Heroes!
We welcome you to participate in the 1.0.8 beta. This will be our biggest update, in terms of sheer fixes. The releases we’ve been putting out until now have mostly been aimed at fixing the most critical issues - crashes, bugs, and imbalances. But since we released the game two months ago, we’ve been working hard to stabilize and optimize the game.
The following patch notes highlights the more notable changes, tweaks and fixes. But for this version, there’s been literally hundreds of changes to the game’s levels - in order to fix positions where players could get stuck, moving around patrol spawn points to make sure we reduce the chance of them spawning in your face, and improving points where enemies could target you through structures.
We’re also dedicated to performance, so this version includes major optimizations to the game engine. You should see a noticeable increase in performance on all systems. However, since we’re making optimization changes to all areas of our game assets and resources, the 1.0.8 beta is going to be a very large download. If you participate, you will be downloading around 20GB. Be mindful of this if you chose to participate. Also, if you later opt-out of the beta, there will be an additional large download.
In order to participate in the 1.0.8 beta, follow these steps:
- In Steam, in the games list, right click Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and select Properties.
- Under the “Betas” tab, enter this beta access code: NoGoingBack20GBdownload
You’re now able to select the 1.0.8_beta from the drop down selection - this will download and install the 1.0.8 beta.
Even though this is a beta, any rewards, such as items and chests, and any progress on your characters is still saved. You will not, however, be able to join games, or have other players join your game, that are playing on the non-beta version.
Bots
- Fixed an issue where bots would rapidly pass healing items back and forth between each other.
- Fixed an issue where a bot would not give an item to a player.
- Added difficulty reaction times for opportunity targets - specials which have not attacked yet.
- Fixed a spot on Halescourge, where bots had trouble jumping between two rooftops.
- Fixed an issue on Righteous Stand where bots would fail to rescue hanging players near the temple of Sigmar.
- Fixed an issue where bots would keep attempting - and failing, to use healing items when an item with the “Natural Bond” was equipped.
- Fixed an issue where bots would chase after a Packmaster that was dragging a player, and would have problems switching to a melee weapon when close to the enemy.
- Fixed an issue where bots were unaffected by the Sudden Death effect from Deeds.
- Changed so that bots now consider total enemy threat value instead of enemy count when evaluating distance to keep from melee follow position. This essentially means that small packs of dangerous enemies (e.g. Chaos Warrior) will now cause the bots to stay closer.
- Fixed some instances where bots would run away and chase enemies that had teleported out of sight.
- Fixed so that bot Saltzpyre can perform heavy chain attacks using the Flail.
- Increased the range at which bots can shoot at to 22.5 meters, up from 15.
- Bots will now vent overcharge when it is safe to do so.
- Improved bot Sienna’s staff weapons. She will now fire the beam on Beam Staff for longer periods of time and can use the charged attack of Beam Staff and Fireball Staff when there are obstructing enemies nearby. She will also fires her Bolt Staff rapid fire attacks at a greater pace.
Sound
- Fixed missing voice lines on Fort Brachsenbrücke, Athel Yenlui, Convocation of Decay, Skittergate, and Halescourge.
- Added new combat music when fighting Rat Ogres.
- Added new voice lines for all heroes.
- Banter and curses between heroes should now play a little less frequently.
- Fixed an issue where sound effects from aggroed enemies could persist even though the enemy was dead or far away.
Graphics and Visual Effects
- Comprehensive optimization for all graphics, which affects all meshes, and textures, and other game assets. This will yield a performance increase on all systems.
- We’ve made a substantial amount of quality of life changes to visual effects on many of the weapons. Most notably was the issue on a Veteran quality Runed Flame Staff, where its jet of flame pointed sideways.
- Removed the “Medium” option from the Ambient Light Quality settings - they’re now optimized to “High” or “Low”.
- Removed the “Off” option from the Volumetric Light settings, and added a “Lowest” option.
- Added a setting for Auto Exposure Speed which enables adjusting the convergence time of auto exposure.
- Fixed issues with particle effects not appearing correctly on lower graphics settings.
Items
- Fixed mismatching descriptions and names for the Beam Staff “Dreiberg’s Disintegrator”, the Longbows “Glade Guardian’s Nastirrath” and “Death Reign”.
- Added an extra headshot sound for melee weapons.
- Fixed Drakefire Pistols only playing overcharge sounds from the right pistol.
- Fixed an issue that caused the repeater pistol’s charged shot sound effect to play on the first shot for repeating handgun’s first charged shot, it also played the wrong animation on the repeating handgun’s first shot.
- Fixed the issue where the 2-handed weapon idle animations for Ironbreaker Bardin and Slayer Bardin were switched. Slayer will now be correctly riled up, and Ironbreaker is correctly chill.
- Fixed an issue on Slayer Bardin where where the animation for Dual Axes would return to a one handed idle animation when switching weapons while holding block.
- Fixed an issue where the trait “Proxy” wouldn’t work for clients. Proxy should now correctly apply its effect to the nearest ally.
Skills & Talents
- Unchained Sienna can now use Living Bomb during its Overcharge explosion to prevent the explosion and clear overheat.
- Fixed an issue where Unchained Sienna’s Career Perk “Unstable Strength” wouldn’t increase damage and stagger values based on overcharge, only the amount of targets hit.
- Changes to Huntsman Kruber’s Thrill of the Hunt: Reduced the reload speed increase after headshot to 20%, down from 35%. Increased duration to 5 seconds, up from 2.
(After version 1.0.5 we’ve noticed an unintended behaviour involving the handgun and a set of talent setups which allowed the Huntsman to fire at an alarming rate. This didn’t work all that great in practice and therefore we’ve decided to reduce the effect of Thrill of the Hunt to reduce the effectiveness of this combination in particular. To balance these changes, we have increased the duration of the buff which should allow for more leniency when using the handgun in particular, allowing weaving headshots with bodyshots and still maintaining the increased reload speed buff.) - Added a new icon for Huntsman Kruber’s Career Perk “Call out Weakness”, which is his critical strike chance aura. This previously used the same icon as the talent “Makin’ it look easy” which caused some confusion.
- Fixed issues with certain Career Skills doing damage to players and props, i.e. Witch Hunter Captain Saltzpyre won’t scream loud enough to shatter glass or ignite explosive barrels anymore, and Ranger Veteran Bardin won’t kill himself with his smoke bomb.
- Fixed an issue where the aiming animation could get stuck while holding down the activation key for Career Skills, while being grabbed by a Lifeleech or Chaos Spawn.
Tweaks & Stability
- Many quality of life improvements to playing with gamepads.
- Lohner and Olesya’s talk-interacts are now correctly labelled.
- All levels have had a proper work over. Locations where players have been reported getting stuck have been fixed. Collisions for structures and environments have been adjusted to make Ratling Gunners less likely to fire through them. Spawn points for patrols and hordes have been tweaked to lessen the chance of enemies spawning in plain sight.
- Added guaranteed health and ammo drops before fighting Spinemanglr.
- Fixed an issue where players wouldn’t respawn in the arena during the fight with Spinemanglr.
- Added objective markers on Festering Ground, to make it easer to find that last Buboe you didn’t pop.
- Fixed an issue on Skittergate where Gatekeeper Naglfahr could be interrupted while transforming into Blessed Gatekeeper. Also, we changed his appearance a little to make him more distinct from Bödvarr. Check him out, he looks cool.
- The Skittergate Generators were being destroyed too easily, so we doubled their hitpoints. And made them invulnerable to ranged damage.
- Added more chests and crates to Fort Brachsenbrücke, to improve the chances of getting loot dice.
- Fixed an issue on The War Camp where a Stormfiend boss could get stuck under water, being unable to attack.
- Fixed a progression blocking issue in the prologue if the player didn’t pick up the bow.
- Fixed an issue where hot-joining players who took the place of a downed bot were given 100% permanent health instead of 100% temporary health, causing them to possibly get stuck in a downed state forever.
- Fixed a crash when a client explodes a warpfire thrower tank.
- Fixed a crash that could occur if the Bile Troll changed targets while being far away from the players.
- Fixed a crash for clients when standing in an active Waystone Portal in the Keep and the host quits the game.
- Fixed a crash when transitioning into a leaping state from anything else than a standing or walking state, i.e. Slayer Bardin’s Career Skill.
- Damage calculations should now correctly apply melee power boosts effects from talents and traits to training dummies. Also, talents and traits should now trigger properly.
- Fixed a crash if you picked up an barrel or training dummy during the animation for Ranger Veteran Bardin’s Career Skill.
- Fixed a crash that would occur if a vote was completed when the game session had been torn down.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when attacking a Stormfiend in the back.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when damaging a training dummy while someone picked it up.
- Fixed a softlock issue when trying to close Hero Selection after having changed heroes.
- Improved word wrapping for Chinese localization.
- Fixed issues with Saltzpyres and Kerillian’s Repeating Crossbows having ammo floating in the air after inspecting your hero.
- Fixed an issue where the health bars for bosses weren’t being displayed for clients, unless the boss was tagged by another player.
- Changed the visual appearance of lamp oil fire to not look so two-dimensional when viewed from above.
- Fixed an issue with Twitch Mode that, while respawning, would hide the voting UI.
- Increase the initial skulk time of Lifeleeches.
- Fixed missing blood and armor impact effects when Ratling Gunners hit other enemies.
- Players now automatically block while reviving or rescuring other players. Blocking before reviving was always something players could do, we just made this automatic.
- Opening Hero Selection will no longer be available during matchmaking.
- Fixed an issue where the crafting sound gets stuck when another player requests a mission vote.
- Fixed issue that were causing the running slam attacks of Rat Ogres and Chaos Spawns, to push away heroes behind and to the sides of the boss instead of only those in its path.
- We now use a font which supports non-latin characters to display player names.
- We fixed the misaligned arrows on the Waystone. Our deepest apologies, you can come back to the game now.
- Fixed an issue where shield-wielding Stormvermin would play the wrong animation when their guard is opened up.
- Fixed an issue with where the spawning sound for Gutter Runners wouldn’t play when certain music was active.
