Warhammer 40,000: Darktide adds a psychic horde murderzone mode and makes Ogryns even smashier

There’s more to Warhammer 40k: Darktide than smashing cultists and chaos mutants into a fine paste. As of today’s ‘Nightmares and Visions’ update you can also squish imaginary enemies of the Emperor, too. Although this being 40k (and thus casually cruel), even imaginary monsters and maniacs can still hurt you. The centerpiece of this week’s update adds a new arcade game mode to the mix; the Mortis Trials, along with a boatload of tweaks and improvements, including big upgrades across the board for Ogryns.

Once hitting Trust Level 13 (which shouldn’t take that long for new players to reach), players visiting the Psykhanium (or just poking around at the new terminal near the mission board) can sign up for the Mortis Trials, a straightforward horde survival mode where you and your squad face twelve waves of imaginary enemies, broken up into four sets of three. It’s not all pain, as every third wave (which is a more complex, objective-focused fight) gets you a restock and the option to pick a roguelike-inspired ‘indulgence’ perk to help even the odds.

Indulgences are just about the only way you’re going to be surviving the final three rounds, where the game fully takes the gloves off and throws downright silly numbers of enemies at you from all directions, making the mode a bit of a power trip in that final stretch.The Mortis Trials also double, in perhaps Destiny-inspired form, as a way of learning a bit more about Sefoni, the mysterious and ever-so-slightly unhinged crew Psyker. Having you stabbed by a thousand imaginary chaos cultists is just her way of getting to know you better.

While a bit less dramatic than a whole new play-mode with a bunch of new story attached, the update includes a boatload of smaller tweaks and additions, with a particular focus on the high-level Havoc game mode. New mutators, like ‘Enraging Elites ‘(enemies go berserk at 50% health) and ‘Rampaging Enemies’ (enemies get defensive buffs upon seeing allies die) should spice up the basic combat a tad, along with a lot of smaller alterations that you can read about in detail here.

The biggest set of tweaks is a major rework and rebalance of Ogryns in general. It seems Fatshark reckon they’ve been underperforming, and have given them a huge range of buffs. Just about every one of their melee weapons has been significantly tuned up, including my favourite, the Blastoom Mk3 Grenadier Gauntlet, which now hits harder, faster and carries more grenade ammo. This is paired with their melee-centric ‘skullbreaker’ skill tree having most of its attack type restrictions lifted, so light attacks will be fully viable on top of heavy hits.

As an Ogryn main myself (using the cheerful space-Yorkshire voice, of course), I’m very happy and looking forward to digging into all of these tweaks and changes. They’ve even buffed my favourite grenade ability (Bigger Box of Hurt, where you throw an entire crate of live grenades at the enemy) to launch even more grenades on impact. Can’t grumble! Especially as I thought I was doing pretty well already. Admittedly that’s because I’ve been running the least-buffed Ogryn build (extra-heavy machine gunner), but even that got a little tune-up too.

Lastly, the game also now supports DLSS 4 for those with fancy high-end Nvidia GPUs, including Nvidia’s much-touted (though I remain unconvinced) multi-frame generation tech, but also improving the quality of existing upscaling and frame gen. Good news for those playing the game with full raytracing. The update is live now, with a special event—‘A Day At The Theatre’—providing additional rewards for jumping straight into the Mortis Trials mode.