A Beginner’s Guide to Warhammer 40K: Darktide – Mastering the Morning Star and Combat

Introduction: Surviving the Heretical Horde

Warhammer 40K: Darktide is a deceptively deep experience that demands teamwork, strategy, and mechanical prowess to stand against the heretical low-lives and infested horrors of Tertium. Whether you’re a new reject looking to survive the Emperor’s trials or an adept fighter seeking refinement, this guide will break down key aspects of the game, from navigating your hub—the Morning Star—to mastering combat mechanics that will keep you alive.

Let’s dive in and ensure your survival as you ascend from prisoner to a righteous enforcer of the Emperor’s wrath.

The Morning Star: Your Hub for Progression

The Morning Star serves as the central hub where you manage your character, upgrade gear, and prepare for missions. Understanding its various sections will streamline your experience and ensure you make the most of the resources available.

The Psykanium – A testing ground where you can practice with weapons, experiment with different enemy types, and refine your combat skills. Mastering this area will significantly improve your combat efficiency.
Tech-Priest Workshop – Here, you can modify and enhance your weaponry to optimize your combat loadout.
The Armory – This shop allows you to purchase weapons of varying rarities, including a rotating selection of higher-tier weapons.
Sire Melk’s Requisitorium – Provides weekly tasks that reward unique currency for acquiring specialized gear or gambling on randomized rewards.
Hallett’s Store – The premium currency shop where you can acquire cosmetics.
Cosmetics Store – Use in-game currency to purchase cosmetic upgrades for your character.
The Barber – Modify your character’s appearance to your liking.

These vendors form the backbone of your progression outside of missions, so taking time to familiarize yourself with them will ensure that you maximize your time in Darktide.

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Combat Fundamentals: Teamwork is Essential

Darktide thrives on cooperation and coordination. Every class benefits from sticking together due to the game’s Coherency Mechanic. Being in close proximity to teammates provides buffs such as increased toughness regeneration, attack speed, or extra damage output.

Beyond bonuses, teamwork prevents dangerous situations. Straying too far from the group exposes you to specialized enemies like Trappers and Hounds, who can incapacitate you and leave you helpless until rescued. While collecting Plasteel and Diamantine for crafting is valuable, ensure you don’t venture too far alone—staying alive takes precedence over resource gathering.

Dodging and Avoiding Damage

One of the most critical skills in Darktide is knowing how to avoid damage effectively. The game bombards players with waves of enemies, and proper movement is essential for survival.

Dodging: By default, pressing space while moving performs a dodge in the chosen direction, allowing you to evade both melee and ranged attacks. This technique is crucial for staying mobile and preventing overwhelming situations.
Attack Alerts: Darktide provides audio cues indicating incoming melee and ranged attacks. Learning to react to these cues and dodging accordingly can make you significantly harder to hit.
Dodge Limits: Different weapons affect your dodge capabilities. Lighter weapons, such as pistols, allow for greater dodge distances, while heavier weapons, like two-handed swords or hammers, reduce your mobility. Additionally, dodging continuously without breaks will exhaust your dodge limit, slowing you down considerably.

Efficient dodging extends your survival time and is a preferred method over blocking, especially against Crushers and Maulers, whose attacks can deplete health bars in an instant.

Melee Combat: More Than Just Swinging a Sword

Melee combat in Darktide is deeper than it initially appears, with several attack types to master:

Light Attacks: Fast, chainable strikes ideal for crowd control.
Heavy Attacks: Slower but deal greater damage; some offer armor penetration.
Alternate Attacks: Some weapons, like the Chainsword, can perform charged attacks for massive damage.
Blocking & Pushes: Holding Right Click (Mouse 2) blocks incoming attacks. While blocking, a Left Clickexecutes a push to create space, and a Push Stab (holding Left Click) delivers an attack while maintaining guard.

Understanding weapon movesets is crucial. For instance:

The Combat Axe has high armor penetration on heavy attacks.
The Thunder Hammer can knock down multiple enemies with its heavy swing.
The Chainsword can rev up for a devastating finisher on tougher targets.

Practicing these mechanics in the Psykanium will help you determine which playstyle suits you best.

Marking Enemies and Situational Awareness

One underutilized yet critical mechanic is enemy marking (Q key). In the chaos of battle, high-priority targets can be difficult to identify. Marking them alerts teammates to immediate threats and is particularly useful in low-visibility missions.

For Veteran class players, marking is even more essential, as later talents enhance damage against marked enemies.

Weapon Loadouts and Talents

Experimenting with different weapons and talents is key to finding the ideal setup. Each class has access to shared and unique weapons, with some excelling in armor penetration and others excelling at cleaving hordes. Early game is the best time to experiment, as gear is frequently replaced by better loot.

Similarly, talent builds significantly affect playstyle. While talent customization is a topic for another guide, remember that talents can be freely swapped at any time, so test different setups to find what works best.

Bonus Objectives & Leveling Efficiently

Missions occasionally feature secondary objectives such as collecting Scriptures and Grimoires. These provide bonus XP and Aqua Dockets, Darktide’s currency.

Scriptures emit a faint whispering sound, making them easier to locate.
Grimoires glow green but reduce your max health when carried. Certain Curios provide corruption resistance, making them valuable when running missions with these objectives.

For efficient leveling, Quickplay Missions offer a 20% XP boost and 10% resource bonus, making them the fastest method to progress.

Understanding Weapon Rarities & Upgrading Gear

Weapons in Darktide have five rarity tiers, each adding perks or blessings that modify performance. While upgrading isn’t a primary concern while leveling, understanding that perks cannot be reverted once modified is important when optimizing late-game builds.

Brunt’s Armory allows you to purchase base weapons for upgrading.
Higher-rarity weapons can be bought but have a limited selection.
Investing resources into weapons is best reserved for endgame at level 30, as leveling gear is frequently replaced.

Conclusion: The Road to Mastery

Darktide offers an immense amount of depth beyond just hacking and shooting through hordes. Mastering cooperation, dodging mechanics, melee combat, weapon synergies, and situational awareness will elevate your play and ensure your survival in the brutal battles ahead.

This guide serves as a starting point, but there’s much more to explore. As you gain experience, refining your talents and weapon choices will further optimize your effectiveness in the battlefield.

For now, embrace the challenge, purge the heretics, and may the Emperor guide your blade!