How Warhammer 40K: Darktide handles grimoires and scriptures

Darktide grimoires and scriptures

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 veterans know that every successful run demands picking up two ominous grimoires and three well-hidden tomes, secret items that reward you with far better loot drops at the end of a successful mission. They also amp up the challenge, taking up vital inventory space and reducing your health pool to a risky sliver. We expected grimoires and tomes to be back in Warhammer 40K: Darktide, and they are—but with some significant changes.

Tomes have been renamed to "scriptures," and Darktide's reworked loot system means the reward for finding grimoires and tomes is a bit different, this time around. The biggest change, though, is that as best as we can tell so far, grimoires and scriptures are no longer in the same place in each level.

Because Darktide's still in beta we can't tell you exactly where to find each grimoire yet. But as we track down all their possible locations, here's an overview of everything new about grimoires and tomes in Warhammer 40K: Darktide.

How do you find Darktide grimoires and scriptures?

Warhammer 40K mission objectives with grimoires

(Image credit: Fatshark)

Here's one huge difference between Vermintide and Darktide: grimoires and scriptures do not appear on every mission. They'll only appear in a level if the mission you take lists them as secondary objectives.

If you're choosing missions on the lowest difficulty setting, you're probably not going to see those objectives pop up. On the mission select screen, look for missions that are at least the second difficulty level (uprising) to find secondary objectives included.

Darktide grimoires and scriptures can appear in several locations

We haven't fully confirmed how this system works yet—and some things may still be changing during the beta—but it seems as though grimoires and scriptures can appear in more than one location in a mission. We'll be confirming their potential locations throughout the beta to build out a thorough guide to where to find every grimoire and scripture. 

What do grimoires and scriptures do in Darktide?

First, the good stuff:  

👍 Grimoires and scriptures increase your coin and XP rewards at the end of a match

That's it—pretty simple. Because Darktide doesn't use a loot crate system like Vermintide, collecting them doesn't have any impact on the quality of gear you can get in Darktide; they just speed up the leveling process and put some cash in your pocket to spend on that new gun you're eyeing. 

Now the bad stuff: 

💀 Grimoires cause corruption, aka the purple stuff that eats up a chunk of your health bar; it can only be removed at a medicae station.

💀 Grimoires take up an equipment slot, so you can't carry medkits or ammo boxes for the rest of the mission.

💀 Scriptures also replace your medkit or ammo box, but they can be temporarily dropped and picked back up. They don't cause corruption.

There are some other limitations to keep in mind. You can't drop a grimoire once you've picked it up, but you can destroy it by equipping it and pressing your attack button (left click). If you get killed, then it's gone for good. Likewise if you crash or disconnect, you'll lose the grimoire. Scriptures can sometimes be found in ordinary-looking containers, so make sure to check every one you see.

Finally, a little tip for your grimoire and scripture hunt: Darktide has items called Curios that can lessen the effect of corruption, making it easier to survive a mission with a grimoire in your inventory. 

Wes Fenlon
Senior Editor

Wes has been covering games and hardware for more than 10 years, first at tech sites like The Wirecutter and Tested before joining the PC Gamer team in 2014. Wes plays a little bit of everything, but he'll always jump at the chance to cover emulation and Japanese games.


When he's not obsessively optimizing and re-optimizing a tangle of conveyor belts in Satisfactory (it's really becoming a problem), he's probably playing a 20-year-old Final Fantasy or some opaque ASCII roguelike. With a focus on writing and editing features, he seeks out personal stories and in-depth histories from the corners of PC gaming and its niche communities. 50% pizza by volume (deep dish, to be specific).

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