When fighting against the ruinous powers of the Chaos Gods, it is common to see their Corruption take hold. All four Chaos Gods spread Corruption through their followers and the environments they touch. Not only is this heavily showcased in the enemy and environment design in Darktide, but Corruption also plays a prominent role in every fight. But how does Corruption work in Darktide?
So, What is Corruption in Darktide?
As you progress through a level in Darktide, you may notice that a portion of your health bar has become purple, or Corrupted. Corruption is a new system in Darktide that reduces your maximum health after you take damage or are revived.
What Causes Corruption?
Corruption is typically inflicted whenever you take damage to your health bar. However, some attacks still apply Corruption regardless of whether you have Toughness or not.
Each time you are afflicted with Corruption, your maximum health is reduced. Certain enemies and monsters can cause a large amount of Corruption compared to normal damage. For example, if you take health damage from standard melee attacks from Scabs or take a few bullets, you will hardly accumulate any Corruption.
Specialists, such as Gunners, Shotgunners, and Reapers, do not inflict huge amounts of Corruption. This is because their attacks are not influenced by Nurgle. However, those who bring Nurgle’s gifts, like Pox Hounds, Tox Flamers, and the Beast of Nurgle, apply large amounts of Corruption. Be wary of any AOE attacks from Tox Flamers or other special enemies in Darktide bearing Nurgle’s Corruption.
Corruption Lowers Your Wounds
We previously covered the topic of Wounds in Darktide. Yet, for the sake of explaining Corruption, we will briefly summarize it here. Not only does Corruption lower your maximum HP, but it also limits your number of revives. Each health chunk in your HP is a Wound, and Wounds dictate how many times you can be revived and your total health.
If one of your Wounds is fully corrupted, you lose that health chunk and thus are closer to dying, both from a regular health state and a revived state. If you have only one Wound remaining and you’re knocked down, you will instantly die and then have to wait to be rescued.
How do you remove Corruption in Darktide?
Corruption can only be removed by interacting with one of many Medicae Stations. These can be found throughout different sections of each level. Medicae Stations have set points, as well as some randomized points.
As you play Darktide, you will notice that specific areas before an objective will always have a fully stocked Medicae Station. However, you can find power cores near inactive Medicae Stations between primary objectives.
Although you can sometimes find an active Medicae Station between major objectives, it requires finding a nearby power core to use, which can be difficult. Note that Medicae Stations have small blue lights on the bottom indicating how many charges the machine has: if there isn’t enough for everyone, save charges for those with the highest Corruption.
It is also necessary to note that Medi Packs do not heal Corruption in Darktide; they only heal missing health. Therefore, if half of your HP is Corrupted, you will only heal the non-Corrupted HP.
Grimoire Corruption in Darktide
One of the two secondary objectives in Darktide is gathering Scriptures and Grimoires. Veterans of the Vermintide series are familiar with these collectibles, but if you are not experienced with Fatshark titles, we will quickly explain.
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What is a Grimoire?
Grimoires are cursed books that are scattered throughout Darktide’s levels. If you receive this secondary objective in your mission, you can find two Grimoires between the level’s start and end.
Each time you pick up a Grimoire, the book takes up your equipment slot where you would carry a Medi Pack or an Ammo Crate, and the book Corrupts your team’s health. One Grimoire will corrupt 30% of everyone’s health as long as you carry the book. Having both books Corrupts your team’s health by 70%, making the run significantly more difficult.
Grimoire Corruption isn’t Permanent if the Item is Lost
As previously mentioned, if you have fewer Wounds, you will also have fewer chances of being revived. If someone dies or manually discards a Grimoire, it vanishes, which is both bad and good: the book is gone, but your health isn’t Corrupted; however, you can’t complete the secondary objective.
Using a Medicae Station will completely heal you as usual, but because you’re carrying an artifact of Corruption, your health will rapidly turn purple after a few seconds. So only non-Grimoire Corruption can be cured permanently.
Curios Help resist Corruption in Darktide.
Some Curios in Darktide can have corruption resistance as a part of their secondary or third buffs. Yet, note that there are two different types of Corruption resistance. There’s normal Corruption Resistance which helps resist Corruption gained from taking damage, and Corruption Resistance (Grimoires) only helps resist against Grimoires, but not damage Corruption.
We always recommend gaining some normal Corruption Resistance on some of your Curios. Yet, if you’re fond of collecting Scriptures and Grimoires, we recommend gaining some Corruption Resistance for Grimoires.
Wrap-Up on Corruption in Darktide
That is our short, in-depth guide on how Corruption works in Darktide. You will definitely need some Corruption Resistance if you plan to challenge yourself on Malice or Heresy difficulty. This is because the number of enemies increases, including Elite enemies and Specialists.
If you want to learn more about Darktide, check out our guides. You may want to learn how Critical Hits work or our explanation of what the Rending stat is and does.
Good hunting, Rejects!
