No daemons in Chaos Wastes? C'mon, Fatshark

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Gameplay Feedback
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We are near blackrock, apparently, so a fairly southern portion of the Chaos Wastes, while the Chaos wastes in general represent a blurred line of bleeding of the Realms of Chaos into the mortal world, we are still closer to the southern border, a much more human portion of the wastes, if you want to check out the Wiki for the chaos wastes, this area is predominantly occupied by Nordic Tribes, which may suffer some mutations due to the proximity to the realms of chaos, but it doesn’t mean we are in some immaterial hellscape (yet).

It would be much more likely for us to encounter monsters like chimeras or chaos trolls / dragon orges ect, as opposed to manifestations of demons. Demons were even rare finds inside of Mordheim, which had substantial magical properties that could keep them tethered to reality for long periods of time (see Belakor).

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That does make

A pretty misleading statement though. Demons are definitely present in the wastes, it just depends where exactly you are. Even in norsca demons can exist, a full on demon prince walked into valkia the bloody’s hall and demanded she joined his harem. She then walked north up into the wastes and fought demons until she died and ascended.

There’s no guarantee you’ll see demons in norsca, but they can definitely exist there, and even more definitely exist in the wastes proper.

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There are also other major reasons FS prolly didnt add demons in, such as them only making sense (possibly) inside of the chaos wastes generally speaking so it wouldnt be an enemy type usable on all the maps, so thats a lot of effort to put into for some limited content badies since you would need new models / rigs / voice lines / ect.

On top of that we predominantly fight nurgle, so if we added plaugebearers what would they even do? They are basically just really tough enemies with swords. There are possibly some ways to make them interesting such as poison auras or dmg from their hits ect, but im not sure how exciting they would be outside of this.

Regardless, having the game supported this long after release and receiving 15 new maps for free, people like the OP should be significantly more grateful.

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depends on where in the wastes (see above)

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No, it really doesn’t lol, the above thing isn’t canon. Valkia the bloody lived in norsca and a proper demon prince just walked into her hall. They aren’t super common in the south areas, but the chaos wastes in general have demons, there’s not really any “maybe” about it, let alone “probably” in the northern areas of the wastes where you’re bordering on the realm of chaos proper.

You aren’t guaranteed to see them, but claiming they aren’t there or are just “maybe there” is bizarre.

Telling a dude that he’s wrong about the wastes being effectively an extension of the realms and then posting a map with landmarks like “The Writhing Fortress”, “Blood Mountain”, “The Brass Glacier”, “The Silvered Tower of Sorcerers”, “The Crystal Spires” and “The Weeping Monolith of Lord Festerlung” is a really weird argument. I don’t really want demons that much either, for the same gameplay reasons you said, but arguing that the wastes are mostly just meaner norway is just wrong. Even just from the wiki itself, the article on the wastes mentions that daemonic creatures exist in norsca, and regularly wander down from the wastes into naggaroth. Let alone places like the inevitable city or above mentioned places.

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I would love you to provide literally any source information for that beyond Valkia’s story, demon princes function quite differently from lesser demons in general, but basically every source material describes the southern wastes as waring tribes and beastmen. Storm of Chaos campaign also went pretty in depth into Archaeon’s quest and upon his arrival to the tribal lands (southern wastes) they were constantly shocked by anything beyond simple mutations.

Im sure demons “can” exist in the wastes in the same way they can exist anywhere in the fantasy universe dependent on the winds of magic, but it certainly not common especially in the regions we are exploring. Sans potentially the citadel mentioned as the new contents end map, which would be a nexus for magical energy most likely.

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Eh, just for the sake of reason let’s refer to them as 15 new locations, using the same terminology that FS themselves advertised. It sounds like the “map” itself will perhaps be made out of a succession of such locations. If I understood things clearly, Fu will be allowed to stream some content today. I don’t have info about other streamers.

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Content creators self included will likely be streaming content this weekend yes.

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That’s great. It will be nice to finally see what’s what about the whole expansion.

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Copied over from Steam forum:

Well, so I checked some maps. There are rare mentions of Daemons in Norsca. But they are at best a rare encounter. The northern Chaos Wastes are mostly inhabited by Norsca, Kurgan and Hung which are all human like tribes which sometimes can get blessed. The likehood of this happens the closer they are to the portal. Speaking about the portal: the surrounding area is the most likely place to encounter daemons and it is far far away from where the U5 are because they would be mince-meated if they came even close to the eternal battle (although I am not sure if it is still running in the current time with all the endtimes stuff). This information can be found here:

https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Chaos_Wastes

So, the area we are has just a close to zero chance for encountering daemons. Other than human warbands and tribes there are unspeakable monstrosities in the northern Chaos Wastes. Looking at this map:

https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/warhammerfb/images/6/68/800px-Beastmen_Map.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/2000?cb=20200524152443

we can quickly identify that these are mostly beastmen. Like, there are countless beastmen in the Chaos Wastes. Actually, expect to encounter :heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart::heart: of Beastmen as they make up major parts of the population up there.

Regarding a circulating claim that the Chaos Wastes are often refered to “Here be daemons” on Warhammer maps. That is partially true, though for the Southern Wastes of Chaos which are like on the other side of the planet (think arctis and ant-arctis) and are something completely different and not even close to where the U5 are going. Information about Souther Wastes of Chaos can be found here:

https://warhammerfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Southern_Wastes_of_Chaos

Example maps of the Warhammer Worlds can be found here:

https://whfb.lexicanum.com/mediawiki/images/thumb/9/9f/High_Elven_Empire.png/500px-High_Elven_Empire.png
https://us.v-cdn.net/5022456/uploads/editor/3h/6fkaayqglxkn.jpg

Take note how the mark is only for the Southern Wastes but missing for the Northern Wastes. So again, we are far far away from most places (Eternal Battle, Southern Wastes) which have a good chance of encountering daemons. Technically, there seem to be a few daemons in Norsca but they are rare+ encounters. The majority of inhabitants are made up of Hung, Kurgan, Norsca and Beastmen. Many, many, many Beastmen.

So basically, there can be daemons in the Chaos Wastes but it still sounds like having won the wrong lottery. Most of them should be tied to the Eternal Battle. There is also the thing with terminology. If we say the “Wastes” we more or less refer to both poles and the southern wastes definetely have daemons. But it seems they are separated as “Chaos Wastes” (north) and “Wastes of Chaos” (south). And then we have also the “southern Chaos Wastes” (mostly Norsca) which adds on the confusion. But I agree, it was never realistic to encounter daemons in the Chaos Wastes. Neither from lore, nor from gameplay perspective.

EDIT: Hey, forum upgrade. It no longer keeps me from posting when I use “to-be-filtered” words. It just replaces them now.

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Plaguebearers could be tougher than chaos warriors (sans super armour) and roughly the height of a rat ogre.
Their attacks would include huge lumbering strikes, small homing clouds of flies that stun players and a infesting spit that deals some damage on impact and then a little bit more over time (think 10+30 dot).

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Do you have more info about beastmen? I couldn’t open the beastmen map link.
I’m mostly curious about their looks, if they are somehow different from the “imperial” ones. It’s just that I’m used to them popping out of forests in the empire and I wonder If the chaos wastes ones have different fun colors or something, considering the colder enviroments. If that’s the case it would be nice to have some reskin for them.

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Huh, this is strange. It can’t be opened indeed. Or at least it doesn’t show in my browser either. But no, I have no further information on the Beastmen.

You can find the map though in the Southern Waste of Chaos link. It is at the top right side of the article.

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Not in the End Times, though. By now, the Auric Bastion is raised and Kisled is raized, there’s armies of just about everything beyond, including demons. The Glottkin aren’t far off their invasion of Marienburg, and if there can be a demon summoning in Helmgart, how can’t there be demons in the Chaos Wastes themselves?

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You cited the wiki, and I pointed out that your citation says there’s daemonic beasts in norsca and that they wander down from the wastes to naggaroth. I also mentioned several obviously heavily, heavily corrupted places, and a specific story involving a high level daemon. If you’d like more, Sigvalds story also involves him meeting a daemon in the wastes, as does Valnir the reapers, the Glottkins involves a daemon being sent to norsca, Archaon (obviously) met a whole variety of daemons in his quests, Haargroth got into a whole massive battle involvine Khorne daemons. I can keep going, though the site I usually use for directly citing stuff is down so my reply may be late.

Southern tribes are likely less exposed to full on chaos stuff because they’re not actually in the chaos wastes proper, as the map Arkblanc posted shows.

I don’t know who told them this, but it’s definitely not true. The northern chaos wastes aren’t really inhabited by anyone, that’s bordering on the actual realm of chaos itself. No real society can operate that far up.

This weird argument about how it’s not realistic to meet daemons in the chaos wastes is one of the stranger lore based things I’ve seen in a while. The whole world is either actively being invaded by chaos, or is going to within the next few years. Daemons can pop up in norsca at the best of times, let alone in the actual wastes themselves in the endtimes.

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Probably Games Workshop. I am not good enough with Lore to question a wiki. So I use as source what I can easily find online. Also maps are not always the same too:

latest (542×756) (nocookie.net)
NorthernWastes.jpg (373×500) (lexicanum.com)

Which gives room of interpretation where the actual wastes begin. Personally, I would say everything north of the Sea of Claw is already Chaos Wastes and there are living nomadic tribes:

Chaos Wastes - Warhammer - The Old World - Lexicanum
Warriors of Chaos - Warhammer - The Old World - Lexicanum

There is also the thing that near the portal a part of the eternal battle is fought. And somewhere the people fighting the battle have to be living. And those are not all daemons fighting there because the wiki specifically mentions that the Chaos Gods Daemons are send to fight in the Eternal Battle in the Realm of Chaos:

The Great Game | Warhammer Wiki | Fandom

The majority of inhabitants or at least a large part seems to be made up of Beastmen if the map is trustworthy. As for Daemons, they might be encounterable but I did not find a single source backing that it is a regular occurence. If you have some public available source which back this up, it would be great to post them.

Difficulty is the argument of the Endtimes as I am not sure how it would influence these stuff. The Wastes expanded during End Times, that is for sure. My main question in this regard would be if Archaon has already united Chaos and has the Eternal Battle stopped. Because if not most Daemons are probably still directed towards the Realm of Chaos. But I couldn’t find an actual year so far for that occurence. Not that I am 100 % sure which year it currently is in Vermintide 2.

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The wiki is often not great on this stuff, but like I said the site I usually use for stuff is not online rn so can’t directly quote stuff countering it. Though the wiki page does also mention daemons in norsca and wandering down out of the wastes themselves, so I’m still not sure where that guy got it from. The northern wastes are just not somewhere people can really live, the only ones we here about up there long term are only really technically “people” at all.

Again it really depends where you are, but I did mention wiki sources backing up that it happens relatively often, and that there’s plenty of areas completely inhabited by daemons in the wastes, where no-one else can even live. It’s regular to find daemonic creatures once you’re in the wastes proper, but specific aligned daemons like bloodletters or plaguebearers is obviously location dependent.

There’s not generally huge armies of daemons wandering around or anything, though that happens too in some places, but daemons are absolutely up there.

As for maps, I wouldn’t necessarily say any is more convincing than the other without a source for when they were made. Most more modern depictions of the north show norsca below the wastes proper, afaik.

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Most stories about Demon being in the Chaos Waste involve a Demon Prince in devenir or a task his God want accomplished, and they usually aren’t numerous, instead leading a small warband made up of Demon, Beastmen and Warrior of Chaos

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It would be nice to encounter a new enemy/boss (be that Demon or otherwise) in the Chaos Wastes DLC, even if that’s only in the Citadel section of the expedition. “Frequency” arguments hold no water - it’s a game, giving us at least 1 new enemy encounter will not be lore-breaking.

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TL;Dr it makes more sense to not have them than to have them, FS even gave a reason as to why /close thread

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