Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Levelling Guide

Introduction

This guide is to help people struggling with their character in the early game.

I’m writing up this advice because I see queries about specific classes on Reddit, and the Steam achievements show that a lot of people drop the game without levelling their character up to 30. I hope this helps someone enjoy the game more.

The advice is specific to pre-level 30 conditions - weak weapons, fewer choices and limited talent points.

Once you are level 30 you don’t have these constraints and can create a wider variety of powerful and fun builds.

Basics

Avoiding damage is mainly through dodging, but blocking, pushing and movement all play an important part. In the early game, weapons have fewer dodges and negative mobility stats which significantly impacts how well you can avoid damage. Weapon selection will revisit this theme. In short - you want to prioritise mobility/defence stats early on, and in general you want these stats at least at 51%.

Toughness regeneration is key to avoiding death once you are unable to dodge damage. If you are at max toughness small hits won’t do health damage. All characters regenerate toughness through being in coherency and melee kills. Therefore - stay close to your team, and engage in melee as soon as melee attackers are closing in. Competency in melee combat is critical to your success even if you are a ranged class. Each class also has unique toughness regeneration talents which will be covered in each class section.

Also worth noting that you can push poxbursters to avoid damage, and you don’t need to aggravate daemonhosts.

Resources

Ammo, grenades, and healing are limited resources shared by the team. Be aware of how these resources are allocated to keep the team strong.

Don’t shoot weak enemies you can kill in melee. Save ammo for threats.

Ping resources for your team, even if you don’t use that resource.

Let the player with less ammo have the pick up (unless they are wasting it on poxwalkers). The colour of ammo in the HUD shows how much your teammates need ammo.

Place ammo crates and medkits at events where their usage is maximised. Don’t drop them before a transition as they will likely be wasted. You will often get medicae and ammo chests after a lift. The appearance of a monster when the team is hurt is also a good reason to drop medkits.

Ammo crates have 4 charges. Let everyone get one, and do some shooting before taking yours.

Medkits do not heal completely corrupted wounds.

Medicae stations heal corruption so let the most corrupted player use it first.

Gearing

The ratings of weapons available to you increases with your character level. This affects both the item stats and blessings available. In the levelling process you will want to replace weapons relatively frequently, so do not invest too many resources in them.

You can get by with only docket purchases from the shop. The requisition option is better because you can choose higher rated items, whereas the armoury is random. The shop resets each hour. Upgrading weapons to blue is good for finding a few useful blessings, and not too expensive. Upgrading to orange is a waste at low level, save your materials.

Melk’s shop is also mostly a waste early on. Keep an eye out for blessings that you really want, even at lower tiers, but otherwise save your marks for level 30. Melk can be a secondary source of curios if you can’t get the type you want in the regular shop.

Curios are a significant part of levelling progress. You should prioritise toughness or stamina. Wounds do not increase your health and are the worst choice in lower difficulties. Health is OK, but not as good as toughness.

Spend your resources on adding +10% experience to your curios as soon as possible. If you are getting spanked by snipers or gunners the damage reduction perks will take it down a notch, but it is best to dodge these attacks. The other damage reduction perks are near useless. Don’t worry about upgrading your curios heavily, as you will replace them later.

Game Selection

Quickplay gives +20% experience and you should do this most of the time. Selecting specific missions is useful when you want to test the next difficulty on low intensity settings, or go to maelstrom for higher rewards.

The difficulties become available before you should join them. Don’t push too early - you have garbage weapons and few talents. It doesn’t matter how good a player you are, you will bring down team performance. You don’t get much experience for failed missions.

If you’ve never played before do one Sedition mission, but in general go to Uprising as soon as possible.You only need a few missions in uprising as you will level up pretty quickly. At level 8 you get a curio, and around level 9-11 you will have enough talent points to hit major improvements to your character. If you are feeling comfortable, go to malice difficulty but test with a low intensity mission first. You should do most of your levelling in malice.

At level 16 you get a second curio and have unlocked many of the weapons. Consider trying malice maelstrom missions for the higher experience rewards.

At level 24 you get the third curio and have all weapon options. You can make the skeleton of a complete build with only a few key nodes missing. Consider heresy difficulty missions if you feel ready. Don’t feel obliged to step up the difficulty, you can comfortably level up in malice.

The class sections will show suggestions at each of these milestones for weapons and talents.

Psyker

Psyker is one of the easier classes to level, but the number of options and desire to use endgame weapons and builds leads to people having trouble.

I suggest using an Assail build for levelling psyker. It gives good damage against most enemies, and several toughness regeneration options. Assail is overpowered in low difficulties, but is merely good in higher difficulties.

Brain burst is my favourite blitz, but it is really weak levelling - your teammates will usually kill stuff before you can and you don’t have talents that complement or enhance it. If you really don’t want to use assail, BB with kinetic flayer and a gun works pretty well at low difficulty.

Smite is good crowd control, but does little damage. Especially in low difficulty it is usually better just to kill enemies over crowd control.

Starting build - lvl9

We have three new sources of toughness regeneration - assail kills, peril generation, and peril quelling. Warp expenditure is the weakest one, feel free to use perilous combustion instead.

We also have two toughness nodes and should have a toughness curio to increase the damage we can take.

WeaponsThe revolver is available at level 6 and will be the mainstay of the build throughout levelling, as it can take out crushers. Prior to that the laspistol or infantry autoguns are recommended. I prefer the laspistol as it has good mobility, accuracy, and flak damage, but a small ammo reserve.

Staves are weak in the early game and not recommended until you can get a good base item and some more talents.

The blessings on the revolver aren’t too important yet. You can save your resources for melee, or consider upgrading to green and getting more carapace damage.

We have more options on melee weapons. The knife has high mobility but is fairly underpowered with a low tier weapon and no talents. Worth considering just so you can run around faster, and will do enough to keep you alive in melee. The duelling swords have good mobility and high single target damage. The deimos force sword has great single target damage, and is better against hordes than the duelling swords, but only regular mobility. All of these weapons have one extra dodge compared to the other weapons available. Weapons not mentioned are not recommended for levelling.

For melee blessings, uncanny strike is available on deimos, duelling swords and the knife. It is a potent blessing even at low tier. If you see a weapon with the blessing for sale, buy it and use that weapon class. The force swords have a large blessings pool so don’t try to chase specific blessings at this point. All the recommended weapons benefit from a blessing even if it’s a random one, so upgrading to blue is a good idea. Changing the perk to flak is a good idea for most weapons at this point as they usually have low modifiers against armour.

GameplayAt close-medium range use assail to kill enemies. As enemies close in keep some peril so that it naturally quells while you are in melee combat. Assail kills and peril quelling are your major sources of toughness regeneration.

Use heavy or special melee attacks against enemies with armoured heads.

For specialists and most elites, or at medium-long range use the assail secondary. It builds more peril so you can spam it less, but also does more damage, is more accurate, and uses fewer charges per kill.

Use your revolver sparingly for high threat armoured targets like crushers, maulers, and bosses. You can also change to revolver while waiting for assail charges to replenish.

Your boss damage will be low with this build, and assail barely tickles them. Consider supporting the team by taking out enemies around the boss.

Your ability is only useful for close range crowd control for now. It can also prevent your brain from blowing up if you go too hard on the peril.

Midway - lvl16

At level 16 we can afford the shield with toughness regeneration, as well as One with the Warp. Quick Shards has been dropped for the meantime. Seer’s presence is an excellent aura, one of the best in the game.

The mk4 duelling sword is available now and it is the best one of the three due to the stabbing heavy attacks. Illisi force sword is also a good option for hordes. The second revolver comes at level 17, but it's not as good for crushers.

By now you should upgrade your revolver to get some blessings options.

If you really want a staff, anything but purgatus can fill your crusher killing needs.

GameplayThe only addition is your shield ability. Feel free to use it regularly, you don’t need to save it. It is useful for toughness regeneration when the team is in melee, covering teammates for a revive or hacking objective, and blocking gunner fire. Shield also blocks Beast vomit, your teammates will love you for that.

Almost done - level 24

Adding to the above tree - we stretch to reach empowered psionics and true aim which will massively increase assail performance.

To finish the build go for overpowering souls, charged up, perfect timing, and a toughness node.

Notable talentsThese talents are very strong and are used in many builds.

Psykinetics aura - extra cooldown reduction.

One with the warp - toughness damage reduction

Kinetic deflection - allows you to block insane damage

True aim - significant increase in crits for many builds

Ogryn

The Ogryn is pretty straightforward as a class, but poor selection of weapons or talents early on can make you feel really weak and slow. Ogryn has the worst mobility of the classes and has a large hitbox, these combine to make ranged enemies a great threat. Even just the regular shooters can strip your toughness if you get caught in the open.

We will combat this weakness by choosing a melee weapon with good mobility - the cleaver. The mark4 and mark6 cleavers are immediately available after your first mission. Mark6 is the bad one. Mark4 is recommended for its strong light attacks, but feel free to try the mark3 later for its sweeping light attacks.

The other melee weapons are by no means bad, however early on they will have negative sprint speed, terrible dodge distance, and high stamina consumption. You will get trapped and hit more.

It is critical to get the Confident Strike blessing as soon as possible as this will massively improve survival chances. You should upgrade your knife to blue as soon as the tech priest becomes available. Get new knives regularly and repeat the process.

Starting build - level 10

We have two talents that give toughness regeneration. Steady Grip works when holding aim with your gun. Smash Em works when you use a heavy attack on one enemy. Both work in very different scenarios and so complement each other. We also have two +25 toughness nodes, 10% toughness damage reduction, and ideally a +10% toughness curio to help with tankiness.

For the blitz, either frag or rock are good. Box is the weak one.

The abilities are all great, but I will be going for a gunlugger build here.

For your ranged weapon, the kickback is recommended for high power and decent ammo economy. The kickback works very well with the Reloaded and Ready talent. Upgrading to green and getting a flak perk is a good idea.

The ripper (not Mark6 - inaccurate) is also good as it’s special does good damage regardless of item level so it is quite strong early on. The special attack counts as a heavy melee attack so it will replenish toughness. It has low ammo though so you will need to focus on melee combat. The ripper with can opener is very powerful early on, if you have plenty of resources from your first character consider trying for this blessing.

The grenade weapons are discouraged because they really need a high quality base item to shine.

GameplaySlide to avoid enemy shots and to close distance for melee combat. Light attacks take care of most enemies, mix in heavy attacks for larger threats and to top up toughness. The special attack on your knife (punch) can stun ragers out of attacking you. If your dodges are feeling droopy, push enemies back to allow your dodges to replenish while giving you space.

Your shotgun is for taking care of specialists at range and disrupting groups of ranged attackers. You can use the special to top up toughness too, as it counts as a heavy attack. If you are separated from the team, or need to top up toughness in cover, brace your shotgun to get 3% per second.

Use your grenade for big threats like crushers, bulwarks, or groups of maulers/ragers. Try to throw at least 3 per mission.

Midway - level 16

Point blank barrage now has rending (armour piercing) which makes it a potent tool against crushers and monsters. You could also use the flame version if you change weapon to the mark7 stubber. Don’t use the mark5 stubber - it’s not as good as the other two.

We also have extra ammo.

The aura is OK. You can take lynchpin instead if you want more toughness regeneration.

At this point you will start to see melee weapons with mobility/defences above 50%. This means they will have an extra dodge which is quite nice. If you are bored of the knife look for a weapon with an extra dodge. Weapons with good light attacks are safe with a ranged build as you can get more out of confident strike and don’t need to invest points in heavy attack talents. The mark19 shovel, mark3 club, mark3/4 knife, and Karsolas pickaxe are recommended.

Almost done - level 24

Adding to the above, we get the 10% toughness damage reduction node and Feel No Pain for even more tankiness. Bruiser is excellent for getting more use of the ability.

Notable talents:3x 10% toughness damage reduction nodes - honestly better than Feel No Pain when taken together.

+25 toughness nodes.

Batter & Delight In Destruction pair well together. Should be in any heavy attack build.

Bruiser is excellent for reducing cooldowns. Practically mandatory.

Veteran

The vet feels really weak at first because all their ranged weapons have terrible armour penetration stats. You want to quickly get krak grenades to deal with armour.

After a few level ups the veteran becomes the easiest class to level due to some insanely powerful weapons and one ability.

Starting build - level 9The highlighted nodes are the core of any vet build. It’s also a fast path to krak grenades so you can easily deal with crushers and monsters.

The other nodes are just nice to have.

Your shovel is fine for taking care of hordes for now. Prioritise your ranged weapon.

Laspistol, infantry autoguns, and revolver are recommended. Later you can also take the recon lasgun.

Your first curio should be stamina or toughness.

Gameplay:Prioritise elite and specialist enemies. You will get ammo back for killing them. Don’t waste ammo on weak melee enemies. Yes, you are a ranged class, but there’s no need to waste ammo on trash.

Throw krak grenades on crushers, maulers, monsters, or bulwarks. Crushers are your main concern.

If any enemies are close, immediately switch to melee. Your melee attacks stop enemies attacking as frequently, and you regain toughness from melee kills.

Your ability is total garbage at the moment so just ignore it.

Alternative gearing:The helbore lasgun is available at level 5. The bayonet special attack is extremely powerful at low level because it doesn’t scale strongly from the damage stat. It also staggers ragers.

You basically need to slide into melee and stab enemies in the head. It’s useless against crushers so use krak grenades against them. You need to hit maulers in the body.

Take a knife for mobility out of combat and use your ability to quickly switch weapons as the helbore has a slow draw time.

The helbore’s hip fire is very inaccurate at low level, so you will need to aim to kill distant specials.

Don’t use the helbore mark3, it’s bayonet attack isn’t as good.

While this strategy is effective for early levelling, it may not be your expectation of a ranged gunplay class!

Midway - level 16

The aura is not a big upgrade to the starting aura, but it is nice to have.

The big upgrade here is Voice of Command.

We also take some utility nodes to replenish grenades and have better crates/medkits. The reload talent is more important now that we change weapon. We don’t need krak grenade anymore.

You get access to the plasma gun at level 16 and it is frankly overpowered. Get one ASAP, you don’t even need to upgrade it. The shovel, chainsword and combat axe (mk2) are good melee options.

Your second curio should be toughness or stamina, but not 2 stamina curios.

Gameplay:You should be using Voice of Command as much as possible. It stuns enemies too. If anyone is missing toughness just pop it.

Shoot specials and elites with your plasma gun. It can clear dense hordes too, but this is a waste of ammo. Your ammo economy isn’t good enough to constantly spam plasma. Don’t bother with the charged attacks.

Frag grenades stagger enemies and apply bleed. You can drop two for high bleed damage against monsters.

The game is on easy mode now. Try not to make the game too boring for your teammates.

Almost done - level 24

The bottom of the skill tree has loads of powerful talents. You don’t even need a keystone, although they are good too.

The talents chosen above are mostly in the notable talents section below.

Notable talents:You’ll see that the veteran is the most spoiled class for powerful talents.

Close order drill - toughness damage reduction when with the team.

Confirmed kill - massive toughness regeneration

Demolition stockpile - regenerate grenades.

Precision strikes - weakspot damage

Fully loaded - more ammo reserve

Superiority complex - elite damage

Born leader - share toughness regen

For the emperor! - damage buff on ability use

Tactical awareness - cooldown on specialist kill

Iron will - toughness damage reduction when at high toughness

Demolition team - replenish grenades on elite/specialist kill

Bring it down! - ogryn/monster damage

Reciprocity - crit chance on dodge

Desperado - melee crit chance and crit/weakspot damage

Trench fighter drill - melee attack speed

Onslaught - strips armour, very effective with fast firing weapons.

+10% melee damage node

+5% crit chance node

+25 toughness nodes

10% toughness damage reduction node

Zealot

The zealot is an interesting one to level, as a lot of the power comes from the abilities and keystones at the bottom of the skill tree. You won’t be at full power for quite some time.

Counteracting that is a lot of ways to regenerate toughness, and good starting conditions. You have one of the best melee weapons starting out. You have the best starting ability, which gives you one powerful hit and regenerates half your toughness. Your starting aura prevents 7.5% toughness damage.

The first thing you need to do is get rid of the garbage autopistol you are given as a starting weapon. Change to a laspistol or an infantry autogun.

Starting out - level 9-12

I’ve selected a bunch of useful talents, you can move ahead to malice without all of these.

Second Wind is the best toughness regeneration talent, as it activates when we are at risk, and it replenishes a large amount of toughness. You can also activate this when dodging ranged attacks.

Blood redemption is pretty good, as we will get most kills in melee, but it’s only a small amount (2.5%).

The middle tree toughness talents are weak and don’t activate when we need them, but the middle branch has some damage nodes and health regeneration.

Enemies Within, Enemies Without is good early on as your kill speed won’t be that good and you will take some hits. It replenishes when we need it, but not a huge amount.

For blitz I’ve recommended immolation grenade because it is the easiest to use. All the blitzes are excellent though so feel free to swap it out. The throwing knives take the most skill but are fantastic for taking care of specialists. The stun grenade is the best crowd control in the game, but has several mediocre nodes to get to it.

For weapons you should keep the Rashad axe and focus on updating it every few missions. You should upgrade to blue and be on the lookout for Brutal Momentum blessing which will increase your ability to clear hordes.

At level 7 the revolver becomes available and is better for dealing with crushers than the axe. You can use another weapon if you prefer, but put +25% carapace damage on the axe in that case. Upgrading the revolver is your lowest priority for resources.

Your first curio should be toughness or stamina.

Gameplay:Sliding and dodging are critical for avoiding damage and closing the distance to enemies. Dodge is necessary to activate many of your talents. Dodge sideways around a group of enemies while hacking at them.

If you have lost toughness, or want to make a strong hit against a bigger enemy use your charge ability. You can also charge to get close to ranged attackers.

Your heavy attacks deal a lot more damage to armoured enemies, but you need to weigh this up against just hitting areas without armour. The dreg bruisers have a flak helmet which your heavy overhead attack will hit, vs low armour body shots with light attacks. Same for maulers. Maniac armoured enemies like specialists, mutants, and dreg ragers should always be hit with light attacks as these do more damage.

Your revolver will help you take down distant specialists, and is a safer way to deal with crushers while your build is weak.

Throw down grenades as area denial while doing objectives, reviving teammates, or holding choke points. It also does ok damage against monsters.

Midway - level 16

Until Death and Holy Revenant give you another chance after being smashed.

Duellist is incredibly good and activates regularly.

Benediction is twice as good as the starting aura. Definitely zealot’s best aura.

Your second curio can be anything except Wound. All toughness is fine, and one of each is also good.

Almost done - level 24

I’ve highlighted nodes to take before being able to reach the keystone.

I’ve switched to throwing knives as there aren’t enough points to have the middle branch as well as the right.

This is the core of a classic crit build.

Scourge increases our crit chance, but doesn’t activate regularly if you don’t have a reasonably high base crit chance so only take it when you can switch to the keystone.

Enduring Faith protects us a lot more now that we will do many more crits.

The keystone increases crit chance and has a feedback loop with Invocation of Death which lets us charge more (another crit). Charge now give increased attack speed making you an absolute beast.

Upgrade your axe to get a second blessing. Shred or Headtaker are ideal paired with Brutal Momentum, but anything is fine.

Your last curio can be anything except Wound. All toughness is fine, and one of each is also good.

Your ranged weapon choice is less important now, feel free to take whatever you like. Laspistol and infantry autoguns are a good choice. Laspistol is notable for its mobility and high crit chance which helps build stacks of Blazing Piety.

Notable talents:Backstabber - works better than it sounds. I always take it.

Purge the Unclean - great against monsters.

Enduring Faith - damage reduction on crit.

Dance of Death - massively increases accuracy after a dodge.

Thy Wrath Be Swift - also affects ranged attacks so you won’t get stun-locked by reapers or gunners. You can also do hacking objectives without being hit out of it.

Good Balance - damage reduction on dodge.

Duelist - huge headshot and crit multiplier on dodge.

Faithful Frenzy - melee attack speed

Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3306811785

Levelling Guide

Introduction

Basics

Resources

Gearing

Game Selection

Psyker

Ogryn

Veteran

Zealot

More Warhammer 40,000: Darktide guilds