Impressions from Karak Azgaraz

[Kantid]

I didn't like the first location. The fog effects were terribly annoying (despite the fact that lowering the graphics did not help). It was still tolerable in the brewery. But the last stage just pissed me off. Despite the fact that I went to the veteran difficulty . The design of the room is terrible. I want to note that the game design, not the style. It's very easy to get lost in this haze at first. The corridors are terribly similar to one another. It is difficult for me to coordinate actions with other people, as it is difficult to describe what and where to be. There are no normal landmarks. And in the end, I ran for a few minutes, not understanding where I had to find the damn elevator. Disgusting stage.

The second location. At first, very good one. Beautiful fortresses. Impressive! But in the end again some kind of hack. You throw a cart with explosives into the pit. And the game writes to you "No, you haven't throw it off". I almost missed a phrase from the characters that still needs to be set on fire. I want to note that, again, the key actions of the event are disgustingly given to the player. Well, I set fire to the cart and run away in the given time. I'm waiting for the fireworks. Instead of something impressive, some kind of pffff and that's it. And the game says get out of here! From where? Where to? I'm going down into the pit. Maybe something was blown through there by an explosion? No. Everything is the same and for some reason the cart with explosives, which was supposed to bring everything down / incinerate, is unharmed and stands still. I start circling the arena again, until my character sad "We're going right".

The third location is generally good. Although it does not look so impressive against the background of the previous one.

As a result, a good adventure. And in general, very beautiful locations. Although I was unpleasantly surprised by strange solutions (I would even say flaws) in the design of levels and events.

[Ol'Chum]

ok

[ZZZZZ]

the screen effects should indeed get adjusted.. I went down once and the light-grey screen effect of wounded status mixing with the location effects turned my screen almost white in the brewery which resulted in eye melting of both me and my character (my character didnt survive)

[JagdPanzer IV]

Your problems with the first stage sound like skill issue. i had no issues navigating, since all paths lead to the same place anyway. And the fog is supposed to be an obstacle, just like the complete darkness on bogenhafen and the troll mine.
I agree on the explosion part, absolutely disappointing fart with no fireball, no cave collapse, no effect on the stage whatsoever. the VT1 version of that area got deformed by an earthquake after you completed the event so this version is a downgrade.
I did have the game crash on the mission of mercy end elevator, but only once. the other two maps had no issue. Theyre snow maps and are much more optimized than the trail of treachery one.
Overall i give it an 8/10 m8.

[Pulkmees]

End event of mercy is more annoying that Engines of War and Tower or treachery.
Why reuse this godawful gimmick again ?
Even Old Haunts is better, the damn heads don't blow up at least.
Yes I know you can drag the damn barrels from previous parts of the map to the end, but who does that every time they play this map ?

You have a way to get to the second floor by lowering the elevator first, but the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
way there is full of small ledges/boxes that are impossible to navigate fast if everything is attacking you.
So damn annoying to jump. Everything that you think your character can jump over, they can't. ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ invisible ledges. Pisses me off to no end. Same ♥♥♥♥ in Fortunes of War too.

Horrible assassin spawns too by the way. They just appear from the sky and smoke bomb you to death. Pathing nightmare with them.

One of the barrel spots is also really bad. You have to drop it from the second floor into it, but it can get stuck at the edges.

[LoveTruffle]

Bots have a hard time navigating Mercy, it took a minute to get through the ending with the endless stream of stunt rats and specials without other players. The last barrel also got stuck up high and I had to fight my way to an awkward angle to shoot it so it would explode and respawn. Thankfully it fell all the way down the second time.

[Fireiznotkool]

Originally posted by LoveTruffle:

Bots have a hard time navigating Mercy, it took a minute to get through the ending with the endless stream of stunt rats and specials without other players. The last barrel also got stuck up high and I had to fight my way to an awkward angle to shoot it so it would explode and respawn. Thankfully it fell all the way down the second time.

Yeah that barrel took a few attempts to destroy thanks to the invis walls you cant shoot through

[3arpbl3y]

finished first (first try) and second(5 tries) map at cata. your problems are far-fetched.
but last event at second map is too easy.

[BILLY HAIRYNGTON (=^.^=)]

yeah the snow areas should be more polished. fps drops

[Randy Marsh]

i didnt even notice the fog lol

[Olde]

V1 player here with lots of experience of these maps from the first game. My impressions: Mission of Mercy (Khazid Kro) is the worst of the group. The part with the brewery is fine, but the finale needs some real work. The scaffolding is hard to make sense of, the barrels sometimes don't fall all the way down, it's not always clear where to take the barrels, and the jump to get up to the scaffolding from the central area needs to be more accessible. It may be better now that the barrels don't explode on a time limit, but the upper scaffolding could be streamlined or the flood of rats could be toned down because it was extreme. That and we also crashed after we fell through the lift. Upon replaying solo I didn't fall.

I have no complaints about the second or third missions. They're fun and pretty accurate to the original maps; in the slight ways they deviate, the changes made are interesting. I'll echo the previous comment that it's not exactly clear how far you have to run away from the explosion in Grudge, and if you never played The Cursed Rune I can see where you might have issues seeing how to escape. Also the names of the last two missions are pretty bad, the last map's being totally ridiculous and no one will ever correctly type it out. They'd probably be better as Cursed Rune or Chain of Fire tbh.

Although Castle Drachenfels was probably the best single Vermintide 1 DLC map, the Karak Azgaraz DLC was a contender for the best DLC because of the consistently high standard across all three maps (Summoner's Peak and the torch section of Dungeons really brought the Drachenfels DLC down). Are we going to see something from the Reik or Stromdorf? After all, there was that little River Reik tease on April Fool's a while ago. Otherwise, it seems as though porting these maps isn't as hard as was initially claimed. After Sienna's fourth class, any of the longer V1 maps (The Enemy Below, The Wizard's Tower, Supply & Demand, Courier, Reaching Out, or even shorter maps like Smuggler's Run and Waterfront) would be welcome additions as well.

[Wundsaltz]

Originally posted by Kantid:

I didn't like the first location. The fog effects were terribly annoying (despite the fact that lowering the graphics did not help).

I don't know what you're talking about. Therefore I'm pretty sure you can resolve this problem by adjusting your settings. Is fog quality set to lowest already? I suspect this might be the culprit here - iirc this also really helps to enhance visibility in dark map sections and to spot blightstormers in the distance.

[Swanky]

They're good maps overall, I like them.

Map 1
Probably the worst of the 3. Looks very basic and bland in many places and the finale is way too dense.
- many rooms look very basic / cubic or bland due to missing lighting or decor
- final encounter feels overtuned, and the barrels can end up on 1st or second floor
- barrel can get stuck in geometry in one of the barrel destinations (where you have to throw it down in the hole)

Map 2
This map has some stunning vistas and both encounters feel great. Well varied map with a great feeling to it.
- fell through the floor on one of the stairs near the bomb cart
- on the way up the hidden path one of the railings can be seen through
- can get out of bounds in the small cave system on the way to the finale
- quest marker doesn't update properly to set to ignite and escape objectives after pushing the cart into the hole (have to get very close to trigger instead of updating automatically like in vanilla maps)
- bomb explosion feels very basic and does not lock off the cave system. Additionally, you can get stuck behind the Skaven drill on the right (potential softlock).

Map 3:
Finding all tomes and grimoires before the bridge got me, and basically everything after is one big encounter right up to the escape. It's a bit shorter than the other maps but no less intense. Love the trading post with the interiors.
- quest markers don't update correctly for the ignite and escape the hill objectives

[Felix]

I played every mission in the expansion. I have 300 hours in the game and I love this game, but I have never seen such raw content in the game. Each mission has strong balance issues, bugs, non-intuitive paths from developers that take a lot of time to find (and some cannot be found at all due to bugs), and etc.

[Khal'cynee]

i have done the first one in legend, the final event was busted lmao
special spawned x3, each 10 second we saw 3 gatling or 3 firethrower poping from nowhere, a lots of fun...
tryied the second one, 3 of use fall in a glitch, the 4th was a bot, we tryied to escape, but after few minutes of spam jump everywhere, host closed lobby, i closed the game, hope for some fix...

[JagdPanzer IV]

All the issues about the end event in mission of mercy could be avoided if you take a few seconds to survey the room before starting the event. i bet every single one of you complaining about it just rushed into the room and immediately started the event. I know its true because 90% of the randoms i play with do it.