Warhammer 40K: Darktidehas a bit of a problem when it comes to map variety. The lack of variety makes sense when you consider that the entire game takes place in a gigantic hive city, however, it does make some maps look almost indistinguishable from others as a result.
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Having said that, there are a few maps in Darktide that aren’t composed entirely of drab corridors and mounds of rubble. Unsurprisingly, these are the maps that immediately stand out from the crowd and are an absolute joy to play on. Everything else is just sort of okay.
14Smelter Complex HL17-36
Mission Type: Strike
This mission is just a big tease. During the briefing, players are told that a smelter has been disabled due to a demonic infestation so, naturally, you would assume that there would be daemons of Nurgle on this map. Unfortunately, the “infestation” is just a couple of Corruptors that have wrapped their tendrils around a few portions of the smelter. How disappointing.
Smelter Complex HL17-36 is a very uncomfortable map to play on. Heretics are the least of your worries when you have huge cauldrons of molten metal floating above your head and literal rivers of lava flowing beneath your feet. While the map does a good job of depicting what a hive city smelter complex would look like in the 41st millennium, Smelter Complex HL17-46 is ultimately a repetitive and forgettable map.
13Hab Dreyko
Mission Type: Investigation
Hab Dreyko tasks players with entering a quarantine zone in the larger Terminus Chasm area in order to learn more about the Blight that’s infesting Tertium. Investigating the zone and acquiring the relevant information is pretty infuriating, partially because Hab Dreyko is teeming with heretics and mutants and partially because Darktide’s investigation mechanics can only be described as snoozeworthy.
Hab Dreyko’s only redeeming feature comes near the end when players stumble upon a tree adorned with eyeballs, green slime, and various other nasty decorations typically associated with grandpa Nurgle. Aside from the tree, though, there’s nothing memorable about this map. In fact, it’s more annoying than anything else due in large part to the aforementioned investigation mechanics.
12Chasm Logistratum
Mission Type: Raid
Chasm Logistratum is a run-of-the-mill map with few distinguishing features. There’s an open-space area near the beginning that gives you a taste of the scale of Tertium, which is massive even for a hive city, and then it’s just corridors and stairways until the end of the mission.
The final area is a bit more interesting as players are tasked with recovering a big shipment of ammunition from the local heretics. The area is fairly large and there are ammo containers located on each side of it, so it’s tempting to want to split up to retrieve them faster. However, doing so is generally a bad idea and will almost certainly get somebody killed, especially on higher difficulties.
11Consignment Yard HL17-36
This is an overall painfully average map with very few notable landmarks. There’s a fairly decent section about halfway through where players need to bypass a security door, but it starts to outstay its welcome after the first minute or so. Past that, there’s nothing interesting going on until the end of the mission.
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After spending a good 15 minutes fighting hordes of monsters in cramped areas, the titular Consignment Yard is truly a sight to behold. Stepping out into an open area is a breath of fresh air, in spite of the thick pollution. The ships patrolling the skies overhead are a particularly nice touch and remind players that Tertium is still inhabited by regular people whose lives depend upon the actions of the Rejects. It’s just a shame that the rest of the map is so bland and lifeless by comparison.
10Excise Vault Spireside-13
Excise Vault Spireside-13 deviates from the typical formula of maps that look samey for most of the mission before hitting players with big set pieces near the end. Here, players are introduced to some striking post-apocalyptic vistas that look stripped straight out of Mad Max just a few minutes in. Only to be then greeted by an even more impressive sight upon encountering the servitor colony.
Unfortunately, the rest of the map looks a little barebone by comparison. The final section, in particular, is underwhelming and a disappointing way to end the mission. Still, as far as Darktide maps are concerned, Excise Vault Spireside-13 is above mediocre.
9Refinery Delta-17
Mission Type: Disruption
Maps like Refinery Delta-17 are a cruel reminder that Darktide doesn’t have the overarching narrative of the Vermintide games. It’s easy to see how this map connects to Excise Vault Spire-13 and Relay Station TRS-150, but it’s hard to get attached to them when there’s virtually no story. Oh well, at least there are some pretty sights to look at, provided you don’t run into any bugs, which seem to be more common here than on other maps for some reason.
Refinery Delta-17 mixes things up by including both indoor and outdoor sections. Some of the abandoned buildings and rundown areas are begging to be explored and wouldn’t feel out of place in a post-apocalyptic RPG. The final sections of the map feel somewhat anticlimactic, although the gauntlet run toward the lift can be fun depending on what sort of enemies the game decides to spawn.
8Vigil Station Oblivium
Mission Type: Espionage
The first portion of Vigil Station Oblivium is what you get when you build something like Ready Player One’s Isle of Dogs in the 41st millennium. The place somehow manages to look depressive and impressive all at the same time. Later sections look almost welcoming and surprisingly well-lit by comparison, especially the bazaar with its big holo-statue that can also be seen on Silo Cluster 18-66/a.
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Unfortunately, Vigil Station Oblivium doesn’t do enough to differentiate itself from its sister map. In fact, it reuses too many of the same sections and the unique ones aren’t quite as interesting. It’s not a bad map by any means, but revisiting sections in a game that doesn’t have a storyline can feel confusing and even a bit lazy on the part of the developers.
7Chasm Station HL-16-11
Mission Type: Assassination
Chasm Station HL-16-11 has one of the better opening sections in Darktide. As soon as players step off the transport ship they are greeted by a bunch of Astra Militarum soldiers holding a key bridge against the hordes of Nurgle. Among other things, their barricade includes a couple of Leman Russ tanks, which are a fun addition for fans of the largerWarhammer 40K universe.
The other stand-out feature of the map is, of course, the boss battle at the end. Warhammer 40K: Darktide features a wide variety ofinfuriating enemiesand this could have been considered one of them if it wasn’t for the fact that the game suffers from a lack of boss encounters. This is by no means the most interesting boss fight out there, but it does give players something to look forward to and makes the map marginally more memorable than some of the other ones.
6Relay Station TRS-150
Relay Station TRS-150 looks like it’s seen some better days. The place was likely falling apart long before the followers of Chaos settled in and made it their home. Normally, purging the heretics residing here wouldn’t be worth the effort, but it turns out they’re using the relay station to spread propaganda, so they must be stopped at all costs. Ironically, the Imperium was probably using the relay station for that very same purpose back when it was still fully operational.
Relay Station TRS-150 is one of the only maps in Darktide that takes place almost exclusively outdoors. Well, in a manner of speaking. If you remove the machinery and brutalist architecture, the map would feel right at home in Vermintide 2 as some of the open areas are very reminiscent ofFatshark’s previous game. The main issue here is that, similar to its two sister maps, the final portion of Relay Station TRS-150 feels unsatisfying. Otherwise, this is a pretty good map all things considered.
5Power Matrix HL-17-36
Mission Type: Repair
Storywise, the mission on Power Matrix HL-17-36 is one of the more important ones in Darktide as it involves repairing a factory that produces vehicles that are key to the war effort. Fittingly enough, the map looks like an industrial hellscape from start to finish. It’s tempting to imagine that this area would have seen better days before the infestation, but in reality, Power Matrix HL-17-36 is a perfect representation of your typical hive city manufactorum. In other words, this is how the place issupposedto look like.
Despite being just as dark and depressing as many of the other maps in Darktide, Power Matrix HL-17-36 has a wider variety of environments and a good number of noteworthy sections. There are quite a few feats of engineering to marvel at while traversing the map, including the Power Matrix itself, which ends up being a huge room filled with all sorts of exotic machinery. It’s a bit strange that nobody comments on the dangers of having a huge firefight around the already unstable core, but that’s just 40K for you.
