Starting now, the Versus Beta August Test (or BAT!) is live! If you haven't already, make sure to sign up by heading to Vermintide 2's Steam Store page and hitting 'Request Access' on the Playtest!

As mentioned before, this Beta is open to ANYONE, even non-owners of Vermintide 2! Make sure to spread the word to anyone who might be interested! Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets, tell strangers!

Versus is an upcoming free new Game mode for Warhammer: Vermintide 2! It’s an asymmetrical PvP+E experience pitting up to 4 Heroes against our AI enemies and up to 4 special players, what we call Pactsworn. A match will take place over several rounds, with each team swapping places between playing the Heroes and the Pactsworn each round. To simplify, each round consists of the Hero team playing a regular game akin to Adventure mode, while the Pactsworn players have to stop them.

Learn more about playing as the Heroes[www.vermintide.com]
Learn more about playing as the Pactsworn (yes-yes!)[www.vermintide.com]

Plenty! We have two big features to highlight: Matchmaking changes and The Horde ability. Alongside that we've also done various balance adjustments and quality of life changes based on previous tests' feedback!

One of the bigger features in the Beta is the Pactsworns’ new Horde Ability, available to each of the Pactsworn players on their own individual cooldown. When fully charged and ready, Pactsworn players are able to rally a small horde, spawning a group of AI enemies fighting for them onto the battlefield. This means that Packmasters can summon cover-kin to blend in for sneaky charges, Ratling Gunners can distract Heroes with melee fodder before laying down fire, or the team can sync up and trigger all Hordes at the same time and overwhelm the opposition.

• Cooldown Reduction: While the ability re-charges slowly over time, it is possible to quicken the progress by damaging the enemy team. Play well, and you’ll be able to send barrage after barrage.
  
• Carry over: Ability bar progress is carried over between deaths.

In the Alphas there were no guardrails preventing (for instance) solo queuing new players to meet an experienced four-stack, meaning that the experience could vary wildly from session to session. This, along with other reported issues, led to us reworking our matchmaking systems.

The new system should, on average, result in lower queue times, finding servers closer to you (resulting in lower latency), and more even games (for example, by trying to pair together premade groups). It will also allow us to more easily monitor the matchmaking in real-time and act quicker if we notice that something isn't working as intended.

It won’t stop variously skilled players from meeting up occasionally, but at least the system should be able to favour other match setups. We hope that this will lead to more balanced and fun games, as well as lay a better foundation for future feedback.

Controllers/Gamepads are now properly supported for Versus! Now that we are rounding up the core set of features we can finalize button assignments and focus on input tweaking to bring the controller experience up to par. For gamepad gamers out there, please let us know any feedback you have about the new implementation in this Beta!

We have re-done a lot of the Pactsworns’ heads-up-display in terms of art, gameplay and general quality of life.

• New Horde Ability progress bar.
  
• Updated Health bars.
  
• Ability Bar: Each Pactsworn has all of their available moves and abilities listed in the HUD, with cooldowns and input clearly shown in an effort to make the characters easier to pick play.
  
• Updated enemy health bars: Wounds, Streak Damage, Regular– and Temporary HP are now displayed directly above the Heroes’ heads.
  
• Ally information: Your fellow Pactsworns’ respawn timers are now displayed above their heads along with their names, hopefully making teamwork easier to pull off.

The ping/tagging system has been adjusted to be more responsive, particularly noticeable for the Hero side. As in Adventure mode, pings should now be instantaneous and prioritize marking enemies better. This should make the system more responsive, intuitive and fluid, while still retaining the ability to place world markers and use the Social Wheel for more detailed callouts.

We are reconsidering how we should view health pick-ups in Versus. We want healing to have intent and consequences, and to be something that Pactsworn are able to make use of as well.

• Level placement: We have moved all healing supplies to be more prominent on each level’s main path. By becoming easy to see “hot spots”, we should be able to create even more interesting and intense scenarios, inviting the Pactsworn to use them for ambushes.

• Updated the visual effects on the Warpfire Thrower and the Poison Wind Globadier. On top of looking better, these new VFX should better reflect the effective Area of Effect of their abilities when active.
  
• Adjusted objectives in Against the Grain to deter speedrunning and running ahead of the team.

The Globadier has remained an undisputed menace throughout the Alpha period, and we still want to keep him that way, but things will be a little different for the Beta. We've lowered the base damage of a globe's gas, but also added a ramping damage curve to Poison Wind tick damage, meaning damage increases exponentially over time.
Mindlessly throwing globes won’t be as effective anymore, but catching unfortunate Heroes in a bad spot will create just as much chaos as before.
The Ratling Gunner has received a healthy check-up on some basic values that should make him a bit more dexterous and effective at range (where he should be shining best).

• Decreased start up and reload duration.
  
• Increased effective range and bullet speed.
  
• Decreased bullet spread.

When a Packmaster hooks a Hero and walks off an edge, the Hero will now hang from the ledge instead of falling to their doom. Was fun while it lasted, hehehe.

Introduced in our last test, the Bile Troll is a rare, playable boss that one random player will get to play as each round. He is large, in charge, and full of gross green stuff. For the Beta, we have focused on getting in a bit more polish and making him more fun to use.

• Adjusted movement acceleration to give a more sluggish and weighty feel to the character, as well as to limit twitchy movement.
  
• Reworked the Bile Vomit attack on a few different points:
  
  • The ability now has the option to be charged and held, letting players aim more accurately and prepare their attack. Hold the F key to start charging and let go to puke.
    
  • Added an aim indicator to better display where the vomit will land and the rough ground area that gets covered.

As always, we hope you have tons of fun playing Versus! Enjoy the Beta, invite your friends, and give us ALL of your feedback! We rely on you, your experiences and your opinions to perfect this exciting new game mode!

If you have any more doubts or questions, check out our FAQ.[forums.fatsharkgames.com]

Hi my name is Joakim Setterberg and I’m the Design Director on Vermintide 2. In this devblog I want to talk about Versus’ upcoming Beta August Test - or BAT - coming August 21st. With the BAT we’re wrapping up most of the larger systems and features of the core game mode. With a few exceptions, our main focus up to release will be to work with surrounding systems and refining the content, to polish the Versus experience and, to quote the team, “fix the jank”.

First, a note on feedback. For every test we do we collect as much of your feedback as possible to find out what we can improve and fix. We sort it, rank it, and talk about what we want to accomplish for the next test. Sometimes there’s a straight-forward way to solve a problem or to implement a suggestion, but other times we’ll go in a slightly different direction, if we believe a problem lies elsewhere. That takes us to our two big features we’re introducing for the BAT: the Pactsworn Horde ability and matchmaking.

Feedback from the last test, the RAT, showed that you wanted something more for the Pactsworn gameplay - like abilities or talents. We also saw requests for notifications when director controlled Hordes were about to spawn, or calls to introduce a Pactsworn special with horde summoning as a singular purpose. These were good requests, but we felt that the Pactsworn side would play even stronger if Hordes were more integrated in active player combat, rather than being played reactive. In the finest Clan Moulder tradition we stitched everything together.

The Horde ability gives all Pactsworn specials a way to summon a small Horde on their own, introducing a tactical element to the gameplay loop. This means that Packmasters can summon cover-kin to blend in for sneaky charges, Ratling Gunners can distract Heroes with melee fodder before laying down fire, or the team can sync up and trigger all Hordes at the same time and overwhelm the opposition. The Horde ability is on a timed cooldown, which decreases faster with successful attacks with your current Pactsworn special and carries over between deaths.
We are excited to see how you interact with this new feature and hear what you think about it, looking forward to your feedback on this one.

A bit trickier were various feedback regarding Pactsworn or Hero balancing, speed running, match quitters and a general feeling of unfairness: all valid points, which we’ll be tackling moving forwards, but this also highlighted one big underlying issue: the lack of matchmaking. In the Alphas there were no guardrails preventing (for instance) solo queuing new players to meet an experienced four-stack, meaning that the experience could vary wildly from session to session. We believe that some of the “unbalanced experience” feedback may originate from this.

For the Beta, we’ve opted to rework our current matchmaking system. It's always been in our mind to improve it as much as possible, and after hearing your feedback from the Alphas we decided to go with a new solution for Versus. The new system should, on average, result in lower queue times, finding servers closer to you (resulting in lower latency), and more even games (for example, by trying to pair together premade groups). It will also allow us to more easily monitor the matchmaking in real-time and act quicker if we notice that something isn't working as we intended.

It won’t stop variously skilled players from meeting up occasionally, but at least the system should be able to favour other match setups. We hope that this will lead to more balanced and fun games, as well as lay a better foundation for future feedback.

On the usability side we are adding gamepad support for those who enjoy button mashing over keyboard smashing. Now that we are rounding up the core feature set we can finalize button assignments and focus on input tweaking to bring the controller experience up to par.

On the quality of life, balancing and bug fixes side there’s a number of things that are changed since the RAT. Some highlights include:

• We’ve updated the Pactsworn UI to display more useful information.
  
  • Enemy healthbars now also display stuff like remaining Wounds and shows regular and temporary HP as separate.
    
  • Your Pactsworn’s abilities and moves are all displayed in the HUD and it also shows their cooldowns.
    
  • Allies now have their names and respawn timers shown above their heads, hopefully making teamwork easier.
• We have moved all healing supplies to be more prominent on each level’s main path. By becoming easy to see “hot spots”, we should be able to create even more interesting and intense scenarios, inviting the Pactsworn to use them for ambushes.
  
• Based on prior test feedback we’ve made the Bile Troll a bit slower and less twitchy, but also gave him the ability to hold his vomit attack to aim it better before launching it.
  
• Buffed the Ratling Gunner by speeding up his ramp up and reload times as well as improving his effective range.
  
• Nerfed the Globadier slightly by making the initial damage of a globe lower but making that damage ramp up dramatically over time.
  
  • Mindlessly throwing globes won’t be as effective anymore, but catching unfortunate Heroes in a bad spot will create just as much chaos as before.
• Tweaked some objectives on Against the Grain to deter speedrunning and running ahead.
  
• Tweaked the VFX for the Warpfire Thrower and Globadier. On top of looking better, these should be easier to read in first person and more accurately show the actual area of effect.

For all of these features we are of course looking for further testing and feedback.

After the BAT ends, we aim to do at least one more Beta test focusing on some final systems and whatever adjustments come from the feedback we receive during this test. We unfortunately can’t give any details on what it’ll contain at this time, but we’ll tell you guys more when we get there.

On behalf of the entire Vermintide team, thank you for helping shape Versus into something great. See you in a BAT!

It is time to sharpen your blades, polish your whiskers, and get ready to sneaky stab-stab in the Versus Open Beta on August 21.

You heard that right, we're moving up from Alpha testing to Beta testing! This Beta will be open to ANYONE who signs up, including non-owners of Vermintide 2! Tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets, everyone should come check out Vermintide Versus!

To sign up, head to Vermintide 2's store page:

https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/app/552500/Warhammer_Vermintide_2/

You should see a button to sign up to the Warhammer: Vermintide Versus - Open Beta
Simply click the 'Request Access' button to sign up! Once the Beta goes live next week, you'll be notified and immediately able to play it!

We also have a Versus Dev Blog coming up ahead of the Beta so keep your eyes open for that, as well!

My name is Joakim, Design Director on Vermintide 2, here with a game update recap just in time for the summer.

As you all know, we started this year with a Closed and an Open Alpha Test for Versus, we celebrated the 6th Anniversary with a Quiet Drink and then wrapped up the Karak Azgaraz storyline with A Parting of the Waves - where Kruber’s team building excursion led to an encounter with a new type of Chaos Warrior.

A bit over a month ago, for Warhammer Skulls 2024, we released a big Chaos Wastes and Things™ update where we introduced Weekly Expeditions with new boons and rewards. Per popular demand, we added a loadout system to the game as well as the (even more requested) option to equip weapon illusions outside of Weaves. Both game modes saw some quality of life- and bug fixes, which increased their popularity and hopefully set you up for some fun games over the summer.

As for the Skulls event itself we once more had you collecting daemonic skulls and killing enemies - this year we set the aim for 1 billion kills, which you reached on the last day of the event. We did notice an issue with kills not counting correctly for losses in Versus or Chaos Wastes and we mitigated that halfway through the event in honor of some of the more devout pilgrims of you (Shoutout to Lancerkils and his 113 Cataclysm attempts in the first Weekly Expedition! Cousin Okri would be very proud indeed!)
Also, being able to purchase last year’s frame and weapon illusions with shillings during the event seems to have gone down well, so we’ll take that into consideration going forward.

Halfway through Skulls, we booted up the Returning Alpha Test, or RAT, where just over 25000 Steam players kill-slayed together in over 16000 games of Versus. Compared to the last test, the GOAT, the test ran for a bit longer and introduced the playable Bile Troll boss, pre-made Hero loadouts, and the PvP version of Against the Grain. Based on previous feedback we addressed the hotjoin hero picker, tweaked and tinkered with balancing for some of the Pactsworn, as well as adjusted some Hero temp HP gain and decay.

The survey made an appearance again, and the responses show that you’re still happy with the way Versus is progressing, giving it an 8.38/10 rating, with the score increasing for every test we do. Pactsworn are still perceived as more fun (no surprises there) but the Hero side is lagging behind. Part of this is due to class- and talent-specific balancing and tweaking, but other big requests relate to preventing speed running, onboarding & practicing, as well as clearing up objectives and scoring; some being specific to Against the Grain while others apply to the mode as a whole.

Speaking of Against the Grain - it does play quite differently compared to the previous missions and we were really keen on seeing what you’d do with the open fields and long sightlines. So far the feedback is a bit mixed, but now we can compare your opinions on the Screaming Bell, Righteous Stand, and Against the Grain missions. Aside from being popular Adventure missions, they represent a cross-section of Vermintide’s environments, map lengths, and topologies that will guide future PvP mission work.

The Bile Troll was generally perceived as a good (although squishy) addition to the game mode that made boss-killing Hero careers more relevant; the Bounty Hunter, Outcast Engineer, and Zealot made it into the top 10 list for the first time, with weapon preference staying mostly the same apart from the addition of the Blunderbuss. On the Pactsworn side, the Globadier is still strong and the buffed Warpfire Thrower got a better rating in RAT.

As always - a huge thank you to everyone who participated in the test, to all of you who filled out the survey (we got nearly 750 responses to read through), as well as everyone posting videos, streams, and thoughts on social media, discord, and forums. We can’t do it without your invaluable feedback!
We’ll be looking over all the feedback and bug reports to see what’s feasible for the next iteration - but as a lot of you wanted more mechanics for the Pactsworn side we’re looking into if we can expand their gameplay with some form of ability. We’re also making progress on matchmaking to pair up similarly skilled players for the next test, but we’re saving up on a Versus progression and reward system for release.

We are of course working on other things as well outside of Versus. As a fun teaser, here’s an animation reference prop for a potential upcoming weapon. Care to guess what it is and who it is for? You might win a pumpkin, you lucky bleeders.

Vermintide will take a bit of a break in July, but keep an eye out for updates and be hyped for an exciting autumn. By Sigmar, the Hammer, and the Empire - have a very pleasant summer!

Joakim, and the Vermintide team

Surprise! We've actually decided to extend the Versus Alpha for another week! Today's hotfix, 5.5.6, includes a few fixes to both Adventure mode and Versus, and has some balance adjustments made to the playable Pactsworn for Versus.

The RAT will now end on June 17th! Starting from yesterday and until the end of the test, the Versus servers will automatically swap between the three active Versus maps: Against the Grain, Righteous Stand and Screaming Bell. You get to play all of them this week and have more fun with our playable Bile Troll!

In case you haven't already, we have a {リンクが削除されました}Versus Feedback Survey that we'd really appreciate if you all filled it out and gave us all your feedback from playing this Alpha!
You can also find the survey link on the launcher.

Hotfix 5.5.7 - 13th of June

Fixes

• Fixed challenge "Sheltering Thicket" not tracking blocked ratling gunner shots properly.
  
• Fixed crash when hosting a game with a Waystalker Bot whose loadout contains a javelin, while the hosts own Waystalker loadout has a bow.
  
• Fixed an issue where you could select career by using the arrow keys.

Hotfix 5.5.6 - 12th of June

Fixes

• (Chaos Wastes) Fixed rare crash when boon drones fly towards something very far away.
  
• Fixed a crash that would occur if you upgrade an item currently equipped on any other loadout.
  
• Fix crash when trying to update character data while having 5-6 loadouts on all careers

Versus Tweaks

• Enabled automatic map rotation between Righteous Stand, Screaming Bell and Against the Grain.
  
• Monsters now block warpfire thrower fire.
  
• Increased Bile Troll health from 600 to 750.
  
• Increased the size of Bile Troll's vomit hit boxes, to make it slightly easier to use.
  
• Increased damage taken while standing in Bile Troll vomit by 40%.
  
• Decreased spawn chance for Poison Wind Globadier slightly.
  
• Increased Packmaster damage by 50% (per tick).
  
• Increased Packmaster health from 30 to 50.

Versus Fixes

• Fixed pinging a potion with the ping wheel in versus causing a server crash
  
• Fixed crash when showing pact sworn choices while playing with a controller
  
• Fixed rare end of game dedicated server crash related to warrior priest ability being active.
  
• Fixed certain spots in Against the Grain where Packmasters could pull hooked players out of the playable area and leave them stuck.
  
• Fixed a climb spot in Against the Grain where Pactsworn players could get stuck while climbing.
  
• Fixed NPC enemies getting stuck on destructible stuff in Against the Grain.
  
• Fixed NPC enemies sometimes getting really obsessed with attacking a spot on the ground in Against the Grain.
  
• Fixed players being stuck in matchmaking if a hero picker appears and times out
  
• Fixed crash caused by friend joining into a versus keep after playing as pact sworn.

Hotfix 5.5.6 - 4th of June

Versus

• Fixed a couple of crashes related to unspawned or unselected characters
  
• Fixed server crash that'd occur when players leave during hero select before being put on a specific side
  
• Versus Voip Clients won't be in voip chat anymore when they have voice chat disabled
  
• Bestigors won't crash dedicated servers while charging through Chaos Warriors anymore.
  
• Fixed server crash in character select related to a player friend joining a game after another player leaves.
  
• Fixed frame perfect server crash when player hot-joins at the same time as a Pactsworn character die-die
  
• Fixed two crashes for Gamepad users caused by UI shenanigans.
  
• Fixed server crash when a player hot joins during a small window when a match finishes
  
• Defrosted the Globadiers' frozen hands and instead will do the reload animation at the end of the cooldown.

Hotfix 5.5.4 - 31th of May

Versus

• Disabled Crafting and Spoils of War for Legacy UI
  
• Lowered base movement speed of Bile Troll slightly.
  
  General
  
  
• Fixed crash related to gaining the boon "Ranald's Mighty Gamble" and swapping from a higher power level weapon to a lower power level weapon.
  
• Fixed a crash occuring when bot loadouts and clients are not in agreement on which loadout the host should use.
  
• Fixed a bug where Outcast Engineer skips the first two shots when shooting. Also, tap shooting works again.
  
• Fixed the temporary mod fix. It should really be fixed now.
  
• Fixed a crash that would occur if you salvaged an item equipped on a different loadout
  

Hotfix 5.5.3 - 30th of May

Features & Tweaks

• Limited loadout manager mod error logs to one unique log per level.
  

Fixes

• Fixed a Crash when a player activates an ability during the end of a game.
  
• (Versus) Fixed so Ratling gunner can't shoot through a monster.
  
• Fixed various crashes in Versus.
  
• Temporary mod fix for UI Tweaks in Versus when attempting to render an ammo counter in team portraits as Pactsworn.

Make sure to tune in to our twitch channel[www.twitch.tv] tomorrow at 16:00 CEST to catch a stream with our developers! Join our Host Tom as he talks with Product Owner Erik and Design Director Joakim about the current Versus Alpha, the new changes and additions made since then, answer questions from the community and they play a round or two of Versus!
Welcome to the Returning Alpha Test, or RAT for short! Starting today until June 9th, you’ll be able to hop on Versus straight from the main Vermintide 2 game! Simply make sure to pick ‘Versus’ from the main menu to enter the Versus lobby and access its matchmaking. This test is open to all owners of Vermintide 2 on PC, so tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets, get everyone in here!

Last test was our first time opening Versus to our entire player base and it was overall a great success! We saw great reception and got invaluable feedback from all of you, and we’re really hyped to see you guys try out the changes and the newest additions!

In case you missed it, here’s a link to the latest Versus Dev Blog, where we go over our thoughts and takeaways from the previous Alpha Test:

https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/news/app/552500/view/4139441932569145653

As said in our previous announcement, this test shall see the first iteration of one of our most highly requested features: Playable monsters! For this test, we’ll be starting with the Bile Troll.

When it’s time for a Monster to spawn, one lucky member of the Pactsworn team will get to spawn as the Bile Troll and wreak havoc on the Hero team!

The Bile Troll is controlled in a manner similar to Heroes. Tapping Attack (Default: Left Mouse Click) will result in sweeping light attacks. Holding Attack will result in heavy unblockable attacks with the Bile Troll’s axe. Pressing the Career Skill button (Default: F) will let you puke acid bile on your tiny foes (The Bile Troll’s puke ability has a cooldown!). You can also crouch with the usual crouch button (Default: Left Control).

We have a new map for you guys to test out during this Alpha: Against the Grain! This classic map has been adapted from its Adventure version, similar to how the previous two maps were adapted, changing parts of the level, adding more objectives and overall tweaking it to make it more fitting for Versus.

We’re very curious about how you guys feel about this map in the context of Versus! The team wants to really nail not just this map specifically, but also in general what works and what doesn’t work for Versus maps, so please give us all your feedback!

We’ll have this as our only map at first but we’ll be adding the previously tested maps (Righteous Stand and Screaming Bell) to the map rotation later on during the test.

Whether you played the last Alpha Test or you’re just curious, here are the highlights of the main changes done to the game mode since the last test, including the Balance Changes done to both Heroes and Pactsworns alike. Please note that the balance changes mentioned here will ONLY affect Versus! As we’ve said before, we will never affect the balance of the PvE game modes of Vermintide solely for the sake of Versus’ balance.

Loadouts
The recently added Loadouts feature will also be available in Versus, with its own separate slots! We’ve also included two pre-made loadouts for each career, designed by our developers, to serve as a starting point for new players or those who just don’t want to bother making brand new loadouts for Versus and just want to jump right in!

Temporary Health will now decay faster
As healing items are limited in Versus, we don't want THP to be the only way to stay alive, nor do we want it to invalidate the efforts of the Pactsworn team. We will evaluate these changes during this test, but please let us know how you feel about them.

• Increased the rate at which Temporary HP decays by 20%
  
• Increased the amount of Temporary HP lost per tick by 50%

Pactsworn Choices Tweaks
We’ve added a weighted system to the RNG choices offered to Pactsworn players when they’re about to spawn to reduce the chances of multiples of the same special being present at the same time.

Warrior Priest

• Nerfed the duration of Shield of Faith (Career Skill) from 5 seconds to 2 seconds
  
  • We are working on getting the correct tooltip in.
• Unyielding Blessing talent now makes the shield last for 5 seconds instead of 10 seconds.
  
• Damage of Shield of Faith explosion is lowered against all enemy types except Monster.

Ironbreaker

• Nerfed the Gromril Curse talent: now also makes the cooldown of Gromril Armour longer (from 20 seconds to 30 seconds).
  • We are working on getting the correct tooltip in.

Sister of the Thorn

• The Deepwood Staff has received an internal cooldown of 40 seconds specifically affecting lifting Pactsworn players. The rest of the staff functions normally, but you can’t lift up an enemy player until the cooldown has expired.

Reduced damage of all crossbows.


Warpfire Thrower

• HP has been increased from 25 to 50
  
• Damage has been increased from 2.5 per tick to 3.0 per tick.
  
• Knockback has been increased.

And that’s about it for now! We’ll be monitoring your feedback on the new changes and additions, alongside everyone’s thoughts and feedback on Versus as a whole! Hope you guys have fun this week!

• Voip is currently not functioning as intended in Versus. We are investigating
  
• The mod 'UI Tweaks' is currently causing crashes. Please disable until resolved to avoid issues.

• Added 3 more loadout slots to all careers.
  
• Increased the duration of the Skulls event buff by 50%. Get crazy for longer! Suffer from withdrawal less often!
  
• Added an option to quit the game directly without going to the main menu.
  
• Added an option to rebind the Chaos Wastes miracle keybind (Default: i)
  
• Implemented a way to patch sanctioned mods until they are updated by the owner. This should increase the lifespan of sanctioned mods, most importantly abandoned ones.
  
  • Loadout Manager mod no longer gives bots adventure items in Chaos Wastes.
    
  • Loadout Manager mod can also no longer overwrite the player's versus loadout with adventure items.
  (Chaos Wastes) 'Taal's Roar' boon: Increased radius by 67%. Increased stagger power against armored enemies by 67%.
  (Chaos Wastes Skulls Event) Event boon rarity reduced from 60% chance to 37.5%.

• Fixed an issue with unreachable respawn spots in the Citadel of Eternity.
  
• Fixed the host crown icon failing to display on the Holseher's Map in the Chaos Waste.
  
• Fixed a bug where using the Hide HUD option while posing did not hide Grail Knight quests.
  
• Fixed the Twitch mode "More Info" description text going out of bounds and overlapping with search Tab.
  
• Fixed the "Curse of tainted blood" effect on the player's health UI going out of bounds until the player stayed idle for the curse recovery.
  
• Fixed a localization issue in all languages.
  
• Fixed the Bloodthirster Frame in Lohner's Emporium of Wonders having an outfit icon instead of a frame icon in its thumbnail.
  
• Fixed the icons for the equippable careers for the Bloodthirster Frame going out of bounds.
  
• Fixed a placeholder icon being shown for the Bloodthirster Frame when accessing it from the Featured tab.
  
• Fixed inconsistencies with Outcast Engineer's career skill attack charge sound sometimes not triggering
  
• Fixed "Piston Power" Engineer talent sound effect being heard by the non-engineer Host if their engineer bot had the talent.
  
• Fixed Be'lakor homing skulls curse not playing related sounds when outside of a Be'lakor node (due to weekly event, for example).
  
• Fixed Huntsman longbow not displaying an arrow when weave skin is applied.
  
• Fixed a bug where players were not able to apply weave skins to Bretonnian Sword and Shield and Bretonnian Longsword if they didn't own the Grail Knight cosmetic dlc upgrade.
  
• Fixed a Ranger Veteran infinite stealth exploit from using ability again before first one runs out. Huh, I'm getting Deja Vu...
  
• Fixed a bug where oil barrel challenge was completable in levels than other A Parting of the Waves.
  
• Fixed the Inventory Details screen failing to close while pressing the I/Esc on the Holseher's Map in the Chaos Wastes.
  
• Fixed a bug where Taal's Roar boon did not receive lower cooldown depending on missing health. Now cooldown is halved at 30% health.
  
• Fixed a bug where Anath Raema's Cruel Volley boon does not increase cost on moonfire bow
  
• Fixed a bug where subtitles were not displayed when enemy lords hold dialogues.
  
• Fixed occasional crash when switching loadout to a loadout with different weapons, and swapping a weapon.
  
• Fixed a crash when the game tried to remove a buff that no longer existed.
  
• Fixed crash related to being affected by multiple support or aura boons at once.
  
• Fixed crash for voip when getting broken connection to the host
  
• Fixed crash when throwing javelins or throwing axes and swapping weapons before it lands.
  

Versus is a free new Game mode for Warhammer: Vermintide 2! It’s an asymmetrical PvP+E pitting up to 4 Heroes against our AI enemies and up to 4 special players, what we call Pactsworn. A match will take place over several rounds, with each team swapping places between playing the Heroes and the Pactsworn each round. To simplify, each round the Hero team must play a regular game akin to Adventure mode, while the Pactsworn players have to stop them.

And for those who haven’t tried out Versus yet or want to know more, have a look at our Versus FAQ[forums.fatsharkgames.com]

We’ll be running a new Alpha soon, the Returning Alpha Test, or RAT for short! Thanks for all your naming suggestions from the last dev blog.

The RAT will be open to all owners of Vermintide 2, and it’ll run between May 30 - June 9 on PC.

[Event is LIVE! Check out the patch notes here:]
https://gtm.you1.cn/storesteam/news/app/552500/view/4148457371248323324

The loadouts system will see its own set of loadouts for Versus since we expect that you’ll need very different builds compared to Adventure Mode! The Versus version of the loadouts will also see each career having 2 base loadouts made by our developers. For new players unfamiliar with the game, or those who don’t want to bother making new builds for Versus, these premade loadouts can make things simpler and let you jump into Versus without having to bother with all that!

We’ve prepared another map for you guys to try out in this new round of testing: Against the Grain! As with previous maps, it has seen modifications to its layout and objectives compared to Adventure mode to fit better with the Versus Game mode. Please give us all the feedback you can on how you find this map for playability, especially compared to the previous maps we’ve had in tests (if you’ve played them!)

One of the most popular requests from our previous tests is finally here: Getting to play as a Monster when it spawns! For this round of testing, we’ll have the Bile Troll available. When it’s time for a monster to spawn during the match, one lucky Pactsworn player will get to pick to spawn as him and take the reins!
Acid puke NOT optional!

Based on the results from the last Alpha Test and your feedback, there have been some adjustments to the balancing of Versus. These changes ONLY affect Versus and do not impact Adventure mode.
We’ve increased the speed at which temporary health decays, as the strength of THP from kill talents and career skills resulted in Heroes being able to easily ignore health attrition.

We’ve tweaked the RNG behind the Pactsworn special choices. Before it was purely random, there is now a weighted system to reduce the chances of multiple of the same Special at the same time.

We’ve lowered the damage dealt by ALL crossbows, as they were a bit too efficient at sniping specials, acting practically like handguns.

Sister of the Thorn’s Deepwood staff has received an internal cooldown specifically affecting lifting Pactsworn players. The rest of the staff functions normally, but you can’t lift up an enemy player until the cooldown has expired.

Warrior Priest’s Career Skill, Shield of Faith, has received an increased cooldown, reduced duration of the effect, and lowered the damage of the explosion against all enemy types except Monsters.

Ironbreaker’s Gromril Curse has been nerfed to increase the cooldown of Gromril Armour to 30 seconds when equipped.

And finally, the charming lil Warpfire Thrower has been buffed to deal more damage, spew fire for longer before having to reload, and move faster while firing!


That’s all the info we have for now! See you all on Versus, Heroes and Pactsworn alike, on the 30th!

Hotfix 5.5.1 - 24th of May

Fixes

• Fixed a network crash related to loadouts.
  
• (Chaos Wastes) Fixed crash if gaining "Ranald's Mighty Gamble" boon while wielding a level object.
  
• (Chaos Wastes) Fixed a crash on Slaughter Bay related to pathfinding.
  
• (Chaos Wastes) Fixed a host crash when Necromancer's skeletons walked into healing zones spawned by bombs with certain boons.
  
• Fixed the Tri-skull Crown missing its store icon on Lohner's Emporium.
  
• Fixed the pop ups for unseen rewards never showing up.

The time has come again to celebrate Warhammer through the Skulls event!
Between May 23 - June 9 you can rampage through the Vermintide in the Skulls for the Skull Throne in-game event. Earn new rewards by collecting skulls, or just participate in the carnage.

Together with the in-game event we also released Patch 5.5.0 - Quality of Life update. It contains a mix of improvements, fixes, and additions that should improve the experience across all game modes. See below for more information on the update and the in-game event.

Skulls for the Skull Throne, Blood for the Blood God!

• Loadout system for Adventure mode
  
  
  Personal Loadouts
  Loadouts are finally officially coming to Vermintide 2! This feature allows you save different combinations of gear & talents as loadouts that you can quickly swap between while in the Keep. Any changes done to your talents or gear while being ‘on’ a loadout will automatically save to that loadout.
  
  Bot Loadouts
  You can also mark one of your loadouts per character as a ‘Bot’ loadout, in which case whenever you are the host, the bots can use specific loadouts that you’ve tailor-made for that bot.

We want to give a shoutout to Squatting Bear for his sanctioned Loadout Manager mod, which covered these features until we could implement it ourselves. Thank you, Squatting Bear!

• Chaos Wastes
  New boons
  We’ve added over 25 new boons to Chaos Wastes. We’ve got some exciting boons to add a lot of juice to your expeditions! New auras, new effects for your bombs, new actions triggered by your career skill, new effects triggered based on your choices during the expedition, new event boons, and more!
  
  Boon Sets
  This is a new mechanic that we’re introducing with this update. Certain boons are part of a ‘set’ of specific boons. Gaining all of the boons within a set in the same expedition unlocks a powerful effect for the rest of the expedition.

New boons introduced with patch 5.5.0:
These don’t include the effects found in boon sets, or some event-specific boons that might be popping up!

• 
  
  Weekly Expedition
  Similar to the Weekly Event game mode for Adventure, we’re adding a ‘Weekly Expedition’ mode in Chaos Wastes. These are Chaos Wastes expeditions with a specific Boon and a specific Curse that will affect every level of that expedition. Be warned, things get real bloody, real fast, in proper Vermintide 2 tradition. The specific Boon and Curse combination will depend on what we set each week, good luck!
  Each week, the first completion of the Weekly Event game mode will grant you a new reward based on difficulty, including shillings, chests, red dust, and one of a new set of runed weapon illusions: the weapons of Bitter Dreams, blessed by Lileath herself.
  Also, similar to the Weekly Event game-mode, participating in some in-game events might involve completing a special event version of the Weekly Expedition. Did you know it’s Skulls for the Skull Throne this week? Foreshadowing…
  
  Stability Pass
  We’ve also taken a stability pass at the overall Chaos Wastes game-mode:
  
  • Fixing several bugs
    
  • Chaos Wastes-specific levels to plug some holes, fix some issues, improve pathfinding (both of Bots and enemies)
    
  • Improve player Navigation, hang ledges, etc.
  You can read the full patch notes below!
  
  This was done mostly based on information from Community bug reports, so we want to thank you all for all the bug reporting you do! Your information and participation is invaluable.

• Weaves of Magic
  Winds of Magic Illusions in Adventure
  We haven’t forgotten about this! Owners of the Winds of Magic expansion can now use the illusions from the Athanor weapons of the Weaves of Magic game mode in Adventure Mode. Simply unlock the weapon in the Athanor and you will have the new illusion unlocked for that weapon!
  
  
  Weaves Game Mode improvements
  We’ve made some changes to the game mode to tackle some of the issues with the mode itself. For starters, bots can now accompany you in public Ranked Weaves, which should help with the biggest blocker for those lacking a dedicated 4-man group for Weaves.
  
  The second thing is that running out of time no longer ends the match prematurely. This is the second biggest issue we’ve seen that prevents players from properly engaging with the game mode. Running out of time still disqualifies your team from scoring for the leaderboards, but at least you can still complete the match!
  
  On the subject of leaderboards, the leaderboard will now default to showing friends’ scores only (you can still manually check the global leaderboards, though!).

And Blood for the Blood God! It’s that time of the year again when we celebrate Warhammer as a whole together! From May 23 to June 9, join your fellow Heroes in glorious carnage, slaughtering as many foes as possible!

We’ll be counting each and every kill from all of you, and if the community as a whole reaches 1,000,000,000 kills across all platforms and game modes before the event ends, you will all earn five new Khorne-inspired Weapon Illusions!
You can check out the community’s progress by going in here: https://www.vermintide.com/counter
New Khorne-y Portrait Frame
Collect 100 skulls, scattered across Helmgart and beyond, to earn this year’s event frame! Progress in this event challenge can be earned across Adventure mode and Chaos Wastes!
Did you miss last year’s event rewards? Fret not! For the duration of the event, you can visit Lohner’s Emporium to spend your hard-earned shillings on unlocking any rewards from last year’s Skulls event that you might’ve missed the first time around.
Without further ado…
Note: We’re still investigating the issue of patch sizes being abnormally large on our Vermintide Steam releases. We’re getting closer to a solution, but for now there might still be patches and hotfixes that have an abnormally large download and install size. We apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.

• Added a Loadouts system, letting you save and quickly switch to and from presets of gear & talents that you've made.
  
• Chaos Wastes boon update: Added over 25 new boons and introduced the concept of Boon Sets.
  
• Chaos Wastes Weekly Expedition: Similar to Adventure mode's Weekly Event, embark on a Weekly Expedition with unique modifiers! Earn the weapon illusions of Bitter Dreams.
  
• Chaos Wastes Chest of Trials: Added a chest of trials for the Chaos Warrior with Mace & Shield.
  
• Chaos Wastes Chest of Trials: Did a balance pass on the infamous Ungor Warherd chest of trials. Should be a bit more reasonable now!
  
• Athanor Illusions: Made illusions from the Winds of Magic Athanor available in Adventure mode.
  
• Weaves no longer end on timeout.
  
• Bots are now useable in non-private Ranked Weaves.
  
• Changed the Weaves leaderboards to default to friends only.
  
• Temporarily enabled the Skulls for the Skull throne Keep decorations. You'll be seeing red for a while...
  
• Re-implemented the feature to re-connect to host on temporary disconnection. This was originally disabled because it could cause crashes.
  
• Added new voicelines for pinging monsters near you.
  
• Added new voicelines for pinging warpfire throwers.

• Fixed hotjoining client crash if the joining client replaces a Necromancer bot just as it uses its ability.
  
• Fixed a really obtuse crash in Chaos Wastes relating to the Coruscation staff and weapon shrines.
  
• Fixed players crashing in chaos wastes when completing a level after the previous host left during last map session.
  
• Fixed a small time window during loading screen where players in the game swapping weapons may cause the joining client to crash.
  
• Fixed the issue that caused voicelines to not trigger when picking up or dropping Grimoires.
  
• Fixed several issues with erroneous subtitles and mistargeted dialogue events that affected all characters.
  
• Fixed a bug where Handmaiden's 2-2 talent "Oak Stance" didn't grant non-host players the increased critical strike chance.
  
• Fixed an issue with the inspect animation on the repeater handguns that made the cocking hammers act all wonky.
  
• Chaos Wastes level fixes:
  • The Foetid Gorge: Fixed a misplaced killzone that players could walk into and instantly die.
    
  • The Foetid Gorge: Fixed an upgrade shrine and a boon altar that could spawn inside the terrain.
    
  • The Foetid Gorge: Fixed several spots where Heroes could get stuck in.
    
  • The Foetid Gorge: Fixed an issue where the event barrel could spawn in an unreachable location.
    
  • Count Mordrek's Fortress: Fixed some issues with Heroes respawning behind events when they shouldn't.
    
  • Count Mordrek's Fortress: Fixed the geometry around some stone steps to be smoother to navigate.
    
  • Bel'sha'ziir's Mine: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck due to geometry or invisible collision.
    
  • Bel'sha'ziir's Mine: Moved some decorations around in the Slaanesh version that could block movement.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Adjusted a couple of pillars that could make movement difficult.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed an issue where enemies could not spawn in a certain spot due to a boon shrine.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed a spot where players could hang from a ledge inside the terrain.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed a rare issue where players joining half way would see a wrong, lower detail version of the level, making progression through certain parts impossible.
    
  • Cinder Peak: Fixed a rare issue where players joining half way would not see the gate open and thus couldn't go through it.
    
  • Slaughter Bay: Fixed an issue where the first respawn point available was too far from the level start.
    
  • Slaughter Bay: Fixed a spot where enemies would just fall over, dead.
    
  • Slaughter Bay: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck.
    
  • Citadel of Eternity: Fixed an issue where players joining mid-way would be missing some moving floors and stairs, making progression impossible for these clients.
    
  • Citadel of Eternity: Fixed an issue where specials could spawn on invisible stairs.
    
  • Arena of Determination: Fixed a spot where enemies would spawn dead. Enough pranking the Nurglites, Tzeentch!
    
  • Arena of Determination: Fixed an issue where the purifying torch from the Nurgle curse would spawn in an unreachable spot.

My name is Anton and I’ve been working as a sound designer at Fatshark and Vermintide 2 for the past two and a half years. I have been working as a sound designer for the past ten years and have been working with and around music and sound for as long as I can remember.

Trivia about me:

• I have the best dog named Håkan
  
• I can tie my shoes really fast (worked part-time in a shoe store for a couple of years)
  
• I’ll turn off a movie or show if they have bad-sounding doors.

In this developer blog, I’d like to highlight what it takes to add to and administer an already great sound landscape (soundscape) present in Vermintide 2. Mostly, I want to highlight some details in the sound design of Vermintide 2.

On Vermintide 2 we currently have two sound designers: myself and David. I create and implement most of the sound effects while our audio lead, David, handles the VO. Both of us started working at Fatshark post-launch of Vermintide 2, so we’ve worked a lot with managing the already great soundscape while still evolving and exploring new ideas.

How do we do that? Well - I try to incorporate my voice in as many assets as I can, literally. As of now, I’ve been a rat in a hat, Sienna's skeletons, a giant pig in the Tower of Treachery, dying seagulls in Karak Azgaraz, Belakor’s flying skulls, poxwalker D (in Darktide), and now a lighthouse. Because I had a planned vacation, David got the honor of voicing our Nurglings - and I’m very jealous.

The lighthouse would be the centerpiece of the level, and it is possessed by Nurgle. Then and there I knew it needed some cool sounds. Obviously. When I started working on the first sound concepts, the gameplay implications were wild. I wanted to muffle all other sounds when you’re hit by the light beam emitting from the lighthouse. When you're hit by the beam, voices would start whispering to you. All of these ideas were fun but from a gameplay standpoint, they were not feasible. However, the ideas were not in vain.

While working on this, our writer Matt Ward recorded some voice lines that we could use for testing and prototyping. Matt did a great job, but I wanted to test with a more guttural approach to the Grandfather of Sickness. And how did I achieve that? You guessed it - I recorded myself.

Sidenote - I tend to record myself because it's very easy to iterate, press record, press export, start the game, listen, and do it again until you get the feeling right. I’m very easy to direct when I’m the director.

To make my voice sound like an ancient God of Chaos I used a lot of effects. I recorded myself at a very high sample rate, that’s a trick used when you want to change the pitch of the voice more freely without quality loss. Then I added my usual effects, compression, eq, delays, and reverbs. But something was still missing. It sounded a bit generic. Then I remembered an effect that could modify and blend multiple sounds in a very interesting way. I found this recording of stirring macaroni that sounded perfectly mushy, gross, wet, and sticky. That worked out great to get an even more guttural sound to my voice.

However, I was still not happy, it still sounded a bit human. Then I remembered Matt’s recordings. What would happen if I blended his voice lines with mine and added the macaroni? Success! It sounds so strange, so big, so gross in a cool way.

And this was only one layer. We still thought it would be too intrusive to have this played for the entire duration of the level. We also wanted to save the big guns for the big end event. I designed some drones with some synthesizers and rumbles, whispers, and gore. This would become what you hear when you're far away. In the level, I added some zones where it’s not as audible, so you get natural dynamics in the soundscape.

I would love to talk even more about the process, but hopefully, this gives a small insight into the sound design workflow. It was a lot of trial and error, implementations, attenuation curves, balancing, playtesting, playtesting, and playtesting. In the end when we added the wonderful music from our composer Two Feathers it all came together.

With all this said, was this the most fun sound design task? No, I like designing rain the most, but that could be an entire blog post by itself.

Thank you for your time, and the next time you hear a random whuaaaargh remember - it’s probably me.