Warhammer: Vermintide 2 becomes a roguelite in its new free expansion

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Chaos Wastes lands on April 20.

Vermintide 2, a first-person brawler about smiting tides of vermin for loot, is the kind of game that lends itself to high skill challenge runs. So it’s nice to see that its forthcoming Chaos Wastes update adds a “roguelite inspired” game mode, which is all about pushing deeper into the game’s hellish quarters for greater rewards.

And these will be new hellish quarters too, as 15 new locations are promised, and they’ll be laid out differently with each run. “Trust your instincts during your explorations, the path you took yesterday can be inaccessible or obliterated,” so reads the Vermintide website. Because each run is different, a lot of emphasis is placed on how you load out with weapons, boons and miracles.

The whole point is to reach the Citadel of Eternity: There’s a lot of lore connected to this place, but in a nutshell it’s where you’ll seek the favour of your gods. Along the way you’ll stumble upon cursed areas, which are basically high-difficulty areas that demand a certain playstyle. It sounds like cooperative play will require a lot of close strategizing and collaboration, so I hope you have friends.

Chaos Wastes rolls out for PC on April 20—it’ll arrive as a title update and you don’t have to do anything fancy to access it. It’s a nice and chunky update for a game that was already very good at launch. “Vermintide 2's combat and level design are so feverishly fun that I'll put up with its bad matchmaking and RPG progression if it means chopping more ratmen in half,” Steven wrote in his review. 

Shaun Prescott
Shaun Prescott
Australian Editor

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.