Noob Survival Guide

There are quite a few attacks on every weapon. Light attack is a quick left click, heavy attack is hold left click, block is hold right, clicking attack while blocking will do a push, holding attack while blocking will do a push attack. A few weapons also have a special attack, V is the default special key.

Charging heavy attacks does not increase damage. Just hold the attack button until the wind up animation changes. *For all melee weapons besides rapier and war pick which have charge points*

The red shield when hitting things means that you are not doing damage due to armor. Change attacks to penetrate armor. (That means a heavy attack on most weapons)

Vermintide 2 has fantastic audio queues for nearly every event type. Specials, like the assassins, have directional sound letting you know where they are coming from. Patrols have marching sounds and can be avoided. Every monster has unique music and roars when they first spawn.
Note: It is designed for decent headphones. I play with a 7.1 sound bar setup and it also works but not quite as well. Make sure to change audio setting to match your setup.

Block is 360 degrees, each weapon has an inner block angle that costs less stamina (shields).

Block while reviving, being revived, being rescued, or being pulled up from a ledge. This allows your block to start before your HUD appears thus preventing instant death while standing up.

After going down a few times depending on difficulty, your screen may turn greyscale. This is called having a wound and means you will die instead of being downed.

There are two types of healing items. Healing Draughts and Medical Supplies. Healing Droughts can be used quickly or passed to allies. Medical supplies take time to use and can be used to heal yourself or allies.
Medical supplies will clear your wound when you use them on an ally, this makes using them on other people stronger.

Most abilities (F) can be used while reviving and using medkits. This can make dangerous revive positions safer.

Hold space in the rewards screen to make it go faster. Also make sure to click return to keep at the end.

In the inventory, click the gear icon next to an item to get expanded info along with upgrade and reroll options.
This shows details on what properties and traits are available. It is also the best way to reroll stats imo

In the inventory, when viewing items for a slot, click F to favorite an item. This will prevent it from appearing in the scrap menu. Now you can use the quick scrap buttons without fear.

Hold the social wheel button (T) while looking at an item to tell a bot to pick it up.

Most weapon combos rely on either an input chain or cancel. This gets complicated fast. The simple version is that each weapon has swing patterns. Blocking will reset the pattern to the beginning.

Occasionally doing a push helps keeps enemies staggered. (Bonus points if it can fit into a swing pattern)

Push the armor rats with a shield serval times to make them drop their guard, or do multiple heavy attacks against them in a short amount of time.

All level 5 talents are about generating temporary health (temp). The most consistent are: temp on kill (Execute), temp on stagger (Second Wind), and temp on multiple enemies hit (Carve, it is actually 1hp per enemy hit up to 5 then 0.5 per enemy hit up to 10 which is far more consistent that simply “multiple”). The other options work but often require specific builds.

All level 15 talents involve extra power or stagger effects. Some are a lot stronger than others.
Most people agree:
Assassin > Smiter > Enhanced Power > Mainstay > Bulwark.
*Note: Only enhanced power increases ranged and DoT damage. The other talents are melee only*

Bots use your level and build on that class. You can also use the loadout system to save a specific bot build. This means leveling all of the characters is necessary to have decent bots

There are a few ways to increase XP. The simplest are to play higher difficulties and collect books.

Books are hidden on each map, there are three tomes and two grimoires (grims). Tomes take the healing slot and can be dropped. Grimoires lower all players’ max health and are destroyed when dropped or if the player dies. You can get curse resistance on trinkets to make the grims take less health.
Books also increase the quality of the chest received on a win.

The official wiki[vermintide2.fandom.com] has lots of decent guides and advice (especially on the bosses). The official discord[discord.gg] is decently active and helpful. The official forums[forums.fatsharkgames.com] are the best place to report bugs and technical problems, it also has some guides for technical debugging.

Mess with settings! There are many settings to mess with, but there are a few I think make a huge difference:

• player outlines set to always on
  
• head bobbing and camera shake set to off so that aiming is possible
  
• Camera movement options control how the screen moves with actions. I turned all these off personally This is preference, but I have noticed most of my friends turn off dodge motion (other action) but like weapon motion (swings or impact).
  
• Equipment & Talents Privacy set to Public. This will let other players see your current build in the Tab menu, allowing them to play around you.
  
• Enable Detailed UI will add numbers to health and many other things. There are other cool settings near this like Kill Confirm Crosshair and Persistent Ammo Count
  
• Make sure to check the default network settings. Sometimes it defaults to really small upload speeds for no good reason.
  
• Graphics also greatly change how the game feels and plays. The important ones to call out are Bloom and Sharpness. Bloom can make effects like fire overly bright and painful to look at. Sharpness is way too sharp for some people.
  
• *Note: There are many other settings that can give you a competitive edge, however there is also a good amount of preference when it comes to settings. There are quite a few guides out there just about settings. I originally followed this video but it is a little outdated.*

Also, this may sound strange, but use space for dodge only and set something else, like shift, for jump. Dodge is used far more often and jumping instead of dodging can be a death sentence.
*Note: This is a hot take, many great players do not separate these binds*
When jump and dodge are on the same key, running out of effective dodges will cause a jump instead of ineffective dodge. The first two ineffective dodges can still be useful and allows you to fully control direction unlike a jump.

Tag everything (tap T by default, hold for social wheel)

Use quick swap when changing weapons as this muscle memory will help later (q is the default key). Alternatively, the direct Wield Melee Weapon and Wield Ranged Weapon keys work well when customized to comfortable keys (scroll up + scroll down is popular).

Play all the classes to at least level 5 while doing all of the Helmgart missions in order. This will let you try each character, have bots with temporary hp talents, and complete the base campaign which will unlock DLC modes.

(Winds of Magic DLC) Once all Helgart missions have been completed on any difficulty, immediately beat Dark Omens and then complete as many ranked weaves as possible (at least 5). This allows you to gain the weave xp (essence) from all other game modes saving grind time.

Good news!! The progression rework means that all you need to do is play the game any way you want! Please play every map once before taking on the grind! TBH that might be enough to level you up nowadays anyways.

You get more XP:

• the more levels you have across characters on your account (commendation bonus)
  
• the first time you play a map on a character (first time bonus)
  
• the higher difficulty you do (difficulty bonus)
  
• Collecting books, 3 tomes and 2 grimoires, is a flat xp increase (finding books is kind of hard, the best way is having an experienced player show the locations. The official wiki has an ok book guide[vermintide2.fandom.com], but finding a video on youtube might be better)

*Note: Beating the weekly chaos waste on recruit or higher also gives an extra 5000 bonus xp once each week.*

Make friends, many of these strategies need other players and are easier with experienced people to carry. The LFG channels in the official verm discord is a great place to start.

Do this before the big level grind!!! (Winds of Magic DLC) Once all Helgart missions have been completed on any difficulty along with Dark Omens, complete as many ranked weaves as possible (at least 5). This allows you to gain the weave xp (essence) from all other game modes saving grind time in the long run.

Mix in other playing between grind sessions. Going full grind mode can burn you out.

Find a character and weapons you like. Starting the leveling grind on your favorite character makes it seem much faster.

*Note: chest power is based on level so try to level at least one character to ~30, however it might be based on level of current character when the chest is earned. I need a noob to experiment with
TLDR; be around level 30 or higher for grinding gear* Getting good gear is a bit of RNG, but it is mostly playing the right thing. You need to play champ+ to get power 300 items. The drop rates also change based on difficulty and quality of chest. You can check drop rates and power range in the difficulty select screen by hovering the chests (the power ranges change as you level, but the rarity rates should stay the same).

Chest quality can be increased by playing quickplay, collecting books, and collecting loot dice, (and a random bonus).

The classic way to get gear is quickplay legend book runs. This has been fading in popularity as on a loss you get nothing and honestly it is often harder than playing cata.

Most people now play chaos wastes for gear where you get 3 max quality chests on a win, and up to 2 chests on a loss. It is a roguelike mode where your gear does not matter, so the initial vet to champ jump is also easier. The only downside is that bots do not scale with the roguelike system so this does require players (can use quickplay to get random players).

The fastest way to get chests is to speed run a short map on a deed. This will give 2-3 chests depending on the deed. Use the two accepted deed glitches to play deeds any number of times on any map and difficulty.
The fastest maps (without exploits) are Screaming Bell, Khazukan Kazakit-ha, Against the Grain, and Halescourge.
To play a deed any number of times, do not use them as host. Have someone else host then use your deeds. (Alternatively, you host and have other players use deeds)
To play a deed on any map or difficulty, have at least two players in the lobby. The non-host needs to start a deed, and do not have the host accept. The person who started the deed needs to open the map again. Have everyone accept the deed. The person in the map can select a new mission and difficulty. This will bring up a new accept screen, but the deed effects will still apply. (you can do quick play with this glitch, but that is frowned upon in the community unless you are a full lobby or are running the host qp mod)

I recommend grabbing some sanctioned mods for feedback and stats. By no means mandatory, but helpful. There are around 32 mods that the devs allow on the official server. They are all through steam workshop.
My recommendations are: Vermintide Mod Framework, Armory, Dodge Count UI, crosshair kill confirmation, numeric UI, Friendly Fire Indicator, persistent ammo counter, Parry Indicator, crosshairs fix

Choose a well known strong build. Any build can be good, but this will free up complexity to learn the basics.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2034609078 *Note: Royale w/ Cheese goes into a lot of detail about how to make builds. Feel free to read all of it, but it is not necessary. They link to specific builds on https://www.ranalds.gift/builds/likeCount that can be copied for simplicity.*

Practice weapon combos. You should try to get a feel for the weapon (especially if you run the meta swift slaying where attack speed can change).
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1821186836

Learn horde control and management. On most builds the small normal enemies should be viewed as potential temp health (but one will always stab you in the back). Controlling hordes relies on stagger and movement. The more enemies you can stagger, the less often you have to move. This makes large cleave weapons like hammers and great swords feel safer in hordes. Other weapons, like daggers, rely on pushes to start staggering. Then you can use cleave attacks and dodges to control the horde. There are two main strategies when attempting to control a horde.

Kiting: The goal in kiting is to continuously move around a large area while being focused on aggression. Once the horde is forming a circle that can be dogged around, the fight is basically won. This is very hard. It can also not be possible due to location and game mode. Other players changing enemy movements can make this near impossible.

Holding: The goal in holding is to find a safe wall or corner (safe meaning that enemies can not spawn from it) and defend that position. The idea here is to reduce the angle of attacks that enemies can make against you. If you move too close to a wall or run out of space to dodge, then it is normally game over. This is most effective when the entire team holds together.

Learn movement vs block trade offs. Dodging is preferable to blocking. Blocking takes stamina which is better served for pushes and push attacks. This does not mean never block. This is where most of the initial skill building will happen.

The official wiki[vermintide2.fandom.com] has links to some of the best guides and lots of advice (especially on the bosses) but it can be hard to navigate.
The official discord[discord.gg] is decently active and helpful.
The official forums[forums.fatsharkgames.com] are the best place to report bugs and technical problems, it also has some guides for technical debugging.

YouTube beginner guide playlist with extra depth in certain areas (sometimes linked in launcher)

Good video that covers most of the information you will need for base game
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qvVA8ooPqLI
well known strong builds
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2034609078
weapon combos
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1821186836&searchtext=weapon+combo
How to fight bosses
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1723437775
Make the bots better
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2068782454&searchtext=bots
Chaos Wastes Boons
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3647142710
Attack Mechanics in Depth
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=437LsMszV8U
ReShade[reshade.me] for better graphics (imo: base game bloom and sharpness are terrible)

Breakpoint calculator

Movetech spreadsheet[docs.google.com]

Too many words about Billhook[docs.google.com]

Everything to know about versus (AkGSkul Guides)
https://steamcommunity.com/id/AkGSkul/myworkshopfiles/?appid=552500&section=guides

Level 15 Talents Explained

official wiki book guide[vermintide2.fandom.com]

Intro to Modded Cata3 DWONS[docs.google.com] (also like guidance on team comp and stuff that is not necessary for base game diffs but if your really want more info this would be a good start. If you want to get into modded, seek out the modded community discord)

Data miner summary of everything (outdated)

But... they also share the decompiled script code[github.com] so like read it yourself if you want

Graphics and technical specs (outdated)

Settings in depth (outdated)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNUmjpK-YV8