Warhammer: Vermintide 2 News

From today you can play the second chapter of The Curse of Drachenfels update, Blood in Darkness, on PC. This update is part of Season 2 and is free for all owners of Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and consists of 3 new missions in total. The final chapter is aimed to be released in March. You can find more information about Season 2 here.

Lohner has received a new shipment and you can now find an increased stock in Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders purchasable with shillings.

With the release of Chapter 2 the Year of the Rat event ‘Rat infestation’ has come to an end, and we hope that you enjoyed it.

[h2]FEATURES[/h2]

• Blood in the Darkness - the second mission in the Curse of Drachenfels adventure.
  
• More cosmetics added to Lohner's Emporium

[h2]FIXES[/h2]Levels

• Old Haunts - Increased difficulty on events (Champion and above).
  
• Old Haunts - Fixed some stuck locations.
  
• Old Haunts - Fixed some respawn issues.
  
• Skippergate - Fixed another one.
  
• Weaves - Fixed crashes for clients when joining a session.

General

• It's no longer possible to switch map whilst a vote is in progress.
  
• Fixed a crash caused by interacting with chat/friend list buttons whilst purchasing a store item.
  
• Fixed crash caused when player gets healed while leaving the game (mainly death mutator in Weaves but was possible outside of that, albeit rare).
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur on metal mutators when you finish the arena with buff still applied from the mutator as the host
  
• Fixed quest timer in Okri's Challenges being drawn under the quest descriptions.
  
• Fixed an issue where Kerillian's Spear and Shield illusion "Princess's Glamour-Shield" awarded from the Point Well-Made challenge displayed a placeholder name.
  
• Fixed the Quick Play bonus not being awarded when joining into a keep.
  
• Bogenhafen cosmetic counts should now tally appropriately when considering items purchased from the Emporium.

2.2.0.1 Hotfix.
- Removed deprecated Dark Omens challenges from Okri's book

Thanks for stopping by to check out the latest dev update from the Shark Tank here in unusually unwintery Stockholm.

This week is what’s known as a ‘Hack Week’ here in the office. What does that mean you might ask? Well, think of Hack Week as an opportunity to do something different - so long as there’s some theoretical or actual value in what you’re doing, and have a pitch for it. Some will end up hacking alone, whilst others will form a team and get cracking on something bigger, or requiring multiple disciplines. They might work on something totally new, or continue something they worked on in an earlier Hack Week. It’s an opportunity to learn and grow and maybe even result in something new for Vermintide 2, or even spawn a new project altogether!

You might see a 2D artist taking a crash course in Blender, or you could see QA have a go at building a level [did you know about - Trial of the Foolhardy in Vermintide 1 and Screaming Bell in Vermintide 2 were QA babies!].

Other features of Vermintide (and the tools that build it) have been the result of hackweeks, such as:

• The ‘Social Wheel’.
  
• ‘Weekly Event’ mutators.
  
• Hearing-impaired accessibility.
  
• A bunch of internal tools:
  • Monitoring our build-system.
    
  • Optimized generation of reflection probes for rendering.
• Twitch Mode 2.0

We will avoid saying what’s being worked on at present, as we don’t want to set up false expectations that something will get into the game. There’s some cool stuff though, so hopefully, you can see the fruits of more hack weeks in the future!


This week the Year of the Rat event went live, where pesky critters roam the keep and a new limited availability portrait frame is up for grabs. A patch has shipped today to fix a few issues that arose with this update, mostly crashes as well as some fixes to leaderboard progression in the Weaves.

You’d think that enabling critters in the keep was as simple as a toggle box but really it’s much more complex than that, and some crazy issues arose upon toggling that hypothetical box. They need somewhere to spawn, a navigational mesh so they know where they can and cannot go and places to try and escape to. Other issues arose from enabling keep critters as well, which happened to have a knock on effect on spawning behaviours in the various game modes.

Our QA team had to build and test 10 different candidates for this fairly simple sounding update due to some of the unique complexities the changes presented - this is more than some much larger updates will see!

A cute and seemingly simple idea can really cause problems if it’s not something considered during the much earlier production phase. But solving those issues now does open the door to more potential Keep shenanigans in the future.


Last week we revealed the name of the map coming in Chapter 2 of the Curse of Drachenfels updates. Blood in the Darkness is due to come out in mid-February. It is currently undergoing testing and we will announce the date when it is in a good state.. We are, however, now able to show you a couple of screenshots from the upcoming adventure map right here!





The release of Chapter 2 will see more cosmetics being added to Lohner’s Emporium as well, including some hats you’ve seen before and some you haven’t. These will all be available for various amounts of Shillings.

edit 2: We just hotfixed a few more crashes.

edit: We just hotfixed a few crashes and an issue with Weave leaderboard states.

At first, it was simply a couple of rats that got into the keep with the crates for Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders, nothing to worry about. However, a couple of days ago Olesya grew tired of their little clattering feet and decided to root them out with one of her spells… it turned out to be an entire rat infestation! The rats are everywhere, and although Sienna does not seem to mind the extra company Saltzpyre is greatly dismayed that they are trying to get to his test specimen downstairs…



With the Year of the Rat upon us, we for some rat-tastic reason felt the urge to honor our furry friends. For what would Vermintide 2 be without rats?

Between February 5 and February 13 something ratty appears to be in the works as an entire league of rats have taken a liking to Taal’s Horn Keep, and to celebrate the arrival of these critters Cousin Okri has from the 6th of February a new quest for you, and of course you will be rewarded for your efforts.

• 3 Event quests starting on February 6th.
  • Rewards 2 paintings and new Portrait Frame.
• Taal’s Horn Keep is overrun by rats! Victor will not be happy.
  
• Fixed a bunch of crashes caused by mod interactions with tooltips.
  
• Fixed a crash in the benchmark tool.
  
• Fixed a crash for joining players which was triggered when user in the joining session had some throwing axes on the ground and then switched ranged weapon to something else!
  
• Fixed a bunch of painting related crashes.
  
• Fixed the weave 95 crash.
  
• Fixed an issue where the painting reward for completing Old Haunts did not show up in the list of available paintings.

Welcome to our first in a series of status updates from the Shark Tank. Last week, the first installment of the ‘Curse of Drachenfels’ hit the live servers along side the kick off for Season 2 and patch 2.1!

What would Vermintide 2 be without rats? Well, actually it would still be quite cool since you’d still get to fight the Norscans and Beastmen, but that aside, we would not be here without our furry friends. They put the vermin in the Vermintide. With the Year of the Rat upon us, Vermintide 2 will pay its rat-spects from Wednesday the 5th of February until 13th of February on PC. You can read more on what this is en-tails on our website next week.



This week we’ve been working to fix up some crash fixes on all platforms, these will be coming the moment they’re tested and ready. There is also been some weirdness with DLC entitlements, with classic Vermintide skins disappearing in Vermintide 2 for those who own Vermintide 1. Tom (of Fatshark Stream fame!) has been ironing out some of those kinks, and looking in to fixing up other issues pertaining to challenge accreditation for purchased Bogenhafen items and similar issues. Some of these issues can and will be fixed without the need for a patch. Stability fixes are on target for the Rat Infestation event coming early next week, and further fixes will be coming with Patch 2.2 and the release of Chapter Two of the Curse of Drachenfels.




We sat down with Game Designer Kasper this week to talk a little bit about Sienna. There has been a fair bit of discussion this week surrounding our favorite wizard, with one of her infamous talent combos being brought down a peg (or two) in patch 2.1.

Sienna is fairly unique. Being a wizard of one particular school lends herself to being a particularly ranged focused, and in a game where melee should be the focus it can be difficult to design natural feeling abilities and synergies that allow for various interesting builds. Finding those flavors is hard, especially with two careers (BW/Pyro) being particularly ranged focused.

Can we talk a bit about why we made the changes we did, and is this where Battle Wizard will be now for Season 2?

"The bond between ‘Lingering Flames and Famished Flames’ + ‘Kaboom!’ was undeniably strong throughout Season 1, and the picks became almost mandatory on some of the toughest challenges in the game right now. For Season 2, Battle Wizard has seen that brought down to more reasonable levels. There’s multiple angles we look to balance from, examples being ‘is something overperforming, or is other stuff underperforming?’ and in this case we’re certain that this talent pairing was the former. We noticed commentary trending that she was super strong, and oftentimes super boring to be in a lobby with as watching your BW simply pressing “F” to win isn’t much fun for everyone else.

We still feel she has her core tenets met - the Battle Wizard represents Sienna trying to balance her addiction to Aqshy, but there’s still a fair bit of recklessness in there. It has a large AoE, explosion and dot heavy kit at her disposal still, but just without the one-button-to-win build. There may be additional adjustments made throughout this season, so do continue to share your feedback with us!"

Nice one, cheers! On to Unchained - there is a bit of talk about town that Unchained feels in a bit of an awkward spot at the moment. What are your thoughts on that?

"Unchained is a career with a pretty high skill ceiling I think, but when mastered can be very rewarding to play. It’s obviously the most melee-centric pick of the career choices for Sienna, and as mentioned before can be tricky to integrate nicely into a ranged archetype.

There is a murmuring amongst the community that Unchained has just only one viable build at the moment. I think that’s what you’re getting at right? I can see the possibility of some stuff to add more varied options to her kit in the future for sure. There is a discrepancy between her ability where it feels like you are giving up your power (overcharge) when you use it. Maybe we could scale with overcharge? More damage/radius when near max level overcharge? Or yield a cool buff when used at high overcharge. Something could be done there. I do think it’s going to take more than just sliding numbers up the scale, though, so it will need some more thought. Ideas of course welcome!"

Cool. Looking forward to seeing where we go with that. Lastly (for now) -- Sienna’s Mace. What role is this envisaged to play, and any chance of some love soon?

“Siennas mace is a bashy/tanky weapon which transitioned from 1-handed weapon in Vermintide 1 to a 1.5-handed weapon in Vermintide 2 (a Bastard Mace? Can we call it that?). It should have good output versus armoured enemies as well as being a decent crowd control weapon, less on the damaging side and more on the tanky side. Maybe the issue is that it’s quite complex to use, what with alternating moveset for the charged attacks. I’d wager the mace could use some tuning as well in a future update. Since from the perspective of a 1h weapon it’s a bit slow, from the perspective of a 2h weapon it has a bit of a low output.

On the immediate horizon this won’t see change, but certainly is on my list of things to mess about with in a future update!”

Cheers, Kasper!


Aside from the Rat Infestation coming to the Keep next week, we also look forward to bringing you the next mission later in February in the Curse of Drachenfels update - Blood in the Darkness. Here is a small sneak-peak quote from Lohner’s thoughts about Blood in the Darkness:

"Well, you've opened up a path to Castle Drachenfels, so it's time to get in there and find out what's going on - and, if at all possible, rescue as many luckless villagers as you can. The Pactsworn are definitely up to something. Whether they're trying to resurrect Drachenfels himself or something else, put an end to it."

Welcome to Season 2 and 2.1.0 on PC! This update brings new exciting things to Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and we are thrilled for you to delve into the first chapter of the Curse of Drachenfels, and explore what Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders can offer. This update is free for all owners of Vermintide 2.

The full patch notes for 2.1.0 can be found at the end of this page, and if you are curious about the changes from the Season 2 Beta to 2.1.0 you can find it described with patch notes and comments from a Game Designer further down.


[h2]Play the 1st chapter of The Curse of Drachenfels.[/h2]
Folk from the villages in the Grey Mountain have gone missing, and Lohner sends our heroes back into the shadows of Castle Drachenfels to have a closer look.


[h2]Lohner is a man of practicality and has always been able to find ways to make a profit even in the direst of situations. There is no situation that cannot be fruitful if you have the right connections, and Lohner seems to have plenty of those considering he has now put up shop in the Keep. His customers? The Ubersreik 5 of course![/h2]
Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders is the in-game shop where you will be able to purchase cosmetics. The idea is to allow players to do daily and weekly quests and collect in-game currency to target the cosmetics they want. The store will at launch contain hats and hero skins, but we aim to add more content over time. There will also be a few Premium Cosmetics available for purchase for real-world money as DLCs through Steam.

The new in-game currency is known as Shillings and they can be earned by completing Daily and Weekly Quests. Anyone in possession of one of the existing Vermintide 2 DLC’s will get a one time bag of Shillings for each DLC as well as additional Quests.

DAILY & WEEKLY QUESTS
Cousin Okri is very generous and has decided to put some extra coins as a reward for the Ubersreik 5 for completing his quests. All his Dwarfen wealth has to go somewhere, as Okri himself has no need of it.

WHY DID YOU ADD PREMIUM ITEMS?
The reasons behind this are that we want to try to release content that involves gameplay for free while charging for a few premium cosmetics instead. By adding a few select cosmetics that you can purchase for real money you can support the studio and we can create more free content updates, such as the Curse of Drachenfels levels.

And do not worry, there are far more cosmetics available to purchase with Shillings than what is available on the Downloadable Content tab!

Ultimately the purchasable content will function as small DLCs and if you wish you can also purchase them through Steam as with the DLCs Shadows over Bögenhafen and Back to Ubersreik.

A new and swifter way to play weaves. With separate queues divided in 5 difficulties you can now join at any difficulty you would like. The Weaves have also been reshuffled.

Quick-Play Weaves will now also be playable with bots!

With each new Curse of Drachenfels mission there will be new challenges provided by Cousin Okri.

We have increased the amount of essence received at completion of Weaves, as well as added a larger essence bonus for completing a Quick-play Weave.


Thank you for participating in the Beta of Season 2, and we are grateful for all of your feedback. For patch 2.1.0 we have taken a closer look at feedback received regarding the weekly/daily quests as they were reported feeling too grindy, and we agree with you.

Balance was also one of the major feedback points, specifically Battle Wizard Kaboom! builds have been investigated, as well as cooldown reduction from attacks across the board.

LEVELS

• Against the Grain
  • Fixed an issue where a player who dies during the escape sequence respawns in an illogical location.
• Convocation of Decay
  • Fixed a patrol path to stop a particular patrol spawn from getting stuck.
    
  • Fixed a location where enemies would do a long leap to players at a specific location instead of just pathing as expected.
    
  • Players should now be able to complete "Feed Me Sinner!" on Cataclysm difficulty.
• Fortunes of War
  • Fixed a spot where players could mitigate enemy attacks entirely.
• Old Haunts
  • Fix for lamp oil and explosive barrels (and general pickup tweaks).
    
  • Fixed a situation where a player who died could respawn behind a closed door in the Gargoyle area.
    
  • Fixed a few sticky spots where players could get stuck.
    
  • Enemies can no longer phase through the closed tavern door in the village area.
    
  • There was a particular place where bots loved to suicide. We gave them some jump assist in this area.
• Skittergate
  • Fixed a spot where the AI navmesh was floating ever so slightly above the terrain.
    
  • Fixed a few hang-ledges so players don't just drop off an edge to immediate death where intended.
  
  
• Weaves
  • Changed how bar is filled to complete the Weaves, now objectives are always 80% of the bar and the rest of the 20% is collected by killing at least 80% enemies spawned by terror events (roamers are worth very little).
    
  • Enabled Bots for use in Quickplay Weaves.

GENERAL TWEAKS / FIXES

• Various Kerillian and Kruber weapon illusions displayed the wrong illusions, most notable in first person - this has been corrected.
  
• Added a bit more constraint on random item drop locations on player death so they would be far less likely to clip into the floor and disappear.
  
• The painting selection UI now shows which paintings are in use throughout your Keep.
  
• Changed the Kill Critters quest so that critter kills are recorded for all players in the group not just the critter-killer.
  
• Complete 3 daily quests and "Complete the weekly event" will always be available each week.
  
• Changed weekly challenge requirements to always have the same requirement values, eg. if you get the painting scraps weekly event it should always be 10.
  
• Reduced the number of painting scraps required to complete the associated weekly quest to 10 from 10, 20, 30.
  
• Fix for darkness Weekly Event so that it doesn't crash when closing the game or ending a mission.
  
• We fixed a crash caused by the game having a level selected that doesn't exist in the build a player is playing on (such as when switching from beta to live after having played a beta mission).
  
• Fixed cases where completing a host migrated game would reload the level even after pressing "Back to Keep".

COMBAT TWEAKS / FIXES

• Reduced the range of Ungors normal attacks and running attacks.
  
• Smiter stagger damage talent no longer prevents stagger damage on targets after the first. Damage will be calculated as normally.
  
• Witch-Hunt and similar effects (Blade Barrier, Hunter etc) now lasts up to 15 seconds (the full duration of the tag). Durations refresh should the target be tagged again. A tagged target can be tagged again to re-apply the debuff.
  
• Fixed an issue where bleeding effects would not stacks properly (Witch Hunter Captain Flense, Waystalker Serrated Arrows).
  
• Cooldown reduction on attacking rebalanced - All non-melee attacks now only grant Career Skill cooldown on the first target hit. This has been problematic with the Battle Wizard and Shade careers primarily where they could use area damage ranged weapons (Conflagration/Fireball Staff and Hagbane Shortbow) to gain an extreme rate of career skill cooldown recovery. This change should tone down the outliers without significantly affecting other careers.
  
• We've looked to smooth out the reliability of the system which weighs enemy damage with enemy density.
• Heleborgs' Tutelage (Mercenary) and Smite (Zealot) will no longer have their critical strikes consumed by pushing.
  
• Fixed huntsman longbow not triggering reload when the player gets interrupted during firing action, but before the reload event gets triggered

WEAPONS

• Two-Handed Hammers - Light attack 1 weapon switch window start increased from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds.
  
• Two-Handed Hammers - Light attack 1 chain to Light attack 2 reduced from 0.85 to 0.7.

“A Slayer build utilizing two 2h hammers together with the technique known as QQ-canceling was outperforming almost every other career in the game when it came to armored enemy DPS. To compensate for this without reducing the power of two-handed hammers, which otherwise is in a favorable spot right now, the time where you can start your weapon switch with the weapon has been slightly increased for the first light attack, and the chain time into the second light attack has been decreased. This should reduce the power of the QQ-canceling technique slightly for 2h hammers while increasing the output of the weapon when using it without the technique.” - Kasper, Game Designer

• Greataxe - Light attack 1 to light attack 2 chain window has been reduced from 0.7 to 0.65.
  
• Greataxe - Light attack 2 to light attack 3 chain window has been reduced from 0.65 to 0.6.

“Greataxe has a similar function as Two-Handed Hammer and has been tweaked in a similar fashion. It already had a slightly slower equip window so it has been unchanged, only the attack timings have been buffed in this case.” - Kasper, Game Designer

• Beamstaff - Stopped resetting beam staff hit counter if player hits environment, still resets if player hits an enemy (dead or alive)
  
• Tuskgor Spear - Reduced the push power from a heavy (think shield weapons) to a medium push (think 2h hammers).
  
• Huntsman Longbow - was not triggering reload when the player gets interrupted during firing action, but before the reload event gets triggered. Fixeeeddd.

TALENTS

• Sienna
  • Battle Wizard
    • Fires From Ash - Now has a 0.5 second internal cooldown.
      
    • Kaboom! - No longer triggers the improved explosion at Siennas starting position.
      
    • Kaboom! - Reduced the radius of the improved explosion from 8 to 5.

“Utilizing Fires From Ash together with the talent Kaboom! allowed close to 100% uptime of Fire Walk when playing Battle Wizard. With the other changes to cooldown reduction this had to be targeted to stay in line with other similar talents.Kaboom! could in some cases apply double the powerful burning effects to enemies with a recent change. This proved too powerful in practice and has been reverted to the previous state.” - Kasper, Game Designer

-----------------------------------

For a refresher on the Beta patch notes which precede the above, please check this earlier announcement with the notation:

https://steamcommunity.com/games/552500/announcements/detail/3998565024868225991