Editing Warhammer 40K: Darktide (section)

==Surviving Tertium Hive for rejects==
A general misconception is that being over-leveled for a difficulty will make you [[Grimaldus]] flattening a bunch of snotlings. While it is obvious for people who played Vermintide, players new to Fatshark's approach of co-op games might not get the hint. What will get you through the mission is not to dish out the most damage or slaughter the most heretics, it's in fact your ability to minimize the damage you take through the level and using your environment to the fullest. Here are a few tips to help you being the best heretic crusher there is on Atoma Prime. Source: "Trust me, I'm an enginseer".

*'''General tips:'''
**'''Stick together or die alone:''' Especially true since there is a whole mechanic of health (and passives) that encourage you lot to stick together, you'll even find out that some specials cannot do shit against you as a group (looking at you pox hound). You'll need stabby mates to hold the line and the shooty ones to clear the specials or other shooties.
**'''If you see them coming, they will die:''' Choose carefully where you receive an oncoming onslaught- stay away from holes in the ceiling or automatic doors. You might want to see what is coming at you and kill it before it sees you. Also helps if you have cover and a chokepoint.
**'''Look everywhere for supplies:''' Some of you may have noticed that 'nades, well supplied ranged weapons and medipacks can make the difference between getting away with the [[valkyrie]] or [[Fail|seeing yourself in some weird ass nurglite goo]]. You may break the "stick together or die alone" to this end, just remember to regroup when the [[poxwalkers]] come, a nasty special pops up or you encounter a large group of heretics. This goes double if you're hunting for scriptures or grimoires that spawn randomly around the level.
***'''Know when NOT to look for supplies''': On higher difficulties especially, staying in an area for too long is just invitation to getting swarmed. If you aren't hurting for ammo and health, it's better to just hoof it and get to where you need to be ASAP.
**'''Make sure the coast is clear:''' As you advance through the difficulties, basic shooting enemies become a greater and greater threat with them doing more damage and being more prevalent in the game's many shadowy corners - the only way to avoid them making you embarrassingly dead from being shot in the back after you decided to advance is to make ''sure'' they are all dead. And even then, they can spawn ambiently to suddenly fuck up your shit or be obscured by shadowy corners, so constant vigilance is your only warning system.
**'''Blocking is bonkers, being pushy gets your way, but dodging is important too:''' Blocking is a pretty reliable tool for avoiding melee damage as long as you have stamina, pushing can give you even more control over hordes by briefly staggering even more enemies than it would take your stamina to block their attacks or give you the space to slip by enemies surrounding you, but the truly best way to not have pointy or sharp objects in places you don't want them to be is to not be there. Disabling specials can be avoided with good timing by dodging right before their attacks land. Renegade guards'/cultists' guns will briefly flash before they fire, so you can even dodge gunfire if you're quick on your feet. You can also avoid bullets while sliding. Unfortunately, it'll take practice. Regardless, using all three of these defensive tools for melee in between each other is the way to go - dodging too often one after the other will causes your dodges to barely move at all without a short break from dodging, blocking many enemies at once will drain all of your stamina, and pushing alone isn't going to work very well against heavier enemies (especially if they're already attacking)...and attacking in between is important too, since stamina regeneration is paused by dodging.
** '''A good defense button for your best offense:''' Just like in [[Vermintide]], blocking completely resets your attacks' chain which for certain weapons with distinct swing patterns can be extremely useful for certain situations - like the Catachan Night Fang which does two diagonal swings that are good for hitting multiple horde enemies and then a downswing which most certainly is ''not'', so you should stick with the first two attacks and block after them to cancel your chain back into them if you've got a lot of basic enemies in front of you. This is still useful even for weapons where its attack pattern is very similar (like the shovel's heavy attacks which are just swings right-to-left and then vice-versa), since it can help you land your attacks more effectively on weaker enemies in a large horde with heavily-armored elites mixed into it by turning your camera and dodging to the right of the elites.
**'''Know your gear:''' Especially on higher difficulties, you better be acquainted with your wargear's moveset and how to get to the important attacks. Weapons like the dueling sword and combat blade do very low damage but slash and stab ridiculously fast, deal bonus damage to weakspots and, very importantly, can dodge far and often to make sure your sorry ass isn't mashed into a pulp. Some weapons need you to use your special button to make full use of them, such as power and chain weapons. Push attacks come out when you hold the attack button after pushing, and they often do the opposite  of what a weapon is good it (IE, a horde-clearing sword might get a headsniping overhead) to give it some leeway. Whether they're good for clearing hordes or singling out the Elites, Specials and Bosses, you better know what you're dealing with. The released game comes with Attack Breakdowns for every single weapon, showing which attack and, in turn, each weapon, is good for singles and which are good for hordes.
***'''Pick your weapons carefully:''' Related to this, barring some fairly specific builds and depending on class, you'll usually want to have one weapon that can deal with hordes and one weapon that can deal with elites. The Psyker and Sharpshooter will always have some fairly reliable means of killing Elites quickly so you'll usually want a chaff killer to accompany them. The same principle applies for the others. Several Melee weapons will be able to do both effectively but naturally rely on you being at close range.
**** Bear in mind that you can only actively regain toughness via melee kills and chaff is the most common source of that, so you will usually want your melee weapon have some chaff-killing capability. 
**'''Watch your back:''' While it'd be great if your entire team were able to constantly overwatch each other at all times and moments, you're generally just a bunch of geeks on a computer that will <s>probably</s>definitely get distracted by the many things that can go wrong during a mission. Even worse, just like in Vermintide, [[Derp|enemies can spawn out of the ether without warning right behind you]]. Therefore, the only 100% reliable method for making sure that you never get hit from behind is to check behind you with your own eyes - spare a glance behind yourself sometimes and listen closely if you prefer to have a chance of blocking the stabs that will be aimed at you. 
**'''Use cover:''' While it may sound like "thank you, Captain Obvious"-tier advice, you may remember that someone paid a bunch of dudes to put and design those debris, concrete slabs, crates, and barrels in the middle of the fucking path. Darktide is still a first-person shooter and requires you to occasionally have a shooty phase while using cover. This tip is mostly for people not familiar with this genre, Vermintide players being used to just dodging around an open space whenever there's no specials and fighting opponents who typically can't hurt them if they're not up close, or simply believing that having cosmetic flak armor makes you bulletproof.
***'''Consider your height''': Sadly, that height slider isn't just for show. If you're tall enough, you won't be able to take cover behind smaller objects, but as a consolation you might be able to shoot over them (little relief when you're being pelted by bolts and bullets, but it's something) and in melee, you won't have to angle your swings to get good headshots. Ogryn are sadly fucked in this regard no matter what.
**'''Consider risk and revive:''' Just like in later Vermintide, you automatically block all melee attacks while reviving, so if you have enough stamina or run Kinetic Deflection for psyker, you might be able to tank a horde of poxwalkers without getting hurt. Shooters however will drain your toughness instead, no blocking will help. Getting damaged interrupts revives unless you're an Ogryn. Don't attempt a revive until you can reliably bring your mate up. Zealot stun grenades (or even Veteran frag grenades, if you throw enough of them), the Ogryn's bull charge, and psyker knockdown can help you get a quick + sneaky revive without killing everyone around you.  This does not apply to teammates snared by trappers.  Untangling them is much faster than a revive and their healthbar will be greatly depleted if a handful of poxwalkers beat on them while they're lying on the ground.
**'''Chop the shooty ones, shoot the choppy ones:''' As is often the case in 40k proper, enemies that are good at being shooty do poorly when they're locked in melee, while choppy heretics can't shoot worth shit and may not even have guns. Most importantly, the moment you get close enough, enemies with multiple weapons  will take a fatal moment to switch up, an opening you can easily exploit. Use this to your advantage.
**'''Use your team to help you:''' This is especially useful when being targeted by elites. Since most of the time they will focus on only one teammate, it's best to tag them, then block/dodge/take cover and wait for your buddies to take care of the heretic.
**'''Spam that tag button:''' The tag button works on special enemies hiding in darkness, in fog, or inside a mob of lesser enemies. Spam that button to pick them out for you and your teammates. Make sure to rebind it to a more convenient key or button if you must.
**'''Engaging patrols or groups of heretics:''' Basic rule: '''elites die first'''. Composition and placement of those groups can result in multiple approaches: force them into melee if they are more shooty with a zealot rush/stun grenade or an ogryn charge, especially a good call if you can flank them. You can also have your veteran or psyker taking the most problematics out with a well placed grenade, volley fire snipe or brainburst. Or go Call of Duty style to soften up the nasties and take down the choppy ones from a relatively safe distance.
***'''Kill the squishies:''' Another good rule-of-thumb in most cases is to kill the enemies that you will certainly kill faster. Bosses may be scary, but the player being attacked by them can focus on dodging and kiting them to take practically no damage from them. Crushers and Maulers are spooky, but the same rule applies. Gunners, Flamers, Pox Hounds and the like however can all still cause damage and disable your team while being harder to keep away from entirely ''but'' will be killed far quicker than the aforementioned enemies, removing their ability to harm you further and giving the team more space to hopefully end the tougher doodz without them doing too much damage to the team. A horde of basic enemies can usually be killed far faster than a boss will...and the team will kill the boss a lot faster when they aren't constantly turning around to the poxwalkers poking their backs. While proper resource allocation can allow you to occasionally ignore this rule (there's not much reason for a psyker to start head exploding a Gunner when the entire fucking rest of the team is already shooting at them, after all), it's a generally-safe procedure to follow. Don't get distracted by the enemy's distraction carnifexes!
***'''Clear the lines of fire:''' Players may not actually be able to cause friendly-fire damage to each other despite their avatars' verbal complaints, but getting in the way of your teammates preventing them from shooting at specials or elites still wastes their time and even their ammo. If you're one of the closer players to a priority target, consider crouching to ensure your allies will be able to shoot at them too. If you're sticking with your melee weapon when priority targets are about, try going toward terrain (and then going backwards if also necessary) so allies behind you can stick toward the middle of an area and easily shoot at priority targets on either side (this also simplifies things for you unless the terrain is also a door, since you can be sure enemies can't approach you from the terrain).
**'''Those barrels ain't for show:''' Maps are littered with explosive barrels and hanging land mines you can shoot to clear out enemies. Obviously, you also want to make sure you're not standing too close to them yourself, since the enemy's shots can set them off too! They're color-coded too: Yellow for vanilla explosions, red for flame bombs that will coat the ground in fire.
**'''[[Team Fortress 2|Professionals have standards]]:''' Remember to protect [[this guy]], who is willing to give up the purging for 10 seconds and use the auspex scanner or debugging the data interrogator. If you are [[this guy]], you deserve your own [[Leman Russ Battle Tank]].
**'''It's not fleeing, it's a strategic retrograde advance:''' Don't hesitate to retreat to a safer position to take cover in order to regenerate your toughness or force heretics to attack you through a chokepoint. Better yet, if you can area transfer while a horde is coming, just do it and leave those screaming sickos behind.
**'''Miniboss encounters:''' "How" and "where", those are the two questions that you must ask yourself when fighting one. For where, a big open area to facilitate your dodges, clear of enemies and without any pit, unless you want to visit Tertium's Under-Underhive. As to how, if you are targeted by the creature, focus on dodging, blocking and looking out to not be blocked by objects. In the other case, kill all others enemies first, then focus on the bastard. This will get easier when you get an idea of how their attack pattern works. Also works with the heretic captains.
***'''Do not shoot the [[Daemonhost]]:''' Seriously, they'll probably just eat the souls of one or two of your teammates if you try. Like Witches from Left 4 Dead, they are better off avoided, but they are far harder to kill than Witches. Unless you're achievement hunting, in which case, try not to get everyone killed, yeah?
**** Sometimes, by dint of game induced randomness, a Daemonhost will be directly in the way of your party. In those circumstances, clear the immediate area of enemies and do your best to slip by it as quick as you can. Daemonhosts give you two chances to avoid them (pissing them off the first time will make them levitate, the second time will give you a bad day), so just have the party beat feet past it before it gets mad. Otherwise, sic the best dodger / blocker on the host and pray to the Emperor that your team doesn't get wiped. If you're REALLY unlucky, you may be faced with two of them at once (though this seems to only occur on the higher difficulties, thankfully). In that case, you're just screwed. 
**'''Don't killsteal a Psykers Brainburst target (usually..):''' Because Psykers need to actively kill targets with brainbursts to get their Warp Charge passives (with accompanying feat bonuses), most psykers will keep their charges topped off by bursting chaff. Let them do it. On a more casual front, really try not to kill a target being brain bursted in general; it's a waste of the psyker's time and just means they built up heat for nothing. THIS SAID, some targets that need multiple brainbursts are worth dealing the extra damage to (Mutants, Ogryns, other elites on harder difficulties etc) or when something needs killing really quickly. 
** '''The little things add up:''' There is a tendency to look at certain weapons and write them off if they don't reliable kill all chaff in one hit. Flamers and Staves tend to get hit with this, along with some other melee weapons. The useful things about these weapons / attacks is that they will frequently set up your team mates for much easier kills ; either by weakening them or staggering them.
** '''Corners for Pox Hounds, Walls for Mutants''': These two are the exact opposite in how they work. Pox Hounds are TERRIBLE around corners, meaning that if they can't jump an object they'll waste time clumsily going around it, leading to an easy kill. Mutants on the other hand can take 90 degree angles to bum rush your ass and pound it to the ground, so do NOT dodge into an object it can turn around. On the other hand, getting trapped by a Pox Hound without anywhere to dodge into is a recipe for disaster, while Mutants will harmlessly throw you away if they have no space to pound you. [[Rage|Assuming there are no instant death bottomless pits, of course]]...
*'''Veteran:'''
** '''Clean up the ranged chaff:''' On higher difficulties, as enemy damage becomes higher, your job as the vet changes from sniping elites to killing everything that tries to shoot at you. With your increased ammo count and increased ranged/weakspot damage, you are the most reliable member of the party for killing ranged foes. Focus on dealing with them while your team protects you from melee hordes.
** '''Deal with the campers:''' The Veteran is the most well equipped for denying Scab Snipers from getting shots off, due to the combination of Focus Fire and having the best ranged weapons in the game. If one gets marked for death (or you spot one using Focus Fire's highlight or the naked eye), drop whatever you're doing and eliminate him if possible.
** '''Two’s company, three’s a crowd:''' Veterans scale very poorly with other veterans. You need a lot of ammunition to function and work best when someone else is distracting the melee enemies so you can line up your shots. When putting a team together, try not to have more than two veterans. If you do end up with more than that, seriously consider bringing a basic lasgun or autogun to maximize your ammo pool.
** '''Sharing is caring:''' Just because you are the most ranged-focused class doesn't mean you are the only guy with a gun. Generally speaking, you shouldn't pick up an ammo box if you have more than two full clips worth of ammo in your bag, nor should you pick up a grenade box if you still have more than two.
*'''Zealot:'''
** '''Stuns for the clutch:''' The Zealot Stun Grenade is one of the best CCs in the game, and thus should be saved for very bad situations. You CAN use it to soften up hordes, but their utility for having to GTFO of a bad situation or clutch a revive can't be ignored.
** '''Don't be a masochist:''' Just like in Vermintide 2, try not to get damaged on purpose just for your attack buff. It's a side effect of bad moves, NOT your main playstyle. That extra attack won't be worth shit if you go down in one or two hits, and the Toughness system in Darktide means a Zealot with full toughness, one health and the invincibility passive on cooldown really will die in only two successive hits by anything, unlike a Zealot in Vermintide 2 being almost functionally alike to being at full health with an entire bar of temporary health.
**'''You can be a crit class''': Zealot's class ability makes his next melee a crit. Combine this with effects that activate on critical hits, stack critical hits on high-speed weapons like a combat blade, and you've got yourself a crit-fishing priest.
** '''Charge to safety:''' Your class ability can be used for more than just getting into melee. The rush forward can be used as an emergency dodge, and the instant toughness regeneration makes it useful even if you’re already in melee with the enemy. Additionally, unlike the veteran and ogryn powers yours doesn’t unequip/swap your weapon, so you can quickly zip to cover with a bolter or other slow-equipping gun.
*** '''Charge to PEWPEW:''' While your class ability makes your next melee hit an immediate crit...it can also make all of your ranged weapon's shots crit for the five-second duration it lasts without being consumed on a melee hit. Since crits can ignore some of the damage reduction caused by armor, this can allow weapons which would otherwise be essentially useless against Crushers, such as flamers or lasguns, to situationally tear them up.
*** '''Become a homing missile''': Line up your crosshairs with a particular enemy when you activate the charge, and you'll beeline straight towards it. You have increased charge distance when you do this, and when you tackle them they get heavily staggered. A great tool for both movement and offense.
*'''Psyker:'''
** '''Force Weapons aren't always the answer''': Your force weapons aren't the only tools in the psyker's kit. They do interact with the peril meter more, but the other weapons are as good as they are on other classes, better depending on how they interact with the psyker's skills. All non-force weapons also passively quell peril 25% faster than force weapons, allowing you to use your Brain Burst or the force weapons you do bring more while neatly switching between them.
** '''You are a tank with Kinetic Deflection:''' Kinetic Deflection exchanges block stamina for blocking with Peril instead. Now you have 100% of Peril to work with instead of a few bars, and managed well you have far more defensive play than any other class. With Force Sword Deflector, now you can block hails of bullets. With a non-Force weapon which passively quells ridiculously fast, you can reliably substitute for a shieldgryn for tanking a Daemonhost.
** '''You're a delicate flower without Kinetic Deflection:''' Psykers are the weakest class in the game, with less health even than the veteran. Unless you have the specific tanking build in mind, you want to avoid charging into the fray recklessly.
** '''Flow like water:''' Building off the previous point, damage mitigation is key for playing a psyker. If you don't have Kinetic Deflection, your best tool is dodging. You can dodge whilst channeling your brain burst or quelling your perils, so be sure to keep moving if the enemy gets too close.
** '''Flay with speed''': Weapons that shoot and swing fast like the autoguns and duelling swords are perfect for proccing your Kinetic Flayer auto Brain Burst and keeping your warp charges high. The king of this for the psyker is the autopistol, due to the close-range focus, the high ammo and, of course, the ludicrous firing speed.
** '''Be a team player:''' Just because you don't need ammo or grenades doesn't mean your team doesn't. Tag any big ammo bags or grenade boxes you see, and be ready to cover your teammates if they need to scrounge for supplies.
**'''Your ult has incredible utility''': You can use Psykinetic's Wrath for more than just quelling peril in overheat. As long as you're looking at these things while you click the button, you can: pre-stagger a horde, free a teammate being chewed on by a Pox Hound from far away, continue your Brain Burst offensives by quelling and more.
** '''Know how to use your Peril''': There are generally two extremes you want your peril, low or high. Low peril means you can spam a lot before you have to quell. Keeping it high however can give you massive buffs depending on your feat and blessing setup. Living on the edge at 100% is perfectly viable if you want a high-risk, high-reward playstyle.
*** '''You don't overheat at 100%''': A useful quirk with your Peril is that simply getting to 100% won't have you blowing up like a melta bomb. You have to cast something at 100% to overheat. You can start a brain burst  at 90%, explode someone's head to bring you to 100 and you'll be A-OK unless you cast something right after before you cool down. This all applies to force weapons, special pushes with the laspistol and more. For people who like high-peril usage for buffing themselves, this is something to keep in mind.
*'''Ogryn:'''
** '''You are the best support in the game:''' Between your tankiness, your unstoppable revives, charges like Foot Knight Kruber and your ability to carry things without any move speed loss, you have more utility than the other classes. Use these advantages well.
** '''The more the merrier:''' Ogryns tend to get significantly more powerful when working with other ogryns. Two ogryns together are a force to be reckoned with, while three are all but unstoppable. Having an all ogryn team is [[meme|hilarious]] (especially seeing all four guys try to cram into the valkyrie in the loading screen), you won't have any good way of dealing with long range enemies like snipers (unless you're really ''REALLY'' good with your grenades, and made sure someone packed a Gorgonum).
** '''Be aware of your size and position:''' Because of your... girth... Ogryns really have to watch where they stand. Cover is hard to come by when you're taller than most everything even when you crouch (making your Ogryn's height anything less than the highest in an attempt to fit into more cover will be punished by [[BLAM]], why the fuck else would you play Ogryn then), and your back can take friendly fire as much as your face gets melted by enemy fire. 
** '''Clear the hordes:''' Ogryns have some of the best crowd control in the game, from the humble bully club to the twinlinked Heavy Stubber. As such, you're right up there with the Zealot's Flamer and the Psyker's Purgation Staff in bringing the hurt to large mobs of enemies. That plus being more tanky than the punies means standing between your allies and a horde is actually a sound move...just also try to give your buds behind you a clear line-of-fire to any special enemies that you'll want deader than the rest of the horde as much as possible.
** '''Think before you shoot:''' Ogryn guns tend to have very high damage but low ammo, slow reloads, and poor accuracy. Make sure every shot (or every burst of shots with the heavy stubber) is targeting an enemy that's actually worth shooting. Every ogryn gun in the game so far has a melee special attack: use that to clear out the chaff if you don't want to switch to your melee weapon.
** '''Charge only as much as you need to:''' Moving backwards while your Bull Rush is occurring will cause it to stop. This can allow you to keep with your team, stay in cover, or just let you get to caving in prostrate Crusher skulls ASAP rather than fucking off to Surroundedville.

  
[[Category:Warhammer 40,000]]