Warhammer 40K: Darktide Traitor’s Curse Part 2 Update Patch Notes

Warhammer 40K: Darktide has launched the second part of its large winter update today, and there’s a lot to discuss. Here’s everything that changed and added with Warhammer 40K: Darktide’s Traitor’s Curse Part 2 update.

Darktide Traitor’s Curse Part 2 Changes and Additions

New Mission: Warren 6-19 Habzone HL-70-04

The rot goes deeper than we feared, and so must we. Head into the back alleys of the Carnival in a new mission. Wyrmwood agents report increased traitor activity and a worrying rise in Stimm use. Find out what you can and destroy the Moebian Stimm production facilities.

Karnak Twins Ambushing Strike Teams

The Karnak Twins have slipped their leash and have been sighted across Tertium. During missions, players can encounter one of the Twins, either Rinda or Rodin. Be on your guard and steel yourself for the fight to come. This combat encounter will be time-limited. 

New Weapon Marks

Foldable Shovels

• Munitorum Mk III Sapper Shovel
• Munitorum Mk VII Sapper Shovel
• Brute-Brainer Mk XIX Latrine Shovel
• Brute-Brainer Mk V Latrine Shovel

Included in this patch there are new foldable shovels for both the Ogryn and the Veteran. These come with a new Weapon Special that folds the blade, turning the shovel into a makeshift pickaxe for one powerful strikedown attack that then resets the weapon back to its unfolded state after a successful hit.

The new Veteran Sapper shovels use the pointy end that is exposed when folded to make a precise strike that gets stuck in the enemy when hit, and also gives extra damage when the weapon is yanked out. The Ogryns Latrine Shovels goes for a more simple, powerful hammer blow that crushes most opponents.

There are two variations each of both the Sapper and the Latrine shovel giving players different movesets catering to different preferences and playstyles, but focusing mostly on crowd control and horizontal sweeps to compliment the weapon special strikedown attacks that favour single targets.

Chain Weapons

• Orestes Mk XII Assault Chainaxe
• Tigrus Mk XV Heavy Eviscerator
• Cadia Mk XIII Assault Chainsword

For this patch we have decided to make some changes and addition to make chain weapons play nicer. We hope that this will make all chain weapons more appealing and appreciated on all difficulties.

One big problem with the chain weapons was the risk reward of the sawing attacks. The reward rarely outweighed the risk and frustration of getting stuck and unable to defend yourself. We added so that you can dodge cancel out of these attacks, at the cost of stamina and missing out on the big damage pay off at the end. This will make the iconic sawing less risky and make the weapon more flexible and adaptable in combat.

The Orestes Mk IV Assault Chainaxe has been a problematic weapon leaving much to be desired both when it comes to damage output and usability. With this patch we made some changes to it. Along with making the sawing attacks cancelable we made the light chain and the activated heavy attack more vertical to make target acquisition easier and avoid hitting enemies at edges of the screen. It also got a bit more bite in all of its attacks.

We also introduce variations of all chainweapons with the new Orestes Mk VII Assault Chainaxe, Cadia Mk XIIIg Assault Chainsword, Tigrus Mk XV Heavy Eviscerator that mix things up with horde handling lights, strong elite shredding strikedown heavies and fast stab attacks to stagger enemies.

More New Marks

Agripinaa Mk XIV Quickdraw Stub Revolver
A lighter Stub revolver with a quick loader that reloads all bullets at the same time. Compared to the Zarona Mk IIa it has shorter range, is a bit less accurate and has lower damage, but it excels in close range with a higher fire rate and a new braced stance that allows for fanning the gun for even higher fire rate.

Kantrael Mk X Heavy Laspistol
A heavier, heavy laspistol. Compared to the Accatran MG Mk II it has higher damage per shot and slightly longer range for the cost of a slower rate of fire.

Catachan Mk VI Combat Blade
A knife that brings more horde controlling capabilities with sweeping vanguard heavies and a different light chain than the Catachan Mk III; the jab weapon special has also regained some of its lost power and should be able to stagger enemies again on both this Mk VI and the old Mk III  knife.

Player Stimms

Stimms are designed to give a temporary boost that empowers the player for a short while.

Stimms are spawned in a mission at random, similar to how ammo and medical crates are spawned. Players can pick them up and they occupy a new dedicated consumable slot for small items. To select this new slot press [4] on keyboard or [D-pad up] on the controller by default. On some controller layouts you swap between the small item slot (stimms)  and the large slot (medical crates, ammo crates, scriptures and grimoires) by pressing the same button multiple times. As a consequence of this new binding, wielding the Auspex has been moved to [5] on keyboards. Check your preferred controller or keyboard layout in-game to see exact binding.

Actions

• Primary Action – Use it on yourself. 
• Secondary Action (HOLD) – Aim it to use it on another player.
  • When aimed, an outline appears around a player if they are in range for being injected. Players can then choose to inject the outlined player by pressing the Primary Action button.
• Special Action (HOLD) – Gift Item 

All Consumable Items – Gift Consumable
We added the ability for players to be able to give equipped consumable to other players. For a player to receive an item they need to have the corresponding item slot empty. All consumables, excluding the grimoires, have gained this action.

• Special Action (HOLD) – Gift it to another player
  • When aimed, an outline appears around a player if they are in range. Players can then choose to give the consumable to the outlined player by releasing the Special Action button.

Stimm Types

• Med Stimm
  • Restores one health segment, or 25% of max health, whichever one is larger, of health and corruption damage.
  • Med stimms can’t be used on a target, on one self or other players, if the target has no health or corruption damage to restore. 
• Combat Stimm
  • Lasts 15 seconds.
  • Increase in Power 25% (Damage + Stagger Strength).
  • Rending 25% (Armour Penetration).
  • Reduction of Peril Generation -33% (Generate less Peril when using Psyker’s Warp Abilities).
• Celerity Stimm
  • Lasts 15 seconds.
  • Increase in Reload Speed 15%.
  • Reduction in Stamina Costs -25% for Pushing, Blocking, -50% for sprinting.
  • Increases Attack Speed by 20%.
  • Increase the following by 25%:
    • Charge up time of Plasma guns, Psyker’s Brain Burst and Psyker Staves.
    • The speed of which the Psyker’s Smite propagates between enemies.
    • Speed of which the Psyker can throw Shards using Assail.
    • Speed of which the Psyker Quells their Peril.
• Concentration Stimm
  • Lasts 15 seconds.
  • Increases your Combat Ability Cooldown Regeneration speed by +300% (Four times as fast as usual).

Bug Fixes & Tweaks

Talents

Veteran Tree

• Moved Talent Nodes in the lower part of the Tree to reduce the amount of points needed to reach the Keystones, which in turn should open the tree up to more opportunities in making a build. This will require talent trees for the Veteran to be reset.

• Psyker
  • Fixed issue where Psyker Blitz abilities “Assail” and “Smite” would not get re-wielded after using an interaction or being catapulted by an enemy, etc.
  • Fixed issue where switching from Charged ‘Brain Burst’ to Locked ‘Brain Burst’ when affected by ‘Kinetic Resonance’ would cause the charge time to reset.
  • Fixed Issue where ‘The Quickening’ and ‘Prescience’ were both active at the same time.
  • Fixed so that Psyker Blitz ability “Smite” always attacks the centre mass hit zone (torso) and now only the gibbing is randomised instead.
• Veteran
  • Fixed issue where Veteran talent “Onslaught” could be triggered by damage over time effects, like burning or bleeding.
  • Fixed an issue where the Veteran “Infiltrate” combat ability was interrupting and preventing sprint on use.
  • Fixed Issue where ‘Born Leader’ didn’t replenish toughness of allies when the player was at max Toughness.
• Fixed an issue where talents weren’t reset when running a preset with an incorrect talent version.

Weapons & Blessings

General Weapon Tweaks

• Orestes Mk IV Assault Chainaxe
  • Heavy attacks 10% faster and decreased chain times into and from them.
  • Heavy attacks increased cleave.
  • Increased armour damage modifiers:
    • Light: +10% vs unarmoured, +25% vs infested and +50% vs Maniacs
    • Heavy: +10% vs unarmoured, +25% vs infested and +30% Maniacs.
  • Increased damage on initial hit of weapon special activated attacks, light 50 to 70, heavy 10 to 95.
  • Updated light chain.
  • Heavy 3 (reachable from light 3) is now a sweep right attack instead, and its speed was tweaked to match other heavies.
  • When the weapon special is active, Heavy 1 will be a vertical attack.
• Cadia Mk IV Assault Chainsword
  • Added impact on the final damage tick on light sawing so enemies will get staggered after getting sawed.
  • Increased damage on initial hit of weapon special activated attacks, light 10 to 40, stab 10 to 35.
• Tigrus Mk II Heavy Eviscerator
  • Increased damage on initial hit of weapon special activated attacks, light from 0.01 to 85, heavy vanguard from 0.01 to 137.5, heavy strikedown from 0.01 to 160.
• Munitorum Sapper Shovels
  • Downward strikes now prioritise enemies heads above body.
  • Chaining the weapon special attack into itself is now 0.45s faster.
  • Light attack damage increased. Power from 70-140 to 80-160 and armour damage modifier vs maniacs increased 10% on first target.
  • Heavy attack damage increased Power from 100-200 to 110-225.
• Brute-Brainer Latrine Shovels
  • Ogryn Heavy attack Relentless damage profiles armour damage modifier vs unarmored and infested increased from 125% to 133% on first target.
• Ironhelm Mk IV Thunder Hammer
  • Push now combos into Heavy 3, to provide a faster way into a Strikedown heavy attack. Also fixed a bug where Heavy 3 didn’t use the correct damage profile and did not deal more damage than the activated sweep attacks in Heavy 1 and 2. 
  • Buffed base damage for this Heavy activated Strikedown, power 400-800 to 450-900. 12,5% more than h1 and h2, but still less than Crucis Mk II Thunder Hammer. 
  • Push follow up now combos into Heavy 2 instead. 
• Catachan Mk III Combat Blade
  • Increased base power of weapon special jab attack from 150 to 500. Adjusted to attack damage and impact distribution accordingly. Overall this will increase both damage and impact of the attack compared to before.
• Ogryn Cleavers
  • Aligned all Ogryn cleavers to have the chaintime into Heavy 2 at 0.5. Krourk IV was significantly faster. This makes the other 2 cleavers faster and evens them out since the attack is similar.
• Graia Mk IV Braced Autogun
  • Increased base damage for Graia Mk IV Braced Autogun by about 20%, from 60-120 to 72-145.
• Accatran MG Mk II Heavy Laspistol
  • Beams now cause much less suppression when shooting near or when killing enemies.
  • Moved attack speed back to how it was before Patch #13: Class Overhaul.

Dev note: 

The Accatran MG Mk II Heavy Laspistol was already strong without the added rate of fire increase, but it also put it in a place where you would have to click unreasonably fast or almost required a macro to utilise the attack speed, moving it more towards an automatic weapon that should be held to shoot. And that isn’t the heavy laspistol. So to keep it more in a reasonable line with the new Kantrael Mk X Heavy Laspistol, it’s now back to its previous rate of fire.

• Zarona Mk IIa Quickdraw Stub Revolver
  • Carapace armour damage modifier from 60% to 40%.

Dev note: 

We felt that the Zarona Mk IIa Quickdraw Stub Revolver was a bit over performing. It had high armour penetration, especially combined with the “Hand Cannon” weapon blessing and was outshining for example the bolter in this regard. This change brings the revolver’s default armour penetration against Carapace armour to be the same as the above-mentioned bolter and brings it closer to the new Agripinaa Mk XIV.

• Nomanus Mk VI Surge Force Staff
  • Secondary charged chain lightning attack now always hits the centre mass hit zone (torso) and now only the gibbing is randomised instead. Critical hits will give maximum gibbing.
• Lucius Helbore Lasguns
  • You can now hold the primary action button to continuously shoot with Helbore lasguns while in ADS.
• M35 Magnacore Mk II Plasma Gun
  • Fixed issue with the primary attack overcharging differently with different Charge Rate stat values. 

Dev Note: 

The Charge Rate stat should not have an effect on the damage output. It should only affect the duration and speed of the action. We’ve decided to change the cap of the charge level from 0.5 to 0.525 to avoid decreasing the damage output, since it could previously range between 0.5 to 0.525 depending on the amount of overcharge. Primary attacks should now always charge up to, but not overshoot, 0.525 charge level.

• Standard-issue Munitorum Sapper Shovel
  • Fixed issue with Defences stat that was affecting the dodge distance.

Dev note:

Defences stat should not affect dodge distance. Only the Mobility stat should.

• Vraks Headhunter Mk III
  • Fixed issue where the bursts would break and not shoot enough bullets if you had a too high attack speed buff.

Weapon Tweaks – Numbers

Orestes Mk IV Assault Chainaxe

• Light Strikedown Cleave:
  • 1.0-2.0 to 0.01.
• Light Strikedown Power:
  • 1st Target power 50-100 to 80-140.

• Light Strikedown Armor Modifiers:
  • Vs unarmoured 67%-133% to 75%-143%
  • Vs Infested 67%-133% to 85%-165%
  • Vs maniacs 48%-102% to 85%-165%
  • 1st target vs Flak Armour 67%-133% to 103.5%-196.5%
  • 1st target vs Carapace Armoured 24%-56% to 48%-102% 
  • 1st target vs Unyielding 67%-133% to 103.5%-196.5%.
• Heavy Vanguard Attacks Cleave:
  • 4-9 to 5.5-10.5.

• Heavy Vanguard Attacks Power:
  • 1st target 102-170 to 150-300
  • 2nd target  55-100 to 100-200
  • 3rd target 20-75 to 10-55.
• Heavy Vanguard Attacks Impact:
  • 1st target 7-14 to 7-22
  • 2nd target 6-12 to 6-18
  • 3rd target 5-9 to 6-8.

• Light Sawing (last) Power:
  • 50-100 to 50-275.
• Light Strikedown (activated, sawing first hit) Power:
  • 1s target 50 to 70.
• Light Sawing (activated, sawing tick) Power:
  • 50-100 to 50-200.

• Light Sawing (activated, sawing last) Power:
  • 200-400 to 300-500.
• Heavy Vanguard Attacks (activated first hit) Power:
  • 1s target 10 to 95.
• Heavy Sawing (activated, sawing last) Power:
  • 300-600 to 550-1100.

Cadia Mk IV Assault Chainsword

• Light Strikedown Power (activated, sawing first hit):
  • 1s target 10 to 40.
• Light Vanguard Power (activated, sawing first hit):
  • 1s target 10 to 40.
• Push follow up Power (activated, sawing first hit):
  • 1s target 10 to 35.
• Light Sawing (activated last) Impact:
  • 0 to 6-7.

Tigrus Mk II Heavy Eviscerator

• Light Strikedown Power (activated, sawing first hit):
  • 1st target 0.01 to 85.
• Light Vanguard Power (activated, sawing first hit):
  • 1st target 0.01 to 85.
• Heavy Vanguard Power (activated, sawing first hit):
  • 1st target 0.01 to 137.5.
• Heavy Strikedown Power (activated,  sawing first hit):
  • 1st target 0.01 to 160.

Standard-issue
Munitorum Sapper Shovel

• Light Strikedown Armor mod:
  • 1st Target vs Maniac 67%-133% to 75%-143%.
• Light Strikedown Power:
  • 1st Target 70-140 to 80-160.
• Heavy Relentless Power:
  • 1st Target 100-200 to 110-225
  • 2nd Target 60-100 to 75-150.
• Push follow up Power:
  • 1st Target 100-200 to 110-250.

Brute-Brainer Mk III Latrine Shovel

• Light Relentless Power:
  • 3rd Target 30-60 to 40-80.
• Heavy Strikedown Power:
  • 1st Target 150-300 to 190-280.
• Heavy Strikedown Impact:
  • 1st Target 10-20 to 10-24.
• Heavy Relentless Finesse boost Modifier:
  • 1st Target 25% to 35%.

Catachan Mk III Combat Blade

• Special action attack Base Power:
  • 150 to 500.
• Special action attack Power:*
  • 1st Target 20-50 to 12-30.
• Special action attack Impact:*
  • 6-12 to 2-5.

*Dev note: 

The base power level has been increased 150 to 500. Hence the power distribution of the attack and impact have been lowered to reflect the higher base power. Over all this will increase both damage and impact of the attack from before.

Ironhelm Mk IV Thunder Hammer

• Heavy Strikedown Power (activated)
  • 400-800 to 450-900.

Graia Mk IV Braced Autogun

• Attack Power
  • 60-120 to 72-140.

Blessings

Hand-Cannon Blessing

• Reduced rending bonus for all ranks:
  • Tier 1 : from 50% to 30% rending on critical
  • Tier 2 : from 60% to 40% rending on critical
  • Tier 3 : from 70% to 50% rending on critical
  • Tier 4 : from 80% to 60% rending on critical.

Dev note: 

Due to the recent change about rending we noticed that some blessings over-performed. Hand-Cannon is one of them and we decided to tune it down a little. Moreover, the new Agripinaa Mk XIV Quickdraw Stub Revolver when combined with Hand-Cannon was getting rid of the carapace armoured enemies too efficiently while using its braced “fanning” technique.

Ruthless Backstab Blessing

• Reduced rending bonus for all ranks:
  • Tier 1 : from 90% to 70% rending on backstab
  • Tier 2 : from 100% to 80% rending on backstab
  • Tier 3 : from 110% to 90% rending  on backstab
  • Tier 4 : from 120% to 100% rending on backstab.

Dev note: 

Rending bonuses is capped at 100% so tier 2, 3, and 4 were all of the same strength. We’ve lowered tier 1-3 for this to make sense again. This won’t have any impact on the damage output for Tier 4.
Combat

• Fixed issue where projectiles that are sticking to an enemy sometimes did not give full damage when exploding.
• Fixed so that barrels and explosive spheres should not allow for sticky melee attacks from chain or force weapons. This should prevent players from getting stuck at a barrel that will explode in their face when they accidentally hit a barrel with an activated attack.
• Fixed so that sticky attacks on destructible objectives does not cause vertical camera movement.
• Fixed an issue where some destructible signs would stop melee attacks in the air.
• Fixed bug that allowed for greater movement than intended when sawing someone with chain weapons.
• Fixed broken sawing stat for chain weapons. The sawing stat did not always affect damage output of the sawing correctly.
• Fixed a bug where Chainswords and Eviscerators second heavy attacks could be cancelled by holding the sprint button.
• Fixed issue where players weren’t immune to damage for the first few seconds after spawning in an ongoing mission.
• Fixed issue with “Limbsplitter” affecting melee attacks on ranged weapons if you had a melee weapon with the blessing equipped.
• Fixed issue where the ‘Executioner’ blessing would reset when not intended.
• Fixed issue where Tier 4 of weapon blessings ‘Skullcrusher’ and ‘Thunderstrike’ were showing 5% extra damage/stagger instead of the expected 10%.

Enemies

• Fixed issue where a player could be healed by a medical crate after being eaten by a Beast of Nurgle.
• Increased the health modifier for Monstrous Specialists in Maelstrom missions from 25% to 40%.
• Changed the number of Daemonhost kills before disappearing from 2 to 1 on difficulty Uprising, Sedition, and Malice.
• Daemonhosts will no longer spawn in missions on Sedition and Uprising difficulty.

Dev Note: 

Daemonhosts can still spawn on any difficulty when playing with Lights Out circumstance since we spawn extra daemonhosts.

• Lowered Ragers base health from 1200 to 1000.
• Ragers should now be more easily heard.
• Removed instant toughness depletion on touching fire. Slightly increased base damage, increased both flamers action speed and fire size, removed toughness regen when standing in fire and changed damage to tick higher the longer you stand in the fire to compensate.

Dev Note: 

This was done to reduce the frustrations of losing all toughness when briefly touching fire regardless of your toughness amount or damage reductions. Curios that affect bombers/flamers will be more viable as well.

• Set Scab Bomber lower arm/head to unarmored armour type.
• Scab Trapper: Set cooldown when shoot net is aborted, Decreased ranged stagger threshold a lot, increased min spawn range when using dynamic spawns (mission objective spawns are controlled by the event), increased cooldown by 2 seconds.
• Increased brightness of Snipers laser sight beam so that it is more easily visible in outdoor missions.
• Fixed an issue where Crusher and Scab Trapper were spamming VO lines.
• Reduced the amount the Conflict Director ramps up difficulty on low/mid difficulties.

Dev Note: 

This is related to a similar patch note from Part 1, where we increased the rate at which the Conflict Director ramps up difficulties.

Missions

• Added speedrun prevention blockers in the mission Relay Station TRS-150.
• Improved bot and enemy navigation around destructible props in some missions.
• Fixed an issue where the fence gate at the end event of Comms-Plex 154/2f didn’t close properly.
• Fixed a bug that allowed players to fall out of the map instead of dying in Smelter Complex HL17-36.
• Added more chests and pickups locations in Ascension Riser 31, Chasm Station HL-16-11, Chasm Logistratum, Smelter Complex HL17-36  and Enclavum Baross.
• Minor visual fixes and improvements to several missions.

HUD/UI

• Updated sorting options through the various UI menus. Also, the selected option now gets saved so when a player revisits the same screen, the last selected option is the one in effect.
• Addressed issue with End of mission progress bar where the player level experience might not be the one showing in the UI.
• Added an error message when the player selects a preset profile with issues that need to be addressed in the loadout.
• Improvements on the visibility of profile presets button.
• Fixed a case where resetting Interface Settings could set different default values from the initial values.
• Fixed an issue where upgraded versions of a base Ability wouldn’t update the HUD icon for the ability.
• Fixed issue with Veteran keystone talent “Focus Target!” buff icon not showing refresh duration correctly.
• Fixed issue where on screen effects and UI would appear in cinematics.
• Added duration indication for  “Limbsplitter” on the buff icon in the HUD.

Misc

• Fixed some clipping around ears on Veteran “Steel Legion Flak Helmet (Parade Polish)”.
• Fix for Ogryn “Bring the Hurt” penance not progressing while using the “Bombs Away” talent.
• Added custom VFX when sawing into Captain barrier shield.

Warhammer 40K: Darktide is available on PC and Xbox Series X|S. If you’re looking for more information on the game, check out our guide on codes for Warhammer 40K: Darktide.