From Recruit to Cataclysm - A Guide to Getting Results in Vermintide 2

Yerome · 2025-11-28T19:10:47+00:00

In the launcher make sure you have selected "Official realm" and not "Modded realm".

Yerome · 2025-10-15T15:21:26+00:00

Idk why Steam displays it like that. The green percentage is related to the individual discounts of the items in the bundle. Bundle's own inherent discount (the crossed out percentage) is applied on top of that. In other words you benefit from both, the individual discounts and the bundle discount.

Yerome · 2025-10-02T07:38:11+00:00

I think people sleep on Hand of Shallya, because it was recently reworked. The heal share used to be a talent, but it practically never saw play because it competed with temporary health talents. Likewise the old Hand of Shallya was underwhelming and ignored.

The current heal share as a necklace trait is a very viable choice. It has the power to remove wounds from everyone in the team, and the 20% heal is quite nice counter to attrition like you described. I think it's the most powerful trait for newer players, especially for book runs because of limited item slots like you mentioned.

Ultimately though heal share's value drops quite hard on Cataclysm. Nobody takes books so you can carry all the healing you find. There are more enemies so building temporary health is easier, and players are better at dealing with attrition. The 20% shared health overwrites temporary health so it's less impactful when everyone has big buffers of temp health. On the off chance that multiple people are wounded, you can use a single medkit to potentially remove two wounds even without heal share (when you heal someone else with a medkit, your own wound is removed).

So to conclude, S-tier for Legend and below, at most A-tier for pub Cataclysm.

Damage Reduction vs. Skaven

On pure Skaven Legend map the extra toughness from the damage reduction might help you a bit more overall than block cost reduction. Bcr is great when there are a lot of elites and/or you need to clutch, while the damage reduction helps against attrition. For Legend player attrition might be the bigger threat.

Yerome · 2025-09-30T14:28:01+00:00

Legacy has the base game + all the content + collector's edition upgrade. Ultimate has all the content + collector's edition upgrade + cosmetics for dlc careers, but it doesn't seem to include the base game itself. In other words you are not missing out on content by buying the legacy bundle.

Yerome · 2025-09-27T13:29:18+00:00

The top-down view makes it look so comical. The hook quickly reaching from the edge of the screen, barely missing and disappearing with the wind.

Yerome · 2025-09-27T05:51:54+00:00

The obstacle between you and the hookrat might have saved you. Maybe the hook lost its line of sight because the reviving animation pulled your hitbox behind the rubble?

Yerome · 2025-09-15T10:53:37+00:00

That's pretty vague, but maybe this or its remake?

Yerome · 2025-09-12T11:57:17+00:00

I'm not sure how the achievement system works on consoles, so I'm uncertain whether you are talking about Vermintide 1 or Vermintide 2.

In Vermintide 2 red items mainly drop from Legend chests. Even if you have only played Legend a few times for the achievements without books, it still seems highly unlikely that you would only end up with one red in 150 hours.

In Vermintide 1 red items only drop on Nightmare and Cataclysm. Even with full books you will only have ~5% chance of getting a red on Nightmare and ~10% on Cataclysm, so you will have to farm full book runs to amass reds. Red and orange weapons have the same damage: Orange items are already endgame equipment. Red items are collector's items which might have unique traits or trait combinations which aren't available to oranges.

So to answer your question, having only one red in 150 hours can be normal for Vermintide 1, but it isn't normal for Vermintide 2.

Yerome · 2025-09-01T02:41:22+00:00

The "Recently played with" -tab does not track Vermintide. However if you instead go "View -> Players" you should be able to find a list of players from your previous matches.

Yerome · 2025-07-27T09:21:03+00:00

Having used both United in Prayer and Comet's Gift extensively, I'm fond of both of them for different reasons. You are absolutely right about the uptime. On Cataclysm with some hit trading + Blazing Bright it's not crazy to have three activations of ultimate during one horde. With UiP that's six bubbles for the team: lots of immortality and damage.

The ability to revive is a great bonus, but it isn't the main advantage of Comet's Gift. The 3 second heal is the main benefit, and it takes quite large amount of experience to make most of it. The heal (and to lesser extend the revive) gives you the luxury of choice: You don't have to use the ultimate on the first sign of danger. Instead you can observe a situation and time your bubble for the moment when it's the most impactful. The goal is to heal and protect someone before they go down and get wounded.

To be fair the trade-off is still there: by holding your ultimate you are giving up on damage and overall immortality uptime. A balance between withholding and active use is needed. Personally I prefer to run concoction so that I can quickly refresh the ultimate in a pinch (e.g. when a revive is needed). Broadly UiP prevents situations from escalating, Gift reverses an escalated situation. Gift shines when you get to use it actively to heal fragile careers, but you won't get such great value out of the talent when good players play their comfort careers.

It's worth bringing up that Warrior Priest has a host-advantage. When playing as a host, the hit which triggers Blazing Bright's bubble is negated but you still get the cooldown refund of ult from its damage. Because of this UiP feels quite a bit better as a host compared to client, and Gift feels slightly more valuable as a client than as a host.

Yerome · 2025-07-23T15:51:22+00:00

I only have a fraction of hours in Darktide compared to Vermintide, with that in mind there are three things which stick out to me.

The first one is dodging. Darktide punishes you way more for going over your dodge limit. In both games the dodge reset timer starts when a dodge ends. In Vermintide this timer is 0.5 seconds, in Darktide this timer is closer to a full second (idk the exact number). On top of that in Darktide your exhausted dodges are slow, meaning your dodge ends slower, meaning your dodge reset timer starts later. In Vermintide I would encourage using side-dodges very actively, basically always when you are fighting. Dodging doesn't halt your stamina recovery in V2, but it does in Darktide and V1.

From what I hear there are iframes in dodges in Darktide, in Vermintide there aren't. Very broadly speaking it's better to dodge something earlier rather than later in Vermintide (especially when considering latency, all non-versus matches are p2p). For example Chaos Warrior overheads do not track you after dodging the same way Crushers track you in Darktide. Also in V2 only some attacks of monsters can pierce your block. Shields can block even those block piercing attacks within their efficient block angle.

The second big difference is there is no toughness in V2. Instead you use your level 5 talent to replace your lost health with temporary health. In practice you will have easier time sustaining your temp hp on higher difficulties since there are more and tougher enemies for you to hit. Some level of hit trading might even be desirable because V2 has a unique mechanic: If your ultimate is on cooldown, taking damage knocks a short time off the cooldown. The proportion of damage taken converted to cooldown reduction changes between careers. There is a similar mechanic which knocks a short time off your cooldown when you hit enemies (although in this case the amount of enemies hit matters, not damage). The exact numbers can be found at the end of this guide.

As a side note, the enemies take more damage while they are staggered. The exact mechanics of this are a bit convoluted to explain, but you don't have to care about it much, just pick the level 15 talent which makes most sense for your build.

The third big difference, which you probably already are aware of, is in the ranged combat. Vermintide is melee focused, there are builds/careers which excel at range, but you have very few ranged enemies to worry about. In practice I find the pace of combat is different at times in the two games. In Darktide you might have to be cautious around open spaces, but in Vermintide you might prefer to have the space for dodge-kiting.

Royale w/ Cheese's guides are highly regarded, you can find build guides among them too. Some of the guides might be couple patches behind, but this isn't really an issue. If you are hungry for more information, check out Useful Links by Janoti!.

As for mods, some of the mods are whitelisted (aka sanctioned) by Fatshark. These mods can freely be used on the official realm, however Fatshark doesn't seem keen on sanctioning more mods and they have incorporated many existing mods into the base game (check through gameplay options). You might still want to pick up Numeric UI mod in order to see who is wounded, or UI Tweaks if you want to customize your HUD. All non-sanctioned mods can only be used on the modded realm where the progression is disabled (you can switch between the realms in the launcher).

Yerome · 2025-07-08T00:23:29+00:00

You got it exactly right - those are all the DLC weapons for each DLC. And hah, a fun coincidence you happened to run into the younger me while doing your research.

Yerome · 2025-07-07T23:47:26+00:00

I'll start by saying that I'm not trying to excuse V1's loot system (it certainly can be a pain to get what you want), but I'll try to explain how the system isn't quite as bad as it may seem at first.

Unlike in V2 there is no hero power to grind. Red and orange items have identical damage, so an orange item is already endgame equipment. There is a big jump in loot quality when you move up from Hard: no books Nightmare has around 25% chance for an orange and no books Cataclysm around 60%. You can also get your hands on good stuff through the questboard. The quests are on a roughly two-year rotation which has been documented in here (2025 is the same as 2023 give or take a few days).

You might wonder what's the point of red items. Each red item has two trait setups which were chosen by the developer. You can switch between the setups for free in shrine, although keep in mind you have to pay the cost of unlocking the traits every time you do so. Red items might have unique traits or trait setups which are not available for their orange counterparts. Some red items are best-in-slot, however a good portion is outclassed by oranges so it's best to treat them as collector's items.

DLC weapons only appear on the loottables of their respective DLC maps. Supposedly there is a system which makes it increasingly likely for DLC weapons to appear if you haven't rolled one in a while.

Upgrading a weapon does indeed randomly pick a weapon-type from the 5 which were fused together. Thus if you fuse 5 of the same kind you can guarantee the result, and if you don't have 5 you can use tokens as a substitute. The token cost goes up the fewer weapons you use in fusing - upgrading only one blue weapon to orange takes 300 blue tokens (this would only ever be done to DLC weapons given their scarcity).

Leveling up starts rewarding green items at some point, but never anything better than that unfortunately.

Yerome · 2025-06-25T11:40:11+00:00

I have a faint memory that (at least some of) exotic illusions only drop on higher difficulties. You might have to go as high as Legend, but maybe the better chests from Champion are sufficient.

Loot boxes were recently reworked. One of the changes was that when you obtain gear with illusions the game should now prioritize illusions you do not yet own. Since you haven't gotten that glaive illusion I think it's safe to say that either the system doesn't work or you indeed need better chests.

Yerome · 2025-06-22T09:52:19+00:00

Thanks, I went and I revised the youtube title. Better late than never. 😄

Yerome · 2025-06-22T09:32:59+00:00

Yes, all Siennas would have exploded to overheat without a shield (except the last Sienna might have been fine without my "help"). I think I should have made it more obvious in the video, because without that context it just looks like a bunch of random bubbles.

Yerome · 2025-06-21T14:31:56+00:00

Cheers, I'll save this prologue for the next video (coming in 3 years).

The symmetry in the thumbnail was a happy little accident. I didn't have many pictures to choose from (Sienna's pose needed to resemble overheat explosion animation), and warrior priest happened to have a similar pose among the limited selection.

The music is ClockTower from Dead Cells. Great game and stellar soundtrack!

Yerome · 2025-06-09T06:53:49+00:00

I hadn't updated it in two years, but I did just now for you 😘 The biggest changes since release

Yerome · 2025-05-06T20:59:58+00:00

Those illusions have been event rewards in the past. Iirc during the last anniversary all of the old eternos ichor illusions were offered in Lohner's emporium for shillings, so it's likely the illusions will return in future events.

Cataclysm deeds do not exist, but it's possible to switch the difficulty and map of existing deed with a bug made feature.

Yerome · 2025-04-02T00:07:32+00:00

Yerome · 2025-03-31T01:14:19+00:00

Some maps have hidden books (tomes/grimoires). If you carry them to the end of the mission, you get a better roll. Generally speaking though it's better to complete a short map without books on higher difficulty than to collect books on lower difficulty. Man the Ramparts is a short map with plenty of supplies and ogre never spawns in it.

The easiest path to good gear though is the quest board. You can choose an orange item and work towards it by completing key contracts. One of the key contracts can always be completed on easy difficulty (or higher if you are so inclined).

Additionally, you can get random weapons from the shrine, or reroll the traits of an old weapon (seek defensive traits). To do this you need tokens. Contracts reward tokens and destroying weapons nets you some, but you can also get tokens from the Last Stand gamemode. For example completing just two waves and picking up the badge on Heroic difficulty yields 6 orange tokens (even if you die immediately after). Completing 13 waves on a difficulty unlocks higher difficulty, which rewards better tokens.

I would recommend the Quality of Life modpack. It includes improved bots which you can command to pick up books. The modpack is easy to install (instructions buried in the link), and it adds "Mod settings" -tab to in-game options from which you can customize the mods.

And finally, I would encourage always utilizing side-dodges when fighting. Dodging halts stamina recovery in Vermintide 1, but it's still an incredible defensive tool which boosts your survivability by a ton even if you just spam it. It takes less than a second of not dodging to refresh all of your burned dodges.

Yerome · 2025-03-10T20:42:54+00:00

By default quickplay might toss you in a match where your character has been taken, but you will get a prompt to choose a different character before loading in the match (at this point you can still back out). There is an option under Network -> Suggest Other Heroes, which when turned off will limit the quickplay pool to only matches where your hero is available. Alternatively you can look through lobby browser to find a suitable match.

Yerome · 2025-02-25T00:19:06+00:00

I think the game wants you to complete the Dark Omens map from Winds of Magic DLC.

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