My relationship with Vermintide has been interesting to say the least. I hated it initially. Playing with high-level players who liked to grab all the grimoires made my e-life miserable, and I stopped playing it for several months. Once I was able to feel my way around the game at my own pace, I grew to love it. I pieced together a few strategies that have really improved my game. I went from lowest performance on the scoreboard, to playing the carry quite often. I want to share what I’ve learned with you now, so you too can go from ZERO to HERO like me! And so we can improve the performance of the average pug.

Stay together. STAY. TOGETHER. Now say it out loud! I cannot tell you how many times I have facepalmed when a member of the group runs off solo, then gets surrounded and swarmed. Then the team dies trying to reach and revive them. Never be alone! On the rare occasion you need to split the group, split into pairs. The game isn’t meant for solo play whatsoever, so don’t try to be a lone hero. Use the buddy system! This is especially challenging with PuGs, but just calmly plead your case in chat and it’ll go over better than abusing your caps lock. Watching each other’s backs is a core part of the gameplay.

Vermintide is all about the swarms. The best strategy to handle said swarms is to fight them at a choke point. Wait for them under an archway, or at the dead end of a cave tunnel. In the middle of the street, you can be attacked from 360 degrees. When you drag those skaven swarms to a choke point, you only have to worry about 180 degrees. It’s even more beneficial if you can keep your back to a wall, but a little team coordination can assign defenders to the rear if need be.

Don’t do what I did. Use the materials from breaking down your unused weapons! These materials are only useful if you, y’know, use them. Fighting with underleveled weapons can make things unnecessarily difficult for yourself. Figuring out which weapons you are good at can be a little difficult, just play with a weapon for several games before deciding if you like it or not. Changing game-to-game doesn’t get you a good average performance. When you’ve finally settled on something, keep crafting your weapon of choice with each new level. Tinker with upgrades and rerolls too. Additionally, don’t keep a big inventory of weapons you don’t want or need. Break them down regularly to give you an idea of just how many materials you have at your disposal.

Learn to block, dodge, and riposte. This alone, more riposte than anything, improved my performance the most. Kerillian with the glaive is the character I learned on, but it translated onto my Kruber main just fine. To riposte, when you want to do a push, keep your attack button/key held down during the push. You’ll riposte after the push is complete, attacking your target before you resume blocking. This helps thin down the hordes of enemies even while you’re on the defensive. This single-handedly increased my experience more than anything else. All of these take a little practice, so play on lower difficulty until you’ve mastered them. Once you do, it’s like a whole new game!

Now you’re ready to face the Warhammer end times once again! It’s all about basic things, but I overlooked these things in my eagerness to get into the game itself. It was the drastic improvement after doing these things that really motivated me to write this. It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees with game mechanics sometimes. Hopefully now though, you can keep swinging and not miss anything!