A very quickly made guide for the newcomers to Vermintide!
Tips and Concepts
All credit goes to Dedmosh!
Three basic newbie rules for Vermintide…
- Keep your head on a swivel (Make a habit of checking behind you and your team frequently in case an enemy is about to hit you. Even if it’s one hit from a weak enemy that damage will add up quickly)
- Stay with your team. Going off on your own is DEATH. Stay in twos at minimum, preferably everyone stays together all the time.
- Keep moving forwards. If you do not make enough forward progress the AI director will spawn hordes, specials, and even bosses. The odds of your completing the level significantly drop the longer it takes you to complete it. There’s only so much healing to go around. Speed is essential.
Combat
There are essentially two ways a team will be wiped in Vermintide.
First is through a sudden spike in difficulty where the AI director spawns in 6 specials amongst a horde with a couple Chaos Warriord. This is why the team must keep making forwards progress through the level. Usually those sudden spikes are caused by a slow team.
Second is through attrition. This is why you must keep your head on a swivel, check your surrounding every few seconds. Odds are that an enemy is approaching you and if they get even one hit off on you it will add up. Healing becomes scarce on veteran, and almost nonexistent on Champion.
Understand your weapon. It dictates your playstyle and is the equivalent of a class from other games.
E.g. Two handed weapons, and anything with a shield is about crowd CONTROL.
One handed, or fast weapons are often about crowd KILLING
Don’t aim to be the top killer on your team if it means going against the weapon you are using.
A two handed hammer isn’t going to get nearly as many kills bc his role is to push enemies back in order to give the dps team mates the chance to kill it.
Ranged Weapons:
Crossbows, Volley Crossbows, Repeater Crossbows, Handguns, Pistols, any ranged weapon where you do not have a high amount of maximum ammo. These are SPECIAL KILLERS. Specials are the one enemy type you generally want to engage at range bc they often have a way of incapacitating you if they get close enough. You also may want to kill them to free a team mate and save them from losing all their health. These weapons will usually be labelled as ‘Sniper’ in the description. They are also good for using against bosses, particularly Kerillian’s Hagbane Swiftbow with it’s damage-over-time makes it a fantastic anti-boss AND anti-special weapon.
Blunderbusses, Grudge Rakers, Drakefire Pistols alt-fire, Drake Gun, any close range wide spread ranged weapon.
These are meant for emergency crowd clearing. When your team is getting surropunded by a horde or someone gets dragged away by a packmaster or otherwise gets downed, these are your go-to weapons. They will put out a MASSIVE amount of damage albeit in a very small area in front of you. I mean it’s a friggin’ shotgun what do you think? Drakefire pistols can be used on anything short to medium range in normal mode, but their alt-fire is a shotgun effect that can be DEVASTATING on hordes. Same for the Drake Gun except it’s a flamethrower. Tbh I haven’t used Drake Gun very much so it’s effectiveness I’m still evaluating.
Wizard / Overheat Weapons
Some ranged weapons have infinite ammo. The cost of this is that you must deal with the overheat mechanic. The more you use it, the more the overheat bar fills up. By itself, heat dissipates slowly. You can however speed up this dissipation by holding the reload button. HOWEVER, be aware that if your overheat level is high enough, you will take damage from venting. Of course the alternative is even worse. Never build your overheat gauge all the way. Like ever. Seriously.
If you do go over the limit on the amount of heat you can store, you’ll EXPLODE AND DIE. On higher difficulties this will easily wipe your entire team if they’re near you.
Generally therefore you’ll want to keep your heat below the threshold where you take damage to vent it unless you’re in a situation where you can’t hold back. Like during a horde or against a boss. In that case just make sure you do NOT go over the limit.
This is what makes the Bright Wizard so unique compared to the other heroes. She is the exception to the ranged weapon rule. Sienna (the Bright Wizard) is primarily a ranged fighter and uses melee as a back up. It’s a completely different playstyle than the other heroes. I recommend trying her out. A skilled Bright Wizard will take a difficult mission and make it practically a cakewalk. Since she had no ammo to deal with she can do this consistently.
Bardin is the other hero who uses overheat with his Drakefire Pistols and Drake Gun.
Learn to block,dodge, and push. I cannot emphasize this enough, if you are not blocking and dodging you are not playing the game right. Rememebr it is absolutely critical to protect your health. To that end you’ve got to dodge backwards or sideways frequently. When that’s not possible, block.
Do not attack nonstop, go for a couple attacks, block, then push. This will give you room to get in a few more attacks and draw aggro away from team mates who might otherwise get hit in the back. Throw in dodges as necessary.
Eventually you will get into a rhythm with your weapon, it will vary with how many attacks you can safely get off whilst avoiding taking any in return.
Do not go out of your way to attack enemies. Again this game is about protecting your health. If you can sneak by enemies without drawing aggro do it.
This goes double for patrols, whether it’s Stormvermin (flashbacks to Vermintide 1 *shudders at fighting them on Cataclysm*) or a Chaos patrol. Most of the time you can get around them or find a spot to hide and wait for them to pass. ALWAYS do that if it’s an option.
Health Management
Health refills come in two varieties, potions and medkits. They have very different roles.
Potions give you a FIXED amount of health. This means they can be used more liberally.
Medkits give you back a PERCENTAGE of missing health. Unless it’s changed from the first game you will recover 80% of your missing health.
This means that using a medkit when you’re above half health is basically wasting it.
Medkits should ONLY be used on someone who has grey health. It will reset the number of times they can be downed.
Potions are more useful if you’re low, but not critically low on health.
However there are exceptions to these rules.
Often people will be carrying Tomes or Grimoires, if they go for all of them then only one person will have an open health slot since there are 3 tomes.
If you are in a situation where you are missing health but you cannot carry the potion/medkit with you. USE IT. Even if it means getting back a little bit that’s better than leaving healing behind. This all comes back to protecting your health bar.
It’s great if you can use health the way I said initially, but there will be times when people will ignore health that they could’ve used bc they don’t think they need it.
You’re not going to be turning around in Vermintide. Progress is a straight line, at most you’ll backtrack a little bit, no more. So using health that will be otherwise left behind, either bc you’ve got a tome or you already have a health item is the best course of action.
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