Warhammer 40k: Darktide! Vermintide in spaaaace!

Whenever the game lets you, almost immediately.

Maclintok wrote:

When’s a good time to bump up to difficulty level 2?

Yep, as soon as possible. For level 3, though, you probably need to be level 15, decently geared, and able to protect yourself. Level 4 is big gear / damage check.

Yea I won a level 3 mission and it felt easy. I am 11 rank. Two of the people were in the high 20 ranks. They carried it.

Started difficulty 2 at Level 7 today. I've gotten into the groove of it after a couple rough runs. Playing a Zealot Preacher and still fairly squishy if the mobs start swarming. Part of the adjustment was switching from sword to axe. Headshots with the combat axe feel amazing. Initially lukewarm about the combat shotgun but it's got surprising range and punch even when hip fired.

Level 10 now with only a blue charm equipped. Was thinking maybe a bump up to Malice at Level 12 but will have to see how the gearing goes.

I can't stop playing this.

ruhk wrote:

really enjoying what I’ve played of it so far tonight but I cannot express how frustrating it can be playing as a sharpshooter with ogryn on the team.

LOL'ed at this. Played with friends last night (two Ogryns, veteran and a zealot). Two maps in and the veteran states it is a real pain in the arse shooting around two Ogryns.

No complaints about clearing hordes and pulling up downed teammates though

Maps are amazing! Soundtrack too. Vermintide in space is an apt summary and that is a good thing.

There's been some very good guides put out on Youtube already. Naturally I'm more focused on the Zealot ones but I'll share some gems I've come across over the weekend.

Unfortunately the official Discord seems a bit on the toxic side so not able to glean that much from that forum just yet.

On the optimization/performance front: I have a RTX 3060 and recently switched from DLSS to AMD FSR 2.0. It requires a couple mission runs to know for sure but I believe I'm getting noticeably better frames with FSR 2.0.

Maclintok wrote:

On the optimization/performance front: I have a RTX 3060 and recently switched from DLSS to AMD FSR 2.0. It requires a couple mission runs to know for sure but I believe I'm getting noticeably better frames with FSR 2.0.

So AMD FSR is not just for AMD cards? I have a 3070 at best I am getting 40 fps on High settings.

Heretk wrote:
Maclintok wrote:

On the optimization/performance front: I have a RTX 3060 and recently switched from DLSS to AMD FSR 2.0. It requires a couple mission runs to know for sure but I believe I'm getting noticeably better frames with FSR 2.0.

So AMD FSR is not just for AMD cards? I have a 3070 at best I am getting 40 fps on High settings.

Correct: AMD FSR works for both AMD and Nvidia GPUs. This is something I just found out as well!

(totally booting up Cyberpunk 2077 to experiment with FSR now)

Not a big fan of the hourly rotating stock at the soft currency store. Of course, my fault for impulse buying new green weapons this morning. When I returned after lunch I found blue versions of both again and could only afford one. D'oh!

I prefer the gacha boxes of Vermintide 2 as it sort of achieves the same thing - the more you play, the more gear you get - but it's more player-friendly than Darktide.

ERROR - double post.

Yeah I am not clear on the currency or penance systems yet. Just been banging out maps and trying to find out which class I want to get to 30 first. Looking at you Ogryn!

But it feels like gear progression will be more grindy than Vermintide was.

And why on earth would an AMD setting improve frame rates for an Nvidia card? Hopeful and concerned at the same time.

Penances are just achievements, and some are pretty freaking hard. They are also how you get a lot of your cosmetics at the moment. Currency buys weapons - coins for the regular store, rune things for the contract store.

My biggest issue with the gear right now is that the contract store only updates once a week, so while you're leveling everything there is instantly behind and not very useful.

If you want to try level 3 at a low level, pick one that has the "Fewer Hordes" modifier. Conversely, you can pick a level 2 "Endless Hordes" for waaay more difficulty. It's good training for level 3-5 though.

Questionable weapons #1

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/J7KbHpn.png):

Played a mission with FSR enabled and switched it back to DLSS when I was done.

created a steam group chat for anyone who wants to ping the group to see who else wants to play. If I didn't invite you already, use this link:

https://s.team/chat/Wxc9O8s9

Dakhath wrote:

created a steam group chat for anyone who wants to ping the group to see who else wants to play. If I didn't invite you already, use this link:

https://s.team/chat/Wxc9O8s9

Steam wrote:

The invite link you followed is no longer valid.

The latest patch has improved the game's performance considerably for me. I'm currently on an old Ryzen 1600 and 1060 6GB. The CPU is below their listed minimum specs.

My new computer parts are scheduled to arrive tomorrow, just in time to setup before release! (5700X CPU and 6700XT GPU)

I will be playing a lot of this in the evenings, will look for people on Discord!

Dakhath wrote:

https://s.team/chat/Nb2qjxSf

fixed?

That worked for me just now.

How are the randos in this version? I didn't play a lot of VT without a premade due to poor interactions. But at least there I knew my way around...I haven't done anything past the tutorial, but I've been wary of wading in.

discoursian wrote:

How are the randos in this version? I didn't play a lot of VT without a premade due to poor interactions. But at least there I knew my way around...I haven't done anything past the tutorial, but I've been wary of wading in.

I'm curious, what were the poor interactions?

I've had no problems with randos so far. I haven't really had problems with most of the Vermintide population, and I like to think that there's a Normal curve describing the level of asshattery I've encountered in my time in VT2. A select few turned into great friends, others I wish had never been born. Most are somewhere in the middle. Perhaps we'll get the same or better for Darktide.

Coming from VT2, I've noticed a few things Fatshark has done to shift the focus away from individual glory and more onto being good teammates:

  • No Friendly Fire - VT2 had so much angst from this one feature alone, and yet it was toned down quite a bit.
  • No scoreboards (yet) - But they promised they're coming in some form. So currently there's no point in competing to get the most dmg/kills and sacrificing the greater good in order to get there. Hopefully what they put in doesn't re-attract that type of player behavior.
  • Coherency mechanics - you regen toughness (aka temp health) when near your teammates! Players who want to run way far ahead are throwing this away.

I'm sure there are other more subtle things I'm not picking up on. I do think that the devs are keen to reduce toxic behaviors in whatever ways they can via the design.

I’ve mostly played with randos and haven’t had any notable issues beyond people occasionally running off on their own and getting overrun.

The biggest issue I've seen is that randos tend to like melee combat to the exclusion of everything else. Might be Vermintide veterans transitioning? This means that on Heresy and above everyone gets hammered by the gunner squads and you die quickly - pretty much every map has an early ranged trap that will slaughter your team if you try to melee it. You can mitigate this by playing ranged.

On the flip side, I've had quite a number of competent groups who have battled through to victory on Heresy. There's been very little negative play, because there's no upside to griefing other than looking stupid - Fatshark did really well in this part of the design. People do get frustrated at times, but that's understandable at the higher difficulty levels because the game is freaking hard. And even failing is beneficial, especially after level 30, because you usually get some materials anyway (which are pretty much all you care about).

Last night, was the first time out of around6 hours or so that I encountered a bad group.
One found a medical power cell, and CARRIED IT AROUND THE ENTIRE ROUND, ALSO INTO THE END ELEVATOR...
The other was a psyker, who died 50 times or so, mostly while alone, so I assume it was from overheating. And from falling over edges and what have we.

Other than that, most groups have been fun to play with !

I do have to say, I had to smile a bit about the powercell carrier...it was silly, but also a little bit amusing.

Never played much VT2, but this has me intrigued. Enable me!

FlamingPeasant wrote:

Never played much VT2, but this has me intrigued. Enable me!

Its a day 1 game pass game so you can try it with almost no commitment.

It was good to play a mission with a few GWJers yesterday. Hoping for more team ups in the future!

Malice difficulty had been giving me some trouble. I've only attempted this difficulty with pugs and typically things would go pretty well until they certainly did not. Seems like a familiar scenario now: they either cascade a few Special spawns together along with a horde or someone wanders off and gets downed and there's too much horde in standing in between the rest of the team. The bodies then begin dropping like flies and that's all she wrote. But I finally completed a mission on Malice last night and this will probably be my default difficulty for a while (unless I'm desperately hunting grimoire and scriptures before the week's contracts reset).

As a zealot I've fallen out of love a bit with the Flamer. Perfect in those final stand instances but really awkward everywhere else. The boltgun feels incredibly chunky to fire but the iron sights are tricky to use and that ready-up time is something else. All-round gun for me is still the combat shotgun: I think someone had commented about the surprisingly good range even when hip firing and I'd have to agree. This is my go-to for burning down a charging hound or mutant.

It was great to pick up a thunder hammer over the weekend. I think this will be my favourite melee weapon once I get used to pre-swinging or getting the hang of loading up that sweeping heavy attack.

20+ hours in and I've been lucky to avoid unusually rude or toxic randos. The night is still young.

Game's in pre-launch maintenance now. Pre-order beta players have some free headgear headed their way.

FlamingPeasant wrote:

Never played much VT2, but this has me intrigued. Enable me!

As an Ogryn, you can throw an entire box of grenades at enemies.

Budo wrote:
FlamingPeasant wrote:

Never played much VT2, but this has me intrigued. Enable me!

As an Ogryn, you can throw an entire box of grenades at enemies.

But they don't explode.

Unless you take the feat that makes them explode!