So I was playing expedition and nobody was on my team (big surprise) so I got stuck with 3 bots. Each one was downed multiple times, and each time, the other bots were instantly responsive and quick to resurrect each other.
I got downed by a mauler overhead, and the 3 bots, despite being right on top of me, chose to fight the mauler and a few pox walkers, allowing me to completely bleed out over the course of 20 seconds.
This game is beyond broken, and I know its intentional. They don’t want us playing solo.
Something about the bots 100% got changed. They were always dumb but now they are VERY dumb. Dumber than the enemy AI by a lot. They often get stuck. Also, they will not revive or remove a net if there are ANY enemies nearby. So that means if there is a mauler, regardless of if it poses a threat or not, they will ignore you ineffectively tap against the mauler nonstop. Same with nets. I preferred when they would suicidally try to raise the player over them letting the player bleed out over the smallest inconvenience. Also, they take forever to get dogs off the player as well, often swinging and shoving at random until they end up happening to hit the dog.
What is weird is that I notice that bots WILL act suicidal when it comes to other bots. Often trying to raise another bot even when there are 5-6 crushers around them.
These issues go back to the first Vermintide. VT2 was SO bad with this, because I used to play that game a lot solo due to bad internet. Essentially if you’re playing with bots you cannot make a single serious mistake, because it is unlikely they will revive you.
exactly this. They were 100% coded with malicious intent to be useless to the player. I am encountering this scenario every single time I play expeditions now. If I get downed or trapped, I immediately know its game over.
The fact that the Devs programmed such an anti-player game is infuriating. No other game has this bad of AI, especially in 2026. Left 4 Dead, which was made over 16 years ago, is lightyears ahead of Darktide in this respect.
@FatsharkJulia could you query if there have been any unmentioned changes to the bots? Bit concerning people are noticing significant changes in behaviour despite no patch notes mentioning anything being touched about them.
There haven’t been any code changes to the bots around rescuing or reviving since 1.2.22 and before that since release. Doesn’t rule out a bug elsewhere affecting them but their logic is same as it ever was.
I remember reading this, but its a straight up lie, on their behalf. It also goes to show they have the power to program the bots however they see fit, but choose to release them in their current braindead state.
Last night, I lost another 5 Auric Expeditions because bots would rather fight 4 poxwalkers for an entire minute then revive me or another player. Its just ridiculous and makes you not want to play.
I responded to a bug report somebody posted at Bots still not reviving and I’ll mostly copy paste what I wrote there, but it feels so bad since, for some reason, we get stuck with 1 or 2 bots in Expeditions, basically I just wanted to respond to understand if this was intended feature or a bug, this is what I wrote there:
"Hello, just made a forum account to leave feedback, I really hope developers can fix this since the bots are more than capable of prioritizing trapped/downed bots, yet not the players when it should be other way around.
It cost us more than a few games now where we were with bots that would keep ignoring us and failing to help us and we would lose games because of it and it is infuriating and really stressful and makes for a miserable experience, I wouldn’t be nearly as upset if the bots were just dumb and treated other bots that way too, but since they are obviously more than capable of helping other bots in the heat of battle, it would be such a qol fix if they did it for players, especially now with Expeditions where maps are so huge.
I hope this isn’t purposefully designed by Fatshark to promote live players over bots, there will always be situations when somebody disconnects during a mission, and sometimes we don’t have a full team so they shouldn’t focus on poxwalkers and other weak enemies that are always present if players are netted or hanging off a ledge and letting us bleed out and lose for no reason."
I’ve been in this exact same situation before. Three healthy bots right beside me completely refused to come to my rescue, and it made that expedition fail straight away.
I’ve always viewed the bots as kind of a Russian roulette type of situation - one out of six bots will actually do something. Sometimes a person will DC and the bot will instantly pick someone up from a net or being downed - other times they will dance around the netted person in circles like some weird type of ritual and then proceed to die.
I really hope they fix it, I am loving the game and have been playing since December last year, but this is so infuriating, it’s making Expeditions even more of a pain because of map size and lack of full teams, it made me rage quit the game a few times, really weird bug that Fatshark should prioritize fixing sooner than later.
I don’t mind it that much when we lose in a normal game, it is what it is, but bots prioritizing literally everything else than saving us just triggers me way harder, especially now when I read a post about how they hotfixed it in the past, cann’t be that difficult to fix again since bots are capable of rushing in and saving other bots.
I don’t think you should attribute malice here. Designing good AI for a game this complex is not easy. I just don’t think Fatshark has prioritized improving bots, so they have very basic AI along with increased toughness, health, and wounds to not die quite as much as they would if they had player stats. I agree that they should be improved, but we don’t need to start a conspiracy theory about sadistic devs torturing us with intentionally-dumb bots.
I have had similar frustrations with bots not attempt to help me when they clearly could under the circumstances. One particular example I remember is during a clutch on Auric Maelstrom. I was 1 room away from the medicae, but got held up killing a bunch of specials and then got pounced by a hound after killing almost everything else in the area. Someone quit the match, then the bot which was about 10-15 feet from me proceeded to bash on a bulwark shield instead of shooting the dog off me. I got corrupted from nearly full health by that hound while the bot did nothing useful.
This seems like a fixable issue without taking an inordinate amount of dev time. Just make bots always prioritize reviving/assisting rather than fighting unless it’s a certain-death scenario like a pool of fire or incoming crusher overhead. If they need more stamina or block efficiency for reviving, give them a little. Players could get these stats from curios, so throw a little bonus on the bots.
Yet they rush for other bots like crazy and are ready to go to other side of the map to save them, how it should be, but for players too.
This made me stop playing Expeditions for the time being, I just feel miserable after it happens like that, I have to lead them around and then I lose the whole game because I got netted by the trapper and there is 2 pox walkers or a bulwark shield 15 meters away they focus on instead of helping me for a single second to get up.
They are so anti-solo mode that they purposely encoded the bots to be useless. It is what it is. The enemy Ai is leagues ahead of our bots. The enemy runs for cover and is responsive. Our bots will walk backwards at 1/10 of a mile per hour while eating an entire ammo belt from a dreg gunner. They will only revive other bots, even under the worst circumstances, but will not revive a player so long as there is at least 1 enemy within range.
Yea, I bought Arbites class, and I just cannot risk it with Lone Wolf I just need to have the dog around, if dog is capable of letting go of marked target to come back to save you, it just makes me feel like Fatshark did it on purpose, I really hope I am wrong and it is just some kind of a weird bug because of updates, since it worked properly before.
