Warhammer 40,000: Darktide Getting Revamped Class System With Skill Trees And New Abilities

Warhammer 40K: Darktide's classes will receive a significant overhaul in the near future, with each of the game's four unique roles receiving a skill tree filled with abilities both new and old.

Currently, each class in developer Fat Shark's co-op shooter--the Ogryn, Psyker, Veteran, and Zealot--and can be leveled up to level 30. Every five levels, players can choose one perk out of three options for that specific level milestone. That system will be done away with come October. Instead, players will receive a skill point every time they level up. Each class will receive a skill tree with three main branches, one of which will represent each class' existing options. The other two branches will feature new abilities, giving each class more playstyles to choose from.

In an interview with PC Gamer, Darktide game director Anders De Geer said the development team at Fatshark has essentially reimagined what a class is in Darktide, and each class will have multiple new active abilities and passive perks. A few examples outlined is an option for Ogryns to choose a "Big Friendly Rock" as their throwable instead of a grenade box and the Psyker gaining a "Force-lightning-esque" ability.

It's a significant change that developer Fatshark said has been in the works since before Darktide launched late last year to middling reviews. The game currently holds a 74 on Metacritic and a "Mixed" user review rating on Steam. Criticisms about missing features and technical performance saw Fatshark indefinitely delay the Xbox version of Darktide, which was originally slated to release last year as well, in order to improve the PC version. De Geer said the team had to reprioritize what to work on following the game's not exactly well-received launch, but kept working on the skill tree system.

"We worked so intensely with it, and we experimented a lot," De Geer said. "Some of the things you will see in this we actually started playing around with [before launch]. But we felt they hadn't reached a quality we needed to be in the game. That is part of why we still felt that we need to do this. Everyone on the team wanted to do this. We felt this would improve the game a lot. We didn't find the right way to get it into the game at launch, and then we kept working on it."

Fatshark has not given an exact release date for Darktide's class overhaul update, but said it should arrive in October ahead of the game's second anniversary. Fatshark recently addressed criticisms of Darktide's loot and crafting system by making it so completing missions is more rewarding and giving players more control over crafting progression. Additional weapons and missions have also steadily been added in the last year, though Darktide's original seasonal content plan was scrapped shortly after launch in order to address player feedback. Darktide's most-recent update made leveling up around 20% faster and brought significant changes to its mission board and economy.