Season 2 - Lohner's Emporium of Wonders - Curse of Drachenfels

Heroes,

Welcome to Season 2 and 2.1.0 on PC! This update brings new exciting things to Warhammer: Vermintide 2, and we are thrilled for you to delve into the first chapter of the Curse of Drachenfels, and explore what Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders can offer. This update is free for all owners of Vermintide 2.

The full patch notes for 2.1.0 can be found at the end of this page, and if you are curious about the changes from the Season 2 Beta to 2.1.0 you can find it described with patch notes and comments from a Game Designer further down.

The curse of Drachenfels - Old Haunts

Play the 1st chapter of *The Curse of Drachenfels*.

Folk from the villages in the Grey Mountain have gone missing, and Lohner sends our heroes back into the shadows of Castle Drachenfels to have a closer look.

The remaining two chapters of the Curse of Drachenfels will be released during Season 2 and will also be free for all owners of Vermintide 2. Stay tuned for more information and updates.

Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders is open

Lohner is a man of practicality and has always been able to find ways to make a profit even in the direst of situations. There is no situation that cannot be fruitful if you have the right connections, and Lohner seems to have plenty of those considering he has now put up shop in the Keep. His customers? The Ubersreik 5 of course!

Lohner’s Emporium of Wonders is the in-game shop where you will be able to purchase cosmetics. The idea is to allow players to do daily and weekly quests and collect in-game currency to target the cosmetics they want. The store will at launch contain hats and hero skins, but we aim to add more content over time. There will also be a few Premium Cosmetics available for purchase for real-world money as DLCs through Steam.

The new in-game currency is known as Shillings and they can be earned by completing Daily and Weekly Quests. Anyone in possession of one of the existing Vermintide 2 DLC’s will get a one time bag of Shillings for each DLC as well as additional Quests.

Daily & Weekly Quests

Cousin Okri is very generous and has decided to put some extra coins as a reward for the Ubersreik 5 for completing his quests. All his Dwarfen wealth has to go somewhere, as Okri himself has no need of it.

Why did you add premium items?

The reasons behind this are that we want to try to release content that involves gameplay for free while charging for a few premium cosmetics instead. By adding a few select cosmetics that you can purchase for real money you can support the studio and we can create more free content updates, such as the Curse of Drachenfels levels.

And do not worry, there are far more cosmetics available to purchase with Shillings than what is available on the Downloadable Content tab!

Ultimately the purchasable content will function as small DLCs and if you wish you can also purchase them through Steam as with the DLCs Shadows over Bögenhafen and Back to Ubersreik.

QUICK-PLAY WEAVES

A new and swifter way to play weaves. With separate queues divided in 5 difficulties you can now join at any difficulty you would like. The Weaves have also been reshuffled.
Quick-Play Weaves will now also be playable with bots!

New CHallenges & Updated Essence Distribution

- With each new Curse of Drachenfels mission there will be new challenges provided by Cousin Okri.
- We have increased the amount of essence received at completion of Weaves, as well as added a larger essence bonus for completing a Quick-play Weave.

What has changed from the Season 2 Beta?

Thank you for participating in the Beta of Season 2, and we are grateful for all of your feedback. For patch 2.1.0 we have taken a closer look at feedback received regarding the weekly/daily quests as they were reported feeling too grindy, and we agree with you.

Balance was also one of the major feedback points, specifically Battle Wizard Kaboom! builds have been investigated, as well as cooldown reduction from attacks across the board.

Levels

Against the Grain

Fixed an issue where a player who dies during the escape sequence respawns in an illogical location.

Convocation of Decay

Fixed a patrol path to stop a particular patrol spawn from getting stuck.
Fixed a location where enemies would do a long leap to players at a specific location instead of just pathing as expected.
Players should now be able to complete "Feed Me Sinner!" on Cataclysm difficulty.

Fortunes of War

Fixed a spot where players could mitigate enemy attacks entirely.

Old Haunts

Fix for lamp oil and explosive barrels (and general pickup tweaks).
Fixed a situation where a player who died could respawn behind a closed door in the Gargoyle area.
Fixed a few sticky spots where players could get stuck.
Enemies can no longer phase through the closed tavern door in the village area.
There was a particular place where bots loved to suicide. We gave them some jump assist in this area.
Fixed a few hang-ledges so players don't just drop off an edge to immediate death where intended.

Skittergate

Fixed a spot where the AI navmesh was floating ever so slightly above the terrain.

Weaves

Changed how bar is filled to complete the Weaves, now objectives are always 80% of the bar and the rest of the 20% is collected by killing at least 80% enemies spawned by terror events (roamers are worth very little)

Enabled Bots for use in Quickplay Weaves.

General Tweaks / Fixes

Various Kerillian and Kruber weapon illusions displayed the wrong illusions, most notable in first person - this has been corrected.
Added a bit more constraint on random item drop locations on player death so they would be far less likely to clip into the floor and disappear.
The painting selection UI now shows which paintings are in use throughout your Keep.
Changed the Kill Critters quest so that critter kills are recorded for all players in the group not just the critter-killer.
Complete 3 daily quests and "Complete the weekly event" will always be available each week.
Changed weekly challenge requirements to always have the same requirement values, eg. if you get the painting scraps weekly event it should always be 10.
Reduced the number of painting scraps required to complete the associated weekly quest to 10 from 10, 20, 30.
Fix for darkness Weekly Event so that it doesn't crash when closing the game or ending a mission.
We fixed a crash caused by the game having a level selected that doesn't exist in the build a player is playing on (such as when switching from beta to live after having played a beta mission).
Fixed cases where completing a host migrated game would reload the level even after pressing "Back to Keep".

Combat Tweaks / Fixes

Reduced the range of Ungors normal attacks and running attacks.
Smiter stagger damage talent no longer prevents stagger damage on targets after the first. Damage will be calculated as normally.
Witch-Hunt and similar effects (Blade Barrier, Hunter etc) now lasts up to 15 seconds (the full duration of the tag). Durations refresh should the target be tagged again. A tagged target can be tagged again to re-apply the debuff.
Reduced the push power of the Tuskgor Spear from a heavy (think shield weapons) to a medium push (think 2h hammers).
Fixed an issue where bleeding effects would not stacks properly (Witch Hunter Captain Flense, Waystalker Serrated Arrows).
Cooldown reduction on attacking rebalanced - All non-melee attacks now only grant Career Skill cooldown on the first target hit. This has been problematic with the Battle Wizard and Shade careers primarily where they could use area damage ranged weapons (Conflagration/Fireball Staff and Hagbane Shortbow) to gain an extreme rate of career skill cooldown recovery. This change should tone down the outliers without significantly affecting other careers.
We've looked to smooth out the reliability of the system which weighs enemy damage with enemy density.
Heleborgs' Tutelage (Mercenary) and Smite (Zealot) will no longer have their critical strikes consumed by pushing.
Fixed huntsman longbow not triggering reload when the player gets interrupted during firing action, but before the reload event gets triggered

Weapons

Two-Handed Hammers - Light attack 1 weapon switch window start increased from 0.5 to 0.75 seconds.
Two-Handed Hammers - Light attack 1 chain to Light attack 2 reduced from 0.85 to 0.7.

“A Slayer build utilizing two 2h hammers together with the technique known as QQ-canceling was outperforming almost every other career in the game when it came to armored enemy DPS. To compensate for this without reducing the power of two-handed hammers, which otherwise is in a favorable spot right now, the time where you can start your weapon switch with the weapon has been slightly increased for the first light attack, and the chain time into the second light attack has been decreased. This should reduce the power of the QQ-canceling technique slightly for 2h hammers while increasing the output of the weapon when using it without the technique.” - Kasper, Game Designer

Greataxe - Light attack 1 to light attack 2 chain window has been reduced from 0.7 to 0.65.
Greataxe - Light attack 2 to light attack 3 chain window has been reduced from 0.65 to 0.6

“Greataxe has a similar function as Two-Handed Hammer and has been tweaked in a similar fashion. It already had a slightly slower equip window so it has been unchanged, only the attack timings have been buffed in this case. “ - Kasper, Game Designer

Beamstaff - Stopped resetting beam staff hit counter if player hits environment, still resets if player hits an enemy (dead or alive)
Tuskgor Spear - Reduced the push power from a heavy (think shield weapons) to a medium push (think 2h hammers).

Talents

Sienna

Battle Wizard

Fires From Ash - Now has a 0.5 second internal cooldown.
Kaboom! - No longer triggers the improved explosion at Siennas starting position.
Kaboom! - Reduced the radius of the improved explosion from 8 to 5.

“Utilizing Fires From Ash together with the talent Kaboom! allowed close to 100% uptime of Fire Walk when playing Battle Wizard. With the other changes to cooldown reduction this had to be targeted to stay in line with other similar talents.Kaboom! could in some cases apply double the powerful burning effects to enemies with a recent change. This proved too powerful in practice and has been reverted to the previous state.” - Kasper, Game Designer

Full Patch Notes 2.1.0

UI / UX

Items now stay in the Recipe slot when re-rolling for properties and traits.
Now correctly removing the item from the Recipe slot after applying a weapon illusion.
Now sorting quest and challenges in Okri's Challenges after: Claimable < Available < Completed.
Now presenting rarity on reward items in Okri's Challenges Weapon illusion rewards are now presented correctly in Okri's Challenges.
Fixed bug with item reward popup showing item rewards without a frame.
[ALT + ENTER] to toggle full-screen no longer triggers the chat.
Fixed issue with option for font size not been working.
Added support to scroll chat text with mouse wheel.
Polished on the visual look of the chat.
Added new font rendering to the chat to make it more sharp and now supports multiple colors.
Changed size of chat window (From 600x200 to 500x250).
Private/public checkbox in tab-menu now only says "Private" to make it clear if game is set to private or not.
Loading screen subtitles do now continue after loading screen is complete as long as the VO is still playing.
Tweaked font sizes and text color of matchmaking status UI. Added sound events for weave game mode menu.
Adding missing variations of the potions for Razer Chroma.

LEVELS

Against the Grain

Fixed some illogical respawn points.
Added and adjusted collisions to prevent Out of Bounds.

Dark Omens

Fixed various spots where heroes would just fall to their death instead of hanging off the ledge.
Adjusted pickups that were outside of the play area.
Moved a grenade spawn spot that was obstructed by a rock.
Fixed a location near the 2nd Grimoire where bots behaved frustratingly.

Empire in Flames

Added and adjusted collisions to prevent Out of Bounds.

Fort Brownbrogues

Fixed a respawn point that could send players back beyond a point of no return.
Fixed spot where cannonball could go out of bounds and become unobtainable.
Fixed a spot where heroes would just fall to their death instead of hanging off the ledge.

Garden of Morr

Dying near the first Tome should no longer spawn you near the third Tome.
Fixed various sticky spots.

Horn of Magnus

Fixed some illogical respawn points and sticky spots.
Stopped Beastmen spawning behind the portcullis during the barrel event.

Hunger in the Dark

Fixed various sticky spots and hang-ledges.

Into the Nest

Fixed various sticky spots and Out of Bounds locations.

The Pit

Added and adjusted collisions to prevent Out of Bounds.

Skittergate

Fixed an Out of Bounds that could lead to a soft lock.
Fixed a location where bots could get stuck.
Fixed a spot where enemies could not path to the player during the final encounter.

War Camp

Fixed some sticky spots.
Fixed a crash that could occur during the Bodvarr encounter.
Adjusted 'Nav Mesh' (AI Pathing) to avoid enemies spawning beneath the water.

Weaves

'Death' Wind: Now only damages permanent (green) health, and gives you temp health equivalent to the health lost. Temp health degenerates at an increased rate.
'Life' Wind: The Thorn Bushes now deal more damage and last longer, but no longer slows and despawns after a single proc.
Fixed various sticky locations, exploitable spots, hang-ledges, collisions and deathzones.
Fixed reported scenarios where there was not enough Essence to fulfill an objective. We've tweaked how we calculate how much each enemy killed contributes to the overall bar in a weave to be more consistent and reliable.
Reduced the severity of damage scaling when reaching beyond Weave 60.
We've revisited the spawning / end events on certain levels (No more exploding loot rats, for now...)

ENEMIES

Fixed cases where the Packmaster would not hoist a grabbed player when it had been re-directed by another player.
Fixed headbutt and shove attacks of the Minotaur having 2 overlapping and continuous hitboxes resulting in potential double hits.
Blood explosion particles from Rasknitt and Gutter Runner death animations are now removed if blood and gore setting is is set to 'Off'.
Fixed an issue where the Chaos Spawn's 'life leech' grab did not scale properly on Cataclysm. Now restores 400 health when the Spawns eats a player, up from 60.
Updated Berserker and Plague Monk combo attack face rotation to be "flat", so if player is at different elevation the attacker wouldn't tilt.
Updated Berserker and Plague Monk combo attack behavior to keep both move target and attack target until the combo is over, so they should no longer switch to closest target for neither attack nor the movement until the combo attack is over.
Ungor Archer's arrows can now be blocked by all melee weapons within block angle. (Same as shield weapons functions currently).

MISC. BUG FIXES

Fixed situations where players could get stuck in the Bridge of Shadows if a connecting player failed to properly connect to the lobby.
Fixed an issue where the torch could spawn on downed bots if Darkness was triggered in Twitch Mode.
Fixed the Twitch Darkness Mutator, so that the torches that are spawned are also despawned when the mutator ends.
Fixed damage statistics not being tracked for remote clients when hitting Trolls.
Fixed 'Slay all Lords with specific weapons' achievements not working on Cataclysm.
Decanter' Trait - Fixed an issue that caused the concentration potion to reduce cooldown at a 50% increased rate when using Decanter. Now restores cooldown at the same rate as without the trait.
Fixed various crashes.

HEROES

Tweaked secondary weapon actions (block/aim/charge). Minimum action time has been reduced from average 0.3 seconds to 0.2 seconds. Weapon switch start for defensive actions has been reduced from average 0.4 to 0.2 seconds for blocking and 0.0 second for aiming/charging (instantly cancelable). This should make weapon switching while performing defensive actions more responsive without making offensive canceling notably stronger.
Decay speed of temp hp increased by 100%.
Temp Health on Cleave - Increased from 0.75 health for each target damaged to 1 health for each target damaged. 50% first target penalty removed.
The talents that increased range of the leaping/teleporting Career Skills caused a lot of problems with out of bounds and mission skips so they have been replaced. (see Bardin and Sienna notes below)

Kruber

Kruber's spear now hits units closer to him. Previously he could miss attacks on enemies in very close proximity with sweeps and stabs. Overall attack range remains the same but should now land more consistently up close.
1h Hammer - Fixed an issue where the third attack in the light chain had inconsistent chaining into heavy attacks.
Mace and Sword - Tweaked chain windows after push slightly to counteract a situation where a light attack could be inadvertently chained into.
Empire Longbow - Fixed an issue where it could still get pushed out of the zoomed shot if you had bonuses to attack speed active.
Foot Knight - Counterpunch - Reduced the duration of free pushes after blocking from 2 seconds to 1.

Saltzpyre

Repeating Crossbow - Fixed the triple shot having a gap where actions couldn't be chained.
Zealot - Heart of Iron passive ability is now active from start instead of on cooldown.

Bardin

Drakegun - Fixed an issue where the light shot of the weapon could sometime prioritize the wrong targets, resulting in them not being hit. Should now always hit targets, even if they are very close to the player.
1h Mace - Fixed an issue where the third attack in the light chain had inconsistent chaining into heavy attacks.
Slayer - Increased base health from 100 to 125 Slayer - Grimnir's Focus - Changed, now grants a 40% damage reduction for 5 seconds after landing a charged attack. The old mechanic of taking reduced damage while charging attacks worked poorly in practice and has been replaced with a more clear one. The damage reduction has been tweaked to compensate for the more reliable uptime and the Slayers increased healthpool.
Slayer - Bounding Leap has been replaced with 'Crunch!' - Increases the stagger strength of the impact of Leap by 100%.

Kerillian

Shade - Fixed an issue that caused Kerillian to gain guaranteed crits for 1 second after unstealthing while using Cloak of Pain.
Dual Daggers, Sword and Dagger - Bleed effect no longer stacks.