Vermintide 1 + 2

An Imgur Album of all 20 Bottles in Blightreaper.

On my first attempt I found 18 bottles. It looks like I missed one in the mines and the second bottle during the finale.

Two minutes of gameplay, just horsing around. End of the video is the best shot I've made in this game, I think.

The flick is real! Glad you also caught me taking an unblocked troll cleave to the back

BushPilot wrote:

The flick is real! Glad you also caught me taking an unblocked troll cleave to the back ;)

You probably couldn’t hear it coming. You should take the muffs off next time.

Hah nice shot.

I've heard that they nerfed the wigglemancer by reducing the number of targets the ult can cleave through. I've tried that build several times but I never stuck with it because it's boring to play. Today I tested it out on the mod realm and I can't see any difference. The ult still chains through 7 slaverats, but stops as soon as it hits something armoured.

So I'm not sure if that was just a rumour or a hidden change because it's not mentioned in the patch notes.

Fatshark_Hedge Community Manager

We’re prototyping both a “mash reds together to get another red not in the mash” system and a “red dust” upgrade system.

Bout damn time.

I've been taking a break from Bardin to go back and get the 100-mission hats for Mercenary and Foot Knight.

I'm having a really hard time getting used to the 2h hammer again, it just feels too sluggish and unresponsive. When I used it on Ironbreaker it wasn't as big an issue because I could afford to trade hits and if things went south I could ult and let my teammates mop up. With mercenary that isn't possible. Even if you stack the two damage reduction talents for -60% taking hits interrupts your swings and it's easy to be swamped by rats. The hammer has almost zero mobility and if the party all takes off kiting in 3 different directions I can't follow them. Another issue it has is a very slow push attack, it doesn't hit many targets and it leaves you open to counterattacks before you can get your block up again.

The 2h sword on the other hand is amazing. I miss the old push-slash attack because it carved up hordes really good, but the new overhand has it's uses. I've been using both power talents on Merc for a total of +30% power, combined with 20% vs chaos and skaven infantry this lets me hit all sorts of juicy breakpoints. The new sword also cleaves through armoured enemies which lets you hit two stormvermin at once, or cut into a horde with a CW/Mauler in it without your swing being interrupted. The heavy slashes also consistently stun berserkers and kill them in 2 hits, which is fantastic.

New vermintide beta patch out now, 4gb download.

It's way too big to post here because they tweaked every weapon and talent in the game. But the major balance fixes are:

-The dodge window (how long an enemy will consider you to be dodging after you finished dodging) has been greatly increase to 3 seconds. Basically, if you dodged during an enemy attack, it will no longer track you, rather than having a timed gameplay component within the attack itself.
-An enemy will wait until their entire attack animation is completed before starting to rotate.
-Stormvermin with shields should now stay "open" for longer/more hits once their guard is broken.
-Stormvermin with shields should no longer block attacks from invisible enemies.

The big dodge window is a huge change, not just for high ping users. They also fixed (finally) the instant 180 attacks for bosses and other stuff. Or at least they did on paper, I'm still downloading the beta.

Here's my patch thoughts so far, I've only tested out Kruber and Bardin.

- They nerfed wigglemancer by applying on-hit effects to the second tick and beyond. So it's more like a lasermancer now because you have to hold the beam on the same target.
- 1h sword feels really good now. You have lots of options, horde clearing swipes and anti armour strikes. The push attack is stronger now for pushing into hordes. You can also freely combo light and heavy strikes, such as light 1 heavy 2 light 3. Or do an anti armour combo of heavy 1, heavy 2, light 3. It's almost a bit OP on kruber now, but Sienna will really benefit from this because her anti armour is lacking.
- 1h axe was buffed in general and staggers a LOT now, maybe too much. Same with 1h mace/hammer
- They nerfed the push attack for 2h axe, I have no idea why because it's already one of the worst push attacks in the game?
- 2h hammer was buffed to cleave more and hit harder. Not sure why as it seemed competitive already.
- The new pick is really good, it's stronger and faster overall and the push attack now gives you an intermediate anti armour hit that sits between light and heavy attacks in terms of damage and speed.
- Crossbow, empire longbow light charged shots, and handgun all have nerfed cleave. They nerfed longbow specifically because light charged shots actually cleaved more than heavy charged in some cases. I REALLY dislike the handgun nerf because you can no longer shoot through marauders and hit specials behind them etc.
- Dual axes were nerfed surprising no one. But they buffed the stagger of light hits just like 1h axe and they are still hilariously strong because you chain stagger everything to death.
- They introduced a new "slam" mechanic to shields and other weapons. What it basically means is these attacks have three effects, a single target strike, a wider AoE effect and a half circle stagger. This is a vast improvement over the old shield bash which only damaged one target even if it had infinite stagger.
IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/955220419578441522/1739EDEB4D15B127408077AC21BA13CCC97CDAA5/)

However I don't think they fully thought this through because the damage arc still has infinite cleave.
IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/955220419578440958/339CEE20E93321619038528D6055FDBE5988EC2B/)
- Shield and axe feels good now. Heavy 3 is now a "crowd control" sweep, but it's still an axe so that just means you'll hit 4 rats instead of just 2. The attack combo has also changed in that you can infinitely chain heavy 2 and 3 instead of having to start back at the heavy 1 shield bash.
- Maceshield had it's push attack nerfed, but they sort of made up for it by buffing the heavy 1 attack. Still feels strong.
- They nerfed the 2h sword push attack, which I don't agree with. It's not about as powerful as a heavy attack, but only hits one target and doesn't cleave armour. Kinda pointless now.
- Executioner was buffed to a ridiculous degree. Light attacks penetrates armour, heavy attacks have +20% crit etc. I thought it was pretty strong already.
- Halberd was nerfed and buffed at the same time. They cut the attack speed and nerfed the overhand attack to make the push stab chain less effective. At the same time they buffed the heavy slash and the stab attacks, especially stab headshots. It's now quicker and easier to kill SV by doing two heavy attacks instead of the push combo. The push attack is still competitive but I found a new combo that works really well. Heavy 1, light 2, heavy 2, this does a slash followed by two stabs in a row and if you can hit targets in the head it does HUGE damage, easily 50-80 on crits.
- Shield and sword feels more stabby/killy now. However anti armour damage is still iffy because you are reduced to repeatedly stabbing things in the face. To do either the heavy stab or the push stab you have to stop blocking so it's very tricky to get right.
- The mercenary ult had it's cooldown cut in half, which I like a lot. I now think the pickup downed teammates talent is the best because of how temp health decays faster.
- Nature Bond and share healing talents seem to be the meta now. Health on cleave/kill/crit talents are pretty much useless or in the case of health on shove so stupidly overpowered it won't last.
- Ranger got a new perk: Using any Healing Supplies, Potions or Bombs has a 10% chance to not consume the item. Stacks with similar effects. He also benefits greatly from the fact that shielded enemies can no longer block attacks when you are invisible.
- Ironbreaker had it's ult cooldown dropped from 3 to 2 minutes. Me likey.
- Scrounger was reduced to 1 ammo on crit instead of 2. I'm surprised they took this long.
- Heat Sink now refunds overcharge spent to make a critical attack instead of refunding a flat rate. I'm not sure how useful this is because I don't play Sienna much and IB doesn't have a high enough crit to make this useful.

Other than that I haven't tried the other classes much. From what I head from jsat and others though, some of the elf weapons are stupidly powerful. I mean just look at this:

Dual swords for Kerillian

Increased power on heavy attacks first targets.
Increased damage and stagger vs armor on heavy attack first target.
Increased critical chance for third light attack (+50%) and fourth light attack (+95%).
All attack can slide past armor.

Last thing I'll mention is the new WHC. Now 125 health, which make sense as he is partially armoured like handmaiden and mercenary, the other two classes with 125hp. He also has a +5% crit talent like mercenary and huntsman. Lastly they cut the cooldown on his ult from 180 to 90 seconds. I love it, this is one of my favourite classes even if I don't play it much.

The new rapier pistol is also great. They got rid of the delay between the pressing of the key and the shot. So it's much more responsive and you can even work the pistol into combos. Stab, Stab, hold down pistol key and fire a followup shot. It's all very smooth and responsive and works great with WHC cause you can headshot stuff just out of poking reach.

This bobblehead mod is hilarious.
IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/955220692501946786/C8F94CB86DF7169DBF19D5474DA06AFF02102796/)
AAAAAAAAAH KILL IT WITH FIRE!!
IMAGE(https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/955221146155118307/BFF765AE1A691FE2A6347C6370CA15A69D172981/)

Anyone else looking forward to the Ubersreik DLC? I haven't played VM1 so the maps will be all new to me.

Recently I've been working with this breakpoint calculator, it was recently updated for patch 1.3 but also added functionality for calculating damage boosting ults like Huntsman and Shade. I started with Kruber's weapons and here's the breakpoints I've figured out so far:

1. Handgun

Spoiler:

20% vs infantry or 10% infantry/10% skaven/10% chaos

This is best for Mercenary, Foot Knight and Ironbreaker. It allows you to kill any special in the game with one body shot, no need to aim for the head unless the target is very far away.

20% vs chaos, 10% vs armour, huntsman ult, 20% ult power talent

This is for huntsman, it lets you kill chaos warriors in one headshot! I recommend using 20% vs chaos instead of 20% vs armour because the former will allow you to kill chaos sorcerors of either type in one body shot without needing a vs infantry bonus. When you use this build you lose the ability to bodyshot globadiers but that's a minor price to pay.

2. Blunderbuss

Spoiler:

10% vs infantry, 10% vs armour, 10% vs Skaven,

This is best for Mercenary or Foot Knight. This sounds like an odd mix, but it allows you to meet a selection of breakpoints. 10% infantry cuts the number of pellets needed for assassins and sorcerors by one. The latter two bonuses combined let you kill gunners and SV with 2 fewer pellets. The same theory applies to the grudge raker too, but the breakpoints on that weapon are slightly different because you fire 9+9 pellets instead of 12.

20% vs armour, 10% vs chaos, huntsman ult

Blunderbuss was buffed in the last patch and this allows you to hit a 2-shot breakpoint against CWs while using the huntsman ult. Assuming all 24 pellets hit. You can also kill them in one crit headshot, but lining that up and ensuring all pellets hit is not easy. A secondary benefit of this build is that it reduces the number of pellets needed to kill a stormvermin to 4, unfortunately pellets don't penetrate SVs so you can't kill 3 in one shot, but it is still useful.

If you use the +20% power talent with blunderbuss it reduces the power you need to 2-shot CWs to just 10% instead of 30%. But this means giving up the -30% cooldown talent instead.

3. Repeater Handgun

Spoiler:

10% infantry/10% skaven/10% chaos

For mercenary and foot knight. This lets you kill marauders and gutter runners in 1 hit, and sackrats in 2 hits.

10% infantry/10% skaven/10% chaos, huntsman ult

With the addition of the huntsman ult you can now kill stormvermin and berserkers of both types in 2 hits, and globadiers/sorcerors in one hit.

20% armour, 10% chaos, huntsman ult, 20% ult power talent

In addition to everything mentioned above, this lets you kill stormvermin and gunners in one shot and a CW in 8 shots or less if most of them hit the head. You do give up the ult cooldown talent however.

4. Longbow

Spoiler:

20% skaven, 10% armour

The classic, this lets you kill SV and gunners with one heavy bodyshot, no ult required! It's important to use 20% skaven instead of 20% armoured because this way you can also 1-shot packmasters as well.

There are surprisingly few meaningful breakpoints for longbow. The only other one I could fine was 20% infantry and 20% chaos so that you can one-shot sorcerors with a heavy bodyshot. But that's no big deal because you can just do one heavy followed by a light to finish them off, or just spam 3 lights.

20% skaven, 10% armour, huntsman ult

Ulting allows you to kill gutter runners and marauders in 1 light shot, though in the latter case you should use charged shots instead to maximize cleave. With just +10% skaven or armour you can bodyshot SV and gunners with a short charged shot instead of a heavy charged shot (which the above build already meets).

Flipping the numbers around to 20% armour and 10% skaven allows you to kill CWs in two headshots during the ult. However doing it this way means losing the ability to 1-shot packmasters which I would consider more important. With 20% skaven two ult headshots will bring a CW down to just 2 health and a flick on the forehead from any of your teammates will finish them off easily. Plus you can still 2-shot a CW if either shot crits, it's not a big deal.

At minimum 4% vs skaven, huntsman ult, 20% ult power talent

I wouldn't recommend this build for experienced players because you can already 2-shot CWs using the previous build and doing it this way means losing out on the ult cooldown talent. However if you're just starting out as huntsman or are short of equipment this is the best build to use because using your ult allows you to kill anything in one heavy charged shot, except for CWs that require two headshots. No specific power bonuses are required to do this and you can also kill SV and every type of special in one short-charged shot except for packmasters and sack rats. (this is why you need that extra 4% vs skaven).

Doing Bardin's breakpoints now. These are simpler as IB has a few class specific weapons and Slayers can't use ranged weapons.

1. Grudge Raker

Spoiler:

10% vs infantry, 10% vs armour, 10% vs Skaven

For ironbreaker, this lets you hit the same per-pellet breakpoints as the blunderbuss even if you fire a different amount.

20% armour and 10% skaven, ranger ult

For the 10 seconds your ult is up this reduces the number of pellets required to kill SV and gunners to 5, and packmasters to 7. This also allows you to 5-shot CWs as ult attacks penetrate armour. The 4th shot will leave the CW with only about 15 health left and you can easily finish him off in melee or let your teammates handle it.

2. Handgun

Spoiler:

20% vs infantry or 10% infantry/10% skaven/10% chaos

For IB the breakpoints are the same as for kruber.

20% vs chaos, 10% vs armour, ranger ult

For ranger you have the choice of using the previous setup in which case you can one-shot anything during an ult except for CWs. Or you can stack 30% power against CWs which lets you kill them in 2 headshots, but you give up the ability to one-shot globadiers. At first glance I think I prefer the former as specials tend to be more common than CW and unlike huntsman you can't get that amazing 1-shot breakpoint against CWs.

3. Crossbow

Spoiler:

10% vs infantry, 10% vs chaos, 10% vs Skaven

This lets you kill two marauders in one shot and berserkers in two shots.

10% skaven, 10% chaos, 10% monster

This lets you kill packmasters in 2 shots and boosts your general boss damage.

Without the ranger ult or the BH guaranteed crit these are pretty much the only breakpoints crossbow has. I'd lean a bit more towards the packmaster breakpoint as those are far more dangerous than marauders.

10% skaven, 10% chaos, 10% monster, ranger ult

With the damage boost from the ult this lets you kill everything in one body shot except for maulers, CWs and packmasters. Maulers and packmasters will die to one crit body shot and CWs can only take 3 crit body shots or 2 crit headshots.

4. Drake Weapons

Spoiler:

Drake Pistol: 20% vs infantry, 10% skaven

This lets you use the blast attack to instantly melt 10 skavenslaves with each shot. I'd also recommend using Barrage to increase damage against anything else. There are other loadouts you can use like increasing boss or armour damage, but none of them are as useful as this horde clear IMO.

Drakegun: ????

Drakegun is a bit of a tossup because the power bonuses don't really matter. It kills infantry ludicrously fast and even does decent armour and boss damage too if you can paint them with the full burst. The problem is it pushes armoured enemies backwards outside of your effective range, so it's more useful for it's knockback than for it's armour damage. The burst attack will stagger everything up to and including CWs.

The first option would be to stack infantry damage as that would make it easier to deal with hordes. You can sweep the flame left and right and it takes less "ticks" of damage on each target to be lethal. The other option is to stack +skaven and +armour to boost your damage against SV. Either way I would recommend using Barrage to boost damage further. Also I think +crit is worthless on this weapon because critical hits don't do increased damage, although it's worth mentioning that drakeguns only hurt CW if they crit.

I'm back into vermintide, I think. How's the DLC up til this point? I played a few quick plays, no one picked up tomes or grimoires --- is that not the meta now?

Anything I still need to know?

It’s not usual to leave books, so that’s odd. The DLC before the most recent has been lackluster, in my opinion. Fun maps, just not a lot of them. This last DLC looks cool, but I haven’t had a chance to play yet.

Atomicvideohead wrote:

I'm back into vermintide, I think. How's the DLC up til this point? I played a few quick plays, no one picked up tomes or grimoires --- is that not the meta now?

It's still the meta but the DLC maps they just added are pretty new and people don't know all of the book locations yet. A lot of them are just straight up impossible to find without humping walls for hours or reading a guide.

On top of that people are rushing through the maps because the DLC allows each character to unlock a new weapon by playing each map once. So there is a rush to finish, particularly for people who don't actually own the DLC.

Tamren wrote:

On top of that people are rushing through the maps because the DLC allows each character to unlock a new weapon by playing each map once. So there is a rush to finish, particularly for people who don't actually own the DLC.

Surely you can't unlock the new weapons if you don't own the DLC?

I don't think so. It's just something I've noticed when I was playing the new maps. People tend to rush through the obvious direct route without even glancing at the side branches where all of the consumables/books are located. I think it's a combination of people not knowing the book locations and not playing the map very often since they can't host it themselves.

That being said I think the quickplay queue is settling down a bit. I did a full book run on Engines last night and at least one person knew where to go.

Anyone dippign into the PS4 version? I'm trying to figure weather to buy the DLC or just get the ps4 version which has the DLC built in.

It's so hard for me to imagine playing this game with a controller...

I would much rather play on PC given the choice, PS4 has no access to the steam workshop and some of those mods are must-haves. They just approved a third wave of mods for use on the official realm but I don't think they will integrate any of them into the base game.

And yeah, I have no idea how controller players manage. Unless the autoaim you get is really good you still can't do things like spin 180 degrees and shoot an assassin out of midair before he hits you in the face. But apparently it's possible, I've met one or two people using controller on PC.

I’ve played Vermintide 2 on both xbox and PC, if you’re used to playing fps’ with a controller the differences are negligible- also the menus for inventory, crafting, etc are paradoxically better on the console version. I still prefer the PC version, but only because matchmaking seems noticeably faster on PC than Xbox.

The PS4 release trailer is fun

Like the music.

Made an attempt at completing the last stand mode with Emmes a few nights ago, the best we did was getting to the last wave. Prior to this I've been to the last wave about 3 times with a different group.

Having a Sienna is a good idea. Battle Wizard with 100% block works well. I think Pyro could also work because the ult would make special waves much easier to clear. I've had mixed results with Unchained teammates and staffs other than beam. Beam works the best because you can snipe specials with pinpoint accuracy, stun specials with the beam and melt hordes with the blast. Conflag and Fireball have better horde clear but had trouble hitting distant specials, I don't have much experience with bolt but it feels slow and lacks the same instant hitting power that beam does.

Bardin also works well. I've made it to the last wave with Ranger Vet using potion drops to feed concs to the shade. Slayer works well vs horde and boss but the lack of special killing is a big downside, though that isn't insurmountable because some of the people with the legend portrait say they beat it with a slayer. I think Ironbreaker is the most useful of the three. One of my best runs was playing IB with a drakegun, but like taking slayer it offloads all of the special killing onto your teammates. The next time I try to beat last stand I'll probably use IB with pistols as that has the best balance killing power against horde/special/boss.

For Kerillian I haven't seen anyone use anything but Shade but I think all three could be viable. Hagbane waystalker for instance, handmaiden would also be great for hordes. My personal preference would be Shade with repeater crossbow and the ammo on backstab, that lets you kill specials at range with one burst and makes you nearly self sufficient with ammo.

For Kruber I've only seen people use mercenary and the pickup shout helps a lot. Kruber's handgun also helps a lot for blight stormers and gunners. Huntsman would trivialize certain attack waves like the stormvermin but is very squishy. Not sure how well foot knight would fare.

Similarly I think Saltz could perform well but I've only see someone use WHC once. No idea about the other two classes, BH has good DPS but would have the same problems as Huntsman. Zealot is good in general but doesn't bring anything special to the table other than hack and slash killing power. I know from experience that WHC with ult and BoP can trivialize most bosses but ammo sustain might be a problem.

How do you get the new DLC weapons? I own the DLC, played the Horn of Magnus map but yet to see any drops.

The DLC weapons are achievement based, there are three steps.

Step 1 is to simply complete all three DLC maps with that character. That unlocks the blacksmith version of that weapon and a basic skin. You can then craft them using scrap, I would recommend crafting them until you get an orange with 300 hero power. This shouldn't take long, and even if it doesn't most players have hundreds or thousands of scrap lying around.

Step 2 is to get 1000 kills with that weapon, this unlocks the "veteran" skin which you can apply to the item using the crafting menu.

Step 3 is to kill all of the helmgart bosses using the DLC weapon. I don't think you need to land the killing blow, just beat the mission with the weapon equipped. This unlocks the glow skin for that weapon, however the weapon itself won't be a red item unless you craft it to be that way using 5 red dust from scrapped red items.

The DLC weapons never appear in the loot pool, you can only craft them.

Thanks Tamren! This was great

There's a lot of new blood choking up the matchmaker. Not sure where they came from, but I think the double XP weekend had something to do with it.

Unfortunately a lot of them have no business playing on Legend. They might be level 30 but I'm fairly certain than most of them don't know how to block and other basic game concepts.

Whats the best way to hook up with the still active GWJers?