Over the past few months, co-op industrial nightmare Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has added Chaos Spawn, new missions, and cross-play between the Steam and MS Store versions. In the next patch, due in mid-August, developer Fatshark promises quality-of-life changes, including the addition of mission boards, crafting, and the sharing of game currency among all characters.

As explained on the developer blog, all currencies previously tied to characters (Ordo Dockets, Ordo Ingots, plasteel, and diamantine) will be consolidated into a single wallet accessible from any Rejects. This is a particularly welcome change, as veterans will not go broke when they max out their levels and start over as Ogrin.

Meanwhile, the mission board will add Maelstrom missions that combine new and existing modifiers, with Fatshark adding "specialist waves, hunting grounds, mutant waves, and players will have their abilities' cooldowns reduced by 20%."

There will also be a separate mission board called "Auric Level Operations" for higher difficulty missions. The way missions are generated will be changed and "more varied conditions" will be added. Maelstrom missions will also be available on the Auric Level Operations board.

Other changes regarding missions include quick play bonuses similar to those in the Vermintide game, and when you jump into quick play to reinforce the strength of an existing squad that is halfway through the map, in return, additional XP, Ordo Dockets, Diamantine, and Plastil will be distributed. The server to connect to will also be manually selectable, rather than being automatically assigned the server with the lowest latency.

Finally, changes to crafting will allow the user to select the exact perk they wish to apply when refining an item, and two aspects of each weapon (whether perk or blessing) will be changeable. The same applies to curiosities. However, the other two aspects of the weapon will be locked; Fatshark says of this decision, "We recognize that the above changes do not give unlimited freedom to all aspects of an item. Doing so would have a significant impact on the acquisition of items in Darktide and we would like to further explore other avenues."

Some of these are great improvements, but as Darktide's player numbers decline, perhaps the real problems behind incentives like the quick play bonuses have not been solved. Darktide's combat remains excellent, the setting captures the atmosphere well, and the opening storytelling is captivating. However, all that is left after that perfect opening is to repeat the map to level up, in exchange for a series of cutscenes that look like a completely different game.

Hopefully Fatshark is working on a fair amount of new content behind the scenes. Because it is the additional story missions and classes that make the Vermintide games worth playing again, not the tweaks to the crafting mechanics.

"All of the above changes are in preparation for the next patch for Darktide," Fatshark said, "which will be released around mid-August. As part of this patch, there will be a maintenance period during which you will not be able to log into the game.