The game has been out for nearly half a year now. Still far too many people consider Daemonhosts as, “Oh, that’s basically just a L4D witch, it’s fine.”
I can see the similarity on the immediate surface level. Thus I’m going to be using the Witch as an example throughout this post.
First off - No. For the love of god, no. The Daemonhost is not a Witch, don’t treat her like one.
In L4D, even on the highest difficulty, a single player with a shotgun can use a single bullet to eliminate a Witch entirely. This is called a “Cr0wn”. (More delicately put, Crowning is actually just killing a Witch without her becoming aggressive. You can do it through speed and stagger, not just raw power, but a one-tap is the most effective way of doing it.)
Anyway, to get back on track. A Witch can be a devastating foe if you mess up. While even on Expert, a prepared team can kill a Witch in seconds, or even a single solo survivor can take it upon themselves if they have the right gear and be fine. However, the caveat is that if you DO mess up, the Witch only needs one hit on you. On expert, this is literal and she will instantly kill you, not just down you. She then panics and runs away.
In short; she is a miniboss. She isn’t the toughest, but she IS the deadliest, and her entire purpose is to remove a single player from the game, or at least greatly injure them, if a team is careless about her or makes a mistake.
The Daemonhost blows her out of the water. First of all, it has LEAPS AND BOUNDS more health. Where a Witch will be swiss cheese before ever reaching a party if all four of you train your guns and light her up from across the street… A Daemonhost stands up, takes a few shots, and OOPS TELEPORTS RIGHT ON YOU.
The lack of required travel time is a massive advantage already. There’s no open planes to mow it down safely, it’s just on you.
One “disadvantage” it has in comparison is that it does not kill you nearly as quickly. It can down most operatives from full health in one flurry, two at most, if you aren’t adept at dodging it. Meaning basically if you aren’t running a mobility build, you’ll only avoid a couple attacks. This is speaking from experience on only Uprising, DIFFICULTY LEVEL 2 OF 5, where I have fought Daemonhosts the most; with the exception of one time for the achievement, every other fight was a mistake.
God only knows how bonkers the Daemonhost gets on higher levels. Of course there is then the 10 or so seconds it takes the Daemonhost to kill a guy once downed. Assuming, of course, that you weren’t already on black and white, or maybe even got really unlucky and became fully corrupted while defending yourself and just drop dead.
Because that’s the next big thing. Where the Witch takes one of you, The Daemonhost wants no less than two. And all the while when the Daemonhost is in a mad flurry, every single hit it makes seems to ambiently curses the entire party. I’ve never been so far from a Daemonhost fight to know if this is proximity based or not, so someone else would need to figure that out.
This isn’t a massive decrease to max health, but it still affects possibly an entire party while outright removing two of you. I’ve had this cut a team in half and leave the two players left with less max health put together than either would have on their own at full.
The teleporting, the big damage, the insane health pool compared to at least what a lot of players, myself included, might expect, and all of this leads into one very simple request.
I do not want the Daemonhost to be nerfed. Despite all the power I have talked it up as having, it’s not invulnerable, and this is absolutely not a post saying it’s too much and should be weakened. It SHOULD be a terrifying enemy. It should stay exactly where it is.
Because it can be beaten. The Ogryn with a shield punches it in the head, stands in a corner, and shields up. The Psyker Brain Bursts it, ideally making it take increased damage from the Veteran who activates Volley and lays into it with a plasma gun, and the Zealot charges up their Thunder Hammer, pulls back a heavy attack, dashes in with Chastise the Wicked to instantly claim 20-25%~ of the entire health bar in one swing, and all of this leads to a very, VERY quick slaughter of the Daemonhost with minimal max health loss.
But that’s an ideal, prepared team, and the biggest thing about the Daemonhost is that it is a boss; it’s appearance on any given mission on any given difficulty is completely, utterly random. And most of all? It’s always optional! With the exception of a few spawn points which makes squeezing by it necessary and scary as it at least goes into an alert phase and floats up, it’s never in all of 20+ encounters been impossible to avoid it. It seems designed to only ever spawn in places where you CAN get by it. It’s never something you have to fight. It’s entirely possible that there are people who have played Darktide daily since launch who have yet to fight a Daemonhost.
The thing is, the Daemonhost is strong and works wonders for what it’s meant to be. There’s nothing that says it’s anything like a Witch with the surface level exception of, “Scary big thing, sneak around it”. But there’s also nothing in general, because the tutorial for the game is fairly barebones and tells you nothing about the Daemonhost’s capabilities. It’s a trial by fire.
And despite it’s strength and the sheer mystery of it when you first meet it… there is quite literally zero incentive to kill a Daemonhost beyond the steam achievement.
I made this post after being rightfully flummoxed and taken aback by the sheer accuracy of a fellow player of mine when I asked, “Oh hey, a Daemonhost. I have the shield, wanna kill it real quick?”
And he bluntly, stoically responded in chat, “Why? No point.”
The Daemonhost is a very powerful optional encounter. This entire post asks for one thing. Give us incentive to fight it. The thought I’ve build up while writing it this; a multiplier on all our end-game rewards, like money, EXP, and whatnot, based on difficulty. Like +10% extra rewards per difficulty level if you killed a Daemonhost. Maybe even lessen the reward itself by 25%~ or so if you lost teammates while fighting the Daemonhost.
Here’s a general list of what I imagine would be cool and fair for beating this uncommon, optional boss:
Sedition – +10% mission rewards | +7.5% mission rewards (one loss) | +5% mission rewards (2 losses)
Uprising – +20% mission rewards | +15% mission rewards (one loss) | +12% mission rewards (2 losses)
Malice – +30% mission rewards | +25% mission rewards (one loss) | +22% mission rewards (2 losses)
Heresy – +40% mission rewards | +35% mission rewards (one loss) | +32% mission rewards (2 losses)
Damnation – +50% mission rewards | +45% mission rewards (one loss) | +42% mission rewards (2 losses)
Now of course the numbers may need delicate tweaking and consideration, but this way, not only is there actual incentive to fight the thing, but there’s also incentive to do it RIGHT. Not just brute forcing it and throwing your teammates against the tide, but working together with speed and power to kill it ASAP for a juicy prize. And let’s not forget, of course, that you actually have to then finish the mission, which is never guaranteed. Let the big meaty Ogryn with his shield tank it all… or ask the Combat Knife Zealot to dodge as long as they can while the rest of you hammer into it’s back.
But even if you do brute force it, even losing half your team on one difficulty will always give a little more than doing it flawlessly on a lower difficulty. It’s always a net profit over the easier version of the fight, no matter how poorly you come out the other side, as long as you do come out the other side.
This way, people will actually pay goddamn attention to this cool as hell enemy for longer than it takes to know where it is and avoid it.
Thank you for reading.
