Updates to Havoc - Dev Blog

Hey Everyone, When Havoc Mode was first released at the end of 2024, we mentioned it would be a system we’d continue to hone with community feedback.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve been reading tons of input from the community on Havoc through player comments, threads, videos, memes, etc.

Now as the first dev blog for our next update, Nightmares and Visions, we’d like to tell players all about the work we’ve been doing on Havoc and the changes we’re bringing to the game mode in March.

First of all, we upped the pacing a bit to keep things fresh. Players might notice there is less time to regroup than there was before. There are other larger changes we’d like to touch on in this blog, though.



Rank Overhaul
One of the biggest points of feedback we received had to do with progressing through different Havoc Assignment Ranks. 

(As a quick refresher, Havoc Assignment Rank is the current Havoc Assignment a player has access to play in the game; Havoc Clearance Level refers to the highest Assignment a player has completed. 

A player’s Havoc Assignment Rank currently changes after each mission or after each weekly reset. It can go down if a player only plays lower Assignment Rank missions that week. However, a player’s Havoc Clearance Level only goes up over time as a player completes higher Assignment Ranks.)

As it stands in the game now, before playing a game of Havoc, the party needs to choose which player’s Havoc Assignment they’d like to attempt to complete. After finishing the game, only the owner of that Havoc Assignment would see their own Clearance Level go up. The remaining players would need to wait until the following week to see their Havoc Clearance Level go up. We read the feedback saying this part of Havoc was frustrating and unclear.

Further, there were worries of “boosting” other players through the initial system we laid out. 

We’ve made some changes. 

With this update, we’ve changed it so everyone who participates in a Havoc game will rank up their Assignment Rank. That is, upon winning the mission, all the players of equal or lower Assignment Rank to the chosen mission will be ranked up. 

All players who participate get the mission reward, as well.

To make it fair, everyone who participates in a mission for Havoc will be eligible to be penalized upon failure (i.e. lose a charge), too.

These changes were made to ensure everyone who participates in Havoc will feel rewarded post-mission. 

How do we determine how many ranks a player will climb after completing a Havoc mission? 

It is determined by the difference between the player's Assignment Rank and the Assignment Rank being played (shown in the chart below).

• A gap of less than or equal to 5 gives an increase of (1) Clearance Levels.
• A gap between 6 and 9 gives an increase of (2) Clearance Levels.
• A gap greater than or equal to 10 gives an increase of (3) Clearance Levels.

A player’s Assignment Rank is no longer determined by the highest completed Havoc Assignment Rank from the previous week. Instead, as long as a player is active each week, the player will retain their current Assignment Rank. (A player is considered “active” as long as they attempt at least (1) Havoc mission in a week. The player does not need to win the game in order to be considered an active player.)

Now, the only way for a player’s Assignment Rank to go down is if they lose all three charges or they are inactive for a certain period of time (i.e. a player does not play at least (1) Havoc mission after a weekly reset).



Havoc Campaigns
Along with Nightmares and Visions, we are introducing something to Havoc called Havoc Campaigns.

Havoc Campaigns is what we’ve opted to call the rotation of the mission pool and mutators within Havoc, we want players to be able to learn and adapt to these combinations while also changing things up over the period of the current Havoc Campaign. It’ll begin from this update!

Maintenance Announcement: With Havoc Campaigns, we’ll be introducing new balancing to the game mode. Ahead of Nightmares & Visions, Havoc will be “off-Campaign” and unavailable to play from the Sunday, March 23 until the day of release on March 25.

During this off-time and to reflect the balance changes made, we’ll reset everyone to their nearest threshold depending on the highest they reached the previous Havoc Campaign period. (Please see the chart below.)




New Mutators
Heinous Rituals: 
Reports indicate that the Admonition has begun creating more Daemonhosts in this area, disrupt these rituals before it’s too late.



The Encroaching Garden:
Marked Enemies will heal affected allies in proximity.
If these enemies are not dealt with quickly, they will rapidly regenerate the enemy forces. 

Rampaging Enemies: 
Enemies in this sector are rampaging. They grow emboldened upon witnessing the death of another of their kind gaining increased defence against attacks.

Enraging Elites: 
Elite enemies will upon taking critical damage become enraged, increasing their attack speed, movement speed, and give them complete CC (crowd control) immunity. 

These four mutators will replace the current four mutators in Havoc. 



This summarizes the first wave of changes we’re bringing to Havoc for 2025. We still have more ideas we’d like to explore and bring to the game mode this year.

We’ll be reading the comments across our platforms in response to this blog, so please join the conversation and let us know what you think!

Thank you for reading and playing.

– The Darktide Team