Today we've put out 1.6.0.1 which addresses a few issues introduced in patch 1.6 - The Anniversary Update:
Fixes
Fixed one case which could lead to a crash in the 'Obese Megalodon' on the event level 'A Quiet Drink'.
Changed the quest 'No Bottle Left Unemptied' so that it requires a total of 99 ales to be drunk, across all sessions. The quest tracks all party members, so if the host drinks 20 ales and each client drinks 20 ales, the total tracked progress would be 80 ales for each player's quest progress. Prior to this patch, should a player have drunk 99 ales or more, the quest should auto-complete upon logging in once more during the event.
Fixed erroneous rain sound effects heard whilst playing 'A Quiet Drink'.
Fixed a floating candle on 'A Quiet Drink'.
EDIT: Unfortunately, it seems we didn't catch all instances of the crash. We're actively investigating, but not been able to reproduce the crash once yet internally. Work continues to solve it once and for all, and we apologise profusely for the inconvenience.
It’s Warhammer: Vermintide 2’s first birthday, and to mark the occasion, there’s a special Event Level that has the Ubersreik Five (or Four? Doesn’t matter) head out on the town on good, old fashioned bender.
The new Event Level, called A Quiet Drink, is available now in the Keep. It begins with our rat-smashing heroes on the prowl for some ale. There’s plenty of that scattered throughout the streets, but this being the End Times, there are also plenty of clanrats, zombies, and Chaos Warriors catching the evening air as well. As these things so often do, it culminates with an all-out tavern brawl at a charming little pub called the Obese Megalodon, followed by a mad dash out through some subterranean tunnels.
Fatshark has also produced a spiffy new One Year Anniversary trailer for Vermintide 2, and it’s worth a watch for any Warhammer fan. The whole thing is a gorgeous still-life shot through Vermintide’s rat-infested world depicted in lovingly-painted miniatures and dioramas, as you can see below.
It’s as good a time as any to get into Vermintide 2, which incidentally was PC Gamer’s Co-op Game of the Year in 2018. A new expansion, which is called The Winds of Magic and adds the fearsome Beastmen, is due out this summer. Vermintide 2 is also free to play this weekend, and you can pick it up for 60 percent off the usual price.
Welcome to patch 1.6. Today we celebrate exactly 1 year since the release of Warhammer: Vermintide 2 - and to help lubricate the celebrations we're rolling out a new Event Level - 'A Quiet Drink', and with it a sweet new set of Portrait Frames that are up for grabs for a limited time only!
Thank you SO much for joining us in this adventure over the past 12 months. We hope you enjoy the anniversary celebrations in the form of this special event level and portrait frames. We can't wait to continue the journey with you all with Winds of Magic coming this summer and everything we have in store there and beyond.
New Event Level - 'A Quiet Drink'. Join the heroes on a night out on the town. Surely nothing can go wrong with this plan.
Three new Portrait Frames - With these three new Portrait Frames you can help yourself remember a great night out on the town every time you play - but remember, you'll need to earn them!
Tweaks
We've added a "Limit UI Scaling" toggle. Enabling this option will limit the scaling of the UI relative to your resolution. This will only affect players who play above 1080p resolution.
A warning will now be displayed when host tries to leave a game with players connected to the server.
Clients will now get a message that the host left the game when the host disconnects (eariler they only got a message that they lost connection to the host).
Wielding a career skill weapon (Bounty Hunter's double handgun, Waystalker's trueflight arrows, Pyromancer's burning skull, or Ranger Veteran's smoke bomb) will now cause you to drop any level event item (barrels, oil jugs, cannon balls, etc.). This is done to one: prevent an exploit where you'd get regular movement speed when having your weapon "out", and two: promote characters with movement related skills be more prized for those carrying tasks.
Taal's Horn Keep - Moved the potions and added two bombs to the target dummy area.
Bots will now despawn nearer to the time in which a player assumes control over them. Players will now join the game closer to the group when assuming control of a bot.
Saltzpyre - Due to some unforeseen consequences from the 1.5 releases, and subsequent quick fixes to the Brace of Pistols there's been some more thorough tweaks to them. All known and found cases of minigun-like behaviour has been fixed. Added a slight manual reload window when out of ammo, which means you can start a reload slightly faster than otherwise with a well-timed press of the reload key.
Levels
Athel Yenlui - Fixed a couple of locations where players could get stuck.
Athel Yenlui - Added improved collision to a specific breed of trees to further mitigate situations where Ratling Gunners would shoot you through them.
Athel Yenlui - Fixed a spot where Packmasters could drag a player out of bounds resulting in them being unrescuable.
Athel Yenlui - Fixed a spot where enemies could spawn behind a solid wall and casually just walk through it, taking the group by surprise.
Blightreaper - Fixed so that torches on The Blightreaper cannot be removed when playing with the "Darkness of Heresy" mutator.
Convocation of Decay - Fixed a pretty rare but nevertheless present issue where a Blightstormer would stand behind a particular wall and cast his vortex unapolagetically at the heroes who couldn't retaliate.
Empire in Flames - Fixed some holes in geometry and some sticky navigation locations.
Empire in Flames - Fixed a resapawn point that sent players far too far in to the level.
Empire in Flames - Fixed a spot where enemies could spawn in plain sight.
Empire in Flames - Fixed a rooftop during the escape section on which a boss could navigate and subsequently get stuck.
Festering Ground - Fixed an issue where players who died after a point of no return when following the Nurgle trail could respawn behind and be rendered unrescuable.
Festering Ground - Fixed an issue where enemies couldn't path to players who were stood atop a tent in the camp.
Festering Ground - Fixed various issues where players could see outside the level unintentionally or where some art assets would disappear when viewed from particular angles.
Festering Ground - We've fixed up a case where a boss could spawn right in your face after jumping down to grab the second grimoire.
Fort Beercanbronchioles - Fixed a location where players could get stuck.
Fortunes of War - Fixed a case where players could die and never have the opportunity to respawn.
Fortunes of War - Fixed spot where players could exploit.
Garden of Morr - Fixed a pickup that became disabled after having swapped items at that location.
Garden of Morr - Fixed a floating plank that remained after completing the end event.
Halescourge - Fixed a location where players could get stuck.
Halescourge - Fixed up some places where bots had a tendency to fall off the edge of the map.
Halescourge - Fixed a situation where two patrols could spawn in the same place.
Horn of Magnus - Fixed a flashing light seen in the darkness 'Weekly Event'.
Horn of Magnus - Fixed spot where players could exploit.
Hunger in the Dark - Fixed a couple of locations where players could get stuck.
Hunger in the Dark - Fixed some geometry issues where players could see through the walls to the outside world.
Into the Nest - Fixed a location where players could get stuck.
Into the Nest - Fixed a particular rock which a Ratling Gunner could shoot through.
Righteous Stand - The 'halo' effect over the statue of Sigmar should now disappear as intended once the explosion ends during the final event.
Righteous Stand - Fixed a location where players could get stuck.
Righteous Stand - Fixed the barrel that was in a state of perpetual falling in the barracks. You know the one.
Righteous Stand - Fixed some unusual occlusion seen when traversing the wall at the Southern Axe Bit Garrison.
Taal's Horn Keep - Fixed a couple of picture frames which weren't appropriately secured to the wall.
The Screaming Bell - Fixed so that should a horde spawn behind the door during the Rat Ogre encounter they can now reach the event area.
The Screaming Bell - Fixed a grate in the floor that could swallow up a loot die if an enemy dropped one in there when killed.
The Screaming Bell - The warpfire VFX seen when the bell is 'cut down' should now be visible by a player who joins after the bell has been destroyed.
The War Camp - Fixed a couple of locations where players could get stuck and one where they could fall through the terrain.
The War Camp - Fixed some spots where enemies could spawn under the water and remain untouchable.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where players were met with an SSL_CONNECT_ERROR when attempting to launch the game since patch 1.5.
Fixed a crash that could occur when scrolling through paintings.
Fixed a crash that could occur when transitioning out of the Taal's Horn Keep level.
Fixed crash that could occur during Twitch voting.
Fixed a localisation issue on a particular Okri's Challenge where Saltzpyre's name was spelt incorrectly in Polish.
Fixed an issue where bots would teleport up into the air after having used a lifting platform.
Fixed the bleeding effect on a Rat Ogre from being reduced in quality at too close a distance to the player. Also corrected some scenarios where the bleeding effect would appear to be 'unattached' to the Rat Ogre.
Fixed an issue with bosses that spawn behind walls being pacifists.
Fixed an issue where some Chaos Troll swings ended their collision too early.
Fixed an issue where player characters carrying a barrel would not play their "grabbed by Leech" animation.
Fixed cases where the beam staff, and drakegun VFX would be placed incorrectly when used by a bot.
Bardin & Kruber - Fixed an issue where a pellet from a shotgun could trigger ammo gain talents multiple times.
Bardin & Kruber - Fixed an issue where the spread of Grudge-Rakers and Blunderbusses were higher than intended.
Bardin - Fixed the hammer that wasn't attached to the body of the gun on of one of his Handgun illusions.
Kruber - Added missing trails to pellets on Blunderbuss illusions that were missing them.
Saltzpyre - The 2h sword critical hit damage against frenzied enemies should now be higher than a non-critical hit.
Saltzpyre - Fixed a crash that could occur when using your career skill as Bounty Hunter.
Saltzpyre - Fixed the Witch Hunter Captain hat 'Candlewick Watchtower' that could clip through his forehead.
Saltzpyre - Fixed the animation of the light attack following a push with the Axe and Falchion.
Beta Fixes
Fixed a crash caused when using the Keep paintings menu.
Fixed level lighting which had gone awry on some of the missions.
Fixed crash that could occur on levels when clients interacted with level objects.
Fixed issue with not being able to apply illusions.
Fixed issue with only one player being able to pickup ravaged art scraps.
There's magic in the air in Warhammer: Vermintide 2, but it's unfortunately accompanied by the musky smell of an army of beastmen. Winds of Magic is the co-op misadventure's upcoming endgame expansion and this month's cover star. We sent Phil to visit developer Fatshark to learn how to be a rancher. Or may just to kill some beastmen. Read our exclusive preview to find out!
Everquest is 20 years old, and impressively it's still kicking and even continues to receive updates. Steven grilled the venerable MMO's developers, digging through its origins and the massive impact it had on the fledgling genre. And if you want to keep finding out how the sausage is made, Xalavier Nelson Jr. spoke with Battlefield 5's developers about the creation of its campaign.
Elsewhere, we take a trip back to Final Fantasy 14, exploring the new expansion; Dota Auto Chess gets put in the spotlight; we help you improve your shooting skills, or at least your FPS aiming skills; and Rick continues his Dishonored 2 diary.
Previews this month include Warhammer: Vermintide 2 - Winds of Magic, Final Fantasy 14: Shadowbringers, Outward, Heaven's Vault and more. And we've got loads of reviews for you, including Apex Legends, Metro Exodus, Far Cry: New Dawn and Slay the Spire. This month's free gifts are Vermintide 2 DLC and a Crossout item pack.
Issue 329 is on shelves now and available on all your digital devices from Google Play, the App Store and Zinio. You can also order direct from My Favourite Magazines or purchase a subscription to save yourself some cash, receive monthly deliveries and marvel at our exclusive subscriber covers. This month's is fierce:
This month
Our exclusive Winds of Magic preview.
Everquest's 20th anniversary.
The making of Battlefield 5's campaign
Learn all about the best new Dota mod.
Winds of Magic, Shadowbringers, Outward and more previewed.
Apex Legends, Metro Exodus, Far Cry: New Dawn and more reviewed.
Welcome to Patch 1.6 BETA - bringing you a host of fixes and a few adjustments. We're putting this out for beta this weekend with the hopes we can identify any problematic mods as well general stability ahead of a full release next week.
This patch lays the groundwork for the Anniversary update coming later, stay tuned on March 8th for that!
To access the 5GB beta patch:
Right-click Warhammer: Vermintide 2 in your game list.
Select properties.
Go to the 'Betas' tab and enter the password: 5GBdownloadBETA
Select 1.6_BETA from the dropdown.
Progress will be kept between the beta and live versions of the game.
Switching between BETA and LIVE will result in an additional download each time, but your progress will persist between both versions.
Tweaks
We've added a "Limit UI Scaling" toggle. Enabling this option will limit the scaling of the UI relative to your resolution. This will only affect players who play above 1080p resolution.
A warning will now be displayed when host tries to leave a game with players connected to the server.
Clients will now get a message that the host left the game when the host disconnects (eariler they only got a message that they lost connection to the host).
Wielding a career skill weapon (Bounty Hunter's double handgun, Waystalker's trueflight arrows, Pyromancer's burning skull, or Ranger Veteran's smoke bomb) will now cause you to drop any level event item (barrels, oil jugs, cannon balls, etc.). This is done to one: prevent an exploit where you'd get regular movement speed when having your weapon "out", and two: promote characters with movement related skills be more prized for those carrying tasks.
Taal's Horn Keep - Moved the potions and added two bombs to the target dummy area.
Bots will now despawn nearer to the time in which a player assumes control over them. Players will now join the game closer to the group when assuming control of a bot.
Saltzpyre - Due to some unforeseen consequences from the 1.5 releases, and subsequent quick fixes to the Brace of Pistols there's been some more thorough tweaks to them. All known and found cases of minigun-like behaviour has been fixed. Added a slight manual reload window when out of ammo, which means you can start a reload slightly faster than otherwise with a well-timed press of the reload key.
Levels
Athel Yenlui - Fixed a couple of locations where players could get stuck.
Athel Yenlui - Added improved collision to a specific breed of trees to further mitigate situations where Ratling Gunners would shoot you through them.
Athel Yenlui - Fixed a spot where Packmasters could drag a player out of bounds resulting in them being unrescuable.
Athel Yenlui - Fixed a spot where enemies could spawn behind a solid wall and casually just walk through it, taking the group by surprise.
Blightreaper - Fixed so that torches on The Blightreaper cannot be removed when playing with the "Darkness of Heresy" mutator.
Convocation of Decay - Fixed a pretty rare but nevertheless present issue where a Blightstormer would stand behind a particular wall and cast his vortex unapolagetically at the heroes who couldn't retaliate.
Empire in Flames - Fixed some holes in geometry and some sticky navigation locations.
Empire in Flames - Fixed a resapawn point that sent players far too far in to the level.
Empire in Flames - Fixed a spot where enemies could spawn in plain sight.
Empire in Flames - Fixed a rooftop during the escape section on which a boss could navigate and subsequently get stuck.
Festering Ground - Fixed an issue where players who died after a point of no return when following the Nurgle trail could respawn behind and be rendered unrescuable.
Festering Ground - Fixed an issue where enemies couldn't path to players who were stood atop a tent in the camp.
Festering Ground - Fixed various issues where players could see outside the level unintentionally or where some art assets would disappear when viewed from particular angles.
Festering Ground - We've fixed up a case where a boss could spawn right in your face after jumping down to grab the second grimoire.
Fort Beercanbronchioles - Fixed a location where players could get stuck.
Fortunes of War - Fixed a case where players could die and never have the opportunity to respawn.
Fortunes of War - Fixed spot where players could exploit.
Garden of Morr - Fixed a pickup that became disabled after having swapped items at that location.
Garden of Morr - Fixed a floating plank that remained after completing the end event.
Halescourge - Fixed a location where players could get stuck.
Halescourge - Fixed up some places where bots had a tendency to fall off the edge of the map.
Halescourge - Fixed a situation where two patrols could spawn in the same place.
Horn of Magnus - Fixed a flashing light seen in the darkness 'Weekly Event'.
Horn of Magnus - Fixed spot where players could exploit.
Hunger in the Dark - Fixed a couple of locations where players could get stuck.
Hunger in the Dark - Fixed some geometry issues where players could see through the walls to the outside world.
Into the Nest - Fixed a location where players could get stuck.
Into the Nest - Fixed a particular rock which a Ratling Gunner could shoot through.
Righteous Stand - The 'halo' effect over the statue of Sigmar should now disappear as intended once the explosion ends during the final event.
Righteous Stand - Fixed a location where players could get stuck.
Righteous Stand - Fixed the barrel that was in a state of perpetual falling in the barracks. You know the one.
Righteous Stand - Fixed some unusual occlusion seen when traversing the wall at the Southern Axe Bit Garrison.
Taal's Horn Keep - Fixed a couple of picture frames which weren't appropriately secured to the wall.
The Screaming Bell - Fixed so that should a horde spawn behind the door during the Rat Ogre encounter they can now reach the event area.
The Screaming Bell - Fixed a grate in the floor that could swallow up a loot die if an enemy dropped one in there when killed.
The Screaming Bell - The warpfire VFX seen when the bell is 'cut down' should now be visible by a player who joins after the bell has been destroyed.
The War Camp - Fixed a couple of locations where players could get stuck and one where they could fall through the terrain.
The War Camp - Fixed some spots where enemies could spawn under the water and remain untouchable.
Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where players were met with an SSL_CONNECT_ERROR when attempting to launch the game since patch 1.5.
Fixed a crash that could occur when scrolling through paintings.
Fixed a crash that could occur when transitioning out of the Taal's Horn Keep level.
Fixed crash that could occur during Twitch voting.
Fixed a localisation issue on a particular Okri's Challenge where Saltzpyre's name was spelt incorrectly in Polish.
Fixed an issue where bots would teleport up into the air after having used a lifting platform.
Fixed the bleeding effect on a Rat Ogre from being reduced in quality at too close a distance to the player. Also corrected some scenarios where the bleeding effect would appear to be 'unattached' to the Rat Ogre.
Fixed an issue with bosses that spawn behind walls being pacifists.
Fixed an issue where some Chaos Troll swings ended their collision too early.
Fixed an issue where player characters carrying a barrel would not play their "grabbed by Leech" animation.
Fixed cases where the beam staff, and drakegun VFX would be placed incorrectly when used by a bot.
Bardin & Kruber - Fixed an issue where a pellet from a shotgun could trigger ammo gain talents multiple times.
Bardin & Kruber - Fixed an issue where the spread of Grudge-Rakers and Blunderbusses were higher than intended.
Bardin - Fixed the hammer that wasn't attached to the body of the gun on of one of his Handgun illusions.
Kruber - Added missing trails to pellets on Blunderbuss illusions that were missing them.
Saltzpyre - The 2h sword critical hit damage against frenzied enemies should now be higher than a non-critical hit.
Saltzpyre - Fixed a crash that could occur when using your career skill as Bounty Hunter.
Saltzpyre - Fixed the Witch Hunter Captain hat 'Candlewick Watchtower' that could clip through his forehead.
Saltzpyre - Fixed the animation of the light attack following a push with the Axe and Falchion.
I unexpectedly starting jonesing just the other day for a bout of delightfully grimdark rat-splatting in Warhammery Left 4 Deadlike Vermintide 2. It’s coming up to a year since its release, but I never got around to the various DLC to date.
Perhaps now I’ll wait until the summer, when the hairy crew known as the Beastmen are set to join the fray in what’s being billed as the first actual ‘expansion’ for V2.
We're incredibly excited to announce the first expansion for Warhammer: Vermintide 2 - introducing a brand new enemy faction and new challenges to the game.
As a meteor crashes down in the Reikland, the Beastmen emerge from the depths of the Reikwald forest and rush to the epicenter to claim it as a Herdstone. It is up to the 5 heroes to stop them before a dreadful disaster strikes the Empire.
KEY FEATURES
New Enemy Faction: Beastmen
New Higher Difficulty
Raised Level Cap
5 New Weapons
New Adventure Level
New Game Mode: Winds of Magic - Bring your friends and try to complete a new set of challenges with increasing difficulties in the weaves of the eight Winds of Magic.
You can find out heaps more information over on PC Gamer (linked below), and we'll of course be talking more about this in the coming week as we celebrate the 1-Year Anniversary of Vermintide 2.
Detailed exclusively in the next issue of PC Gamer magazine, Winds of Magic is the first expansion for Vermintide 2, planned for release this summer. The expansion will bring a new enemy faction, a new endgame mode, new difficulty options, new talents and a new weapon type for each character.
In Winds of Magic, Beastmen will join the existing alliance of Skaven and the Rotblood Tribe. Rather than simply being fresh meat to carve through, the Beastmen have been designed to introduce new types of problems for players to tackle. In the prototype build I was shown, Fatshark was testing packs of bow-wielding Ungors, and augmenting standard melee fighters with spear units—providing different ranges of attack.
The Beastmen's elite unit is the Bestigor, a giant, armoured hulk who charges players—also knocking over any other enemies that get between him and his target. Their special, rather than ambushing players like the Gutter Runner or Packmaster, plays more of a support role. The Standardbearer will place totems that will buff nearby enemies with effects like invulnerability, forcing players to deal with the problem before clearing out the hordes.
While Winds of Magic will likely offer a new introductory mission, Fatshark aren't planning to create a new campaign of adventure maps. Instead, the focus of the expansion will be a new mode: an ongoing gauntlet of exponentially more difficult challenges, each with a special modifier related to one of Warhammer's eight winds of magic.
The Winds of Magic is made up of what Fatshark is currently calling "Weaves". Each Weave will be a combination of the following elements:
Map: A chunk of one of the existing adventure maps, remixed to add variety. In the example I was shown, for instance, the map was played back-to-front. These maps will also look different based on which Wind is currently active.
Wind: A modifier based on the Winds of Magic. One example being prototyped for the Jade Wind (the Lore of Life) is that players have constant health regeneration, but take damage each time they hit an enemy.
Objective: Your goal in each Weave is to complete a specific task. Currently being trialled are objectives such as killing a number of enemies of a specific type and defending a capturing a number of control points.
Finale: Once the objective has been completed, a portal will open to an arena where players must survive a final showdown. Examples I was given included battling waves of enemies, or fighting against multiple bosses.
Difficulty: As players progress through Weaves, Fatshark plans to escalate the challenge far, far beyond what is currently available. The base set of Weaves will all be handcrafted, but the plan is for them to repeat at exponentially higher difficulties.
Gold Wind levels have veins of ore bursting through the map.
Fatshark's hope is that Weaves will act more like puzzles—requiring the community to figure out the best careers and weapons to progress. By not randomising them, players can share their tips, and also compete in individual leaderboards for each Weave. Beyond that, a global leaderboard is being discussed, showcasing the players who have made it the furthest through the mode. Ultimately, by continuing to escalate the challenge, Fatshark hopes to create an endgame with no upper limit on the number of Weaves—that ends simply when players are unable to progress any further.
That's the general overview. You'll find more details, including an explanation of the new weapon types (here's a hint for one character: throwable axes) and a more thorough explanation of the new faction and mode, in the new issue of PC Gamer magazine, out March 7 in the UK, and March 26 in the US. Here's a look at the exclusive subscriber cover, which will start arriving at subscribers' doors from tomorrow.
