Heroes!

Welcome to Patch 2.0.15. Thank you for taking part in the experimental test this past week. It’s been great to see your feedback on that, as well as the bugs you’ve reported as a result of the test.

The patch focuses on bringing back some of the tightness of the combat loops and engagements you face within Helmgart that you, rightfully, told us was out of whack. This covers areas such as enemy density, strike reliability, sound cues and enemy spawns.

The Experimental Test highlighted some new issues and provided feedback on the end event tuning that was present in the test. As a result of the test, we’ve fixed a bunch of those issues such as explosions triggering multiple times (this impacted bombs, hagbane, Sienna staves etc). The issue of bots dying through the Skittergate has been resolved, as well as other issues reported in the test.

We’ve also removed the “on spawn” audio prompts once more from specials such as the Globadier and Warpfire Thrower. In the EXP patch notes, we mistakenly added a note about the Hookrat now having a spawn sound. This was a miscommunication, so, sorry for that.

Last but not least, we’ve taken another pass over the end events for the levels noted in the list below. Whilst the patch notes remain the same as from EXP, they have been futher tuned to be somewhere between what was seen on the test build, and the previously live version of the game. Keep that feedback coming, and we’ll adjust where needs be going forward.

Once more, thank you for your participation!

/Vermintide 2 Team

Fixes and Tweaks

• Fixed various UI strings.
• Various crash fixes.
• Fix for missing localisation for one of the paintings.
• Fixed (we hope, finally!) players being placed in to matches without being offered hero selection should their chosen hero be taken, resulting in players entering matches with the wrong hero.
• Fixed an issue where having too many enemies alive prevented completion of the ‘Cage Breaker’ challenge on Against the Grain.
• Fixed bots taking damage when they are teleported to you/a team mate whilst mid-air.
• Enemies, notably the Chaos Spawn and Rat Ogre (but this does apply to all enemies) will slowly nudge players who find themselves stood within the enemy unit, through the expiration of a cloak ability or other such means. This fixes situations where enemy AI could not reach the player stood “inside” them.
• Fixed battle wizard career ability fire trail going further than the player travels. Fixed fire trail not appearing if player jumps over a gap in the navmesh* (*the path on which AI can travel)
• Fixed fire bombs not aggroing patrols if they step on the fire, now applying dots to enemies to alert them.
• Fixed an issue where the Achievement “Ride Together, Die Together” could not be completed on Legend difficulty.
• Changes the backstab trigger to calculate on clients instead of server
• Updated all hidden spawners on all levels to try and combat facespawning issues.
• Updates to enemy considerations to try and fight hyperdensity.
• Updates to horde spawning, primarily targeting ambushes.
• Fixes issue where the host hear the backstab indicator when bots are being backstabbed
• Updated how sweeps are calculated for:
  • 1h Swords, Kruber and Sienna
  • Dual Wield Daggers, Kerillian
  • Dual Wield Swords, Kerillian
  • Spears and Shield, Kerillian
  • Spears, Kerillian
  • 2h Swords, Kerillian

This should reduce the chance of getting Phantom Sweeps when playing at low fps and/or very high attack speed.

• Added Push/Block angle to weave melee weapons. An issue caused these to not display properly as an option that could be selected.
• Gors no longer use their kick attack since it telegraphed very poorly.
• Reduced the speed of the Gors attacks by approximately 10% across the board.
• Adjusted beastmen jump/climb up timers to reduce snappiness.
• Fixed missing sounds on Kerillian’s Shield+Spear.
• Fixed missing sounds for Bardin’s hammers.
• Overhauled the sound mix to improve enemy specials awareness.
• Removed spawn stingers for Ratling Gunner, Warpfire Thrower.
• Fixes hordes spawning without the horde music and ambiance.
• Fixed an issue where enemies using the combo attack (Plague Monk etc) wouldn’t face their target.
• Beastmen and chaos ambush horde music now triggers earlier to give a better indication for the player when they are about to be engaged.
• Beastmen and chaos horde ambiance has been changed to the same effect.
• Beastmen Standard Bearers no longer engage patrols when they put down their banners.
• Fixed a case of super fast Gutter Runner behaviours. Seemed to be an interaction between assassin rats and edges in terrain/geometry.
• Fixed some situations where patrols spawned too close to the player.
• Fixed an issue where Chaos Warriors sometimes could hit player that were very close behind them when performing their overhead cleave attacks.
• Fixed an exploit with Fire Walk and Slayer’s Leap which allowed some solid objects to be passed through.
• Fixed an issue where clients would deal more damage when they were the original cause (Sienna venting for example).
• Bulwark’ Talent - Fixed an issue that caused the bonus damage to enemies you stagger to be applied to ranged attacks. Now only affects melee attacks.
• Sienna - Battle Wizard - Flame Walk - She can no longer target her flame walk whilst airborne. This is mechanically unchained, but previously you could target whilst airborne but you couldn’t use the ability.
• Sienna - Battle Wizard - Kaboom! - Now applies the proper burning effect on both the start location and the target location.
• Markus Kruber - Mercenary - Blade Barrier - Fixed an issue where the talent could not be triggered if you had the talent “Enhanced Training” selected.
• Markus Kruber - Mercenary - Walk it Off! - Now refreshes duration if Morale Boost is activated while the damage reduction is active.
• Kerillian - Shade - Vanish - Changed icon of the invisibility buff to indicate that Kerillian is under the effect of Vanish.
• Saltzpyre - Witch Hunter Captain - The Unending Hunt - Fixed an issue that caused the the ability to refund 80% cooldown rather than the intended 40%.
• Saltzpyre - Witch Hunter Captain - The Unending Hunt - Fixed an issue where the cooldown would not be properly reduced while playing as a client.
• Saltzpyre - Zealot - Heart of Iron - Fixed the talent from not preventing death if the damage taken is greater than the total max health of the player.
• Bardin - Ranger Veteran - Firing Fury - Now refreshes duration of reload speed buff if triggered again.
• Crit Counter buffs of Mercenary and Zealot now show when they trigger.
• Empire Longbow - When zoom is held, will maintain zoomed in state instead of flipping in and out after each shot. Should yield a smoother experience when using the longbow.
• Bolt Staff - Fixed an issue where the second level of charge for the spear had less cleave than the first and third level of charge.
• Swiftbow - Increased headshot damage of charged attacks.
• Longbow - Increased headshot damage of light attacks.
• Longbow - Increased Body shot damage of charged attacks vs Berserker-class enemies.
• Fixed issues where critical hits dealt less damage to certain enemy types with certain weapons:
  • Repeating Crossbows, Saltzpyre and Kerillian.
  • Blunderbuss and Grudge-Raker, Markus and Bardin.
  • Hagbane impact damage, Kerillian.
  • Fireball Staff, Sienna.
  • Bolt Staff, charge level 2 heavy spear attack.
  • Flamethrower heavy attacks, Sienna and Bardin.
  • Shield heavy attack slams, Markus and Bardin.
  • Dual Axes push attack, Bardin.
  • Flaming Sword claw attack, Sienna.
  • Greathammer, Bardin and Markus.
• Cermonial Dagger - Heavy attack 1 chains slightly faster into heavy attack 2.
• Beam Staff - Fixed sometimes not doing charged shot while holding right mouse button and left mouse button is spammed.
• Hagbane - Removed projectile penetration on charged shot to make sure it always creates poison cloud on impact.
• Fixed issue where the player wouldn’t respawn or take a really long time to respawn in the final arena part of a Weave.
• Skittergate: Fixed a case of Skippergate.
• Skittergate: Fixed a cliffedge which had no hangledge and heroes whom fell there were just insta-killed.
• Skittergate: Bots should now behave a bit better around the ledges during the escape.
• Skittergate: Fixed various AI navigation and sticky locations.
• Athel Yenlui: Fixed a handful of sticky locations
• Tweaked the end events of the following missions:
  • Convocation of Decay
  • Fort Barkenbörken
  • Skittergate
  • Garden of Morr
  • The Screaming Bell
  • Righteous Stand
  • Engines of War

The end events should be less punishing on higher difficulties, and slightly less challenging on all difficulties across the board. The first wave of tuning for the experimental beta .15 was quite heavy handed. We still want Legend and even moreso Cataclysm to pose challenges that enforce good teamplay and threat evaluation from a party of heroes. We will continue to monitor our data and collect feedback from the community to ensure this is upheld when it comes to end event difficulty in Vermintide 2.

Some of the most egregious ones were. Since the patch notes are reflective of changes from the 2.0.14 to 2.0.15 they do not list all the changes as a result of the test, since those changes weren’t changes to the live version. When working with deadlines, as you say, we found the feedback and overall experience of the EXP branch to be superior to that of the previous live version, and it makes sense to ship that even if we can’t hammer out all the newer bugs the patch introduces. That said, when it came to issues reported, we picked those that were the most impactful, like explosions being multiplied, bots dying through the skittergate etc and solved those. We still have the other bugs in our tracker and will iron them out in subsequent updates.