TLDR: What should I get?
bless
The stats are further explained below and each is discussed, but we have to start somewhere, not everyone wants to read an article.
Always Good: +(20-21) Health, +(16-17) Toughness
If you need it: +3 Stamina
Up to 3 wounds: +1 wound
Bottom line: get the stamina you think you need (usually 0-1 +3 stamina), the health you think you need to survive - ignore damage (0-3 + health curiosity), fill the rest with tenacity and ignore extra wounds.
Absolutely Basic: Start with full health and/or durability and see how you feel about it.
compensation
Because of the way the Curios are acquired, trying to follow some strict "just these 3" systems is not possible, even with an easy answer as to what the best setup is (no, but we can try). Only one attribute can be selected directly through refining and the others are random. I have listed the benefits of series 3-4. Scroll down again for more context and a mechanistic explanation.
Probably the most comprehensive: +(22.5-30%) Stability recovery rate
Good, but still subjective: +(12-15%) sprint efficiency, +(10-12%) stamina regen
Can't go wrong: +(4-5%) health/toughness
Safety: +(15-20%) wear resistance (shooter/shooter);
Good in principle, but low numbers: +(3-4%) combat ability regeneration
A bit too specialized, but serves its purpose: +(8-10%) refresh rate (allies), +(10-12%) block effectiveness
Bad: (+15-20%) Damage Resistance (Bombarder/Flamethrower/Mutant), +(12-15%) Corrosion Resistance, +(15-20%) Corrosion Resistance (Magic Book)
Not recommended, but with reason: +(15-20%) Chance for Curios as quest rewards (rather than weapons), +(8-10%) Ordo Dockets
Useless at level 30, but BIS for leveling: (+8-10%) XP
how to collect curiosities
If you're a beginner or just don't have much time to play at max level, I suggest you start collecting (and equipping as needed) curiosity with good stats from your arsenal right away, picking up promising pieces while you go to you see them. They're cheap and the best source of a lot of Curios that you'll eventually have to burn to get the premium Perk scrolls you'll need in the long run.
This means checking your arsenal every hour (updating as often as possible), the best way to do this is to use the swap arsenal browser extension, info here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide / reviews/ 1000s5t /formally_announcing_the_armoury_exchange/
If you want to fish for good weapons, you can do a lot with the filters so you don't have to fish a bunch of junk, but as far as I know, they aren't designed to only filter good curios. This is fine because there are only two listed at a time and there is an easy drop down menu to see just those.
The second step to make this annoying process less annoying is the Psych Ward mod: https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/89?tab=files, which gives you access to inventory and shop screens without load into the mourning star . It can save you a lot of time, especially when dealing with multiple characters.
It's a shame, but it's all we've got.
The other main way to get them is from the emperor's gift. You'll inevitably get some Curios from them, but the chances of getting anything good from the Gifts are slim to none. Some people use the perk to increase Curio drop for gifts (warning: reports indicate that at least stacking this effect doesn't work). I value weapon gifts more, so I don't support this approach, but if you really want it, it's there.
If you see a Curio in Melk's Pick of the Day, I suggest only buying it if it's close enough to perfect. Base stats in the range above and at least two good perks you want to keep. The third stat can be repeated. Every test I've seen of Melk's cryptic option strongly suggests it's a waste of resources.
There is a nice mod that will make it easier to browse your inventory for antiques (and weapons), Quick View Cards: https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/142
Upgrade - when and how
When should you start spending resources (Plasteel) to upgrade Curios? Just get a good gift (the main stat) while having at least one good weapon before picking up Curios. These weapons aren't necessarily perfect, but your Plasteel will get a lot more use out of them in the first place.
My limits for investing in a Curio are +20/+21 Health, +16/+17 Stamina, or +3 Stamina. Sticking to perfect toughness/health will leave you with very few candidates, and lowering the bar makes me overly uncomfortable, but there's no hard line there.
The basic system that effectively upgrades Curios, and I wish there was a better answer to this, is to dedicate them until you have bad advantages on the blue and purple plates, so stop if you do. Turns orange only for items with two fixed perks. It's very expensive to play to try to get Curio all the way to orange because you don't get another bad perk that will destroy the item in the long run. The cost varies slightly by item level, but green to blue costs about 160 Plasteel, blue to purple costs about 320, and purple to orange costs about 650. This adds up quickly because there are so many bad perks.
Useful mod for improving items: Reroll-Until-Rarity https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/30 Allows you to set the desired Perk and roll it back until you reach the desired level. If you've ever tried manual optimization, you know how annoying and slow the process can be.
Basics (Blessings)
Curios has four main stats that you're sure to know: +(17-21)% Health, +(14-17)% Stamina, +(2-3) Stamina and +1 Wound. You may see larger areas in the resources, but these are the rolling areas for a level 30 character right now.
Both +Health and +Toughness stack additionally to extend your base HP/Toughness. If I have three Curios, all with +17% Resilience Blessing and +5% Health proc, I'll get +51% Resilience and +15% Health. Whether it's a gift or a perk, its stacking is the same.
Each class has different base health and toughness values, which do not scale by character level.
Veteran: 150 Health, 200 Stamina
Zealot: 200 health, 100 stamina
Soul: 150 Health, 100 Stamina
Ogryn: 300 Health, 100 Stamina
So if I equip the installation example on Zealot, I end up with 230 health and 151 durability. For a more in-depth look at their relative strengths and weaknesses, see the next chapter.
A very useful reference for different character values can be found here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YAn6wSBxiNC-fvRh5aRRtnkRIwsGJe55ll4r5J1Arh8/edit#gid=0
I also take this opportunity to introduce a very useful mod for tracking your game stats: NumericUI https://www.nexusmods.com/warhammer40kdarktide/mods/14
Wound
Extra wounds increase the number of times you are demoted and revived before dying. These are represented in the user interface as the pieces that the health bar is divided into. In Heresy and above, Ogryn starts with 3 wounds, while others have 2 wounds. Add a wound above Malice and below.
These statistics often seem to be misunderstood, and part of the blame lies with the user interface, because without the numbers visible, it's not necessarily clear what the true value of Curio's statistics is. Some players (in T5) even seem to think that the extra wounds make them think harder and have no external source, which isn't a completely crazy assumption.
When you are down and revive, your last bar (wound) health is replaced by corruption, which reduces your maximum health by a percentage of your wound's maximum health. With 2 starting wounds you will only have half health and with 3 starting wounds you will have 2/3 health on first resurrection. Note that this is the maximum health value, so adding health values will also affect this calculation. Only Medicae Stations (or Dead and Rescued) clears app crash, not Medkits.
Corruption can be caused by other sources such as health damage from Poxwalkers, Pox Hounds, Poxbursters, Daemonhosts or Plague Ogryns. Hang or eat Beasts of the Nurgle or Corruptors (the targets you have to kill blisters to reveal) like near a Daemonhost, but this aura only makes you half corrupt. Grimoires initially apply 40 Health of Corruption, then apply more marks of corruption over time, eventually dropping to 1 uncorrupted health.
If your bar is already partially damaged, the damage will only fill the next partially intact bar, but otherwise it's exactly the same: if you don't have more than a full intact bar when you're down, you'll die. Wounds have no effect on your health when injured.
stamina
+X Stamina Increases Stamina bars by the specified value. You will no doubt notice this bar appear in your UI and drain as you sprint, block or push. The number of individual parts equals your max stamina tank (1:1, unlike Vermintide 2). Your basic stamina has two components, your class and your weapon. The basic strength of the class is as follows:
Veteran: 2
Zeloter: 3
Psyker: 1
Ogryn: 4 You can see the durability bonus for each weapon in the Inspect UI. Weapon stats don't affect this, or at least I can't think of any that do (but stamina costs do).
When you run out of stamina, you lose sprint speed, can't push anymore, and if a blocked attack drains it to zero, you'll be temporarily stunned (commonly known as a breakout).
Stamina pools and stamina regeneration are explored further below.
Health and strength
The biggest decision most players will make when choosing a Curio is whether to focus on health or toughness, although there is no rule against mixing them. There's no easy right answer to this question, but first I'd lean more towards Tenacity as it's a resource that replenishes quickly in a fairly controlled manner while health is usually gone.
There's a lot to dig into on this one, but I'll start with a brief rundown of the key differences, most of which are pretty obvious to anyone who's played for a while. Thanks to Grimalackt for this post on enemy attacks, it's a good read for more details as I shorten some explanations: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTide/comments/10f40uz/all_enemy_attacks_damage_values_healthtoughness/
Shot damage is fully carried over to persistence before it starts draining your health. When Tenacity runs out, you gain a short (curse for 1 second) 82.5% additional bullet damage reduction on cooldown.
Melee damage will be partially absorbed by toughness, depending on how full the toughness bar is. At 100% toughness it completely absorbs an attack, at 75% toughness you take 25% of the damage to your health, the rest is taken by toughness, etc.
Multiple melee and shooting attacks increase resistance damage. See the link above for details.
Things I would incorrectly classify as "special damage" either ignore toughness and damage health entirely (eg Grimoires, Nurgle Beast Slime, Barrel Explosions) or automatically reset your toughness and deal full health damage (eg. Poxbusters, Bomberfire ).
So isn't resilience just false health? Not so fast!
Although toughness is weaker than health by design, it has one major advantage: you get more. Read more. This analysis may seem obvious to some, but my experience suggests otherwise.
The first main source of regeneration is what is called Coherence Regeneration. Get closer to some players and restore persistence, everyone knows that. Resilience Regeneration Speed improves this, both delaying the damage before it starts and the speed at which it regenerates. This is a fixed price, so larger pools take longer to refill.
The InventoryStats mod helps to illustrate the difference, here the TRS on Zealot is between 0% and 75%.
Another common source of resilience regeneration is melee kills. Stab something, regardless of Horde or Elite, you will gain 5% toughness (7.5% for veterans). The rule of thumb is that every source other than Coherency Regen is percentage based, so increasing your stamina will give you greater rewards from those sources.
Then you have class features that increase Fortitude regeneration or apply damage reduction. For the sake of brevity, and to avoid starting to use this as a class guide, I won't list them all, but each class' feat sequence is at least dedicated to Tenacity, and some of the perks that Tenacity spawns are quite powerful (especially the confidence that affects ). How you design your builds to manage your survival tools is critical and can have a big impact on your Curio priorities.
Damage reduction effectively increases the value of the health/toughness pool and the corresponding curiosity. At low prices this is somewhat negligible. Zealot's 15% Resilience DR upgraded aura increases your (team's) effective tank by 17.6%. The effect increases rapidly, out of all proportion to what the apparent numerical increase might suggest. If you reduce a given pool by 50%, it essentially doubles its value. 75% quadrupled. These are currently available at high uptime prices so are worth keeping in mind.
However, the reductions stack multiplicatively, so a Zealot with normal Crit DR (50%) with Enhanced Aura (15%) will have (0.5)*(1.15) = (0.575) = 57.5% Fortitude DR.
This all adds up to a rolling stamina economy that keeps you in the fight a lot longer than the simple analysis I've seen some people do of how much damage you can take from 100% to zero would suggest. This is why toughness is competitive even on Ogryn, max blessing will give you +63% = +189 health and +51% = +51 toughness. Unless your mission is really bad, you'll be refilling your manpower several times during the time it takes to get to 0 Health.
Health case
The premise of the last subtitle is not entirely wrong. Some things don't care about your persistence, no matter how much you stack or respawn, sometimes it will hit you. The main thing to balance is not getting nerfed too quickly by one or two special sources of damage, such as snipers*, Poxbursters, Grimoires, or gravity-bending grenades.
Without a +Health source, a single Grimoire can easily reduce a Psyker's or Veteran's health to less than half in the time between the last Medicae and the completion of the ending. Two Grims can bring them within 1 shot for a short time. I don't research or build for Grimoires, but the same principle applies to anything else that negates Toughness. You need to decide how much buffer to use.
The way you tend to take damage (when it's not just crippled and overpowered) is a leak for a few melees and thin health or zero toughness against one shot and fire again before covering or closing the gap multiple times. This is why the Vermintide-style Zealot build, which intentionally goes to 1 Health and relies on temporary Health** for maximum damage buffer, doesn't work in Darktide. Your real health is weakened by every suitable adversity.
There is one build that actually regenerates health regularly: Zealots and Holy Spirits. In this case, you can begin to assess health more through the aforementioned resilience indicators. A tip though is to try to activate it when you know you can exploit it, rather than risking getting stuck when it might be activated naturally.
Pushing everything out of persistence can also require a more aggressive and deliberate build and playstyle, which may not be for everyone.
A way of saying health is better than persistence. I've seen this play a few, but I personally don't buy it because persistence breaks easily on T5 and you have a temporary buffer to resist the shot anyway. You can also perform Standard Hold and Use Temporal Reduction to start regaining resistance or otherwise change the situation. My subjective experience is that you can get more out of the durability investment than you make.
Finally, a damage type can be protected very well by veterans with high base stamina and high uptime on the Unwavering Focus feat. The added protection against this type of damage is icing on the cake rather than having any real effect. . Covering in situations where primary defense doesn't apply can be better than going all in. This is something to consider.
*: Sniper deals massive but technically not excruciating damage to Fortitude.
**: If you haven't played V2, it's kind of like Resilience, but replaces lost health as it regenerates and wears off over time.
Wound. A wound on a wound.
This is a constant point of contention until everyone seems to be tired of talking about it. Third plague, waste or miracle? My basic position is that you can add a wound to non-Ogryn, I won't discuss your situation, but I think it's better to stay out longer.
Falling and being picked up is far from certain in the T5+. Can I say that extra damage due to stamina or health is never good for my game? of course not. Overall, I don't think it's as useful as other options.
First let's roll 4+ wounds. The scenario where someone goes down and actually respawns 3+ times between meds without a team wipe is that the person is probably just trying to build up extra HP/Toughness/Stamina, if that happens and they die then so be it, little option to level them up later. This is unlikely to be a problem caused or solved by the speed selection.
Extra wounds keep you out of the instant death zone for longer than getting knocked out when fighting corruption from other sources, but in that case it would be better to have health anyway.
There are more ways to capture the +1 wound build scenarios compared to the +Health building. If you use +Health Curio, you gain more total health between starting health and your first health regeneration, but if you include the second resurrection, you gain more total health from the extra wounds. Comparing damage and toughness on a statistical basis is a pretty dubious proposition unless you start collecting data on win rates from multiple runs. Whatever you want.
How much stamina is enough?
Enough to do what you (think you) need to do. Some practical specific tips: The bigger your stamina base (class + weapon), the less likely you are to need stamina curiosity.
Ogryns essentially offers just that. Regardless of weapon choice, the +3 isn't enough to change their massive starting tank.
For others, it depends.
Zealot weapons from +1 (knife, tactical ax) to +4 (epee) durability. At the lowest point, you can start to think about it, but personally, even with the Tac Ax, I've found the Sprint Efficiency and Stamina Regeneration Perks, Zealot's quick Stamina Regen delay (from consumption to starting production again), to I do enough so I don't feel like I don't need it. If you want to train harder in Push Attacks, run various Curio Perks, or just like long distance running, then this might be for you. Try without it and see how you feel.
Psychers are unique in that their Stamina Regen Delay is so short that they can send unwanted push attacks indefinitely into the void. In this regard, +Stamina drops even though their starting team is the smallest. They can also transfer the block cost to Peril through the feat to avoid easily breaking defenses when blocking multiple attacks. Using Force Swords (3 Stamina bases total) I found I could get by without the Feat or Stamina Curio, but I could see the added Sprint ability and safer blocks and pushes.
Veterans are the class I usually recommend running Stamina. The main reason is that Veteran's Stamina Regen Delay is terrible. 1.25 seconds compared to Psyker's 0.5 seconds makes you very dependent on your starting team. If you've been playing veteran enough, you've probably experienced the feeling of stamina reset when you're cornered and trying to fix the situation. In this case, using a more defensive weapon than my usual Power Sword would work instead, but at least for PS I feel like the extra Stamina pool makes a big enough difference to warrant a Curio slot.
blocking and lack thereof
Although I just talked about emergency blocks above, you usually don't need many blocks in Darktide. The following applies to benefits with +Stamina Blessing, Block Efficiency, and Recovery Speed.
Looking at my last ten curse games (+ mix of high intensity and impact), at least one game per class, I've had 0 to 15 interceptions based on the scoreboard model, an average of 5.4 interceptions per game. I suspect 10 and 15 of the blocked plays were due to pressure recoveries and many of the blocks were accidental on push attacks. These are standard numbers and my stats are not out of line compared to other players.
However, it has one element that doesn't matter...until it does. Maybe you want to recover after the flash grenade wears off, or you don't want to get crushed by another Rager sneaking up on you to break the guard so he can get out. This won't happen forever. But is the blocking itself worth it? I do not think. The opportunity cost of block effectiveness on Curio isn't huge, and +Stamina has other uses, so I wouldn't completely ignore it. Just don't focus on blocking too much.
return to performance
Let's go over some details about the perks in the order I listed them at the top.
Durability Regeneration Rate: The mechanical part is included in the toughness part. While this perk isn't mandatory, I think it's the most available and probably the most impactful on average. The better your independent (non-consistent) respawn is, the less it matters, but even in the cases where you need constant respawn to get back into the fight, you'll be glad you had it.
Stamina Restoration: While this perk is nice, for many builds it won't show up that much. It's kind of relaxed if you're in the back lane most of the time and don't use push attacks or dashes to dive into the shooter. In terms of how much you boost regeneration, those numbers aren't very high. However, it is an important resource and, in some cases, extremely valuable.
Sprint Efficiency: Moving faster is very good - very good, consistent - and that's what makes you. Even if you don't dive into Zealot, you should still gain slots, which can advance you faster and/or gain more stamina while doing so. You won't notice you have one equipped, but as you stack, you'll start to feel it (which is true of any perk, admittedly). You can see the Sprint cost through the Inspection UI, depending on your class and equipped weapons.
+Health/Toughness: A little flat, but it's a nice boost with no problems.
+DR (shooter): Includes draw/bark shooters and reapers. Not an environmental shooter, not a shotgun player (a question people ask a lot). Very common enemies, if not the most dangerous, as long as your toughness stays the same. If you are easily impressed by images, please rate them very high.
+DR (Sniper): On an average per route basis of any kind, this will do very little. There aren't many snipers and their behavior is relatively rare... unpredictable. This perk earns some points back, especially on non-Ogryns, despite how devastating it is to get hit once. No judgment here, how good are you at spotting/dodging sniper shots? Be real about it and prioritize accordingly.
Combat Skill Recovery: As I said above, this is basically good to good depending on how spammy your ults are. For context, all but the veteran's 25 second volley have a 30 second cooldown. Each 4% perk reduces the 30 second timer by 1.2 seconds. It works well, although I would like to be more excited about how it works.
Resurrection Speed, Block Efficiency: See the discussion in the Stamina section for more on blocking, but I combined them because regen is pretty much the only time you'll be doing a lot of blocking in Undertide. For that matter, Revive Speed is one of the best. Once you stack it, it's a bit clutch and noticeable, but I don't think it performs well enough to warrant a high rating. Another use of Block Eff. In some versions Psyker Deflector, but this is not as powerful as it might seem at first glance.
+DR (Bomber/Pox Dog/Poison Flamethrower/Mutant): What these specials have in common is that they don't deal you direct damage in almost any relevant situation. Mutants hit walls and knock you out half the time, and don't hit as much if there are no other enemies to help them while you're disabled. If the Pox Hounds attack you, they'll eventually deal some corruption damage, but you're doomed or freed before it actually works.
(Toxic) Flamethrowers and bombers do some damage if you're on fire, but what they really do is break your toughness and make you move or freeze you in place, depending. As far as I know, Bombers only covers "Bombers" and not Poxbusters, despite some labels suggesting so. If this turns out to be wrong, then you can upgrade the privilege a bit.
These would amount to doing something, but no more.
Corrosion Resistance: The issue with corrosion resistance in general is that non-Grimoire corrosion is mostly dealt with through wounds (which are not affected at all) or through attacks that also deal health damage that exceeds the amount of corrosion. Resisting partial corruption is only relevant if you're healed beyond that threshold by something that isn't a healing station, or if it takes you past your final wound threshold and you're knocked out. This is starting to become a very specific scenario.
To deal with Grimoire damage, since they deal a fixed amount of damage at the start and every turn, rather than a percentage of your health (like they do in Vermintide), the best way to equip resistance to Grims is to simply build health ( or playing Ogryn) If you want a Grim hunting version then these will help but don't think I care.
Curio rewards are covered in the Get Curio section above.
+Ordo Dockets: I'd be lying if I said I thought you'd get less Dockets for sacrificing combat stats for this. If summarization is your goal, this will help. If you want to be prepared for a race, then of course it won't help you.
Source: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2978264496
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