Warhammer: Vermintide 2 News

https://youtu.be/wG1mAnHmAQ0


Welcome to the latest update for Vermintide 2.

Today we bring you two deliveries. With the first, we're updating the live game to patch 2.0.15.2 - this includes improvements to the rerolling of traits and properties to be more deterministic and less true RNG, and includes changes to Weekly Quests.

[Quote] Weekly Quests:
Will now be granted to all players, not just those who own the Bogenhafen DLC. You will receive 4 quests as a base and then one additional for each DLC you own ( Bogenhafen, Back to Ubersreik, Winds of Magic ) at the beginning of the week (Mondays 00:00 CET).

Weekly quests will now reward Shillings which can be spent in Lohner's Emporium of Wonders. Lohner's Emporium of Wonders will be available in a limited form on the Beta.

For those still collecting Bogenhafen cosmetics; the full release of Lohner's Emporium of Wonders will make all of them available for those of you who own the DLC.

Crafting
Optimised salvaging items resulting in quicker salvage times and less frequent backend errors.

Rerolling traits and properties is now more deterministic; you are guaranteed to see each trait and property configuration within a certain amount of rerolls. It is also no longer possible to roll a trait or property configuration twice in a row.

We also have as mentioned in our letter to the community last week the latest on Season 2 in the form of a BETA. Patch 2.1.0 is available for test! The notes of which can be found below.

To install the Vermintide 2 - Season 2 Beta:

• Right-click Vermintide 2 in your Steam library sidebar
  
• Select 'Properties'
  
• Select the 'Betas' tab
  
• Expand the 'Select the beta you would like to opt into' dropdown and select:
  
• season2_beta_8.6gb_download
  
• An 8.6GB download for the Season 2 Beta should then start downloading. If the download does not start automatically, please restart the Steam client.

PROGRESS FROM THE BETA IS PLANNED TO PERSIST TO THE FULL RELEASE.

Exceptions may be made in regards to in-game currencies. Should issues be found with the economy during beta, there is a potential for currency to be adjusted.

We have compiled a bunch of answers to potential questions over on our Support Site FAQ so be sure to check those out if you have any queries! The notes are as follows:



HOTFIX #1

• Fixed a crash that could occur on the map Dark Omens
  
• Fixed Bardin Slayer’s talent Grimnirs Focus not working for clients

FEATURES

• Revisions to the Weaves (including unranked Quick Play) (for Winds of Magic owners).
  
• The first of the Curse of Drachenfels maps, 'Old Haunts' (for Everyone).
  
• Lohner’s Emporium. Lohner’s Emporium will be a limited experience for the time being as we test out how you interact with currency and look for edge cases in the machinations that bring it all together.

UI / UX

• Items now stay in the Recipe slot when rerolling for properties and traits.
  
• The crafting interface now removes the item from the Recipe slot after applying a weapon illusion.
  
• Quest and challenges in Okri’s Challenges now display in the following cadence: Claimable < Avialable < Completed
  
• The UI now presents rarity on reward items in Okri’s Challenges
  
• Weapon illusion rewards are now presented correctly in Okri’s Challenges
  
• Fixed bug with item reward popup showing item rewards without a frame.
  
• [ALT + ENTER] to toggle fullscreen no longer triggers the chat.
  
• Fixed a problem where by the Font Size didn’t take effect in the settings.
  
• Added support to scroll chat text with mouse wheel.
  
• Polished the visual look of the chat.
  
• Added new font rendering to the chat to make it more sharp and now supports multiple colors.
  
• Changed size of chat window (From 600x200 to 500x250).
  
• Private/public checkbox in tab-menu now only says “Private” to make it clear if game is set to private or not.
  
• Loading screen subtitles do now continue after loading screen is complete as long as the VO is still playing.
  
• Tweaked font sizes and text color of matchmaking status UI.
  
• Added sound events for weave game mode menu.
  
• Adding missing variations of the potions for Razer Chroma.

LEVELS

• Against the Grain - Fixed some illogical respawn points.
  
• Blightreaper - Added and adjusted collisions to prevent Out of Bounds.
  
• Dark Omens - Fixed various spots where heroes would just fall to their death instead of hanging off the ledge.
  
• Dark Omens - Adjusted pickups that were outside of the play area.
  
• Dark Omens - Moved a grenade spawn spot that was obstructed by a rock.
  
• Dark Omens - Fixed a location near the 2nd Grimoire where bots behaved frustratingly.
  
• Empire in Flames - Added and adjusted collisions to prevent Out of Bounds.
  
• Fort Brachsenbrucke - Fixed a respawn point that could send players back beyond a point of no return.
  
• Fort Brownbrogues - Fixed spot where cannonball could go out of bounds and become unobtainable.
  
• Fort Brandybutter - Fixed a spot where heroes would just fall to their death instead of hanging off the ledge.
  
• Garden of Morr - Dying near the first Tome should no longer spawn you near the third Tome.
  
• Garden of Morr - Fixed various sticky spots.
  
• Horn of Magnus - Fixed some illogical respawn points and sticky spots.
  
• Horn of Magnus - Stopped Beastmen spawning behind the portcullis during the barrel event.
  
• Hunger in the Dark - Fixed various sticky spots and hang-ledges.
  
• Into the Nest - Fixed various sticky spots and Out of Bounds locations.
  
• The Pit - Added and adjusted collisions to prevent Out of Bounds.
  
• Skittergate - Fixed an Out of Bounds that could lead to a soft lock.
  
• Skittergate - Fixed a location where bots could get stuck.
  
• Skittergate - Fixed a spot where enemies could not path to the player during the final encounter.
  
• War Camp - Fixed some sticky spots.
  
• War Camp - Fixed a crash that could occur during the Bodvarr encounter.
  
• War Camp - Adusted 'Nav Mesh' (AI Pathing) to avoid enemies spawning beneath the water.
  
• Weaves - 'Death' Wind: Now only damages permanent (green) health, and gives you temp health equivalent to the health lost. Temp health degenerates at an increased rate.
  
• Weaves - 'Life' Wind: The Thorn Bushes now deal more damage and last longer, but no longer slows and despawns after a single proc.
  
• Weaves - Fixed various sticky locations, exploitable spots, hang-ledges, collisions and deathzones.
  
• Weaves - Fixed reported scenarios where there was not enough Essence to fulfil an objective. We've tweaked how we calculate how much each enemy killed contributes to the overall bar in a weave to be more consistent and reliable.
  
• Weaves - Reduced the severity of damage scaling when reaching beyond Weave 60.
  
• Weaves - We've revisited the spawning / end events on certain levels.

ENEMIES

• Fixed cases where the Packmaster would not hoist a grabbed player when it had been re-directed by another player.
  
• Fixed headbutt and shove attacks of the Minotaur having 2 overlapping and continuous hitboxes resulting in potential double hits.
  
• Blood explosion particles from Rasknitt and Gutter Runner death animations are now removed if blood and gore setting is is set to 'Off'.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Chaos Spawn's 'life leech' grab did not scale properly on Cataclysm. Now restores 400 health when the Spawns eats a player, up from 60.
  
• Updated Berserker and Plague Monk combo attack face rotation to be "flat", so if player is at different elevation the attacker wouldn't tilt.
  
• Updated Berserker and Plague Monk combo attack behavior to keep both move target and attack target until the combo is over, so they should no longer switch to closest target for neither attack nor the movement until the combo attack is over.
  
• Ungor Archer's arrows can now be blocked by all melee weapons within block angle. (Same as shield weapons functions currently).

MISC. BUG FIXES

• Fixed situations where players could get stuck in the Bridge of Shadows if a connecting player failed to properly connect to the lobby.
  
• Fixed an issue where the torch could spawn on downed bots if Darkness was triggered in Twitch Mode.
  
• Fixed the Twitch Darkness Mutator, so that the torches that are spawned are also despawned when the mutator ends.
  
• Fixed damage statistics not being tracked for remote clients when hitting Trolls.
  
• Fixed 'Slay all Lords with specific weapons' achievements not working on Cataclysm.
  
• Decanter' Trait - Fixed an issue that caused the concentration potion to reduce cooldown at a 50% increased rate when using Decanter. Now restores cooldown at the same rate as without the trait.
  
• Fixed various crashes.

HEROES

• Tweaked secondary weapon actions (block/aim/charge). Minimum action time has been reduced from average 0.3 seconds to 0.2 seconds. Weapon switch start for defensive actions has been reduced from average 0.4 to 0.2 seconds for blocking and 0.0 second for aiming/charging (instantly cancelable). This should make weapon switching while performing defensive actions more responsive without making offensive canceling notably stronger.
  
• Decay speed of temp hp increased by 100%.
  
• Temp Health on Cleave - Increased from 0.75 health for each target damaged to 1 health for each target damaged. 50% first target penalty removed.
  
• The talents that increased range of the leaping/teleporting Career Skills caused a lot of problems with out of bounds and mission skips so they have been replaced. (see Bardin and Sienna notes below)
  
• Kruber
  • Kruber's spear now hits units closer to him. Previously he could miss attacks on enemies in very close proximity with sweeps and stabs. Overall attack range remains the same but should now land more consistently up close.
    
  • 1h Mace - Fixed an issue where the third attack in the light chain had inconsistent chaining into heavy attacks.
    
  • Mace and Sword - Tweaked chain windows after push slightly to counteract a situation where a light attack could be inadvertedly chained into.
    
  • Empire Longbow - Fixed an issue where it could still get pushed out of the zoomed shot if you had bonuses to attack speed active.
    
  • Foot Knight - Counterpunch - Reduced the duration of free pushes after blocking from 2 seconds to 1.
• Saltzpyre
  • Repeating Crossbow - Fixed the triple shot having a gap where actions couldn't be chained.
    
  • Zealot - Heart of Iron passive ability is now active from start instead of on cooldown.
• Bardin
  • Drakegun - Fixed an issue where the light shot of the weapon could sometime prioritize the wrong targets, resulting in them not being hit. Should now always hit targets, even if they are very close to the player.
    
  • 1h Hammer - Fixed an issue where the third attack in the light chain had inconsistent chaining into heavy attacks.
    
  • Slayer - Increased base health from 100 to 125
    
  • Slayer - Grimnir's Focus - Changed, now grants a 40% damage reduction for 5 seconds after landing a charged attack. The old mechanic of taking reduced damage while charging attacks worked poorly in practice and has been replaced with a more clear one. The damage reduction has been tweaked to compensate for the more reliable uptime and the Slayers increased healthpool.
    
  • Slayer - Bounding Leap has been replaced with 'Crunch!' - Increases the stagger strength of the impact of Leap by 100%.
• Kerillian
  • Shade - Fixed an issue that caused Kerillian to gain guaranteed crits for 1 second after unstealthing while using Cloak of Pain.
    
  • Dual Daggers, Sword and Dagger - Bleed effect no longer stacks.
• Sienna
  • Battle Wizard - Switched tiers of Famished Flames and Immersive Immolation. The combination of the talents Famished Flames and Lingering Flames made Battle Wizard a close to 100% must pick for higher difficulty content. Rather than gutting two interesting talents we'd like to experiment with them being independent build styles for Battle Wizard.
    
  • Battle Wizard - Whoosh! - Replaced with 'Volans' Quickening' - Reduces the cooldown of Fire Walk by 30%.

Hey everyone,

The year is rapidly coming to an end, and we have some news on our progress towards launching with Season 2 for Vermintide 2 on PC.

We'd also like to invite you to a Stream on Wednesday December 11th where myself and others will be on board to talk with you about Season 2! This is scheduled for 14:30 UTC over on https://www.twitch.tv/fatsharkgames.

Season 1 ended over five weeks ago, and it has been a fair while since we first spoke about our plans for Season 2 in our blog post and reddit AMA.

Since the launch of Winds of Magic, the Vermintide 2 team has been hard at work focusing on game health with smaller - less substantial updates and a larger experimental branch which went live in patch 2.0.15 after positive feedback to the changes from a lot of you folks. Thank you for testing that out and giving us all your feedback, warts and all, and helping us get closer to what we can all agree is a more stable and fair experience. Is it perfect? It’s not, but thanks to all your reports and commentary, we’re working towards it and hope that with your input, we can give you an experience you can rely on, and have a blast bashing the bad guys to bits.

Season 2 was intended to start fully in December, alongside the first of three free maps to all Vermintide 2 players as part of the ‘Curse of Drachenfels’ update. This update would also feature the long-awaited ‘Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders’ for everyone, Quick Play enabled Weaves for WoM owners, alongside other considerations as noted in the Season 2 blog post.

These plans have, given our focus on ‘game health’, been adjusted slightly. Given the success of the latest experimental test and our ongoing commitment to improving our releases, we are instead bringing the changes intended for Season 2 into a Beta Test. This test will be available - all going well - from December the 16th and runs through the festive period. This will include revisions to the Weaves (including unranked Quick Play) for Winds of Magic owners, the first of the Drachenfels maps, Lohner’s Emporium, and more. Lohner’s Emporium will be a limited experience for the time being as we test out how you interact with currency and look for edge cases in the machinations that bring it all together.

As for those playing on Xbox One and Playstation 4, we owe you an update regarding Winds of Magic and the launch of the expansion on those platforms. The cascade of events above has had an impact on our plans for Console releases, but not too dramatically. We are currently going through platform certification for the console versions, and if all goes well with that, we hope to have it with you before the year is out. We’ve been going through extensive testing for this, using both in-house and external QA teams, and we still plan to have Winds of Magic released this month on both platforms as always intended. Winds of Magic for consoles will be equivalent to patch 2.0.15 on PC, with the addition of Quick Play weaves.

Should all go well with the certification process, the above will still be true; however, the best-laid plans can trip up, and in such an event, we’d have no choice but to delay Winds of Magic on console until January 2020. While we don’t expect that to happen, there is always a chance, and so we want to be as open as possible with you now so that there are no surprises going forward. Season 2 is planned for next year including the full release of the Emporium and free Curse of Drachenfels adventure maps.

There will be cool stuff going on in 2020, from the upcoming Vermintide: Versus and much more beyond.

We hope you enjoy the beta and we look forward to reading your feedback.

Seasons greetings,

Martin / The Vermintide 2 Team

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Welcome to Patch 2.0.15. Thank you for taking part in the experimental test this past week. It's been great to see your feedback on that, as well as the bugs you've reported as a result of the test.

The patch focuses on bringing back some of the tightness of the combat loops and engagements you face within Helmgart that you, rightfully, told us was out of whack. This covers areas such as enemy density, strike reliability, sound cues and enemy spawns.

The Experimental Test highlighted some new issues and provided feedback on the end event tuning that was present in the test. As a result of the test, we've fixed a bunch of those issues such as explosions triggering multiple times (this impacted bombs, hagbane, Sienna staves etc). The issue of bots dying through the Skittergate has been resolved, as well as other issues reported in the test.

We've also removed the "on spawn" audio prompts once more from specials such as the Globadier and Warpfire Thrower. In the EXP patch notes, we mistakenly added a note about the Hookrat now having a spawn sound. This was a miscommunication, so, sorry for that.

Last but not least, we've taken another pass over the end events for the levels noted in the list below. Whilst the patch notes remain the same as from EXP, they have been futher tuned to be somewhere between what was seen on the test build, and the previously live version of the game. Keep that feedback coming, and we'll adjust where needs be going forward.

Once more, thank you for your participation!

/Vermintide 2 Team

• Fixed various UI strings.
  
• Various crash fixes.
  
• Fix for missing localisation for one of the paintings.
  
• Fixed (we hope, finally!) players being placed in to matches without being offered hero selection should their chosen hero be taken, resulting in players entering matches with the wrong hero.
  
• Fixed an issue where having too many enemies alive prevented completion of the 'Cage Breaker' challenge on Against the Grain.
  
• Fixed bots taking damage when they are teleported to you/a team mate whilst mid-air.
  
• Enemies, notably the Chaos Spawn and Rat Ogre (but this does apply to all enemies) will slowly nudge players who find themselves stood within the enemy unit, through the expiration of a cloak ability or other such means. This fixes situations where enemy AI could not reach the player stood "inside" them.
  
• Fixed battle wizard career ability fire trail going further than the player travels. Fixed fire trail not appearing if player jumps over a gap in the navmesh* (*the path on which AI can travel)
  
• Fixed fire bombs not aggroing patrols if they step on the fire, now applying dots to enemies to alert them.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Achievement "Ride Together, Die Together" could not be completed on Legend difficulty.
  
• Changes the backstab trigger to calculate on clients instead of server
  
• Updated all hidden spawners on all levels to try and combat facespawning issues.
  
• Updates to enemy considerations to try and fight hyperdensity.
  
• Updates to horde spawning, primarily targeting ambushes.
  
• Fixes issue where the host hear the backstab indicator when bots are being backstabbed
  
• Updated how sweeps are calculated for:
  • 1h Swords, Kruber and Sienna
    
  • Dual Wield Daggers, Kerillian
    
  • Dual Wield Swords, Kerillian
    
  • Spears and Shield, Kerillian
    
  • Spears, Kerillian
    
  • 2h Swords, Kerillian
  
  This should reduce the chance of getting Phantom Sweeps when playing at low fps and/or very high attack speed.
  
• Added Push/Block angle to weave melee weapons. An issue caused these to not display properly as an option that could be selected.
  
• Gors no longer use their kick attack since it telegraphed very poorly.
  
• Reduced the speed of the Gors attacks by approximately 10% across the board.
  
• Adjusted beastmen jump/climb up timers to reduce snappiness.
  
• Fixed missing sounds on Kerillian's Shield+Spear.
  
• Fixed missing sounds for Bardin's hammers.
  
• Overhauled the sound mix to improve enemy specials awareness.
  
• Removed spawn stingers for Ratling Gunner, Warpfire Thrower.
  
• Fixes hordes spawning without the horde music and ambiance.
  
• Fixed an issue where enemies using the combo attack (Plague Monk etc) wouldn't face their target.
  
• Beastmen and chaos ambush horde music now triggers earlier to give a better indication for the player when they are about to be engaged.
  
• Beastmen and chaos horde ambiance has been changed to the same effect.
  
• Beastmen Standard Bearers no longer engage patrols when they put down their banners.
  
• Fixed a case of super fast Gutter Runner behaviours. Seemed to be an interaction between assassin rats and edges in terrain/geometry.
  
• Fixed some situations where patrols spawned too close to the player.
  
• Fixed an issue where Chaos Warriors sometimes could hit player that were very close behind them when performing their overhead cleave attacks.
  
• Fixed an exploit with Fire Walk and Slayer's Leap which allowed some solid objects to be passed through.
  
• Fixed an issue where clients would deal more damage when they were the original cause (Sienna venting for example).
  
• Bulwark' Talent - Fixed an issue that caused the bonus damage to enemies you stagger to be applied to ranged attacks. Now only affects melee attacks.
  
• Sienna - Battle Wizard - Flame Walk - She can no longer target her flame walk whilst airborne. This is mechanically unchained, but previously you could target whilst airborne but you couldn't use the ability.
  
• Sienna - Battle Wizard - Kaboom! - Now applies the proper burning effect on both the start location and the target location.
  
• Markus Kruber - Mercenary - Blade Barrier - Fixed an issue where the talent could not be triggered if you had the talent "Enhanced Training" selected.
  
• Markus Kruber - Mercenary - Walk it Off! - Now refreshes duration if Morale Boost is activated while the damage reduction is active.
  
• Kerillian - Shade - Vanish - Changed icon of the invisibility buff to indicate that Kerillian is under the effect of Vanish.
  
• Saltzpyre - Witch Hunter Captain - The Unending Hunt - Fixed an issue that caused the the ability to refund 80% cooldown rather than the intended 40%.
  
• Saltzpyre - Witch Hunter Captain - The Unending Hunt - Fixed an issue where the cooldown would not be properly reduced while playing as a client.
  
• Saltzpyre - Zealot - Heart of Iron - Fixed the talent from not preventing death if the damage taken is greater than the total max health of the player.
  
• Bardin - Ranger Veteran - Firing Fury - Now refreshes duration of reload speed buff if triggered again.
  
• Crit Counter buffs of Mercenary and Zealot now show when they trigger.
  
• Empire Longbow - When zoom is held, will maintain zoomed in state instead of flipping in and out after each shot. Should yield a smoother experience when using the longbow.
  
• Bolt Staff - Fixed an issue where the second level of charge for the spear had less cleave than the first and third level of charge.
  
• Swiftbow - Increased headshot damage of charged attacks.
  
• Longbow - Increased headshot damage of light attacks.
  
• Longbow - Increased Body shot damage of charged attacks vs Berserker-class enemies.
  
• Fixed issues where critical hits dealt less damage to certain enemy types with certain weapons:
  • Repeating Crossbows, Saltzpyre and Kerillian.
    
  • Blunderbuss and Grudge-Raker, Markus and Bardin.
    
  • Hagbane impact damage, Kerillian.
    
  • Fireball Staff, Sienna.
    
  • Bolt Staff, charge level 2 heavy spear attack.
    
  • Flamethrower heavy attacks, Sienna and Bardin.
    
  • Shield heavy attack slams, Markus and Bardin.
    
  • Dual Axes push attack, Bardin.
    
  • Flaming Sword claw attack, Sienna.
    
  • Greathammer, Bardin and Markus.
• Cermonial Dagger - Heavy attack 1 chains slightly faster into heavy attack 2.
  
• Beam Staff - Fixed sometimes not doing charged shot while holding right mouse button and left mouse button is spammed.
  
• Hagbane - Removed projectile penetration on charged shot to make sure it always creates poison cloud on impact.
  
• Fixed issue where the player wouldn't respawn or take a really long time to respawn in the final arena part of a Weave.
  
• Skittergate: Fixed a case of Skippergate.
  
• Skittergate: Fixed a cliffedge which had no hangledge and heroes whom fell there were just insta-killed.
  
• Skittergate: Bots should now behave a bit better around the ledges during the escape.
  
• Skittergate: Fixed various AI navigation and sticky locations.
  
• Athel Yenlui: Fixed a handful of sticky locations
  
• Tweaked the end events of the following missions:
  • Convocation of Decay
    
  • Fort Barkenbörken
    
  • Skittergate
    
  • Garden of Morr
    
  • The Screaming Bell
    
  • Righteous Stand
    
  • Engines of War
  
  The end events should be less punishing on higher difficulties, and slightly less challenging on all difficulties across the board. The first wave of tuning for the experimental beta .15 was quite heavy handed. We still want Legend and even moreso Cataclysm to pose challenges that enforce good teamplay and threat evaluation from a party of heroes. We will continue to monitor our data and collect feedback from the community to ensure this is upheld when it comes to end event difficulty in Vermintide 2.