The books are a great “Push your Luck” mechanic in Vermintide 2. And you could see the tangible impact on the rewards via the dice roll bonus.
They don’t work at all in Darktide. Here’s a few reasons why:
They both take up the same slot, the Health or Ammo crate. In VT, Scriptures took up the healing item slot, Grims took up the Potion slot. This made more sense since Potions (equivalent to Stims) were relatively less critical than Healing items, and balanced the debuff Grims give.
In DT, the Scriptures have 0 impact since the Crates are relatively much more rare than Healing items in VT, and since they’re placed, there’s almost no cost to pick up a crate, dropping it, picking your Script back up. Players still don’t even bother though.
Grims on the other hand are relatively more punishing. Their debuff effect is arguably more punishing in DT than VT as they’ll more easily push a player into 1-shot territory, and they prevent being able to pick up and drop a crate, leaving you at the mercy of other players doing it for you (they won’t).
I know you can get Curios to reduce the Grim effect, but why would you, when you can instead get a Curio stat for literally anything else, and not do Grim missions? In VT, the Grims were always there, and always mattered. So you wanted the Curse reduction. In DT, Grim Corruption resist is 100% a wasted stat.
And since you never get both Scripts AND Grims in a game, you’re missing the Risk / Reward and Push your Luck effect that stacking them had in VT.
But more than anything is the lack of reward. In VT, they gave you XP and you could see the impact of the books on your chest quality. In DT, you get XT and Dockets, but there’s nothing showing you the impact the books have on the item reward.
And even with that, item rewards essentially don’t matter in DT because you’ll essentially never have a match-end reward that ever comes close to a crafted item.
Now the easy fix for the reward here visibility: Show the impact of the tomes on the reward. But also make them increase what matters… The resources. Give a clear indicator of Scrips and Grims upping your Plasteel / Diamantine reward at the end of the game by 7% / 10% per. So that you total +20% resources. Or 30%.
Because as it is, no one ever does the Book missions now. Everyone I play with rerolls them at Melk. No one picks them on the map. When Quick play gives me one, even if I tag the Scrips, no one bothers to pick them up, even when they’re right in the way. Grims no one even touches.
TLDR: Make Scripts and Grims worth it again. Make them give a 20/30% Plasteel and Diamantine increase. Make Grims less punishing, or make the book missions always be 2 Scripts 1 Grim. And not 3 of one OR two of the other.
