This will simply be a thank you note to fatshark for crafting my single favorite game of all time.
I’m a long time hardcore Vermintide 2 player, I’ve been playing since shortly after this game came out. I have about 1350 hours on Xbox and more recently switched to PC with another 250 hours. I’ve recently reached the level of playing C3DWUTCH with a group of friends from the modded community after a background of challenge runs on official realm Xbox. I cannot express enough how addicting this game is, the skill ceiling for this game never seems to end. It’s been one of the most consistent factors of my life for the past 7 or so years. I don’t plan to stop executing heretics and rats by the thousands any time soon and hope to see the rest of you on the front lines for years to come.
Cataclysm 3 - Increased enemy stats. An unused difficulty that’s technically available in Weaves. Death Wish - Enemies are significantly more stagger resistant. Dutch Spice - A high difficulty mod with big changes to enemy spawns and new enemies.
It’s a wombo combo of three mods to make the game difficult and fun.
Cata 3 like the late game weaves.
Deathwish makes enemies very stagger resistant and harder to kill.
Dutch Spice takes the mod Onslaught and makes hordes both bigger and faster, increasing caps on specials and elites. Adds new enemies with de-buff auras and so much more. Specials are all modified.
EDIT: Beat me to it. I will add, I don’t like how the game feels with these mods. I played modded for awhile with the tournament balance, but anything above Cata 1 makes each mission feel like a slog and it gets too tedious. Cataclysm (plus Twitch Mode sometimes) feels like it’s about as far as the normal game’s can be pushed before it starts get absurd.
IMO, the best way to make the game more difficult would need new challenging enemy types and weapons. Turning enemies into sponges, and making more of them is a very artificial way to make it more difficult. Dutch Spice adds some new stuff, but it feels more hacky than authentic. Fully animated new enemy types with unique mechanics that compliment the game; that’s what I’d want.
With a coordinated team and well built team comp it usually doesn’t feel like a slog but you are right that the modded difficulties most definitely aren’t for everyone. The modded difficulties demand much more map knowledge and team play, whereas in official since you often dont have a coordinated team it demands much more individual skill, independency, and in the moment problem solving skills. Modded of course requires some level of individuality, and official of course requires some level of team play, but those things are where I’ve seen each gets their core difficulty from.
It’s because of this difference that modded has a bit of a different playstyle as there’s less of the randomness and unpredictable moments that lead to crazy plays that you see in official since the players have broken down every map into its base components to know where every horde comes from, know where to hold every horde, know where specials route from at each hold spot, know where each boss/patrol trigger, and so on. Instead modded is a game of execution, you can already at least somewhat control what enemies you fight and when, it’s then just about actually fighting and managing the sheer number of them, the stagger resitance, health increase, and other changes to actually beat a map. That’s probably why you’ve understandably see it as a slog, it’s a much more methodical and controlled way of playing as that’s what’s optimal for the difficulty, but that does lose the chaotic charm you only really see in official.