With 10 million players picking up Warhammer: Vermintide 2 during the recent free to play event, there are now many beginners playing the game.
With that in mind, we thought it would be helpful to share some tips for new players to help you along.
1 - Understanding Gear Progression
When you first start playing the game, you will have a full set of basic weapons and jewellery, each having 5 power. Power is the number used by the game to determine the base damage of your attacks. You can get up to 300 from your currently equipped items (the game takes the average of all five items), and another 350 from your character level (you gain 10 power per level, up to level 35). This means in normal game modes, you cap out at 650 Hero Power.
Make sure to keep opening the boxes you earn from leveling up and finishing levels, these contain three random items, and they will generally be of a slightly higher quality than what you currently have equipped. In the beginning you shouldn't worry too much about Traits and Properties on the items, just keep equipping the ones that are higher in power than what you already have, until you hit 300 power on all of your item slots.
Also keep in mind that reward boxes from Recruit difficulty only give weapons up to 100 power, so it's a good idea to step up to Veteran and above fairly early.
Remember to open your Spoils of War
2 - Always Stick Together
There's some pretty mean code behind the scenes in Vermintide 2 - when a player is by themselves, the AI Director will try to capitalize on this by spawning several special enemies near the isolated player - i.e. assassins, packmasters and leeches.
Even without that detail, you should avoid leaving your team as much as possible. Things can go downhill very suddenly in this game and your best chance of dealing with whatever the Pactsworn can throw at you is as a team of four, rather than four isolated individuals.
3 - Don't Wait Too Long to Try Champion
Champion difficulty is the point at which the game stops holding your hand, and things get a little bit harder. While it's not a good idea to jump into it when you're really new to the game, if you spend too long on Recruit and Veteran difficulty you can pick up some bad habits. This is because the damage you receive from enemy attacks on those difficulties is very low, friendly fire is disabled, and you get multiple revives before needing to heal.
Friendly Fire becomes active on Champion difficulty
In Champion and above these helpful boons are no longer in play, so when you feel comfortable on Veteran it's definitely worth making the jump up to Champion.
4 - Tomes and Grimoires
Tomes and Grimoires are books hidden in pre-determined locations throughout the level. They always spawn in the same place, so you can learn the locations of them for each level. But what's the point in that?
At the end of the level, the quality of loot you receive will be determined from several factors. The best way of increasing the quality is to collect all three Tomes and both Grimoires in the level. This doesn't matter much when you're new to the game, but once you have hit 300 Power on your items, you'll probably want to get better quality items.
The only trouble with getting the books is that they put you at a disadvantage. You can't carry a Tome and a Healing item at the same time, however you can temporarily drop a Tome in order to drink a potion, and then pick it up again.
Grimoires are a bit different - these take up the item slot used for Strength, Concentration and Speed potions. When you pick a Grimoire up, the max health of the entire party is reduced by 33% (this effect can be lessened with the Curse Resistance property). If you drop the Grimoire (or the Grimoire carrier dies) then it is lost for the rest of the level. For this reason, it's generally a good idea for tankier classes like the Ironbreaker, Handmaiden or Foot Knight to pick up the Grimoires where possible.
Tomes and Grimoires help to improve loot quality
5 - Don't Hoard Supplies
If you come at Vermintide 2 from an RPG background, it's often second nature to save potions and bombs, only using them in the most dire emergency (when it's often too late for them to save you anyway). The same can apply for your Career ability too, if it has a long cooldown you might be tempted to hold it back most of the time.
There's generally no need to do this, supplies aren't super rare most of the time, and using them to quickly deal with dangerous enemies can prevent a bad situation from developing. In short, using your supplies to prevent a problem is better than using them to cure one.
Don't be afraid to use Potions and Bombs
6 - Give Healing to Who Needs it Most
This point adds a bit of counter-balance to the previous one. You shouldn't be reluctant to use healing, but there's a couple of things that are worth keeping in mind.
It's important to know that when a player has been downed and subsequently revived, they will be "wounded" until they get healed, which means their health is at zero, and they are relying on temporary health in order to survive. If they get knocked down again while wounded, they'll be put out of action and need to be rescued later in the level. Having a player out of the picture can be the difference between success and failure in tough situations, so always try to keep an eye out for players who are wounded - they should get priority for health potions and medical supplies.
A good priority for healing would look like this:
- Wounded players who are carrying a Grimoire
- Wounded players without a Grimoire
- Low HP players with a Grimoire
- Low HP players without a Grimoire
Another trick to do with healing is knowing how Medical Supplies work - if a wounded player uses them to heal another player who is also wounded, only the target player will get HP, but both players will have their wounds cleared. This is a useful trick to use if lots of players are wounded but healing supplies are scarce.
7 - Temporary Health is a Godsend
For me, the most transformative thing was when I started understanding how Temporary Health (THP) works, and how to maximize it. It has to be said that some classes are better than others at generating THP, either due their talents or the weapons they have available, but making sure you have chosen the correct THP talent for the weapons you're using will make you much more durable.
Are you smashing enemies around with big hammers? Pick the talent that gives THP from stagger. Are you using a high damage single target weapon? Use the one that gives THP from slain enemies.
Each class has a choice between two THP talents or healshare (from the very first talent choice you unlock at level 5). I don't recommend choosing healshare when you are new to the game - it's a trap a lot of well-meaning new players fall into because they want to help their team out, but having no temporary health generation will make your time much harder.
Often the best way to help your team is to stay alive and keep swinging, and having good THP will allow you to do that.
Where to find your Temporary Health talents in Vermintide 2
8 - Get Some Block Cost Reduction
When you're very new, you don't need to worry too much about this. But when you take the jump up to Champion, it's worth thinking about it more. It's pretty much standard on higher difficulties to always have the Reduce Block Cost property on your necklace.
If you are a frontline (melee focused) role, then its also worth considering putting it on your melee weapon as well, for a total of 66% block cost reduction (if the items are of red quality).
Sometimes you just need to hold block for a few seconds if you find yourself in a really tough situation, or to finish reviving somebody. In these situations there's nothing worse than having your block broken and getting stun locked.
If you have no block cost reduction, it only takes one heavy attack from an elite enemy to deplete all of your stamina, and on higher difficulties (Champion and above) this can be very bad news.
9 - Learn the Art of the Dodge
While blocking is important, most of the time you're better off dodging. Seriously, you can do it all the time. Learn the attack patterns of Elite enemies and bosses and dodge their heavy attacks while winding up a swing of your own. Dodge dance in a horde to stop the smaller enemies from tracking you effectively.
You can dodge Leeches, Assassins and Packmasters when they try to grab you, but this does take some practice.
Dodging heavy attacks is important for staying alive
It costs no stamina and as long as you're not totally surrounded, it's a great way of getting out of a tight spot. There is a limit to effective dodging - if you spam it more than a couple of times in a very short span of time then your dodge distance will be greatly reduced. That's why it's an art, you don't want to spam it, but with enough practice you can literally avoid about 90% of damage with perfectly timed dodges, which starts to turn you into the kind of player who routinely saves the run from disaster when everything goes wrong.
When you are learning the timings for dodging various enemy attacks, I recommend holding block as a backup, that way you don't get punished too hard for making a mistake. Eventually you will build enough skill and confidence to rely on your dodging skills in almost all situations.
10 - Increase your FOV
This might not be something that everyone likes, but I do recommend at least trying it. Going into your game's Video settings and increasing the Field of View allows you to see a lot more of what's going on around you, meaning you're less likely to be caught by surprise.
For me personally, after increasing it there's no way I could go back to playing at the default setting for this.
You can increase Field of View in the Video settings menu
We hope you enjoyed this guide for Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and found it useful!
