Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is a survival horror gorefest catered explicitly to a co-op experience, best played with a group of friends. Though death and revival will be an expected outcome initially, you'll improve your combat skills alongside the existing character skills unlocked through mission and player progress.
Each Reject has a combat area they're specialized in, but lucky for you, you can try all of them out and stick with whoever fits your style best. This is just one of the things you'll want to know before booting up the game, but there are a few more top tips.
7 Play Your First Few Matches With Bots
If you're fast enough when selecting "ready up" on the mission selection screen, you can load yourself into a match with bots providing free time to hone your combat skills without feeling like you're letting your team down. It isn't a 100 percent viable strategy since you're likely to join a team with one online player and two bots, but this can still allow you to take as many baddies as possible by yourself.
After testing out a few missions this way, you'll be better prepared to head into online play and learn how best to work with your team. Bots play helps improve your combat capabilities, whereas online play can fully integrate you into the rest of the game.
6 Crafting Your Backstory
When creating a backstory, craft it well and craft it wisely, as these pointers will have implications on dialogue and how story characters react to your Reject. The most notable dialogue importance depends on the class you select; Psyker, Veteran Sharpshooter, Ogryn, and Zealot Preacher. If you choose a Psyker, many will fear and even detest you for your unholy powers. However, playing as any of the other three, you'll receive a lot more upfront respect.
During this section, you'll also decide on your homeworld, childhood, life growing up, defining moment, and prison sentence (each sentence putting you in a different color garb).
5 Prepare To Play On Low Settings On PC
Darktide is poorly optimized in its PC version, where even those with the newest CPUs and absolute top-end hardware will struggle to keep it running smoothly without any frame drops or graphical difficulties. In the case of PC Players, be prepared to switch graphic settings to low or medium unless you want to deal with the additional struggles of freezing, crashing, and more.
Everything still looks great on the lowest settings and performance will undoubtedly improve at the low end, so you won't need to worry about your gameplay looking terrible.
4 Potential Game Crashes
Again, this is a problem in the PC version, where game crashes will happen at random periods (so you can't prepare for them), although they're usually when you're about to enter a room or a new area. As expected, this becomes annoying quite quickly as you'll be slashing down enemies one minute, and the next, you're straight back to your desktop.
These crashes also make it extremely difficult to play with others since you'll constantly be resetting the game and sitting through loading times again, only to be kicked out halfway through your first mission. It's recommended to jump into the Xbox version if possible for a smoother experience.
3 Switch Between Your Operatives
The very first thing you'll do is create an operative, including deciding on their backstory, looks, and voice. You'll also be free to create an additional four operatives you can switch between outside of missions whenever you want. Each operative levels up individually, so if you get one to level ten, the others won't automatically reach the same level; you will have to play as every operative to get them to that same number.
Switching between these operatives has never been easier, and providing five slots means you can have one of each class and an extra character if you choose.
2 Stay Close To Your Team
Toughness is far more important than your health bar because it determines how much damage you can take before hits start affecting your operative's health. Once your toughness is broken, there are two main ways to get it back. The first is to melee kill opponents, slowly raising the meter back up, or the second is to stand with your team, increasing your toughness much faster.
It's smart to keep with your team at all times anyway, and even if you split up, stick to groups of two. This way, there's always an ally to help in case you get overwhelmed with enemies and need reviving.
1 Melee All The Way
Every operative has an ideal way to play which is why you always want to use the character class you feel most comfortable with in combat. No matter which class you select, what cannot be underestimated is the sheer power of an excellent ol' melee weapon, as successive swings can wipe out almost an entire horde of enemies, perfect for the times when you're forced to separate from the rest of your team.
Guns have limited ammo unless picking up and deploying ammo crates, and ranger classes should always be the priority with picking up this extra bit of ammo. Guns are best saved for bosses, and melee should be used for everything else.