Warhammer 40K Darktide Tips & Tricks [Top 15]

Warhammer 40K Darktide might seem familiar to those who have played Vermintide 2, with many improvements and additions to combat and new-level designs. However, if you’re new to the game, then certain tips and tricks can greatly improve your experience in Warhammer 40K Darktide.

Defeating the hordes of enemies isn’t quite simple in the game; it requires you to know all sorts of little details so that you’re clearing out rooms as efficiently as possible. Not only that, but it’s also useful to know which weapons and damage types are the most useful during combat.

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Key Points

• As Darktide is a co-op game, sticking with your allies and distributing and marking loot will give you all sorts of buffs and help you take out hordes of enemies with ease.
• Trying different weapons and learning about weapon ratings or different enemies at the Meat Grinder will help you in the field.
• Selecting or replaying missions with the appropriate difficulty levels will ensure that you’re never overwhelmed. 
• Learning about mechanics like Toughness, Corruption, and the different healing methods will help you manage your resources more efficiently. 

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Stick With Your Allies

It’s no secret that Warhammer Darktide is a co-op game, which is why it goes out of its way to ensure you’re actually playing it as a co-op game. That’s why there are certain advantages to sticking with your entire squad.

• If you stray far from your teammates, whether they’re actual players or just bots, you will end up missing out on many useful buffs.
• By remaining close to your teammates, the most noticeable buff is a stack of “Coherency,” which provides several benefits which correspond to whichever class you’re playing as. The buff could be anything, such as free ammo, faster melee speed, or extra elite damage.
• You can also regenerate your “Toughness” (aka shield) much faster when you’re close to your allies.
• The only time it might be safe to move away from your squad is if you’re looting or looking for collectibles.

Melee Attacks And Toughness

Most games tend to have some sort of shield health that takes damage before any actual damage is inflicted on the player’s real health. That is also the case with Darktide, but there is a slight twist.

• Although Toughness acts like a shield and can block any sort of damage before being depleted, there is a type of damage that can hurt your health, even if your Toughness is full.
• You can fully block out ranged damage before your Toughness depletes; however, melee damage can reduce your toughness while also chipping away at your actual health as well.
• Therefore, even if you’ve got a good amount of Toughness, either avoid taking melee damage overall or keep an eye on your actual health, as it can become critically low despite the presence of Toughness.

Beware Of Surprise Attacks

Enemies love to get a sneaky hit on you in games to reduce your health bit by bit. That is quite common in Darktide, and knowing when to expect them is quite important.

• As mentioned, melee damage cannot just reduce your Toughness but also your health, so it is important that you avoid melee flanks from your enemies.
• The most obvious solution is to check your six constantly. But the game also loves throwing enemies at you from locked doors, bunk beds, or an already cleared-out room.
• Remaining cautious around such areas will ensure that you don’t needlessly lose your health.

Difficulty Levels

Warhammer Darktide has five different levels of missions that you can choose from. Although it is quite obvious that you should start off with level one missions, it’s important to know when you should move on to the next difficulty so that you’re not too underprepared.

• Level one difficulty missions should be played at the start to get the hang of the mechanics, looting system, and knowing how to upgrade your gear, as most enemies will be quite weak.
• Once you reach somewhere between levels 10-13, you should be ready to tackle level two difficulty (Uprising). Just make sure you have a good grip on your Feats and gear.
• After level 20 or higher, you should definitely move onto Malice, aka level three difficulty missions, as they’ll offer you more XP and gold for clearing them out.
• Level four and level five of the game (Heresy and Damnation) are pretty hard, where enemies can kill you with just a few shots. Therefore, keep them reserved for when you and maybe your entire squad have reached max level and have mastered the combat system of the game.

Replaying Missions

Besides just knowing which mission difficulty you should tackle, you need to consider the replayability of certain missions as well to make grinding much easier.

• Replaying missions is a great way to grind for XP, especially if you’re not ready to tackle the higher-level missions yet.
• If you’re the type of player who gets bored of repetition and grinding, then worry not, as Darktide tends to come up with different scenarios when you replay a mission so that it feels fresh and not repetitive.

Try Out Different Weapons

There are many weapons in the game, and trying out as many of them as possible will give you a great idea of what suits your playstyle better.

• Don’t stick to weapons that might seem specific or complimentary to your operative class, as sometimes some random weapon can surprisingly be quite powerful.
• The Armory refreshes every hour with new gear, which is why you should check it out almost every time in-between missions.

Weapon Ratings Can Be Deceiving

Speaking of trying out different weapons, one way to know whether a weapon is great or not is by looking at its overall rating. Ideally, a weapon with a higher rating might be great, but that doesn’t seem to be set in stone. Here are a few tips and tricks regarding weapon ratings in Warhammer 40K Darktide to ensure you’re choosing the right weapons.

• Sometimes, a weapon with a higher rating might not be better than a weapon with a lower rating because the rating is a culmination of all of the stats.
• A weapon could have higher points on a stat that you might not often use, such as mobility, which could make it rate higher than a weapon with relatively more damage.
• Therefore, while choosing a weapon, look at its individual stats in order to determine whether you should swap it out for your current weapon or completely ditch it. Certain stats might complement your feats which is also something worth considering.

Know Your Enemy Types

Every game has different enemy types to ensure that there is variety in each encounter and things get challenging as you progress further. Having knowledge of these enemy types can sometimes greatly help you out in battle.

• Although you’ll mostly get the hang of the enemies as you progress in the game, there are certain enemy types that you should be aware of, as they might give you the most trouble.
• The Pox Hound is a specialized enemy that goes after isolated party members, and once caught in its grip, the player cannot break free until another member helps you out. You can either dodge to the side to avoid the pounce or aim to eliminate it immediately if you hear it’s howling.
• The Scab Sniper is another tricky enemy type as it constantly creates distance from you and takes only seconds before sniping you once it has its aim. You should aim to either snipe it as well or use cover to close your distance as quickly as possible.
• Ogryn is a boss that you’ll face quite often, and it can tank many of your attacks which is why you need to play strategically. Facing it, head-on can be troublesome due to the high damage output. Your focus should be defensive when it is on you and offensive when it is distracted by other party members.

The Meat Grinder

Knowing about the enemies and different weapons is great. But sometimes, you need a place to actually practice properly without worrying about the consequences of failure. That’s where the Meat Grinder comes in handy.

• The Meat Grinder is a training area where you can equip and try out all sorts of enemies.
• You can also test your weapons on different enemy types to determine the best tactic to deal with those specific enemies.
• The Meat Grinder gets unlocked after you reach Trust Level 2, and you can unlock more enemies there as you level up.

Understand Corruption

Understanding certain fundamental mechanics of the game is important so that you don’t have difficulty later on. Corruption is one of those mechanics that can be quite tricky if you don’t properly understand it.

• Corruption is essentially the purple damage on your health bar, which locks away that part of your health, reducing overall health.
• You can only regain that portion of your health by visiting health terminals; med kits will have no effect on them.
• One thing you must be careful about is that corruption can spread and block off more of your health if you get downed during combat.
• Therefore, try to remain on the defense until you reach a medical terminal to ensure the corruption doesn’t spread further.

Different Healing Methods

In the last tip and trick for Warhammer 40K Darktide, we mentioned corruption and how it can only be healed through a healing terminal. Well, it is important to actually understand the different methods of healing in the game so you can make the most out of them.

• The most efficient method of healing in Darktide is by using medical terminals that you’ll find throughout the levels.
• Unfortunately, healing is finite, and you cannot keep using the terminals, so it is important to prioritize who should get healed first in your party, such as someone with corruption.
• You can make the healing from a terminal more effective by inserting a power source in it.
• Another method of healing is through the use of medkits which heals anyone in its vicinity, which is another great reason why you should stick close to your teammates.

Use The Pinging System

Communication is vital in co-op games, especially Darktide, where the items that you come across are scarce, and your own inventory can be quite limiting.

• You can use the pinging system to mark enemies, ammo, resources, or health packs which will immediately inform your teammates of its presence.
• Sometimes, your inventory might be too full to carry additional resources such as extra health, especially considering you can only carry one stack of certain resources. That is why tagging it is important so that someone with an extra slot can carry it for later.
• Marking enemies makes them visible and highlighted to everyone else, allowing everyone to focus on a single threat more easily. And letting others know of extra ammo will definitely help you out later with the boss fights by ensuring that every member is fully equipped.

Save Your Crafting Materials

Crafting is a huge part of Darktide, especially if you want to ensure that your gear is upgraded and ready to take on the higher leveled threats. But knowing when to use and when to save your materials is quite important.

• Using your crafting materials on a weapon, specifically Plasteel and Diamantine early on can be quite wasteful because you’ll eventually find a weapon that might be overall better than your current weapon.
• Instead, you should hold on to such materials till you reach at least level 25 or 30, as by then, you’ll have a weapon that you can take all the way to the endgame by upgrading it with the precious materials.

Hordes Of Enemies

Co-op games are never about taking out specific enemies or just a small group of enemies. You eventually run into a huge horde of enemies that require you to be smart and tackle them as efficiently as possible.

• Try not to use your ranged weapons when the hordes of enemies are close distance to you, as you’ll just be wasting your ammo trying to take them all out.
• Instead, try relying on your melee weapons to perform sweeps and target multiple enemies with one attack.
• If you find yourself getting surrounded, you can use a high-stamina melee weapon to shove enemies aside or use dodge to get out of the way. Dodging works slightly more efficiently if you have your melee weapon out instead.
• Additionally, grenades can take out a huge portion of the horde.

Kicking AFK Players

When you’re playing with strangers online, there is bound to be a player that goes AFK. Sometimes it is all right to wait for them as they might have something to tend to. But if they remain AFK for too long and you can’t wait long enough for the idle timer to kick them out, there is an alternative way to get rid of them.

• By going into the social tab in the menu, you can find your strike team on the left side.
• From there, select the player that you’d like to kick and vote to kick them from the Strike Team.
• All other members also have to vote to kick until the player actually gets kicked out.

With that, you know some of the best tips and tricks related to Warhammer 40K Darktide in order to make the most out of your gameplay and defeat enemies more effectively. If you keep the basics in mind and play the game as intended through co-op, then you won’t have any difficulties reaching the high ranks of Darktide! 

Up Next:

• Warhammer 40k Darktide: Scripture Locations
• Warhammer 40K Darktide Classes Tier List
• Warhammer 40k Darktide BEST Classes