Hotfix 5.5.1 - 24th of May

Fixes

• Fixed a network crash related to loadouts.
  
• (Chaos Wastes) Fixed crash if gaining "Ranald's Mighty Gamble" boon while wielding a level object.
  
• (Chaos Wastes) Fixed a crash on Slaughter Bay related to pathfinding.
  
• (Chaos Wastes) Fixed a host crash when Necromancer's skeletons walked into healing zones spawned by bombs with certain boons.
  
• Fixed the Tri-skull Crown missing its store icon on Lohner's Emporium.
  
• Fixed the pop ups for unseen rewards never showing up.

The time has come again to celebrate Warhammer through the Skulls event!
Between May 23 - June 9 you can rampage through the Vermintide in the Skulls for the Skull Throne in-game event. Earn new rewards by collecting skulls, or just participate in the carnage.

Together with the in-game event we also released Patch 5.5.0 - Quality of Life update. It contains a mix of improvements, fixes, and additions that should improve the experience across all game modes. See below for more information on the update and the in-game event.

Skulls for the Skull Throne, Blood for the Blood God!

• Loadout system for Adventure mode
  
  
  Personal Loadouts
  Loadouts are finally officially coming to Vermintide 2! This feature allows you save different combinations of gear & talents as loadouts that you can quickly swap between while in the Keep. Any changes done to your talents or gear while being ‘on’ a loadout will automatically save to that loadout.
  
  Bot Loadouts
  You can also mark one of your loadouts per character as a ‘Bot’ loadout, in which case whenever you are the host, the bots can use specific loadouts that you’ve tailor-made for that bot.

We want to give a shoutout to Squatting Bear for his sanctioned Loadout Manager mod, which covered these features until we could implement it ourselves. Thank you, Squatting Bear!

• Chaos Wastes
  New boons
  We’ve added over 25 new boons to Chaos Wastes. We’ve got some exciting boons to add a lot of juice to your expeditions! New auras, new effects for your bombs, new actions triggered by your career skill, new effects triggered based on your choices during the expedition, new event boons, and more!
  
  Boon Sets
  This is a new mechanic that we’re introducing with this update. Certain boons are part of a ‘set’ of specific boons. Gaining all of the boons within a set in the same expedition unlocks a powerful effect for the rest of the expedition.

New boons introduced with patch 5.5.0:
These don’t include the effects found in boon sets, or some event-specific boons that might be popping up!

• 
  
  Weekly Expedition
  Similar to the Weekly Event game mode for Adventure, we’re adding a ‘Weekly Expedition’ mode in Chaos Wastes. These are Chaos Wastes expeditions with a specific Boon and a specific Curse that will affect every level of that expedition. Be warned, things get real bloody, real fast, in proper Vermintide 2 tradition. The specific Boon and Curse combination will depend on what we set each week, good luck!
  Each week, the first completion of the Weekly Event game mode will grant you a new reward based on difficulty, including shillings, chests, red dust, and one of a new set of runed weapon illusions: the weapons of Bitter Dreams, blessed by Lileath herself.
  Also, similar to the Weekly Event game-mode, participating in some in-game events might involve completing a special event version of the Weekly Expedition. Did you know it’s Skulls for the Skull Throne this week? Foreshadowing…
  
  Stability Pass
  We’ve also taken a stability pass at the overall Chaos Wastes game-mode:
  
  • Fixing several bugs
    
  • Chaos Wastes-specific levels to plug some holes, fix some issues, improve pathfinding (both of Bots and enemies)
    
  • Improve player Navigation, hang ledges, etc.
  You can read the full patch notes below!
  
  This was done mostly based on information from Community bug reports, so we want to thank you all for all the bug reporting you do! Your information and participation is invaluable.

• Weaves of Magic
  Winds of Magic Illusions in Adventure
  We haven’t forgotten about this! Owners of the Winds of Magic expansion can now use the illusions from the Athanor weapons of the Weaves of Magic game mode in Adventure Mode. Simply unlock the weapon in the Athanor and you will have the new illusion unlocked for that weapon!
  
  
  Weaves Game Mode improvements
  We’ve made some changes to the game mode to tackle some of the issues with the mode itself. For starters, bots can now accompany you in public Ranked Weaves, which should help with the biggest blocker for those lacking a dedicated 4-man group for Weaves.
  
  The second thing is that running out of time no longer ends the match prematurely. This is the second biggest issue we’ve seen that prevents players from properly engaging with the game mode. Running out of time still disqualifies your team from scoring for the leaderboards, but at least you can still complete the match!
  
  On the subject of leaderboards, the leaderboard will now default to showing friends’ scores only (you can still manually check the global leaderboards, though!).

And Blood for the Blood God! It’s that time of the year again when we celebrate Warhammer as a whole together! From May 23 to June 9, join your fellow Heroes in glorious carnage, slaughtering as many foes as possible!

We’ll be counting each and every kill from all of you, and if the community as a whole reaches 1,000,000,000 kills across all platforms and game modes before the event ends, you will all earn five new Khorne-inspired Weapon Illusions!
You can check out the community’s progress by going in here: https://www.vermintide.com/counter
New Khorne-y Portrait Frame
Collect 100 skulls, scattered across Helmgart and beyond, to earn this year’s event frame! Progress in this event challenge can be earned across Adventure mode and Chaos Wastes!
Did you miss last year’s event rewards? Fret not! For the duration of the event, you can visit Lohner’s Emporium to spend your hard-earned shillings on unlocking any rewards from last year’s Skulls event that you might’ve missed the first time around.
Without further ado…
Note: We’re still investigating the issue of patch sizes being abnormally large on our Vermintide Steam releases. We’re getting closer to a solution, but for now there might still be patches and hotfixes that have an abnormally large download and install size. We apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.

• Added a Loadouts system, letting you save and quickly switch to and from presets of gear & talents that you've made.
  
• Chaos Wastes boon update: Added over 25 new boons and introduced the concept of Boon Sets.
  
• Chaos Wastes Weekly Expedition: Similar to Adventure mode's Weekly Event, embark on a Weekly Expedition with unique modifiers! Earn the weapon illusions of Bitter Dreams.
  
• Chaos Wastes Chest of Trials: Added a chest of trials for the Chaos Warrior with Mace & Shield.
  
• Chaos Wastes Chest of Trials: Did a balance pass on the infamous Ungor Warherd chest of trials. Should be a bit more reasonable now!
  
• Athanor Illusions: Made illusions from the Winds of Magic Athanor available in Adventure mode.
  
• Weaves no longer end on timeout.
  
• Bots are now useable in non-private Ranked Weaves.
  
• Changed the Weaves leaderboards to default to friends only.
  
• Temporarily enabled the Skulls for the Skull throne Keep decorations. You'll be seeing red for a while...
  
• Re-implemented the feature to re-connect to host on temporary disconnection. This was originally disabled because it could cause crashes.
  
• Added new voicelines for pinging monsters near you.
  
• Added new voicelines for pinging warpfire throwers.

• Fixed hotjoining client crash if the joining client replaces a Necromancer bot just as it uses its ability.
  
• Fixed a really obtuse crash in Chaos Wastes relating to the Coruscation staff and weapon shrines.
  
• Fixed players crashing in chaos wastes when completing a level after the previous host left during last map session.
  
• Fixed a small time window during loading screen where players in the game swapping weapons may cause the joining client to crash.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused voicelines to not trigger when picking up or dropping Grimoires.
  
• Fixed several issues with erroneous subtitles and mistargeted dialogue events that affected all characters.
  
• Fixed a bug where Handmaiden's 2-2 talent "Oak Stance" didn't grant non-host players the increased critical strike chance.
  
• Fixed an issue with the inspect animation on the repeater handguns that made the cocking hammers act all wonky.
  
• Chaos Wastes level fixes:
  • The Foetid Gorge: Fixed a misplaced killzone that players could walk into and instantly die.
    
  • The Foetid Gorge: Fixed an upgrade shrine and a boon altar that could spawn inside the terrain.
    
  • The Foetid Gorge: Fixed several spots where Heroes could get stuck in.
    
  • The Foetid Gorge: Fixed an issue where the event barrel could spawn in an unreachable location.
    
  • Count Mordrek's Fortress: Fixed some issues with Heroes respawning behind events when they shouldn't.
    
  • Count Mordrek's Fortress: Fixed the geometry around some stone steps to be smoother to navigate.
    
  • Bel'sha'ziir's Mine: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck due to geometry or invisible collision.
    
  • Bel'sha'ziir's Mine: Moved some decorations around in the Slaanesh version that could block movement.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Adjusted a couple of pillars that could make movement difficult.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed an issue where enemies could not spawn in a certain spot due to a boon shrine.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed a spot where players could hang from a ledge inside the terrain.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed a rare issue where players joining half way would see a wrong, lower detail version of the level, making progression through certain parts impossible.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed a rare issue where players joining half way would not see the gate open and thus couldn't go through it.
    
  • Slaughter Bay: Fixed an issue where the first respawn point available was too far from the level start.
    
  • Slaughter Bay: Fixed a spot where enemies would just fall over, dead.
    
  • Slaughter Bay: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck.
    
  • Citadel of Eternity: Fixed an issue where players joining mid-way would be missing some moving floors and stairs, making progression impossible for these clients.
    
  • Citadel of Eternity: Fixed an issue where specials could spawn on invisible stairs.
    
  • Arena of Determination: Fixed a spot where enemies would spawn dead. Enough pranking the Nurglites, Tzeentch!
    
  • Arena of Determination: Fixed an issue where the purifying torch from the Nurgle curse would spawn in an unreachable spot.

My name is Anton and I’ve been working as a sound designer at Fatshark and Vermintide 2 for the past two and a half years. I have been working as a sound designer for the past ten years and have been working with and around music and sound for as long as I can remember.

Trivia about me:

• I have the best dog named Håkan
  
• I can tie my shoes really fast (worked part-time in a shoe store for a couple of years)
  
• I’ll turn off a movie or show if they have bad-sounding doors.

In this developer blog, I’d like to highlight what it takes to add to and administer an already great sound landscape (soundscape) present in Vermintide 2. Mostly, I want to highlight some details in the sound design of Vermintide 2.

On Vermintide 2 we currently have two sound designers: myself and David. I create and implement most of the sound effects while our audio lead, David, handles the VO. Both of us started working at Fatshark post-launch of Vermintide 2, so we’ve worked a lot with managing the already great soundscape while still evolving and exploring new ideas.

How do we do that? Well - I try to incorporate my voice in as many assets as I can, literally. As of now, I’ve been a rat in a hat, Sienna's skeletons, a giant pig in the Tower of Treachery, dying seagulls in Karak Azgaraz, Belakor’s flying skulls, poxwalker D (in Darktide), and now a lighthouse. Because I had a planned vacation, David got the honor of voicing our Nurglings - and I’m very jealous.

The lighthouse would be the centerpiece of the level, and it is possessed by Nurgle. Then and there I knew it needed some cool sounds. Obviously. When I started working on the first sound concepts, the gameplay implications were wild. I wanted to muffle all other sounds when you’re hit by the light beam emitting from the lighthouse. When you're hit by the beam, voices would start whispering to you. All of these ideas were fun but from a gameplay standpoint, they were not feasible. However, the ideas were not in vain.

While working on this, our writer Matt Ward recorded some voice lines that we could use for testing and prototyping. Matt did a great job, but I wanted to test with a more guttural approach to the Grandfather of Sickness. And how did I achieve that? You guessed it - I recorded myself.

Sidenote - I tend to record myself because it's very easy to iterate, press record, press export, start the game, listen, and do it again until you get the feeling right. I’m very easy to direct when I’m the director.

To make my voice sound like an ancient God of Chaos I used a lot of effects. I recorded myself at a very high sample rate, that’s a trick used when you want to change the pitch of the voice more freely without quality loss. Then I added my usual effects, compression, eq, delays, and reverbs. But something was still missing. It sounded a bit generic. Then I remembered an effect that could modify and blend multiple sounds in a very interesting way. I found this recording of stirring macaroni that sounded perfectly mushy, gross, wet, and sticky. That worked out great to get an even more guttural sound to my voice.

However, I was still not happy, it still sounded a bit human. Then I remembered Matt’s recordings. What would happen if I blended his voice lines with mine and added the macaroni? Success! It sounds so strange, so big, so gross in a cool way.

And this was only one layer. We still thought it would be too intrusive to have this played for the entire duration of the level. We also wanted to save the big guns for the big end event. I designed some drones with some synthesizers and rumbles, whispers, and gore. This would become what you hear when you're far away. In the level, I added some zones where it’s not as audible, so you get natural dynamics in the soundscape.

I would love to talk even more about the process, but hopefully, this gives a small insight into the sound design workflow. It was a lot of trial and error, implementations, attenuation curves, balancing, playtesting, playtesting, and playtesting. In the end when we added the wonderful music from our composer Two Feathers it all came together.

With all this said, was this the most fun sound design task? No, I like designing rain the most, but that could be an entire blog post by itself.

Thank you for your time, and the next time you hear a random whuaaaargh remember - it’s probably me.

Hi everyone! My name is Teodor, resident game designer on Vermintide 2. While I have been at Fatshark for a while now I am still fairly new to the V2 team, joining just last year. And so, this will be my first ever dev blog for the project. Let’s get straight into it!

This latest update saw the introduction of our new Chaos Warrior variant (and his big shield). Players coming from Darktide might feel right at home when looking at our newest enemy, but he does function slightly differently than his Bulwark brother from across the studio. We’ve been looking at adding a new Elite enemy for a while, especially one that makes room for some heavy-stagger-playstyles, so here he is in all his shield-wielding glory.

The first thing you’ll notice is that this new Chaos Warrior is heavy, but he does have an exposed weak spot in the form of his big, green swollen stomach (safely tucked away behind his shield, of course). We set out with the mindset of always promoting multiple ways of dealing with this new threat, so while waiting and sneaking in weak spot attacks during openings is entirely possible, you’ll find that heavy swings work just as well. Landing repeated heavy blows on his armor or shield will slowly knock down his stature. Once breached, the Chaos Warrior will stumble and open up for damage. Getting teammates in on the action is worthwhile as well as these stagger values do stack, ‘opening him up’ much faster. But try not to lose focus of him, as he’ll start recovering his poise if left alone for too long!

The second thing you’ll notice are his shield attacks. Being a bit of a scrambler-type enemy, the new Chaos Warrior’s role (on top of damaging the players and being an all-around menace) is to push the heroes away from each other, separating them. While a shielded Chaos Warrior might be less of a threat by his lonesome, he should amplify the threat of any horde he’s in pretty drastically (especially if there is a regular Chaos Warrior somewhere in the mix). We wanted to build something that jams well with other, more frantic, enemies, and hopefully, this new Chaos Warrior will accomplish just that.

Introducing a new enemy to an already well-rounded roster in a game like Vermintide 2 is always going to be an interesting time, so please let us know how you feel about it. I’ll be monitoring the new Chaos Warrior’s performance and sentiment over the coming weeks so that we can continue to develop the experience together and turn him into a more natural fit if need be.

Cheers!

Hotfix 5.4.2 - 17th of April

As a heads up, the patch size for this hotfix is unfortunately 25GB. We're still investigating what's causing some of our patches to have this issue to be able to avoid this in the future.

Features & Tweaks

• Added new sound effects for when the Chaos Warrior with Shield blocks a ranged attack.
  Slightly increased the likelihood of hero conversations starting in A Parting of the Waves.
  Tweaked some objective markers in A Parting of the Waves to avoid confusion.
  Added an idle animation for the 5th Hero in A Parting of the Waves.

Fixes

• Fixed the missing dialogue for Saltzpyre when he's the last man standing and when someone wastes healing. Ohhh he's gonna let 'em have it now...!
  
• Fixed a visual bug in the first person view of a particular fireball staff illusion, which was missing its proper glow.
  
• Fixed the text in the search bar of the crafting menu sometimes spilling out of the search bar.
  
• Fixed a bug with the Chaos Warrior with Shield when facing a hero that went invisible.
  
• Fixed missing stagger values for Chaos Warrior with Shield in certain difficulties.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Chaos Warrior with Shield playing a stagger animation twice when recovering from being lifted by a Sister of the Thorn.
  
• Fixed a visual bug with Saltzpyre's volley crossbow having floating ammo when switching from 3rd person to 1st person.
  
• Fixed a crash caused by having too many buffs active at once. Y'all are crazy.
  
• Fixed a host crash when a client joins on a hero that is not currently present near the end of A Parting of the Waves.
  
• Replaced a door in A Parting of the Waves to prevent a rare crash.
  
• Fixed an issue where Necromancer has their skull overridden by their potion if ending a Chaos Wastes level with a skull in potion slot and a potion in their extra slot.
  
• Fixed an issue with the Chaos Warrior with Shield not splitting into two enemies when certain tzeentchian modifiers were active.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Fixed the big barrel model disappearing at certain distances.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Moved ammo box on wagon before end event so its reachable by bots.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Taught bots how to navigate a sunken ship at the harbor.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Improved bot navigation at the pier.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Fixed some respawn points being set underneath the ground level.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Fixed a house disappearing at certain distances.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Fixed several locations where players could get out of bounds or into unintended areas.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Fixed a typo in the counter message for destroyed buboes Okri challenge.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Fixed a spot where enemy blood would turn into moss. Very nurgle-y, really.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Added a fix to prevent the challenge fish from being killable more than once. Like, how dead can a fish be?
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Removed a 'hanging from ledge' spot on a broken ship that was vestigious from previous designs of the map.
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Climb spawners on the first island were broken and made the spawned unit die on spawn. Not any more, so make sure you look up and behind you!
  
• (A Parting of the Waves) Added missing idle animations for the 5th Hero, waiting by the escape boat.*
  
• (Mission of Mercy) Fixed some spots where you could go out of bounds.
  
• (Athel Yenlui) Fixed players being able to walk along the outer edge in the finale.
  
• Fixed a crash when quitting the game after getting a backend error.

Hotfix 5.4.1 - 11th of April

This patch fixes a common crash and adds various fixes to the new map, A Parting of the Waves.

Fixes

• Fixed a common crash related to the Chaos Warrior with Shield's animations.
  
• A Parting of the Waves Fixes:
  
  • Fixed so you cannot slap in the barrels at the rock wall or in the factory until you have been at the blighthouse.
    
  • Fixed the light from the lighthouse not disappearing after you guys blow it up.
    
  • Fixed some lighting issues where certain objects were darker than they should be.
    
  • Fixed some areas where parts of the map could visually disappear.
    
  • Fixed a spot where players could get stuck near a tome.
    
  • Fixed instances where the intro cutscene would not play.
    
  • Fixed a spot where players could get stuck on a tarp.
    
  • Fixed some issues with fire particles throughout the level.
    
  • Added a fence to block off an inaccessible spot that looked accessible.
    
  • Changed the water depth at the end area, near the exit.
    
  • Fixed a couple of LoD issues with some objects throughout the level.
    
  • Shrunk a misbehaving wall a bit.
    
  • Fixed an issue that caused there to be multiple copies of the same lantern running about.
    
  • Fixed a levitating pickup item.
    
  • Added some planks near the ship players can enter in the harbor.
    
  • Added some materials to make the escape a bit clearer.

The fourth and final part of the Karak Azgaraz saga - A Parting of the Waves - is out now on PC, free for all owners of Vermintide 2!

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2445960/Warhammer_Vermintide_2__Karak_Azgaraz/

Join our Heroes on their bonding exercise, as they try to work through their quarrels and chase the fleeing Skaven to a gloomy whaling village, ravaged by storm and something sinister…

In addition to the new map, this update sees the introduction of a brand new enemy: the Chaos Warrior with Shield! This new enemy will show up alongside in any mission with Rotblood's presence.

We’ll also be hosting a developer stream on April 12, at 16:15 CEST! Join Community Manager Catfish, Art Director Joseph, and Design Director Joakim as they do a deep dive on the A Parting of the Waves update!

Without further ado...

• Added a brand new map: A Parting of the Waves
  
  • This map is considered the 4th and final entry in the Karak Azgaraz saga for Vermintide 2.
    
  • Includes its own set of Okri's Challenges and rewards! New paintings and portrait frames!
• Added a new enemy type: Chaos Warrior with Shield. Sigmar preserve us...
  

• Outcast Engineer: Increased the Cooldown of the bomb generated by 'Ingenious Ordnance' to 180 seconds (up from 120 seconds).
  
• Outcast Engineer: Decreased the starting bombs from the 'Bombardier' talent to 2.

• Fixed an issue with Outcast Engineer talent 'Linked Compression Chambers' not increasing fire rate properly.
  
• Fixed an issue with Necromancer not being able to see her Chaos Wastes potions when checking her inventory.
  
• Fixed some spots where bots would get stuck in Trail of Treachery and Tower of Treachery.
  
• Fixed a tome not spawning in Khazhukan Kazakit-Ha!
  
• Fixed an issue with the 'Eyes of the Crowfather' Okri's achievement being impossible to complete. Something something Tzeentch ravens.
  
• Fixed the skulking sorcerer from that one Nurgle curse on Chaos Wastes breaking entirely when lifted by the Lifestaff.
  
• Fixed a placeholder localization line on the 'Quit to Menu' button.
  
• Fixed a host crash when a Kerillian bot spawns and is being attacked the same frame.
  
• Fixed rare host caused by a bot Warrior Priest with 'The Comet's Gift' talent being replaced by a human player while they have their ability active on another player.
  
• Fixed a rare crash while spectating.
  
• Fixed rare crash when local game receives info about a projectile, but the projectile or hit unit was already removed locally.
  
• Fixed a crash when someone hotjoins the same frame as a pinged unit is destroyed.
  
• Fixed a very rare crash related to player despawns.
  
• Fixed a bug in the launcher that sometimes caused the wrong GPU to be selected when multiple GPUs were available (mostly affecting laptops).
  

Nowa darmowa aktualizacja pojawi się na PC 11 kwietnia i będzie zawierała nową mapę wieńczącą historię Karak Azgaraz! Ta czwarta, finałowa mapa nie jest odtworzeniem misji z Vermintide 1, lecz oferuje całkiem nową, burzliwą misję!

Ci, którzy ostatnio śledzili Kroniki Lohnera, mogą już wiedzieć, że nasi bohaterowie nie są obecnie w najlepszych stosunkach. Po tym, jak Sienna nauczyła się nekromancji i zaczęła wskrzeszać zmarłych, aby lepiej walczyć z atakiem Skavenów i Chaosu, sytuacja stała się... napięta. Wśród naszych bohaterów powoli narastała nieufność. Dziś Piątka z Ubersreiku jest na skraju rozpadu.

I właśnie wtedy wesoły Kruber wpadł na fantastyczny pomysł! Piątka powinna zebrać się i wyruszyć w pogoń za statkami Skavenów uciekającymi po rozgromieniu w Khazukan Kazakit-Ha!
Zabijanie szczurów jest tym, co połączyło bohaterów, z pewnością zatem pomogłoby im się ponownie zjednoczyć.

Tyle że morze bywa zdradliwe. Gdy ścigają uciekających Skavenów do wioski wielorybniczej, sztorm przybiera na sile, fale ryczą, a światło przewodnie wioskowej latarni morskiej wydaje się bardziej złowieszcze niż pokrzepiające...

Cieszymy się, że 11 kwietnia będziecie mogli poznać ostatni rozdział historii Karak Azgaraz.

W „Rozejściu Fal” czyha więcej niebezpieczeństw niż tyko deszcz. Wraz z aktualizacją pojawi się zupełnie nowy typ wroga: Wojownik Chaosu uzbrojony w tarczę i buławę. To mocarny i trudny do pokonania przeciwnik. Potrzeba będzie potężnych ciosów, aby powalić tego żołnierza Chaosu, lub przebiegłego bohatera, który będzie w stanie ugodzić go w słaby punkt.

Wojownik Chaosu z Tarczą pojawi się na wszystkich mapach, na których występują Rotbloodzi.

Hope you had a great 6-year anniversary! My name is Joakim and I’m the Design Director for Vermintide 2. In this dev blog, I’ll provide an update on the Versus game mode by following up on the recent Open Alpha Test. Actually, we dubbed it the Great Open Alpha Test, or GOAT, as it was preceded by the Closed Alpha Test, or CAT. Tradition now mandates that we can’t have a next test before we decide on a good animal acronym. Suggestions are welcome.

First off, thank you everyone for playing and supporting the game! The GOAT was active at the same time as our Anniversary event, from March 7th to March 17th, with Versus being available from the (new-ish) PC main menu. The test saw some polishing and balancing, it featured a new Versus map - Righteous Stand - and supported our DLC careers.

All in all the test was successful, but unfortunately, it was quite unstable in the first days of play, requiring five hotfixes to resolve the stability issues.
After 6 years Vermintide 2 consists of a lot of moving parts, and as the previous test had been on a separate beta app the integration of the game mode into Vermintide simply proved trickier than anticipated. Apologies for all the inconvenience it caused for your Quiet Drinks - but hopefully this should have been one of the biggest production hurdles, and we expect things to roll out smoother now for any future binging in Helmgart.

With that, cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the rats of statistics!

The GOAT saw just shy of 24000 players fighting across 39529 rounds in 9345 games, compared to the 3600 players in CAT. The tweaks to balance and scoring were successful in reducing the number of games ending in draws on both maps - only 0.4% compared to nearly 7% in CAT. With Righteous Stand we also wanted to test a longer, three-section map over Screaming Bell’s two sections, and we saw match times averaging around 30 minutes toward the end of the test. Overall you seem to approve of both the map and the longer playtime compared to the previous test, and we’ll take that into consideration going forward.

The balance tweaks and the introduction of the DLC careers had a definite impact on the Hero meta, with the top ten most-played careers shifting slightly as a result:


Grenades and sniping weapons continue to be the core of the weapon arsenal against the Pactsworn; handguns, crossbows, longbows, and bolt staff are in the lead, while brace of pistols seemed to perform well, specifically for Saltzpyre.

From a Pactsworn perspective there was little change in terms of pick rate and longevity compared to the CAT: the Globadier still outperforms as a safely hidden damage dealer whilst the Warpfire Thrower could do with more buffing to increase usability and appeal. The Gutter Runner saw a slight uptick in picking, which may be a result of the general open layout of Righteous Stand, and the Packmaster players were probably having the times of their (short) lives, happily lurking by the cliff sections in the third set (or in the second set’s labyrinthine sauna spots).

With the GOAT being available to so many players we saw lots of good feedback on the forums and in our social channels, all of which is much appreciated. The survey made an appearance in the launcher as well and we got a great turnout of over 1500 responses. Huge thank you for all your responses and feedback, it makes all the difference going through your answers and tracking how things are improving over different tests.

Last time we did the survey, for CAT, we ended up with a majority of Legend and Cataclysm player responses. A goal for GOAT was to get more responses from Recruit, Veteran and Champion players, and/or players with <60h playtime, and we… mostly accomplished that. To our 8 Recruit players; thank you, but we need to make sure even more of you find your way to the survey next time.

In general, all of you seem to have a really good time in Versus, with 84% of you rating the game mode between 7-10 in “fun”, and with Cataclysm players being overwhelmingly the most positive to both Versus and playing Pactsworn. Looking at the mid-to-negative responses, the majority of these mention balancing and stability as the biggest issues we can improve on.

So what do the feature requests look like at this point? Well, nothing has really changed from CAT, with the most common requests being balancing the teams further (special shoutout to Warrior Priest and Life staff this time!), adding Pactsworn talents or abilities, designing a training area for Pactsworn and implementing both some form of matchmaking and private game options.

Oh, and also to add a playable boss. But we’re working on that, so don’t you worry.

We’re also aware of frustrations with getting a random Hero when joining into a game, as well as having too many Globadiers around at the same time, and we’ll look into these things as well. The next test, Animal Name Pending, will be a fun one I reckon.

Appearances aside, we are working on other things aside from Versus. For instance, we are finally working on a loadout system and hope to have that out together with the next test. But what about the Ubersreik 5, you may ask? What’s in store now that Karak Azgaraz is saved (again), Sienna has a penchant for the undead and Lohner is receiving unexpected guests? Whale, we can’t reveal anything about the future just yet, so you’ll just have to wait and sea what it holds for oar heroes.

But not for too long, we expect.

Thank you for these past 6 years and for your continued support. In a year we’ll meet up again to try to find that door to the Obese Megalodon (though if Queen Kerillian was a door - she’d be the best door, obviously).

Joakim, and the Vermintide team

Never one to pass up an opportunity to keep the old war funds flowing, I reckon it's time to take the Emporium of Wonders in a whole new direction, namely shoes, boots, sandals, sabots, and clogs - a festive festonery of footwear. I mean, some folk might say that an army marches on its stomach, but wiser heads know that it's the feet that make the magic happen. Gotta look after them, is what I'm saying ... for the right price. Now, who wants what?

Do you wonder to wander? Searching for the boot for your route? A shoe to break your blue? Dare not to leave your toes bare? Maybe Ladrielle has asked you to step up your footwear game?

Lohner’s Shoe Emporium of Wonders offers those wandering among us (looking at you, Kerillian) a place to keep your toes dry. For the price of a couple of shillings, your Hero can wear the most dashing and daring of sole-full accessories and receive Lohner’s grateful toe-ken of appreciation.

A store full of sole is walking your way.

Coming after the release of Bardin’s Songbook.

Heroes!

The Versus map will be changing back to Righteous Stand from 10:00 CET for the remainder of the Alpha Test. Just a reminder that the Alpha Test ends on 17th March 23:59.

Thank you to all those who have played so far!

Heroes!

Thank you for all your incredible feedback on the 'Righteous Stand' map so far, we will now be swapping map to 'Screaming Bell' from 13:30 CET 12th March - 10:00 CET 15th March. We will swap over gradually so it may take some time before you start to queue in to the 'Screaming Bell' map.

For those who played or watched during our Closed Alpha Test here are the changes we have made to 'Screaming Bell' for this test:

• Increased enemy presence (including enemies triggered by certain events)
  
• Reduced pickups / health
  
• Added a Reach objective stage after the Bell event (before the Bridge of Shadows)