History YMMV / Warhammer40000Darktide

* RealismInducedHorror: On the horrific planet Nox Alpha where the Moebian Sixth would eventually turn traitor, there was three differently-demanding regions. The Tenebrus was [[TheNightThatNeverEnds perpetually dark]] and required the constant use of flares, the Hellus was pervaded by [[OminousFog red mists]] that those who endured it the most [[NothingIsScarier had the least to say about what they found in it]], but Grundrak forest was feared most of all by the troops, even by the most battle-hungry Ogryn who'd otherwise be {{Fearless Fool}}s, as an assured death sentence to be sent to...because it was simply an extremely dense forest that it'd take a psyker to be able to see oncoming enemies before they were upon you.

* DarthWiki/MostAnnoyingSound: Few things can provoke a sense of immense frustration and paranoia among players than hearing the pin dropping or barks of "Bomber advancing!" while in the thick of combat, as it usually means someone's gonna be losing a lot of health very soon. Given how spam-happy Bombers can be, expect to be hearing this ''a lot'' if the whole squad is tied down and no one can get rid of them in a timely manner.
** The Sniper doesn't make any noise at all - until you hear the echoing report of his Long-Las, which often means someone on your team has just lost most of their HP.

** The Veteran's Smoke Grenades are considered this for the most part. Their accuracy debuff for enemies is inconsistent at best, and does nothing to deter the larger, high-health units hassling your team in melee that are more often than not the run enders on Heresy+. The same ranged enemies who are actually affected by the smokescreen can also just be shot, which Veterans should naturally do anyway. Compare this to the Frag Grenade's crowd-clearing capabilities, or the Krak's power to instantly delete one or several Crushers in one blow even on Auric Damnation, and Smokes really start to not seem like a fair trade.

* ThatOneBoss: The Karnak Twins DualBoss fight in The Orthus Offensive can qualify on higher difficulties, especially their {{Superboss}} version. On their own, the Twins themselves aren't too much of a problem to deal with if approached properly (Rinda's shield taking more gun damage, Rodin's taking more from melee weapons), the problem arises when their lackeys start streaming into the room to distract players, which can comprise of numerous Crushers, Ragers, Maulers, as well as Hounds and Mutants, further backed up by Bombers, Snipers, and Flamers on Heresy and up. This can quickly snowball into an inescapable trap as players are pressured from all sides, made worse by Rodin's fondness for throwing down an absolute minefield of Corruption-inducing Blight grenades, making recovering from downs or deaths extremely difficult with both Twins constantly knocking them out of the reviving process (or in the case of Damnation hard mode, will not allow rescuing of respawned players at all).

* ObviousBeta: ''Darktide'' was not ready for release even after the first delay, to put it mildly. To the extent that, shortly before the game was released on PC, it was announced that the console version of the game was delayed indefinitely. The PC launch has been rather rocky, with extremely inconsistent performance across computers (such as bringing high-spec machines to their knees, but running fairly smoothly on lower-spec ones) and serious bugs that required the [[UsefulNotes/GraphicsRendering raytracing rendering]] be forcibly disabled for all users due to the performance hits. The ItemCrafting system was also lacking most of its features at launch, and despite the massively improved weapon stats display screen the stats themselves can be rather opaque and unintuitive. Whilst post-launch patches have gradually tackled some of the worst crashing issues and improved performance, a lot of work still needs to be done both to flesh out the game itself and restore damaged trust. It took up to Patch 13 (which overhauled the class feat system into a skill tree and ''finally'' brought the game to consoles, among other improvements) to win back a fair bit of the crowd, but a number of issues still remain.

** As with ''Vermintide'' before it, the meaty "schwick" sound effect that plays when a Special or Elite enemy is killed, even more so if one shoots blindly into a big mob and then a cacophony of these noises fire off at once. Doubly so if you're playing Psyker and using the Voidstrike staff with its charged HerdHittingAttack that barrels through an entire line of mooks.

** ExplodingBarrels, being a ''lot'' more likely to knock players off them the map and instantly kill them than in VideoGame/TheEndTimesVermintide, are frequently joked as being the most deadliest enemy in the game.

* ThatOneSidequest: Also doubles as ThatOneAchievement in the cases that unlock an associated trophy upon completion. Specific Penances and their associated achievements can be a real pain to unlock even in a tight crew, because many of them require counterintuitive or even counterproductive play to achieve. All of these Penances were eventually changed in Patch #9, replacing them with much more achievable goals, relaxed most of the old Penances' requirements, and shuffled them to their own "Redacted" category (mainly due to them still being incredibly annoying and requiring a team effort).
** '''The Bell Tolls for Thee''' requires beating the {{Superboss}} version of the Karnak Twins. The annoying factor has more to do with the nature of missions in ''Darktide'' more than the actual fight itself, however, as to even attempt the challenge run, at least one player in the party must have completed the Profane Bells secret beforehand, which is never a guarantee given the game's random matchmaking. The challenge bell must then be hit right as the mission begins, which many players either won't know about to do, or won't bother with hard mode, and there's little one can do about it if they're queued into a session already in progress, other than leaving the match and hoping to get lucky in another lobby. As a result, while it is ''technically'' possible to finish such a run without a premade group via quick matching, it's virtually impossible in practice, given the many hurdles in the player's way.
** ''Any'' penance that specifically demands the player to complete them in a full mission. Unlike its predecessors, ''Darktide'' doesn't have a dedicated lobby browser, meaning that short of gathering a group of friends together to tackle those penances, the only other option is to queue into a mission or use quick match, and ''pray'' that it plops you into a session that's yet to start.
** '''Flawless Execution''' at tier 3 requires the player to finish fifteen full matches ''in a row'' on Heresy or harder without going into bleedout once. If you made a mistake, or one of the many {{Demonic Spider}}s mentioned above caught you out in a bad spot, your streak will most likely be wiped. Thankfully, quitting out of missions after being incapacitated doesn't impact the streak, but doing so means abandoning your former teammates to their fates and can be considered borderline {{Griefing}}.
** Literally ''anything'' as the Psyker can be a huge pain in the ass to unlock for a multitude of reasons:
*** '''Malleus Monstronum''' (briefly renamed as '''Head Honcho''') requires you to burn at least 90% of a monster's health by yourself on Heresy and up, using only damage from Brain Burst and nothing else. That means using a relatively slow ability that requires frequent venting to avoid killing yourself, no damage from your allies, your other abilities and weapons, or even stray hits from enemies that leave [=AoEs=] on the ground like Bombers and Flamers, until the very last 10% of its health bar. The pre-release iteration used to be even more crazy, since it used to demand that you ''solo'' the monster in its entirety using only Brain Burst, and if someone so much as looked at it funny, the penance would fail, though the introduction of the daemonhost monster inadvertently provided an EasyLevelTrick to this penance, due to its scripted focus on only the player who triggered it, meaning that you could theoretically have an Ogryn teammate with a shield tank all of the damage while you get to whittle it down in relative peace. It was mostly unchanged in Patch #9, now requiring to be done in a private game.
*** '''Going Out With A Bang''' demands that you blow yourself up from overcharging your Peril meter and kill three Elites in the explosion on Malice and above. This forces the Psyker player to actively ignore their class' most important mechanic and deliberately play badly/hamper their group by removing themselves from the fight for a ''chance'' at killing three Elite enemies who can just move out of the way, or survive with a bit of health left, since the explosion alone cannot kill most "common" target types that aren't Gunners or Shotgunners on Malice, and pre-emptive damage can make things worse if they happen to die too early. Naturally, it quickly proves to be ''the'' most hated class penance of all, despite the relative simplicity of setting it up with a coordinated group, as even well after the game was officially released, Going Out With A Bang is still the one achievement with the lowest global unlock rate on Steam at ''less than one percent'' of players at the time of writing. It was later altered to only need ''one'' Elite killed by suicidal explosion.
** The Ogryn also has his own share of headscratchingly-frustrating penances to unlock:
*** '''Friends will be Friends''' is so counterintuitively designed that it causes more frustration to the whole party than anything else. To wit, completing the Penance requires the Ogryn player to always be in Cohesion range of at least one other player at all times (and prior to being adjusted for the public release, ''the entire group'' at all times) while playing on Malice or above, meaning that enemies that cause the group to scatter like Flamers or Bombers will be a major pain to deal with, and Zealots and other Ogryns must never use their own class abilities if they're the only ones in cohesion with the player attempting to complete this challenge, essentially reducing them to mindless bots that can only shoot and slash. Even with the Towering Presence feat, the Ogryn's Cohesion radius is still remarkably small and easy to stray out of, doubly so when playing quick matches with randoms, or with bots, since the former often can't be persuaded to stick close, and the latter can never be told to do so at all. As if it's not mind-numbing enough, even if you've got a tightly-knit group going on, and somebody disconnects, it's usually an automatic fail, since the bot that spawns in to replace them will lag behind as it's placed into the map. This was later changed to "only" require 90% of the mission time.
*** '''Heavyweight Champion''' is often talked of as the bane of Ogryn players due to the sheer amount of targets it requires. To wit, Heavyweight Champion demands that the Ogryn player in question run over at least ''six'' enemy Ogryns in one Bull Rush on Heresy or harder, while the average spawn rate of these enemies tend to hang around four or five on a good day. This means that short of suicide-diving into High-Intensity Damnation maps and ''hope'' that enough Crushers, Bulwarks, and/or Reapers spawn in a convenient location, the whole group will have to make a coordinated effort to ''not'' kill any of the ones they found, while stringing them along and avoiding all of their attacks until they've herded together at least six for the Ogryn to run over. Also keep in mind that the Reaper ''can shoot back'' and potentially kill people, especially on Heresy, thus forcing the team to find more Bulwarks and Crushers to shore up the headcount and not die in the process. As insult to injury, this is one of the few class penances that were made ''harder'' upon the game's official release for no discernible reason, as the original target count of four enemies was much more feasible without jumping through hoops and taking chances with the AI Director. Its change in Patch #9 simply reverted the required target count back down to 4 as it originally was.
*** Introduced in Patch #9, '''Keep Your Friends Close''' is '''Friends will be Friends''' but arguably worse. While it lacks the Cohesion requirement of the former, this penance instead tasks the Ogryn player with beating three full missions on at least Heresy difficulty with no team deaths, and nobody being downed or pinned for more than ten seconds, meaning that getting caught by a Specialist enemy is also a no-no. While the no deaths part can be handled relatively easily, it's a headache and a half to keep tabs on the other three members of the team such that they don't get jumped by a Pox Hound or Mutant where you can't get to them in time before the ten-second timer runs out, which is made worse by the tendency of quickplay groups to scatter, whether during combat or to take care of multiple objectives at a time. Making things ''even worse'' are the disabler or area denier Specialists that will do their absolute best to bar the Ogryn from coming to an incapacitated ally's rescue, if they weren't already the original cause of somebody going down to begin with. And as the cherry on top, all of these requirements apply to ''yourself'' as well, so if your teammates tarried or were prevented from saving you by enemies, the rest of the mission is a bust for the purpose of the penance.
*** '''Bring The Hurt''' was one of the handful of new penances added in Patch 9. While the unlock criteria is simple in itself, being that one must hit (not kill) four Elite or Specials in a row in any combination without missing using the Big Box of Hurt, and repeat that four more times while playing on Heresy or Damnation, actually unlocking it has been a thorn in the sides of many Ogryn players for several patches. This is due to the fact that it's requirement is ''very damn specific'' due to a programming oversight, in that ''[[ExactWords only]]'' the Big Box of Hurt's hits actually count for the purpose of the penance, while those of its augmented version via the Bombs Away keystone will not. This also has the knock-on effect of forcing the Ogryn to attempt this penance on Heresy without the rest of his skill tree, as unlocking any of his Blitz keystones will prevent progression, effectively turning the player into a liability for their team on a difficulty that heavily punishes inadequate stat distribution. This was eventually patched with the release of Traitor Curse part II.
** Zealots have some that can be headache-inducing:
*** '''Just A Flesh Wound''' requires you to beat a level on Heresy and above in [[SpeedRun under 20 minutes]], with one Wound's worth of health remaining for 75% of the time. While the "one wound's worth of health" bit is actually relatively easy with the right curio setup[[note]]Stacking health instead of maximum wounds[[/note]] and carrying grimoires to deliberately reduce your wound count further, the 20-minute time limit is ''ridiculously strict'' especially on Heresy+, and only a few missions can be reasonably completed in this time limit, even with the '''Low-Intensity Engagement Zone''' condition. If the Zealot's allies get stuck or interrupted too much by enemies, tough luck. This used to be theoretically even more difficult, requiring an absurd and basically impossible completion timer of ''10 minutes'' or less, but it could be cheesed by failing the mission before 10 minutes were up. This was changed to requiring a private game. With the release of The Orthus Offensive, this penance has become significantly more doable by taking the mission's shortcut to the boss room, where the "one Wound" condition will also take care of itself due to the frequent Pox gas clouds pumped into the arena.
*** '''Buying Time''' asks you to hit a Sniper with the Stumm grenade from more than 40 meters away. The distance requirement on its own turns this into a special kind of hell, since you have no way of determining how far 40 meters is in-game and your flash grenade is meant to be used in close quarters, to the point that you can't even aim it properly for long distance throws (all you can do is look up into the sky and pray). Most places in the game won't give you the space necessary to even halfway qualify for the achievement, and this is all putting aside the fact you're doing this to a Sniper that can blow you away if you give them the chance... and most players know that Snipers are a priority target and will naturally just shoot them instead of letting you waste your Stumms trying to stun a Sniper. This was unchanged in Patch #9.
** Veterans don't get it easier either:
*** '''Long Bomb''' is also a confusing one to get. As the Penance requires, one must throw a grenade in such a way that it does not bang into anything, enemy or otherwise, blow up, and hit five targets with the explosion. The problem is that the Veteran's frag grenades run on a ''very'' long five-second fuse that can't be cooked, meaning that the throw must be achieved over long distances and the explosion must hit the targets in mid-air. There are only a fair handful of places in the game where one can even achieve remotely high air time with a grenade and not have it bump into a wall or the ceiling, let alone teeming with enough enemies for it to blow up. One will most likely achieve this by accident, since even by consulting guides on the internet, it still takes a combination of skillful timing, the location having enough enemies to throw at, and luck so that it doesn't hit anything else along the way. This was also unchanged in Patch #9.
*** '''On Overwatch''' entails beating a mission on Malice+ difficulty without taking any melee damage, and is a doozy for early-game players due to the tendency for stragglers to spawn behind the group as a way to discourage people from hanging back and snipe, not to mention the sheer amount of enemies that can shred through Toughness and deal health damage to you in a few hits on Malice+. Unless the Veteran player has a teammate specifically to babysit them and/or using the Camo Expert feat, and regularly checking behind them even then, it's very liable for a lone Poxwalker to get a cheeky poke in and ruin the whole run. Doing this together with '''Untouchable''' can easily result in {{Rage Quit}}ting, though thankfully Corruption and damage done to your Toughness won't immediately lock out either penance so long as your health meter remains unchanged. This Penance was unchanged in Patch #9.
*** '''Make Every Shot Count''' can give players an aneurysm trying to complete it legitimately due to a combination of conditions that actively work against the class' philosophy. Basically, one has to complete a full mission on Heresy or harder, while maintaining perfect accuracy and having no ammo left by the end of the match, while using a specialist killer class that actively generates ammo whenever you or a teammate in Cohesion eliminates an Elite. As such, you are basically screwed if you so much as miss a single shot, which is much easier than it sounds due to how much the enemies move around, and if a teammate happens to kill a target you're trying to shoot, it can cost you the entire run. And no, killing multiple enemies with one shot does not compensate for misses. Likewise, you need to kill as few Specials and Elites as possible to avoid generating too much ammo, while actively staying out of Cohesion range so that teammates can't also do it to you, and also using a weapon with poor ammo economy like the Plasma Gun or Revolver, thus enforcing a kind of playstyle that runs counter to how your class is supposed to function and being a massive detriment to the party on a difficulty where teamwork is vital. The only consolation is that ammo generated via your class aura will not count against the penance if you've already exhausted your supply beforehand without missing, but only so long as you don't switch to your gun again afterwards, ''on a class that has to actively look out for and shoot Specials''. This was changed to only require 90% mission accuracy, and after the class reworks, became a lot easier to manage just by selecting a different Aura keystone to avoid accidental ammo generation from kills.

** Using Stimms on a teammate is made aggravatingly difficult due to HitboxDissonance. To wit, using a Stimm on someone else requires that person to be within basically spitting distance to the player, and ideally not moving, as the targeting tolerance is annoyingly low, such that the Stimm can fail to deploy if the recipient so much as stepping an inch to the side before you can finish. This is especially frustrating in the case of Medical Stimms if your patient is almost dead and yet lacks to good sense to stand still, as this forces you to basically chase after them with a HealthPotion while they keep dancing out of your deploy range, typically resulting in eating unnecessary damage or the team suffering casualties.

* Stimm shaking became a universal joke after their introduction in the Traitor Curse part 2, where players would rapidly spam the aim button while holding a stimm shot. This results in the player character making a repeated shaking motion with one hand in third-person, which looks a lot like one's having a date with good ol' Rosie Palms. Rather obviously, this doesn't work on Ogryns due to them having a different animation for this, but that hasn't stopped players from trying anyway.

** The Psyker's baseline Obscurus force swords have always been rather niche, but the introduction of the vastly superior Deimos and Illisi models shunted them squarely into this category. On paper, the Obscurus was designed with balance in mind, with a moveset that gives it both crowd cleaving and single-target damage options, however in practice this turns it into a MasterOfNone that excels at neither. Its horde cleaving damage is modest at best, made even more unwieldy by its lack of sweeping attack patterns; even in the latter category, its burst damage is still not exceptional and requires a very good setup to be viable on higher difficulties, not helped by the same type of "grinder" animation as the chain weapons when powered up that could leave the user vulnerable to attacks. Compare it to its two direct divergent counterparts, which excel at horde clearing and single-target burst damage, respectively, while still performing solidly enough in the opposite situation, and it's not hard to see why the Obscurus isn't used very much beyond being a stepping stone for new Psykers who are working their way up to the melee weapons actually worth using.