Bound by Duty, Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s first big update in months, has just gone live. On top of expanding the Mortis Trials arena mode and adding a selection of new heretic mincing tools, it makes significant skill tree changes to three of Darktide’s five playable classes – the Veteran, Psyker, and Zealot – aimed at “increased flexibility and player agency”. Including, it seems, the flexibility to blow up your own head more effectively.
Here be patch notes, and a more general (i.e. less stat-soaked) overview. I’ve just had a quick look at the new trees in-game and they do appear to be structured more openly, at least at the lower levels, so you may not need to commit to a playstyle – tanky berserker versus swift dagger stabbist on Zealot, for example – quite so early on.
As for specific skill buffs, I can’t judge yet who the big winners and losers of this patch are, but by far the funniest talent rework has to go to the Psyker’s Crystalline Will. It still prevents you from downing yourself if you overload on psychic sauce, but a massive buff to the accompanying warp eruption sounds like it could make for a serious offensive tool. Expect mic’d up Psykers to change their tune from “Oh no, I’m exploding” to “Oh yes, I’m exploding”.
Less fortunate are the space rozzers of the Adeptus Arbites, who’ve been made squishier following their arrival (accompanied by packs of EMP dogbombs) earlier this year. They and the three reworked classes have all had full skill point refunds, so make sure to reinvest them before deploying.
Mortis Trials, meanwhile, gets a frigid new arena, plus a handful of new perks to unlock as you survive successive waves of Nurgle’s lads. Veterans, those lucky devils, also get a class-exclusive Power Falchion sword, and those who spec as ranged specialists should get even more of a kick out of the new Boltgun and Bolt Pistol variants. These, the Bolt Pistol Mk VI Godwyn‑Branx and Boltgun Mk III Locke, are tuned to make their exploding bullets more explodey – evidently, between these, that tweaked Psyker skill, and the Arbites’ remote-detonated pets, someone at Fatshark just really likes seeing things go boom.
As a piece of Imperium cannon fodder who typically prefers the flow of conventional missions to the more static defence play of Mortis Trials, I’m slightly saddened that Bound by Duty doesn’t offer a fresh taste of the former. Not least because almost all of the post-launch missions have been excellent, with more ambitious set-pieces and more intriguing, lore-massaging vox banter. But then, I barely played anyone besides Ogryn after his own rework in March, so maybe another round of skill touch-ups can have a similarly rejuvenating effect. I’ll be playing this week to find out.