Dev Blog - Ogryn Pack Master

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Announcements
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Some new threats have been detected! Let’s look into the new enemies coming to Darktide soon.

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Warband,

Today we have a treat for you all, not one, but two new enemies are on their way to make a debut in Darktide! We have braved the mad laboratory lair of Jonathan, our Game Designer in charge of these new creations.

Take it away!

“Hello! My name is Jonathan and I have been told I am not good at making enemies in real life, so I took it as my mission to make them for the game instead. Jokes aside, I work with stuff relating to enemy behavior, pacing management and general enemy combat design.”

  • Jonathan

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We have two new enemies to talk about today, both of them being themed to each other. You might have already seen them in the new teaser video here. Let’s shine the spotlight on them, one at a time, starting with the…

Ogryn Pack Master

Have you ever wondered who takes care of all those Pox Hounds running around in Tertium? Well this might be your answer, introducing the Pack Master, an Ogryn monstrosity (yeah you read that right) that packs a serious punch!

The Pack Master ticks two boxes for us, one is the fact that we wanted to add another monstrosity to the enemy roster for some while now, and the other is the fact we have wanted to make a monstrosity that is a bit less daemonic or mutated. The game hasn’t had a new monstrosity in ages, so it was about time.

Making him an Ogryn also lets us have a monstrosity with interesting voice lines that are not just guttural roars or chaotic screams, but instead a guy who likes to talk while he battles the players. He has some really cool reactive voice lines depending on what happens around him. He will for example react when you take one of his hounds down or when one of them manages to pounce you or someone on your team.

But you are not here to read just about his “lovely” personality, you wanna know what he brings to the fight right!

“He is very fast for an Ogryn. Very fast and very heavy, and he will keep up with you!”

  • Jonathan

The Pack Master is a fast and heavy bruiser type of an enemy. He won’t have any problem charging into the fray, his big shocking prod ready to bash some agents of the Imperium. He is a melee fighter that will do his utmost to get into your face. This weapon also applies a debuff to players, so getting hit will not just hurt, but also leave you with a speed reduction and slower dodge replenishment.

Additionally, what makes him extra scary is that he will be joined by Pox Hounds to help him in combat. Depending on the situation, he can bring along either normal Pox Hounds, the new Armoured Pox Hound (more on that in a bit) or a mix of the two. He is called the Pack Master for a reason! It will also be important to take him down as quickly as possible, since even if you get rid of all of his hounds, he can still spawn in new ones as long as he is alive.

Another interesting thing is that you will find him roaming, so you will be able to hear him as he walks around. You can use this to your advantage and prepare to take him on. Having all of those hounds around him makes him a pretty good tracker, so hiding from him might prove very hard.

“Oh and he sees through stealth! This is a big one. You can’t hide from him, he will see you and just keep up his attack.”

  • Jonathan

Finally, before we move the spotlight to his canine friend, we should give a fair warning to all Arbites players out there. This guy is used to having unruly dogs around him, so you should probably think twice before you send your Cyber Mastiff his way. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

“Yeah we do have a new cool animation for when a Cyber-Mastiff attacks the Pack Master and he just…”

  • Jonathan

With those words of warning, let’s proceed to the…

Armoured Pox Hound

So this is a new Pox Hound with, you guessed it, armour. This enemy is what we could call a sidegrade to the normal Pox Hound. All that armour is giving it more health than the already existing hound, so it’s harder to take down, but at the same time all that metal makes it slower than its less iron clad cousin.

If you manage to block this enemy in midair you can stagger it, and if you do, you might want to circle around and attack the unarmoured weak spot on their backs for some extra damage. We hope that this new variant will give even the most seasoned Pox Hounds hunters a new challenge!

“Best thing is to stagger them and then circle around and hit them in the… yeah, haha”

  • Jonathan

The armoured variety will be part of the Pack Master’s pack, so you will only encounter these hounds when he is around.

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Hope this little teaser has made you ready to fight the Pack Master when he and his new armoured friends enter the fight in Darktide. They will both appear in the next update, and while we’re excited to share more, we’ll dive into the details when the time is right!

So for now we will have to leave this as just a teaser! Keep your eyes on our community space and social media channels for information when we are ready to talk more about this!

In the meantime, as always, thank you for reading this dev blog.

See you on the Mourningstar!

  • The Darktide Team
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D’ye like dogs?

Awesome news.

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Yes

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Okay cool? Sounds like more armor spam though.

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New enemies are very welcomed, the game needs new combat scenarios heavily. But why armored again? DT is already tuned towards armor spam.

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I LOVE THE NEW OGRYN PACK MASTER IDEA

Armored Pox Hound also sounds very cool, but I have a question about em

Does this mean the counter to this one is blocking the jump rather than trying to push them mid air? If yes then I really hope the sounds of armoured pox hounds are extremely easy to discern from normal Hounds

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Also important note

PLEASE IF YOU ADD ARMOURED ENEMIES DON’T FORGET ABOUT NERFING/REWORKING UNCANNY STRIKES PLEASE, otherwise it’s just more painful for non OP weapons

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Now add more than one map and you’ve managed to beat your previous year’s output. Very nice.

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Cause they don’t care about balance, Havoc state it’s a shame and they don’t even mention any kind of fix or tweak

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cool boss but what about this guy?

also for enemies more hordelings…add shields, make a group of horde enemies that can’t be burned by any DoT! also elites for the dregs on the melee side.

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Can we get dreg enemies that aren’t gunners so the game isn’t cod on a dreg seed

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A really cool idea but I’m just worried about the amount of armored enemies, I use bleed knife and fire recon lasgun so I can take care of it usually but I want to use other weapons that aren’t focused on armor pen.

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I’d hope to see some elaboration on why this would be a feature in a dev blog but instead it reads as an extra with no reasoning behind it. It’s a little concerning.

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I can imagine it as he has a increased sense of smell or his dogs can sniff you out and through nurgle magic gets that relayed back to him.

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Not with all the armor piercing weaponry we have. The armor might as well not exist.
Severely needs a rebalance.

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I hope that this year will be that content, the new classes are cool but you can’t expect that to carry the game.

I like vermintide 2 but there should be no reason that this game shouldn’t take priority. Unlike vermintide every console/PC are together so it’s a larger player base and your not splitting development between the two game states.

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It’d be a miracle for them to release more than 1-2 maps a year. I have zero expectation and I will still be disappointed. It’s been like that since release now.

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Reading this makes me think the dog’s body going to be Carapace armour, otherwise their “unarmoured weak spot” would be completely irrelevant.
Unless… flak & carapace ADMs get completely overhauled?

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Side note: what, really, does the packmaster add that the Chaos Spawn doesn’t, on his own? Unrelenting CQC? Spawn. Debuffs? Spawn.

The roaming is a nice touch at least.

That said…if this is all they’re talking about 3 months into the year? I’m disappointed. Stuff continues to slip as ‘event modifiers’ take up the majority of ‘updates’ and actual meat is ignored.

I hope this is followed up on with something more substantial.

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Excellent that a new enemy is being added, especially because they’re playing around with the idea of him seeing through stealth. It’s a good idea to add new enemies with new mechanics to address cheese strats. Hopefully he can also catch up to someone who sprints away from him straight away.

My concerns are immediately:

  1. Hope it’s not just a crusher with two poxhounds with different armor and more HP. It is already certainly that conceptually, which is disappointing, but I hope gameplay wise it can stand out at least, even if the assets/AI are recycled. It’s unfortunate we aren’t getting “truly original” enemies, but I hope they don’t let whatever is limiting them also limit the gameplay implementation.
  2. They’re adding positional armor on the dogs and mention encouraging hitting them from the back. That’s a good concept to make carapace piercing weapons less important. But I hope the carapace piercing weps don’t just get to circumvent that mechanic and stab them in the head anyway. That would be really silly and achieve the opposite and make them more valuable.
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