Video Game / Warhammer 40,000: Darktide

"Rejects will rise..."

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a horde shooter FPS developed by Fatshark and based on the Warhammer 40,000 setting, released on November 30th, 2022.

The story is set at the Hive City of Tertium, on the planet of Atoma Prime. The Inquisition has been made aware of dark forces stirring in the hive city, and has sent its agents to prevent the city of Tertium's fall.

Gameplay-wise, the game plays similarly to Fatshark's The End Times: Vermintide, but with a little more emphasis on gun battles, adapting 40K gameplay terms and rules like Wounds, Toughness, and Cohesion to a first-person horde shooter format. Rather than a set of pre-made characters like the prior games, Darktide instead offers players a class system consisting of the Veteran, Zealot, Ogryn and Psyker classes, with fairly extensive character customization choices. The Developers have also stated they intend to release new classes every few months.

The game was released on November 30, 2022 for PC, whilst the Xbox Series X version was released on October 3, 2023.

Previews: Announcement Trailer, Gameplay Trailer, Release Date Trailer "Rejects Will Rise" Trailer, Extended Gameplay Trailer, Veteran and Zealot gameplay. Preacher Class Spotlight, Sharpshooter Class Spotlight, World Intro Trailer.

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This game provides examples of the following:

• Absurdly Sharp Blade: Power swords are one of the weapons available to some classes and feature their trademark power fields as their ability. It's only good for a couple swings per activation but it can be activated repeatedly, cuts through rank and file enemies like a hot knife through butter, and still makes reasonably quick work of any elite or specialist clad in anything less than carapace armor.
• Action Bomb: Poxbursters, whose sole purpose appears to be to charge at the squad and detonate themselves in a corruption blast. Psykers can become this on the players' side via Perils of the Warp overloading, though it's not necessarily the wisest move due to it having a relatively small radius, while also causing the Psyker who attempted it to fall into bleedout (or drop dead, if it happened on their last Wound).
• Adaptational Wimp:
  • The plagues that Nurgle and his worshippers inflict are normally incurable and cause severe symptoms — even a single touch from a Plague Ogryn is said to bring a horrible death. In this game, all the disease does in the form of Corruption is lower your maximum health and does not progress further unless you're downed or hit for more Corruption damage (such as being hit by a Plague Ogryn), and can be completely cured by a Medicae Station. It's a well-justified Gameplay and Story Segregation, though, as if these aspects were to be in play and if these things are just as bad as they're in canon, there will be no game, but a complete and utter annihilation.
  • Plasma Guns overheating are also depicted like this for the sake of gameplay. Per fluff, a plasma gun suffering from Explosive Overclocking typically unleashes a cloud of superheated vapors that can hideously maim or even vaporize the gunner outright if it's a particularly catastrophic meltdown, to the degree that this can even happen to Space Marines in full power armor, much less the lowly flak vest-wearing Guardsman. In actual gameplay, all this does is knocking the Veteran down as if they'd just lost a wound, with no lasting impact done to either the weapon or the wielder themselves.
• A.I. Breaker: The enemy AI has no idea how to deal with doors. Repeatedly opening and closing a door will confuse them as they flit back and forth between charging through and finding a way around, which can allow the group to easily deal with them while they can't fight back.
• Always Night: Zig-zagged. Most of the missions actually take place in the main hive or the underhabs, which are contained within and under Tertium's atmospheric shield and do not receive natural sunlight, and the Throneside operations are always set during nighttime. The missions located further up the spires do show the occasional bits of daylight, however, which the Strike Team members will comment on.
• And I Must Scream: A given considering the universe the game takes place in.
  • Poxwalkers are infected with a deadly "gift" called the "Walking-Pox", which causes their flesh to rot and their bodies to shut down before ultimately dying and being reanimated as zombies. The true horror comes from the fact that the Pox's victims are still alive and conscious after they are reanimated, helpless to watch as their bodies go off in search of others to kill. You can sometimes hear them begging for help, or bemoaning how cold and hungry they feel.
  • Medicae station servitors have some pretty chilling lines after treating injuries too, asking if you'll take them with you or how pieces of their mind are floating away. Keep in mind that servitors are usually lobotomized and have their brains reprogrammed by the Adeptus Mechanicus to serve as mindless menial labor, so something must have gone very wrong that these ones are still aware of their predicament, and horrified that they can't do anything about it.
  • It's revealed that the Traitor gets remade into a lobotomized and mindless Servitor after they're executed by Rannick.
• And Your Reward Is Clothes: Completing Penances only unlock new outfit pieces, portrait frames, and lobby poses for your operators. Since the loot system of Vermintide was done away with in this game, the primary incentive for one to play on the harder difficulties is to cross out their associated Penances for more clothing. However, the crafting currency reward for completing higher difficulty missions was increased to address such complaints.
• Anti-Frustration Feature:
  • Friendly fire is absent in this game unlike with Vermintide due to the much higher focus on ranged combat as well as the Ogryn's stature often blocking shots from allies.
  • Unlike how venting Overcharge was with Sienna Fuegonasus in Vermintide, quelling Peril as the Psyker doesn't cause self-damage and can be done as often as desired. The cooldown is also much faster, and it will go down on its own if the player doesn't do it. Venting heat with the Plasma Gun will inflict self damage, however it was changed in Patch 9 to prioritize the Veteran's Toughness first, instead of reducing their hitpoints directly, meaning that sparing use of the ability won't leave the player hobbling for health on higher difficulties.
  • Getting disconnected from a session will give you the option to reconnect directly into that match from the login menu, while also reserving your slot on the squad until you do or decline, provided that the match is still ongoing and you boot the game up again before the reservation timer ends, thus enabling a dropped player to get right back into a good game without hassle.
  • The reloading process of magazine-fed firearms will "remember" the stage at which they were interrupted (e.g. magazine in, racking the charging handle, etc...), allowing you to resume the process later should something interrupted your actions, so if you had to hot swap to your melee weapon for a quick block before you could chamber a new round, switching back to your gun will simply have your character pulling the bolt back instead of having to go through the motions all over again.^note Revolvers are an exception for some reason, forcing you to go through the entire reload animation again if it's interrupted, possibly due to oversight.
  • While Vermintide's staple tomes (now called Scriptures) and grimoires do make a return in the same capacities, they're no longer as important to hoard. For one, scriptures and grimoires will not naturally appear in maps unless a specific sub-objective is enabled, and only one or the other can spawn, thus alleviating the stress of hunting them down. For two, since Vermintide's post-game loot chests have been done away with in Darktide, collecting either type of book will only give you slightly more experience and money for your troubles (bonuses are also granted per item in addition to the whole set), and players don't tend to bother with them unless they're doing weekly missions for Sire Melk.
  • Despite how the Wounds system works, collecting a Grimoire while on your last wound will not cause your character to drop dead, though the gradual Maximum HP Reduction still applies, and the filled Wound will show after you've healed back up.
  • Any Diamantine and Plasteel your party collects during missions is applied to your account immediately and in full, so even if you're having connection issues (whether on your end or the server's) you don't have to worry about missing out on crafting materials should you disconnect right at the end of the mission and can't reconnect in time. Though you may still miss out on XP and basic currency.
  • Unlike with Vermintide, where respawned players and bots could often be rendered not rescuable if they happened to be placed just in front of points of no return that the group has already passed, they will be continuously moved forward in anticipation of the team's progression so that there can be multiple opportunities to get them back into the fight.
    • In the event of a gauntlet-based defense mechanic where the group has to remain in a given area until allowed to proceed, the respawned player will appear in the same room.
    • If a dead player respawned while in direct line of sight and close proximity to their teammates, the usual Elite "guard" enemies will not be present.
    • As well, players who are downed, dead, or otherwise awaiting rescue will be replaced with a live bot should they disconnect, or vice versa, which can be a lifesaver in many situations where being short one member can be disastrous, and can even prevent group wipes if the replacement bot can revive party members who are all in bleedout.
  • A Medicae station charged with a power cell will always have four uses available regardless of difficulty. Said cell is always near-ish to the Medicae station needing it, and it glows a soft blue which is easy to spot in the game's typically dark environments.
  • If a player or bot falls off a cliff without getting a chance to grab the ledge (such as being thrown by a Mutant or an explosion), any supplies they were carrying are left next to the ledge instead of being lost to the party. This is so you don't lose a critical ammo or first aid box due to an unlucky break, though Grimoires will still be lost as if manually discarded.
  • Unlocked Blessings are account-wide and will be applicable to all Marks in a given weapon's family, meaning that one can for example use a Mk I lasgun with a good blessing roll to unlock it for the rest of the line that can be used by every class that has access to said guns. That said, the class that benefits the most from this system is the Veteran, due to the amount of generic gear that they share with Zealots and Psykers.
  • When refining a weapon or curio's perks or blessings, the material costs will steadily go down with each attempt until it's eventually made free altogether, allowing the player to change that given property as much as they like. This was eventually ditched altogether in Patch 13, which replaces the dice roll with a list of available Perks and Blessings that the player can freely choose from and apply for standardized currency costs appropriate for their tier level. While every Perk is available from the get-go at their highest levels, Blessings still need to be manually unlocked over time by surrendering unused gear to Hadron.
  • Implemented with Patch 8 is a grace period when joining matches in progress where the joiner is completely invisible and invulnerable to enemy attacks while loading in, as well as a full Toughness replenishment upon being revived by an ally, both of which are intended to cushion players from receiving cheap damage when they're unable to retaliate due to technical reasons.
  • As of Patch 12, credits and crafting materials gathered are consolidated into a single account wallet, regardless of which class the player acquired them as. This includes Requisitorium Marks as well, which has the added effect of quadrupling the player's weekly income as all four classes can contribute to this shared wallet by finishing their own contracts, thereby making high-quality gear much more easily acquired.
  • With the exception of those that specifically require match completion, penances (and associated achievements, if applicable) are awarded on the spot regardless of how the rest of the session went. This is unlike in its sister series where a challenge is only considered "complete" if the stage ended in victory, and wiping means the player will have to do it all over again in a later run.
  • A Med Stimm cannot be used on players who are at full health and don't have any Corruption to cleanse, thus preventing accidental wastage.
  • To somewhat offset the increased difficulty of Maelstrom mode modifiers, specific missions have beneficial adjustments to give players some breathing space, such as limiting generic enemies to only Scabs, class abilities recharging 20% faster, no hordes, and so on. These tend to only be found as part of the really difficult Maelstrom missions, however.
• Apocalypse How: Regional social disruption flavor, as the plague outbreak is largely quarantined inside of Tertium, while the rest of Atoma Prime is implied to be untouched (though most of the surface is also seemingly a sun-blasted wasteland, so it's not like the plague would do much out there). It's definitely much more Ubersreik than Helmgart, however, as even within Tertium itself, it's strongly implied that many of the major sectors are still securely operating under loyalist control, since most of the missions only involve the Strike Team taking care of odd jobs and running logistic resupplies, while a larger fighting force is doing the heavy lifting elsewhere.
• Apocalyptic Log: The first series of Wyrmwood's transmissions in the Vox Transmission videos depict circumstances in the hive going From Bad to Worse as it falls to Nurgle's cultists, with the agent herself being hounded by both the Dregs and Moebian 6th forces, as well as the more ghastly creatures of the Warp summoned by the heretics, culminating in her death at the supposed hands of a Daemonhost as it taunts Inquisitor Grendyl over the Vox unit.
• Arbitrary Gun Power: In terms of per-shot damage, the strongest gunpowder-based firearm available is the Revolver, which hits like a truck. In comparison, the Ogryn's machine guns do far less damage per shot, even though the individual bullets they fire are nearly bigger than the revolver itself.
• Armor Is Useless: Visible armor and padding for all classes are cosmetic only, and thus have no bearing on your character's ability to eat damage, whether they're decked in Astra Militarum-issued combat gear or wearing their starting prisoner rags. Averted for many of the enemy types, however, whose bulk of armor rather accurately describes how much punishment they can take before dying, though certain Maniac or Unyielding types like the basic Ragers and Mutants still play this straight due to them being chemically conditioned to Feel No Pain.
• Army of Thieves and Whores: The Reject Strike Teams are basically this, consisting of individuals conscripted from all walks of life who ran afoul of the law one way or another, and were given the choice of fighting for the Inquisition in exchange for amnesty. Additionally, the Moebian 101st Penal regiment is Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
• Artificial Brilliance: Ranged enemies will keep players pinned down so their melee compatriots can safely advance into them. Said ranged enemies will also steadily advance (firing all the while) when there are enough of them to both try and maneuver past players' cover as well as making it more difficult for players to just pop out of cover and gun them one of them down, or move over to cover while exposed. Plus, if you run into a renegade guard squad and don't take them out before they scatter, they'll all spread out into positions where they can cover each other whilst also shooting at you.
  • Whilst using the incendiary Exploding Barrels to create patches of fire can be quite effective, the AI for most enemy types is generally smart enough to route itself around such obstacles (at least on higher difficulties) if there's another available path that isn't too long. Still, it does provide a temporary buffer zone and can force enemies to take a slightly longer route to get to you. They'll also use the barrels against you if you try and take cover near them.
• Artificial Stupidity:
  • If a ranged enemy gets within melee range of a player or vice versa, it will attempt to melee them to death instead of just keep shooting at them. This often results in the player retaliating and killing the enemy before it can swipe at them, as the AI has to actually take time to switch weapons, and dancing in and out of this range can often times confuse them into constantly swapping back and forth and not doing any damage. The only exceptions to this rule are the Shotgunners for obvious reasons.
  • Unlike The End Times: Vermintide's disabling enemies, who will try to move into an operable range of some player and then go for the kill, the disabling enemies of Darktide will acquire a target from a good distance off and then gun straight for them and only them, logic be damned, even if this causes them to ignore and run past a perfectly good option-of-target on the way to their acquired target. This is especially obvious with Mutants, as the game specifically sends disablers after players who run off to punish them; even if they've rejoined the group by the time the Mutant catches up, it'll still be gunning for them in particular. The only way to force them to retarget prematurely is to use the Veteran or Zealot stealth abilities, and even then the enemy may return to their original target as soon the Veteran or Zealot comes out of stealth again.
  • Poxbursters can descend (albeit very inelegantly), but they can't ascend anything more than about waist high. If they spawn somewhere they need to scale a barricade of some description - such as, say, an impassable fence - in order to get to the squad, they'll simply immediately explode upon reaching said barricade as if they suffered a Logic Bomb. This is even if there would be another route to the party that it could take by using a Monster Closet door, too.
• Ascended Glitch: One that's Borrowing from the Sister Series to boot. Block reviving was an Ascended Glitch in and of itself in Vermintide 2 after gaining popularity among players of the first game, which became an integral feature after several patches. This is carried over into Darktide as well, where helping a downed ally will cause your character to automatically block all melee attacks aimed at them.
• Attack Its Weak Point: Any enemy wearing armor has at least one section unarmored, that can be hit for increased damage. Alternatively, blowing off the armor with repeated attacks is also possible, though more time-consuming. The Beast of Nurgle also has a very large glowing spot on its back that can be blasted for very high damage.
  • Also applies to the Strike Team: if a player gets attacked in the back, the damage they take to Toughness is much higher, and health damage from backstabs is enough to down a player in one or two shots on higher difficulties, where they would survive multiple attacks from the front.
• Auto Doc: To heal, the acolytes can use the medicae stations scattered across Hive Tertium, semi-automatic healing station operated by servitors which happen to sometimes be aware of their predicament. To prevent abuse and camping, they have a limit of up to four uses before they stop functioning; in some cases they may have as few as one use remaining, or they may need a power cell recovered and inserted.
• Back Stab: Available as a playstyle for Zealots as of Patch 13, with many nodes going down the Shroudfield tree giving them bonus damage and other benefits when landing or killing enemies with backstabs. The Catachan combat knives also have this in the form of the Ruthless Backstab blessing, which lets the player ignore most or all of an armored enemy's protection when hitting them from behind.
• Badass Longcoat: Every class has one, provided the player has purchased the corresponding Death Korps of Krieg cosmetics from the Commodore's Vestures.
• Battle Theme Music: Certain tracks play when the strike team is being attacked by hordes or monstrosities. Seer Psykers may ask a Bodyguard Ogryn if they can hear music get louder when the team is under attack (the Ogryn does not hear it, but will say he'll keep an ear out for it).
• Bayonet Ya: Certain types of firearms like the Helbore-pattern lasgun or the Ogryn's Ripper Gun have bayonets affixed to them that can be used in melee by pressing the special attack key. On the enemy's side, those bearing autoguns and lasguns often also have their own bayonets that they will use against players who come too close.
• Beam Spam: Possible for both the players and the enemies, given their vast numbers. For players, short form Kantrael Lasguns and Accatran pattern Lasguns have a very high rate of fire, with the 'rapid fire' Accatran variant hitting somewhere on the order of 1000 shots per minute (whereas most weapons are well within the 400-650 shots per minute range). A full party with such weapons can put on quite a lightshow.
• The Berserker: They can be found on both the player's side and the enemy's.
  • On the Heretics' side, the player can look forwards to encountering Ragers, extremely durable, speedy melee specialists, and Maulers, heavily-armored brutes who are a little too fond of their Chainaxes. Both of them will aggressively charge you down.
  • On the players' side, both the Ogryn and the Zealot are prone to this sort of playstyle. Both are more melee-focused than the Veteran or Psyker, and both of them can take a powerful charge as their Blitz. Personality-wise, all of the Zealot's personalities fit the bill; the Ogryn leans more into Boisterous Bruiser territory.
• BFG: With the exception of the Psyker, every other class has access to at least one.
  • Veterans and Zealots can unlock the Locke-pattern Boltguns, which are the downscaled versions of the "big" BFGs commonly seen in the hands of Space Marines. Despite this, they're still absolutely massive, and their gunshots are appropriately thunderous. Whilst their ammo is limited, further hampered by a sluggish animation set, their firepower is immense; most weaker enemies hit by one will be reduced to Ludicrous Gibs, and the list of things that can survive fifteen bolter rounds can be summed up as "bosses, monsters, and Executors", for a total of about five enemy types out of dozens.
  • Available to the Zealots is the Purgation Flamer, a huge flamethrower that obstructs most of the screen when used.
  • Any gun used by the Ogryn definitely counts. The iconic Ripper Gun appears as an unlockable option, and their starting weapon is the Kickback, an Ogryn-sized (read: about the size of a small cannon) M79 grenade launcher-like gun that fires massive canister rounds that are about as big as the already-massive hands of their wielders, often turning their unfortunate targets into Ludicrous Gibs. If those aren't enough, they can also get a Heavy Stubber (dual-barreled heavy machine guns styled on the M2 Browning, which shoots .50 BMG for an idea of how massive they are), for More Dakka.
• Bilingual Bonus: The Fanatic Zealots of both genders pepper their dialogue with Scots words, such as unco (strange), screenge (scour), scunner (pest), and clartyheid (shithead).
• Black Comedy: During the character creation screen when selecting a homeworld, the player gets to see an image of it. Cadia's is nothing but a bunch of rocks floating in space thanks to the Fall of Cadia.
• Black Speech: The Cult of Admonition practices one such obscure language, complete with its own alphabet (or "unholy sigils" as reported by Wyrmwood agents) that can occasionally be seen scrawled over walls and floors, as well as the armor and bodies of certain enemy types. Many Dreg units can also be heard chanting words or phrases in this dark tongue, though it doesn't correspond to any known 40K lexicon as it's a new language created by Dan Abnett specifically for Darktide.
• Blackout Basement: The "Power Supply Interruption" mission condition causes most of the bright lights in a level to be completely shut off, making the level much darker than it normally is. This doesn't mean that enemies can't also see you coming, however, so Never Split the Party is all but explicitly enforced, as blundering off into the darkness may turn out poorly for you. The good news is that players can get flashlights to light areas in front of them, but the worse news is that Daemonhosts spawn much more commonly in said mission condition, and they're not too keen on bright lights...
• Blue Is Heroic: The other present loyalist, non-Inquisition factions are predominantly garbed in blue, with the Moebian 21st also doubling as naval units. The loyalist version of the Moebian 6th wargear added in the Path of Redemption update sports a lot of blue armor plating and padding as well.
• Bolivian Army Ending: Subverted with a recon squad who were the subjects of the game's first teaser trailer, ending the trailer with staring down the impossible odds of a massive hordes of enemies about to advance on them. They reappeared in the World Intro trailer to a fair bit more explicitly portray their fates - they are in a fighting retreat before a Chaos Spawn appears and tears into them.
  • The squad can be found in-game, too: on the Hab Dreyko map, impaled above an arch on the way to the HL-16-11-1318 hab. Sometimes when you pass beneath them, Sergeant Major Morrow will comment they were "one of our recon teams back when this started," and state that he's glad to finally learn what happened to them.
• Boring, but Practical:
  • The Kantrael Mark XII Lasgun is one of the less flashy weapons, being a relative Jack of All Stats compared to many other Lasguns and lacking cool effects like the Bolter's armor piercing rounds, but it gets the job done well. Its damage is just high enough to take care of most elites and specials, it has a good rate of fire to give high DPS, it has far more ammo, less recoil and less reload time than Bolters, and does a good job in general against anything that isn't Carapace armored.
  • Infantry Autoguns are meant to be this among their weapon family. While they lack the raw punch of Headhunters or the capacity and sheer volume of fire of Braced Autoguns, they are built to be well-rounded and easy to use, with proper iron sights and a decently fast fire rate, allowing a skilled Veteran to make use of them from any range and against any type of threat without running afoul of Crippling Overspecialization.
• Boxed Crook: All four playable classes are this for one reason or another, being conscripted by Explicator Zola into stopping whatever shenanigans the Moebian Sixth are up to in Tertium in exchange for freedom and amnesty. The Ogryn Skullbreaker class trailer even said as much.
  "Serve with distinction, and past sins may be forgiven."
• Break Meter: The Toughness meter serves this function for you, where running out results in your character being more susceptible to flinching from suppression fire, and enemy heavy attacks can interrupt your actions.
• Brown Note: The heretics seem to be employing some manner of this, with them broadcasting their own propaganda laced with subliminal messages and their own Black Speech to corrupt the minds of the faithful to their side. The main objective of the Relay Station TRS-150 Disruption mission is to shut down a captured communications hub that has been converted to broadcast such a message, though exposure doesn't seem to damage the Rejects' sanity in any way.
• Cannon Fodder: The player characters, unlike Vermintide, are entirely normal prisoners, imprisoned psykers, disgraced zealots, and former soldiers who have been conscripted to assist the Inquisition with stopping the cult alongside the veteran Inquisitorial stormtroopers that are otherwise being used. The staff of the ship that serves as the game's hub space let the player characters know in no uncertain terms that until they prove their worth (and even after they already have, if the flavor text of progression-locked portrait frames are any indication), they're seen as nothing but cannon fodder. The Official Launch trailer even shows this with a new squad of rejects suffering a Total Party Wipe, so Sergeant Morrow brings in the next batch of rejects — the ones we've seen in past trailers — to complete the job.
• Chained by Fashion: The Ogryn can have a chain wristband on their right wrist. All of the starting "prison uniform" type outfits also have a length of chain at each hip and around the back.
• Chainsaw Good: The iconic Imperial chainsword is one of the available melee weapons. It lacks the crowd control capabilities of the basic swords, but in exchange it can be revved up to absolutely butcher single opponents. There's also chainaxes if you want harder hits at the cost of slower swing and draw speeds, or the Zealot-exclusive two-handed Eviscerator if you want a Big Karking Chainsword that's basically an upgrade to the standard one.
• Character Class System: Four for release, with more planned for post-release launches;
  • Veteran: A straightforward trooper with a focus on ranged combat, they start with the classic lasgun, an entrenching tool, and frag grenades. They carry significantly more ranged weapon ammo than the other classes, and can enter a brief sharpshooting Aura Vision mode which highlights priority targets like Specialists and Elites. Alternative abilities allow them to stagger enemies in close proximity and revive downed allies with a motivating battle-cry, or go into stealth, whilst they can also opt for magnetized anti-tank 'krak' grenades or smoke grenades to provide cover.
  • Zealot: The melee-focused answer to the Veteran, the Zealot charges into close quarters and unleashes their fury in the Emperor's name. They have potent crowd control capabilities with their stumm grenades. When their melee weapons fail, they alone may break out flamethrowers to purify the heretics and Kill It with Fire. They can also be powerful squad support with an aura that restores toughness and staggers all enemies, or disappear into stealth like the Veteran for devastating backstab attacks. Incendiary grenades and throwing knives round out their throwable choices.
  • Ogryn: Massive and supremely durable, the Ogryn packs a big stick and an even bigger shotgun. Whilst their size makes them a little bit of a liability on occasion, they are the most durable class and very deadly up close. Unfortunately they are much less capable at ranged combat. But that's fine, since they can simply perform a Foe-Tossing Charge to get up close and personal with most opponents if need be. Alternately they can unleash a battlecry that forces nearby enemies to focus on the Ogryn, or gain a short-lived boost to rate of fire and reload speed. Instead of their grenade box, they can also choose to simply hurl chunks of concrete, or a singular devastating mega-frag grenade.
  • Psyker: An archetypical Squishy Wizard, the Psyker starts out weak but can become much more dangerous as they hone their skills and gain access to powerful new items like force staves. Plus they can always just decide that Your Head Asplode regardless of what weapons they happen to be carrying thanks to their always-available Brain Burst power. More defensively minded psykers can generate barriers that halt incoming ranged attacks, or enter a psychic battle-trance that increases their weapon damage and critical chance. Those unsatisfied with simply making heads explode can unleash swarms of Telekine Knives, or embrace their inner Sith Lord with torrents of Bio-Lightning.
• Character Customization: Each class can be customized, starting with their appearance, voice, and gender (with the exception of the Ogryn on gender), and the addition of head/upper/lower outfit pieces and weapon appearance.
• Cherry Tapping: Certain attacks deal very minimal damage, but can kill provided the enemy is on low enough health, such as poking them with the Auspex antenna, punching or slapping enemies by using the special function of certain Ogryn melee weapons, or scoring a direct impact with grenades as either the Veteran or Zealot.
• Clear My Name: The player characters all stand accused of a crime that they may or may not have committed. The game's intro sets them up to be placed in a position where they aren't summarily executed for their crimes and instead get to prove their innocence and/or loyalty to the Imperium by working under the Inquisition combating a Chaos incursion. The game's level system is even quantified in how much your handlers trust you ranging from a convict they cannot trust to a loyal and reliable agent of the Emperor as a member of the Inquisition.
• Color-Coded Armies:
  • The enemy factions conveniently wear outfits in distinctive colors to help with identification, with the Moebian 6th's infantry garb being mostly gunmetal gray, while the Dregs of the Cult of Admonition wear yellow. Both factions tend to feature a lot of vibrant green in their outfits as well, whether as equipment lighting or conventional garb, the primary color of the Chaos God they're aligned with.
  • Applies to the good guys as well, with general Inquisition personnel wearing red regardless of their armor. The loyalist Moebian 21st regimental troops wear blue due to their nature as marines and naval units.
• Color-Coded Item Tiers: Starting at Grey (Profane) for the lowest tier, then Green (Redeemed), then Blue (Anointed), then Purple (Exalted), and finally Orange (Transcendant) as the highest tier. Weapons gain increased stats with tiers, and alternate between gaining Perks (minor benefits, such as increased Ranged Damage against a particular type or small group of enemies) and Blessings (larger bonuses, such as regaining Toughness on killing Elite enemies) with each tier starting with a Perk at Redeemed and ending with two Perks and two Blessings at Transcendant.
  • A more subtle example also exists in default colour patterns; ranged weapons with faded cyan paint are low damage/rapid fire, weapons that are faded green are average, and weapons that are brownish are high power/slow-firing.
• Company Cross References: Players who own either of the Vermintide games also get access to some cosmetics made for referencing and emulating Vermintide's playable characters. A Zealot body tattoo even depicts Saltzpyre's premium cosmetic the Stolen Swine hat on it a.k.a. (Holy) Pigmar.
• Competitive Balance: Though not a competitive game, the various classes and weapons are for the most part balanced to each other to have notable strengths and weaknesses that make them more or less desirable than others according to playstyle preferences, and allow them to complement each other neatly. For example the Locke-pattern Bolters may put out absolutely ruinous damage, but it has a painfully slow reload and poor ammo capacity, necessitating careful ammo management. Lasguns, by comparison, have far greater ammo reserves and swifter reloads, meaning that whilst even the most powerful Kantrael MG XII lasgun may only have maybe half the raw firepower of a Bolter, with none of the penetrative power versus heavy armour, it can keep shooting for a lot longer and reload a lot quicker when needed.
• Continuity Nod:
  • One of the weapon designs you can get your hands on are Graia-pattern Autoguns; Forgeworld Graia was the setting of Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine and Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun. They are noted to be considered cursed by some as the world experienced an unspecified "series of calamities", but still have their fans. There are also Graia-pattern helmets for cosmetic options.
    • Space Marine is also referenced in a conversation about the Codex Astartes. Doubles as Leaning on the Fourth Wall, with someone saying "Everyone prefers chapters that don't follow the rules".
  • It may seem strange at first that a Cadian veteran can have hive-ganger as their backstory, given the planet's reputation for imposing strict military discipline on the entire population. However, Cadia having many gangs in its underbelly is actually established back in the novel Gunheads, which features a Cadian sergeant who dislikes ex-gangers in his ranks due to a bad encounter with them in his youth.
    • Also, the Cadian system had multiple planets, including the Hive World of Macharia.
  • One of the Veteran voicelines mentions that they've heard that Gellar fields were powered by plugging psykers into them like batteries, then mentioning that they probably don't do that anymore^note This is a reference to an old lore tidbit on how hibernating psykers were used to power Gellar fields.
• Critical Annoyance:
  • Overcharge-based kits like the Psyker's Peril mechanic or the Plasma Gun's overheating will play loud, repetitive noises to alert the player of their imminent explosion until the charge meter has gone down sufficiently. For the Psyker, being at high Peril will have them hearing a constant cacophony of voices that wear at their (already mostly gone) sanity, while the Plasma Gun will beep loudly as it reaches critical overheat, though at least the latter case can be silenced by simply swapping away from your ranged weapon slot until it has cooled down.
  • Going down to your last wound will slightly desaturate your character's field of view, along with a faint but noticeable heartbeat when they're close to dying. They will also complain frequently about possibly dying until healed back up.
• Critical Existence Failure: As a carryover from Vermintide, your characters will just drop dead if they lost all health while on their last wound, whether by ambient Corruption or direct damage. While they do have voice lines specific to low health statuses, these will also trigger if they're still at maximum wounds, and there's no real penalty to their combat capabilities whether they're at full or one HP.
• Cycle of Hurting:
  • The Ogryn can do this with some of his weapons.
    • The Latrine Shovel's uppercut alternated along with the first heavy attack in its moveset can inflict this on almost every enemy in the game save for Assasination targets, as can the variety of clubs' slap attack if repeatedly applied to a monstrosity's weakpoint.
    • Likewise, the post-buff Kickback shotgun is great for knocking your targets down on their ass and keeping them there due to its immense stopping power and a reload animation that takes less time to finish than most enemies can stagger back up onto their feet, assuming it didn't just vaporize the top half of whatever the player fired at. This opens them up for a lot of punishment from either the Ogryn himself, or his allies who may have better-suited equipment to deal with the stunned enemies.
  • Enough mutants charging after the same player over and over can also inflict this since enough of them going after the same player would make it impossible to dodge every one of them grabbing at you, though if one's back is facing terrain, you can avoid taking damage from the mutant...though again, there is no guarantee something else won't still succeed in damaging you.
• Dark Is Evil: Well, it's not titled "Darktide" for nothing...
  • Power outage mission modifiers causes a mission to be largely dark and dimly-lit from the lack of working light sources in the hive...and there will be Daemonhosts scattered around the map.
• Darker and Edgier: Much less colorful and cheerful than either Vermintide despite it dealing with just an incursion by Nurgle rather than The End of the World as We Know It. Being Cannon Fodder for the Imperium is...expectedly unpleasant.
• The Dead Have Names: One of the Psyker's random conversations with the squad will have them comment on a list of names Morrow keeps in his mind, names that fill him with guilt and grief. It is strongly implied that they are operatives who have died under his command.
• Death of a Thousand Cuts:
  • Damage Over Time works this way, but especially Bleed. Individually, each stack of Bleed only does very small amounts of damage per tick until it naturally decays, but when accumulated to a maximum of 16, suddenly the target will be losing considerable chunks of its health (scales with type and armor rating) every second, which can melt even Mighty Glaciers like Executors and Bulwarks pretty quickly, especially if complemented by the players' own input.
  • Weapons of the Blade Spam and More Dakka varieties usually operate like this, with each attack doing relatively low damage, but are compensated for by their ability to churn them out at ridiculous rates per second. Rapid-firing but weak guns like the Shredder or certain models of Infantry Autogun lend well to short-ranged builds that stack Brittleness on the enemy on hit due to their sheer volume of fire, and tend to dominate DPS-wise on higher difficulties where enemy health is increased to levels where slower and harder-hitting weapons may struggle under pressure. Melee weapons under this principle also tend to deal significantly higher damage to weakspots and/or possess greatly inflated capacity for Critical Hits, on top of their aforementioned ability to inflict Bleed, which allow them to occasionally chip off huge chunks of the enemy's health if the player know what they're doing.
• Degraded Boss: The "Monstrous Specialists" modifier gives a chance for a Monstrosity to spawn in place of a group of specialists, but it has 1/4 the usual health to compensate.
• Developer's Foresight: Being on a Beast of Nurgle's vomit causes corruption to a player's health, but sliding on it causes far more since now you're coating your legs in the supernaturally-corrosive and infectious goo instead of just your feet.
• Difficult, but Awesome:
  • The Bolter, 40k's iconic weapon, is incredibly powerful, with incredible damage-per-shot and rate of fire, massively outclassing autoguns and lasrifles in DPS. However, it has a fairly low ammo pool (and unlike most weapons does not get bonus ammo on higher grade weapon rolls), and it takes a second to cock the charging handle whenever you switch to it, making it much more awkward for quickswitching combat (which the game is based around). While it can effectively delete any opposition that you might run into (short of a Daemonhost), it really requires expert skill to use effectively.
  • The Plasma Gun likewise demands a lot of experience to utilize its heavy damage output. A combination of its Charged Attack functionality and lack of proper ironsighting means that one needs to have a good grasp on where the shots will land among its open crosshairs, while also being able to Lead the Target against more mobile enemies like Pox Hounds or Mutants; its lower rate of fire also means you'll need an effective alternate means of dealing with enemies that suddenly jump into melee range, and the overheating mechanic also forces the user to be prudent with their shots, since firing willy-nilly at random targets may cause the weapon to become too hot to use against actual Elites or monstrosities that arrive later.
  • What's colloquially known as the "Knife Zealot" build. As the name suggests, it's a setup focusing on the use of the Catachan Mk III Combat Blade, which is deceptively powerful despite the weapon's low base stats. To wit, the knife has a very high critical multiplier via Finesse, especially on good stat rolls, along with incredible dodge capabilities, and possesses blessings that allows the player to rack up Bleed stacks on enemies that both significantly contribute to their DPS, as well as constantly activating the Zealot's defensive feats, allowing a particularly nimble player to waltz right into big enemies and slice them to ribbons, while taking little if any tangible damage in return. That being said, this build requires a degree of skill to use properly, since the knife itself has very low block stamina, cannot control crowds very well, and lacks any effective means of staggering or opening armored or high-health enemies up for exploitation like the Thunder Hammer, Executor, or Eviscerator can, meaning that getting up close to Elites or monstrosities is always a risky gamble.
  • Parrying, by performing the special function of specific weapons. Unlike blocking, which will still leak damage through depending on the specific enemy attack (e.g. Executor/Mauler overhead swings, Traitor Captain melee attacks, etc...), parrying incurs no loss to health when performed correctly, while also causing the player character to launch a Counter-Attack at the enemy for some quick stagger. The catch is that parrying requires very precise timing due to the variance in enemy attack speeds, and there's a very noticeable delay before one can block or attack again, meaning that messing up a parry will leave the player open to additional attacks that could have been defended against had they just dodged or blocked the initial hit to begin with.
  • The Zarona Stub Revolver boasts extremely high damage, near pin-point accuracy, and so much penetration power that it might as well be infinite. In exchange, it holds only five rounds, has a very lengthy reload time, and has a rather-petite ammunition pool. If the player can learn to handle these sizable downsides, the Zarona can address almost every problem the squad faces. The weapon's high damage makes it ideal for sniping entire swarms of Specialists and Elites before they ever get close enough to yell threats, and it's more than capable of drilling Executors, Monstrosities and Reapers in only one or two shots more. It's most devastating in the hands of a capable Veteran, as their ammunition-related perks make it so ammo-efficient that squabbling over pickups becomes a thing of the past.
• Dialogue During Gameplay: The squad will engage in conversation with each other dynamically as they progress through the mission. These range from simple exchanges to lengthier discussions about the situation, the 40k 'verse as a whole, and the squad's opinions of one another.
• Divided We Fall: One of the earliest cinematic trailers features a Total Party Kill due to poor teamwork. The Cohesion system drives home how important teamwork is, giving you a regenerating shield that recovers faster the more teammembers are "in cohesion", along with various other benefits based on your squad's class composition and selected talents.
• Do Not Drop Your Weapon: One easy way to tell that an enemy is definitely dead is when they drop the weapon they were holding. It often comes along with a satisfying clank as their weapon hits the deck too.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: The Run and Gun blessing on specific weapons allows the player to shoot them while sprinting. Played straight with most other things however, since sprinting forces your character to lower their firearms though there are a few exceptions - laspistols, for example.
• Dungeon Bypass: One that can be unlocked for the Orthus Offensive by solving the map's bell puzzle and beating the Twins on hard mode. Assuming the hard mode run is successfully completed, further instances led by the "host" player will have an altar with two bells right next to where the level begins. Hitting the left bell will skip the whole stage up to the Final Boss, while hitting the right bell (Damnation only) will also skip to the Twins fight, but with hard mode enabled.
• Dynamic Entry: With the exception of daemonhosts, which spawn in predetermined spots around the map, Plague Ogryns, Beasts of Nurgle, and Chaos Spawn make their entries like this, often smashing their way out of a nearby bulkhead or wall to attack the strike team and catch them by surprise.
• Elites Are More Glamorous: Crosses over into Surprisingly Elite Cannon Fodder as well. Despite their convict status, the player characters are still part of an Inquisitor's warband, which put them several cuts above a penal legion member and the average guardsman. The gameplay reflects this with how easily the Rejects can gain access to goodies like Plasma guns and Power Swords, which are usually reserved for officers and veterans in the regular army. They can even have access to a bolter, not a bolt pistol but an actual (man-portable of course) bolter.
• Elite Army: Auric-level operatives serve as this within Inquisitor Grendyl's warband, which the Rejects can work their way up to, though beyond having access to (slightly) better wargear and more perilous missions, they seem to have largely the same privileges as the rank-and-file, which is to say rather little. The Mortis Operatives additionally serve as an even higher echelon within the warband as some form of black ops, such that information on them is highly classified and next to nothing have been revealed about them so far.
• Emergency Authority: It sounds like Wormwood's Inquisitor is unresponsive, which has forced them to enact desperate measures as the Hive is increasingly threatened by the cult's forces.
• Equipment Upgrade: Player gear can be consecrated at Hadron's workstation to increase their power rating and color grade, which bestows additional perks onto them. Upgrading equipment costs Plasteel and Diamantine, which are sometimes found during missions and also granted post-match in small amounts.
• Escort Mission: The finale of Ascension Riser 31 is meant to be played this way, as one player needs to be carrying the mission objective to the extraction point while the other three defend them from an onslaught of enemies after the final gate has been opened. Downplayed in practice, however, as there's nothing stopping the carrier from simply throwing the canister forward to gain some distance while still being able to fight back.
• Evil Is Bigger: With the exception of trash mobs, most Specials and Elites are noticeably taller than even maximum height player characters, with the standout examples being the Reaper and Bulwark enemies, who are slightly larger than the playable Ogryns.
• Exploding Barrels: Barrels scattered around the level can be ignited by shooting them and waiting for a few seconds, or shooting them again when they're ignited. One type simply explodes an area for damage and high knockback, the other explodes and leaves flames on the ground that can drop Toughness to 0 instantly and deal constant damage to players and enemies caught in it. There's also "floating" versions of these which resemble sea mine-like objects hanging via cables.
• Eye Scream: Corruptor nodes are destroyed by bursting their central "eye" part after removing all of the surrounding tendrils. As the Ogryn, there's even an achievement for killing one by chucking your grenade box at the eye itself.
• Facial Horror: Being aligned with Nurgle, most of the heretic forces are in various stages of decay, with most of their facial features missing or outright rotting off of their skulls for all and sundry to see, and blows to the head can carve off chunks of whatever flesh they still got left as well. Even the helmeted enemy types like Executors and Maulers can get in on the fun as well, as doing enough damage to their heads can destroy their headgear and their faces along with it, exposing a ghastly visage that's largely devoid of skin (or indeed flesh of any kind) or even eyes for that matter.
• Felony Misdemeanor:
  • 3 out of 4 backstories for the Veteran have them punished for extremely minor crimes, like not getting out of the way of a superior quick enough, or complaining that the rations (often made from human meat in this setting) taste weird.
  • All of the backstories for the Savant Psyker have them declared a Witch for crimes at least as minor as the Veterans, with the standout one being 'was seen by upper hive nobility'.
• Fictional Currency: At least three types are in circulation among the Mourningstar's many establishments. The most basic type of currency are Ordo Dockets, which is the common coinage players earn through completing missions and is used to purchase basic equipment, upgrading them, or acquiring more cosmetics from the Commissary. Going up one tier are Requisitorium Marks, which are earned from completing Sire Melk's weekly challenges and spent on wares offered by his services. Third and last are Aquilas, which is the game's Premium Currency purchased with real money to be spent at the Commodore's Vestures for special cosmetics not acquirable elsewhere.
• Foreshadowing: It's easy to jump at shadows in the Warhammer universe, but there are clear elements of foreshadowing to future content in dialogue; character dialogue during missions in the Enclavum Baross make reference to the Archivum Sycorax and how we should steer clear of it, only for an update not long after to add a mission that sees squads heading to the commsplex on the roof of the same Archivum to send a Distress Call. Likewise there are multiple references to there being another Hive City out in the wastes; Morrow or Zola always chime in to abruptly shut down any discussion of the topic.
• Fragile Speedster: Pox Hounds are special enemies that are unarmored and subsequently quite easily staggered and killed by pretty much any ranged weapon (or even melee weapons if the players are fast enough themselves), but they are small, run far faster than any other specials, and can move pretty erratically if the environment doesn't allow for them to just run straight at you.
• Friend or Foe?: Enemies can mistakenly hit their own side as they try to kill you. This is most common with the Bomber enemies throwing incendiary grenades that are likely to burn their allies as well as you if the enemy is anywhere near to you, but enemy gunfire is also capable of causing this.
• Friendly Fireproof: The Rejects can't hurt each other with grenades and gunfire even on the higher difficulties.
  • Fatshark made a point to avoid any friendly fire at all compared to Vermintide due to the higher focus on ranged weaponry, and likely due to the Ogryn's stature. That's not to say that friendly fire doesn't affect your allies, as shooting at a teammate enough and they will complain about it. Furthermore, specific weapons designed for One Hit Poly Kill like the Plasma Gun can fire through teammates, but will still apply the penalty calculation from penetration as if they were enemies, causing the shooter to do lower damage overall.
  • Averted with the game's enemies - even basic shooting enemies are actually capable of shooting their allies by accident while they were aiming for the players, while the likes of enemy flamethrowers, incendiary grenades and bombs are all but guaranteed to be damaging their allies if any amount of melee enemies were around the players.
• Gangsta Style: Played with. The Auto and Laspistol are held at an angle when aiming, but are otherwise wielded upright at all times. In the case of the laspistol, the usual drawback of Gangsta Style risking spent cartridges flying toward the shooter does not apply as it is a laser weapon.
• Gorn: Expect things to get messy, especially as you unlock the setting's more powerful weapons. Bolters will blast weaker enemies into bloody chunks outright, whilst a charged powersword or revved chainsword heavy attack can make any heretic Half the Man He Used to Be in very short order, or at the very least remove a limb.
• Guide Dang It!: The game is aggravatingly vague about many of your wargear's stats and what they do, leading many players to just attempt to build loadouts that have the biggest numbers, though the official release actually did come with damage and modifier breakdowns when mousing over certain attributes. The most common offenders tend to be Blessing properties, as without repeated testing in the Psykhanium or diving into the game's scripts, it's anyone's guess what any given trait does.
  • Brittleness and Rending technically achieve similar things. Brittleness is simply a Damage-Increasing Debuff that reduces the enemy's armor by a certain percentage, while Rending just straight-up ignores a portion of their defenses. In layman's terms, Brittleness has a lower effective cap, but is useful for softening an enemy up for your entire team to exploit, while Rending is very much your own selfish damage modifier against armored targets.
  • Impact is another obtuse value. What it actually does is increasing the likelihood of your attacks stunning or interrupting the enemy, which can synergize with certain talents that provide bonuses against targets afflicted with Stagger.
• The Gunslinger: This is the Agripinaa Mk XIV revolver's main gimmick, where the player character will fire it from the hip while rapidly fanning the hammer, giving it a much higher fire rate than its Zarona cousin, but lower accuracy accordingly.
• Half the Man He Used to Be: A sideway cleave from the more powerful bladed weapons such as a charged Powersword, revved Chainsword, or Eviscerator can cleave weaker enemies in two at the waist. Likewise, a killing shot from a sufficiently powerful weapon such as a Kickback may obliterate the top half of your target entirely, leaving only a bloodied pair of legs where they once were.
• Hand Cannon: The Stub Revolvers are deadly accurate in the right hands, and very powerful to boot, capable of taking down most low to mid level threats with a single headshot or even body shot in some cases. The drawbacks are their awful 5-round capacity, either poor accuracy at range (Agripinna) or extremely slow one-round-at-a-time reloads (Zarona). Amusingly enough, the Stub Revolver does have a unique blessing of that exact name, which allows it to penetrate armor on critical hits.
• Hard Mode Perks: Aside from specific penances which require you to play on Heresy and Damnation to unlock, successfully completing missions on these difficulties will award higher-grade gear as part of the Emperor's Gift at the post-game screen, with Exalted and Transcendent items occasionally being given out depending on if an associated sub-objective, if applicable, has been accomplished or not. Likewise, Diamantine and Plasteel are also found in much larger quantities on these higher difficulties, and the post-match reward will also be in greater amounts to encourage player participation.
• Healing Potion: The Med Stimms introduced in the Traitor Curse part II serve as this. When used, a Med Stimm will restore either one Wound's worth of health, or 25% of the recipient's max HP, while cleansing the same amount of Corruption from them, depending on whichever value is higher. Like all Stimms, they can be used on other players as well by aiming at them as one would a weapon, though if a given ally is unhurt, then the Stimm will simply not be spent to prevent waste.
• Health/Damage Asymmetry: Player characters have 100 toughness (200 for Veteran) and 150/200/300 health (Veteran & Psyker, Zealot, Ogryn respectively). Many Cannon Fodder enemies have lower health on lower difficulties but more on higher ones (a Poxwalker has 98 on Sedition but 300 on Damnation), but Specialists and Elites tend to have more than the players (Dreg Gunners have 525 and Poxbursters have 455 on Sedition). However, player characters can output much more damage against an enemy than most enemies can against them, and the regenerating toughness allows players to take much more damage than their health.
• Herd-Hitting Attack: Available in a handful of formats, mostly to the Psyker with the Force Staves. Certain weapons have punchthrough/body penetration, such as the Agripinaa Braced Autogun and Gorgonum Heavy Stubber. Then there's the Zealot's flamethrower, and the incendiary shot for the Kantrael shotgun. Of course a few enemies have these too; Bombers, (Tox) Flamers, and Poxbursters are the primary users.
• Hoist by Their Own Petard: The Adeptus Administratum's sterilized propaganda and secrecy surrounding the Moebian 6th's conditions of war also inadvertently helped keeping the regiment's Warp exposure and fall to Chaos unnoticed by the population at large. By the time they revealed themselves to be traitors, the 6th's forces have already spread throughout the lower hives of Tertium and seized controls of many of its vital subsystems.
• Human Resources: Occasionally invoked as part of Auspex scanning missions, where the tech-priest Hadron may threaten to make new servo skulls out of the Rejects should they lose the one she lent them for their task.
• HP to 1: Corruption that's gained through grimoires, specific environmental hazards, and the Beast of Nurgle's attacks cannot outright kill the player, with the health reduction stopping upon hitting one point of health.
• I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: There's a Bridge of Many Martyrs in Throneside that connects to the occupied Aegis Station. Understandably, none of the Rejects are particularly happy to cross it.
• Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels: The difficulty levels from easiest to hardest are as follows: Sedition, Uprising, Malice, Heresy, and Damnation. Update 12 also added "Maelstrom" missions, which are Heresy-or-higher difficulty with a mix of unique modifiers, such as the High-Intensity Shock Troop Gauntlet (increased enemy and specialist/elite count, with specialists and elites often spawning in groups). They pay out somewhere around twice as much as a regular mission of that difficulty though.
• I Have Many Names: The zealots may be all, well, zealously devoted to the God Emperor of Mankind's Imperial Cult, but they still have different preferences as to how to refer to him. The Fanatic sticks with the God Emperor, the Judge favours the (Most) Beneficient Emperor, and the Agitator goes with the Master of Mankind.
• Immune to Flinching: The appropriately-categorized Unyielding enemies (i.e. Ragers and Ogryn-types) are extremely resistant to staggering from most sources. Unless an explosive goes off next to them, or struck by specific high-Stagger weapons like Bolters and Shotguns, these enemies will typically be able to power through raging gunfire to strike at your character without much difficulty. Then there's Mutants, who won't be staggered out of their charge even if an explosive barrel goes off right next to them! On the player's side, the Ogryn's class passives also give them a similar degree of protection against flinching from being hit by enemies, whether in melee or from range.
• Interface Screw:
  • Getting hit by most enemy attacks will cause a Screen Shake that can be very disorienting.
  • The "Ventilation Purge" mission condition causes all areas to be shrouded in fog, obscuring vision past a certain distance.
  • A Beast of Nurgle's vomit attack will cause your screen to be partially covered in its vomit for a while, ala the Boomer's bile from Left 4 Dead.
  • Getting too close to a Daemonhost will cause frosty effects to appear around the edges of your screen.
  • Being down to your last wound will desaturate the world and wash out all of the colours, as well as add a slight tunnel vision effect around the edges of the screen.
• Interservice Rivalry: Veterans from Cadia and Veterans from elsewhere don't always get along. One of the banters has the Cadian guard deriding his comrade for being weak, only for said comrade to fire back by making fun of Cadia's fate.
• Invulnerable Knuckles: Ogryns have an animation of shaking off their fist in pain after uppercutting an enemy in a spot armored by carapace armor. However, such an animation is oddly absent from human characters no matter what they punch, ever - while Ogryns are an inhumanly-large-and-tough subspecies of humanity!
• Is This Thing Still On?: The Rejects seem to have a habit of badmouthing the company's officers without turning off their comms first, usually resulting in I'm Standing Right Here moments, followed by awkward silence. Their most typical targets of gossip are Hadron the tech-priest, Explicator Zola, and their pilot Masozi.
• It's a Wonderful Failure: When the player's team goes down, a short cutscene plays out showing the aftermath of your team's defeat.
• Kaizo Trap: In Assassination missions, the level's not won as soon as the Traitor Captain goes down — you have to eliminate all remaining enemies or wait for a good bit of time. If the squad wipes during this period, it's still a defeat.
• Lag Cancel:
  • Even considering the game's incremental reloading system that "remembers" which stage of the process you were on before you swapped out, many weapons can still be reload cancelled by switching to a different piece of equipment or using your Blitz, due to their ammo counters typically updating before the animation has actually finished.
  • The Zealot's Blades of Faith can be thrown, which is very quick and after which the player is free to act normally, to avoid the long drawing animation of guns like the Flamer or Bolter.
• Limit Break: Also carried over from Vermintide 2 are the unique Abilities for each of the four playable classes, plus more variants of each available as skill tree keystones that radically alter how a specific class plays. Additional modifiers can be unlocked to reduce said Abilities' cooldowns through performing specific actions, tack on additional effects, or in some cases, grant more charges that can be used consecutively.
• Ludicrous Gibs:
  • Certain very powerful weapons like the Bolter, Plasma Gun, and Kickback will often turn weaker enemies into an explosion of gore and body parts on hit.
  • Enemies killed by the Psyker's Smite Blitz or Surge Staff will pop into an explosion of blood.
  • This is the fate of anything that is not a boss or monster that winds up on the business end of a Krak Grenade, as is befitting its status in 40k lore as a grenade built to punch through vehicle armor. Even Ogryn Crushers, the most heavily armored and tankiest non-boss enemy in the game, will be blown utterly apart if they get hit by even one of these.
• Machete Mayhem: The Dreg Stalker and Scab Shotgunner don't use bayonets and instead attack with a machete if the Rejects get close enough to them.
• Madness Mantra: "Buzz, buzz, buzz!" This pops up several times, usually from those succumbing to the pervasive Warp influence caused by the Nurgle cultists. Daemonhosts will often mutter it, crowds of Poxwalkers may occasionally begin chanting it during assaults, and the Psyker may mention buzzing if their Peril gets too high.
• Maximum HP Reduction: Used much more aggressively than previous titles. Your health bar is partitioned into several smaller blocks called "Wounds", with each Wound being blotted out by Corruption every time your character enters bleedout, though Grimoires and specific enemy attacks will also do this. The more times you went down, the more Wounds get filled up, and the less health your character will have to spare when they're helped back up, with the expected eventuality of dying if you lose all HP again on your last block. While the most typical treatment of Corruption is to use a Medicae station, the limited availability of such on higher difficulties encourages players to be careful with their health management; some class talents can passively cleanse Corruption as well, such as the Zealot's Beacon of Purity or the Veteran's Field Improvisation, though they cannot restore Wounds lost from going into bleedout.
• Messy Maggots: When striking Poxwalkers, maggots are violently expelled from their bodies, along with sprays of decaying matter and corrupted sickly yellow-green blood.
• Mighty Glacier: Certain weapons have their hideous damage output balanced out by a slow ready time, long reloads, clunky animations, significant speed reductions when braced, or a combination of everything. Those like the Bolter or Heavy Stubber usually take ages to get set up and ready to fire, and leave you painfully vulnerable to interruption in so doing, but once they're fully deployed, anything on their business end might as well be chunky salsa.
• Money for Nothing: Although Ordo Dockets may be spent in large amounts when you're leveling a new character and are trying to keep their gear up to date, there's not a whole lot to spend it on past level 30, especially after you've assembled a loadout that you're happy with, which isn't particularly hard despite the RNG nature of the requisitorium. Given how maps of harder difficulties also tend to pay out significant amounts of Dockets on completion, it's very easy to accumulate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of credits that can't go anywhere.
• Monster Closet: Mooks are spawned from un-enterable rooms that open up and dispatch enemies on you. Minibosses like Plague Ogryns and Beasts of Nurgle often tend to bust out of otherwise-innocuous walls when entering the area. Enemies can also run into these inaccessible rooms and effectively use them as teleporters to get around the level, preventing the players from easily escaping pursuit by using airlocks or the like.
• More Dakka: This is Warhammer 40,000. Did you really think there wouldn't be a massive amount of Dakka to go around?^note Still not enuff, though.
  • The Shredder submachinegun does what its name suggests by spitting out colossal amounts of brass at blazing speeds, allowing it to mince crowds and make Swiss cheese out of unarmored enemies with ease. Its meager accuracy and low stopping power means it can struggle at range or against protected targets.
  • Most weapon families tend to have specific sub-variants that boast significantly higher fire rates and magazine size, though usually in exchange for lower damage, worse recoil, poorer accuracy, or any combination thereof.
  • The Ogryn is the undisputed master of Dakka on Atoma Prime when wielding the Heavy Stubber line of weapons. Picture a Browning Machine Gun that's been made Ogryn-portable. Their trademark Ripper Guns are no slouch, either, essentially being fully automatic shotguns. The Gun Lugger skill-tree amps things up to levels that would make any Ork proud with the Point-Blank Barrage ability, which massively increases the player's fire rate.
  • Feel free to augment any of the above with an Alacrity stimm for even more dakka.
  • The Heretics get in on the fun with the Reaper and Gunner specialists. The former is an Ogryn packing a Heavy Stubber who will happily hose your entire squad down with lead. The latter is a more heavily-armored version of the standard gun-toting cultists, wielding a monstrously large, fully-automatic Lasgun. Both can come in packs, especially on higher difficulties. Have fun!
• Mystical High Collar: As is standard for Psykers used for battle by the Imperium, most Psyker headgear options in-game have some sort of esoteric and large metal collar which is used to dampen and drain their powers to help them resist demonic influences.
• Mythology Gag: Quite a few to Vermintide.
  • The Loner Psyker voice has this line when picking up ammunition: "Ammunition. And not before time."
  • The Medicae Station servitor occasionally asks to "heal your ravaged body", referencing Saltzpyre's iconic/memetic line from Vermintide.
  • Likewise, a Zealot may praise a Veteran who's cutting a bloody swath through the enemy horde as being "a credit to [their] regiment".
• Never Say "Die": Zig-zagged. While "dying" due to running out of health or having your entire HP meter blotted out by corruption counts as a death that's added to the post-game tally, the game officially refers to this happening as your character being "incapacitated", and then captured by the enemy, which sort of explains why they can respawn and be rescued later on. Outright defeat, however, will clearly show the party's corpses lying around in a short cutscene.
• Never Split the Party: As with Vermintide, splitting the party is a good way to get the entire party killed. Going it alone can cause individuals to get rushed by hordes of enemies, gunned down by fireteams, caught in a Scab Trapper's net, or pounced on by a Pox Hound, getting a player killed and their party with one less member. This trope is further encouraged with the game's Cohesion system, where players gain regenerating Toughness and grant each other passive buffs for being in close proximity to each other, along with various other perks based on the class composition.
• No OSHA Compliance: The large mission terminal on the Mourningstar completely opens up the floor around it by about four feet, with a large drop and a slowly-spinning fan beneath it. Railings can be seen on other maps... but not here.
• Not Using the "Z" Word: In keeping with official materials, the common Plague-bearing mooks are referred to as Poxwalkers. Ogryns, however, will avert this in the specific case of Pox Bursters, whom they sometimes refer to as "Boom zombies" instead.
• Off with His Head!: Lethal headshots are liable to cause the target's head to fly off, both with melee and ranged weapons. The Lasgun is a notable exception, since it just drills a hole straight through the unfortunate target's skull rather than applying kinetic force of any kind to it.
• Oop North: The playable character voice sets veer into this region at times, mostly for the Veterans.
• Ominous Fog: The 'Ventilation Purge' modifier reduces visibility in missions to absolutely horrendous levels with a blanket of murky brownish fog, with the squad being able to see no further than perhaps two or three dozen meters at most.
• One Bullet Clips: Ammunition still in the magazine (for magazine-based weapons, at least) is returned to your total rather than being discarded.
• Overheating: Applies to the Psyker as a class mechanic, as well as the Veteran's Plasma Gun.
  • In the Psyker's case, their Peril meter will rise every time they use Warp powers, and if not given time to vent or if they neglect to do so manually themselves, the ensuing Superpower Meltdown will make them explode involuntarily and put them in bleedout instantly (or kill them outright, if they're on their last wound). There's a brief window during the overload animation in which you can use your special ability (if it's not on cooldown) to avoid this, at least.
  • The Plasma Gun's version is basically the same, though it also consumes ammunition and requires reloading like other weapons, though only rarely given its rather generous capacity. Unlike Perils, venting heat manually causes damage (which used to bypass Toughness and damage your health directly, but was thankfully changed), and it is also fully vented (with no damage) whenever the weapon is reloaded, which takes a full nine seconds. If allowed to overheat, trying to fire an uncharged shot will fail and instead vent a bit of heat. Trying to fire a charged shot causes the weapon to explode which downs you instantly, exactly like an overloaded Psyker, with no ability to save you^note In fact, exactly like a Psyker, up to and including being able to earn a Psyker-only penance
• Our Ogres Are Hungrier: Ogryns are a Human Subspecies of dim-witted Heavyworlders who are nearly twice as wide and tall as a normal human. One of the playable classes is an ogryn, and the renegade militia includes hostile ogryns as Smash Mooks and Shield Bearing Mooks. There's also the Plague Ogryn miniboss, an ogryn that has succumbed to the Walking Pox and transformed into a massive Elite Zombie.
• Our Zombies Are Different: Poxwalkers, a sort of Nurgle infected undead caused by a plague known as the "Walking-Pox". They are capable of running and wielding melee weapons.
• Pardon My Klingon: Expect to hear a lot of "kark" and "grutt" in place of the usual F-word, particularly from Veterans and Ogryn.
• Pinned Down: A core mechanic. Shots that are close to an enemy will make them duck and cover, which discourages them from shooting back; hosing down a mob of Moebian Traitor Guards will have them scattering into cover, where the melee-focused classes can charge in and wreck them. Conversely, players being shot at by enemies will find their aim momentarily jarred with each nearby impact, encouraging them to find cover before more shots hit them... until an enemy horde rushes into them. Certain melee-focused enemies (like the semi-mindless poxwalkers and plague ogryns) can't be suppressed though, and one high-level Veteran trait allows them to become immune to suppression too - though they'll still take camera flinch if they're directly hit.
• Pistol-Whipping: Available as the Bash special function for certain weapons, where pressing the associated button will have the player character smacking the enemy with the butt of their guns (or in the case of many Ogryn weapons, by swinging the entire gun into them). The actual pistol whipping move itself is available for both variants of the Stub Revolver.
• Player Headquarters: The Mourningstar, an inquisitorial space vessel that also serves as a social hub for players.
• Powerful, but Inaccurate: Weapons with the Brace aiming type tend to put out considerable volumes of fire that can decimate entire hordes with one of their sizable magazines, but are balanced by their inability to use proper ironsights and ineffectiveness against enemies from mid range on outwards.
• Powerful Pick: Played with. While actual pickaxes aren't part of the Rejects' arsenal, the four foldable shovel types introduced with the Traitor Curse part II allow the player to fold back the spade head to access the pick at the other end for a swift single-target attack. The Veteran's Munitorum Mk III and VII shovels also deal a second hit of damage upon pulling the pick blade out of the enemy, while the Ogryns don't even bother with the pointy end and use the large spade head as the pick instead, which does about as much damage as you think this does.
• Praetorian Guard: The Moebian 33rd regiment, also colloquially known as the "Black Guards", serve this role for House Margrave, the current nobility that rules over the Domain. To ensure complete obedience and loyalty, the 33rd only drew members from families or organizations that are totally subservient to House Margrave, though it is said that such recruitment standards have fallen significantly, with much of its ranks during the events of Darktide being composed of local gangs, whom they also routinely force to charge into the thick of the fighting to die first if it means the safety for the Margrave loyalist elements.
• Prophet Eyes: All four playable classes can play with this if you pick the whitest eye color possible for them, which doesn't affect their vision one bit due to their cosmetic nature. Some Groaners and Poxwalkers have these too.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The main party is a squad of prisoners-turned Imperial agents sent down to fight the forces of Nurgle, implied by the Rejects Will Rise trailer to be part of a much larger penal legion. You even get to pick what your crime was when you create your character.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Occasionally Averted - the Professional voice for Veterans will sometimes fail to remember the codeword for a Special enemy and just replaces the word they were intending to say with "Something", whilst the Loose Cannon and Cutthroat are even less formal about things. The Loner might chatter about after declaring an enemy horde in oncoming "I'm sensing rage, fear, and foreshortened lifespans...no, not 'four shortened lifespans', I said 'foreshortened lifespans'. Are you not paying attention? Look at me, not them!", clearly being testy at having to repeat himself... while the strike team is being attacked. Ogryns will TRY and be professional, but due to their difficulty with big words, they'll end up saying a special was Elim-, Elimina- Eli-...Gutted.
• Reasonable Authority Figure: Morrow is brutally honest with the Rejects, telling them that he expects them to die very quickly. However, both his own actions and dialogue from the Psyker imply that the deaths of the men under his command weigh heavily on him, even the Rejects. He may also occasionally deflect (off-screen) complaints from Brahm about the Rejects by stating that as long as they continue to survive and completete missions, the rest is irrelevant. Needless to say, both attitudes are uncommon in the Imperium.
• Red Is Heroic: The forces of the Inquisition predominantly wear red fatigues and robes with their armor, and represent the "good guys" (by 40K standards) in this game.
• Reforged into a Minion: This happens to the Traitor, who appears in the commissary shop. Before the cutscene where Rannick executes them, they're human. After that scene, they'll still appear there, but now as a lobotomized Servitor that's forever forced to serve the Imperium.
• Revenge: According to the Saved by Sarge defining moment, this is very Serious Business among the Moebian regiments, where servicemen and women take losses extremely personally, usually to the point of swearing oaths to avenge their fallen brethren, no matter the cost.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Psykers, Veterans and Zealots can bring along a Punch-Packing Pistol that hits like a truck, even against armored targets. It's offset by a slow reload time and a small ammo pool. Unlike most examples of this trope, it's a five-shooter rather than a six-shooter.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: Characters have a (semi-)regenerating 'Toughness' bar, and non-regenerating health bar. Toughness only regenerates if you're close to your teammates, if you score melee hits/kills, or if you have certain traits/talents from levelling up. It also only fully protects a character's health from ranged attacks - toughness instead reduces damage caused to health inversely proportionate to the percentage of the toughness bar when the attack landed, thereby only fully protects health from melee damage while it is completely full. This makes ranged attacks less punishing, and encourages the team to stick together in general, since many talents also function off this "Cohesion" system.
• Scary Black Man: Male characters with darker skin complexions can be this as they messily chop up the forces of Chaos. Bonus points go to the Ogryns, who also have the benefit of being massive.
• Scenery Porn: Just look around once you get into bigger areas, or just around certain maps in general. Throneside, especially, is lavishly decorated. There's also plenty of Scenery Gorn where you get to see the effects that centuries of neglect have wrought upon the Hive when you head out into the abandoned sectors, to say nothing of the effects of Chaos occupation and invasion of places in general.
• Screen Shake: Darktide might as well be renamed as "Screen Shake: The Game", due to how violently an enemy's melee attack or a gun enemy's shot will jerk your camera. Worse still, being struck by multiple enemies at once will cause nauseous-levels of shaking that it's often extremely frustrating trying to regain your bearings.
• Secondary Fire: All weapons have some form of secondary attack; for guns, this can be toggling or using an attachment (such as a flashlight or bayonet) or smashing someone with the stock of your rifle, but it can also be loading special ammunition or other more unusual attacks. Certain melee weapons also have special attacks, as swords can parry and riposte whilst chain weapons can be revved up to eviscerate.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Soundly defied. The shotguns the players use are going to do something against pretty much any enemy that they can actually see. While they'll definitely kill enemies from five feet a lot easier and faster, they're plenty capable of landing a useful hit against a sniper who only has their head peeking out of cover, and probably will kill that sniper in just a few more shots.
  • When aiming down the sights, even the "short range" Kantrael shotgun can score kills at thirty meters, while the Agripinaa model kicks this up a notch with its slug-firing special mode that basically turns it into a scopeless sniper rifle that also does high damage against Carapace armor, giving it a similar edge against them as the Bolter has. Even the the Ogryn's Kickback, which formerly played this trope straight, was eventually buffed so much that it could be used to counter Snipers in a pinch.
  • Conversely, the many shotgun-wielding enemies now play this trope straight due to balancing reasons. While fully capable of hitting players at absurd ranges on launch, they have since been nerfed several times to avoid run-ending cheap shots, such that they can only start firing once within several paces of their targets. Even assuming they can hit a distant player with stray shots, any further out than point-blank range and their damage will start falling off sharply to the point of doing negligible harm to even the squishiest of Psykers.
• Shout-Out:
  • The Zealot Penance "Just a Flesh Wound" is a reference to the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
  • The Judge Zealot may exclaim "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" while using Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude. Bonus points if they say this while repelling a Monstrosity.
  • If someone rescues an Agitator Zealot, the latter may reply, "Give me a moment for pity's sake!"
  • The name for completing the penance where the player has to use an Ogryn's Bull Rush to move 40 meters in under 20 seconds is, "Don't stop me now!"
• Shovel Strike: The signature melee weapon of the Veteran class is a Militarum-issue combat spade, and a giant version is an unlockable option for the Ogryn. It's also the melee weapon given to all four classes in the prologue level. Likewise, certain Dreg fodder troops will also pull out a crude spade when forced into melee range.
• Shown Their Work: The iconic Lasgun is one of the only ranged weapons that cannot decapitate enemies. This is because they do not apply any kind of kinetic force to the target - they simply vaporize whatever they hit. The developers considered having the gun be recoil-free, as it is in lore, but decided against it, as it just didn't feel satisfying or intuitive to use.
• Simple, yet Awesome: The Catachan series of combat knives and the Atrox tactical axes lack the bells and whistles of many other melee weapon options, being not very impressive at crowd-controlling and lacking in raw damage, but they make up for these by being overall very balanced, on top of their fast swings and Assassin-type hits that allow them to quickly melt high-health targets with rapid strikes, while being quick on the dodge in case anything goes wrong. While there are much better specialized picks for the three non-Ogryn classes, all of them can do well with a well-specced axe or knife (Zealots in particular benefit immensely from knife builds).
• Situational Sword: The flashlights attached to certain models of lasgun and autogun tend to be unused most of the time due to how many maps are brightly lit, or at the very least not totally dark enough to the point of needing an actual light source to see. In maps with the Power Supply Interruption condition, however, they become significantly more useful for navigation due to the pitch darkness nature of those stages, though the daemonhosts that come with the modifier probably won't appreciate having flashlights shone in their faces.
• Sound-Coded for Your Convenience: All of the Special enemies bar the Scab Sniper will give off a telltale sound when they appear and/or when they prepare their attack:
  • Poxbursters make a constant electronic beeping noise that gets faster the closer they are to the listener.
  • Scab Bombers make a ringing grenade pin drop sound (which can usually be heard clearly even during a fierce melee or firefight) before they prime a fire grenade, and the fire grenade itself makes a beeping noise that quickens as its time to explode decreases.
  • The raspy female voice and laughter of Scab Trappers are the signs that one has just spawned or is nearby, and the mechanism of a Net Gun being prepared signals their attack.
  • Upon spawning, Pox Hounds will let out a howl that everyone can hear, followed by the sounds of a ferocious dog running once they get close enough. If it's a Hunting Grounds, you instead get the sound of an entire pack of them howling and barking as they're set loose.
  • The sound of gas stove clicking is a telltale sign of a Scab Flamer or Dreg Tox Flamer being in the vicinity, ready to unleash fiery doom. If they're not close enough or can't get a good shot, they tend to rant maniacally about fire.
  • Mutants never stop roaring until they're dead and it can be heard from quite a distance, which alerts the team to one that's approaching.
• Stance System: Applicable to specific firearms which change their firing modes upon aiming, such as the Ogryn's Ripper Gun, the Bolter, the Zealot's Purgation Flamer, or the Agrippina Stub Revolver. More technical examples can be found in the later model Sapper and Latrine Shovels available to the Veteran and Ogryn, respectively, whose special function is a toggle between their usual state and priming for a special, highly damaging single target strike.
• Status Infliction Attack:
  • The Zealot's Purgation Flamer and Immolation Grenades cause damage as well as burning to deal damage over time.
  • The Psyker's Purgatus Staff allows them to inflict Soulblaze on enemies they hit, whilst their Surge Staff and Bio Lightning Blitz chain between enemies and stun them.
  • The Veteran's Shredder Frags and several Ogryn perks inflict Bleed on enemies, which causes straightforward damage over time - and unlike burning and Soulblaze, Bleed doesn't wear off until the enemy dies.
• Stone Wall: Enemies with the Unyielding armor class typically boast a much more generous health pool than their brethren and receive less damage from weapons without a perk that specifically grants a bonus against their type. These Unyielding enemies are usually appropriately large and sturdy-looking, such as Monstrosities, Reapers, and Bulwarks, though Executors are an outlying category, having the Carapace Armour tag instead. As an offset to their durability, Unyielding enemies also take quadruple bleed damage, making them surprisingly vulnerable to Death by a Thousand Cuts.
• Super Serum: The Stimms introduced with the Traitor Curse part II play this straight. They basically serve the same function as the potions from Vermintide, with the added gimmick of being able to use them on other players in addition to oneself. Aside from the Med Stimms which act as standard Healing Potions, these come in three other flavors.
  • Combat Stimms boost outgoing damage, stagger, and armor penetration of the user when applied, as well as Peril resistance for Psykers.
  • Celerity Stimms speed up most of a player's actions as well as their weapon's Charged Attack if applicable, while also making Psykers quell their Peril faster.
  • Concentration Stimms greatly accelerate the user's Ability cooldown when used.
• Suspicious Videogame Generosity: Found a fully-stocked Medicae Servitor and a bunch of those yellow crates that are packed full of ammo, grenades, and other useful goodies? Chances are you're just about to enter one of the mission's main encounters. The Orthus Offensive amps this up to ridiculous levels, as the elevator leading down to the Karnak Twins fight is absolutely surrounded by supplies of all kinds, including guaranteed ammo and first-aid kits, as well as four Med Stimms just for good measure. You'll definitely need them.
• Tae Kwon Door: Closing the large sliding doors on an enemy can crush and instantly kill them. This even works on Monstrosities like Plague Ogryns.
• Tank Goodness: The Lex Atoma employs heavy use of the famous Leman Russ Demolisher as part of Tertium's perimeter defense. Several missions actually involve the Strike Team infiltrating captured, overrun, or disabled automated industrial complexes and restarting them or otherwise performing vital maintenance so the production of these tanks can continue. A few can also be seen scattered around Throneside, seemingly abandoned by their crews.
• Technicolor Eyes: Cadian characters can have pink or purple irises, a mutation caused by living near the Eye of Terror for so long.
• Temporary Online Content: Anything sold by the Commodore's Vestures will be rotated out every few weeks and rendered unobtainable until FatShark reintroduce them again further down the line, though most cosmetic bundles released thus far haven't seen a reappearance yet.
• Throw the Book at Them: Hilariously enough, Scriptures can be wielded as impromptu melee weapons. While the damage they deal is negligible, book-bashing the enemy is strangely effective as a horde staggering attack, since the hitbox is ridiculously wide and the animation is much shorter than the recovery frames of your enemies, making it possible to stun-lock huge mobs of them by continuously slapping them really hard with a tome.
• Thunder Hammer: Well, yes. Thunder Hammers are available as weapon options for the Zealot class, with two variants on offer: the Crucis, which has a stronger focus on single-target damage, and the Ironhelm, which does better at crowd-controlling, though both models are capable of devastating attacks when charged up.
• Total Party Kill:
  • The Guard squad first seen in the Announcement Trailer make their return in the World Intro Trailer, where they apparently escaped the horde they encountered, only to get ambushed by a Chaos Spawn.
  • The Launch Trailer has a squad comprised of four entirely different-looking rejects ultimately getting defeated by a Trapper, a Mutant, and a Poxwalker horde. Sergeant Morrow then brings in new rejects, who are the four members featured in previous trailers.
• Trading Bars for Stripes: The player characters are convicts (although most, especially the Zealot and Veteran, are still loyalists in their own minds) recruited by an Inquisitor (or an Inquisitor's agent) to fight the Nurgle Cult on Atoma Prime. As the Rejects Will Rise narrator puts it:
  We take you — the outcast and the criminal, the lost and the damned — because you have nothing left to lose.
• Training Stage: The Meatgrinder simulation on the Mourningstar serves as this, allowing players to test out their weapons, skills, and builds against the various enemies encountered in the game, except they do not fight back. Attacking the enemies will display how much damage was dealt as well as what level of armor or flesh type mitigated the attack, if any.
• Unexpectedly Realistic Gameplay: Darktide takes time to emphasise its suppression mechanics during the tutorial, which work both ways; shooting at enemies will make them run for cover, and being shot at will disrupt your aim as well. In addition, the reloading system has distinct stages or checkpoints of sorts for each weapon, so if you just slapped a fresh magazine into your autogun but needed to switch to your entrenching tool to smack a heretic, then when you swap back to your autogun you'll pick up where you left off with just having to rack the charging handle before you're ready to fire again. For certain weapons like the stub revolver, your character will only eject the spent shells and load in replacements during a partial reload, rather than dumping out all of the ammo and replacing it all.
• Uniformity Exception: Of the selectable home worlds during character creation, all of the planets provided are part of the Moebian Domain...with the exception of the bunch of debris that used to be Cadia. This was most likely done for fanservice reasons, given how popular Cadia is within the 40K fanbase.
• Universal Ammunition: Done for the sake of gameplay convenience, where every firearm can inexplicably replenish their stocks by picking up the same box of shells off the floor, regardless of whether you're using an obviously non-ballistic lasgun or a slug-throwing Heavy Stubber.
• Violation of Common Sense:
  • Due to a rather heavy-handed approach to Friendly Fireproof, the best way to break yourself and your team out of a horde swarming you on all sides is to have a Veteran or Zealot chucking grenades at their (and your) feet, blowing up or stunning whatever's mobbing you while staggering those who survived, all without any of you taking any damage from the blast. Similarly, the best way to go about crowd-controlling with non-hitscan weapons like the Zealot's Flamer or the Psyker's myriad staves is to shoot through your teammates, since their hitboxes won't be able to block your torrent attacks while you yourself cannot hurt them. Notably, this is the exact opposite mentality of FatShark's own preceding Vermintide titles, where doing similar things as above will severely hurt if not kill yourself and your allies.
  • It is possible to knock monstrosities off of ledges and cause them to fall to an immediate demise...which somehow includes Daemonhosts, who constantly levitate and can teleport toward players.
• Vocal Dissonance: Wearing full-faced headgear doesn't always muffle a Reject's voicelines like it should. There are specific items that do play this straight, or otherwise apply a modulation effect on top of the character's dialogue, but even in those cases the class ability voice lines are still played normally, creating a disconnect between how a given player look vs. how they sound.
• Walking Shirtless Scene: Interestingly not played for fanservice effects. A bug introduced in Patch 9 somehow re-enabled the default bare-chested torso as a selectable cosmetic "option" for all classes where body armor would usually go, allowing players to run around slaughtering heretics half-naked without ill effects, due to how Armor Is Useless anyway.
• Worst Aid: Halfway through the tutorial, the player character runs into Zola again; she's been badly wounded by the Heretics and still has a knife lodged into her body. The player character then proceeds to grab said knife and pull it out of her shoulder. The game treats it as a good thing, showing that the player character is indeed an ally of the Imperium and willing to help despite the circumstances but, in Real Life, pulling a blade out of a stab wound is actually the worst thing you can do, because on top of potentially making the injury even worse, it will also leave the wound open, leading to greater blood loss (especially if an artery was damaged) and thus reducing the victim's chances of survival. An Ogryn player could be forgiven for making that mistake, but the other classes have no such excuse.
• Would Hit a Girl: All male player characters have no qualms hitting or even messily killing Scab Trappers or Dreg Tox Flamers, both of whom are female. Of course it goes both ways, as enemies won't hold back simply because some of the squad are female either.
• Wound That Will Not Heal: Corruption that is gained as the result of carrying grimoires can only be temporarily remedied by a Medicae station, before rapidly filling back up.
• Wretched Hive: The Underhives of Tertium are (or at the very least were, prior to the traitor occupation) controlled by various gangs and criminal syndicates, who were turned a blind eye to by both the ruling aristocracy and the law enforcement organizations through bribery. The Water Cartel were one such gang.
• Your Head Asplode: As expected, doming your enemy with a headshot will cause their skull to pop like a zit, especially if using something like a plasmagun or bolter. The Psyker's Brain Burst/Rupture ability also does this if sufficiently charged, with the added benefit of penetrating all armor below Carapace, which only mitigates it slightly.

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