I just repurchased the game again recently and I was advised not to …by friends who were rigorously playing it. The main things that drew me back in were the new skill trees, resources being shared across characters, more missions, and a crafting system, instead of having to grind for each individual item having completely randomized stats. Even the locks are better than no crafting.
So, I think Darktide now is a massive improvement from release. Got 2 characters to level 30 and going for a third. Have been playing a lot of 5s with friends and randos. Haven’t had a chance to play Auric yet, but I will.
Lots of stuff is still unpolished. A few bugs that standout. All in all, this is more like what one would expect from an initial release, but it’s a full year since release.
The thing that irks me is that there are so many mods for basic features and interface stuff that really should be a part of the original game such as healthbars, auto-taking Melks weekly quests like one would Okri’s in Vermintide. Item sorting, inventory search bar, favorited items, penances completed on character selection, etc, etc.
There is one weapon blessing that is code in a UI string. There’s two crafting resources but now you only need one because both are used in almost every crafting option.
All in all, without getting into specifics, the actual gameplay during missions feels a bit clunky compared to Vermintide. Many skills and blessings rely too much on randomness to trigger and areas will sometimes be filled with roaming elites or have barely anything giving Darktide a more janky feel than Vermintide. It’s much better if skills/blessings trigger based on skillful actions from the player or the team rather than randomness and right now I feel Darktide has too many things that randomly trigger or trigger on crit to the extent that a fight can go miserably or extremely well. This is particularly true for Psyker who has so many abilities on either crit or that have a % chance to trigger.