This forum category was a neat idea and I wanted to contribute! I put this together to help folks with some of the unspoken basics of Darktide. I hope it helps ^.^
Table of Contents
- Who am I?
- Getting Started
- Movement
- Dodging
- Sliding
- Mantling / Climbing
- Stamina and Defense
- Stamina
- Sprinting
- Blocking
- Reviving / Rescuing
- Backstab Sound Effect
- Weapons
- Modifiers
- Marks
- Enemies
- Armor Types
- Horde
- Elites
- Specials
- Bosses
- Plague Ogryn
- Beast of Nurgle
- Chaos Spawn
- Demonhost
- Traitor Captain
- Good Teamplay Tips
- Good Solo Tips
- Outro
1 -
Who am I?
My name’s CruBop! At time of writing, I have over 2k hours, play the highest difficulty exclusively, and stream on Twitch! Stop by if you’ve any questions ^.^
2 -
Getting Started
You are required to complete basic training when first playing. You should also complete the advanced training to cover some basic topics I don’t address here.
3 -
Movement
Dodging - As you continually dodge, your dodges will temporarily become less effective. This is because each weapon and item has a Dodge Limit, the maximum number of dodges you can perform before you suffer diminishing returns. You can find this value on weapons by opening your inventory, clicking on the weapon, hitting “Inspect”, and seeing the listed Dodge Limit on the right.
After approximately 1 second of not dodging, your Dodge Limit will reset to full.
Dodging briefly pauses the regeneration of your stamina.
It’s not always correct to begin dodging immediately. Some enemies have a homing element to their strikes that will follow an early dodge.
If your weapon has a Mobility stat, this will increase the efficiency of your dodges. Quick tip: If they have the stat, you should aim to get weapons with at least 50% mobility. This will give you the maximum amount of dodges available to that weapon.
Sliding - Sliding while dodging will count as using an additional dodge unless you are sliding forward, in which case it will not count as a dodge at all. Despite this cost, sliding is vital to surviving. While sliding, you cause ranged attacks to miss. That’s everything from basic shooters to snipers. Sliding while dodging also lets you travel further in a safer state than walking. Weave slides into your game play to help you cover more ground and to either avoid or rush at ranged enemies.
Mantling / Climbing - There’s several spots in the game where you’ll want to mantle over obstacles or climb up a ladder. Keep in mind that when you’re in these animations, you are vulnerable. You cannot block or dodge until you finish. This is often only a second but can get you bonked if done at a bad time.
4 -
Stamina and Defense
Stamina - Stamina is used for Sprinting, Blocking, Pushing, and Revive / Rescuing. Each character has a stamina bar. It is filled with a number of stamina chunks.
The # of stamina chunks you have is (Base Character Stamina) + (Weapon Stamina) + (Weapon Perk) + (Curio) + (Talent Tree Nodes).
Base character stamina is: Psyker - 1, Veteran - 2, Zealot - 3, and Ogryn - 4. Weapon Stamina can be found by selecting your weapon, hitting “Inspect” and seeing its value on the right. You can the totality of your talent tree nodes, including stamina, by opening Talents and pressing “View Full Build”. They are under “Operative Modifier”.
You regain stamina over time while not sprinting / dodging OR by taking direct health damage.
Sprinting - Lets you go faster at the cost of draining your stamina and being unable to do other actions. You need to be sprinting to do a forward slide. You will still sprint at 0 stamina, just much slower.
Blocking - You can block all attacks EXCEPT overheads (see Mauler and Crusher). Doing so will drain your stamina. If you block a hit that reduces your stamina to 0, the attack is blocked BUT your block will be broken and you’ll be briefly stunned. Generally, dodging is better than blocking because remaining at the same stamina is better than losing stamina. That said, you’ll often dodge and block together, blocking being the failsafe in case you actually are going to get hit. And don’t be afraid to exclusively hold block and dodge if you’re under a lot of pressure! Sometimes it’s too risky to attack and you need to escape and reposition.
Blocking resets your attack chain. This can be useful to spam a light or heavy attack repeatedly.
Reviving / Rescuing - When a teammate is downed or captured, you can pick them up. This puts you into a blocking state. You receive 3 bonus stamina when doing so. If your stamina is broken during a pickup attempt, the pickup will fail and you will get briefly stunned. A notable exception is Ogryn, who cannot be interrupted during pickups. If an Ogryn’s stamina reaches 0 during a pickup, they will continue picking up but will take the damage of incoming attacks instead of blocking them.
Backstab Sound Effect - There is a “whoosh” sound effect when an attack is coming at you from behind. When you hear it, you should learn to instinctively dodge & block.
5 -
Weapons
It can be very confusing to understand what you’re looking at with weapons. Two main tips.
-
Modifiers. There are deeper layers to every modifier, even ones that seem simple like “Damage”. To learn what modifiers do, select a weapon, hit “Inspect”, and then hover over the modifier to see its effects.
-
Marks. All weapons have Marks, abbreviated to Mk in-game. Different marks of a weapon, even ones of the same class that look seemingly the same, have different attack patterns and can even have different modifiers! Rule of thumb, a lower Mk (ex. Mk I or Mk III) tends to be less damage per swing / shot but attacks faster. A higher Mk indicates the opposite.
Weapon specials that are attacks tend to have a high stagger value. Some even lead into a unique follow up attack!
Weapon push attacks can lead into favorable attack chains. You can use this to “skip” attacks in a combo to get to the attack you actually want to use.
(p.s., a major crafting update is coming soon and I don’t want my info about crafting weapons to be immediately outdated. I’ll edit and address crafting after it drops :3 )
6 -
Enemies
Armor Types -
Different enemies have different armor types. Some even have multiple armor types based on body part! You can see which is which while attacking them in The Psykanium. The most common armor types are Flak and Maniac. The least common is Carapace.
Horde -
There are different types of hordes with different behaviors! Keep an eye out for Poxwalkers (zombies), who’s direct damage imparts some corruption, and Dreg & Scab Bruisers, flak-armored grunts who will constantly track you with lunges.
Elites -
What is considered an Elite?
Bulwarks, Crushers, Gunners, Maulers, Ragers, Reapers, and Shotgunners.
Maniac ragers attack and move faster than their armored variant.
Gunners and Reapers can melt you under sustained fire in an open field. It’s preferable to jump them before they start firing or catch them reloading (which they will do!). Failing that, have a nice sturdy wall / corner to hide behind and wait for them to approach.
Shotgunners’ shots physically move you on hit. Be careful around ledges or hazards.
Maulers’ helmets are considered Carapace and their chests are considered flak. You can target the chest if the helmet resists your weapon.
Bulwarks’ shield shove does MASSIVE stamina damage. It’s near impossible to pick someone up with a Bulwark on you.
Specials -
What is considered a specialist?
Bombers, Flamers, Mutants, Poxbursters, Pox Hounds, Snipers, and Trappers.
Every special has a spawn sound effect. Learn to recognize them so you know what to be alert for.
Prioritize killing disablers whenever possible. These are Trappers, Mutants, and Dogs. These threats can completely remove you or an ally from combat. Trappers specifically are the most dangerous enemy in the game. Their disable is ranged and forces a teammate to physically reach the disabled player. Mutants are weaker to melee. Dogs are easy to push during pounce or off another player. They’re also easy to shoot off a teammate.
You can push poxbursters during their suicide leap and then dodge backwards to avoid getting exploded. If you see your teammate walking over to a poxburster, they’re probably planning on pushing it. Please don’t shoot and explode it in their face.
Bosses -
All bosses are considered the Unyielding armor type except Traitor Captains, who are Flak.
Bosses make a sound when they switch targets. Learn this to know when you’re safe or about to be in danger.
If a boss has disabled someone, they will switch targets once that player is freed.
-
Plague Ogryn
- Dodge dancing is very effective vs a Pogryn. Stay close to trigger an overhead, dodge back, move back in and counterattack to trigger another overhead.
- The real danger of Pogryns is its area of effect knockback. Be careful to not get yeeted to oblivion while fighting around ledges.
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Beast of Nurgle
- Staggering a Beast of Nurgle will make it spit out anyone it’s eaten / is eating.
- Is a good slug pup. Can do a big hop.
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Chaos Spawn
- You want to slide dodge to the right when a Chaos Spawn goes to grab you.
- If someone is grabbed by a Chaos Spawn, walk up to them to trigger the bosses’ throw. This does not damage them and stops the spawn from corrupting and healing
- I believe Chaos Spawn’s prioritize grabbing you if you’re attempting to pick someone up in front of them.
-
Demonhost
- You know you are too close to a Demonhost when you hear its chains rattling.
- Flashlights will very quickly aggravate a Demonhost.
- Prioritize getting out of the radius ASAP. Running in its radius DOES aggro it faster but if you get out fast enough, this becomes a non-issue.
- The corruption a Demonhost spreads in proximity is capped. You won’t get corruption melted.
- An effective way to kill a Demonhost is to ledge it.
- You can use terrain with a little verticality to kite a Demonhost. You can manipulate its teleport by waiting and then force it to path around by scooching up and down.
- An Ogryns’ slap to its face can stagger the Demonhost. Do with this what you will
-
Traitor Captain
- Their bubble shield is a special armor type called Void as opposed to their normal armor, Flak.
- The shield takes reduced damage from ranged attacks and has a damage cap for all incoming damage sources. This makes repeated smaller hits (say a revved chainsword or full auto weapon) better at breaking it as opposed to huge, single target attacks.
- Damage over time effects (bleed, warpfire, fire fire) that are applied to the captain when their shield is down will continue to tick and do direct HP damage even after the shield goes up.
7 -
Good Teamplay Tips
Disabled teammates have a red exclamation mark on their portrait. If possible, free disabled teammates ASAP. Two guns are better than one.
Wait for other players at Dead Drops. These are one-way ledges you drop from that cannot be returned to. The danger is that if one player gets disabled after everyone else drops, they’re dead. Keep in mind when folks are waiting for you as well and drop ASAP if you see that the team has moved on.
Teammates’ ammo icons are different colors depending on how much ammo they have left. Approx. 67% or higher shows white, between 66% and 34% shows yellow, orange is less than 33%, red is 0%. Use this to know who to share ammo with.
Generally, give medicae charges to players on their last wound. Even if you’re missing more health, it’s important that a teammate not instantly die if they go down.
Tag / Ping everything! Ammo pickups, enemies, points of interest are all information you can share with your team without saying a word. Just don’t bind it to the same button as your primary fire 
If you’ve got a scary enemy attack coming your way, like a crusher overhead, be mindful you don’t dodge towards a teammate and lead the hit into them.
8-
Good Solo Tips
Know where your toughness comes from. Yes, you get toughness back in coherency. That is not your only source. As you level and acquire new weapon blessings and talent tree nodes, you will have your own individual ways to regenerate your toughness. Knowing how to keep yourself topped off is crucial to reducing chip damage you take and staying alive.
Make sure your build has at least one answer to Carapace Armor, Bosses, and Ranged Specialists / Elites. Most of us are playing with random folks online. You should not assume your teammates can deal with everything. Having at least one option to deal with the aforementioned threats will make sure you don’t run into an enemy that you won’t be able to interact with. An example of a good build: Zealot with Mk 5 Combat Axe & Fury of the Faithful (Carapace) + Flamer (Bosses) + Throwing Knives (Ranged Specialists / Elites). You don’t need to be perfect in every category but you shouldn’t be a helpless noodle against one enemy type.
Figure out your “role” with your current team. Is no one killing specials? You are now. Are shooters beating up your squad? Focus them. This “role” isn’t set in stone but will give you an easy default action when things get hectic. With that being said, don’t get yourself stuck if you need to adapt! Sometimes the exec stance vet really needs to hold boss aggro. Sometimes the squishy psyker needs to go hold off a horde. You’ll get more comfortable with the ebb and flow of combat and doing stuff you didn’t build for the more you play.
9 -
Outro
And that’s all folks! I know it can be daunting getting into Darktide but its very fun once you’re in there. Hopefully this was helpful with getting you started and sets you on a good path :3