MeinMMO author Ody had a long on-off relationship with Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. He repeatedly gave the co-op slasher the chance to impress him – but it never really sparked. With the Skitarius, a new playable class for the game, that changes now. Now the game is even worth a PC upgrade.
Darktide has been a game that I should have loved for many years, but just couldn’t. The two previous games from the Swedish developer Fatshark Games – Warhammer: End Times – Vermintide and Warhammer: Vermintide 2 – are among my absolute favorite games and most-played titles on Steam.
Still, I never really warmed up to Darktide. I gave the game chances to prove itself since its release on November 30, 2022 (unfortunately without success). However, this dramatically changed when I saw the new Skitarii class – first in the trailer, later in a showcase with the developers. Afterwards, I even got to try out the class myself.
You can see the new class in the trailer here:
Tech corpses in the service of the Omnissiah
Skitarii are the foot soldiers of the Adeptus Mechanicus: Fanatical tech nerds who worship a machine god. Its physical manifestation is the Omnissiah – remember this, as your Skitarii will mention him repeatedly.
The Skitarii themselves are augmented cyborg soldiers, more machine than human. Under their robes, they look like withered corpses, but they are not undead. Their arms and legs and most of their organs have been replaced by prosthetics, which is why they would be unable to live without technical assistance.
In Darktide, we even take a look under the robes of our Skitarius to admire him in his full, rotting glory. During character creation, there are four body types and arm and leg prosthetics to choose from. We can also adjust the color of the ocular lenses (essentially the eye color).
For the current outfits in the game, only the choice of ocular lens color, arms, and legs actually matters. The former makes lights on your mask glow in the respective color, arms and legs are free while the rest of the body remains covered. But it’s still a cool detail that fosters a connection to our character.
Even though the memories of the Skitarii are erased so that previous memories do not interfere with their duties, they still retain a part of their humanity. Sometimes they can even remember parts of their past. Therefore, you can also adjust the personal background for the Skitarius.
According to the developers, there are a total of four unique personality types, and you can even adjust the exact sound of your mechanical voice using a voice slider. Also cool: You get to choose which of the four factory worlds your Skitarius swears allegiance to. However, this only has cosmetic effects, not gameplay-related. Furthermore, Skitarii are the only class allowed to use numbers in their names – all lore-accurate.
Shocking abilities and a rifle to enslave them all
The Skitarii class comes with a variety of new melee and ranged weapons. My absolute favorite weapon so far is the galvanic rifle. In the showcase, the developers revealed that this is the weapon they knew they had to get right. And after over 4 hours of playtime with the new class, I can confidently say they hit the nail right on the head.
I haven’t tried any of the other firearms in my entire playtime – simply because I had so much fun using this rifle. It reminds me of old repeating rifles while still feeling high-tech. The small magazine of the weapon is balanced out by the immense damage the rifle inflicts even at long range.
There’s hardly anything that feels more satisfying than blowing a heretic’s head off with it or taking out two of them with just one shot. The projectiles have so much punch that they penetrate unarmored enemies and hit foes behind them as well.
When fighting, Skitarii also rely heavily on shock attacks: Many of your melee weapons can be upgraded with electrical damage, and with your active ability, you unleash an electrical discharge around you. This stuns enemies for a few seconds and deals damage to them. In my opinion, it could be a bit stronger. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure if the ability had worked at all.
Additionally, Skitarii are accompanied by a servo skull. You can command it to attack enemies or conduct a data query. If you don’t feel like manually hacking terminals, the servo skull is a real blessing. While it is slower when hacking, it has never felt too slow to me.
By the Omnissiah, bless this tormented setup!
The only downside is that one thing hasn’t changed since the release 4 years ago – my PC just doesn’t handle the game very well. My setup looks as follows:
- GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT (12 GB VRAM)
- CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 3700X (8 cores at 3.59 GHz)
- 32 GB RAM
The hard drive on which Darktide runs is also, of course, an SSD. While I can still play Vermintide 2 very well with this setup (easily over 75 FPS at high to ultra settings and 1440p without upscaling), it reaches its limits with Darktide.
I play on the lowest graphics settings at 1440p with FSR enabled – still, the FPS fluctuate, strangely especially in the hub. If I wanted to play the game at medium settings, I would already have to settle for 40 to 50 FPS – I shouldn’t even think about high presets right now.
Darktide still requires a powerful computer. However, it would actually be worth it for me to upgrade after years (in the not-too-distant future). Until then, I will probably continue to run Darktide on my potato of a PC. My enjoyment of the game cannot be ruined by poor performance.
By the way, I only learned about the existence of the Skitarii recently, through Warhammer 40,000: Mechanicus 2. There, the cyborgs saved my butt repeatedly while I was knee-deep in the remains of space mummies. Surprisingly, I found it much easier to identify with the latter: I thought the tech nerds from Warhammer 40,000 were my brothers, but thanks to Mechanicus 2, I’m now into Robo-mummies.
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