The general point of this guide is to help inform new players to champ on some of the differences between vet and champion, give a list of Do's and Don't's, and help players be better at the game in genreal. Champion can be daunting and following a few of these points can help your runs go smoother and assist you with avoiding some of the common mistakes many make when first starting champion runs.

Note that this is not a guide for all classes and subs classes but more of a general set of bullet points and foot notes that many people struggle with when it comes to playing Champion. If you are looking for how to build a character or how certian things work with specific class setups then it would be better to look for a specific guide on what character you are interested in.

I most likely won't be updateing it very much as this is more of a "getting started" guide unless something massively changes and most of the main points are covered. Well i seem to be updating this guide a lot more than i first thought so that went right out the window. May update more in the future with things that i notice people need help with or ask a lot of questions about.

As with the other difficulties there is both an enemy damage and toughness go up in Champion compared to Vet. As with Vet you do not start and any healing and items such as healing, potions, bombs, and ammo are in far fewer numbers.

Getting downed only once puts you into a black and white state with temp hp and getting downed after that kills you. Enemy horders are in much larger number as well as special enemies. Boss level enemies are also far more common, with 1-2 bosses per run not being out of the ordinary (sometimes
you will get far more in a run but expect to get AT LEAST 1 to 2 bosses). Sepcial enemies will sometimes spawn in packs of 2 even if it is the same enemy (eg 2 hookrats, 2 assassins, etc)

The biggest change from Vet to Champ is the introduction of Friendly Fire from ranged weapons and certian class abilities. You can seriously damage your team if you use ranged weapons and are not careful so you need to drop some habits such as firing through teammates.

This section is deticated for a few things that don't really fit elseware. This covers a few things that people don't seem to grasp when it comes to proper teamplay in Champion and above.

The green circles don't mean anything!

I don't think this can be stated anymroe. If you are playing to get the green circles then you are playing wrong. Your goal is to get to the end of the map and survive, not to get the post kills and damage. Yes, it can be an ok metric to see how you are doing with your team (mainly damage done and taken vs the rest of your team). If you notice you are taking twice as much damage and doing far less than the rest of your team then you know something is wrong.

The important thing to know is that not all classes are created and some are going to excel in some areas over others.

Don't split up from your team, the game will punish you!

One concept that is not stated often is how the AI for spawning enemies compensates for players that split off from the team. If a player runs off the AI director will spawn more enemies and distribute them in a way so they are around the whole team, including the player who ran off. This results in more spawns and often the AI will spawn disabling specials on the one who ran ahead of behind.

To have the least spawns and also the best chance of winning you need to keep your team togeather.

Power rating vs Level

Power rating is a combination of your character level and your items into a number that increases damage, stun, and how many enemies you can slash or hit through. You can get a max of 300 PR from items and 300 from charater level.

To this end you don't want to enter champion till you hit both a decent power rating and level. Being level 15 abd having PR 150 weapons would be an ok spot to start trying champion.

However, you may also want to keep playing vet until you hit power rating 200 on your weapons as opening max 300 PR chests does not automatically put your to power rating 200, it goes either + or - 5 of what your maxium level item was. This may also get you to a level where you get stronger trait passives that really help in champion and above (eg, getting temp hp off of kills).

At the end of the day if you are just looking for loot there is not point in rushing to Champ with your first character if you haven't hit PR 200 gear yet. Not to metnion there is a grater chance of failure thus making it harder to gear out your character if you aren't ready yet.

Marking an enemy or an item with your mark key (default T) can allow your team to more easily see special enemies, bosses, and items by applying a blue outline to them.

Marking an enemy even if you lack ammo or a ranged attack altogeather (example: The Slayer) can help your team pick off a thougher enemy before they become a problem. It highlights them and makes a sound so even without saying anything your team can more easily pick them out of a crowd.

This is especially important on bosses and enemies like Blightstormers since sometimes the mix of particle effects from enemy abilities and map elements make them extremely hard to see. This is also useful for pinning down enemies that teleport around and could cause serious problems for the rest of your team.

Finally if you happen to be playing with a WHC any enemy that is marked takes more damage so keeping enemies marked is in your best intrest. Though im not sure what the numbers are for increased damage it looks to roughtly be around 5-10% more damage and boss health goes down far faster compared to an unmarked enemy.

In Champion every ranged attack can do friendly fire. Some attacks do far more than others and can cripple your team pretty badly if you are not aware of what you are shooting at.

On top of the usual "don't shoot your teamamtes" adviceit's important to reconize 2 important things with how Friendly Fire work in Vermintide 2.

1) Being hooked, Assassined, or Leeched does not make your teammate immune to damage done by friendly fire. You can often do more harm than good when wildly firing and not aiming for the rat or leech that has your teammate pinned down.

2) Your abilities can and will damage your team if it is aimed at them or passes through them. This is especailly notable to people who play Elf's first carear, Bounty Hunter, and Unchained. The elf's arrows will still pass through a teammate however they will still take all of the damge from the stroke as well as the enemies it hits.

It's really important to aim accurately with your shots and mind your lines of fire. Most friendly fire is entrely avoidable by following a few simple steps.

-Avoid firing into a horde when a teammate is attempting to enegage in melee.

-Do not cross in front of ranged heroes, always cross behind them when moving or wait till there is nothing for them to fire at.

-Aim above your teammate's heads for taller enemies and stay on their side when firing, avoid standing directly behind when shooting as a teammate can get thrown up and backwards by an enemy's attack.

-Never walk through a hero that is firing. Always walk around.

-Carefully aim your shots when saving a hooked teammate and if you cannot get a clear shot try to engage in melee. Slayers and Zealots are good for saving teammates in a grabbed state when ranged is not an option.

Picking a good spot to defend is a far more important aspect in Champion than in Vet or Recruit

Generally during a horde wave you should pick a easy to defend spot, hunker down and fight through it. Fighting out in the open is a death sentence, your team will get swarmed and they will either go down or get dragged off 1 by 1 by specials. Here are just a few notes regarding sucessfully defending during a horde event.

-Never seperate from your team. This is a common sense statment but you see a lot of newer teams split into oppsoite corners and get overwhelmed because they just don't have the damage to fight off 20+ rats at a time by themselves.

-Try to sit somewhere that rats or chaos can be funneled into 1-2 easy to control areas. The less places they can come from, the better. This is best done when your team has atleast 1 tank, 2 damage based heroes to the direct sides of the tank and 1 person to cover the rear and additional sides enemies can come from. It is also their job to call out if a horde is coming from the opposite direction

-Ledges are a really good defensive spot to sit on top of during a horde event. You are effectively getting free hits on rats and chaos raiders as they try to climb up and they cannoy hit back while climbing up. You also have a grater field of view and can more easily spot specials off in the distance.

-Standing under a ledge is usualy a poor idea. On top of dealing with enemies from the front and sides you now need to deal with enemies dropping down on top of you which can be unpredictable and hard to hit. Having a larger enemy land directly next to your party can result in a total party wipe instantly.

-Be careful when using movement displacing abilities in Champion and above during a horde wave! On more than one occausion i have see either a Footnight or Handmaiden use their ability, throw themsevles on the otherside of a horde and isolate themselves from the rest of the team. They then get swarmed, die and leave their team a man down and without a tank.

Additional note Posted by Lackmus in the origional thread:

You can cancel the charge ability of Footknight, handmaiden, and zealot by pressing block after activating while still getting the benefits like attack speed, extra blocking, or pushback.


-Have a fallback planned for globerats and Blightwinds. Don't just scatter because it result in the horde wiping your team instead of the special.

Hordes will often have 1-2 Waves in them. Just when you think the horde is winding down a second wave will usually come. You can tell if a horde is still coming by the music as well as the sound of a horn in the distance. A good indication if it did stop or not will be a change in the music and a comment from your character along the lines of "They are gone for now but they will return".

Special enemies are the real meat of the challange in Champion mode and are often most of the reason a group will fail aside from Bosses. Many champion level specials can bring a teammate from full health to none in a matter of seconds or wipe entire teams in the case of Blightstormers.

Dealing with special enemies should be the top priority of your team whenever they are spotted.

Ideally in a party you should have atleast 1 desiginated person on Sepcial Enemy duty. Their job should entirely be to look out for anything that could seriously damage the party, point them out and kill them.

An important note is to make sure that you have your sound turned up so you can hear special enemies. They all make distinct sounds and you will hear a special enemy before you see or your character will call out it's presence. This guide refrences the audio ques each special makes so make sure you have your audio turned up and tuned so you can hear it.

Hookrats

Hookrats are always to be feared near ledges, dropdowns, or during horde events. They can pull a teammate up and over a ledge even after a teammate has dropped down. Make sure that if you hear a hookrat you all either jump down and stay away from the unpassable ledge or stay in place to save a teammate if they are grabbed.

You can hear a hookrate coming by the rattling of bones and an almost giggling in the distance.

Assassins

For Asassins keep your team close but notstacked on top of eachother, They will stagger and push back nearby teammates when an assassin jumps on it's prey. Focus on trying to kill an Assassin in 1 shot as if you simply shove or hit them off they will come back for repeat attacks. Simply pushing them off will result in the assassin using a smoke bomb, dissapearing and coming back again.

They will make the sound of whispering and echos off in the distance before they attack.

Globe Rats

Globe rats will throw 1-2 poison globes from far away, spreading a green damaging gas over an area that also obscures vision. Marking them is recomended as the green gas will often obsure them from view and make killing them from a distance difficult. Globe Rats will continue to throw globes at your team so you should kill them quickly.

They make a sound of a hissing and weezhing as well as a heavy breathing. Note that this can sound similar to a Warpfire Thrower but the hissing is far slower and mechinacal sounds are far more muted.

Ratling Gunners

Ratling gunners can easily chew through your hitpoints if you are not caerful. Do not try to engage them out in the open, you will die. Either wait till they spin down, hit them from exreme range where their shots are not as accurate, or try to peak around cover to get a shot off by dodging back and forth.

If they are hitting through cover then they have glitched and the only way to make them stop is to kill them! Do not just try to wait it out as your cover is being nullified and you will continue to get shot.

They make a heavy metal clanging sound as the walk around and you can usually hear thier spinup as well as the first few shots.

Warpfire Throwers

Warpfire Throwers are fairly easy to deal with at range. Just keep a long distance from it and do not stack your team into a corner. After they fire they will leave an area of effect DoT on the ground so mind your footing.

The audio you will hear before one attacks is the clannging of meta, a small sput of flame, bellows and a rate making disjointed comments about fire and green flame.

Leech Sorcerer

Leeches are just as annoying as they are deadly. They are somewhat of a combo between the assassin and the hookrat, teleporting near teammates, hitting them and then pulling them in with their ability.

Pay specail attention to the sounnd of zaps from teleporting and pay special attention tot he back of your party. They will teleport in as close to your team as possiable and attempt to teleport away if the grab is broken. Killing them in 1 hit is important in a similar way it's important to kill the assassin in 1 hit. If you simply damage them they will come back later and attempt to grab another teamate.

You will hear whispering and chanting from them but in a fairly muted way. They best indication one is near is a large ammount of zapping from teleports and your characters pointing it out.

Blightstormers

Blightstormers are your number 1 priority to deal with an any situition for the below reasons.

1) They have a massive area AOE ability that disables the whole party with very little warning.
2) They block vision and make it harder to see other enemies
3) They do a lot of damage to the whole party all at once
4) Their ability will completely displace and split your team.
5) Their stom wil chase your team and push them into undesireable positions even if no one is caught in it.

You can see the trail of a blightstomer as he starts to cast his spell. Use this to mark him first and then land the killing blow. Make sure you go for a 1 hit kill or just like the leech he will teleport away and even without line of sight the storm will continue. Sometimes it is best to rush the Blightstomer and kill him rather than let him cast.

You will hear the blightstormer chanting and reciting what sounds liek a rhyme involving sickness and plague, he is much louder than the chaos leech and the sound of his main attack is that of gusting wind.

Sack Rats

I almost feel silly including this one but here we are. Lets just lay this out right now, a Sack rat is not worth taking damage, getting downed, or the success of your team.

Mark them, let the ranged class deal with it and if it gets away then don't worry about it, you will most likely not get a loot die anyway and even then it's not a huge bonus. DO NOT run halfway across the map trying to get kill while pulling every enemy in between you and it.

You will hear the sound of rattling gold coins and a shrill rat voice going "mine, mine, mine!" if one is in the area.

This section is deticated to the types of enemies that you will find in Patrols and how to properly deal with patrols. Unlike in the lower difficulties Patrols are a much larger threat in Champion and above. They have lead to more than one party wipe due to people being careless and agroing a horde of tough enemies.

Footsoliders and skaven with shields

Alongside Elite enemies sometimes you run into nromal enemies with shields. These enemies are harder to kill with standard attacks because they will mostly be blocked unless you have a shield breaking or armor peircing weapon. Try to power attack them or get behind them while a teammate has their attention. Knocking them off balance will expose them to your blows

They are annoying but not super deadly, just don't get stuck in a corner aganist them.

Stormvermin and shielded Stormvermin

These are man sized rats with either polearms or shields and Swords. Their thick armor makes them harder to kill so it's best to leave Stormvermin to ranged heros that can land repeted headshots agansit them or to teamamkes with armor and shield breaking weapons. It's better to dodge over blocking as some of their attacks can swing through blocks (mainly overhead swings) fairly easily and take large chunks of your health off.

Note for below section: It's hard to pin down what i these 2 enemies are acutally called. Some voicelines call the armored chaos chaos warrios when marked but the after kill callout declares them as rothelms. Same with the other way around. for the purpose of this guide Rothelms are the less armored chaos axe men and the Chaos Warrios are the ones in full plate

Rothelms

Towering champions of chaos that have a large axe and are heads above most other enemies. They lack armor so just a few hits to them from ranged can eaisly down them. It is not recommended to fight them in melee but if you must dodging is the best option.

Chaos Warriors

Chaos Warriors are heavily armored versions of Rothelms that deal massive damage and are all but unkillable unless yout hit them in the head or from behind. These are the kind of enemies you want to use class abilities on. The Bounty Hunter can down 1 of the in a single hit with their ability and make them a non issiue. Other than that used ranged attacks and shield breaking. Another method is to use a class that can stunlock them into place.

Beserkers and Skaven Monks

These enemies attack fast and do a lot of damage. It's best to take them down before they get in range but if they do get close you want to block. It's better to have a teamamte kill them while you maintain block and avoid damage. A single beserker if you miss the dodge of block can chew up over half your hitpoints in a few seconds. They are fairly tough compared to regular enemies and will take a hit or 2 to take down.


The Patrols

In Champion Patrols are much larger than their vet counterparts. In Champion they are something to avoid rather than to fight head on due to higher hp and damage individual enemies in the patrols possess. Patrols come in mostly 2 variety, Chaos and Skaven.

Skaven patrols are made up mostly of 6-8 Stormvermin and somtimes includes stormvermin shield enemies. These are rough to deal with just due to sheer numbers of armored enemies that hit your team with repeated heavy swings.

Chaos partrols are the most dangerous since they come with a mix of many Rothelms, several Chaos Warriors (one time i have seen 6 spawn in 1 patrol) and 1 or 2 Beserkers. They have a lot more damage due to the mix of Beserkers and the Rothelms. Chaos Warriors are much harder to kill due to their armor, damage, size and limited hitbox vs Stormvermin.

Here is how to generaly deal with patrols.

1) When you hear a patrol, figure out which way it is coming from and mark the leader. This allows you to keep track of where they are and where they are going.

2) Do not engage! Hide! Stay out of the path of the patrol. Don't soot in their general direcction as they will instantly know where you are!

3) Pay attention to where they are going and take note if they are on a loop and come back through an area.

4) Pass the patrol when the area is clear and move onto the next area.

There are several reasons to avoid patrols. They do a massive ammount of damage, they are hard to take down, there is no benefit to getting rid of them, and usually getting rid of a patrol eats up resoruces that could have been used in the next fight.

If you do run into a patrol then you need to have 1 person as deticated tank, another person to focus down the tougher enemies in the pack, and finally have 2 others as general damage. Ideally if you run into a patrol have a bomb to chuck at them, this will clear the majority of the patrol thus making it easier to fight. This is also the time to use any area control and damage abilities your party may have as your goal at this point is to mitigate the ammount of HP and resources lost from fighting a patrol.

The wost thing you can do with a patrol is split up. This makes it harder to focus damage to kill enemies (thus reducing the damage they can do to your team) and it can often leave weaker allies in melee agansit a stronger foe such as Chaos Warriors or multiple Stormvermin. Running past will not work either as they will continue to chase after your team. Be careful of their displacement abilities as they can throw teammates quite far away.

The bottom line with Patrols is this: It's best to avoid the fight altogeather. You gain nothing from fighting them and are most likely to just lose a large chunk of health, ammo, and items at best.

Boss level enemies are probably one of the most dangerous types of enemies to run into on Champion especially.

Even something as weak as a rat ogre can down multiple teammates and easily eat much of a groups resources just trying to kill it. This will both be kind of a general section and a more specific one for dealing with bosses.

For the most part you want to always follow these points:

1) Always try to fight a boss in an open area. In champion you cannot afford to be taking repeated hits from bosses. You will likely be able to block 1-2 hits at best and that is about it. You want to have space to run around and kite the boss.

2) Building on the last point, avoid splitting your team and getting them stuck in a small tunnel section. More than 1 run has ended when one half of the team kited the boss into a small, cramped, tunnel thus blocking off one half of the team from helping the other. Open spaces are key!

3) If the boss agros you, run. As stated you can maybe block 1-2 hits at best but your advantage is going to be keeping away from their swings and blows. Alternatively you should dodge and block at the same time, trying to circle around them and avoid their attacks.

4) Keep the boss marked. As stated above you do not want to lose sight of where a boss is and that can eaisly happen due to partical effect heavy areas.

5) Avoid ledges. Bosses can and will punt you off the map if they get the chance and you will pretty much instantly die from my expirence.

6) Have 1 person continue to look out for special enemies! The AI director is an ass in this difficulty, he wil often spawn specials alongside a boss. To kep your team from losing members during the fight always have one eye on the edge of the fight.

Rat Ogres

This is probably the second easiest boss to fight. It functions in a similar fashion to the Left 4 Dead tank and usually charges, leaps towards teams, has a wider sweep attack with knockback and a heavy downward slam attack that can break a block.

You want to just spread out and focus fire on the head. Dodge around the rat and try not to get cornered. Follow the basics on boss killing and you should be fine.

Storm Fiends

In my opinion the easiest boss in the game, storm fiends are an armored rat which uses mostly ranged fire attacks agansit your team. They are sesntially an oversized fire rat and are fairly slow and easy to deal with. They will shoot 2 streams of green flame that you can either avoid by dodging or sit out of the range of.

This is a boss where having teammates on either side does not hurt as much as he has a front weakpoint (the head) and a back weakpoint (the rat controller or the rat pack). Hitting both of these grants headshot damage and as long as your team is focusing the head and the back while staying out of the flame it should go down fairly easily. You can also dodge a circle around them to get to their back and also eaisly dodge out of the way of their 1 melee attack.

Chaos Spawn

The second hardest boss, the Chaos spawn works similarly to the rage ogre minus the leap attack. Instead they have a fairly wide sweeping attack with their tentacle that can break blocks and hurts a lot. It's best to engage this boss at range as they can grab teammates and absob their health as well as doing massive damage. You can dodge a cicrle around them but at the same time it is risky as their grab can hit players BEHIND THEM AS WELL AS IN FRONT!

If a teammate gets grabbed the chaos spawn will drain their hp and refill their own. You can use either a bomb or a class ability to free them.
Of the class abilties i have seen work Footnight's charge, WHC's push back, Mercs ability, and Bounty hunter's F without the double ammo attack will knock the Chaos Spawn out of life leech mode.

Bile Trolls

In my opinion, this boss is one of the hardest bosses to fight over all others. For starters it gets a fairly strong swing attack despite it being short range. Second, it's Bile is either a AoE in a stright line or in a puddle around itself. Third, he regens health passively though the fight and also will regen a lot of health in some sections when he goes to bend down.

You just need to keep doing damage to him. The best thing you can do is stay out of the bile and avoid his area attacks. Fighting the troll in a confined area is a death sentence. Worst of all the game will not let you run from it, you will find som areas are blocked off if you try to advance forward anymore.

Your friend is going to be constant damage and quick dodging. The only advantage vs the troll is t that he telegraphs his attacks fairly long and slowly and he is weak to fire damage. When he bends down to heal that is when you should go in and hammer him hard, this will counter act the regen and if you do enough damage you may even stop him from regening his health back up. Firebombs and lanterns are also useful in this state if your team agrees to stay at ranged but DO NOT use one if you are mostly doing melee damage. Fire will cut off their healing but it may also damage your team.

Dodging is an imporatnt part of defending agansit incoming damage. Part learning to effectively play champion is avoiding damage altogeather. It is required to just survive boss fights as blocking is simply not enough.

An important note is that there is 2 ways to dodge in Vermintide 2. The default control is set to using your back or straife movement keys plus space bar. Keep in mind you need to hold movement + space at the same time to dodge. The second method is to enable double tap dodge. This allows you to hit your back, left, and right movement keys twice to dodge in a given direction. This is a bit more reliable but it can result in unintentional dodges into firendly fire and mobs till you get the hang of it.

The general rule of thumb for dodging is knowing your surroundings. Dodging backwards to avoid damage just to back into a different group of enemies or off a cliff makes the attempt itself pointless.

Dodging from normal enemies

Most of the time you are going to be dodging backwards or left and right of a horde while blocking and shoving.

That way instead of an attack looking like this [Enemies *] (Player ^)

**************
^

It looks like ths

* * *
* * * *
* *
* *
^

At this point you will have enemies coming at you 1 and 2 at ta time vs having a huge wave of 10 enemies all attacking at once.

Champions and armored enemies

Mostly you are going to want to dodge left and right on those long windup overhead swings and dodge back on sweeps. Keeping block up is important so if you do get hit you still reduce some of the damage.

Ideally you should dodge a swing, go in for a hit, dodge out again, and then come back in and repeat untill dead. Only break this rythm if you have an easy way to stunlock an armored foe.

Bosses

For the Rat Ogre you want to dodge around him left or right while keeping pointed directly at him. You especaially want to keep your block up and watch for his overhead swing.

For chaos spawn the rules remain mostly the same. For normal swing dodge left or right around him until he agros another teammate. Additinally if you see him going to swing his tentacle you should dodge diagnally (S and a or d + space) to clear the most distace. Getting grabbed as stated above makes the fight a lot harder for your team due to you taking damage and him healing,

The Storm Skaven is mostly a game of dodging left or right away from his flame spouts. Very little back dodging is needed as his front facing melee attack is both rare and does far less damage than that of a rat ogre. Dodging back is not advised as his flame waves have a very long distance and it's mostly better just to back up beyound the range.

The troll rrequires you to pay special attnetion to his animations and attacks. His one phase which is just swings you should treat the same as a chaos spawn. Dodge left and right with block up to avoid his swings. When he goes to vomit you want to dodge both back and right or left. His vomit has a long range and comes in 2 forms, a stream in from of him or a pool around him. Doing this keeps you out of both of them as fast as possiable.

The 2 types of healing in the game are health potions and medkits. They generally serve the same purpose of healing you but there are 2 notable differences.

Potions can only be used to heal yourself and are instant. Medkits can heal yourself and others but take time to do so and requires a teamamte to stand still.

Ideally you ALWAYS want to use healing potions first and take extra medkits with you. This is mainly because you can always heal another teammate or youeslf with a medkit. You can't always pass a potion to a teammate.

Sometimes it could be because they are busy in combat, they could be carrying a tome, someone may even have the nacklace trait that passive heals them but as a reult they cannot heal themselves. Either way your priority should look something like this when coming across med supplies.

1) Always heal teammates that were downed and are in black and white.

2) Heal large ammounts of missing HP with potions.

3) Take extra medical supplies with you so you have as many as you can carry.

4) Heal up to full with medkits if there is extra so you are not missing any hp.

It's also useful to take note who has what traits. Many of these are designed to make the most of your healing supplies in different ways.

Does a teamate heal themsevles when they heal others with a medkit? Does one get a passive health regen and can't heal themselves? Does someone have a chance to not use a healing item? Does a teammate heal 30% more when a healing item is used on them? All these can help preserve your supplies and save them for when they are most needed.

You also want to keep an eye on the HP of characters carrying Grims. If that character dies while carrying a grim then the bonus is lost.

Reviving downed players

When it comes to reviving Allies always go for the lowest HP one first. This is simple stuff but if you do it the other way around with multiple down teammates you could most likely end up only saving 1 instead of 2.

Reviving is inturrupted by being hit. It is often better to kill surrounding enemies first and then try to revive an ally. In a pinch if you hold right click and revive an teammate then you will actively block while getting them up, keeping smaller groups of enemies from interrupting your revive.

Revive allies Grims, if they die, it's gone.

Finally, if you can make sure to have 1 person covering a teammate that is actively reviving another. That way the teammate doing the reviving takes less hits and the teammate being revived doesn't get picked up into instant death due to being surrounded by a horde.

Do not try ot pick up teammates if a boss is on top of them. It is best to draw the boss away with agro and then pick them up ast they boss chases a new targe.

Ammo in Vermintide 2 is generally fairly scarce.

Depending on the level and the AI director you can be lucky to sometimes see 2 ammo crates per run and maybe 1-3 ammo drops.

Ideally you are going to be saving ammo for larger encounters with boss type enemies or larger nubmers of special Chaos and Skaven enemies. Wasting ammo on hordes and smaller enemies will cause you to run out when you need it the most.

Some heros have abilities that give you ammo on use as well as some traits. It's advised that if you plan to be using a lot of ranged you take either one of these weapon traits that give back ammo for headshots or crits and/or take a class talent to do the same.

In addition you are going to want to use up ammo drops only when you really need it as the ammo you find in chests and other locations will fully refill your stock.

Go for headshots when you can as you are going to be doing more damage for the same ammo spent.

Don't be afraid to use your ammo on special enemies as that is primarily what ranged weapons on Champion should be used for. Spedning 6 ammo is worth it when it means you can spare a teammate from losing half their health.

Any enocunter with specials you should be asking "if this enemy doens't die soon realistically how much damage can they do to my team?"

Potions are powerful temp boons to your team that can cause you to attack faster, do more damage, or regen your abilties faster. Potions do not benefit all characters and weapons equally so you must expirement and examine how to make the most out of your potion supply based off of your character's strengths and weeknesses.

Ideally potions should go to teammates that have the shared potion trait to make the most out of it. This can eaisly double the benefit of using any potion. Sharing something like a concentration potion between 2 characters with powerful class abilities to help get your team spam ablities agansit a tough foe like a chaos spawn.

If someone has a double duration that vastly help the team with a much needed extension on an already powerful buff. Someone with a strong career ability using a potion of concentration can result in them using that ability 2-3 times in the span of 10 seconds.

You don't want to waste potions either as they will be very rare to find in a given level, usually you should ideally save them for bosses, large hordes, patrols that end up in awful places or emergencies where it could be victory or defeat for your team.

Potions will usually be tucked away in chests, on shelves, in boxes, or in dark corners of the map. Keep an eye out for them as they can mean the difference between scraping by a hard area by the skin of your teeth or failing a run.

Bombs are a great support item but also can be a huge danger to your team. Always, always, always, call out when you are about to use a bomb. Just like other ranged weapons and abilities these do friendly fire damage to your team. Using one at the wrong time can end your run extremely quickly.

Ideally you should save bombs for 2 main occausions: Bosses and Patrols. Patrols go down really fast when bombs are used and bosses can be stunned and stagged which can interrrupt abilities such as the Chaos Spawn's life steal. If your teammate has an ability that causes enemies hit with bombs to take more damage from all attacks for 10 seconds it can make really short work of a boss or patrol (note this works on both fire and normal bombs).

A big note as well is to not waste bombs on hordes. Most teams will 100% be able to deal with a horde unassisted if they take a smart defensive posture. Usng a bomb is not only wasteful but can also damage your main tank or in the case of a fire bomb it can make a previously good defensive spot no longer safe.

The first thing to reconize is that you will often not win a full grim and tome run. You are handicapping youself in two counts, you are taking less healing and also have less overall hp.

To do an effective grim and tome run it is recomended that you have both a minus curse effect trinket and a +to hp ammount necklace. Atleast 20% reduction in curse effect and 10% extra hp should be your minium numbers to aim for. It is also recomended that you have some kind of bonus to healing item whether it be getting more healing, reducing the chance to consume a healing item, or a shared healing trait.

In addition you should carry the grims for your team if you are a more hardy hero (such as footnight or iron breaker) and don't benefit grately from popping potions yourself. Alternatively if you have a shared potion trinket, are playing a squishy class, and have a ability that could massively benefit from potions it is recommended that someone else carries the grim.This is the best case and will most likely sometimes need to carry a grim anyways despite not being best suited for it.

Here are a few ground rules regarding a sucessful grim and tome run.

1) Practice grabbing grims and tomes in a lower difficulty. In recruit or vet you have more time and a much larger margin of error to grab a grim or tome. In Champ you don't have the time to wander around or try to jump up a ledge for 5 min, you need to be able to do it quick.

2) Mark tomes/grims and grab them through surfaces. Yes this is an exploit, yes it can be considered cheating but it often cuts down on the time required to make some of the trickier jumps and you won't have your team as exposed for long.

3) Use the buddy system. At the very least you should have one teammate with you when trying to grab a tome or grim. Even I have had a moment where is was over confident, went to grab a grim or tome, and had a leech or assassin grab me when away from the team.

4) Plan which grim or tome to grab first. In some cases such as on the forest map you can have 2 tomes or a grim and tome close togeather but if done in the wrong order it can take a lot longer to get throug the level. Communicate with your team about which one to get first and do it in a way where you don't stop progressing forward through a level. Never EVER split the party to get far off tomes and grims.

5) If it takes more than 30 seconds then skip it. This is maiinly to do with jumping puzzles more than anything else but it can apply with trying to find a tome you aren't fimilar with. Spending to long looking for a tome or grim is inviting disaster.

6) This is the big one, do not pick up grims while a horde is happening or just about to happen. This also goes for moments where you know there is a boss happening. You can always grab the grim after the fight with the horde so if you lose any hp it matters less anyway, Grabbing the grim during a major fight can cause your team to go down due to their hp unexpectedly getting cut and result in a quick party wipe.

This also goes for Against the Grain especailly. Do the bossfight first, then grab the tome. you never know what boss is going to be in the barn and how badly your team is going to be beat up. Also remember that getting killed with a grim means the grim is gone forever.

Thanks for taking the time to read this guide and hopefully some of the information was useful to you.

Much of this is based off the original discussion thread i made and expanded on with the help of some of the commenters in the thread.

Guide Creator: RockerFox

Commenters whos ideas I included from origional thread:
Lackmus
Harukage
Jedzenie
My Little Pwny

Link to the original thread: http://gtm.you1.cn/app/552500/discussions/0/1697167355228793361/