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.
Patch #12: Into the Maelstrom
Rejects,
Here are the Patch notes for Patch #12 - Into the Maelstrom. As part of this patch there will be a maintenance period in which you will be unable to log in into the game. We expect this to last around 3 hours, commencing from 07:00 UTC.
Updated Features
Mission Board
With this patch, the Mission Board will now primarily utilise its Dynamic System. This means that the conditions chosen to be available on the mission board will cycle much more frequently through all released conditions available.
We want new players to have a smoother experience in the early game, while still adding challenges for advanced players with harder conditions. As an example, you will see much less frequent occurrences of Low Intensity conditions on Damnation, while lower difficulties like Uprising will have less frequent occurrences of High Intensity conditions.
Maelstrom Missions Maelstrom missions are now available on the mission board! These are missions with a set of new Conditions, which is a mixture of new modifiers and existing ones in different variations. They will be accessible through a unique slot on the mission board, which is available at all times so that they are easy to find and try out. We will be experimenting with different variations going forward.
These Maelstrom missions should be approached with caution as some of them can be quite challenging! As a reward for completing these challenges, both XP and Ordo Dockets will have a higher payout than usual.
Auric Operations
We are introducing an additional mission board for players that will consist of a set of high difficulty missions that will always have a condition applied to them. You must be level 30 to play these missions.
With the changes we made to the dynamic system, Auric-level operations will always have available conditions which include the high intensity modifiers (this means some of your favourite high intensity missions will appear more often!), except for the Maelstrom missions. Elite Resistance is also being re-worked based on prior feedback and will not yet be available.
Progression
The Experience Points requirements for levelling up characters have been adjusted. Overall, the XP needed to level up between levels 2 - 20 have been reduced by an average of 20%.
Due to this change, some of your characters may enter a higher level than before now that they meet the XP requirements. Please note that characters will not decrease in a level they have acquired.
Standard Operations Total available missions on the standard operations board have increased! We have rebalanced the introduction of difficulties and spread of conditions over our mission difficulties as follows:
For both Sedition and Uprising difficulties, the amount of missions available with conditions has been decreased.
Sedition difficulty missions will no longer have conditions.
Uprising will now only have one available mission with a condition active.
In Heresy and Damnation the amount of missions available with conditions has been decreased.
Level requirement to access Heresy difficulty has been increased to 9 (from 6 previously).
Level requirement to access Damnation difficulty has been increased to 15 (from 12 previously).
Dev Note:This is due to the introduction of the Auric-level operations available with these difficulties and conditions.
The duration timer for how long a mission is available for has been changed for Standard Operations to coincide with other changes made to the Mission Board. The intent is for you to see a faster rotation of conditions and maps available to select from.
For missions without conditions this has been adjusted to the following values:
Sedition: 10 minutes (from a value between 10 and 20 previously)
Uprising: 10 minutes (from a value between 10 and 20 previously)
Malice: 15 minutes (from a value between 10 and 20 previously)
Heresy: 15 minutes (from a value between 10 and 20 previously)
Damnation: 20 minutes (from a value between 10 and 20 previously)
And for missions with conditions, the following adjustments to the duration have been made:
Sedition: 10 minutes (from a value between 30 and 45 previously)
Uprising: 10 minutes (from a value between 30 and 45 previously)
Malice: 15-20 minutes (from a value between 30 and 50 previously)
Heresy: 15-20 minutes (from a value between 30 and 45 previously)
Damnation: 25-30 minutes (from a value between 30 and 50 previously)
Quickplay Joining games through quickplay will now award you bonuses to the Experience, Ordo Dockets, Plasteel, and Diamantine that you acquire.
Quickplay will match you to games from the mission board you are currently viewing, whether it's the standard operations or the auric-level operations.
New Conditions New conditions are being introduced in this patch.
High and Low intensity variants of the Ventilation Purge special condition will enter rotation on both mission boards.
Power Supply Interruption with High Intensity will only appear on the Auric-Level operations.
Advanced Mission Board Options The mission board now has an advanced options menu:
Private games have been relocated to this menu
You can select the server region used for matchmaking purposes in this menu.
Dev Note: The latency from your location to the servers is also displayed giving you information when making a choice. By default, Darktide has always selected the server region that has the lowest latency.
Shrine of the Omnissiah
Refine Item The Refine Item action has been updated. When choosing this action at the Shrine, you can now select from a list of all available perks for the weapon or curio you are refining. There is a direct cost to pay once for each refine action.
As with the other actions at the Shrine, the amount of required resources will scale depending on the base item rating of the weapon, and will scale depending on the tier of perk being selected to refine into.
For Refining an Item, the following amounts are at full price (for at item base rating 380)
Tier 1
50 Plasteel
500 Ordo Dockets
Tier 2
75 Plasteel
1000 Ordo Dockets
Tier 3
100 Plasteel
40 diamantine
2000 Ordo Dockets
Tier 4
200 Plasteel
100 Diamantine
4000 Ordo Dockets
Weapon Modifications
You can now modify two different aspects of your weapon (be it perks and/or blessings) locking out the other options, that being said, you’ll be able to change the two aspects you have selected as many times as you want. This means that you can choose to modify a perk and a blessing, or two perks, or two blessings. This increases the potential permutations of the item that you want to modify. The perks or blessings that you chose to modify will be indicated now in the item card.
Modified slots are represented with an icon. After two slots are modified on an item, the remaining slots of Perks or Blessings are represented with a lock icon.
We have also extended modifying perks to the Curios (as you cannot change its Blessing). You now have the ability to modify two out of three of the perk slots on the curio for further customisation.
Cost Scaling In addition to the above, we have made changes to the cost of actions at the Shrine of the Omnissiah for both Curios and Weapons.
The change modifies how the cost scaling is applied at the beginning of scale (the minimum cost, at lowest item rating).
This change is to reduce the minimum amount of scaling from 35% to 20%. This will mean it will be cheaper for newer characters who are levelling to use the Shrine.
Economy
All character bound currencies will now migrate into an account bound wallet where access is shared across all characters on that account.
Migration Information Upon logging into Darktide after this update is live you will automatically go through a migration process where the character wallets of Ordo Dockets, Ordo Ingots, Plasteel, and Diamantine will merge into one unified account wallet. These currencies will no longer have any character based wallets.
An explanation of this process will be presented at the Main Menu / Character Selection screen, as well as a “Receipt” detailing the balance of the wallets for your characters and the total merged result for the account.
Additionally, the Account Wallet will be displayed on this menu, as all the currencies & resources are now shared between your characters.
Fixes and Tweaks
Adjusted calculations for continuous fire based blessings to be a bit more generous when rounding. More noticeable on Ripperguns, and weapons with smaller clip sizes.
Reduced black overlay when players start regen toughness after losing toughness, added 2 second cooldown
Fixed bug where Mutant decided to do squats instead of chasing its intended target.
Added animation speed scaling for Mutants so that the animations match the speed.
Fixed a bug where the Beast of Nurgle could get stuck in a vomit state.
Lowered Reapers push force when hitting players from 6 to 5 for humans, and from 6 to 2 for Ogryns.
Tweaked down Ragers normal attack duration to make them more responsive
Added small healing over time when Beast of Nurgle has consumed a player
Added the option to rebind “I” used to open the Operative menu in the Mourningstar.
Fixed a crash that could occur on Intel Arc GPUs.
Dev Blog: Into the Maelstrom
Devoted Rejects,
In this dev blog we are going to dive into three topics and upcoming changes that we will be making to them. The three topics are the Mission Board, Crafting, and Currencies/Resources within Darktide.
All the changes that we will be discussing in this dev blog have been in development, and are being prepared to launch in Patch #12 (1.1.20). These changes mark the next step in our support to the game, we will keep on monitoring feedback and evaluate future changes.
For clarity, these changes are not the only changes currently in development and being worked on by the team. We’re also still hard at work on Darktide for Xbox!
Mission Board
We’re making some key changes to how the mission board generates its missions, while also expanding upon the available content. We are going to cover the details further into the dev blog, but for those of you who want a high level summary here are the changes that will be made:
Maelstrom Missions
We will be introducing Maelstrom missions, which are a set of new Conditions with a mixture of new modifiers and existing ones in many different variations. Most of them will be explained through a string of modifiers. For example: waves of Specialists, hunting grounds, waves of mutants and players have 20% reduced ability cooldown.
These Maelstrom missions should be approached with caution as some of them can be quite challenging! As a reward for completing these challenges, both XP and Ordo Dockets will have a higher payout than usual. They will be accessible through a unique slot on the mission board, which is available at all times so that they are easy to find and try out.
Auric-level Operations
We are introducing an additional mission board for players that will consist of a set of high difficulty missions that will always have a condition applied to them. You must be level 30 to play these missions (sidenote: the numbers of missions available for Auric-level operations in the above screenshot could be subject to change). This board will also sport Maelstrom missions, a few of them will have unique conditions variations that are inherent to the Auric-level board.
With the changes we made to the dynamic system we have made the Auric-level operations favour High Intensity conditions, there will be no Low Intensity conditions active in these missions.
Quickplay Bonuses
We are adding bonuses through use of Quickplay as we want to ensure that you are rewarded, should you choose to lend a helping hand by filling an empty spot in a strike team.
Experience, Ordo Dockets, Diamantine, and Plasteel will be bonuses upon receiving these rewards when a mission concludes (sidenote: quickplay bonuses numbers displayed in the screenshot could be subject to change by the time we deploy this patch).
Matchmaking & Server Selection
For further flexibility with the matchmaking system we have added the ability to set the servers used to matchmake with. Darktide has always used the best latency servers you can connect to for matchmaking, however we realise that some players in the world may need to connect to different servers in order to find a larger pool of players. In addition, we regularly review and update matchmaking rules to provide an improved matchmaking experience.
Changing the servers can have an effect on the gameplay experience through the added latency, and we’ll present the latency values in the server selection so that you can be aware of them.
Changes to the dynamic system of the Mission Board
The mission board on the Mourningstar shows the emergent threats throughout Tertium Hive. Functionally these threats are uncovered by the board through use of two systems, a dynamic system and an event driven system. The dynamic system generates content based upon a set of rules, meanwhile the event system acts as an overriding system that will then substitute its ruleset over the dynamic one.
We have made several changes and added functionality to the dynamic system to give much more refined controls over the content generation. The dynamic system refreshes far more frequently (approximately every 10 minutes) and we can now set an individual weighting to each condition per difficulty level.
For you the players, this will mean a more varied amount of conditions available across the mission board. There is also now control for us to weigh certain conditions for certain difficulties differently. As an example, you will see much less frequent occurrences of Low Intensity conditions on Damnation, while lower difficulties like Uprising will have less frequent occurrences of High Intensity conditions. The intent is for new players to have a smoother experience at the start while also providing a challenge to advanced players with harder conditions.
Our aim in these changes is to refine the emergence aspect of the mission board with further variety and the ability to adjust the board as needed.
Crafting
Let’s now talk about crafting, and some of the upcoming changes you can expect. Item Refinement, or previously known as Perk re-rolling is the main focus of our changes.
Ability to select the exact Perk when refining an item
You can now select the exact perk at any tier that you wish for an item (weapon or curio). There is one direct cost to be made for each refine action. This cost will remain flat throughout refining and will be reduced for lower level characters
As with the other actions at the Shrine, the amount of required resources will scale both depending on the base item rating of the weapon and on the tier of perk being selected to refine into.
Two Modifications for items
You can now modify two different aspects of your weapon (be it perks and/or blessings) locking out the other options, that being said, you’ll be able to change the two aspects you have selected as many times as you want. This means that you can choose to modify a perk and a blessing, or two perks, or two blessings. This increases the potential permutations of the item that you want to modify. The perks or blessings that you have chosen to modify will be indicated now in the item card.
Change to Curios
We have extended the ability to make two modifications to Curios, specifically you will be able to modify two Perks.
We are aware that the changes mentioned above do not give unrestricted freedom to all aspects of an item. To do so would have a big impact on item acquisition in Darktide, and we want to explore different paths further down the line.
Currencies & Wallets
And for the final chapter in this dev blog, we’d like to discuss the changes we will be making to the currencies & resources in Darktide. In short, all character bound currencies are moving towards an account bound wallet where access is shared across all characters.
Migration of currencies
After careful consideration and review of how these systems are working and what value that you the players receive out of them, we decided to opt for moving everything to a single unified account wallet. Now you can choose any character you have created and with the currencies you get as rewards, you can now choose how to spend those freely.
With the next patch, after you login to Darktide you will go through an automatic migration process where the character wallets of Ordo Dockets, Ordo Ingots, Plasteel, and Diamantine will merge into one unified account wallet. These currencies will no longer have any character based wallet anymore.
An explanation of this process will be presented at the Main Menu / Character Selection screen, as well as a “Receipt” detailing the balance of the wallets for your characters and the total merged result for the account.
Additionally, the Account Wallet will now be displayed on this menu and show all the aforementioned currencies & resources as they are now shared.
The next Patch #12 - Into the Maelstrom (1.1.20)
All of the above changes are being prepared for our next patch to Darktide, which will release around mid-August. As part of this patch there will be a maintenance period in which you will be unable to log in into the game, we expect it to last 3 hours.
We will continue to iterate on these features and more, in part through community driven discussions and topics that are presented to us by sharing your thoughts and comments on both our Official Discord or Forums.
Thank you for reading, and watch each other's backs down there on Tertium.
Community Comm-Link 27th July 2023
Rejects,
This is Catfish, Darktide Community Manager, here with another comm-link update.
The comms team is back from its break and so are comm-links! Due to the summer hiatus, this edition will be shorter than usual. We will also have a slower pace of Comm-links for the foreseeable future, to make way for more varied types of comms, such as dev blogs.
Here is what you can expect for the coming weeks on Darktide:
On August 3rd, we will publish a Dev Blog focusing on upcoming changes in Patch #12 (1.1.20), giving you an in-depth look at our plans for account based currencies, perk refinements, adjustments to crafting locks and options on the mission board.
In the first half of August we will be releasing Patch #12 alongside its patchnotes.
