Soloing Darktide's Hardest Difficulties

[@TrixMelee]

The game ran fairly bad during the Beta test so you'll have to excuse the poor frame rate. Also since I decided to quickly slap together this video I didn't do a proper audio pass so comms will be a bit messy, but hopefully that doesn't get in the way of gameplay. I've got a couple decent full runs saved on my hard-drive so if there's interest I can upload more Darktide videos.

[@ThunderCats-sx3fs]

Fingers crossed that framerate won't still be a thing by launch lol, but anyways great video

[@Poupeur]

@@ThunderCats-sx3fs Yea, literally the only thing i'm really worried about. The game is awesome in every other aspects.

[@quantum5661]

3060ti here. anyone with less then a 2070super is going to have a real bad time at 1440p.

[@danivalvalsson8174]

@@quantum5661 2080ti here and going medium and taking annoying stuff like bloom and motion blur away had með at like 60-90

[@Myztek26]

It feels like a grenade or 2 could have really helped you out.

[@boxdynomite3]

I agree with your closing thoughts about dodging. It's window for cancelling enemy tracking is extremely generous. I feel they made a strange system where its either block/push or dodge. Weaving the 2 doesn't really work in the beta because dodging stalls your stamina regen so it punishes using both together.

[@roshawn1111]

shit not with the base game its damn near impossible to dodge range fire lol

[@Higurashika]

So exhausting to watch, can't even imagine your feelings during those plays, trying to kill a bunch of armored dudes x_x

[@CephalopodsRock]

The part with the Bulwark and the sniper was like somethings out of a movie lol

[@TWLpontus]

That was insane! Great skill! At the end I am surprised the sword has not broken yet! :D

[@adamszitas8564]

Good god a Horde clearing powerhouse weapon like Two handed sword from V2 will be such a fun thing in this game

[@absolutelyyousless7605]

The two-handed Krieger Shovel... *ooh baby, that’s going to be sweet.*

[@anonymous549]

What we'd do for a Sororitas eviscerator

[@adamszitas8564]

@@anonymous549 fisrt they need to make chainsword working Right now its a hunk of metal that only is a chainsword during special

[@anonymous549]

@@adamszitas8564 Fuck that hurts me down in my soul. They couldn't even add a revving mechanic that increases damage the more charged it gets? Bruh...

[@gplr1882]

Good news, 2h chain axes and the eviscirator has been datamine leaked

[@wongcheewah9901]

My heart went roller coaster with this video, great play!

[@last2nkow]

holy crap that was freaking sick! that was full on puissant skill sir. arms like an ogryn carrying the team that hard! its a bold tactic to let the enemy capture all your squad so they respawn all together at the end of the map like that so they dont have to fight their way through XD

[@happykharl]

that looks intense I cant wait for full release

[@Thanatos-I]

How...HOW. You make it seem so God damn smooth, so god's damn simple. It's like you have a gift for making things seem so effortless. Just, how do you manage this? Either way, wonderful vid. And well done as always.

[@ArsDeicidium]

I thought the same thing watching this as I did watching his Mordhau videos - 'Strong brain'

[@slavknight1790]

local fanatic hits hordes 500000 times and refuses to die

[@solarupdraft]

Go to 6:15 and watch the hound at .25 speed! It has a unique animation for if it lunges at you, misses, and lands on a wall. It lands all four feet on the wall and then drops back to the floor.

[@Chumdump]

It does it a couple times

[@ricardohumildebrabo]

Great clutches man! Love to see it! pay no mind to the lame naysayers here, this is awesome content.

[@YakovDub]

Can't wait to play it looks so good! Also you're absolutely cracked, can see a vermintide pro a mile away

[@3556df44]

Pro? 🤣 its just dodge stepping....

[@YakovDub]

@@3556df44 you kappin right?

[@3556df44]

@@YakovDub no, zealot has great survival feats and class ability etc. You can stay alive with zealot whilst dodging indefinitely. You recharge 100% toughness with your special and zealot also has amazing toughness regeneration n the lvl 5 feats. Just like in vermintide 2, zealot is again the easiest class to play by far.

[@YakovDub]

@@3556df44 well no shit you got the theory lined up all right now go do solo cata grail knight like this dude did. No pro my ass

[@3556df44]

@@YakovDub i do play cataclysm, i just dont upload it to the KZbin's for ppl to praise me 🤷‍♂️

[@solarupdraft]

These clutches are wild. Absolutely awe-inspiring. Maybe you know this by now, but you can't block while picking people up in DT, you can only tank as long as your toughness lasts. I think that's how it works. (Unless you're Ogryn, he doesn't get interrupted by damage.)

[@TrixMelee]

00:47 You can see my stamina go down as I block melee attacks while reviving. There's no audio feedback so the implementation is currently worse than Vermintide 1 and 2.

[@solarupdraft]

I see that now. Well, glad I said something so I could be corrected!

[@TrixMelee]

No worries, I appreciate the comment regardless. Hope you have a good day!

[@starryeyes5860]

i played zealot during the CB and youd be amazed the shit they can get out of because of their passive that prevents death.

[@gplr1882]

What i'd give for teammates such as this. Most of my level 4runs in the beta were losses because everyone went their own way

[@FreeHugzForLife]

I love your logo, I wonder what inspired it

[@GigaSchnitzel]

clutch indeed, impressive man

[@56bturn]

Channel name is Trix. And that hat. Wouldn't be a reference to a certain showpony now, right?

[@Masilya111]

If only my performance was good enough. The melee did not feel good to me (compared to VT2) because of performance and other issues. Pity, because it does seem fun and impactful in this video.

[@TrixMelee]

Yeah I agree, the combat isn't as good as Vermintide at the moment.

[@NotWithHonor]

As someone who plays VT2 and Darktide's Beta casually. Could you explain to me why it's lacking?

[@TrixMelee]

A lot of it is just the audio feedback upon hitting an enemy with a melee weapon. It just doesn't feel and sound as visceral as Vermintide 2 because of that. The visuals could do with some tweaks as well to try and make weapons stick in enemies for a tiny bit longer before moving on to the next attack. It wasn't obvious if I reached the cleave limit, or if it even existed. In Vermintide 2 your attack would stop in the middle of your screen if it couldn't cleave much more and it helped make it feel like you were carving through a lot of enemies. If this was a thing in Darktide then it wasn't immediately obvious and it could do with some tweaks. The exceptions to this are the 1-handed Axe and Great Hammer, but all the other weapons I tried felt like I was slicing a cabbage or something. I didn't try the Ogryn's weapons so can't comment there. On top of this the combat balance is completely whack, they've regressed back to Vermintide 2's launch where dodging is the meta. When the Winds of Magic DLC dropped it completely overhauled the combat so you had to use a mixture of dodging, blocks, and pushes to properly control enemies. This essentially means you can't do what I'm doing in this video which is basically dodge forever without taking a hit. Still technically possible in Vermintide 2, but it's a much higher skill requirement since I need to read enemy attacks to see when I need to block, or push, or dodge. I think another reason for this is because the dodge distance is huge in Darktide whilst Vermintide you can't move nearly as far or as quickly. Another reason the combat doesn't feel great is there's a lot of input queuing issues at the moment. To the extent where I don't think it even exists. I can easily swap weapons mid-attack and combo into heavies from lights, and vice versa, in Vermintide, whilst in Darktide it feels like a lot of those inputs get dropped in very intense situations. Overall the game is still fun but it's just very frustrating considering a lot of these issues weren't present, or were resolved, in Fatshark's previous games. I think this is why quite a few Vermintide players are dissatisfied with Darktide at the moment. I also don't think the devs really did much favours with their weapon selection for the beta. Only a handful felt like a 'reasonable' choice damage wise, and the rest were very subpar. I guess we'll see if these things are improved by release.

[@kronosDking]

@@TrixMelee I hope you posted this feedback in the forums! It sounds quite important.

[@TrixMelee]

Sounds like a good idea, at this point I really should put a post up on the forums about all my thoughts and concerns with the game.

[@czailoncz]

this is The perfect example of DWONS player in darktides :) great clutches man, hopefully there is gonna be something much harder than 5/5 difficulty :) EDIT: Those shield guys are waay more annoying than Shield SV :D

[@foxdavion6865]

Is that you Sly Marbo?

[@TikiShootah]

Remember your grenades

[@timd7709]

that's some insane skill.... how is it even possible... :D

[@levitate4867]

I really didn't like the sword for zealot, It felt so underwhelming. Was it 8 or more hits to kill a guardsmen near your downed teamates? A high damage and penetration axe, with a 10% against armored modifer kills hordes in half the time. Because you can still aoe slash with guard counter spam 👍🏻

[@TrixMelee]

I'm not a huge fan of the sword either, but it was the only weapon in the beta that allowed me to pull stuff like this off. The 1h axe did feel good but it also felt like the damage was quite underwhelming, as well as the cleave being very low too so it made it very tough to control hordes. Apparently there were 2 types of axes though, so I might have been using the bad one? The great hammer was the other decent melee option since that could do some damage, but it was quite slow and left me exposed after attacks so I found I was trading hits a ton.

[@levitate4867]

@@TrixMelee @Trix Yeah there were 2 different axe types, one with low penetration and one with lots. I also noticed that the damage bar seemed to not matter on weapons? Having a green semi auto shotgun with 3x the amount of damage over a grey pump shotgun couldn't even kill trash mods... Hence why i think during the next playtest you'd really like the other axe and will notice how you'll save minutes on your runs. You can find one in the shop usually at every reset. Great video 👍🏻 Zealot truly has the best survivability.

[@TrixMelee]

Yep, the stat bars are the most useless thing and do not seem to represent any useful information. You'd have thought they would have learned their lesson like 6 years ago with Vermintide 1, but unfortunately that isn't the case.

[@EcchiRevenge]

@@TrixMelee Have you tried axe push-attack? It's like vt2 wp's hammer&book's, so it has some decent cleave. For some reason you could chain that indefinitely without worrying about stamina, unless you got hit of course.

[@EcchiRevenge]

@@levitate4867 The shotgun does poorly against armor but has a *lot* of stun(load special shell and stun almost anything below plagueogryn, except mutant ofc).

[@aaddaamm45]

How were you healing so much?

[@TrixMelee]

Zealot can get a passive at level 5 that lets shields regenerate near enemies, and also a level 20 talent that regens 30% of damage taken over 5 seconds (sort of like Grail Knight's passive in Vermintide 2 but not as good). With those talents combined it gives me a lot of sustain in melee combat and means I can be far more aggressive and get away with the occasional hit-trade.

[@honestbenny]

@@TrixMelee That's not only that that. Notice please on your video the 7:20 mark. When you are up and Dot is going down. You can see INSTANTLY when he is going down you are starting to regenerate CRAZY amount of HP until you are full HP again. That happens also first time you ressed the other guy and he immidietly died. Watch your vid and HP only carefully. Apparently (due to bug or intentional feature) that 30% damage take over 5 seconds works with your passive aura and it also works on damage taking by your teammates. I think its a bug that it's applied to your passive aura.

[@kraidenb.226]

@@honestbenny Yes, for a second I was like: is he cheating?^^ That was literally god mode unkillable and I don't know why.

[@Dante130666]

Compared to my frame rate it looks like its 2x speed ;p

[@TrixMelee]

Always looks smoother in a recording that's for sure, but I was dropping to 30-40fps fairly constantly unfortunately. Hopefully it gets a lot more optimised before release!

[@braisedtoast9002]

It's a real shame this is 99% melee. I wanted a shooting game.

[@Co-Z_Hosey]

Found the Tau gamer

[@braisedtoast9002]

@@Co-Z_Hosey I have 1500 hours in vermintide 2. I have 1400 in mordhau. 800 in chiv 2. If back for blood was good I wouldn't complain but it wasn't. This was supposed to be shooting focused.

[@Co-Z_Hosey]

@@braisedtoast9002 Yeah I feel you on that. Fat Shark's promos do not reflect just how much melee there was going to be in the gameplay loop (at least in the beta). Maybe with the full release there will be guns that make it more viable to go full ranged for a level. Hell they might make a ranged only class one day that has good disengagement options.

[@lnlsun]

@@Co-Z_Hosey They already said it was about 70:30 melee to gun ratio in their dev talk. It's not like they were hiding it.

[@ricardohumildebrabo]

AFAIK it was never promoted as a shooting game.

[@honestbenny]

I mean... nothing to see here if you are V2 vet. If all you have are melee enemies/horde and no disablers/boss or lasguners/gunners then you can melee your way without issue on any class. Problem starts when there is balcony with 5 man lasgun squad.... or trapper inside horde. Good job anyway I guess. And hordes in this game a laughtable small comapre to V2. Also one mauler on Diff 5 inside horde. Should be like 3 + 2 other elites + at least 1 bulwark/reaper. Like game should be way more horde'y. Diff 5 is too easy even with undergear characters.

[@TrixMelee]

I did have a mix of all those enemies, the problem is that dodging is just completely busted and there's no reason to push or block at all. Ranged enemies may as well not even exist because the minute I have melee enemies slotted into me they stop shooting me, so I can close the distance on ranged enemies by just kiting the melee. There actually are quite a few units in hordes in Darktide but there's no elites mixed into them even in the Cataclysm difficulty equivalent, no density at all because of that. On top of that the pacing system doesn't seem to work that well because specials turn off the minute there's more than 15 enemies, and hordes are barely sent your way.

[@Fake-ty7nr]

"then you can melee your way without issue on any class" not every class has stats and abilities like zealot. You cannot jeese sneeze your way like that on sharpshooter or psycher, at least not that "easily" but I wouldn`t even call this video a representation of an "easy" "melee your way without any issue" that would be an underestimation of concentration that still needed to be maintained in long exhausting moments like this, you can start making mistakes even just by simple boredness that you get, by hitting same units for 100 times.

[@TrixMelee]

@@Fake-ty7nr I disagree with your take. Zealot is strong, especially with the amount of mobility and sustain the dash provides, but the broad strategies I'm using can translate to other classes. Kiting is something everyone can do, and everyone can also exploit the slot system to prevent ranged units from attacking them. Dodge distance in general is a lot higher in Darktide making it even easier to kite. This is because elite tracking is much more aggressive in Darktide, which means you can reliably dodge at the last moment to consistently avoid their attack. In Vermintide, elites lose tracking the minute you dodge and they will follow through with their original trajectory (but relative to the player... it's weird) and still potentially catch you out. It's also important to note that I'm playing with the Zealot's abilities in mind, you'd be making slight adjustments according to whatever weapons and abilities you have available to you. Psyker has very strong CC with the ult and staff, and Ogryn also has very strong CC mixed with his charge that provides mobility like the Zealot. Sharpshooter... well Sharpshooter is doing its best and might need a buff to be honest. As for your point regarding the amount of concentration required... Well, you'd be surprised with how a lot of this stuff is just muscle memory at the end of the day. The main things I'm concentrating on is my kiting path and whenever specials show up. That's not to say there isn't concentration required, it's just not as much as Vermintide since I can rely on dodging to pull it's weight to avoid pretty much every attack. I actually agree with the first comment in this thread, sort of, in the sense that the main threat is from specials. Darktide just doesn't chuck much of them at you at all. Now, since specials are out of the equation, it's not nearly as intense as you'd imagine when you have experience with true solos in Vermintide, and just experience with melee games in general I guess.

[@3556df44]

Yep i also had a similar experience. Zealot is too op and needs a rebalance.

[@skryonix357]

No I think even then none of the characters compare to even Vermintide capabilities, with the exception of stun grenades. The other classes need buffs.

[@benclark3457]

Dissappointing

[@Tommybotham]

This is bad imo. You surviving like this when all you're doing is mashing left-click (I don't think I saw much in the way of weapon combos?) and just strafing is kinda not a good thing. You couldn't do this in Vermintide 2 very often. I literally saw the enemies just stand still here. Also the voice acting sucks. 5:41 "for the Master of Mankind" should have sounded way cooler.

[@TrixMelee]

I completely agree, Vermintide 2 is much better and requires a lot more skill. It's so frustrating to see them take such a big step back when they nailed a lot of these things in their previous game.

[@EcchiRevenge]

There was dodging and vaulting/jumpdown like it's dead by daylight.

[@czailoncz]

@@TrixMelee gonna finish darktides on max diff, but if the game will not offer more challenge, Vt2 Dwons is always there, waiting for us :D since you can finish the maps highly underleveled... on max level+max gear, its gonna become very easy. me and my team are just bunch of nolifers with 3k+ hours in Vt2 :D

[@Sulamanjansulttaani]

Wait what, there is field of view in the settings? Didnt find it