New character experience and solo private session

[DoubleW]

Probably beating some long-dead horses here, but I need to vent.
I started with zealot and leveled to 30 before the class overhaul. Most of my 287 hours are on zealot, maybe a dozen hours or so doing true solo damnation. Another 447 hours of transferable experience in VT2.
I picked up ogryn and leveled to 30 before keystones were added (if I remember right).
I decided I wanted to play some psyker months ago, and I’ve just now got it to level 20.
I have a level 6(?) veteran that I rarely want to play, but would if it was level 30.

The reason I don’t have every class maxed with gear is because I don’t play with randoms. I have three friends that play Darktide and who aren’t always online when I am. When we can get the gang together, it’s much more fun to use our leveled characters and run harder content, so I don’t often get to level up my off classes. If I could make progress in a solo (with or without bots) lobby, then I would have maxed out all of my characters ages go. I would have a hundred more hours in the game.

It’s why I have so much more time in VT2 still. I leveled up every character so that I would have decent bots. Then I played all the Helmgart missions on Champion with my preferred bot characters so that they would have cool matching cosmetics. Then I decided I wanted to finish every mission on Legend difficulty with every career. I did 90% of that solo with bots well before my friends were good enough to play on Legend. I would never have done that, and had so much fun doing it, if I had to play with randoms. (Or use Darktide’s crafting system)

It’s a personal problem. I know, I know, that lots of people have had mostly neutral or positive interactions with randoms, but I’m still just not going to do it because of the chance that I upset someone. Not just to avoid the toxicity coming back at me; I don’t want to possibly make someone else’s experience worse.

Leveling up to 30 and crafting new gear isn’t going to teach me to be a better player at this point. It just keeps me from wanting to play those classes at all.

[Mezmorki]

This isn’t a cop out answer… BUT imho you don’t have too much at all to worry about queuing with rando’s in order to level up your other characters.

People are rarely using voice, so no pressure at all to communicate in that way. People don’t even text chat that much either. At least on Auric, people are very chill and non-toxic overall.

Honestly, a lot of the time other players could be bots (albeit playing better than the bots) and you probably wouldn’t even notice.

If you have decent skills (sounds like you do being a VT2 vet) then you can likely carry on lower difficulties even without a fully leveled up character.

In other words, if you have the inclination to play and your crew isn’t available, just queue up some public games and see how it goes. It will probably be totally fine and manageable.

[CobaltNinja]

Yeah, basically this. I’ve only ever really seen people be hard or get angry if someone is so awful that it’s an active detriment to the team, but even then, most folk tend to keep to themselves. Pubbing in Darktide is very much a mostly single-player experience, with you chipping in to help someone out every now and then.

If you play around your team and don’t expect them to play around you, you’ll be fine. You may have to play boring, meta, generalist builds to level up your character to 30 solo, but after that you can start tweaking it however you want. That said, leveling is absolutely a slog, and I wish I could skip it like I can skip the tutorial.

[Crayvun]

Yeah to echo the other fellas here, have you given queing with randos a shot? Most of the time no one says a word.

And even if someone does, at most its a sarcastic side jab, if you get me? lol

Well, unless you’re like me, then you might lose your mind about dumb s**t like someone asking you how many hours you have in the game, but thats most definitely a me thing