In the world of FPS gamers, there are few things more important than knowing your weapons. After all, your success in any given match is largely dependent on the firepower at your disposal. So, if you’re a fan of the newly released game Warhammer 40k: Darktide, then this quick guide is for you. Here, we’ll provide a comprehensive explanation of all the weapon stats in Darktide so that you can go build your character armed with all of the right knowledge!
How Weapon Stats Affect Your Guns in Darktide
Several different factors come together to determine how your weapons handle and function in-game. Namely the weapon’s type, its stats, its overall power, and its attack types. When you go to requisition a new gun or blade at the Armoury Exchange, you will see lots of confusing weapon stats and symbols in Darktide with little explanation as to what each means.
Weapon stats include factors like Damage, Mobility, Ammunition Capacity, Defense, Armor Penetration, etc. Ideally, you’d want all of these stats to be maxed, but realistically, everything is a trade-off. Focus on weapons that have stats and attack types that augment your build or shore up any of its weaknesses. Don’t just grab your next weapon in Darktide because it has a high Damage stat or an overall slightly higher Power Rating. There are vast differences in performance and ability than is included in that simple Power Rating.
In this article, we will only be covering weapon stats. For more related information, check out our companion guides to learn more about the different weapon symbols and weapon ratings in Darktide affect your gameplay.
Explanations for All Weapon Stats in Darktide
The following details the meaning of each and every weapon stat in Darktide. For most stats, we have also added additional notes to help you understand when each characteristic will be important to focus on for different character / build types.
Ammo
Put simply, this is the relative amount of ammunition a weapon can hold. You will often see this as a ratio of two numbers (e.g. 16/134). The first number represents the amount of ammo your weapon will be able to hold in a single clip before reloading. The second number represents the total amount of ammo you can store in reserve.
Note: For most loadouts, especially for a close-range Zealot build in Darktide (for example), this will not be a significant factor. As long as you have enough ammunition to be viable, don’t worry too much. The only time this stat will be very impactful is if your clip can’t store enough, and you essentially have a weapon with only 1 shot that can be used before swapping to your melee.
Blast Radius
For weapons that deal Area of Effect (AoE) damage, this Darktide weapon stat describes the relative radius of that area of effect. Larger values indicate that your effect will splash onto a larger number of grouped enemies in a wider circle from your target.
Note: For AoE builds, this is a critical weapon stat in Warhammer 40k: Darktide to focus on. If you want to be the AoE beast that lays down whole hordes, only grab weapons with large blast radii.
Collateral
Collateral is a weapon stat in Darktide that describes the relative amount of suppression a weapon will cause on ranged enemies that aren’t directly hit by your attacks. Suppression is an important effect that will cause your enemies to run and hide behind cover. It can be very valuable if facing ranged enemies picking off you or your allies from a distance.
Note: This can be a useful stat against hordes of enemies that are not quite close enough to engage. However, it is relatively of little use compared to other more primary gun stats in Darktide.
Cleave Target
This describes how many enemies will be hit by a cleave attack in Darktide. You can cleave by swinging your weapon horizontally. To hit even more enemies (if your weapon has a high Cleave Target weapon stat in Darktide), rotate or pan your view while swinging.
Note: For frontline brawlers, this is a relatively important stat. It’s mostly impactful when facing a horde. Yet, you will want to hit at least 2-3 targets in a single cleave just to ensure that you don’t waste your hit that was aimed at an elite on a low-tier enemy.
This weapon stat isn’t the only consideration for how many targets you can hit with a single swing in Darktide. Enemy hit mass plays a large role in deciding how many enemies you can hit with a single swing.
Cleave Damage
This stat describes how much weapon damage you will be able to deal after you strike through your first melee target hit.
Note: Similar to the Cleave Target stat mentioned just above, this secondary stat is mostly applicable when fighting hordes of enemies. By all means, don’t shortchange it. However, it should not be your primary focus unless you are trying to optimize a unique build for a specific purpose with a team.
Crowd Control
Currently, this weapon stat has a limited scope in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. It specifically refers to the ability of a weapon (or shield) to stagger enemies when you push them block while blocking.
Note: This stat seems it would be critical for an Ogryn Skullbreaker build in Darktide that is relying on a shield to tank and push through crowds. Yet, for most players, this will not be a critical focus in their weapon selection.
The ‘Critical Bonus’ Weapon Stat in Darktide
This particular stat is relatively obvious in its meaning. It shows how much extra damage you deal when you apply a critical hit.
Note: As in almost all games, critical hits in Darktide only occur on occasion. As testing has confirmed, hitting weak spots (i.e. heads) does not inflict a critical hit. They can be very powerful, yet don’t rely on this stat for consistent damage output. In the game’s current meta, this is not one of the most impactful stats you should focus on.
Charge Speed
This simply describes how quickly you can charge up a charged attack. This appears to only be relevant to Psyker characters at game launch. However, once more classes are added to Darktide in the future, this weapon stat could be meaningful to others as well.
Damage – Maybe the Most Important Weapon Stat in Darktide
This stat represents the vanilla damage output of a weapon in Darktide. The higher this is, the more damage you should expect to deal.
Note: This should often be one of the most important stats that you maximize. However, it does not represent the overall damage output of your character over time. AoE damage, rate of fire, accuracy, and several other weapon stats also play a key role in determining how much actual damage is dealt “down range” to your enemies.
Therefore, do not maximize damage so much that it sacrifices other core characteristics of your guns or other melee weapons.
Defenses
For weapons that can block, the Defenses stat describes how much stamina you will use up to perform defensive actions.
Note: For tanks or melee-focused character builds, this is a very important weapon stat in Darktide to pay attention to. As we cover in our Darktide beginners guide, Stamina is critical to your survival. If you can’t defend to duel or hold back enemies while your teammates engage, you won’t last long.
Finesse is a Very Important Weapon Stat for Sniper Builds in Darktide
Finesse is a very important weapon stat in Darktide. It characterizes how much bonus damage you will deal by hitting weak points. Head shots are probably the most common type of targetted attack that deals extra damage and benefits from the Finese weapon stat.
Note: This is one of the most important stats for any Veteran Sharpshooter build in Darktide. While all classes can perform headshots, characters using Braced weapons that don’t allow iron-sight targeting are probably going to benefit the least from additional weak point damage.
Mobility
The greatest impact of changing weapon mobility appears to be on the amount of distance covered by your dodge. Yet, as was first reported by PCGamer, each weapon in Darktide has a different base dodge distance stat. This means that its not possible to simply compare Mobility stats between weapons to determine which will allow the player to dodge farther.
Note: Mobility may do more than increase dodge distance. In Vermintide 2, the spiritual predecessor to Darktide, mobility also increased sprinting and was more of a general agility stat. That may also be true in Darktide. However, there is not enough strong evidence at this time to say what specifically this stat does beyond increasing your dodge distance.
Penetration
When fighting armored targets, much of your damage is negated by their armor. For players looking to break through that protection, they can pick up a weapon with a high Penetration stat in Darktide. This stat describes how much relative damage will make it through an enemy’s armor and will affect their health.
Note: Penetration is nice to have. However, it is less meaningful when teams can negate the need to fight through most armor by bringing along a Psyker. The Psyinetic Psyker’s ability to pop the head of armored enemies means many armored foes just aren’t very threatening. For that reason, we really recommend taking along a strong Psyker build in Darktide to make sure elite enemies and snipers hiding behind cover don’t become a problem.
Stopping Power
The name of this weapon stat in Darktide is fairly self-explanatory. It conveys how likely a weapon hit is to stagger or stop an oncoming enemy.
Note: Weapons with good spread and high stopping power can be very useful against hordes. Conversely, powerful weapons with high stopping power can also be powerful against elites looking to charge you. It’s always very beneficial if you can reliably stagger a rushing enemy before they grab or pounce on you.
Stability is Another Critical Weapon Stat in Darktide for Almost any Medium/Long Range Gun
Stability increases your control when recovering from firing a round or when firing multiple rounds. Higher amounts of weapon stability indicate that you can better stay on target when aiming down your sights. It also seems to improve your control when hip firing or brace firing.
Notes: For semi-automatic weapons with relatively small magazine sizes, this is less important. In the extreme case of only having a single round per reload, this will have no impact.
This is probably most important for the Sharpshooter. Yet, if you are building any other ranged characters in Darktide, pay attention to this stat on your next weapon purchase.
Reload Speed
Reload speed is another useful core weapon stat in Darktide. It directly impacts how quickly you will be able to reload your gun’s ammunition.
Note: Not all characters or weapons will benefit from increased reload speed. For example, if your weapon clip is quite large or you tend to swap to melee in the midst of battle, you may not often reload in the middle of combat. Consider if you will need to reload quickly in combat before placing much weight on this stat for your next buy decision.
The First Target Melee Damage Weapon Stat
For a multi-target attack (i.e. a Cleave), this dictates how much damage you will deal to the first enemy hit. It is the other half of the damage equation when combined with Cleave Damage.
Note: The type of build you are attempting will dictate whether Cleave Damage or First Target damage is more important. Increased Cleave Damage means you will do more damage to hordes. Yet, First Target means you will more reliably take down single targets and elite or boss enemies.
Both weapon stats in Darktide are good. Yet, you can’t always have both. Try to complement your other weapon or your teammates to ensure you have at least one character who can focus on elites and at least one who can focus on hordes.
Quell Speed
Psyker class characters suffer from Insanity (small price to pay for magic, huh?). In-game, this mental instability is called the Perils of the Warp, and it increases whenever you cast. Quell speed describes how quickly you can banish Peril.
Warp Resistance
While Quell Speed increases the rate at which you lose Peril, Warp Resistance is a weapon stat in Darktide that reduces the amount of Peril generated whenever you use your Psyker’s abilities. Both are valuable; they just focus on two different sides of the same coin.
Ideally, a weapon for a Psyker who wants to use their abilities or Void Staff often would limit the amount of Peril gained through Warp Resistance while also increasing their Quell Speed to effectively reload their ability to use magic.
Bonus Weapon Stats from Increased Rarity
As in almost all games since Diablo II, item rarity is shown by a color change on the item. Darktide items that are better than standard, vanilla variants can carry with them enhanced weapons stats. An example of this is shown in the image below. Keep an eye out for these variants. They often have higher price tags. Yet, they also offer great bonuses. Consider their bonuses alongside the other stats shown.
Final Thoughts on How to Optimize Your Weapon Stats in Darktide
Change up your playstyle and experiment with different weapons to find what works best for you and situations you commonly find yourself in while playing. If you have a set of friends you usually play with, coordinate your builds and weapon choices to synergize well, so you have fewer weaknesses and more strengths.
Yet, no matter what you do, remember to have fun! Games are meant to be enjoyable so don’t get too caught up in trying to min-max everything.
We hope this guide covering all Darktide weapon stats and when/how to use them was useful to you. If you have any lingering questions or comments, please feel free to leave them in the comment section below. We love to engage with our active readers.
For more insights into the game, feel free to also check out our comprehensive guide to curios in Darktide. They are powerful stat boosters that are vital to consider alongside your weapon stat bonuses when perfecting your builds.
