tl;dr - Since player power has vastly outpaced enemy power, it’s time for a higher difficultly level to quickplay into. I’ve played close to, if not more than, 20 event missions on Auric with random folks via quick play. They have all been a walk in the park, including one where everyone kept going down and finally quit so I finished it with bots. That was the most challenging one, but also real boring. I’ve had games barely make it to the 20 minute mark because we were just breezing through. The power creep is so bad the highest difficulty is like this. It’s absurd. I login, play one easy game, and then quit. Valheim is more challenging. Funnily, I’ve been trying to get a friend to start playing so made a new character to journey with them. Those games are more fun and challenging than auric! It takes more hits to kill things and I feel more vulnerable. Everyone we’re playing with is in a similar boat. I’m purposely not using my monies or masteries to upgrade the weapons so I stay at a similar power level as them. This is actually more fun. It also shows, there is a way. Since player power has vastly outpaced enemy power, it’s time for a higher difficultly level to quickplay into. Why don’t I play Havoc? Aside from finding many of the modifiers unfun, Party Finder is an absolute garbage experience. If I want to run anything off meta, I’m rejected, regardless of the Havoc rank. Plus, this makes it particularly hard: [image] So, yet another request for a higher difficulty. I’d be far more excited about that than another class. Off to do one QP game and then quit!

[image] zhurtek: I agree completely that the movement mechanics of DT give the players a level of survivability that makes it almost impossible to balance around. It’s true, but I also like the mobility. I could see reducing player movement speed a bit, but having all this movement tech makes the game more fun to me and it contributes to the skill ceiling. It may be that they need to increase enemy move speed to make them harder to outrun. Sliding should probably have a stamina cost as well instead of just having the sprint cost that gets paused during the slide. I’m hesitant to nerf sliding too much though or ranged enemies can become oppressive.

It is pretty funny that they busted Bounty Hunter’s kneecaps for the crime of doing a quarter of what Shroudfield Crusher does in this game. You don’t have to find potions in this game either.

[image] myheartislessthan3: Since player power has vastly outpaced enemy power, it’s time for a higher difficultly level to quickplay into. Yeap, that has been my conclusion for a while now. Base game difficulties are a good intro to the game, but the power creep, but that and certain AoE builds don’t help players with learning the core combat mechanics.

An argument for a new difficulty would be that people are less upset that they are not good enough for the new difficulty compared to nerfing and sending them down a difficulty. 2/3 of auric players are just getting carried by players cruising through that difficulty.

I think this is a good point The issue however is that we’re just encouraging players to use AoE slop even more It’s better to just rip off the band-aid even if that means that some people will need to go down

[image] Can we have a new difficulty on the main board? Gameplay Feedback [image]

I was thinking about making a seperate post going through each class and talking about specific nodes and builds that are seen as problematic by the community, but I do genuinely think that before a new difficulty gets made, or drastic changes are made to things that affect the feel of the game, a handful of outliers need to be addressed. Veteran - Shock trooper needs removed or turned into a percentage chance to not consume ammo on crit. Demo team needs dropped down to like 2.5-3% chance or removed. Now that vet doesn’t need to sacrifice melee for their ranged damage they don’t need as many grenades as a crutch. Psyker - Remove tap quelling or make it so you can only do it once before you need to fully quell. Increase peril gen from smite, scriers, inferno staff. Remove surge blessing from staves. Make their secondary attacks have a point. Reduce range and width of Wind slash so its not a full screen mulch. Ogryn - Remove Big Boom and Fire Away, Increase Frag bomb radius by Big boom as its base size. Reduce Maximum Firepower CDR by 25%. Zealot - Shroudfield needs a rework, remove Time to Kill, Reduce Martyrdom Toughness DR to 5% per stack. Basically just get rid of boss one shotting so that they live for a few seconds at least. Skitarii - Honestly with the nerf to skull, I think skit is in an ok place right now. Arc rifle spam could maybe use a look but at least that requires ammo. Increasing chord claw capacitance cost so that it caps at 3 with redline maybe. Arbites - remove true grit, I don’t think anything on the class is too egregious at this point. Hive Scum - Reduce precision violence and Jittery bonuses, slight increase to rampage cooldown, make desperado not a meme ability. General - Reduce all DoT stacks caps slowly across multiple patches until it finds a sweet spot.

[image] zhurtek: Psyker - Remove tap quelling or make it so you can only do it once before you need to fully quell. Increase peril gen from smite, scriers, inferno staff. Remove surge blessing from staves. Make their secondary attacks have a point. Reduce range and width of Wind slash so its not a full screen mulch. didnt they already do this in the last patch? you cant tap quell anymore. unless im crazy. [image] zhurtek: Zealot - Shroudfield needs a rework, remove Time to Kill, Reduce Martyrdom Toughness DR to 5% per stack. Basically just get rid of boss one shotting so that they live for a few seconds at least. hard disagree, you are on crack. the whole one shotting the boss is a gameplay type, you sacrifice horde clear for boss kill – sure reduce the cheese efficacy of martyrdom shroudfield. that is a bit OP. but changing shroudfield. you will lose all V2 Shade mains in an instant. not worth it.

Little bit of trivia and context for the possible newcomers to this board… A portion of the people complaining about powercreep in this thread are the same people who couldn’t shut up about Carapace spam, and this very incessant shortsighted whining directly lead to a collapse of Darktide difficulty, resulting in us clearing ML’s in less than 15 minutes. Until that point the game had actual difficulty and until that point Auric/ML was still capable of offering a kernel of challenge :frowning: So for a new board members, keep in mind that lot of the people yapping about the powercreep are also the same people who damaged the game and got it where it is right now in terms of difficulty!

Event is the best example of why we need a new difficulty

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Gameplay Feedback

Haps October 29, 2026, 2:40pm 47

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Forum Community Poll on Core Experience Difficulty Gameplay Feedback	60	586	September 24, 2026
Game is in a boring place General Discussion	50	850	June 12, 2026
Going back to Auric missions really puts the Havoc strengths and weaknesses into perspective General Discussion	76	4013	January 13, 2025
DT needs higher difficulty tier and open "hard mode" mission Gameplay Feedback	31	319	November 5, 2025
Please fix the powercreep (RANT) General Discussion	1463	19980	January 16, 2026

Event is the best example of why we need a new difficulty

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