Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide Survival Guide

Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide can be a tough game that requires massive amounts of teamwork, patience, and skill to master. Like Valve’s Left 4 Dead before it, the game offers a challenge for players who want it. For players coming from other cooperative multiplayer games like PayDay 2, Destiny and Helldivers, there are a number of mechanical differences that may throw you out of balance so I’ve decided to put together this guide to get you through Vermintide. 

This guide contains some of the more basic elements you’ll need to know to survive the hordes, as well as advanced survival tips to keep in mind once you get the hang of it. 

Once you know how to stay alive, be sure to check out our combat tactics guide for Vermintide. 

Basic Survival

You'll want to avoid seeing this screen. 

Stick together. Be aware of where your allies are at all times and never run off on your own. All it takes is a single Gutter Runner or a Packmaster to kill any party member who strays. Enable player outlines in the options menu so you don’t lose track of your friends. 

Avoid damage. Practice using your dodge, block and push abilities. On harder difficulties, even slave rats will be able to kill you in a few hits. 

Keep moving. Don’t stay around a spot for too long or you’ll have to deal with increased spawns and special enemies. 

Practice situational awareness. Enemies can come from every direction. Being rats, they can climb fences, scale walls, burrow through walls, and dig through holes in the ground.

Heal up. Use the medical supplies or drink a healing draught when you’re low on health. If you’ve been incapacitated once, use a medkit as soon as possible, or you’ll bleed out. Incapacitated players are at “death’s door” with a grey health bar and will slowly lose health until they become vulnerable to dying in a single hit. 

Don’t leave supplies behind. Even if everyone in your team has close to full health and you’ve taken some damage, it’s always a good idea to make use of any additional medkits you come across because you won’t be backtracking. 

Cover your flanks. When your team is beset from all sides, pick a flank and watch each others’ backs. Most of the damage you take will come from enemies attacking you from behind. 

Communicate with your team. Even if you’re not using VOIP or other voice chat, you can point out important items and enemies by aiming at them and tapping T. This will create a blue highlight around the item or enemy your whole team can see. 

Double check to make sure your whole team is ready before triggering big fights, and resist the temptation (looking at you, elf players) to run ahead of the team. Conversely, don’t get left behind rooting around for supplies and tomes. Keep an eye on where your team is.

If you’re playing with bots, be aware that they’ll lag behind, especially in open arena areas after a fight seems to be over. Make sure you’re not getting too far ahead of the group to be rescued. (However, don’t rely too heavily on the AI to rescue you.)

Heal injured teammates. It’s in everyone’s best interest to keep your tanks alive. You can use medkits on another player by approaching them with the kit equipped and holding the right mouse button.

Advanced Survival Tips

While it’s important to keep moving forward, explore as much as possible. Some loot dice, tomes, and grimoires are hidden away in hard-to-spot nooks and crannies around each map, and it’s worth finding out where they are, even if you have to wait for a subsequent run to pick them up.

Each grimoire (not to be confused with tomes) you pick up will lower your party’s maximum health by 25%. You can discard a grimoire by left-clicking while it is equipped in your hands. You might want to do this to ensure your party’s survival if things get hairy. They CAN’T be picked back up once discarded, so be careful with this. 

Healing draughts will restore 25% of your health regardless of how much health you have. Medical supplies will heal you for much more, provided you have lower health. You should use the latter when your injuries are more severe. 

Loot every chest. Chests can contain more than ammunition, potions and health supplies. They can also contain loot dice, two of which will spawn during each mission. 

When transporting barrels or grain sacks, you can throw them ahead of you to avoid having to slowly carry them through dangerous, open areas. You can toss barrels and sacks a pretty good distance, and you don’t have to walk all the way up to the objective to place them: They’ll tumble into place if you throw them close enough. This saves precious time and can prevent key items from being buried in Skaven swarms, too. 

Pay close attention to what you hear, for each special enemy makes a distinct sound. Aside from the bombastic musical cue of the Rat Ogre, you’ll be able to make out the sound of a Ratling Gunner’s machinegun cycling up, the clanking of a Packmaster, and the murderous whispers of a stealthy Gutter Runner. 

Avoid Stormvermin patrols. You can hear their distinctive marching sound from a ways off. Learn to move around them and hide from them whenever possible. Being neither blind nor deaf, they will be able to hear the sound of your gunfire and rush to your location, so emphasize caution. 

Additional information

If successfully carried to the end of the mission, grimoires will provide you with green dice during the loot roll screen, essentially guaranteeing a good reward. 

If you’re hosting the game, any bots present will equip any gear you have assigned to your own characters. 

Customize the FOV. You can get a larger field of vision and keep track of more things around you with a wider FOV. 

For additional tips and tricks, I recommend the Tutorial section on Fatshark’s forums for guides other players have created.