Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide

So at level 34(!) I finally learned how to do a heavy attack.

Just hold down the mouse button until it executes, right? That’s what I had always done and the result was that I never used heavy attacks because they took forever. But I learned you only have to hold down the mouse button for about half a second to trigger the heavy attack. This results in a heavy attack that’s about three times faster than just holding down the button.

It’s completely changed the way I play the game. I love using the Mercenary with a big 2H sword and cleaving rats left and right. The problem is I get carried away and end up taking a lot more damage than I should. Most swords (and, oddly, shields) have a large cleave as their heavy attack.

Got my first exotic, but it’s crap. A trinket that reduces respawn time by 50%. Here’s an idea – how about I not die in the first place? Good for my bots, maybe. Bots take the gear of the host’s characters, so always equip your characters with your best gear even if you’re not playing them.

You are playing this with bots only? And reached level 34? Thats nice - I havent played since launch, since I had a few bad groups (Only wanting to use glitching and so on), but if bots actually are viable…?

While I’m not sure that longer right mouse holds for the charge attack don’t do more damage, I do know that any right mouse duration counts as a “charged attack”. I primarily use the hold for timing a swing. For example, if I am running with the Zwiehander I tend to back step while holding to avoid attack animations, then step in to cleave as the timer expires on the charge hold. In the case of the rapier I always quick stutter charge attack for quick firing “charge” attacks so I can get a fast head shot (special ability) and armor pierce at approaching Skaven. Only when a hoard of slaves run in do I left click for the quick and wide horizontal rapier swing (at head height of course for cleaving head shots). Zwiehander rarely seems to benefit from left click and it’s mostly about timing the hold of right click according to the situation while swaping to pistols with a qucick press of Q when targets are out of range.

Basically “charge attack” is a glorified alternate attack that doesn’t take up the all important block or push button. It has nothing to do with duration (except when it does, such as the Bright Wizard), but rather gives variable speed timing to the four-actions-two-buttons combat system that Vermintide has.

Would anyone want to kill some Vermin in like 3 hours? 9pm eastern? :)

You can still cheese Horn, sadly. There’s a wooden beam holding up the horn that you can crouch on and the rats can’t figure out how to get to you. They just run around aimlessly. The typical cheese strat is for three people to hang out in the ammo room while one blows the horn and hops on the beam. You can also have all four players on the beam but this is riskier as you can easily knock each other off.

I also just found out you can cheese Black Powder, which regrettably is how I completed my first Cataclysm run. One person drops down and runs across to the far side near the boat, runs to the top level and hops on top of a roof where, again, the rats can’t get to them. As soon as they get there and establish aggro, the rest of the team drops down and grabs the barrels (after previously figuring out who’s going where) and dumps them in the middle. Once all the barrels are in the middle it should be time wave of rats to come. There’s a hut with a little back alley on the first floor of the “near” side that’s a good place to fight. After the rats are dead, run out and load up the boat, being careful to hug the wooden railing so as not to aggro the rats that are on the person still cheesing on the roof.

Having said that, it remains stupidly hard. A hit from a rat will take off 40% of your health, and if the cheeser encounters a special, you’re done. If a special attacks the other three players who are still waiting to drop down, it has a pretty good chance of wiping the other three players, as it likes to come with a Stormvermin. We did 6-7 tries and only succeeded once.

I did see a “red” helmet at the top of the loot listing.

I sure feels like there is a “water always finds a way” exploit whack a mole going on in Vermintide. Every time the developers plug a cheese strategy, the players find and exploit another one. It sort of reminds me of my off and on times with Destiny. But worse. I’m not sure if it’s the extreme player focus on loot and a nasty personal skill climb to get there legitimately, or if there are just too many map geometry hiccups that break enemy path finding.

The real pain of the thing though is that once the new cheese is found everyone runs to it like rats :). It starts to be difficult for the matchmaking to find a group or a map that is not following the current meta-exploitation. It is harder yet to not be yelled at for “doing it wrong” if you don’t want to play along. This lasts a few days, then a patch fixes it, then a new exploit is found after a glorious yet short lived time of legitimate runs. I’m no programmer, but I am starting to wish that rather than trying to spackel all the map issues that they just put an MMO styled protective leash on critters, objectives, or timers once the enemy path finding hits a loop.

Yeah, I’m starting to think that this “meta-strategy” craze is having a detrimental impact on gaming. A large portion of players seem to have lost the joy of pure unaided exploration in a game but now need to meticulously comb through patch notes and data mine game files. I don’t remember it as much with L4D back in the day.

-Todd

Ugh, what a crap weekend. Lucky if I saw a 30% success rate over 30+ missions. Lag, shitty teams, and on the rare occasions I find a good team? The Host crashes. Host crashes seem to be way higher than they were before. Personally I only saw one crash this weekend, which suggests the buggy code is in Host code.

Oh, and the icing on the cake was Fatshark’s servers going down for 15 minutes. Ruined another good run.

Had a play on hard with the witch which is a class I’m wasn’t familiar with. We played Magnus horn and at the end the team choose to cheese and stand on that beam where the rats can’t reach. I normally don’t like these sort of thing but didn’t want to spoil it for the others. Anyway I don’t know if I’d been able to survive the final onslaught otherwise. Its really hard to manage the witch’s health.

Oh, and I rolled a shitty level 1 item. Serves me right for cheating :)

So after that rant I started a game as host, zero lag, became awesome again, and went 4-0.

Host ftw.

So I guess the problem wasn’t the host code?

That or I got lucky?

Hard to tell. You could have been unlucky and got onto a whole lot of laggy hosters earlier?

So far I’ve had a pretty happy existence hosting private games of 1 :)

The first DLC has been announced, and it’s free!

“We couldn’t be happier to reach 300,000 sales of Vermintide so far and the player reception and feedback, has left us humbled more than anything,” said Martin Wahlund, CEO of Fatshark. “I’m super excited to announce that Sigmar’s Blessing will be free for all current and future Vermintide players, plus, going forward, Vermintide will offer alternating free and paid DLC”.

The free DLC will introduce a number of new features including player control of what loot is dropped in-game and a new altar in the Inn, that provides ways of sacrificing existing loot to improve players arsenal. In addition to this, the DLC will include completely new traits added to the loot tables and new, unique weapon drops in the “red” loot class for each of the 40 weapon types in Vermintide. Each red weapon features a set trait combination, taking top tier gameplay to a new level.

Aside from this first DLC, Fatshark is separately planning on adding a private mode, for players wanting the challenge o facing off against the Skaven alone! Realism mode is also on the way, removing the game HUD, crosshairs and more to create a truly immersive and authentic (and hardcore!) experience for particularly skilled Vermintide fans. Last but not least, Fatshark will be adding a survival mode to the game, allowing players to take on endless waves of ever-increasing enemies. How long will you be able to last against the deadly Skaven hordes?

Patch 1.0.2 is now live!

You know the way the witch works, right? You don’t actually get hurt by having the heat meter go above the bracketed area. You only get hurt if you try to vent heat when it is above the bracketed area. That’s when you take damage from it. If you just let it cool down on its own, you don’t get hurt. (Of course, if you run the heat meter all the way around the full semi-circle, then you just explode.)

So use the fireball and other abilities to your heart’s content, just switch to your melee weapon for a while when it gets close to making you explode, and let it cool down passively. (Or, you can also cool down without doing damage if your heat is still inside the smaller bracketed area.)

I only say this because it is kind of counter-intuitive. A lot of people assume they are taking damage when the heat meter goes past the bracketed area. They then vent to cool down to ostensibly avoid taking damage from being overheated, but actually cause the damage they are trying to avoid. :)

I did figure that out but - I seems that fireballs also raise your hay meter, and I think that cool down is slower with the sword equipped.

Am I missing the beef in the free DLC? It seems to just be any ol’ patch that addresses community outcry over loot progression. I love the game, and will be glad to hand over money for tangible content, but this seems like a lot of smoke and spin. Or am I missing something?

They are adding Private, Realism, and Survival modes with the free DLC.

Also I think legendary weapons are in there as well.