A Quiet Drink

I’m just very happy my favorite map in Vermintide ever is back again, and this time it even has Cata difficulty! Glorious! Everything about it is brilliant. The plot, the zany events, the challenge, the music, and especially the hilarious drinking mechanic and extraordinary voice acting. Wish it stayed forever.

I’ve been playing it (exclusively on Cata so far) the last days, and even though I’ve been having a ball, it’s quite a bit more difficult than I expected. It took quite a few tries (with randoms) before I even finished it, and it’s definitely harder than most normal maps. The barfight is pretty much Fortunes of War level difficulty, even. That’s not something I consider a bad thing though, don’t get me wrong! I want nothing changed! But I figured I’d make this topic so we can discuss the map and maybe share some tips to help people finish it on whatever difficulty is hard for them, as is the essense of Vermintide.

Here’s my main takeaway points:

  • The drinking mechanic hampers classes that derive a big part of their strenght by having a powerful Ult ready when they need it, like Shade or Huntsman. Those might not be the ideal classes for this one. Classes like Zealot are less disadvantaged here.
  • Pacing can be tricky. You sure do not want to dawdle, but the ambient spawns and events on this map, combined with the locations of monster and patrol spawn points, can be brutal. It takes a few tries to get the pacing right here, as pushing too fast can cause you to be overwhelmed easily.
  • After The Hungry Troll is tragically taken away from us, there’s a point when a bunch of Berserkers and Chaos Warriors spawn. Staying where the doors that would have led to sweet, sweet libation used to be can get you surrounded. A good strategy is to jump back down the ledge to the ruined house with the ammo box and kite / fight them around there.
  • The main reason for wipes (and the greatest thing about the map!) is the barfight at the end. My observation is that wipes mainly happen in the beginning of the fight, when you don’t deal with the first bunch of Chaos Warriors & Friends fast enough, and more of those Friends show up soon after. If a team survives that part, the chance of them finishing the map seems to be pretty good. What I found works best: Just before taking the barrel, everybody should get lvl 3 drunk and then go absolutely crazy in the beginning with Bombs and Ults and Potions. Take them out fast, or be on the backfoot until you get overrun. Although something like Shade is overally disadvantaged in the map, classes like her are actually pretty good in the barfight because of freely available beer, funnily enough. I also find WHC to be really good here. (Nothing deals with a mob of Stormvermin, Berserkers, and Maulers faster than WHC with a beer-powered guaranteed crit Ult and unrelenting Rapier light attacks aimed at the eyes.)

Anybody else has some experiences to share, or just praises to sing of FS’ magnum opus? I’ll probably be playing this map for the next days when I find time to play, so hope to see you there!

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Do we still have to drink every single beer on the map?

No, just finish the map I think. But just because you don’t have to, doesn’t mean you can’t, dawri…

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Wipes happens because ppl don’t deal with specials

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Hopefully next time they will add some Ulthuani wine as well, for those of us who have more… esteemed taste and dignity.

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Fair enough, but that’s more of a general thing, and not specific to this map.

The three places I’ve seen the most wipes are:

  • The Hungry Troll terror event. Pretty much as you said, when the chaos warriors and berserkers are coming in, you can easily be overwhelmed if you’re bunched up next to the cliff.
  • The second plaza, the one you get into AFTER you all have started drinking. There’s a high chance for there to be a Chaos Patrol here, for some reason. Like, 4/5 times, there’s a chaos patrol there. It can be really sudden, and lots of people are rushing into this plaza for some booze so they get rekt. There can also be a monster spawn here.
  • The finale bar brawl. Pretty much like you said, lol.

I wanna add that Unchained just suffers here, because she can’t use her ult while hangover, and when you DO drink, you have to start charging your ult again from zero. Very tough considering she needs her ult to not die when overwhelmed.

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I know I’m going to get lambasted here but…

I think once you get past the awful gimmick (that is terribly explained) of a drinking session and the novelty wears off, the map in it’s current state is downright rubbish. The Screen effects are annoying, the swaying around is annoying, the whole thing just irritates me. It’s supposed to be increased fun and a lighter-hearted map but it’s just downright infuriating and just in case the elf wasn’t abrasive enough you have her spouting crap about Queen Kerrilian every two minutes. I speed ran it once on recruit to grit my teeth and endure the whole stupid thing for the frame and never will I go near it again. I’m glad it isn’t here for longer and please FS NEVER ever put it into the QP rotation. It’s awful.

IF the map appeared as something else, without the stupid drinking thing going on it would be quite good to run through.

Whether you like it or loath it though, having a map locked to a single week of the year when the whole community has been crying out for maps is almost criminally stupid. Just put a little ale tankard somewhere players can interact with to start it, or remove the drinking mechanic and add it as a normal map to the rotation. Just putting on my flame proof suit.

flame proof suit

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Yeah, that goes into the book, Kruti!

But seriously, I can understand you, I guess. It’s just a matter of taste. I like the map for some of the reasons you hate it, probably. I also agree with AQD not belonging in Quickplay, and I’m in the camp of favoring making it available as a bonus bonus map in the same way FoW is right now.

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