Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide

No, you only get loot at the end of the mission, not during. They are tied to your characters. So when you loot a dwarf item while playing wizard the item goes to your dwarf automatically.

You can only exchange something in one of your slots for another item on the ground.

I’m really bad at this game. I tried the 1st mission with bots a few times and the farthest I got was the big square after we blew the gate. Then we met a squad of armoured rats and a ratlinger.

Ha ha, you will be playing with all white gear!

I look forward to continue playing this tonight and onward throughout the weekend (with my growing collection of green and blue items).

Seriously, if anyone likes Left 4 Dead, Warhammer fantasy, and/or the idea of a loot chase gives that gives reason for playing levels over and over, then this one is really worth looking at. It has a lot of polish and production value for an indie game. The melee focused combat turns the fairly calm shooting into hallways of approaching zombies of L4D into sheer terror as Skaven are in your face swarming you at all times. Said melee combat also gives a lot of subtle decision making such as choosing when to swing, when to charge swing, how long to charge swing, when to dodge, when to block, when to shove, how to aim your unique weapon’s arc, etc that really has me appreciating how much my improvement as a player matters more than gear. The AI director and random spawning makes each run feel much more unique than L4D ever did (possibly also owing to the melee focus).

For me, it’s just darn fun. Rampant, giggly, wild fun. I have played just shy of 20 hours in my week of the beta which only has 3 levels. I look forward to the rest of it tomorrow. I will buy every DLC. I will probably re-buy it if it comes to console. Best $27 spent in a while.

Oh, and I have blue and green items before launch… =p

I am just bad - I keep dying. I made it almost to the end of one game and then got captured and the game crashed. But I am having fun.

As one gains XP do you get to hold more items?

Experience levels are not what one would think. All they do is open up trinket slots or features (crafting) at certain levels or give you a free weapon. The only real value to levels I have seen so far is it gives me a quick heads up on how much experience (ha) a player has with the game.

Most of the advancement in the game (IMHO) is from just learning the game itself. It is a bit like Monster Hunter or Dark Souls in that sense. Learning and becoming proficient with the move sets in the combat system are a big deal. Loot adds minimal power boosts, but can aid with the random trait slots (blue weapon does just a hair more damage, but maybe it heals a tad, puts you in an attack speed frenzy some percent of the time, or adds more push when shoving). Maximizing inventory use (health, potions, bombs) is also critical. The trick is, outside of level geometry and main objectives, everything is random on each run. This means you really need to be on your toes and adaptive with the above.

You’re really summed up why the game is just so damn fun to play. It’s pure, visceral, giddy and wonderful mayhem. On top of that its just so easy to pick up and play. There’s no need to pore over rules, manuals or forums for strategies. You can jump right in the game as feel that you are contributing, as long as you work as a team and stay together. When the rat-swarm comes just keep you back to the wall or a buddy, don your raincoat, and swing away. It’s glorious.

The starting equipment isn’t particularly bad, either. You can definitely get through at least hard difficulty with the starting gear so long as you don’t have baddies, which is generally recommended since the loot table for higher difficulties is quite a bit better. In fact I’ve yet to find any equipment I want to swap out for the soldier or witch hunter. Soldier’s hammer and cannon-onna-stick and WH’s rapier and pistols akimbo are both super strong. And my other item swaps were just slight improvements. Like a hammer and shield for the dwarf instead of his starting axe and shield, since it’s a little slower, less damaging, but better knockback.

I was pretty leery on the loot drop system since I thought it was going to be something like Payday 2 which would drive me insane, but honestly it’s pretty good. I enjoy getting new stuff to mess with and none of it (Thus far) has felt massively more powerful than starting items.

Yeah… about that.

Why does the Witch Hunter’s melee weapon appear to have ammo? It says 16/0. I can’t figure out how to use it.

I’ve seen grandma Bright Wizard put a red reticle on the ground to aim some fiery bomb thing. How do they do that? I couldn’t figure out how. I’ve also ween a BW with a fiery sword. An item drop, I guess?

The witch hunter’s rapier has an offhand pistol. Default is mouse button 4 to fire it. Bomb thing is a different staff type, and fiery sword is an item drop.

One thing the loot in this game does do, is offer up variety in how you play. I love playing the Dwarf and the starting crossbow is really nice for picking off specials at range, but on a level up I got what is basically a double barrel shotgun. Switching them up, I can no longer easily snipe specials or headshot stormvermin, but I can blast the hell out of groups of rats and still pick off the weaker rats at a lesser but still decent range. One of my main suggestions is when you get a new weapon type, don’t discount it right off but at least take it through a run and give it a go.

Thanks. Any other characters have a “hidden” 3rd ability?

The dwarf ranger and the empire soldier have a shield.

I kid, I kid. For those that have not played yet crowd control is a huge deal on the higher difficulties, and the shield is king for this as it offers the most stamina. However most folks love to grab the 2H weapons for the dps and epeen end game stats (if they make it). I hope they add something like number of vermin knocked down or damage prevented to the end game screen to help offset this.

Generally (although this can greatly change given load out choices) it seems the characters break down as such:

Waywatcher: sustain ranged dps/ melee gap filler
Bright Wizard: burst ranged dps/ very good area ranged damage options (has a battletech/mechwarrior overheat mechanic)
Dwarf Ranger and Empire Soldier: crowd control/ melee hold the line type or 2H beat stick
Witch Hunter: Jack of all and master of none gap filler/ he can do all of the above but none of them as well/ player needs to be a nimble gap filler as needed

Oh, and the servers are down for an estimated hour as they get the retail client launched. giggles uncontrollably

Release is released

13.4G worth of brand new bytes coming to my PC.

Ha ha, all beta build progress was wiped!

-Tom

P.S. Probably not, but I figured I’d gloat just in case.

It wasn’t, but I’m still seeing beta bugs. Entering a level as just a pair of arms and stuck in spectator mode. Entering a level with a cursor on screen.

Made it to last level. It’s rather challenging. They definitely get harder as they go.

I was not aware this was leaving beta today! YAY!

Matchmaking seems to be broken. Sometimes you get grouped with the same party over and over. Sometimes you’ll be running with a bot for, like, over 30 minutes and no one joins.

Edit - random matchmaking, anyway.

I noticed that too. Even though there are a lot (Relatively speaking) of people playing it takes surprisingly long to fill up a lobby.