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Warhammer: Vermintide 2 News

With the necromancer, Vermintide 2 is getting a pet class at last




Fatshark said it would continue to support Vermintide 2 after the launch of Darktide and has done just that, with additions like new free levels and remastered levels from the original Vermintide. Next up, pyromancer Sienna will finally get her fourth career: the necromancer...
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Warhammer Vermintide 2's Necromancer skeletons are surprisingly smart

The Warhammer Vermintide 2 Necromancer is right about to burst forth her minions from the earth, unleashing the undead hordes against the forces of Chaos and the Skaven. With the new Sienna career set to launch in a Warhammer Vermintide 2 update next week, developer Fatshark gives us some insight into how the skeletons came to be, and the potential created by its new tech developed for the feature.


Read the rest of the story...


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Dev Blog: Sienna the Necromancer - Design

My name is Joakim and I'm the design director on Warhammer: Vermintide 2. I've been a part of Fatshark even longer than Lohner and for 15 years I've been working mainly with level creation and design in pretty much all of our games. Earlier this spring I took on the role of leading the design vision and direction of Vermintide 2 - like being the resident mission giver.

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Hello darlings,


Now that the long-awaited career for Sienna - the Necromancer - is just around the proverbial Ranaldstrasse corner, I want to look back at the journey leading up to this point and show you some behind the scenes production footage in this dev blog.

But first, if you haven’t read the narrative lore post then go here to get the story.

When the team started exploring what Siennas new career could be, they started with our three general career goals in mind:
  • To create a career that was fun and cool, and that had its own gameplay space in the lineup.
  • To explore something new that helped us innovate a technical aspect.
  • To delight you with something unexpected yet plausible for the Hero.

The idea of a Necromancer has been kicking around for a long time - it was already in the back of our skulls when starting work on the Grail Knight. The team knew from the onset that we had to explore something that wasn’t a fire wizard simply because it would be challenging to carve out a gameplay role that didn’t cannibalize on her regular careers. From a tech perspective we also dreamt of something akin to a pet class with a summon & control type of gameplay. Together with the End Times storyline a Necromancer ticked all of those boxes.

[h2]Creating the Concept[/h2]
We started out creating a concept for the Necromancer. We do similar concepts for all things that we create, highlighting details and material references so that our outsourcing partners have a clear idea of the direction we want.



Looking at the career designs it was clear that the Necromancer would be the most complex class of the bunch, and that it made most sense for it to go out last. That would give us confidence in figuring out good practices for careers in general and it gave us time to plan and lay the groundwork for the technical side of things. Most work was put into the career highlight: the skeleton minions.



[h2]Creating Sienna’s Minions[/h2]
We call them minions rather than bots because even though they feel similar they don’t share the same code or design space. Sienna’s skeletons are actually rather like a friendly faction of their own, sharing behavior and movement with Vermintide’s enemies. That meant a lot of work, both from a pure visual and combat behavior perspective but also balancing their presence and relative player positioning so that they didn’t end up being too noisy or obtrusive. It also meant a lot of bug fixing.







So having done the groundwork we now have a bit of tech in place for enemies fighting enemies. We’re pretty excited toying around with that for the future. :)

After a lot of prototyping the skeleton behavior was getting to a good spot, enabling us to focus on presentation and tweaking.

[h2]Bringing the Necromancer to (Un)Life[/h2]
Career production started in earnest earlier this year with creating the Necromancer's basic building blocks - her weapons, the character model and the minions. The initial idea was of Sienna using ranged attacks to soften up enemies but having a heavy hitting toolkit to finish them off. In the beginning it might have been a bit too heavy hitting.



This combat style saw several iterations in both functionality and appearance, and the way she played was changed and tweaked over several months - a special shoutout to our alpha testers who provided invaluable feedback and insight on direction.

The team worked hard to ensure we fulfilled what players would expect from a Warhammer Fantasy Necromancer. The career not only had to play well, we also had to make sure she looked the part, and stayed in keeping with the miniatures and Warhammer Fantasy lore. Extra care was put into nailing down how she could summon skeletons, which saw us going back and forth with it being an active or passive ability (and trying out different alternatives for visual presentation).



Of course, having figured out a design doesn’t mean the work ends then and there - it’s all about finding that sweet spot between gameplay balance, performance targets and sheer fun. Some ideas didn’t make it, but the team sure had fun exploring them. :)



We’re super happy to soon release the Necromancer and the recently deceased upon Helmgart and surroundings, and we hope you enjoyed this behind the scenes blog. A big thank you to all our players and our fantastic community. And rest assured, we’ll be back soon enough with more cool things to reveal in the next dev blog showing you what actually made it into the career.

Come along Darlings, let's go save the world.

— Joakim, on behalf of the Vermintide 2 team.

Dev Blog: Sienna the Necromancer - Lore



The Ubersreik Five have been through some stuff haven’t they? Confounding the evil machinations of the Skaven at Ubersreik (even if they couldn’t quite save the city in the process). Then thwarting the Pactsworn alliance in the depths of Helmgart (again, a bit late to actually save the city, but who’s quibbling?). Little did they know that these weren’t isolated invasions of the kind the Empire has endured since its founding, but harbingers of a new and terrible age: the End Times, when the laughter of the dark gods finally swallows the world.

The Five have known for a while that something isn’t right, of course. Tzeentch, the Chaos God of Change, has been dabbling away with the causality of the mortal world, tangling fate and destiny into new designs for no other reason than because he can.

[h2]Divine Interventions[/h2]
This isn’t to say that our bold Five have drawn the attention of the Chaos Gods … well, perhaps the odd curious eyeball from time to time. It’s more that they’re caught in the ripples as the dark brothers hurl stones into the pool of reality. They’re not alone in that. The wider world has problems of its own beyond marching armies and bloodthirsty warriors.

But nor have the Five been completely untouched. Other entities have manipulated our heroes for their own ends. The goddess Lileath - known to Bretonnians as the Lady of the Lake - anoints Kruber as one of her Grail Knights, even as Kerillian falls from her light and under the sway of the bleak Cytharai goddesses. Be’lakor, the Dark Master, deceives the puritanical Victor Saltzpyre into seeking the Citadel of Eternity - and then a Warrior Priest’s mantle - for reasons of his own. And it may yet be that Bardin’s embrace of the newfangled and oft-cursed engineer’s vocation is not so whimsical as it seems.

Now, as Geheimnisnacht draws near, it’s Sienna’s turn.

[h2]Death Unleashed[/h2]
Since time immemorial, a network of elven waystones has channelled the eight Winds of Magic - the stuff of Chaos itself - into the Great Vortex at the heart of the high elven realm of Ulthuan. But as the End Times gather pace, this network is failing, and one being in particular seeks advantage in that calamity.

When Nagash, the Great Necromancer, conspires to yet another resurrection this fateful Geheimnisnacht, he has more in mind than a simple return. Reborn, he lays claim to the Wind of Death, becoming a veritable god … and in the process making his dark art of Necromancy more accessible than ever before.

As the End Times gather pace, countless wizards dabble in necromantic magic out of pride, desperation, greed or simple curiosity. Balthasar Gelt, Supreme Patriarch of the Colleges of Magic will become the most prominent of these, wielding the dead as a weapon to contain the northlander invasion.

[h2]The Lure of Necromancy[/h2]

The sorceries that empower Necromancy are hollowing and dangerous. But then all magic is corrosive to mortals, to greater or lesser degree. It’s why so much of even the simplest spellcraft is bound up in ritual and somatic conjuring - it gives a wizard a means to minimise their exposure and their risk. And of course, necromancy’s great power arises through the most selfish of means: the binding of other creatures (albeit dead) to one’s own will - and having absolute dominion over anything - much less (once) living creatures seldom ends well.

Given these physical, mental and spiritual pressures, it’s no wonder that Necromancers turn evil - or else go so mad as makes no difference. When the boundary of mortality becomes so blurred, death loses its meaning - especially the death of those who stand in one’s way. And death is … so much tidier than living. Skeletons don’t talk back. They don’t need food or encouragement. They simply await their next command. And is it really so evil to press the dead to service if it saves the living?

Such was certainly Balthasar Gelt’s logic during the End Times, and he was by no means the first. So many of the Necromancers who rose to bedevil the world first began as wizards driven by simple curiosity, only to be led astray, one misstep after another.

[h2]A Darker Path[/h2]
Perhaps Sienna’s reasoning is much the same? Of all the Ubersreik Five, she’s the first to be appalled at the carnage and cruelty they encounter. More than that, though Saltzpyre has struggled to give her the benefit of the doubt, her impetuousness and her addiction to magic have always threatened to lead her down darker roads. Perhaps Nagash’s unshackling of the Wind of Death simply presented an irresistible opportunity?

Maybe - just maybe - a third party fanned those flames during her recent periods of absence from Taal’s Horn Keep? The daemon Be’lakor has manipulated our heroes at least since they returned to Castle Drachenfels. Is Sienna his latest toy? Or perhaps Sienna found a secret mentor, just as Gelt fell under the sway of Vlad von Carstein? Stranger things have happened in the shadow of the Chaos Gods.

Or is Sienna’s twin sister Sofia to blame? She’s always served as Sienna’s dark mirror, a soul free to act however she wished - to embrace all that magic has to offer - while Sienna strove for discipline. Did the Five’s battle to reclaim Olesya’s tower gather old resentments to the surface?

It may even be the case that Sofia’s influence is of a more direct kind … there is little more dangerous - or desperate - than a Necromancer’s spirit.

Whatever the truth, we’re going to find out together in the weeks and months to come.

The End Times have barely begun, and the Ubersreik Five have battles yet to fight.

Warhammer Vermintide 2's Necromancer weapons are a spooky delight

As the Warhammer Vermintide 2 Necromancer career gets ready to unleash its undead pals on the armies of Chaos and the Skaven hordes alike, developer Fatshark reveals the weapons that Sienna will get to use in the upcoming Warhammer Vermintide 2 update. With a devastating scythe and a staff offering her unique magic abilities for the new career, you'll be making and reanimating corpses in equal measure.


Read the rest of the story...


RELATED LINKS:

Warhammer Vermintide 2's new career is channeling Diablo 4

Steam's top modern FPS games are up to 90% off, but not for long

Vermintide 2 free DLC lets you return to an old favorite