogryn Bodyguard within the last 90 seconds.
Now rare rules are okay, but this is close to non-existent. In an effort to make this rule play somewhat more often, I have recently tweaked these requirements to:
Have less than 3 enemies nearby (from 0);
No banter in the last 100 seconds (from 140); and
For the female Savant Psyker to have triggered the friendly fire VO on the Ogryn Bodyguard in the last 180 seconds (from 90).
From time to time, we do these kinds of tweaks to the dialogue to try to shift what will be heard, tune down the most common conversations and tune up the rarest. All to keep the dialogue feeling like an alive and dynamic experience for all of the players! (Note: I personally get a real kick out of seeing people posting rare conversations on reddit.)
We put together a video with a series of voice lines that can show the specificity with which these voice rules are created, as well as the pure talent from our voice actors. These lines include:
Zealot hears a Horde coming
Veteran bonding conversation when low on health
Pskyer finds ammo when a Zealot is low on ammo
Veteran sees an Ogryn on a killstreak
Psyker sees someone hogging ammo
Ogryn finds a health boost while a Veteran is low on health
Ogryn responds to friendly fire from a Zealot.
https://youtu.be/n8Zbzw2DGug Alright, that’s it for now! If you’re excited to hear more about this topic, we have plenty more to talk about like the sound design of Darktide, implementation and WIPs, collaboration with level design or other disciplines, etc. If you have any specific questions related to voice over rules, or you’d like to hear more on the topic, please let us know.
Recording Voices
Our next topic is written by our Sound and VO team member, David. Go for it, David!
For Darktide, we want all of the voice-overs (VO) to sound natural, as if they belong in the world of the game and they come from the character that is speaking.
There are many things to keep in mind to achieve this goal. For example, when recording voices it's therefore important to be consistent when it comes to the mics and how they are positioned relative to the actor/actress. In both of the recording studios, OMUK and Molinare in London, we use the same type of DPA mic that sits on a person’s forehead. This gives the actor/actress the possibility to move and do gestures while talking.
For Darktide, most of our voice-over is either barking during combat, or talking while walking or even running. It's important to capture this sense of movement and effort. We have tried to achieve this by actually letting the actor/actress move during the recording or add pauses and breaths before/after or in between words. Imagine how you would talk while jogging with a friend. That’s what we’re going for during the session.
Before and during the recording session, my role as a game developer/voice designer is to give the voice director and the actor/actress as much context as possible about the game and the specific situations. For example, if the voice-over line is meant to be delivered while someone is being dragged up after being knocked down, it’s important for the actor/actress to convey this through effort and strain in the voice. If I had to pick, the most common comment from me to the voice director or actor/actress, it’d probably be: "Can we have a bit more effort and movement in the voice please?" It's not super fun when you see how sweaty the actors/actresses are, but it's necessary for world-building.
That’s all for the first peek into what it’s like to record voice lines for Darktide. Would you like to hear more on the topic, such as drafting the voice lines, or what lines are the most difficult to get right? Maybe a deeper dive on the enemy voice work? Do you have any questions for our voice actors? Let us know!
And so ends our second Darktide 101 dev blog. What topic would you like to hear about next time? Do you have any questions for the devs working on Voice Acting and VO for Darktide? Comment below and we’ll try to get some more dev replies for you!
Until next time!
Itemization Rework Q&A Part 1 - Dev Blog
Heyo Everyone,
Earlier this month, we released an Introduction to Itemization dev blog. After sharing the first looks of Itemization, we got a lot of messages from players. We collected over 13 pages of feedback, questions and concerns. As promised, we're following up on them.
While we cannot answer all of those questions yet, as some things are still being decided and iterated upon, we wanted to answer a batch of them today. We will continue to share more answers as we move closer to release! We want to hear more of your feedback and opinions through this dialogue.
Note: All of the questions we’re answering in this are pulled directly from the comments on the Forums, Reddit and Discord. We kept the players’ wording instead of writing our own questions.
Before we dive in, we want to make it clear for those who might’ve missed prior communications: WE ARE BREAKING THE LOCKS WITH THIS REWORK. 🔓
Questions From Players
Blessings / Transferring Weapons to New Systems
Question When StrawHat said that players will begin with a headstart in the new system, does that mean that we won't have access to blessings we did previously and therefore forcing us to grind for the tiers all over again?
Answer No, the actual blessing sticker book will be translated to experience into Mastery. It does mean that you actually can even learn blessings you didn't before if wanted.
Question What if I already have a perfect 550?
Answer Already owned weapons won’t be touched, they’ll remain intact. (Note: We are doing some blessing tweaks and balances with this update to accommodate for the new system, so some numbers might change.)
Question Soooo... my old weapons don't just disappear right? Guys, it took me 500+ hours to get all the stuff I want through your RNG casino, so that would be more than just a little bummer. Will already unlocked weapons be converted 100%?
Answer No, they won’t disappear and they will stay 100% intact as they are. You will keep the entire arsenal of weapons that you have acquired previously. (Note: We are doing some blessing tweaks and balances with this update to accommodate for the new system, so some numbers might change.)
Mastery and Expertise Systems
Question How does Mastery XP work? Do you get more for higher difficulty missions? What if you fail a run?
Answer The amount of Mastery XP is based on what difficulty the player plays. The higher the difficulty, the higher amount of XP is awarded. Experience gained will remain the same, no matter the weapon you use the most during a mission.
If you fail a run, you will be awarded a portion of the XP just as with normal Experience and Ordo Docket rewards.
Question Mastery is not tied to a specific weapon in your inventory. It has its own progress per weapon family that includes all marks, that unlocks blessings and perks for that weapon family. Do I have that right?
Answer Yes. Playing with any weapon (different marks) within a weapon family will progress that entire weapon family’s Mastery. Note: There can be several weapon families within the same school of weapons, such as Lasguns and Autoguns. They each have multiple weapon families, containing a number of Marks (e.g. Infantry Autoguns and Braced Autoguns). TL;DR - If you play with a Lasgun Family A Mark X, you will progress your Mastery into Lasgun Family A. So every other weapon mark in Family A will benefit from the Mastery progression into Mark X.
Question There's no farming blessings at all anymore. You just directly unlock the ones you want with the Mastery points. At full Mastery you'll have all blessings at all levels unlocked. (Yes or no?)
Answer Yes. As you gain Mastery with a Weapon Family you unlock blessing points (among other things); these points can then be freely used to unlock any blessing of your choosing: the more blessings you unlock, the more powerful versions of blessings you are able to unlock. When you have reached full Mastery with a weapon family you will have unlocked all the blessings available for that family. Moreover, in the new system, you’ll be able to freely swap out any blessings and perks on any weapon, at any level of Mastery, without them becoming locked after two changes.
Question So every weapon we buy/earn has a random-ish stat cap, and our Mastery of that weapon’s family (so autoguns, shotguns, etc) lets us build that up via expertise?
Answer Yes. We are still working out the finer details of this system. But in essence, as you gain Mastery you will unlock more Expertise within that weapon family. You can then choose to invest into that weapon and increase the stats of the weapon while keeping the predetermined stat distribution the weapon was created with.
Miscellaneous Concerns
Question This system is the anti-choice system, it’s the system that forces you to grind every single weapon family before you can try a build.
Answer The Mastery system is an addition to the existing crafting system that allows players to steadily unlock every Blessing for a weapon family, instead of relying exclusively on RNG to obtain them.
True, there will be some grind to fully unlock all the blessings at their most powerful tier for a weapon family. The system however lets you have full freedom in which blessings you unlock, and in what order, so being able to unlock a specific blessing for a build should be a manageable time investment. We are still experimenting with the exact time investment needed to fully unlock all blessings for a certain weapons family. We are also adding more tiers to most blessings, making previously higher tier blessings available at lower tiers.
Also, loot is still part of the system. The fact that we are still keeping the RNG loot system in place (Emperor's Gift, Sire Melk’s Requisitorium, The Armoury Exchange, and the ability to Consecrate weapons at Hadron’s Shrine with random upgrades, etc) will allow players to get to weapon builds that they have not unlocked in their Mastery before they actually get there. The loot system will be able to shortcut you to things that you have not yet unlocked.
Question If the only way to upgrade a weapon is to use it, players won't want to try new weapons because of the marked drop in power they'll have to put up with for as long as it takes to grind out the upgrades.
Answer Powerful weapons will still be distributed through stores/Emperor’s Gift. You can start with already high tier weapons to grind the Mastery, similar to what the game proposes at the moment.
Mastery will just open the toolbox to the player for them to experiment.
Mastery doesn't “gate” a person from acquiring a weapon with a given blessing, it only gates you from freely being able to add it to any weapon of your choosing. The loot system can still allow players to shortcut to a more powerful blessing before they unlock it in the Mastery.
Question Is ‘weapon potential’ a new stat? Is it tied to the base power level? If it is a new unrelated stat does that mean a 371 power weapon with a low weapon potential rating has less possible power increase than a say 342 power weapon that has a high weapon potential rating? Please give us examples with actual numbers to compare.
Answer Weapon Potential just refers to the stats distribution. For any weapon in the game, they actually have the potential to be maxed out. Every weapon now has the potential to reach a 380 stats rating. Note that maxing out does not mean reaching 80% on each stat: every weapon is created with a pool of stat points that have been distributed in the different stat buckets, and every weapon has the same potential maximum number of stats that can be distributed.
DISCLAIMER: The following images are NOT representative of the final UI / work for Itemization. They are meant to illustrate the different potential stat distributions of a maxed out weapon (the darker grey number).
Weapon Sharing
Question Sorry if this has been asked, but with this itemization rework, will characters that can use the same weapon archetypes have a shared inventory to those weapons? So no more fancy lasgun that only my Psyker can enjoy, now my Veteran and Zealot can too? This has been one of my biggest gripes.
Answer No, it will remain as it is today, where any item is unique to the character that has it.
However, we can say that we’re opening up more weapon families to be shared between all classes. It's still case by case, but for example, shotguns will be available for all classes.
Question Given that blessings are currently shared across characters, it’d be a massive step back if progress was silo’d.
Answer The Mastery / blessings unlocked are shared by account. However, any applied Expertise is at an item level and character level.
Essentially, if you have the Infantry Lasgun weapon family at 100% unlocked on Character 1, when you go to Character 2 and find a new Infantry Lasgun, you’ll have all the blessings unlocked on the new gun. But you’ll need to spend the materials to apply any Expertise changes on Character 2.
Alright, that answers the first batch of questions. We will answer more! If anything in this post is unclear, please let us know below. This will help us collect more feedback and ensure we answer them in our future posts.
Thank you!
Darktide x Fractal x Mionix Steam Swedish Midsummer Giveaway
Hey there Everyone,
To celebrate the Swedish Midsummer Steam Sale (15 July - 29 July), we’re partnering with Fractal and Mionix to give away a selection of prizes to some lucky players. Be one of the first to get these prizes to perfect your set up!
We’ll start with the prizes.
There will be 3 randomly selected winners who will win the following prizes (product pages listed below):
First Place.
1x Fractal Refine Chair*
1x Fractal North XL Computer Case
1x Fractal Scrape Gaming Headset*
1x Mionix Naos Pro Mouse
1x Mionix Alioth MouseMat
2100x Aquilas
Second Place.
1x Fractal North XL Computer Case
1x Fractal Scrape Gaming Headset*
1x Mionix Naos Pro Mouse
1x Mionix Alioth MouseMat
2100x Aquilas
Third Place.
1x Fractal Mood ITX Computer Case
1x Mionix Naos Pro Mouse
1x Mionix Alioth MouseMat
2100x Aquilas
Then, 47 other randomly selected winners will be rewarded 2,100 Aquilas. Meaning there will be 50 total winners!
* These prizes will be released and shipped in late 2024.
1x entry - Follow @Darktide40K on X (formerly Twitter)
1x entry - Follow @fractalofficial on X
1x entry - Follow @mionix on X
- You'll need to use the Gleam.io link in order to enter the giveaway.
Timeline
This giveaway is running at the same time as the Steam Midsummer Sale. Players will have from today (15 July) until end of day 29 July CEST to enter in this giveaway using Gleam.
We’ll use Gleam to select the winners on 30 July and announce the winners that same day! We’ll include instructions on how to claim your prize in the post.
