Darktide Archivum

Depths of the Damned: Balance Preview

Fatshark's preview of the "Depths of the Damned" free update for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide: talent tree reworks across all seven classes, a broad weapons pass, and a big nerf to Golden Toughness (its spillover immunity is removed) to make combat damage more consistent.

The talent tree changes lean on a common pattern across Ogryn, Zealot, Psyker, and Veteran: small flat stat nodes for movement speed, reload speed, toughness, and damage percentages are getting trimmed out of the tree, with the strongest of those effects folded into new baseline "Iconic" passives everyone gets for free. Ogryn's Towering Presence and Zealot's Blood Redemption both move to Iconic this way, and Veteran and Zealot each pick up a brand new Iconic passive (Guardsman and a reworked Until Death, respectively) instead of needing to path toward the old effect.

The weapons pass centers on melee. Thunder Hammers get a full rework with new stacking melee strength while charging and a longer Shock and Awe duration, Combat Axes can now be swung mid-sprint, and the "On Perfect Block" family of blessings (Counterattack, Energy Transfer, Lightning Reflexes) triggers on any block instead of requiring frame-perfect timing. The Relic Blade's Sprint Heavy Stab attack loses about 20% of its baseline damage in exchange for a new stacking strength bonus, and an attack-speed exploit affecting several weapon families is getting closed.

On the enemy side, several sources of sudden, hard-to-avoid burst damage are getting toned down alongside the Golden Toughness change: poxburster explosions now scale with distance instead of dealing full damage anywhere in range, sniper spillover damage is cut in half, and both the Ogryn Crusher's targeting and the Scab Mauler's attack frequency are tuned to back off players who are already getting overwhelmed.

• Ogryn: Base Toughness 75 to 125, Dominate rending 10% to 15%, Keep Shooting reload speed 15% to 20%, Indomitable cooldown 30s to 25s.
• Zealot: Base Toughness 100 to 125, Until Death reworked into a Core Keystone granting an Unkillable status, Unseen Blade damage 15% to 20%.
• Psyker: Base Critical Chance 7.5% to 10%, Psykinetic's Aura now affects the user only, Perilous Combustion stacks 3 to 2.
• Veteran: New Guardsman passive (+25% ranged damage), Duck and Dive now also grants movement speed, Voice of Command toughness bonus 50 to 75.

As with any preview, treat the numbers below as a snapshot of where the update currently stands rather than a final patch note; Fatshark has historically tuned individual values between a preview thread and release. Full class-by-class buff and nerf breakdown, chart, and per-item list load below.

Update History

• Skitarii Class Launch (Patch 1.12.0) — June 23, 2026: 7th playable class, Skitarius Alpha Primus, with the game's first non-linear (center-out) talent tree.
• Hive Scum Class Launch — December 2, 2025: 6th playable class, dual-wielding weapons and custom combat stimulants.
• Bound by Duty — September 23, 2025: Veteran, Zealot, and Psyker talent trees reworked into a more interconnected layout; new arena and Mortis Trials content.
• Battle for Tertium: Arbites Class Launch — June 23, 2025: 5th playable class, Arbites/Arbitrator, with a Cyber-Mastiff companion.
• Nightmares & Visions (Patch 1.7.0) — March 25, 2025: new Mortis Trials mode; Ogryn talent tree reworked.
• Grim Protocols — December 3, 2024: new Havoc mode, a 40-level escalating endgame difficulty ladder.
• Unlocked & Loaded — September 25, 2024: itemization overhaul (Mastery and Power systems replace RNG-heavy progression), new Operations mission type, Party Finder.
• Secrets of the Machine God — June 25, 2024: new mission and weapons, including the Ogryn's first two-handed melee weapon.
• Patch #13: Class Overhaul — October 3, 2023: the node-graph talent tree system as it exists today replaces the original level-up perk picks.
• Patch #12: Into the Maelstrom — August 8, 2023: Maelstrom missions, Auric-difficulty Operations, account-wide currency wallet.
• Patch #4: Blessings of the Omnissiah — February 22, 2023: the game's first proper crafting system.
• Darktide Launch — November 30, 2022: four playable classes (Veteran, Zealot, Psyker, Ogryn), six zones, 15 missions.

21 Tips From ~4,000 Hours

Field notes from a lot of missions, organized by topic. Nothing here is required reading, but it'll save you some hard-earned lessons.

Combat Fundamentals

• Audio cues beat visual cues. When things get hectic, hearing a threat before you see it is what lets you dodge or block in time. Cut unnecessary vox chatter and mute anyone obnoxious. A decent wireless headset (cheap ones on Amazon work fine) can dramatically improve your gameplay.
• Dodging and blocking are the core survival skills. Practice them liberally: there's a mod that shows a counter of how many dodges you have left. Push-blocking a burster that's about to bomb your team is often your single highest priority action.
• Sliding beats meleeing a sniper. If you have to close on a sniper that's zeroed in on you, sliding at them makes you a much harder target to hit.
• Ogryns can be moving cover. If line of sight is a problem, mark targets and use a weapon that punches through allies: plasma gun, pistol, helbore, etc. "Ogryn tanking" is a real thing with a high-caliber weapon, and a past balance patch let all weapons cleave through allies, so this works even more broadly now.
• Know your priority targets. Roughly most to least dangerous: Demonhosts (avoid entirely), poxbursters, flamers, bombers, snipers, bulwarks, ragers, beasts of Nurgle, trappers, dreg gunners, tox flamers, scab gunners, chaos spawn, dreg/scab shotgunners, crushers, maulers, mutants, plague ogryns, hounds, then the horde itself.
• Push-block hounds. It's an easy, reliable way to stop a hound from jumping you.
• Check your surroundings before shooting a poxburster, or you'll injure your own teammates in the blast.
• Push-block bursters and dodge back for a clean kill. This keeps everyone safe and works even in the middle of a horde.
• Mind ledges near barrels and boss knockback attacks. Getting blasted over a ledge and picked off alone is one of the worst ways to go.

Team Play & Positioning

• Don't just sprint to a downed teammate. Secure your area and theirs first, or you'll be the second one down. Hold block while being revived, and dodge immediately if you're getting surrounded. Sometimes the right call is to leave them and come back for them once it's safer. About half of deaths are doing something dumb yourself; the other half are trying to rescue someone who did.
• Find better teammates on the official Warhammer Discord: join or create a strike team there. You get open comms and players who'll happily walk you through build design. Public games have been a bit more miss than hit lately.
• Distance and positioning are life or death. Don't run into the open against a wall of gunners; don't hole up in a one-exit room against a wave of crushers. Know when to fight and when to fall back toward your team for fire support: a big horde funneled down a narrow hallway or doorway is trivial to handle.
• Learn the levels. Knowing where objectives are and staying in coherency has real payoffs: toughness regen, or that last-second Veteran shout that saves your life.
• Build some diversity into your team's loadout. You want coverage for hordes, bosses, specialists, sniping, and support/protection, not four people building the same thing.

Builds & Loadouts

• Learn your weapon's optimal attack chain. Look up the ideal melee combo for your character/weapon instead of just spamming light attacks all mission.
• Experiment with builds, but master one character first. Find what performs best for your playstyle before spreading yourself across every class. Tanner on YouTube is a solid starting resource if you don't know where to look.
• Example curio setup (run-and-gun Veteran / combat knife): toughness, stamina, and health as the main perk, then block efficiency (1 curio), sprint efficiency (1 curio), stamina regen (all 3), and combat ability regen (all 3). Mobility = survivability.

Etiquette & Learning

• Check teammates' ammo and health before grabbing pickups. Don't be the person who takes ammo or medkits someone else clearly needs more.
• Plasteel and diamantium are shared at mission end, so don't stress about not grabbing much, or get upset at teammates who scoop it up during the run.
• Died? Spectate the good players. Watch how experienced teammates move, prioritize targets, and engage. Warn them if you can see a dangerous group stacking up behind them.
• Play at or just above your skill level. Pushing yourself a little is good; going way above your level just hurts the team and doesn't help you either.

PC Mods Worth Knowing About

Quality-of-life mods that a lot of experienced players run. None of these are required to play well: they're mostly cosmetic/informational, and it's worth occasionally turning them all off just to experience the game without them (and with less information to process).

Getting Started: Installing Mods

Gameplay Info

HUD & Crosshairs

Quality of Life

Solo Play & Testing

The Tancred Bastion

Extraction from a prison barge docked at the spaceport.

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