Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Flawless Execution penance, the easy way

Intro

So, our goal is to get the penance Flawless Execution, which requires completing 15 missions in a row without ever going down in Malice or higher difficulties.

This penance is not inherently hard to get.

However, its just statistically not likely to occur during normal gameplay, due to a single mistake resetting the entire streak back to zero.

So, we will want to minimise the chances of that happening as much as possible, and there are several methods we can employ to do so, which combined should almost guarantee the completion.

Know Your Enemy

First, we need to know what actually breaks the streak.

It will break when:

You fall over the ledge into abyss and die

Your main healthbar goes to zero, you get incapacitated with a temporary healthbar and need a teammate to pick you back upHanging off the ledge won't break it, that is if someone picks you up before you fall and die.

Getting pounced by a dog won't break it immediately, but it will continue chewing you, so eventually it will incapacitate you and break the streak, if someone doesn't kill or stagger it.

Getting netted also doesn't immediately break it, but you will be getting attacked and will eventually go down too unless rescued.

With all that in mind, our primary enemies are:

The Ledge

The most dangerous enemy you could possibly face, and the most likely way your streak could end. Avoid at all costs, never stand near the ledges if possible. The ledge is a great equaliser, no matter how tough your build is, the ledge brings an instant death to all.

Explosive Barrel

By itself not particularly dangerous, but combined with the ledge, it becomes the most dangerous thing in the entire game. Explosive barrel launching you straight into abyss is a #1 way to end your streak. If you see a barrel anywhere near the ledge, either shoot it immediately if its far away (provided that there are no teammates near it), or quickly get away from it if its near you. Never stand between the barrel and the ledge, as one stray bullet is all it would take to send you to your doom.

Disablers - dogs and trappers. Shoot the trappers, dodge to the side to avoid the net. You need a slight delay before dodging, as there is a delay between the trappers netgun sound and her actually shooting it at you, dodge too early and she will shoot you after the dodge. Shoot the dogs, dodge to the side to avoid the pounce, and can also push the dog away mid-jump. As long as at least one teammate is around, should not be a major issue.

Crushers and Maulers - specifically their overhead attacks. If such an attack would reduce toughness to zero, it will deal its full damage to your HP as if your toughness didn't exist. You can eat one such attack thanks to the build that will be discussed later, but 2-3 such attacks can still kill you. However, you should not be eating multiple such attacks, ever.Other enemies:

Bosses - not a problem for our build at all. You can easily solo a regular boss without even blocking or dodging much, simply by hitting it with heavy melee attacks, since each attack restores 20% of your toughness. Even if you accidentally trigger a Demonhost, you should be able to kite it with dodges + blocks long enough for your team to kill it. However, this all changes with a presence of a ledge - absolutely ensure you are NEVER between a boss and a ledge, as bosses have attacks that can launch you a very long distance.

Ragers - just push them and they fall down. Or kill them with rocks. Ripper Gun works fine too.

Snipers - you can eat several sniper shots. However, just slide instead.

Poxbursters - push them away. Even if you fail, you should have enough toughness to tank one with no health damage.

Mutants (Chargers) - side dodge when they are about to grab you. Also, one heavy charged pickaxe attack should generally be enough to kill in one hit.

Other enemies - low threat.

Missions

Mission selection is extremely important for this achievement.

There is an enormous difference between maps, namely with how many instant death ledges there are in them, ranging from none to everywhere.

So, we will simply avoid playing on maps with ledges. Its that simple.

Despite that, it is the most impactful thing you can do to guarantee the completion of Flawless Execution penance.

Only full missions count for the streak.

So, never use Quick Play, as it has a chance to put you in a mission in progress, which won't count for penance progress, but going down there WILL end your streak!

Mission difficulty - Malice, the minimum allowed.

Higher difficulty = more chances to die.

Preferably don't pick missions with difficulty increasing modifiers.

A pack of 20 dogs will end your mission very quickly if not dealt with.

Never pick Maelstroms.

Check the level of people in your team.

30+ - most likely will be a cakewalk, especially if its a bunch of vets shooting everything on sight

25-30 - fine

20-25 - should be fine majority of the time, but can become problematic if no one knows what they are doing

below 20 - if just one player then might not be a huge issue, if 2 or even 3 - leave the mission, as this team will increase your chances of failure drastically. Like, these can be people who get incapacitated every 2-3 minutes and can not stay alive at all.

below 15 - active hindrance to the mission, low chance of completion, leave.Recommended missions - maps with either no or very few ledges.

Comms-Plex (Espionage) - the best mission, very safe.

Chasm Logistratum (Raid)

Ascension Riser 31 (Strike)

Consignment Yard (Raid) - has some ledges at the end, but you can easily avoid being near them

Mercantile (Raid) - has small number of ledges, but mostly safe

Warren (Disruption)

Chasm Station (Assassination) - just your typical London tube. Has a bridge in the beginning, safe after that.

Enclavum Baross (Strike) - has one bridge

Relay Station (Disruption) - has some ledges in the first half of the mission, safe after that

Power Matrix (Repair)Missions to avoid - do not run these!

Clandestine Gloriana (Repair) - NO! Absolutely not! Abyss on the left side in the beginning + lots of explosive barrels everywhere + can spawn the boss right away. You can be thrown off the ledge within the first 5-10 seconds into the mission. Don't ask how I know this.

Silo Cluster (Strike) - lots of ledges, bridges and explosive barrels. Very dangerous.

Hab Dreyko (Investigation) - lots of ledges and stairs

Smelter Complex (Repair) - has ledges

Archivum Sicorax (Espionage) - has ledges and stairs

Refinery Delta-17 - has ledges, especially in the final zone, very dangerous.

Magistrati Oubliette (Assassination) - has ledges

Vigil Station Oblivium (Espionage) - has ledges

Excise Vault Spireside-13 (Investigation) - has ledges

Rolling Steel - train, ledges everywhere

The Build

Flawless Execution penance, the easy way image 64

Flawless Execution penance, the easy way image 65

Flawless Execution penance, the easy way image 66

The condition for Flawless Execution fail is your HP reaching zero, so we're getting as much HP as we can, hence playing an Ogryn. You should end up with somewhere around 450+ HP

We're making the tankiest, least likely to die character possible.

On Malice, you can kill almost all enemies with 1-2 pickaxe hits without any damage nodes, so putting almost all nodes into increasing survivability is fine.

We are simply picking everything health and toughness-related from the tree.

Key nodes:

Big Friendly Rock - great way to kill priority targets. If you see any Ragers / Crushers / Maulers / etc., toss a rock at them.

Indomitable - your rush ability. Can clear a horde or knock down any priority targets, allowing you and your team risk-free kills.

Stay Close! - more toughness regen, team-wide. Also somewhat contributes to the "Dream Team" achievement - complete 100 missions without anyone being downed.

No Pushover - with this pushing Ragers will knock them down like bowling pins, making them a complete non-issue.

Feel No Pain - even more toughness regen and toughness damage reduction.

Pickaxe

Either Borovian or Karsolas, they have different attack chains, try both.

Perks: Flak and Carapace Damage

Blessings: Confident Strike (more toughness gain) and Headtaker or Slaughterer (more damage)

Just a great weapon in general, good against all types of enemies.

Use heavy attacks against bosses, carapace armoured enemies, or when you need more toughness gain, otherwise light attacks can quickly kill everything else. Slide attack will one hit kill common enemies.

Ripper Gun Mk V

Mk V variant is better for long range shots, which is mostly what we'll be using it for.

It has lower spread + less damage fall-off over range.

Perks: Flak and Maniac Damage

Blessings: Can Opener and Blaze Away

Kills most enemies in 1-2 burst shots.

Decently long range, can kill snipers with it.

Fast reload.

Fist click even unbraced is quite accurate. If whatever you aimed for didn't die, either wait for recoil+spread to reset for the second shot, or brace it before continuing to fire.

Use it primarily to deal with ranged enemies or specialists. Don't shoot enemies that are in melee range, unless they are disablers, just slide and melee them instead.

Also don't shoot Carapace armoured enemies with it, either throw a rock instead or rush + pickaxe to the face.

With Can Opener blessing you can use its special attack, which is the bayonet stab, to give bosses a bunch of brittleness stacks, which will increase the damage they take from everyone on the team.

Curios:

Blessing: 2xHP + 1xToughness, or 2xToughness + 1xHP

Perks: +block efficiency, +stamina regeneration, +Health, +Toughness, +Combat Ability Regen, mix as you see fit.

Toughness Regen Speed is kinda bad as it only affects coherency regen, meaning it won't actually help you in a fight, so its better to take something else instead of it.

Example:

With all this, it should be nearly impossible for you to go down in Malice from enemy damage, unless you do something REALLY stupid.

General Strategy

Some various things to keep in mind:

Stay with your team! Under no circumstance should you be alone anywhere.

1 dog near a team - non-issue. 1 dog when you're alone - potentially a death sentence.

The game will keep spawning disablers when you're far enough away from everyone else, until either they get you or you re-join the team.

If you see someone getting netted, the first thing you should do is to free them, before trying to kill the trapper, unless there is an immediate lethal threat to you. Freeing someone from the net is very quick, and this will avoid situations of you both going down if you try to kill the trapper first and get incapacitated in the process.

You can knock down almost all enemies except Monstrosities with your charge ability, Including Crushers and Maulers. Any time you see them - rush and knock everyone down. Ideally these enemies should never even get a chance to make any attacks with you around.

You can stop your rush ability by hitting the move backwards key (S), useful to stop near the last enemies or near some priority target.

If you see any Ragers - just push them, with your stagger increase node it will knock them down

The Last Resort

Good ol' Alt+F4

If you see your health quickly approaching zero, you can Alt+F4 to emergency kill the game and save your mission streak.

However, doing so means that you have FAILED at playing the game correctly.

Ideally, such situations should simply never occur.

Conclusion

Following everything outlined here, you should have no problems getting Flawless Execution penance.

Currently, Flawless Execution achievement on Steam has the lowest completion %, so you can contribute to raising it ever so slightly higher.

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3349644720

Flawless Execution penance, the easy way