Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters - Duty Eternal has now been unveiled as the turn-based tactical RPG’s first paid expansion and, after getting a brief look at it during a recent preview event, its Venerable Dreadnought certainly looks ready to burn all the heretics in its path.
Rather than continuing from where the campaign left off, Duty Eternal aims to give players more tools in the fight against the Bloom during new campaigns. The Grey Knights are getting not just a Venerable Dreadnought pal to accompany them on special missions, but also the new Techmarine class, alongside a new addition to their fleet in the shape of the Gladius Frigate.
The Venerable Dreadnought was described by publisher Frontier Foundry as a powerful combat walker with customizable weaponry and unlockable abilities. It joins your squad in an early event mission and, as you probably expect, it’s quite adept at both soaking up and dealing damage.
It can equip one of three weapons on its left arm and one of four weapons on its right and, although we don’t have an extensive list, the Doomglaive and missile launcher were confirmed as potential picks.
The unit comes with skill trees of its own that let you specialize in the use of different types of weaponry. In addition, you can also inter any of your Grey Knights with the fallen status, allowing them to fight on in the name of the Emperor.
The Venerable Dreadnought is, however, only available to control during the new Technophage Outbreak missions, where it joins your squad as a fifth member to battle this new strain of the Bloom. One of them is guaranteed to occur per Bloomspawn eruption and they’re some of the toughest missions in the game.
They remix existing maps with new Warp Surge conditions that also feature more enemies, including new types, like the Technophage Elites, who specialize in shredding armor and resist being stunned by your Grey Knights.
On top of that, they have harsher consequences for failure and are the only source of the new Archeotech currency, which is used to upgrade all the new units available to your squad.
Archeotech caches are dynamically placed across the map and guarded by powerful units. They hold a finite amount of the currency, but permanent extraction sites can be unlocked on the star map through a mission chain, granting the currency passively.
Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate - Daemonhunters - Duty Eternal’s new class, the Techmarine, deploys combat servitors with dedicated tactical functions, but can also repair and augment the Venerable Dreadnought.
As opposed to its hulking peer, it can be recruited just like the other classes in the game once unlocked. Upgrades allow you to add more combat servitors to your arsenal, but whenever they use an ability, they draw from the Techmarine’s AP pool.
By default, the new class comes equipped with the Omniscient Power Axe, a new weapon. Servitors have bolter, multi-melta versions, and others that can be unlocked during the campaign.
Daemonhunters throws you into a battle against the odds, as the Bloom doesn’t politely appear in just one place on its star map. Duty Eternal introduces the Gladius Frigate in an effort to grant more flexibility in dealing with the plague, by allowing you to respond to two Bloom eruptions at once.
Obtained by completing a mission to reclaim it from Nurgle’s acolytes, the frigate lets you assign a squad of Grey Knights to it and pick a location where the Bloom is present. The second squad autocompletes missions off-screen and it’s worth noting that they have the same risks and rewards as regular ones.
Warhammer 40,0000: Daemonhunters - Duty Eternal is slated to launch on December 6 and will be available on both Steam and the Epic Games Store for the price of $14.99/£ 12.99/€14.99 or your regional equivalent.
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