Patch #14 contains the second part of changes based on community testing that we’ve had with select members of the community the past 2 months, and adjustments to live issues that have appeared. We once again want to thank the community members for their continued help with improving areas of the game that need extra attention.
We could not post all the patch notes here so make sure to head to our forums to check out part 1 (same notes as presented here, the most important ones, if you will), part 2 (weapon balancing details) and part 3 (weapon balance details continued).
All
Operative Modifier “Suppression Boost” - Increased Suppression from 5% to 25%
Psyker
Blitz - All
Set wield Quell chain time to 0 on all Psyker Blitzes, meaning it will be more fluid to start Quelling after switching to your Blitz
Blitz - Brain Rupture
Reduced Peril cost of charging right click from 30% to 20%
Reduced movement penalties from charging
Increased power from 850 to 900
Increased Unyielding armour damage modifier from 1.0 to 1.25
Increased Maniac armour damage modifier from 1.0 to 1.5
Increased Carapace armour damage modifier from 0.75 to 1.0
Fixed an issue where “Brain Burst”/”Brain Rupture” would cause an explosion even with the talent “Empowered Psionics” active
Blitz - Assail
Shifting power, to reduce spammyness of primary attack but increase the usability of the secondary aimed attack:
Reduced power of primary action from 250 to 200
Increased power of secondary action(aimed) throw from 250 to 340 or 400 if talent “Empowered Psionics” is active
Fixed an issue where “Assail” projectiles would lose targeting when Force Swords are wielded
Fixed an issue that could cause the animation and action for “Assail” to be stuck if you were attacked while aiming a shard
Fixed an issue where “Assail” would play critical strike sounds globally and in 3D
Blitz - Smite
Fixed an issue where the ability didn’t show hit indicators when damaging enemies
Fixed an issue where Incorrect VFX cloud keeps triggering during the secondary attack
Dev Note:Smite being able to channel without cost when Empowered Psionics was active was a bug. We do however feel that without it Smite can feel a bit lacklustre in combination with Empowered Psionics, so we’re further increasing the power of it. We’ll be keeping an eye on it, and are up for doing something related to cost in the future as long as it's more balanced this time around!
Increased bonuses from Talent “Empowered Psionics” - +125% Damage, 50% faster spread between enemies
Fixed an issue where the Talent “Empowered Psionics” incorrectly made Smite not cost any Peril
Combat ability - Psykinetic’s Wrath
Added a 10% Quell to base “Psykinetic’s Wrath” ability. Meaning that Psykers who don’t have the upgraded “Psykinetic’s Wrath” still can use the ability to avoid downing themselves.
Combat ability - Scrier's Gaze
Fixed an issue where sound effects were not turned on and off properly when activating “Scrier's Gaze”
Combat ability - Telekine Shield/Telekine Dome
Increased speed of the “Telekine Shield” and “Telekine Dome” placement action
Increased the max duration of “Telekine Shield” from 15s to 17.5s
Increased the max duration of “Telekine Dome” from 15s to 22.5s
Increased the health of “Telekine Shield” and “Telekine Dome” from 15 to 20
Increased the minimum duration “Telekine Shield” and “Telekine Dome” from 4s to 6.5s.
Fixed an issue with not being able to place the “Telekine Shield” on certain flat areas
Fixed an issue where the “Warp Siphon” Talent granted an instant cooldown of the “Telekine Shield” and “Telekine Dome” Abilities
Fixed an issue where enemy hits on the “Telekine Shield” and “Telekine Dome” Abilities could be seen through enemies
Fixed an issue where impacts on the “Telekine Field” and “Telekine Dome” Abilities were not vanishing
Fixed an issue causing sound effects to not trigger correctly when entering/exiting a “Telekine Dome”
Talent “Soulstealer”
Reduced Toughness replenished from 15% Toughness to 7.5%
Talent “Perilous Combustion”
Reduced the numbers of Soulblaze stacks applied to nearby enemies on Elite or Specialist kills from 4 to 3
Talent “Prescience”
Aura Talent “Kinetic Presence” - Reduced the Damage bonus from 10% to 5%
Increased Critical Hit chance bonus to 5% from 4%
Zealot
Blitz - Blades of Faith
Tweaked knife throw to make it more consistent and easier to hit priority targets:
Added small cleave to be able to cleave through one small enemy
Reduced projectile radius from 0.37 to 0.2, to make it easier to hit priority targets in hordes and avoid accidentally hitting the smaller targets.
Fixed so Blades of Faith don’t inherit spread modifiers from wielded Ranged weapons, they should go straight now.
Increased power from 500 to 585 to help reaching some weak spot breakpoints
Increased Flak armour damage modifier from 0.75 to 0.8
Fixed minor animation issues
Combat ability - Shroudfield
Talent “Perfectionist” - Reduced the Backstab damage bonus from 100% to 50%, but changed the Cooldown increase from 100% to 50% so the cooldown punishment is lower. This was made to avoid single hits doing too much damage.
Changed the Finesse Damage bonus from being multiplicative to additive.
Daemonhosts will now be able to see Zealots using Shroudfield, to avoid cases where players can aggro a Daemonhost and make it attack other players.
Combat ability - Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude
Added functionality to cancel the ability with the secondary action input
Changed action chaining so that you are not allowed to cancel out of the ability during wielding animation. This to avoid accidental cancelling of the ability before it is started
Changed so that Monstrosities are only staggered by the first and last pulse of the ability
Talent "Inexorable Judgement"
now only activates on melee and ranged hits
Talent “Second Wind”
Added 0.5s internal cooldown
Increased Toughness replenish from 10% to 15%
Talent “Shield of Contempt”
Reduced damage reduction from 75% to 60%
Talent “Bleed for the Emperor”
Reduced damage reduction from 50% to 40%
Dev note:These slight changes to damage reduction talents are to avoid high stacking damage reduction
Fixed the Talent “Martyr’s Purpose” having the wrong icon
Fixed an issue where the “Beacon of Purity” Aura could leave players with remaining corruption damage
Fixed issues where the Talent “Sainted Gunslinger” didn’t activate when reloading Combat Shotguns or Stub Revolvers
Veteran
We are currently working on an update to the Veteran’s Talent Tree, including Keystones, which will be coming in a future patch. We hope that these changes to your Abilities will still be interesting enough and open up for a few more build paths, while we finalise the larger update.
Reduced Veteran Stamina regeneration delay from 1.25 to 1.0, meaning Veterans will start Stamina regeneration quicker than before.
Blitz - Smoke grenade
Added a small stagger to Smoke Grenade explosion
Duration increased from 10s base, 15s with "Grenade Tinkerer" talent to 15s base, 30s with "Grenade Tinkerer" talent.
Blitz - Krak grenade
Changed behaviour of the Talent “Twinned Blast”. One grenade will now land where aimed, and the duplicated grenade will land in a random position nearby, left or right of the aimed position.
Combat ability - Volley Fire / Executioner’s stance
Allow cooldown to tick during “Volley Fire”/”Executioner’s stance”, but increase cooldown from 25s to 35s, meaning achieving a higher uptime on “Volley Fire” will reward you more.
Talent “Counter-Fire” - Added Scab Stalkers as Volley Fire Targets
Fixed issues where the “Volley Adept”/”Executioner’s stance” didn’t activate when reloading Combat Shotguns or Stub Revolvers
Combat Ability - Infiltrate
Daemonhosts will now be able to see Veterans using Infiltrate, to avoid cases where players can aggro a Daemonhost and make it attack other players.
Reduced Infiltrate cooldown from 60s to 45s
Increased Infiltrate duration from 6s to 8s
Combat Ability - Voice of Command
Reduced cooldown from 45s to 30s
Added stronger stagger to “Voice of Command”, will now be able to stagger Monstrosities and Mutants.
Talent “Only in Death Does Duty End”
Increased cooldown increase from 33% to 50% - With the reduced cooldown of “Voice of Command”, this adds up the same 15 s extra cooldown. (33% of 45 is 15, 50% of 30 is 15)
Talent “Duty and Honor”
Increased toughness gained from from 50 to 100 and duration from 10 to 15
Fixed an issue where the ability didn’t play sound effects.
Talent “Deadshot”
Moved from percentage of max Stamina to flat Stamina, 0.75 stamina per second, 0.25 per shot.
Talent “Exploit Weakness”
Increased from 2.5% Brittleness to 10% and set max stacks to 2
The Description currently reads Rending, but should say Brittleness Talent “Rending Strikes”
Reduced from 15% to 10% Rending to all weapons. With the Class Overhaul we also changed how Rending was calculated, resulting in it being more effective than before. This resulted in ‘Rending Strikes’ being stronger than we anticipated.
Talent “Keep Their Heads Down!”
Increased Ranged Attack suppression from 25% to 50%
Talent “Demolition Team”
Corrected the description to state that only the Veteran receives a grenade.
The gameplay change was already in, but the description didn’t get updated properly.
Ogryn
Blitz - Big Friendly Rock
Reduced replenish cooldown from 60s to 45s
Increased Maniac damage
Increased impact VS Monstrosities. Stones thrown to the head of Monstrosities will now stagger them.
Lowered chaining time from wield to the aim throw - This will reduce the time until the player can throw the stone, allowing for more reactive gameplay.
Blitz - Ogryn Frag Bomb
Armour Modifiers Close Damage (near, far): Unyielding : 200%, 200% to 325%, 200%
Armour Modifiers Far Damage (near, far): Carapace: 75%, 37.5% to 100%, 37.5% Unyielding : 187.5%, 100% to 262.5%, 112.5%
Combat ability - Loyal Protector
Fixed an issue where Daemonhost was behaving weirdly after Ogryn Loyal Protector activation
Fixed an issue where the ability didn’t play sounds effects for other players
Combat ability - Point blank Barrage
Fixed issue where the ability would not trigger Talent “Reloaded and Ready”
Talent “Light ‘em Up“ - Reduced Stacks of Burn from 3 to 2
Talent “Batter”
Reduced number of bleed stacks applied from heavy attacks from 6 to 4.
Talent “Pained Outburst”
Fixed an issue where the talent would return 100% Toughness instead of 25% and would replenish Toughness if knocked down.
Talent "Dominate"
Reduced from 30% to 15% Rending on Elite kills
Enemies
Tweaked Enemy base health on all difficulties, with focus on bigger Elites to make them stay alive a bit longer, and for the Conflict Director to not spawn as many:
Mutant base health from 1900 to 2000, is now the same base health as before the Class Overhaul patch.
Bulwark base health from 1500 to 1800
Crusher base health from 1500 to 1800
Dreg/Scab Rager base health increased from 800 to 1200
Scab Mauler base health increased from 1200 to 1500
Added new backstab sound for Elites
Increased heavy stagger thresholds for Crushers, Maulers and Reapers
Lowered push force applied by Scab/Dreg gunner shots by around 70%
Tweaked Scab Stalker combat ranges to increase distance where they switch from melee to ranged attacks
Scab Shooter can now trigger "On successful dodge" procs.
Fixed so Scab Bomber will only drop his grenade once pin-pull sound is played
Spawning
Fixed issue that caused more flamers be able to be spawned at the same time than intended
Added more aggressive speedrunning prevention spawning
Fixed an issue where the Monster Specials Condition could fail to set weakened state
Mutants
Improved dodging when Mutant charges players around corners, added extra wall collision raycast
Plague Ogryn
Lowered Plague Ogryn stomp radius
Beast of Nurgle
Tweaked Beast of Nurgle slime slow from 50% to 20%
Fixed a crash that could occur if two Beasts of Nurgle tried to consume the same enemy
General Weapon Changes
Full details on damage values, armour modifiers, etc. are found further down.
General:
Reduced Bleed damage from 200 to 175
Dev Note:This was 40 before Patch #13 Class Overhaul
Fixed so Recoil doesn’t increase while crouched for some weapons
Rending no longer increases Stagger strength
Duelling Swords:
Changed chain windows on all swords to have faster access to weapon special attack
Adjusted cleave values
Slightly increase power on stab heavy attack
Improve armour damage modifier vs Unyielding/Flak on stab heavy
Changed chain windows on all swords to have faster access to weapon special
Heavy Swords:
Set same damage profile for 1st and 2nd target
Chainaxe:
Increased Maniac armour damage modifier
Kickback:
Faster auto reload after shooting hip/zoomed
Increased power.
A bit tighter spread with ADS (Aim Down Sights)
Minimum pellet hit count changed from 10 to 16 for both hip fire/ads on all Armour types except Flak/Unyielding.
Grenadier Gauntlet:
Tweaked values on melee attacks to make it more viable.
Fixed an issue where heavy melee attacks did not allow for talents such as “Batter” to proc as intended.
Ripper Guns:
Reduced base reload speed from 30% to 20%.
Slightly reduced ammo reserve.
Force Swords:
Fixed an issue with the smart targeting of the force sword push follow up being overly prioritised.
Increased the lights and heavy attacks damage, with a bit increased cleave and finesse.
Changed Force Swords dodge limit from Infinite to 5 (same as Combat Knife)
Dev Note: We believe infinite dodges aren't healthy for the balance of the game and decided instead to give Force Swords the same dodge count as the Combat Knife(one of the best dodging weapons). This change was made together with an overall bump in Force Sword damage and cleave output to compensate for the dodge loss and other weapons power increase. Infantry Lasguns:
Improved sprint ready up time for all Lasguns
Improved hipfire recoil/spread for all Lasguns
Increased power.
Laspistol:
Increased power
Reduce sprint ready up time
Slightly increased fire rate
Tweak recoil, spread, stability to be far less severe, focused on stability even when mobile
Tweaked the input buffer so as to reduce the feeling of lost inputs
Thunderhammers:
Added 1 more dodge
Switched Crucis Mk II Thunder Hammer’s push follow up to be light sweep.
Switched Ironhelm activated strikedown heavy sweeping profile to heavy single target profile, meaning it will be more effective against single targets.
Switched Ironhelm chain from pushfollow to heavy 3 for easier access
Crusher:
Crusher has been changed to be more of a fast, crowd-controlling, headshotting focused weapon.
Added 1 more dodge
Tuned lights/heavies damage profile to be more efficient, with focus on headshotting.
Increased heavy hitbox length from 1.15 to 1.4.
Tuned up attack speed.
Switch push followup to light sweeping with higher finesse.
Reduced light and heavy activated explosion radius, larger decrease on light attack.
Tactical Axes:
Atrox Mk II
Tuned up single target damage for Light 1 and Light 3
Ogryn Club:
Increased the speed of heavy attacks on "Brunt's Basher" Mk IIIb Bully Club
Slap
Tuned down impact a bit to avoid juggling enemies in the air.
Fixed so slapping a weak spot can stagger stronger elites, such as Crushers.
Combat Swords:
Added chain to heavy attack 1 from push follow up and slightly increased the chain time.
Devil's Claw Mk VII push followup switched to single target damage profile, following attack changed to a sweeping profile, meaning the first attack will be more useful versus 1 target and the following attack more useful with multiple targets.
Combat Axes:
Achlys
Added chain to heavy attack 1 from push follow up, slightly reduced the chain time
Headhunter Autoguns
Bash weapon special
Tweaked hitboxes to be a bit easier to hit
Increased speed of normal/heavy bash
Added chain window from hip shoot so shooting won't lock you out from firing as much.
Vraks Mk III Headhunter Autogun
Tweaked recoil behaviour
Vraks Mk VII Headhunter Autogun
Tweaked recoil behaviour
Increased damage per shot
Decreased fire rate
Agripinaa Mk VIII Headhunter Autogun
Changed burst time from 0.175 to 0.1
Braced Autoguns
All Braced Autoguns:
Replaced push on weapon special to sweep.
Add stagger reduction on bash hit, higher on weak spot hit
Tweaked hitboxes to be a bit easier to hit
Increased speed of normal/heavy bash
Boltgun
Bash weapon special:
Replaced push on weapon special to sweep
Add stagger reduction on bash hit, higher on weak spot hit
Tweaked hitboxes to be a bit easier to hit
Increased speed of normal/heavy bash
Power increased
Infantry Autoguns
All infantry Autoguns: changed crit effect to be a less flash-bangy one. Should be less blinding to get a lot of crits.
All infantry Autoguns: increase ammo clip and reserve.
Agripinaa Mk I Infantry Autogun
Tweaked recoil, fixed faulty crouch settings that caused recoil to go up when crouching.
Reduced recoil on first 3 shots
Increase recoil when moving to more around x2 of stationary
Columnus Mk V Infantry Autogun
Tweaked recoil, reduced horizontal by a lot, fixed faulty crouch settings that caused recoil to go up when crouching.
Increased sprint speed.
Increased dodge.
Changed damage profile to be more effective at close range, far range falloff
Set same falloff range as other infantry Autoguns
Slightly reduced vertical recoil
Graia Mk VIII Infantry Autogun
Tweaked recoil, fixed faulty crouch settings that caused recoil to go up when crouching.
Increased sprint speed.
Force Staves
Tweaked fire times on Force Staves with a projectile primary attack (Nomanus Mk VI Surge Force Staff, Equinox Mk III Trauma Force Staff, and Equinox Mk IV Voidstrike Force Staff). Fire time is now 0.1s, up from 0.025s, and the animations and time scales have been tweaked to better match the fire time.
Special attack bash
Slightly faster
Changed damage profile to be similar to other bash changes, high stagger on weak spot hit, higher on heavy, more cleave on sweep
Increased hitbox range
Tweaked chain timings
Fixed the impact sfx/vfx on special attack bash to be blunt
Ogryn Cleavers
Fixed so uppercut special can stagger heavy targets, such as Crushers.
Orox Mk II Battle Maul & Mk III Slab Shield
Increased push radius from 3.25 to 4
Tuned chain timings
Standard-issue Munitorum Sapper Shovel
Tune chain timings
Increased damage of lights and heavies
Catachan Mk III Combat Blade
Tweaked up light/heavies, tune chain windows
Added innate 25% backstab damage bonus to heavies.
Power Swords
Munitorum Mk VI Power Sword block cost reduction by 25%
Activation can be cancelled to block 0.3s in, keeping the activation
Dev Note:This change was made to make Munitorum Mk VI Power Sword more focused on defensive chaining, by allowing the block chain to be activated. The activation animation also matches the block animation so the transition from block -> activate is smoother.
Activated attack power buffed significantly; Heavies with a focus on horde clear, lights for dps or smaller target counts, push attack weak spot hits for carapace and unyielding damage.
Voidstrike
Chain timing from start next projectile set to quell chain time
Slightly reduced the previous 70% buff applied to secondary fire to tune down extreme damage on high health targets.
Surge Staff
Added gibbing to Surge Staff kills
Rumbler:
Reduced sway to make aiming trajectory more reliable
Added crosshair during reload
Human Shotguns
Upped ammo pools.
Increased Armour damage modifiers vs unarmoured, infested, maniac and unyielding.
M35 Magnacore Mk II Plasma Gun
Increased power
Increased cleave
Increased finesse
Grenades
Reject Supply Kit Giveaway
Rejects!
Don't miss the chance to win a Throne-blessed supply kit for your Tertium adventures. Read more here!
Hotfix 1.2.1
Hotfix 1.2.1 just went live on Steam, check out the full patch notes here
Patch #13: Class Overhaul
Devoted Rejects!
Here are the Patch Notes for Patch #13: Class Overhaul. Not all our notes would fit in one Steam post! To read the rest of the patch notes please click here to continue reading on our forums.
New Features & Improvements
Talent Trees
We have replaced the old Feats with new Talent Trees!
Instead of unlocking a new row of feats every 5 levels, you will now be granted one Talent Point for each level you reach, to a maximum of 30 points at level 30. Spending and removing points in the Trees is free, so don't be afraid of trying out different configurations and creating multiple presets!
Every Class will start with a Baseline Ability, Blitz, and Aura (Most of them are the same ones you are playing with today), and in the Trees you will find options to upgrade them or replace them completely with new ones. For a few Classes this means that we've also lowered the strength of the Baseline Abilities, and you'll instead be able to regain the lost power further down in the Trees.
Most of the Feats that were available to you before can be found scattered around in these Trees, so if you loved the build and playstyle you had before, it should still be available to you even with these changes!
Veteran
Volley Fire: No longer designates Elites and Specials as a baseline. You can upgrade Volley Fire to include this feature further down in the Tree instead.
Scavenger/scroungers aura: Changed to keep track of "leftover" percentages and apply it on later procs instead of rounding up on every proc. For example, you are about to replenish 0.5 ammo. Earlier we would round it up to 1 ammo, but now you will instead store it away and replenish the stored ammo once it adds up to 1.
Psyker
Psykinetic's Wrath: Reduces the Quell amount of the baseline ability. You can increase this further down in the Tree.
Brain Burst: Lowered the damage of the baseline ability. You can increase the damage further down in the Tree.
Kinetic Presence: As a baseline we've replaced this with 'The Quickening', reducing Ability Cooldowns for you and allies in coherency. You can still find Kinetic Presence further down in the Tree.
Changes
Enemies
General
Adjusted most enemy health pools, hit mass values, and stagger thresholds to be a bit higher overall, with higher increase on Monstrosities, with the goal to match the overall increase in power output from players.
Added more ways for the Conflict Director to spawn hordes. Hordes can now spawn in different ways to respond to player behaviour, including coordinated strike with Specialists, mixed in Elites with the horde, push from behind while ranged enemies spawn ahead, bigger ambushes with more spread and more.
Replaced fast transitioning sprint animations for far ranged enemies with a smoother start animation for easier aiming.
Fixed so Dreg Bruisers have right hit sounds based on their blunt weaponry.
Fixed an issue where Monstrosities that were meant to be Weakened did not receive the Weakened debuff in Monstrous Specialists condition.
Pox Hound
Made improvements to the way Pox Hound leaps are calculated for more consistent & reliable behaviour.
Mutant
Tuned functionality for when players dodges Mutants on high latency.
Fixed a case where Mutant could bring players into enemies' spawn rooms.
Poxburster
Increased Poxburster explosion vs Infested so Poxburster chain explosions can happen.
Fixed a case where Poxburster could ignore stagger if just walked in fire.
Fixed issue when using Surge Force Staff secondary on Poxbursters that would make them stagger backwards multiple times during a very short timeframe.
Bomber
Reduced radius of stun when grenades detonate by around 50%, reduced stun duration.
Beast of Nurgle
Increased corruption gained when eaten by Beast of Nurgle.
Chaos Spawn
Made Chaos Spawn grab a bit easier to dodge.
Tweaked Chaos Spawn attack durations to give players a bit extra room to get in melee hits between attacks.
Slightly reduced Chaos Spawn combo damage.
Reduced knockback radius for leap land, reduced force on players, Ogryns only get pushed.
Made improvements to the way Chaos Spawn leaps are calculated for more consistent & reliable behaviour.
Plague Ogryn
Switch Plague Ogryn broken stomp particles to better match the stomp, increase stomp radius.
Fixed case where Plague Ogryn charge push had wrong direction when hitting players.
Corruptor
Reduced tentacle regrowth speed from 2 to 1.5 on Damnation.
Balance
Almost all of the weapon and blessing changes were made with the help of closed community testing where we got the opportunity to hang out with members of the community while giving them early builds to try and feedback on. These tests also gave us a lot of early feedback regarding the talents and new abilities which helped us iron out rough bits of the balance. We want to extend a huge thanks to these people, as they have been very important to help us iterate on the balance.
Some balance changes made in these tests are still being worked on and will be released in future patches.
Weapons
Below you will find a list of changes to weapons in this patch. The first list is a quick explanation of the changes, and further on in the patch notes you will find the raw number changes for each weapon if you want the finer details.
All weapons:
All weapons now have weak spots as sweep hitzone priority.
Krourk Mk IV Cleaver
Changed moveset to include faster stab chain followed by sweeping light, switched up heavy chain to feel smoother to use.
Changed stab profiles for all cleavers to be better at handling Flak/Carapace/Maniac armour type.
Krourk Mk VI Cleaver
Talent Trees Deep Dive
Devoted Rejects!
A promise is a promise here is our deep dive blog on the talent trees. We figured you might want to enjoy a studious weekend, dissecting each class and getting ready for the launch of Patch #13 and Xbox on October 4, 2023.
Make sure to check out our previous dev blog on the design work of the class overhaul patch! Quick disclaimer; in this blog, we will cover Combat, Blitz and Keystone abilities. We will let you explore Aura, Talents and Stat Nodes once you jump into the game.
Veteran
When we first released Darktide we wanted to provide a solid template background striving to capture the core of the guardsman experience, encompassed by the Veteran Sharpshooter. A soldier with a rifle. Simple and approachable. Equipped with a frag grenade, it allowed for a ranged focus playstyle that could circumvent challenges by simply headshotting efficiently.
We wanted to expand the build space into more support roles, using the leadership and officers of the Astra Militarum as inspiration. There were early prototypes of a squad leader subclass based on the original release format lying around, so scavenging some abilities and the odd Krak grenade implementation was a solid start.
We also wanted to allow Veterans to lean into the more aggressive, close to melee range, assault infantry power fantasies. On what started to be known as the ‘commando’ side of things, ambushing and smoke-grenades were added to allow the players to get stuck in and disrupt the ranged enemy domination.
Initial designs for the Veteran talent tree included weapon-specific Keystones, with the plasma rifle, bolter and power sword as first set. The idea was to create specific bonuses for different play styles while introducing mutual exclusivity between them. After multiple iterations and some closed testing feedback, we ended up removing the weapon specific keystones. In the end, any weapon specific node ends up either offsetting the entire balance of the particular weapon or becoming a mandatory talent tax. Neither were impressively interesting.
We've ended up with a Veteran talent tree that provides a suitably rigid layout with three clear lanes. We have tuned the tree to allow for flexibility, where zig-zagging across the different lanes is not just an option but encouraged. There are clear tinkering spaces where talent options and stat nodes enable builds ranging from pure ranged damage output, suppression immunity and resilience, melee loadouts with stamina configurations and plenty of others in between. The staple features of ammo management and extra grenades are still present, and are integrated into parts of the tree. Creating a well rounded or very specific build for your Veteran is up to you, with clear and straightforward build options available and lots of tinkering hidden in the talent clusters and bridges between lanes.
Combat abilities
Executioner's Stance: Enter Ranged Stance for 5s. When in Ranged Stance you instantly equip your ranged weapon, deal +25% Ranged Damage, +25% Ranged Weakspot Damage, and your Spread and Recoil are greatly reduced. Elite Enemies and Specialist Enemies are highlighted for 5s. Base Cooldown: 25s. This is an augmented version of Volley Fire.
Voice of Command: Replenishes your Toughness & Staggers all Enemies within 9m. Base Cooldown 45s.
Infiltrate: Replenish all Toughness and enter Stealth for 6s, gaining +25% Movement Speed. Leaving Stealth Suppresses nearby Enemies. Attacking makes you leave Stealth. Base Cooldown: 60s.
Blitz abilities
Shredder Frag Grenade: Throw a frag grenade that explodes after a short delay. Applies 6 Stacks of Bleed to all Enemies Hit, causing Damage over time. This is an augmented version of Frag Grenade.
Smoke Grenade: Throw a grenade that creates a lingering smoke cloud for 10s. The cloud blocks line of sight for most enemies and reduces the sight range of enemies inside it.
Krak Grenade: Throw a grenade that deals devastating Damage. Sticks to Flak Armoured, Carapace Armoured & Unyielding Enemies.
Zealot
The original class was designed to showcase the melee gameplay and provide a familiar home for our Vermintide veterans. Equipped with a stun grenade and a charge ability, it allowed for an aggressive get-stuck-in melee play style that could bypass the ranged combat and lock the heretics in glorious melee combat.
The first thing we set out to solve was a realization of the bolstering prayer fantasy. The ability to act as a solemn anchor for the team. The source of faith. The reminder that the Emperor protects. Providing players with the opportunity of supporting and buffing the rest of the team - quite a challenge from a design standpoint. In one fork of the tree we landed on Zealots having a classic ability, and buffed the impact of it to allow for better control, including staggering of monsters.
On the other side of the tree we just went full stabbing. We made a stealth and backstabby talent tree that leans into those tropes, fully equipped with throwing knives you can quickthrow while wielding any weapon, a stealth ability very reminiscent of the Vermintide shade, coherency while-not-in-coherency talents and mutator packages focused on mobility, headshotting and dodge-dancing. Playing with a stabbing zealot changes the way a team works its way through the mission. The sudden appearance and disappearance of one or more team members becomes a flow that the team has to adjust to. One part acts as the anchor, drawing aggro and directing combat, while relying on stealth build players to strike from the shadows, make that clutch revive or complete the objective utilizing their unique skills.
There are three different keystone sets at the bottom of the tree, all unlocking different core passives that are foundational for a build. But plenty of key talents are found higher up. “Until Death” together with “Holy Revenant” makes up a pair of talents that enable the Zealot to avoid death should it occur and regain health based on damage output for a duration immediately after. You’ll find stat nodes for toughness and wounds, talents that provide damage mitigation based on wound thresholds and plenty of either close range or melee focused damage buffs within the tree. The tinkering space also features plenty of tweaks to your ability suite and hopefully encourages tinkering for synergies with the complete loadout chosen.
Combat abilities
Fury of the Faithful: Dash forward, Replenishing 50% Toughness & gaining +20% Attack Speed for 10s. Your next Melee Hit gains +25% and is a guaranteed Critical Hit. Base Cooldown: 30s
Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude: Wield a holy relic that releases pulses of energy every 0.8s. While channeling, Allies in Coherency have Stun Immunity and Invulnerability. Each pulse Replenishes 45% Toughness to Allies in Coherency. If the Ally is at full Toughness they instead gain +20 Max Toughness up to a total of +100. 60s Base Cooldown.
Shroudfield: Enter Stealth for 3s. While in Stealth gain +20% Movement Speed, +100% Backstab Damage, +100% Finesse Damage & +100% Critical Chance. Base Cooldown: 30s
Blitz abilities
Stunstorm Grenade: Throw a grenade that stuns all Enemies within its blast radius. This is an augmented version of Stun Grenade with +50% blast radius.
Immolation Grenade: Throw a grenade that leaves a layer of flaming liquid, Burning and Staggering enemies, and barring their path. Most effective against Unarmoured Enemies.
Blades of Faith: Throw a consecrated knife to deal high Damage to a Single Enemy. Very effective against most Enemies; less effective versus Carapace Armour.
Quick Throw
Killing Elite & Special Enemies in Melee replenishes 1 knife
Ammo boxes replenish knives
Keystones
Blazing piety: +15% Critical Hit Chance for 8s when in Fury. Fury is triggered when 25 Enemies have died within 25m.
Martyrdom: Each missing Wound grants +8% Melee Damage, up to 9 missing Wounds.
Inexorable Judgment: Moving grants you Momentum (Stacks 20 times). When you Hit an Enemy, spend all Momentum, gaining +1% Melee Attack Speed, +1% Ranged Attack Speed, and +1% Damage per Stack. Lasts 8s.
Psyker
Mechanically, the release version of our Psyker leaned on controlling the overcharge mechanic of Perils by providing dynamic buffs and abilities granting better management. The Brain Burst blitz encapsulated the design principle of pushing Psyker utility towards the extremes of our design space. The ultimate single-target remover of problems, disregarding armor, line of sight or anything else standing in the way of a kill. The design was all about enabling the use of force powers and the interplay with managing your Peril meter. A true mastery of the warp, walking a fine balance between suffering its perils and unleashing its powers.
The new Psyker talent tree was envisioned as the most tinker-friendly. The shared resource between weapons and blitzes tie everything together, and since there’s plenty of talents that scale and interact with Perils it makes build choices for the Psyker a bit more involved and interesting. Enforcing a layout that encourages this and invites exploration and customization rather than straightforward progression was the initial goal.
On the Blitz side, we have the old Brain Burst, mainly intact with some balance adjustments and finetune improvements. We have added two new ones, one for crowd control and one for those easily mesmerized by the twirly spectacle that is our true flight projectiles. The new Smite blitz is our crowd control one. A chain lightning that allows the Psyker to stunlock large populations of enemies, holding them in place and pushing them around at will. For the last Blitz we did implement an ammo loop in the end. Warp infused homing missiles that will track and pick targets based on what you're looking at, have a self-regenerating ammo cap built in. There are modifiers that allow you to lessen the limitations that come with the ammo loop, but at its core they work best as a burst of extra damage.
Perhaps the biggest news with the biggest impact on the whole game loop is found in the Shield ability available in the Psyker talent tree. It’s a simple concept: place a flat shield that blocks enemy shots but lets yours and your allies' shots pass. It can be played purely defensively, as part of a push or more tactically to ensure objective completion. The modifier layer allows heavy customization too. There are options to deploy multiple shields, to have specials stagger when trying to pass through, and options to exchange the wall for a dome.
Combat abilities
Venting Shriek: Unleashes a wave of warp energy that Staggers Enemies in front of you. Quells 50% Peril. Base Cooldown: 30s This is an augmented version of Psykinetic's Wrath.
Telekine Shield: Spawns a psychic shield in front of you for 15s. The shield blocks Enemy Ranged Attacks, while you and Allies can still shoot through. Base Cooldown: 40s.
Scrier's Gaze: Triggers Scrier's Gaze. When entering Scrier's Gaze you gain +10% Damage and +20% Critical Chance. For every second in Scrier's Gaze you gain +1% Damage up to a maximum of +30%. This effect lingers for 10s after leaving Scrier's Gaze. While in Scrier's Gaze you build up Peril. Build up is temporarily slowed down by enemy Kills. At 100% Peril, Scrier's Gaze ends. Base Cooldown: 30s.
Blitz abilities
Brain Rupture: Charge up your Psychic Power and release it to deal immense Damage to a Single Enemy. Effective against Flak & Carapace Armoured Enemies. This is an augmented version of Brain Burst dealing +50% Damage.
Assail: Throw swift, homing projectiles formed of psychic energy. Less effective versus Carapace Armoured Enemies.
Smite: Unleash a torrent of Bio-Lightning. Using primary fire to instantly deal damage and impact to an enemy on release, spreading slowly between multiple enemies. Charge up the attack to have it spread between enemies faster.
Keystones
Warp Siphon: Killing an Elite or Specialist Enemy gains you a Warp Charge for 25 seconds, stacking 4 time(s). Your next Combat Ability spends all available Warp Charges to reduce the Cooldown of that Combat Ability by 7.5% per Warp Charge.
Empowered Psionics: Kills have a 7.5% chance to Empower your next Blitz.
Empowered Smite: +30% Damage 25% faster spread between enemies
Empowered Assail: 100% Peril Cost Reduction. Base Damage increase from 100 to 150. Does not consume any charges.
Disrupt Destiny: Every second, Enemies within 25m have a chance of being Marked. Killing a Marked Enemy Replenishes 10% Toughness, grants +20% Movement Speed for 2.5s, and adds a Precision Bonus for 15s. Each Precision Bonus grants +1% Damage, +2% Critical Damage and +2,5% Weakspot Damage. Precision Bonus Stacks 15 times.
Ogryn
Ogryns are three things: brawlers, bodyguards and bringer of big karking guns. The core Ogryn experience of the Skullcrusher that was part of the release was already there. Big, strong, melee powerhouse that relies on heavy attacks and massive health. Ignoring the stuns and staggers the little ones suffer, with “charge at the problem” as the go-to solution for anything.
To create a strong bodyguard, protector of friends, the Ogryn needed to be able to draw aggro. A taunt ability was nothing new, we have those in the Vermintide game. Making it work in the hybrid combat of Darktide is trickier. The Taunt is one of those abilities that changes how the team plays. It is good for the Ogryn player,as it helps control the fight - but it’s very good when used with the team, putting the Ogryn at the core of any squad.
We also added the Point-blank barrage ability which is particularly good for Ogryns that like to lug around big guns. It brings up your ranged weapon and reloads it whenever you use the ability and it also makes guns shoot faster and reload faster for 10 seconds. It’s great fun with a Rumbler. Sometimes the team says it’s like it’s raining grenades, but most use it with a heavy stubber or a ripper gun. It’s like you can shoot twice as much.
Ogryns get some nice end nodes. The three keystone talents at the end of the talent tree. You can only pick one of them, but each has a bunch of more modifiers after - and they’re not like the ability or the blitz, you don’t have to do anything to use them, they are just always there if you pick them. Getting all the way down to one of the keystone talents is good as most Ogryn builds need one. There are lots of talents on the way there, so once you have all the talent points you can pick a bit from each path and make a good build that way too.
Combat abilities
Indomitable: Charge forward with great force, knocking back Enemies and Staggering them. Gain +25% Attack Speed and +25% Movement Speed for 5s. Charge is stopped on collision with Monstrosities. Base Cooldown: 30s. This is an augmented version of Bull Rush with an increased charge.
Loyal Protector: Taunt Enemies within 8m, making them attack only you for 15s. Base Cooldown: 45s.
Point-Blank Barrage: Swaps to and reloads your Ranged Weapon. You have +25% Rate of Fire and +70% Reload Speed for the next 10s. Base Cooldown: 80s.
Blitz abilities
Big Friendly Rock: Toss a big rock or hunk of junk at a Single Enemy. Reduced effectiveness against Carapace Armoured Enemies and Unyielding Enemies. You pick up a new rock every 60s and can hold up to 4 rocks at a time.
Bombs Away!: Throw a box of grenades with great strength and enthusiasm to deal high Damage to a Single Enemy. Hitting an Enemy causes the box to break open, releasing 6 grenades around the target. This is an augmented version of Big Box of Hurt.
Frag Bomb: Throw an Ogryn-sized (the only proper kind!) frag grenade with a 16m blast radius, dealing increased Damage at the centre.
Keystone
Heavy Hitter: +5% Damage for 7.5s on Heavy Attack Hit. Stacks 5 times.
Feel No Pain: You are blessed with 10 Stacks of Feel No Pain. Each Stack grants +2.5% Toughness Replenishment and +2.5% Damage Reduction. Taking Health Damage removes one stack. Stacks are restored every 6s.
Burst Limiter Override: 5% chance of triggering Lucky Bullet and not consuming Ammo when making Ranged Attacks.
The Darktide Team
Dev Blog: Class Overhaul
Hello Devoted Rejects!
My name is Mats Andersson, also known as the resident Combat guy, Lead Combat Designer or just “Ratherdone” around the interwebs. I’d like to tell the story of the Darktide team's new take on classes and all the player choice and build availability that comes with it. This update is the result of a wide collaboration throughout the project as changing the core of what defines a player character has far-reaching implications on many parts of the game.
First off, we’ve always looked at Darktide as a game where you define your own character and play style. Much more so than in our previous tide-games. The idea that we’d be less prescriptive in the way we present who you play always has some friction with the class system. It is just natural that presenting a class, full with loadout restrictions, abilities and talent packages, comes with a heavy lore-package and a specific “you’re choosing to play THIS GUY”. We wanted to change that. We wanted to make the character creation stretch further into build choices and loadout configurations. We wanted you to be able to pick and choose and define your own main character using any and all combinations of gameplay and cosmetic choices available. The whole “forge your own narrative” taken to a very personal level.
Now, we also wanted to just widen the available builds and play styles. So for those of you who aren’t really that heavy into the lore or characterization, there is a heavy focus on just adding more game to explore.
So we made big, complex talent trees with lots of build freedom. We’ve expanded each class and raised the perspective a bit. The Sharpshooter is now just one of the builds available within the Veteran tree. This shift in class definition helps us give you guys some more freedom in picking your build while keeping the design space nice and open for us. We’ve internally talked about the different trees rather as “domains” than “classes”, striving for that broader range of sources. So, a character from the Veteran domain can be anything from a sharpshooter to a squad leader to more commando/spec ops type character and anything in between. It also allows us a nice freedom to add or change stuff in the future as there’s plenty of stuff that fit within these broader categories.
Within the talent trees you can keep things “by the book” and go for some more conservative builds, like recreating the current Preacher class within the Zealot space; or you can be a bit more unorthodox and forge your own character with a mix of picks as you navigate across the talent tree. Want to make a team supporting fanatic that bolsters the team with invigorating prayers while dipping into the mobility and knife-tossing mayhem that the deathcult side of our Zealot tree provides? Go right ahead. It’s your character, it’s your story, it’s your choice.
So that’s the main idea. The tricky thing with ideas is that you also have to realize them and somehow build all of this. We approached this with a couple of different approaches. On the practical side of things we started out with just slapping together a bunch of build-packages for each Class. Quickly staple a bunch of buffs and bonuses together with combinations of new and old Blitz and Combat abilities. Some rapid prototyping, some reanimation of old and forgotten feature-tests, some scavenging throughout the code base later we had a solid library of around 30 builds up and running on internal tests.
There’s also a fairly high-brow academic approach to this whole design-space, mainly consisting of designers trying their best to cosplay some kind of intellectual ludologist while defining gestalts, inter-play cooperation and the whole actions-into-moves mapping. In short, doing some paper design where we guess (real accurately) which power fantasies and gameplay roles we can cover, and how they’ll rotate to allow everyone their moment in the sun while keeping some variation in the gameplay. There have been fairly large parts of this theoretical map that we didn’t cover with the original classes. Mainly the area of team support, which brings a much needed cooperation loop into the moment-to-moment gameplay. There’s also parts of our roster that just lacked coverage for certain playstyles (shooty Ogryn anyone?).
Equipped with this set of builds and a theoretical map of what we’d need to cover we set about playtesting. It’s only after we’ve tried things in-game that we actually started building the trees themselves. This might seem counterintuitive, but we really didn’t want to end up in the “the tree demands there to be X amount of buffs/choices” but rather allow what made sense for the game to direct the format of the trees. The old feat layout, for instance, mandates that we construct six rows of three interchangeable options for everything, which can be restrictive and make cool ideas fall short. With a new ruleset that allows for much more freedom we can instead change the trees to fit the cool stuff we want to add.
Now, here’s where things become tricky from a balancing perspective. We broke down our premade builds into their components and spread them out across the emerging tree-structures. We wanted there to be clear and easily identifiable options here, portrayed by a branching end of the trees. So new players or less tinkering-prone ones can just click their way down and have a nice build to play. However, we also wanted there to be a tinkering space where less obvious combinations of choices create their own build packages. The principle of “the udder and the teats” was born. It’s a very cow-based metaphor and perhaps not the most sensible one but it worked. Higher up in the talent trees, within the “udder”, players are free to tinker and pick their path, narrow or broad. Lower down in the tree we branch out in the key-stone “teats”, which provide a more single-path deep-dive into particular buff sets. We also wanted each tree to be free from restrictive layout rules and provide their own, individual tinkering spaces. So some trees have larger udders while some have longer teats. If we wanted to make another tree with like five teats that would be ok too. These are some grimdark cows we’re modeling after so creative freedom is intact.
The different nodes available within each talent tree are of the following different types:
Blitz ability: The grenade slot or other type of extra attack.
Combat ability: The ult, bound by cooldown and high impact on game.
Keystone: More iconic talents, varies between the trees but drive playstyle.
Talent: Interactive buffs that tie into core gameplay loops
Aura: Various team buffs spread as Coherency bonus.
Stat node: Simple flat bonus to a core stat (toughness/crit chance/health)
Currently we settled in on a three blitz, three combat ability and three keystone configuration per talent tree, with a varied assortment of talents and stat nodes to provide the core of the tinkering space. The inclusion of stat nodes also allows us to bring a previously hardcoded baseline into player control. Where starting values for health, crit chance, toughness etc is just that, a starting point that is subsequently boosted through picking stat nodes within each talent tree. As for the size of trees and unlocking of points, we’re trying to keep it simple. You’ll earn one talent point per level and players are free to re-spec at any time, landing us on a total budget of 30 points to spend on each talent tree. One core principle we’ve tried to follow is you should be able to reach an end-node around the 20-point mark and then have some change to tinker with.
This whole endeavor does have quite a heavy impact on the game balance and thus warranted a wider take to make everything play nice together. We’ve shifted baseline difficulty scales, re-tuned healthpools for enemies, tuned spawning limits and rebalanced core parts of our damage system as part of our test-driven approach. What’s the point of having suppression bonuses in a talent tree if everything is already immediately suppressed, or worse: dead. Same goes for builds with a heavier emphasis on backstabs and flanking shots, which warranted an overhaul on how we stack our damage multipliers. This work has also included some deep dives into the weapon and blessing space, since we view a full build loadout as the sum total of your weapons, curios and talent choices. Brutal momentum is one example of a blessing that has changed to fit snugly into the whole system; it now discounts any targets killed with a clean weakspot hit - allowing you to loop as many heads off as you manage to line up with the right build to back it up.
With the new talent trees come a range of new features. On the blitz side, to name a few, we’ve got krak grenades, flame grenades, homing magic missiles and pretty rocks the Ogryn will find throughout his adventures that just happen to be very useful if hurled at nasty traitors. On the combat ability side you will find taunting, stealth mechanics, warp shields, stances and shouts to tailor your operatives build from a team support pillar to a murderous whirlwind of dps and anything in between.
We’ll return with more in depth looks at the different talent trees and their configuration in the near future. We have been continuously testing and tweaking as we have moved closer to release, both internally and together with playtesters from the community. The amount of builds that have emerged and minute finetuning of all the components that enable them have been a pleasure to explore and an interesting challenge to balance. One of the key reasons we made this change is to allow fast iterations and change, we hope to continue evolving the classes and the game together with you.
The Darktide Team
Hotfix 1.1.22
Devoted Rejects,
Here are the notes for Hotfix 1.1.22 which just went live on Steam, and will be out shortly on the Microsoft Store.
+X Stamina perks now give incrementally higher bonuses (+1 / +1.25 / +1.5 / +2).
Refining "+% Curio Chance as mission reward" perk should no longer display an error.
We will release a new patch for Darktide in October which will overhaul its class and feat systems, introducing talent trees.
Each class will have 1 talent tree featuring 3 main paths. Each path will feature many nodes and several additional abilities, allowing players to tinker with their playstyle and create different builds for their characters.
If you want to know more about Patch #13 - Class Overhaul, make sure to read up on our interview with PC Gamer here featuring our Game Director Anders and our Executive Producer Juan.
Join us on our social channels and Discord to stay up to date with Patch #13 - Class Overhaul. Our plan is to roll out more information on the latter through a dev blog during September.
Hotfix 1.1.21
Rejects!
Here are the notes for Hotfix 1.1.21 that just went live on Steam and will be out shortly on the Microsoft Store.
Fixed an issue where the server could crash when running a mission with the high/low resistance ventilation purge conditions.
Fixed a crash that could happen when trying to load into a mission that has already completed.
Removed outdated voicelines pertaining to Auric Level Operatives.
Fixed missing blessing description for Roaring Advance.
