complete a final event. “Right now we have one that is like
survive waves [of enemies],” says Batsford. “Another one
we have is where two bosses spawn and you have to
defeat both of them. And the Wind mutator is in effect.”
As players progress to higher Weaves, the difficulty
will continue to increase. “We have continually scaling
difficulty that goes way beyond the highest difficulty that
we have in the game,” says Batsford. “We don’t want
people to ever reach a cap on this. The cap will rather be
when it gets just too hard for them to do it.” While the
first few Weaves will be fun, easy introductions to the
modifiers, later ones will be harsher – providing less
gen on Life Wind levels, for instance.ING A SPELL
the key ways Winds of Magic’s new mode will
from Diablo III’s Greater Rifts is that Weaves won’t
domised. Everyone will be playing the same set of
es, meaning that players can work to find solutions
ecific problems. More than just a combat challenge,
tshark wants Weaves to feel like puzzles – challenging
players to experiment with different weapon sets and
career compositions. “People can then share that on
forums, Reddit, whatever,” says Batsford. “I think if we
can nail that it’s going to work out really nicely.”
Another benefit of having predetermined Weaves is
it lets Fatshark add leaderboards to the game. “You’re
going to get a score while you play these,” explains
Batsford, “and your score is going to be based on how
long it took you to complete it, and then also how much
damage you took. So you might have [a Weave] where
the best way to get score is to do it slowly but make
sure you don’t take much damage, or you might have
one where you speedrun it and it doesn’t matter how
much damage you take.”Fatshark is still figuring out which
mutators should be tied to each
Wind, but the prototypes I’m shown
seem designed to offer both positive
and negative modifiers. The Life
Wind, for instance, currently grants
constant health regeneration, but
causes players to lose health
n enemy.
ns to,
pecific
bjectives placed
around the map. “The objectives we
have, we want them to be different,”
says Batsford. “We want them to be a
different way to play the game rather
than just going from A to B and
killing stuff ... just different ways to
play each time.”
Once the objective is completed, a
portal will open that will take players
to an arena where they’ll need toRIGHT A selection of
the angriest goats in
the room.a specific goal. But if your ambitions
go beyond some fancy hats and nice
pictures, Fatshark has a plan for you
too. This year’s biggest addition will
take place this summer, with the
release of Vermintide II’s first
expansion, Winds of Magic.
The expansion will add a new
enemy race, new difficulty and new
weapons. At its heart, though, Winds
of Magic is designed around one big
idea: to give players an endless
gauntlet of progressively more
difficult challenges. “The basics of
the expansion is to provide an
endgame.” says Wahlund.
Winds of Magic will likely offer an
introductory story mission, but new
adventure maps aren’t the focus.
Rather, the main progression path for
the expansion is a new mode. “I think
the most similar game mode would
be the Greater Rifts that Diablo III
has,” says Wahlund, “where you go in
and they scale in difficulty. We’re not
doing the same thing, though. We’re
doing it in our own way.”
IT’S MAGI
Each stag
Winds o
new
called
altho
term
many
the exp
which on
recently ent
full production
Each Weave will take
chunk of an existing level mar
one of the eight Winds – the currents
of magical energy that flow across the
Warhammer universe.
“The idea behind the Winds is
they’re going to change the look and
overall feel of the level completely,”
says programmer Tom Batsford.
“Each Wind should look very
different from each other, even on the
same level, and also give a mutator.”
e
nay rs
fi s
s ll
toTO AID VARIETY,
FATSHARK PLANS
TO REMIX EACH
LEVEL CHUNKGORE
Yes, Bestigors
will charge you. But
their aim isn’t
amazing, so they
might hit their
allies too.