Back to Bögenhafen (Fixes + Content Update Suggestions)

The Shadows Over Bögenhafen DLC is the first DLC for Vermintide 2. It currently has Mixed reviews on Steam, due to the numerous problems with the DLC: the maps, storyline, and cosmetics. There’s been a wealth of suggestions on what to do to fix the DLC, so maybe it’s time to organize our thoughts and seriously consider going back to Bögenhafen to fix up everything, rather than cutting our losses and just leaving it behind.

This is about eight pages (~3700 words) containing what I think are some of the major issues of the DLC, as well as suggestions for what I think could fix it. There’s also a TL;DR at the end, but I’ll get kind of offended if you skip everything, since I included pictures, bolded text to emphasize key points, and tried to break things down section-by-section.

Map Issues

The Pit

The Pit is a visually stunning map. The titular area has a very distinct, instantly identifiable aesthetic that sets it apart from the other maps in the map pool. There’s even a cool day-night progression in the map! The primary issues with the Pit are its unutilized space primarily due to the books, its underwhelming crescendo event, and its final part that drags on a bit. Does this sound like me complaining about the entire map? Yes, but they’re all relatively minor issues that just build on each other to create a long, often unpleasant experience.

Once entering the Pit’s main area, you immediately jerk to the right to dive down into the gross water to grab Tome #1 in the sewer area. This is often a “noob trap” for people to get separated if only one or two people jump down, especially during a horde, separating a team almost immediately and potentially near one of the first boss spawn points. After grabbing Tome #1, you then hug to the right as much as possible to retrieve the barrel and grab Grimoire #1. You then jump down from the Grimoire’s resting spot (ideally forward) to quickly go grab Tome #2 from the corner of the Footpad Canal area and invariably proceeding through there to “The Rock”, despite there being 2 other paths to proceed forward. This zig-zag route to grab the books efficiently essentially takes you in a big circle around the Pit, artificially inflating the map’s length. Here’s the rough route that I see taken every time in quickplay.

Here’s also a little handy gif with me roughly drawing some of the potential routes through the map.

  1. Blue goes left through the market and Footpad Canal.
  2. Brown goes through part of the west side of the Lower Pit to the drop-down between Footpad Canal and the Pit’s tower to go through the guard tower in the wall.
  3. Black goes straight through the Lower Pit, for the most direct but risky/ambushable route (also there’s a gate there that I’ll mention later on, bear with me).
  4. Magenta hugs along the Eastern Pit wall, playing it a little safe, kinda like if you just hugged the right side of the beginning forest section of Athel Yenlui.
  5. Red is zig-zagging to grab all three books in this single section of the map.

After you get through this area, the crescendo event where you burn the food in the Black Hook Gang’s hideout is relatively dull. It doesn’t involve any specials, and the primary risk of defeat is when someone gets too bored and goes off on their own to guard a window and gets overwhelmed by a Chaos Savage hitting them from behind some shielded enemies. This slog of an event may have been adjusted by difficulty-varying terror events introduced in the Winds of Magic beta and may be out-of-date, but I can’t say I know anyone who deliberately went out to try this map in the beta. Regardless, it’s nothing special as far as events go.

After what feels like an eternity (but is more like two and a half minutes) waiting for food to burn, the wall breaks and you escape the burning building. It’s very tense to get everyone out because there’s always that one guy that wants to fight enemies while leaving instead of just holding W, but this finale is otherwise not that difficult. As you’re coming down from that high from your sheer sense of pride and accomplishment, you feel like the level’s over. The event didn’t feel that tense, but you feel like the map’s been going on for a while. As you try to make your escape (outrunning a horde), this finale pacing is suddenly interrupted by somebody going up into the rafters to grab Grimoire #2, which makes the map feel even longer. I feel like this Grimoire’s placement is kinda like if the second grimoire on Skittergate was a 20 second jumping puzzle after you kill Rasknitt (spoilers, sorry). It removes a lot of the tension and focus from what’s going on around you in this escape, as well as removing a lot of tension from the crescendo event because you’re not carrying two grims during the finale.

That was long, so it sounds like there’s a lot wrong with the map, right? No, not really. I feel like relatively minor changes can be made in service of gameplay.

Fixing the Pit

  1. Move Tome #1. Currently, it’s just a noob-trap where people take fall damage, get separated during a horde/boss, and it leads to people taking the same Eastern path over and over again. Move it to the sewer before the fish market, which still maintains some risk to the tome by forcing players into that drop down area.

  2. Open up the lower sewer grate area where Tome #1 previously rested as an alternate route besides the fish market. Some people may not like the smell of fish and would rather wade through poopy water.

  3. Move Grimoire #1 somewhere else. It’s a rather long detour to grab the barrel to blow up the cart, and it even interferes with the Eagle-Eye View challenge. Boo! Move the Grimoire to the base of that tower for the aforementioned challenge. It gives players a nice place to regroup and appreciate the scenery before choosing their route, instead of invariably leading to the current zig-zag. Maybe someone will even do the challenge while waiting for someone to grab the Grim. Yay! Also add a ladder up there from the west side of the bridge. Make it shootable like the ladder for Grimoire #2 on Halescourge, just so there’s a way up to the Grimoire from both sides of the map. Plus, it’d be cool to have a Grim with multiple solutions, right? One solution using parkour and another using your brain.

  1. Consider using blockages to randomly decide which path the players will take, to mix things up like Fort Brachsenbrücke (and other maps). Maybe block off the fish market one time and reseal the sewer grate the other time. Maybe block off the market/canal entrance to force players out into the open. Maybe destroy the bridge to the Eastern Pit path at the start. Use this tactic only if it seems like one path is routinely chosen in regular play and needs to be randomly blocked to encourage more diversity. There’s probably a lot of potential blockades that can be non-disruptive to the Okri’s Challenges: like opening/closing the gate in the east side of the Lower Pit, sealing up some entrances to Footpad Canal, and closing off some side-paths randomly. These could easily be non-disruptive to the Okri’s Challenges for the map.

  2. Move Tome #2 out of the corner of Footpad Canal. It’s been submerged in doo-doo water for Sigmar knows how long! I don’t want to grab this book, that’s gross! It also forces everyone to go this same route every game, instead of choosing the other paths, which is even more gross than being submerged in doo-doo water. Move it to somewhere in the “The Rock” section. There’s a lot of nooks, crannies, and mini-jumps that I would guess were potential book hiding spot candidates at some point.






Also there’s a missing texture right here, so this is transparent. Pls fix.

  1. Move Grimoire #2’s location to a jumping puzzle just before you enter the Black Hook Gang’s hideout. Rather than having a 15-20 second jumping puzzle in the middle of your escape (and disrupting the pacing of the final portion of the map), we can have a jumping puzzle while everyone’s healing up before the event, since people will usually take a few seconds to linger in this area anyway. Also, if you fall like a dumb man-thing and break your legs, you can maybe heal up with the supplies before the event. It also adds some tactical consideration to the map: should you skip this Grim if you’re not doing well and you feel under-prepared for the event?

  1. Mix up the terror events during the burning building finale so the only thing that kills you isn’t just a Savage hitting you through a window behind some shields. Add specials and/or add a guaranteed boss after you escape. This last stretch needs something to make it feel a little more spicy, like a real finale. I didn’t play this at all in the WoM beta, so maybe Fatshark already did this. If so, good job!

  2. Shorten the area between Grimoire #2’s current location and the end of the map. It feels a little bit unnecessary, although it is fun to fight a boss in this area occasionally, as I mentioned in #8. It doesn’t have the rest of the Pit’s unique aesthetic, so it kinda just blends back into the normal map pool. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with the area, I just feel like we can shave another minute or two off the map’s length in the service of pacing and fun. Escaping the burning building and then almost seamlessly melding into the docks rush seems like it would be a heart-pumping finale, especially if it’s not interrupted with someone trying to do a Grim jump for 25 seconds like in #7. I added a screenshot of one last bit of the Pit compared to Empire in Flames and Righteous Stand. It really doesn’t have that signature squalor look of the Pit, it’s just a normal area at night-time. I feel like a bit of it could be cut down.

The Pit (area after finale)


Empire in Flames

Empire in Flames

Righteous Stand

The Blightreaper

I dislike the Blightreaper a lot more than the Pit. I actually like the darkness mechanic with torches like the Dungeons from Castle Drachenfels of Vermintide 1, although I know many people who dislike it. I enjoy the scenery and the constant fireworks. However, it shares a problem with the Pit as far as books, but it also has just really slow events in general that slow down the pacing dramatically. There’s a few reworks I’d have in mind.

Fixing the Blightreaper

  1. Buff the torch so someone actually wants to grab it, for Sigmar’s sake. I get that it’s meant to be weak, but a slave rat can backstab me for damn near quarter of my health with the same torch, so I’ll suspend some disbelief in service of gameplay. Give it some stagger, decent knockback, and decent burn damage.
  2. Pressing ‘Q’ with the torch out should just bring out melee. If I want to get rid of the torch, it’s usually because I’m surrounded and need to kill things. If I want my ranged weapon, I can press “2” instead. It is really inconsistent for muscle memory with how every other item in the game works, so it’s uniquely bad. Video explaining it more: https://youtu.be/wTk7CBTJ9uM
  3. Change Grimoire #1 to not require zig-zagging through the entire dark section to light all the braziers. Just make it tied to a secret hidden switch or two somewhere in the darkness pretty close to the main path but slightly hidden. Like the Pit, it just artificially inflates the map’s length by forcing us to zig-zag through the same path every time just to get a grimoire realize we missed one of the torches way back and get angry because this map is so long and has no loot dice.
  4. Speed up the darkness event. Almost every time, it’s just people crouched at the portcullis waiting to crab walk through. It’s slow. Maybe instead of one interactable windlass to open all the doors, make there be one interactable windlass per area, which triggers a subsequent terror event. Cautious teams may want to take it slower, while more skilled teams can whip through some terror events back-to-back. Maybe you could even make a new Okri’s Challenge called “Afraid of the Dark” - “Legend: Escape the darkness of the sewers within five minutes”.
  5. Add a guaranteed Troll spawn in the darkness event (at least on higher difficulties) so I can yell “TROLL! IN THE DUNGEON! TROLL IN THE DUNGEON… thought you ought to know.” Okay maybe this is just me, but I like getting extra loot dice on this map, alright? Having a guaranteed boss spawn in the dark section is spooky and exciting, like that Rat Ogre at the end of The Dungeons in Vermintide 1.
  6. Change Tome #2 location. Currently it’s kinda lame because it naturally makes most teams go along one path, instead of potentially exploring other parts like the Fischmarket. I’ve included a birds-eye view screenshot like the one in the Pit that kinda emphasizes the different paths in this section. You could move the Tome further, somewhere in the Dreicke Platz/Bogenhauer’s Steps or, move it to be this pro gamer jump like I say in this video: https://youtu.be/jCR11gB4kfU
  7. Speed up the hidden switches event. Why. Does. This. Take. Thirty. Seconds. Per. Switch. It. Is. Really. Boring. Same principle as the other event. If flipping a switch would queue up a terror event to come at us, well-prepared teams could do this fast while others could take their time to handle everything.
  8. Add a fight against a Gatekeeper Naglfahr-esque boss to drop a loot die (or two). This is a huge boss arena, why is there not a boss fight here? Only a few motley hordes of plague monks and savages came to retrieve a legendary Chaos artifact? Make him appear after we grab the Blightreaper to thank us for unlocking the gate for him. Having a boss fight timed with temp HP sounds kinda cool! Especially because we’d get to hear more of what the Blightreaper has to say, since the sword has a bunch of lines that we never hear because the mission ends like 20 seconds after you grab it. We wouldn’t even need any dialogue for Bouncer ToenailBoat’s stand-in, since the Blightreaper is whispering to us during the fight.

Storyline Issues

In the intro to Blightreaper, Lohner’s voiceover explains that the sword “draws fatty Nurgle’s eye wherever it goes, and plague follows. Plague, and worse.” So, why are we holding the sword in our trophy room with a sticky note that says “pls don’t touch sword”? Is there some way to detect its presence, or is it more of a situation like Lord of the Rings where Sauron only sees the ring if someone uses it? Either way, if this is how our hideout gets found out like the Red Moon Inn from the last game, I’m going to be kinda pissed off that we’ve just been holding onto the damn thing. It’s like in horror movies where everyone is acting stupid and you’re yelling at the screen.

Heck, it’s been almost a year at this point. It’d make sense to say “Oh it took us a year to research and discover a way to neutralize the sword’s Chaos power” and weave that into a new map. Oh yeah, on top of that, Olesya doesn’t say anything in the keep after you beat these two missions. I feel like she could say, after the Blightreaper, “ahh yes good job getting that sword can you please wash your hands? Let me do some research on how to dispose of this properly.”

Non-Map Content Issues

Alright, I’ll admit it. I like the cosmetics for the DLC. But that’s besides the point.

  1. This is the only “adventure mode DLC” in Vermintide history that didn’t add new weapons. That’s kinda lame. It’s a hard sell to convince people of its value when Back to Ubersreik is the same price, gives 3 (technically 3.5 or 4) maps, and 5 weapons.

  2. The Bögenhafen Strongboxes still don’t prioritize generating loot for your class, as far as I can tell?

  3. It still takes at least 22 weeks to get all the content of the DLC, grinding every week. I still don’t have everything as an on-off player. It took me until May, on my 76th chest, to get the purple Ranger Veteran skin. That’s messed up.

  4. After you get everything, the weekly challenges just disappear, even if you did like coming back to have that regular mission to do.

  5. Why are Okri’s Challenges locked behind the DLC? A big selling point of the DLC is that only one player needs it to play it, but when you want to do some of the challenges in a group, non-DLC owners don’t give a rat’s ass, so to speak. A non-DLC owner has no reason to not light the braziers for an achievement or not pick up a torch. You wouldn’t lock a Steam achievement behind DLC, why should Okri’s Challenges be locked?

  6. Also, some of my favorite veteran illusions didn’t get a purple counterpart. That makes me sad.

Fixing Non-Map Content

  1. Add some weapons, free for everybody. I don’t like Back to Ubersreik (and soon Winds of Magic?) setting the precedent that potentially meta-changing weapons are locked behind DLC. The Axe and Falchion, the Dual Hammers, the Crowbill are often considered best-in-slot for their respective characters, until they eventually get nerfed (several months later). Just add some weapons to Bögenhafen that you unlock in the same fashion as B2U weapons, to incentivize people to give the maps a chance after you reworked them (and maybe added a third, final map?)
    I don’t even think the weapons need to be particularly innovative like the throwing axes or billhook. Just having something rather than nothing would be great. DLC owners would be able too whip through three hosted games to get the weapons ASAP, but non-DLC owners should be able to eventually acquire them via a friend hosting or quickplay luck.

  2. Make the Bögenhafen Strongboxes generate loot for your hero first and foremost. It’s silly that they didn’t. It just extends the grind and makes me dislike the DLC even more.

  3. Change the Bögenhafen Strongboxes to guarantee at least one Bögenhafen illusion/skin/hat, but otherwise have 3 total random items like a Commendation Chest. You may just get an Illusion + 2 green weapons, but imagine the excitement seeing an Illusion + Hat + Skin at random. My heart would leap out of my chest moreso than getting two or three reds in a Legend Vault. It’d make the chests actually more interesting to open rather than just opening and saying “Oh look an illusion for a class I never play.”

  4. Changes in #3 where the Bögenhafen Strongboxes act kinda like Commendation Chests would allow them to drop forever to give the DLC more incentive to buy.

  5. Unlocking Okri’s Challenges to everyone and letting them grab a few Bögenhafen Strongboxes would give players a taste of what cool skins they could get from buying the DLC, as well as giving everyone a reason to complete a challenge in a random game, unlike the current system. They wouldn’t be able to unlock everything they want with only 18-20 strongboxes (if they did every challenge), and surely they’d want to buy the DLC to complete their set. When I got my purple Great Axe, the first things I wanted was a purple shotgun and the purple suit to complete the ensemble… and that took me 76 chests.

  6. Adding purple counterparts to the remaining Veteran illusions would give reasons to keep coming back to get those Bögenhafen Strongboxes, allowing you to almost double the number of purported cosmetics in the DLC, right? Pump out some more purple character skins besides Ranger Veteran as well.

TL;DR

The Pit is boring because the books make you zig-zag and make the map seem much longer than it actually is. It also makes it seem much more repetitive because you don’t ever get to experience the different routes that the Pit has, which are all pretty cool. Also the finale is essentially just waiting around, then running, then grabbing the grim, then running some more, then grabbing the tome, then running some more, then pulling a lever, then picking up your Handmaiden who dashed off the docks, and then running some more.

The Blightreaper is boring because it actually is really long and the Bögenhafen doorsmith really likes making every door the slowest possible door, so the map is longer than Skittergate but doesn’t give any loot dice even though it should because you’re literally collecting a legendary Chaos artifact.

Also the DLC doesn’t have anything to tie the story all together, like how Back to Ubersreik has Fortunes of War to tie all the illusions together. The current story trajectory just looks like the Blightreaper is going to get our hideout exposed since we’re holding it instead of destroying it, so it’s like we’re in a horror movie where the characters are being dumb and we’re yelling “HE’S BEHIND YOU DUMMY”.

The non-map content is also kinda lame unless you like purple because there’s no weapons. But, at the same time, adding weapons for DLC is pay-to-win and I don’t like that because it wasn’t like that in the first game, Fatshark.

19 Likes

Here’s a link to the reddit post I made as well, it seems like it’s at least getting some traction. Any discussion and more visibility is nice.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/ccd65t/back_to_bögenhafen_fixes_content_update/

Big like. Agree with all of it. And imagine the good will and positive PR it would generate :wink:

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Wet book = ruined. I actually never even thought of that.

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Try not to think about all the times you’ve bent over into poop water to carry a book soaking in poop water for the rest of the level. :nauseated_face:

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/u/Emhyr_van_Emreys commented about some story stuff that I liked

Emphasis is mine for the post, however.

Now, I like that story angle a lot! The mentioning of A Quiet Drink as a level (daily reminder to also add that back into the game without mods) made me think of the third map as a similar concept: have a different map start in a familiar portion of another map, but quickly diverge into its own thing.

  1. Start at the dock where the sewer exit on Blightreaper is, making snarky comments on how we should have used this dock instead of going through the smelly, dark sewer like we did originally.

  1. Here’s a prettier drawing to better explain it from a different angle what I’m talking about.

  1. Another possible diverge point for Map #3 from the middle of Blightreaper after the sewers.

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Yeah granting us purple illusions for all veteran illuisions is one of what players want
Also it is not that hard to make them
If writting lore for new purple is the problem, then i think it is okay that dev can skip lore and give us just illusions

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While I don’t know that I really read the names and descriptions of every weapon that I own, they are still an important piece of polish that would feel missing and sad to be without. I don’t think it’s worth sacrificing.

Now, writing is definitely important work and it’s definitely something that is non-trivial. One thing is for sure: that fans of this game and Warhammer in general are definitely the type of people that would write an essay about their game.

Now, if they add 50 items that all need names and descriptions that fit some Warhammer lore, that’s ballpark of at least 4000-5000 creatively inspired words, which is pretty significant.

Solution to the writing issue: community engagement and outsource creativity! Back in the day, when the game Team Fortress 2 was in full swing, a lot of that game’s content was community generated: maps, cosmetic items, weapon models/animations, etc. One such contest, for eager (but not artistically-inclined fans) was the “Hat Describing Contest”, where Valve let the community post on their official forum to write descriptions for hats. The best ones were selected to be in the game by the TF2 team.

There was no in-game reward or incentive, just a contest on the official forum. Fatshark I’m sure could add a portrait frame for winning submissions if they did something similar, but the ability to say “I wrote that funny sentence that appears in-game” was motivation enough for the TF2 community.

From the TF2 official blog:

Eh? Eh?

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Well the easiest way i think the Bogenhafen DLC could be improved is:

  1. Optimization. Maps run horribly at times, such as stutterering, audio distortion, crashes etc. Fix these issues and the DLC will be alot better.

  2. New Weapons: 5 new weapons, one for each career, y’know the standard thing that the BTU and WoM have. Preferably make most of them ranged weapons as there’s already a load of melee options for all characters… Well except Sienna, but that’s more of an issue of over half her melee weapons being underpowered trash.

  3. New Map. After collecting the runesword you have to take it to X place to have it destroyed by X person, but X person betrays you and steals the sword and gets turned into a plagued version of a chaos spawn to which you have to fight/kill and take back the sword. Then it’s simply a case of escaping X place with the sword.

Doing these 3 things alone would instantly make the DLC a hell of alot better and it would garner plenty of good PR. I do like the things other people have suggested too.

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With all due respect to the work you have done, but I’m afraid that there is not much sense in it. Why? Because I have never heard anyone improve or add content to the DLC, which has already released (I may be wrong, but I do not remember similar case - excluding mmo rpg games ofc)
FS is now working on WoM. After its release, there will probably be a lot of work with the patches, tweaks etc. and the new content is waiting, because that’s what customers want.
I am afraid that apart from optimization and minor adjustments, there is no reason to expect fundamental changes in Bogenhafen DLC :frowning:

And word about community content like in TF2. We must remember that the warhammer brand does not belong to FS but to GW. GW is very restrictive when it comes to adding new products to their universe and I think it’s very good, because thanks to this there is no flood of garbage as in the case of other games.
But describing contest… maybe who know… In any case, nothing is happening in this area.

2 Likes

Of course, best way is putting lore on illusions i agree that.
but if we put lore for adding in already released dlc purple illusions, dev should put them to all supported language.
it will cost more than giving illusions only which means our chance to get them will be lower if we stick lore with illusions.

also there is purple illusion without lore on S&D
and i didn’t see that anyone report this
players who have this illusions knew this illusions had no lore, no special name but they didn’t care
if devs have limited money, then i think just illusions are not bad

my points are
1.best way is putting lore + new name for additional purple
2.but putting lore + new name for supported languages cost money than just put purple
3.furthermore, only few players care lore + name but most players don’t care

1 Like

I’m quoting and replying to everyone in one big comment rather than doing individual comments to everyone.

True, I did have framerate issues at times during The Pit when there’s a lot of stuff going on. The main areas are when you’re in an upper part of the Pit and during the burning building escape, for me personally.

I think the first one could be explained by just how big the map is, maybe work needs to be done to optimize what gets drawn and different LODs on the models, I haven’t investigated this. The second one, I think a lot of the debris combined with all the enemies on the screen might be overworking the CPU. I’m not sure, it’s definitely worth investigating the map with Hwinfo open to see what’s going on.

This is still an important consideration: if my fairly new computer chugs on DLC content that isn’t as optimized as the base game, people on the lower end of the system requirements spectrum may not be able to experience this content properly at all. There doesn’t appear to be separately listed system requirements for the DLC.

Absolutely, I agree. My only thing would be if we tie the weapons to Bögenhafen in much the same fashion as Back to Ubersreik, where you play the maps as each hero, I’d greatly prefer if the weapons were freely available content to players.

Vermintide 1 had a fairly good approach to it: you could get DLC weapons by playing DLC maps, regardless of if you owned the DLC (although it was still randomly dropped like everything else). People who owned the DLC could host the maps and therefore grind out to get the weapons much earlier than people who did not own the DLC.

Vermintide 2 has reneged on this by locking weapons behind DLC, especially meta-relevant ones. The Axe and Falchion, Dual Hammers, and Crowbill are particularly strong for their careers. The A+F is best in slot for Saltzpyre, and it’s only getting nerfed to coincide with Winds of Magic’s release, several months later. I don’t like this “pay-to-win” precedent they started. I have a feeling that the new weapons will all be meta-relevant and people will buy Winds of Magic just to get overpowered new toys. It’s like when Payday 2 had DLCs where you got a Rocket Launcher (releasesd 6 March 2015) as a replacement for a pistol and later a six-shot Grenade Launcher (released 26 March 2015), but then they eventually released a free rocket launcher and grenade launcher months or years later after all those possible DLC sales had been made. The Compact 40mm grenade launcher was only released for free over two and a half years later, on Christmas Eve 2017! I’m sure the other weapons were nerfed along the way some time prior, but that’s not even a fraction of the pay-to-win weapons they added. It’s a bad path to start down, even if Vermintide 2 doesn’t get as nuts as Payday 2’s DLC did.

That being said, they should totally give a Grenade Launching Blunderbuss to Kruber lol. As part of a DLC, yes, but available to non-owners to prevent it being pay-to-win. It was hiding in the game files of Vermintide 1 at some point. We should go back to the Vermintide 1 DLC method: not locking away important content from people just because we may think it increases the value proposition of the DLC. You should buy a DLC because you want to play the maps and support the developers, not because you want exclusive access to some of the best weapons in the game.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Vermintide/comments/avs3os/im_not_gonna_get_my_hopes_up_but_im_praying_that/?st=jy1u88pv&sh=425c6b6f

Yep! I agree. I think it’s still important to go back and fix the maps as part of the content update, since they still have the problems you and I, as well as many others, have talked about.

I mean… you just contradicted yourself? How is Fatshark unable to improve or add content to this DLC, when you immediately just said they’ll be busy improving and adding content to the next DLC. I believe they’ve said on-stream that they’re interested in doing a random, endless Weave mode. Even then, if there’s a team working on the next content update after Winds of Magic, why can’t it be a free new map and free new weapons to the community before Christmas time: y’know, as a good-faith gift?

On top of that, most of the changes to the maps are minor tweaks. That’s the point. It’s such little work to fix the Pit and the Blightreaper, although more work can be done to greatly improve the maps as well. They’ve gone back and changed book locations and changed jumping puzzles after release. Look at Righteous Stand’s first Grimoire: that jumping puzzle got patched and reworked. Look at “The Dungeons” from Castle Drachenfels from Vermintide 1. Fatshark themselves added a whole new Tome to the map while fixing a glitch that was discovered by someone, and named that Tome area after that person! In the age of the internet, there is no reason to not go back and fix something that can be improved.

So, no, you’re absolutely wrong on this point.

and the new content is waiting, because that’s what customers want.
I am afraid that apart from optimization and minor adjustments, there is no reason to expect fundamental changes in Bogenhafen DLC :frowning:

Consumers aren’t a monolith. There’s at least some people that like the idea of improving old, flawed content so that they can appreciate it with a fresh new perspective. I don’t understand your point. I’m suggesting a new content update while also tying it in to a previous thing that should be fixed. Half the post is new content, which I think customers would want, while the other half is optimization and minor adjustments. They can go hand-in-hand and they can be at different phases of development, not necessarily concurrently. I’d love if the book changes got squeezed in to the Winds of Magic release. Those changes alone would make a world of difference.

This is true, the fact that they’re licensing an IP and don’t have full control over it may restrict being able to do a contest like I said. I doubt that it would work in retrospect, but at least it was an idea worth sharing and critiquing.

I forgot about translations/localizations as well. That definitely makes it stickier. You raise a good point. I suppose there’s no reason the weapon illusions descriptions couldn’t be added at a later date if they just wanted to release the illusions as content.

Thanks for all the replies, everyone. It’s good to see some meaningful discussion and different perspectives about what’s important.

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Replying to myself to add another insight from Reddit, this one’s a bit more innovative, but a cool idea that could really separate the Blightreaper and a potential 3rd map even moreso than just “it’s dark and there’s fireworks”, since Hunger in the Dark is already, y’know… dark, and the torch mechanic was yoinked ‘Straight outta Drachenfels/Stromdorf’.

From a comment by /u/hunhaze in the reddit thread.

I like the original idea with the Blightreaper sapping the whole party’s health by converting everyone’s health to temp HP, but this definitely seems like it could be meaningfully reworked.

The Blightreaper could act as a pseudo-Grimoire/torch that gets passed around, cursing the player holding it but needing to be carried to the end. Rather than just being a simple debuff like a Grim or Nurgle’s Rot, it could leverage the idea that’s borrowed from Hysh, the Lore of Light, and its mechanic from the Winds of Magic: a curse that lowers health but also endows attack speed (or some buff). Rough explanation of how I imagine it working:

  1. Have the Blightreaper either occupy an equipment slot like a Grimoire or be a temporary weapon like the torch. It could either be a melee replacement for each class (3 people already have sword animations) or simply an item that we carry because we don’t want to wield it and risk corruption.
  2. The Blightreaper reduces max health but increases attack speed the longer you hold on to it, like the Hysh mechanic from the Weaves. Having it on your person saps your life away until you die.
  3. The Blightreaper could show up on the back of the person carrying it like the third-person equipment mod, when it’s not being held in their hands, to signify who is carrying the objective.
  4. The Blightreaper can be dropped like a Grimoire/torch to get rid of it and slowly recover from the life-drain mechanic (like standing near the totems in the Hysh weave).
  5. The Blightreaper will teleport to a random person if its wielder dies or it is dropped for a significant amount of time. It seeks to corrupt someone, and it is a magical cursed sword with its own will.

The idea itself seems crazy, but I like its simplicity for a couple reasons:

  1. It can introduce a unique mechanic to the DLC’s map pool, like previous V1 DLC’s had a theme or introduced unique objectives.

  2. It can leverage existing assets and mechanics for the Blightreaper. The sword’s 3D model, the stacking curse + buff concept from Hysh Weaves, and even the animation sets for the two-handed swords for Kerillian, Saltzpyre, and Kruber. That means unique third-person animations need to only be developed for Bardin and Sienna, if we were to hold the Blightreaper and not merely carry it.

  3. It introduces a mechanic briefly in one level that is then iterated on and greatly expanded in a subsequent level. This sword’s mechanic can be introduced at the end of Blightreaper for a bossfight, but then you are tasked with carrying the sword to destroy it in the third and final map. The end of one level is the tutorial for the next.

  4. Carrying the cursed item in much the same fashion as the One Ring means I can work in Lord of the Rings quotes when playing these maps. When I’m playing quickplay, I can tell new players in my game: “I can’t carry it for you, but I can carry you. Come on!” when we are working our way through the level to throw the sword in a volcano the runic forge where the sword was made, the only place it can be unmade.

Jeez, talking about this DLC that only exists in my mind has got me all hyped for something that probably will never happen. Ha… :frowning:

I disagree on only one point:

It’s literally impossible to NOT fight enemies during the escape sequence. They run faster then players can, and once spawned they will follow you until they die. Leaving by holding W is not an option. If you try, then whatever poor sap happens to be in the back WILL ALWAYS AND WITHOUT FAIL get caught by the horde. It’s true that you want to get to the pool as fast as possible so the spawns stop, but simply booking it and ignoring all foes is a guaranteed way to ensure you have to run back and rescue someone.

It’s not their fault for stopping to fight, since they have no choice other then dying. It’s the groups fault for not covering it’s rear.

This is probably a map design flaw of it’s own, actually.

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Yeah, I think it’s a bit of unintentional hyperbole on my part, my bad.

I think my issues with that particular section can be more accurately described as this:

  1. The debris, particle effects, and fairly dense hordes mean that it’s not particularly good or fun to fight in that cramped area because your FPS will often take a nosedive way below 60 fps, even on a good setup.

  2. The enemies dropping down from the roof are not always timed well such that they drop down in front of the entire group, meaning it’s very easy to get separated if some of your group has movement abilities while others do not: the enemies will completely miss the front people in the group and only slow down the last person in the pack.

  3. Getting stuck in a corner or caught on some of the environment will slow you down significantly, and you’ll sometimes get overwhelmed too fast for your group to notice you lagging behind.

You can usually get out fairly easily if everyone sticks together, one or two facing forward while the others shoot towards the rear with ranged weapons to thin out the chasing hordes while still staying well ahead of them. If you turn around to face enemies with melee, you’re just going to get surrounded because you stopped moving.

I think necessitating teamwork is a good thing for that section, but it’s usually an unpleasant experience in quickplay because someone will invariably dash ahead with some movement ability and trigger spawns that don’t attack them at all. It’s also usually very choppy to fight in, almost as bad as looking towards the center of the Pit’s main area.

I think shortening that section a tad and making it more of a straight shot instead of having several corners would alleviate some of the issues. When someone goes way far ahead and they finally notice you need help, they often can’t use their ranged weapons to help you in that hallway and you’re probably going to die before they can help you with melee.

Bögenhafen should have had one more map with a battle against a boss. We even have a painting where the monster appears. If new weapons are added, they would always be welcome. For me, the DLC only needs that.

I have also said many times adding more maps of V1 DLC “Back to Ubersreik” as Karak Azgaraz or Drachenfels.

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Yeah, i think bogenhafen deserve to get chaos demon boss fight
changing finale on blight reaper to chaos demon fight inside dimension that it creates would be really awesome

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Honestly, I thought of an extra funny bit to the boss fight when I was playing. If the boss is fighting you to take possession of the Blightreaper, perhaps the AI would aggro more on who is holding the sword. If he successfully downs or grabs/munches the person with the Blightreaper (or someone throws it on the ground and he gets to it), he’ll wield the sword in much more aggressive attack patterns and maybe get some health regen to accompany it. You’ll have to deal damage or stagger him significantly to force him to drop the sword and return the boss to a regular, beefier Chaos Spawn.

Essentially the boss becomes a game of monkey in the middle, where the monkey is a really pissed off Chaos Spawn that can grab the sword and bash you over the head with it.

You could even design achievements around the fight like:

Poetic Justice: Kill Blessed Baron Justus Francke with a final blow from the Blightreaper

Professional Keep Away Game: Kill Blessed Baron Justus Francke without him taking possession of the Blightreaper

Uncorruptible: Kill Blessed Baron Justus Francke without anyone in the party holding the Blightreaper for the entire duration of the fight.

Legendarily Uncorruptible: Kill Blessed Baron Justus Francke on Legend difficulty or higher without anyone in the party holding the Blightreaper for the entire duration of the fight.

I 100% agree going Back to Everywhere from the first game, except maybe Summoner’s Peak. I also wasn’t a huge fan of the “illusion” angle that they went with, or at least I just didn’t really like Olesya yelling at me for “going the wrong way, imbecile” every time I went to grab a damn Tome or Grimoire.

I think returns to those two settings should be with new story objectives or motivation. Maybe for Castle Drachenfels, we’re going in there to kill some Chaos Necromancer Lord that’s setting up shop, rather than just grabbing a few trinkets. You’d still be able to keep the areas mostly the same, but maybe we’re fighting a new boss in that Castle Drachenfels final hall instead of moving three gargoyles to the center.

Another insight from /u/Cuddlesthemighty on Reddit. Emphasis is my own addition.

They raise an issue with the randomness adding a fear factor to the map. The burning building escape isn’t half bad because it’s unpredictable which of the two routes you have to take. Pretty intense section of the map for sure, if the frame drops in that area weren’t as substantial.

With the docks finale, I made the joke of “pick up your Handmaiden that dashes off” but that truly only happens when someone is new to the map, since it’s always predetermined which tiles fall off and which wall the Chaos Warriors will break through to surround you. I think mixing up which part of the dock collapses, much like the collapses at the end of Festering Ground, would also go a long way in making that a lot more exciting.


As an aside, some other ideas:

Probably also mixing up the terror events, where sometimes they’ll come from behind and sometimes they’ll spawn ahead of you, would be beneficial as well. I don’t even know if a lot of people know about that Chaos Warrior breaking through the side wall on the docks because most people just hold W in that section and don’t look back.

If there was a potential boss spawn at the start of the docks that got triggered once you were halfway through, that would be rad. You could either high-tail it out of there, use a bomb/ult to knock him into the sea, or make your way to solid ground to fight him and claim another loot die. I think having this boss spawn be exclusive to Legend/Cata would be acceptable.

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I always felt the best thing to redo the Blightreaper map is to acquire it at the 25% mark maybe the 35% mark. Then you actually have to get it out of the city. Here is the fun part when you are caring the blightreaper you are absurdly strong, you just cut everything down with ease. The kicker is the sword talks to you and corrupts you overtime so you would need to hot potato it between the group. If a teammate holds it for too long they will die and turn into a Chaos Spawn that the party would then need to kill.

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