Quality of Life update! Player Loadouts, updates to Chaos Wastes and Weaves, Skulls for the Skull Throne 2024!

Heroes!

The time has come again to celebrate Warhammer through the Skulls event!
Between May 23 - June 9 you can rampage through the Vermintide in the Skulls for the Skull Throne in-game event. Earn new rewards by collecting skulls, or just participate in the carnage.

Together with the in-game event we also released Patch 5.5.0 - Quality of Life update. It contains a mix of improvements, fixes, and additions that should improve the experience across all game modes. See below for more information on the update and the in-game event.

Skulls for the Skull Throne, Blood for the Blood God!

Patch 5.5.0 - Quality of Life Update

Loadout system for Adventure mode

Personal Loadouts

Loadouts are finally officially coming to Vermintide 2! This feature allows you save different combinations of gear & talents as loadouts that you can quickly swap between while in the Keep. Any changes done to your talents or gear while being ‘on’ a loadout will automatically save to that loadout.

Bot Loadouts

You can also mark one of your loadouts per character as a ‘Bot’ loadout, in which case whenever you are the host, the bots can use specific loadouts that you’ve tailor-made for that bot.

We want to give a shoutout to Squatting Bear for his sanctioned Loadout Manager mod, which covered these features until we could implement it ourselves. Thank you, Squatting Bear!

Chaos Wastes

New boons

We’ve added over 25 new boons to Chaos Wastes. We’ve got some exciting boons to add a lot of juice to your expeditions! New auras, new effects for your bombs, new actions triggered by your career skill, new effects triggered based on your choices during the expedition, new event boons, and more!

Boon Sets

This is a new mechanic that we’re introducing with this update. Certain boons are part of a ‘set’ of specific boons. Gaining all of the boons within a set in the same expedition unlocks a powerful effect for the rest of the expedition.

New boons introduced with patch 5.5.0:

Boon name	Description
Grungni's Bombardment	Bombs have reduced range, but have more explosion radius and Damage.
Bomb of Alchemical Concentration	Your Bombs consecrate the ground for a few seconds on impact. Players within the consecrated ground gain increased Career Skill Cooldown Speed.
Bomb of Alchemical Lethality	Your Bombs consecrate the ground for a few seconds on impact. Players within the consecrated ground gain increased Critical Strike Chance.
Bomb of Alchemical Rejuvenation	Your Bombs consecrate the ground for a few seconds on impact. Players within the consecrated ground will rejuvenate health.
Bomb of Alchemical Alacrity	Your Bombs consecrate the ground for a few seconds on impact. Players within the consecrated ground gain increased Attack Speed.
Bomb of Alchemical Strength	Your Bombs consecrate the ground for a few seconds on impact. Players within the consecrated ground gain increased Power.
Ranald's Spiteful Plunder	When a Chest of Trials is activated, it creates consecrated ground that grants you increased Damage for a few seconds.
Ranald's Hearty Plunder	When a Chest of Trials is activated, it creates consecrated ground that grants you increased Cooldown reduction for a few seconds.
Harrying Boon of Hoeth's Precision	Headshots spawn multiple projectiles that seek out enemies.
Harrying Boon of Hoeth's Deflection	Parries spawn multiple projectiles that seek out enemies.
Harrying Boon of Hoeth's Perfection	Critical Hits spawn multiple projectiles that seek out enemies.
Myrmidia's Wildfire	An enemy that dies while Burning inflicts a Burning to nearby enemies, causing Damage over time.
Myrmidia's Cleansing Flame	Your Career Skill also Burns nearby enemies for damage over time.
Lileath's Prophetic Bolt	Your Career Skill also spawns a projectile that seeks out enemies.
Drakira's Flensing	Your Career Skill also inflicts Bleed on nearby enemies.
Mathlann's Storm-Strike	Your Career Skill also calls down lightning strikes on nearby enemies.
Atharti's Venomous Affection	Your Career Skill also inflicts Poison on nearby enemies for Damage over time.
Lileath's Blessed Destiny	Increases your Career Skill maximum charges.
Taal's Roar	Periodically send out a shockwave that staggers nearby enemies. Cooldown decreases with missing health.
Valaya's Boozy Grant	Enemies close to you take increased Stagger from teammates.
Ulric's Valour	Enemies close to you take increased Damage from teammates.
Lileath's Favour	Gain increased Damage and Attack Speed per active Boon.
Lileath's Avenger	You again increased Damage against enemies near to allies.
Lileath's Disruptor	You gain increased Stagger against enemies near to allies.
Ranald's Mighty Gamble	You gain massively increased Critical Hit Chance, decreased by the Rarity Level of your Currently Equipped Weapon.
Ranald's Hasty Gamble	You gain increased Cooldown reduction, decreased by the Rarity Level of your Highest Rarity Weapon.
Anath Raema's Cruel Volley	Ranged attacks inflict increased Damage, but use more ammo.
Taal’s Crippling Shot	Enemies hit with your Ranged Weapon take increased Damage from you for a few seconds.

These don’t include the effects found in boon sets, or some event-specific boons that might be popping up!

Weekly Expedition

Similar to the Weekly Event game mode for Adventure, we’re adding a ‘Weekly Expedition’ mode in Chaos Wastes. These are Chaos Wastes expeditions with a specific Boon and a specific Curse that will affect every level of that expedition. Be warned, things get real bloody, real fast, in proper Vermintide 2 tradition. The specific Boon and Curse combination will depend on what we set each week, good luck!

Each week, the first completion of the Weekly Event game mode will grant you a new reward based on difficulty, including shillings, chests, red dust, and one of a new set of runed weapon illusions: the weapons of Bitter Dreams, blessed by Lileath herself.

Also, similar to the Weekly Event game-mode, participating in some in-game events might involve completing a special event version of the Weekly Expedition. Did you know it’s Skulls for the Skull Throne this week? Foreshadowing…

Stability Pass

We’ve also taken a stability pass at the overall Chaos Wastes game-mode:

Fixing several bugs
Chaos Wastes-specific levels to plug some holes, fix some issues, improve pathfinding (both of Bots and enemies)
Improve player Navigation, hang ledges, etc.

You can read the full patch notes below!

This was done mostly based on information from Community bug reports, so we want to thank you all for all the bug reporting you do! Your information and participation is invaluable.

Weaves of Magic

Winds of Magic Illusions in Adventure

We haven’t forgotten about this! Owners of the Winds of Magic expansion can now use the illusions from the Athanor weapons of the Weaves of Magic game mode in Adventure Mode. Simply unlock the weapon in the Athanor and you will have the new illusion unlocked for that weapon!

Weaves Game Mode improvements

We’ve made some changes to the game mode to tackle some of the issues with the mode itself. For starters, bots can now accompany you in public Ranked Weaves, which should help with the biggest blocker for those lacking a dedicated 4-man group for Weaves.

The second thing is that running out of time no longer ends the match prematurely. This is the second biggest issue we’ve seen that prevents players from properly engaging with the game mode. Running out of time still disqualifies your team from scoring for the leaderboards, but at least you can still complete the match!

On the subject of leaderboards, the leaderboard will now default to showing friends’ scores only (you can still manually check the global leaderboards, though!).

Skulls for the Skull Throne!

And Blood for the Blood God! It’s that time of the year again when we celebrate Warhammer as a whole together! From May 23 to June 9, join your fellow Heroes in glorious carnage, slaughtering as many foes as possible!

Blood-Red Weapon Illusions - The Kill Counter

We’ll be counting each and every kill from all of you, and if the community as a whole reaches 1,000,000,000 kills across all platforms and game modes before the event ends, you will all earn five new Khorne-inspired Weapon Illusions!

You can check out the community’s progress by going in here: https://www.vermintide.com/counter

New Khorne-y Portrait Frame

Collect 100 skulls, scattered across Helmgart and beyond, to earn this year’s event frame! Progress in this event challenge can be earned across Adventure mode and Chaos Wastes!

Lohner’s Emporium of Old Wonders

Did you miss last year’s event rewards? Fret not! For the duration of the event, you can visit Lohner’s Emporium to spend your hard-earned shillings on unlocking any rewards from last year’s Skulls event that you might’ve missed the first time around.

Without further ado…

Patch 5.5.0 patch notes

Note: We’re still investigating the issue of patch sizes being abnormally large on our Vermintide Steam releases. We’re getting closer to a solution, but for now there might still be patches and hotfixes that have an abnormally large download and install size. We apologize for the inconvenience in the meantime.

Features & Tweaks

Added a Loadouts system, letting you save and quickly switch to and from presets of gear & talents that you’ve made.
Chaos Wastes boon update: Added over 25 new boons and introduced the concept of Boon Sets.
Chaos Wastes Weekly Expedition: Similar to Adventure mode’s Weekly Event, embark on a Weekly Expedition with unique modifiers! Earn the weapon illusions of Bitter Dreams.
Chaos Wastes Chest of Trials: Added a chest of trials for the Chaos Warrior with Mace & Shield.
Chaos Wastes Chest of Trials: Did a balance pass on the infamous Ungor Warherd chest of trials. Should be a bit more reasonable now!
Athanor Illusions: Made illusions from the Winds of Magic Athanor available in Adventure mode.
Weaves no longer end on timeout.
Bots are now useable in Ranked Weaves.
Changed the Weaves leaderboards to default to friends only.
Temporarily enabled the Skulls for the Skull throne Keep decorations. You’ll be seeing red for a while…
[PC ONLY] Re-implemented the feature to re-connect to host on temporary disconnection. This was originally disabled because it could cause crashes.
Added new voicelines for pinging monsters near you.
Added new voicelines for pinging warpfire throwers.

Fixes

Fixed hotjoining client crash if the joining client replaces a Becromancer bot just as it uses its ability.
Fixed a really obtuse crash in Chaos Wastes relating to the Coruscation staff and weapon shrines.
Fixed players crashing in chaos wastes when completing a level after the previous host left during last map session.
Fixed a small time window during loading screen where players in the game swapping weapons may cause the joining client to crash.
Fixed the issue that caused voicelines to not trigger when picking up or dropping Grimoires.
Fixed several issues with erroneous subtitles and mistargeted dialogue events that affected all characters.
Fixed a bug where Handmaiden’s 2-2 talent “Oak Stance” didn’t grant non-host players the increased critical strike chance.
Fixed an issue with the inspect animation on the repeater handguns that made the cocking hammers act all wonky.
Chaos Wastes level fixes:

The Foetid Gorge: Fixed a misplaced killzone that players could walk into and instantly die.
The Foetid Gorge: Fixed an upgrade shrine and a boon altar that could spawn inside the terrain.
The Foetid Gorge: Fixed several spots where Heroes could get stuck in.
The Foetid Gorge: Fixed an issue where the event barrel could spawn in an unreachable location.
Count Mordrek’s Fortress: Fixed some issues with Heroes respawning behind events when they shouldn’t.
Count Mordrek’s Fortress: Fixed the geometry around some stone steps to be smoother to navigate.
Bel’sha’ziir’s Mine: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck due to geometry or invisible collision.
Bel’sha’ziir’s Mine: Moved some decorations around in the Slaanesh version that could block movement.
Cinder Peak: Adjusted a couple of pillars that could make movement difficult.
Cinder Peak: Fixed an issue where enemies could not spawn in a certain spot due to a boon shrine.
Cinder Peak: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck.
Cinder Peak: Fixed a spot where players could hang from a ledge inside the terrain.
Cinder Peak: Fixed a rare issue where players joining half way would see a wrong, lower detail version of the level, making progression through certain parts impossible.
Cinder Peak: Fixed a rare issue where players joining half way would not see the gate open and thus couldn’t go through it.
Slaughter Bay: Fixed an issue where the first respawn point available was too far from the level start.
Slaughter Bay: Fixed a spot where enemies would just fall over, dead.
Slaughter Bay: Fixed several spots where heroes could get stuck.
Citadel of Eternity: Fixed an issue where players joining mid-way would be missing some moving floors and stairs, making progression impossible for these clients.
Citadel of Eternity: Fixed an issue where specials could spawn on invisible stairs.
Arena of Determination: Fixed a spot where enemies would spawn dead. Enough pranking the Nurglites, Tzeentch!
Arena of Determination: Fixed an issue where the purifying torch from the Nurgle curse would spawn in an unreachable spot.

Patch 5.5.0, live now! Quality of Life Update, Skulls 2024