I love the feel of the crowbar in game, and it rode in with scum so its still far more usable than all the maligned weapons of the game. The uppercut openers are peak and some of the best meaty thwacks among blunts…I’d put the crowbar at the top of the beaty hitstick pile personally.
I would like to take this opportunity to share my thoughts on the crowbar and bonesaw 
. The three exclusive melee weapons of hive scum are largely designed around its three primary playstyles: the dual knives fit the melee build, the crowbar provides anti-armor and vulnerability for the gunplay build, and the bonesaw suits the toxin build. Of course, these pairings are not strict; you can mix a weapon with another build and get interesting results, but there are clearly some delicate designs here.
What has consistently bothered me is that the crowbar and bonesaw do not synergize well with the hive scum’s toughness recovery talents. There are two primary toughness recovery options: voice of tertium for ranged bd, and precision violence which triggers on melee. The proc frequency of the latter depends on the number of hits, weak point hits, and crits. Therefore, the weapons that benefit most from this talent (and those designed based on similar logic) are light and agile, such as the dual knives, tactical axe, and heavy sword… almost all weapons in the arsenal, except for the second-slowest crowbar and the very slowest bonesaw.
The crowbar has a noticeable hitch on its secondary mode attack hit, making its attack speed benefits significantly lower. I do not like bringing it in a melee build and only use it for a gunplay build. Since gun builds primarily use Voice of Tertium for toughness recovery, I can tolerate the crowbar’s clunkiness in that specific scenario.
But what about the bonesaw? Its base attack speed is not high, and it gets obstructed when carving into heretics. It also has low cleave; in environments like Havoc 40, a swing often only hits one regular zombie in a horde. It is slow and sluggish, unlike the butterfly-like agility of Hive Scum weapons, feeling more like an Ogryn’s heavy cleaver. Actually, the Ogryn’s heavy cleaver is lighter and has higher cleave than this. To stay on topic, the bonesaw’s characteristics result in poor adaptability. Aside from using its high-damage heavy attack 1 to kill high-health elites, it underperforms in many other situations.
Regarding the toughness issue again, its clunkiness prevents good synergy with Precision Violence. Its heavy attack 1, which deals two damage instances, only restores toughness once. I think this design could be refined. For example, increasing the bonesaw’s cleave to hit more enemies per swing but with quick damage falloff. This would improve its self-sustain against hordes without increasing its overall damage output too much. For another example, adding an additional effect to the two dodge talents for Hive Scum that restores a small amount of toughness on every successful dodge. This would give slower weapons like the crowbar and bonesaw a way to recover toughness outside of precision violence.
Also, the Needle Pistol’s explosive mode failing to spread toxin on hit is a clear bug 
. I have mentioned this in a dedicated thread. I hope it gets fixed soon.
The 3rd and 4th updates for the year will be around first week of oct and dec just like the last two years running, unless something is very amiss.
Conservatively, i would expect mostly balance changes and reworks in October, along with a side dish of content like maybe an operation map, MAYBE. Hoping that it isn’t anything for expeditions, would be a waste of effort. Last year the October update was the class reworks and they said there was more they wanted to do with them. That update felt like it was thrown together of stuff they had ready just to have an update tbh.
December will probably be another class, raising funds for the next game. VERY optimistically they could do another enemy faction as their kind of coup de grâce to darktide. If it isn’t clear I anticipate the unreal 5 game to be announced within a year, I was given reason to believe it might even be announced this year.
How do you feel about skull crusher?
Uhhh the last 2 3rd update of the year were in late September for both 2025 and 2024
Both Bound by duty and unlocked and loaded
oh yeah u right, but still there was not much notice given of the sept patch last year either.
like no preview of what the patch was posted here or anything, and they contacted creators very late
Fatshark struggle with the concept of saying words and then another cm leaves
Considering that the weapon pack has effectively been abandoned and Vermintide 2 hasn’t received an update in a long time, I’d say most of the developers are probably working on the new UE5 game by now.
The fact that Vermintide 3 isn’t coming anytime soon probably means the UE5 game is something completely different.
I’d honestly be really curious to see what kind of game they could make if they created a completely original IP and no longer had any of the restrictions imposed by Games Workshop.
Next, Fatshark will be heading into their next holiday break.
What if the developers are actually working their butts off under insane pressure on Darktide and aren’t even planning a new game? It must be so frustrating for them to read players saying the game is barely staying afloat and that all resources have been shifted to a new project
Yea I can imagine it to be very frustrating, doubly so cause Fatshark never shares anything until it is ready. We have no idea what they’re working on. It could be the bestest most awesomest thing that needs a lot of time to make and we’d be completely clueless.
I think that’s a realistic conservative view of what’s to come.
Though, I have to think that the absolute failure of Expeditions would have led them at this point to abandon it. Mortis Trials had a better reception and it still only got one update after release before being largely forgotten. I actually occasionally do Expeditions when I’m not feeling up to concentrating on a real mission - stupidly thinking I’ll eventually grind down the penances. Even during prime hours, you won’t even get into a mission lobby with others, you’ll get in a match with just bots and eventually it might fill up. Sometimes only three people. The only thing more dead than this is Weaves.
My “realistic hope” would be that whatever leftovers they have for Expeditions are being retooled into a regular map. It would be a lot less of a waste than releasing more content for a mode as dead as a doorknob.
I somehow become even more envious of swedish worker rights if so.
This is some nice hopium, but we already know there is another game.
I just don’t see how the storyline and maps have been entirely paused for almost 2 years, the only new weapon for non dlc is power falchion.
The dev blog for no mans land said that it was a solo dev project for almost its entire lifespan. Where are the environment artists, map design, weapon design resources going?
If work was being done on darktide we would know, they would have had at least a new map to package with skitarii- they didn’t even have an operation like with hive scum.
If it truly is some big secret hidden thing for dt I really wish they would knock it off, hiding their work from players is a losing strategy for all parties.
I can only hope for what Ive always asked, new maps.
Operations were supposed to be smaller maps that the devs could sprinkle in while working on other stuff so we could keep getting new maps but with less resources involved.
Now Operations are treated like actual, full maps. Pretty telling on how much resources Darktide’s skeleton crew gets in terms of free updates…
Expeditions. You rejected Victor’s vision now you will suffer the consequences. No maps for you until you play more expeditions.
Urmal Map Tomorrow!.. 8th… hopium 
think the ue5 project is most likely going to be an aos game. i have very little interest in aos though, the setting always seemed too detached and noncoherent for me to really like it
Yeah, I’ve suspected we’d get some kind of AoS game, perhaps even being a spiritual successor to Vermintide 2. I have to wonder if they’ll even ditch the “on the ground” aesthetic and just straight up have the players be sigmarines. Probably hinting that they’re the Ubersreik five now as stupid not-space marines.