The objective of this guide is to cover the most common perk setups for weapons in Darktide, to try to set people up on the right track for evaluating their own gear. I’m going to start with general (TLDR) advice and then elaborate on some of the reasoning further down, along with an explanation of the enemy armor type system (Unarmored, Flak, etc.) and how Crit and Weak Spot Damage perks work, which is not how new players think they would .

I’m not going to cover Blessings here because they are very weapon specific.

This is written with Damnation(+condition) difficulty in mind but I don’t think any of the priorities change significantly on lower difficulties if that’s what you’re concerned with.

With Maelstrom missions more game modes have been added that change enemy composition more than previous modes did. With Monster specials, Mutant waves, etc, you may want to shift those priorities but I would suggest that's better done with weapon selection than Perks. Don't try to polish a turd.

For the base recommendations we’re going to assume a general use weapon with stat lines within a reasonable range and with the traditional roles they serve in Tide games. Melee weapons for fighting melee elites and chaff, guns for shooting Specials and shooter enemies (more or less). You can make loadouts and adopt playstyles that break that paradigm, like Psykers can do anything they want with a Staff and almost ignore the melee weapon or relegate it to very specific uses.

These lists are meant to be a starting point and to help create a baseline for people to compare other options to. It’s not prescriptive in that you should put ‘these two’ Perks on every weapon always.

Perks top out at +25% to a type. Adding 25% to something you don't do much isn't going to add up the way you want. Us changing weapons doesn't change the enemy composition or their behaviors.

“+Armor type/Enemy type” refers to “+X% Damage (type)” perks. Keep in mind that bonuses against groups of enemies like Elites (6-10%) are much smaller than against armor types (15-25%).

TLDR summary:

• Safe, strong pick for basically everything: +Flak.
  
• Then usually a choice between: +Maniac, +Elite, +Unyielding(*) (see below)
  
• Less common but may have a role: , +Unarmored, .
  
• Too specific for most weapons: +Carapace, +Specialist, +Infested
  
• Need to know what you’re doing (explained later): +Weak Spot Damage, +Crit Chance, +Crit Damage.
  
• Garbage: +1-2 Stamina, Block Efficiency, Sprint Efficiency, +Groaner/Poxwalker.

*: On Monstrous Specialists Maelstrom missions you can actually start to rate this high on your Monster dps weapon. Otherwise there aren't quite enough targets.

The vast majority of enemies most players routinely fight in melee are Unarmored or Flak Armored, with Infested and Maniac a way behind those. Elite covers a large enough pool of enemies to be a pretty solid perk even with its reduced bonus compared to armor type perks.

With Patches 13 and 14 there’s been a shift in enemy health pools and spawn rates. There are more elites and Ragers were made much stronger. Simultaneously player power has increased substantially, making handling most sub-Elite ambient enemies easier. With that in mind I’ve shifted the earlier recommendations around.

On +Maniac: This is where the nuance starts to creep in. How important this Perk is depends on your playstyle and build. To start, if you have a ranged weapon that efficiently deletes Maniacs at close range like an Infantry Autogun 5 then you won’t need this very much. Maniac is also an armor type where breakpoints (whether a Perk will change the number of hits needed to kill) are very important as the targets are in moderate numbers with medium sized health pools. If you run Throwing Knives this Perk also gets better as they benefit from your active weapon's Perks.

Unarmored, Infested, and to some degree Flak Perks are propped up substantially by the fact that not only are those enemies very common, but you end up cleaving through a bunch of those targets with most weapons. Cleave damage has falloff (except with Blessings like Brutal Momentum, to a point) so even if the first target dies in one swing without a Perk the rest of the targets will take a rapidly diminishing amount. The end result is that in fighting a ‘horde’ of these enemies you’re going to come pretty close to adding up your total theoretical damage until you meet the total enemy health pool so your Perks are more likely to live up to their stated potential.

This won’t usually be the case with Elite and Specialist enemies (which all Maniacs are). If a hypothetical target has 1000 Health and you do 500 damage with each hit then adding +25% Damage will not quite be useless, because other sources of damage can come into the equation, but it won’t help you very much. You’ll still need two hits to kill it most of the time.

So if you go through with testing and/or theorycrafting and don’t see a notable change in kill times on the relevant enemies then think twice about whether you could get better mileage out of another Perk. For Maniac and melee particularly that’d be Dreg Ragers, Flamers, and Mutants (Trappers you’ll usually shoot). Be mindful of which buffs you should consider as being on for this testing.

+Horde (Groaner/Poxwalker) will rarely be totally dead. However horde clear has become rather trivial and this Perk is too narrow for how small a boost it gives.

Carapace enemies have seen a small boost in population outside of the Maelstrom modifiers full of melee elites but I still strongly suggest you not take this Perk unless you’ve done some good research and have a reason to. +Elite gives you substantially more bang for the buck if you don't have a specific breakpoint you're aiming for with Carapace.

Unyielding enemies have become more worthwhile to melee over time but I do not find them so common that I'd routinely want this over the alternatives.

Crit and Weak Spot perks I’ll elaborate on further later in their own section but I didn’t put them down that far for no reason. Do not pick these Perks blindly.

The garbage tier contains stats that in isolation are useful. I use Stamina curios in some builds and value Sprint Efficiency as a curio perk (for melee particularly), but they are so much worse than the alternatives on weapons that they are undesirable in this context.

TLDR Summary:
Normal weapons:

• Absolute gold standard: +Flak, +Maniac.
  
• Less exciting: +Elite, +Unyielding(*), +Unarmored, +Specialist.
  
• Need to know what you’re doing (explained later): +Weak Spot Damage, +Crit Chance, +Crit Damage.
  
• Bad: Reload speed(**), +Infested, +Carapace
  
• Garbage: +Groaner/Poxwalker, +1-2 Stamina, Sprint Efficiency.

*: On Monstrous Specialists Maelstrom missions you can actually start to rate this high on your Monster dps weapon.
**: This is hard to pin down precisely but I can say I would not pick this over a relevant damage boost in almost any case. More discussion further down.


Maniac is an extremely important armor type for shooting, with Trappers, Mutants, and Flamers being priority targets. Flak isn’t as highly represented among Specials (Bombers) but it covers most shooters and Elites so it’s still a priority.

If you have to choose between Flak and Maniac, Flak covers way more enemies but Maniac covers some of the more critical ones so if you don't have a good melee solution to Mutants and are primarily targeting Specials with the gun then consider Maniac, but otherwise stick with Flak for a more general approach.

With Unarmored, if you’re intending to heavily target Shooter and (Shot)Gunner enemies this can move up depending on your gun/build breakpoints. Traditionally this mostly applies to Veterans.

Specialist and Elite are usually decent as a fallback Perk if your weapon didn’t roll perfect but they also often come in when you want to hit some specific breakpoints that you either couldn’t hit with an armor type Perk alone or to reach some that the smaller bonus is enough for while also getting something against a wider range of enemies.

Unyielding is a little too specialized for me to recommend for non-Monstrous Spec missions. It’ll do something for most guns but the targeting priority for these targets is pretty far behind the other types.

Infested can have applicability against Pox Hounds and Poxbursters but I've never been able to justify the Perk slot for just that. If +Specialist doesn't get me there on those targets, +Infested has had too high of an opportunity cost.

Back to Reload Speed. The best case is something like a Bolter that can empty its magazine fast and has a slow reload and the worst is something like Infantry Lasgun with a long time to empty and fast reload. Even in the best case you should consider how much of a boost you're getting to the reload time and whether that's worth it over spending one less shot on killing something. Do you save more time (even leaving ammo use out of it) firing one less shot to kill something while emptying the last mag than you'd save taking 10% off your reload time? That's not a long time taken off.

Area weapons (Purg, Flamer, Trauma, Rumbler):

This is a little looser and the weapons have less in common, as you can tell by the * caveats, but I felt like I should include it.

• Absolute gold standard: +Flak.
• Not quite as good: +Elite , +Unarmored, +Crit Chance (*).
• Less exciting: +Infested (***), +Maniac, +Unyielding , +Specialist, , +Crit Chance (others).
• Basically garbage: +Groaner/Poxwalker (***), +Carapace, +1-2 Stamina, Sprint Efficiency, +Weak Spot Damage, +Crit Damage, Reload Speed (***)..

*: Critical hits apply two burn stacks with Purgatus and Flamer.
**: For explosions really look at your breakpoints if you want to clear hordes, this may move up in priority.
***: See above for discussion.

Flak is still a dominant target. Unarmored and Infested can feel like gilding the lily on Flamer/Purg particularly but even then it'll still do good work. Elite is broad enough that it’ll get some decent work done.

Okay so what’s up with enemy armor types? If you go to the Psykanium and hit something it’ll pop up the armor type along with the damage number. Enemies can have different armor types on different body parts and direct attacks will do damage according to the body part hit.

Dreg Bruisers (bucket head melee guys) have Flak Armoured heads and Unarmored bodies. +Flak damage will boost your headshots against them and +Unarmored everything else.
Area weapons (e.g. Flamers, Trauma Staff) will do damage according to the enemy’s base type, so Dreg Bruisers are treated as Unarmored for those purposes.

For further details check out https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PtPcw4m4YtO_IcEkFlJJOBVWCYDEIeCKJRYLT4SmLc0/htmlview# for a more technical breakdown and https://imgur.com/a/DqmYpV1/layout/grid for a visual representation. Again, if you’re unsure then a quick trip to the Psykanium should clear any confusion about what’s being hit. (The imgur link is out of date as far as the numerical values go)

You should be familiar with enemies that pop up in the kill feed but ambient and horde enemies are a little more confusing so I expertly crafted explanatory images for them:

Here are the types listed out:

Unarmored: Groaners (horde), Dreg Stalkers (shooter), Dreg Bruisers (melee), Snipers (special), Tox Bomber (special).

Flak: Scab Shooter* (shooter), Scab Stalker* (shooter), Scab Bruiser* (melee), Dreg/Scab Shotgunners* (elite), Dreg/Scab Gunners* (elite), Scab Rager (elite) (**), Scab Mauler (elite), Scab Bomber (special).
*: Partial Unarmored.
**: Scab Ragers have been changed to body Carapace but the head and limbs are still Flak.

Maniac: Scab/Dreg Flamer (special), Dreg Rager (elite), Scab Trapper (special), Mutant (special).

The preponderance of Specials in this category is the reason +Maniac is generally superior to the broader +Specialists perk if those are your concern.

Infested: Poxwalkers (horde), Poxbursters (special), Pox Hounds (special).

Unyielding: Bulwarks (elite), Reapers*** (elite), all Monsters.
***: Partial Carapace, Chest is Flak.

Carapace: Crushers, Scab Ragers (chest only).

Crits are appealing as a universal passive dps upgrade but a few factors really hold them back from actually being as good as they look.

TLDR: Only take +Crit chance if your weapon has awesome crit damage or it procs something really important. Never take +Crit Damage. Only take +Weak Spot damage after you've run the numbers yourself.

To start, base Crit Chance is 5% for Zealot and Veteran. Ogryns are 2.5% base and Psyker is now 7.5%. This was changed in Patch 13.

Some weapons have stats that scale this up front and some (mostly guns) have hidden mods. More on that below.

The first thing you need to look at is whether Crits are any good on your weapon. Just inspect your weapon in inventory and bring up attack breakdowns. Laspistols for example can have over 3x damage on Crits (ratios vary between armor types). Sweet.

What about my Power Sword then, that has 80 Finesse, must be a crit monster! Yeah, no. About 1.5x damage crits. Rashad Combat Axe? Finesse weapon! Kinda, 1.5-1.9x (stat/armor dependent). Antax Combat Axe with no Finesse stat: 1.4-1.8x.

Finesse (Fatshark uses this term for both WS and Crit) damage was generally boosted in Patches 13 and 14, along with changes to hit zone priority for many weapons to reward better play, but many weapons still have poor returns on Crits and WS hits.

How Crit and Weak Spot Damage works

(Abilities that add "Weak Spot/Finesse/Crit Strength" do not work like this and will scale damage by the full listed number (or close enough depending on other Strength sources).)

The stat scaling Critical/WS Damage, like in Vermintide 2, only scales the damage increase over the base damage – not the total damage on Crit/WS attacks.
So if we go back to that Power Sword, if I slap +10% Crit Damage on it I’ll be increasing the (Unarmored) damage of a charged Heavy Crit from 877 to 916. A total of +4.45% - not the +10% advertised. If we total up the potential cleave damage to 7 targets it’s even worse: +4.19%.

To make the basic math there clearer (numbers rounded):
Base damage: 490
Crit damage: 877
Difference: (877-490) = 387
Crit Damage perk gain (387*0.1) = 38.7 damage added. That's not much.

Weak Point damage normally follows Crit damage on a weapon but not always, so check that one as well before you start doing any theorycrafting. What WS damage has over Crits is that with any weapon that cares about WS hits you can usually get way higher rates of WS hits than ever on Crits. You don't have to be a great player to have >50% Weak Spot rates on melee weapons.

If you have both bonus Crit and Weak Spot damage they'll stack for your WS Crits. +50% WSD and +50% WSD = +100% Crit WS Damage. It's calculated using the same "difference" method described above.

Bonus Crit/WS damage Perks never keep up with +TargetType on those targets (even Elite/Special on the same percentages) because +Type multiplies the final product, not just the WS/Crit damage part of the equation but there are real cases where there's still a strong argument for using them.

Some ability/feat/blessing interactions can also increase the value of these stats, like if you had an axe with Brutal Momentum and +WS Damage clears a 1-hit headshot breakpoint on an ambient or horde enemy that isn’t a favored armor type, letting you get cleaving faster while also boosting your damage some across the board. That could add up to a significant gameplay benefit even if it doesn't immediately look significant from a total damage perspective.

Similarly if you’re on Zealot and want more damage reduction uptime from +Crit Chance, that’s a valid choice with something like Knife or Tac Axe.


Base Crit chance modifiers for weapons. Some of these are listed on the weapons via stat tooltips but many are not.

• Grenades: -5%
  
• Surge Staff: +5 to 25%
  
• Recon Lasguns: +2% | String: 2 | 2 | 2
  
• Infantry Autoguns: -2% | String: 2 | 3 | 3
  
• Braced Autoguns: -2% | Strings: 2 | 2 | 2
  
• Autopistol: -2% | String: 3
  
• Revolvers: +5 - 25%
  
• Heavy Stubbers: -2% | Strings: 6 | 6 | 6
  
• Laspistols: +15%
  
• Bolter ADS: +5%
  
• Infatry Lasguns: +5%
  
• Helbores: +5%
  
• Plasma: +5%
  
• Shotguns(Non-Special): +5%

Strings: This is the number of shots in a row that will crit if one shot does. The next (as many) shots after that will not crit unless an outside mechanic forces it, like Psyker's 5 headshot talent. They are listed in ascending order of the weapon marks (so Infantry Autogun Mk1 | Mk5 | Mk8).

This guide is meant to be generalized and it’s no stretch to come up with scenarios where you could decide your priorities warrant a different approach.

One common quandary with Perks is whether to double down on your strengths or try to compensate for your weaknesses. With the way Perks are designed my advice generally is to focus on what you actually do with a given weapon in real games first and foremost (you need to be a little analytical and honest with yourself on that) and then to mostly focus on your strengths.

Adding 25% to the Carapace damage of my Bull Butcher Cleaver for example will clear a breakpoint. Might even save me 2-3 swings. But it won’t matter – it’ll still suck against Carapace.

Stacking buffs

When looking at your build outside Perks you do need to know about damage multiplication. The most relevant buffs are +Power, +Damage%, and +Type (perks). These buff categories all multiply each other (Base * Pwr * Dmg * Types) but Power and Damage stack additively within their categories while Type damage boosts multiply each other (e.g. +10% Elite and +25% Flak = +37.5% Scab Rager damage).

So if an example Zealot with 3 stacks of Martyrdom (24% Damage) and 5 stacks of Sustained Assault (20% Damage), has a perfect roll Heavy Sword 9 with Headtaker 4 stacked (+40% Power), Rampage (+36% Power +10% Groaner/Poxwalker damage, and +25% Unarmored damage hits a Groaner (Unarmored) with a Light attack it'll go:

(Base Damage = 103,98) * (1 + 0.4 + 0.36 = 1.76 Power) * (1 + 0.24 + 0.2 = 1.44 Damage) * (1.1 * 1.25 = 1.375 Type) = 3.48 * Base Dmg = 362.35 (exact rounding may vary).

Power is now called Strength ingame, since for some reason they repurposed the term Power for the crafting rework. I'm leaving it in the text.

The main takeaway there is that stacking Power or Damage bonuses carries diminishing relative returns. Adding Rampage to the example Zealot increases total damage by less than 36% because they're already boosting Power via Headtaker. Similarly the (formerly) popular Autopistol with Blaze Away (bonus Power for extended fire) and Pinning Fire (bonus Power on stagger) will see relatively lesser returns from each when both are active. That doesn't mean they're bad (at all), the absolute returns are still what they're advertised as, you just have to be careful not to overestimate the impact of stacked buffs. This comes up the most with +Damage bonuses that you may have multiple sources of within a Talent tree as well as Blessings.

To one-shot or not to one-shot...

“Breakpoints” – the points at which a boost will take you from needing two hits to only needing one (e.g.) to kill an enemy is the first thing most players look at. The Breakpoint Calculator is very helpful for that: https://dt.wartide.net/calc/

However keep in mind that not all interactions (mostly uncommon ones) are implemented there and you can’t account for class abilities with it, so for every class you’ll have to consider different outside variables, like Psyker Warp Charges, Vet Executioner's Stance and Weak Spot bonuses, Zealot Martyrdom and Sustained Assault, and Ogryn’s piles of Heavy Attack bonuses. The Psykanium helps and is usually faster than trying to spreadsheet it yourself with multiple overlapping abilities. Consider the Healthbars, Creature Spawner, and Debuff Indicator mods to help test stuff if you really want to get into it.

Look at what procs your other abilities as well. 1-hit headshots for Brutal Momentum. 1-hitting Groaners or Poxwalkers for Slaughterer cleave trains - nobody likes teching for hordes but if you can get these enemies from one to two hits to kill it makes a marked difference ingame. What do you need to one or two-shot specific enemies with or without Volley Fire? Does clearing a nice breakpoint for a rarer enemy outweigh the total cleave damage against a horde enemy?

It’s a messy world out there and there aren’t always clear answers to be had but hopefully this helps someone draw their own conclusions.

Some are linked above also

Enemy types: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1PtPcw4m4YtO_IcEkFlJJOBVWCYDEIeCKJRYLT4SmLc0/htmlview#

Enemy types visualized: https://imgur.com/a/DqmYpV1/layout/grid

Breakpoint Calculator: https://dt.wartide.net/calc/

Jsat’s discord has some good resources and can be hit up for questions: https://discord.gg/xF7wvAjsHz

The Loadout Config mod is extremely useful for identifying potential breakpoints, and can be found at the Darktide Modding discord: https://discord.gg/GFyCGNpJb8

Gameslantern has a site that can help look up stuff for builds, like available Blessings, the live mission board, or whatnot (browse top banner): https://darktide.gameslantern.com/weapon-blessing-traits

Rending/Brittleness explained: https://forums.fatsharkgames.com/t/patch-13-class-overhaul-part-1/83184 (Scroll down to Updates and Tweaks)

Jsat playlist with mechanical explanations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QlBkFN9RRw&list=PLIK-d7nI4NiiosXNF8-__gL2tzmh5quUj&index=2