Darktide blasts dudes good and with understanding the mechanics the game does not document for you, you can blast even better.

Enemies have hit points (HP), and weapons deal damage to those hit points, and when the HP goes to zero, the enemy is dead. This guide isn't worried about that part.

When a shot or stab hits an enemy, a setting on each weapon for the attack's cleave is compared to the target's hit mass in a function to see if the shot keeps going: this is the guide's major concern. More bullet cleave means more blasting per bullet, and melee weapon cleave means bigger knifery.

Similarly, shots have an Impact rating separate from their damage. If the impact is bigger than the target's stagger resistance by enough of a threshold defined by enemy, you can get one of many types of stagger and knock folks around. This part of the guide is a work in process.

Strength increases increase weapon power which increases damage, cleave, and impact. Blessings and talents can increase strength and other guides cover what those do.

Short version is weapons have cleave values built in and enemies have hit mass values and your attacks go through dudes with hit mass reducing your cleave until the cleave value hits zero. E.g. if you have 11.7 cleave on a Power Sword charged attack and enemies have 1.5 hit mass you can get 8 dudes in one swing (7 * 1.5 = 10.5 leaving 1.2 left and so the 8th guy brings it to 0)

Melee Weapons have a separate cleave damage distribution (ranged just does full damage) and so different attacks distribute damage across targets different - even if you have a bunch of cleave you might only damage 2-3 targets on a big heavy strikedown attack with the main target having 100% damage and the second/third targets getting 25% while a sweeping vanguard attack might go 100/75/50/33/25 with the remainder getting 25% - eviscerators are notable because they have huge cleave but can only damage 4 targets per swing - the rest get stagger. These can be found in the weapons damage settings profiles in the source code.

Brutal Momentum ignores the step down in damage for 3 dudes and you do full damage to the next guy because the step down gets ignored because of the weak spot kill and that's why it does great clear because all the dudes are getting first hit damage. Check out kuli's Darktide blessing guides for additional blessing specific information!

Carapace armor stops cleave cold unless you have a source of ignoring the attack stopping property of super_armor. Those are rarer - see Sunder, Plasma Gun, Perfect Strike, Unstoppable Force blessings.

Staggering a dude will reduce hit mass consumed by 10% to 25% to 50% and you can cleave harder so Impact blessings can indirectly help cleave.

If you're curious what the hit masses are for dudes it's in the source code here and varies by difficulty on the mooks (the mooks also have a special setting for a mystery sixth difficulty that isn't used):
scripts/settings/difficulty/minion_difficulty_settings.lua

If you're curious what the cleave values are for different gun functions it's also in the code for each weapon profile, and it's messy to list them all, so we'll get to that part in a later section.

Cleave is a property assigned to a weapon damage profile. Cleave can be a weapon stat too and the percentage roll of it will determine where on the spectrum within a min and max it lands - 80% roll on a single_cleave weapon with minimum of 1 and maximum of 2 would be 1.8 cleave while a 70% roll would be 1.7. This usually only applies to melee weapons within the 0-80% roll and the ranged weapons default to 50% within a range. E.g., Agripinaa braced revolver with double_cleave with a range of 2 to 4 has 3 cleave on ranged attacks.

Damage cleave and impact/stagger cleave are separate values on each weapon - a weapon can damage less people than it staggers, for example.

The base type can be found in the source code at:
scripts/settings/damage/damage_profile_settings.lua

A weapon's particular cleave settings will be found at their damage profile settings. For an autogun, it'd look like this:
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/autoguns/settings_templates/autogun_damage_profile_templates.lua

To look at a particular weapon like autoguns that have multiple types (infantry, vigilant, braced), the marks are separated with "m" and the general family is separated by "p" - the braced autos are known as "sprayandpray," or "snp," the vigilant autoguns as "burst," the infantry autoguns as "assault".

The different base cleave types look like this:

• damage_profile_settings.no_cleave=
  {attack={0.001,0.001},impact={0.001,0.001},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.single_cleave=
  {attack={1,2},impact={1,2},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.single_plus_cleave=
  {attack={1,3},impact={1,3},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.double_cleave=
  {attack={2,4},impact={2,4},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.light_cleave=
  {attack={3,6},impact={3,6},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.medium_cleave=
  {attack={4,9},impact={4,9},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.large_cleave=
  {attack={5.5,10.5},impact={5.5,10.5},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.big_cleave=
  {attack={8.5,12.5},impact={8.5,12.5},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.fold_cleave=
  {attack={2.5,2.5},impact={2.5,2.5},}

Each enemy has a hit mass value that affects your stabbery, and what that hit mass is is affected by the difficulty setting and whether or not there's the Tox gas in play (any source, not just bombers). There's the Threat 1 through Threat 5 we all know and love, and some of the minions have hit mass settings for a 6th unknown difficulty.

These values can be found in the source code under the file scripts/settings/difficulty/minion_difficulty_settings.lua.

• chaos_beast_of_nurgle = 20
  
• chaos_daemonhost = 20
  
• chaos_hound = 4
  
• chaos_hound_mutator = 2
  
• chaos_ogryn_bulwark = 12.5
  
• chaos_ogryn_executor = 12.5
  
• chaos_ogryn_gunner = 12.5
  
• chaos_plague_ogryn = 20
  
• chaos_poxwalker_bomber = 2.5
  
• chaos_spawn = 20

• cultist_berzerker = 4
  
• cultist_captain = 20
  
• cultist_flamer = 2
  
• cultist_grenadier = 2
  
• cultist_gunner = 4
  
• cultist_mutant = 10
  
• cultist_mutant_mutator = 8
  
• cultist_shocktrooper = 2

• renegade_berzerker = 10
  
• renegade_captain = 20
  
• renegade_executor = 10
  
• renegade_flamer = 2
  
• renegade_flamer_mutator = 2
  
• renegade_grenadier = 2
  
• renegade_netgunner = 3
  
• renegade_plasma_shocktrooper = 4
  
• renegade_sniper = 2
  
• renegade_twin_captain = 4
  
• renegade_twin_captain_two = 4

The calculation for how hit mass is consumed in an attack can be found in this part of the source code:
scripts/utilities/attack/hit_mass.lua

Pox Gas from any source applies a buff to the enemies that increases their hit mass by 2.5. It can be found in this script (thanks kuli!):
scripts/settings/buff/mutator_buff_templates.lua

The same .LUA file also shows us that folks with the green nurgle blessing on Maelstroms count 10 times towards the hit mass consumption function!

Impact is a function of the gun power. It has different multipliers based on the armor type it's hitting, bonuses from blessings and talents, and strength bonuses. Each enemy type has a stagger resistance rating which is a multiple on how hard you need to impact them to hit a stagger threshold. Each type of weapon impact can do different categories of stagger, some of which are easier to hit the big stagger animations. If an enemy has stagger reduction, which is a flat malus to your stagger amount separate from the multiplier of stagger resistance, it'll be baked into an animation or state of being. This is in their "breed" settings.

To find the stagger categories by weapon type, they're in this chunk of the source code:
scripts/settings/damage/stagger_settings.lua

The stagger calculation is performed in:
scripts/utilities/attack/stagger_calculation.lua

To look at a enemy's settings for stagger thresholds and their stagger reduction, the folder to look in is this:
scripts/settings/breed/breeds

For example, Dreg ragers are easy to stagger normally and when they're attacking they have 50 stagger reduction and ranged attacks have to stagger 20 harder - this is in their breed LUA. Instead of flinching at 1 stagger you'd need to hit them with 71 ranged stagger or 51 melee stagger to get them to sit down.

Poxbursters have 2.0 stagger resistance in general, stagger reduction of 1 vs non-ranged, and stagger_reduction_ranged = 15, so you need double the stagger to trigger an animation and guns need at least 17 to trigger a light stagger. When they're making the jump to blow up, it's in the breed_actions as a melee attack, the stagger reduction to ranged and killshot stagger is 60, so you need like a shotgun to bust through that! (Though at that point you might just pop the bomber!)

Many weapon special attacks ignore enemy stagger reduction so they're good for busting through stagger resistance. E.g., the Ogryn bully club slap has a weakspot_stagger_resistance_modifier = 0.1 so if you slap them in the face the stagger you need to trigger an animation is reduced by 90%.

Pushes and Finesse hits also consider stagger reduction 50% of what it would be!

Default Stagger Thresholds look like this:

• stagger_settings.default_stagger_thresholds = {
  
• [stagger_types.light] = 1,
  
• [stagger_types.medium] = 10,
  
• [stagger_types.heavy] = 20,
  
• [stagger_types.explosion] = 40,
  
• [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.sticky] = 0.25,
  
• [stagger_types.electrocuted] = 0.25,
  
• [stagger_types.killshot] = 2,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_block] = 0.25,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_heavy_block] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_broken] = 10,
  
• [stagger_types.wall_collision] = 0.25,
  
• [stagger_types.blinding] = 0.25,

Individual enemies will have stagger threshold overrides in their breed data too - here's one for the poxwalker_bomber breed:

• stagger_thresholds = {
  
• [stagger_types.light] = 1,
  
• [stagger_types.medium] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.heavy] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 100,
  
• [stagger_types.killshot] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.sticky] = 100,

This means that melee and pushes push it good while ranged attacks really gotta add up compared to the defaults.

Staggered enemies consume less hit mass when you blast them so you can cleave crowds better. Thanks to kuli in the comments, the amount is 10/25/50% less hit mass consumed based on the severity of the stagger state - light/medium/heavy. That data is in:
scripts/extension_systems/behavior/nodes/actions/bt_stagger_action.lua

Going back to stagger_settings.lua, it's got the types of hit mass reductions coded by type to where the debuff amount is coded with a 1,2,3,4; Transliterated, it looks like this:

• stagger_settings.stagger_impact_comparison = {
  
• [stagger_types.explosion] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.heavy] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_broken] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.wall_collision] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.medium] = 25% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_heavy_block] = 25% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.killshot] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.light] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_block] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.sticky] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.electrocuted] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.blinding] = 10% hit mass reduction,

Stagger you apply that doesn't do a stagger goes into a pool that by default in stagger_settings.lua looks like this:

• stagger_settings.stagger_pool_decay_time = 1
  
• stagger_settings.stagger_pool_decay_delay = 0.2

If you keep punching them every less than 0.2 seconds, your stagger keeps adding up, and after a full second of no impact the stagger goes away.

Pushes do a certain amount of impact based on if enemies are close in a cone in front of you or further away and based on what kind of push it is. Push impact information is in this script:
scripts/settings/damage/damage_profiles/common_damage_profile_templates.lua

This section walks through practical examples of how to look at your weapon stats in game, look at the code for an enemy, and gauge whether or not it will fall over when you punch it in the face.

The good news is the weapon inspect screen tells you accurate values on what your impact ratings are versus different armor types and weak spot hits, just based off the weapon.

Bonuses to impact from blessings and talents you can do napkin math on - Zealot Grievous Wounds gets +50% impact on melee weak spot hit and also has the middle tree +30% impact node for ranged and melee impact, and impact_modifier tag is an additive bonus, so you'd take the listed melee impact from the inspect screen and scale it up to 180% of listed value (e.g., 30 to 54) for the impact that's punching the monster.

Whether a bonus is additive or multiplicative is listed in this settings file:
scripts/settings/buff/buff_settings.lua

When stagger calculations are performed, based on impact comparison to stagger thresholds (after stagger resist multiplier and first doing stagger reduction additive malus), you either get a stagger or you don't (at which point the impact is banked), and if you get a stagger the type of stagger you get is determined by the weapon damage profile's stagger types. (Most make sense for what they are called, and I'll note "sticky" stagger usually refers to chain weapons or foldable shovels that "stick" to the target while doing the attack).

stagger_settings.stagger_categories =

• melee = {light, medium, heavy}
  
• stab = {light_ranged, medium, heavy}
  
• sticky = {sticky}
  
• electrocuted = {electrocuted}
  
• flamer = {killshot, medium}
  
• hatchet = {killshot}
  
• uppercut = {light, medium}
  
• killshot = {killshot, medium, heavy}
  
• ranged = {light_ranged, medium, heavy}
  
• explosion = {light, medium, heavy, explosion}
  
• force_field = {light}
  
• blinding = {blinding}

These categories can be found in:
scripts/settings/damage/stagger_settings.lua

We want to look at an Ogryn Crusher to see if punching it with a Veteran's shovel will make it fall over, and so first what we have to do is find the damage profile for the standard issue shovel special stab, find its stagger type, figure out whether it ignores stagger reduction, figure out its special multiplier for stagger resistance, compare it to the Crusher's modified stagger thresholds, and if the impact is bigger, you get a stagger and now you know why it's a stumble and not a flinch.

Turns out the shovels are actually coded as a third type of combat axe (regular combat axes are p1, tactical axes are p2, shovels are p3), so for the standard shovel we're looking for the m1 data because the foldable shovels are p3_m2 and p3_m3.

Script file for the standard-issue shovel:
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/combat_axes/combataxe_p3_m1.lua

Damage profiles for the different axe actions are in this script:
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/combat_axes/settings_templates/combat_axe_damage_profile_templates.lua

Because all the axe attacks and shovel attacks are in one file, doing a CTRL+F for "Special" in the damage_profile_templates LUA jumps us down to the actions coded as special actions for the different axes, and conveniently the one we thought we wanted is labeled for the shovel as "light_shovel_special," except it's just a bunch of overrides of the axe_stab action for a bazillion damage and turns out it's actually the p3_m3 foldable shovel folded bonk. The way we actually verify which action we actually want is to go in the p3_m1 template LUA, CTRL+F for "special," look at which damage profile template the special has, and find out that it's actually the axe_stab action in the weapon's DamageProfileTemplates LUA.

Magic keywords on axe_stab we're interested in:

• ignore_stagger_reduction = true,
  
• stagger_category = "uppercut",
  
• weakspot_stagger_resistance_modifier = 0.0001,
  
• cleave_distribution = single_cleave,

This means that the enemy's stagger reduction doesn't happen, any staggers that do happen cap at medium stagger (based on uppercut categories), and the stagger thresholds become 1/10000 of what they were.

Based on the Chaos_Ogryn_Executor_breed LUA, we find the following information about the Crusher's stagger_threshold overrides:

stagger_thresholds = {

• [stagger_types.light] = 20,
  
• [stagger_types.medium] = 80,
  
• [stagger_types.heavy] = 160,
  
• [stagger_types.explosion] = 200,
  
• [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 60,
  
• [stagger_types.killshot] = 60,
  
• [stagger_types.sticky] = 10,

And the following interesting stagger tags on the crusher:

• stagger_reduction = 15,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 15,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,

Normally it'd take 35 impact to do a light stagger and 95 to do a medium stumble with an uppercut, and thanks to the power of ignore_stagger_reduction that would be 20 and 80 respectively, and thanks to a weak spot hit the weakspot_stagger_resistance_modifier divides your stagger on weak point hit by a 0.0001 multiplier to make 54 impact on weak spot hit vs carapace turn into 540,000, so that 80% damage shovel is gonna stumble that Carapace armor weak spot guaranteed with the medium stagger. Because it's an uppercut, it won't bowl over the crusher with a heavy stagger, and that's okay, you still bought time for the team!

Ranged weapon cleave is the fun kind: the more it goes through people the better because it keeps all the damage it would have at that range. The damage still goes down on as ranges change, and it the cleave doing that.

Weapons that cleave then explode like the Bolter bolts will do full damage until they stop cleaving at which point they explode. Bolt pistol used to have no cleave and now it goes through 2.0 hit mass - single_plus range of 1 to 3 with 50% standard ranged cleave gets you 2.0.

Plasma Guns can stagger Mutants on headshot critical hit which is neat. Light shots have 3 cleave and charged heavies do 100.

Most ranged weapons don't have a Cleave Targets stat so they default to 50% of the cleave for their damage profile.

Most hitscan guns are single_cleave so they go through 1.5 hit mass (50% between 1 and 2) and thus 2 groaners or 1 poxwalker on Damnation.

The Heavy Accatran Recon Lasgun and the Heavy Infantry and Braced Autoguns (Agripinaa pattern) have better cleave (double_cleave) so they blast folks better.

Psyker 100% cleave on peril talent does affect ranged weaponry which is enough to get a Zarona revolver to blast through Maulers and Bulwarks though Crusher carapace still stops the attack. Zarona revolver has medium_cleave for 4 to 9 and at 50% that's 6.5, Psyker talent gets it to 13, and that's enough to get through a 12.5 hit mass Reaper or 3 whole Dreg Ragers (at 4.0 mass) and change.

In particular shotguns can be tricky because they load multiple projectiles - the projectile states have their own cleave values. Aim Down Sights (ADS) on the combat shotgun under the "killshot" has "0.01" cleave which can be confusing compared to the no_cleave 0.001. Zarona shotgun has 1.3 cleave when not ADS by comparison. Agripinaa shotgun slugs and Accatran fire shells have light_cleave for 4.5 (50% of 3 to 6) while the Agripinaa buck has 1.3 non-ADS, 0.01 ADS, and the Accatran buck has 2 cleave ADS or non-ADS.

Notably, the stagger_category when ADS on a shotgun is "melee" instead of "ranged" so you get better light staggers when aiming on the sights.

This shotgunnery is all documented in
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/shotguns/settings_templates/shotgun_damage_profile_templates.lua

Shotgun pellet counts can be found in shotgun_shotshell_templates.lua in the same folder.

Ogryn ripper guns are notable since they have 2 cleave on all marks and the ripper gun stab has the same kind of stagger as a flamer (and ignores stagger reduction!)

Weapon blessings and talents and strength that boost cleave will affect both the damage and impact cleave amounts. The amount of damage that passes through is based on each weapon's damage profile setting which hooks into the lerp tables for the damage stepdown.

Weapon damage profile settings can be found:
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/

Lerp tables for stepdown can be found:
scripts/settings/damage/damage_profile_settings.lua

It's easier to use a damage calculator to see how much damage passes through on a given melee attack than to look at the individual moves and their attack and stagger step downs because it's long - a community damage calculator is linked at the end of the guide.

In general, if you boost cleave super high, your impact will be more notable than the damage because of the step downs. Strikedown attacks tend to only damage 2-3 targets, while vanguard attacks can attack many. Test in the Psykhanium how your favorite feels!

Your weapon's impact values in the Inspect Screen will be generally correct for a neutral hit, they're just not showing boosts to Impact from blessings or conditional buffs, so generally you'll punch harder than you'll expect.

A couple of practical notes, to be expanded upon in future iterations of the guide:

• While the heavy and light uncharged power sword attacks have different cleaves (usually double_cleave on the sweepy lights and single_cleave on the strikedown lights and medium_cleave on the heavies), when you charge the power sword with the special, both marks gain big_cleave on all the attacks so zip zap slice away - with Wrath and an 80% cleave targets roll you can get over 40 cleave to stab many many ragers!
  
• Blessings like Thunderstrike and Skullcrusher that put debuffs on stagger will put those debuffs on when you do the first stagger, and then the next hits will be buffed up, and hitting them again in a staggered state adds more of the debuff.

While much time was spent in the Psykhanium punching dudes to confirm cleave data, it's important to cite sources, like the Darktide Source Code repository here:

https://github.com/Aussiemon/Darktide-Source-Code

This repository is regularly updated with each patch and if you ever need the latest numbers, this is where to go diving.

There's a community damage calculator that pulls from the source code where you can easily see your cleave values by attack type and how they're affected by strength. As of Oct. 2024 it's still on patch 1.4.0 (game is on patch 1.5.3 as of guide writing time) so check the version of the calculator on the top left to confirm which version of the data is being worked with.

https://dt.wartide.net/calc/

The Darktide page on GamesLantern has a lot of nifty data, builds and pictures, so if you want basic enemy stats (not modified by difficulty) including stagger resistance multiplier, this page is a good starter:

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/enemies

In case you were wanting to run builds similar to what I do on threat 5 and Auric, they can be found on the GamesLantern community builds section here for all 5 loadout slots for the 4 classes. Veteran gets a few more, as a treat.

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/user/clemcuddlecakes

As Darktide continues to get patched by Fatshark, this guide will be updated with the latest and greatest in clowning around. Past Unlocked and Loaded update in October 2024, the sky's the limit!

The stagger section of the guide will be fleshed out more over time - appreciate your patience!

If people want to see a particular topic that isn't covered and want more detail, continue to leave comments! Your input is appreciated!