Vermintide 2's Shadows Over Bogenhafen DLC was supposed to arrive all the way back in April/May, but was unfortunately postponed as the developers needed to focus on squashing the numerous bugs that appeared around launch. The wait is now just about over, however, as Shadows Over Bogenhafen will finally be arriving this August 28th for both PC and Xbox One.
The DLC will bring with it two large new maps to explore, a variety of cosmetics and weapon illusions, as well as an absolute ton of balance changes and tweaks. If that sounds right up your alley, you'll be glad to hear that you can now test out the DLC for free, as well as help ensure it launches with as few bugs as possibly, by joining the Steam beta. Simply right click Vermintide 2 on Steam, go into Properties and then Betas, and then just select 'beta' from the dropdown menu. After a fairly sizable download you'll not only be let loose on the new maps, but you will also be able to keep all of your progress and items from the beta!
As for the balance changes themselves, you will find the full patch notes over at the Steam forums. There's far too many changes for me to cover in any sort of detail, but allow me to at least share a couple of the more important ones, just in case you don't feel like reading through all of them:
• Sounds have had a major overhaul. We've made changes to how Specials - like Gutter Runners, and Vortex Sorcerers, will play sounds when they appear, to make them more audible. These changes includes increasing the range at which you can hear these sounds, and making them higher priority. The obstruction of a sound take in account how important that sound is. For example a Packmaster will be heard better behind a house than a Clanrat.
• Level unit complexity reduced and assets are reworked and combined to reduce draw call counts. Improves CPU and GPU performance by reducing draw call counts.
• Boss doors will now spawn for all bosses further into the level. You need to defeat the boss before proceeding. Also fixed issues where boss doors didn't despawn after the boss was defeated.
• Significantly increased the impact damage and damage over time of Incendiary Bombs.
• Trolls turned out to be quite hard to kill on higher difficulties, especially when facing them alone. To balance this, we have changed the passive regeneration of Trolls to pause for 3 seconds after taking damage.
• Single target weapons will now more consistently hit the target being aimed at.
• Increased push radius for all melee weapons.
• Increased push strength for all melee weapons.
• Reduced stamina regen delay after pushing.
• Two-Handed Swords - Increased attack range of all attacks.
• Two-Handed Swords - Heavy attacks now cleave through armored enemies.
• Sword & Shield - Increased damage of push stab attack.
• Sword & Shield - Increased movement speed of shield slam attack.
• Hammer/Mace & Shield - New attack: Push attack is now a downward slam. Pierces armor.
• Hammer/Mace & Shield - Increased movement speed of shield slam attack.
• Two-handed Hammer - Increased damage multiplier versus Chaos Warriors from 0.75 to 1.1.
• Fighting Monsters with melee weapons turned out to be very inefficient and unsatisfying for some weapons. We have increased the damage multiplier versus Monsters for various melee weapons.
Since even my own 'short' list is absolutely gigantic, I think it's fair to say that this update has brought with it an absolutely ridiculous amount of changes, the vast majority of which are going to improve the gameplay experience quite significantly. So if you're like me and you haven't played Vermintide 2 in a while, I would highly recommend you come back and give this update a try. It really is like a whole new game, and I'm not just talking about the two new maps!