A New DLC is always welcome in titles that have a continuous gameplay cycle because it gives you brand-new ways of trying out the same levels, and Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is no different. It launched with four unique classes, and earlier this year, Fatshark released the Arbites DLC class and now, we have the brand-new Hive Scum class added to the game as DLC. These masters of the criminal underworld are not new when it comes to crimes and violence and the harsh living of the streets of Tertium have prepared them for anything that comes in their way. The Hive Scum are natives to this planet, so they are, in fact, right at home, and they know every dirty secret of the underworld. This is our review of the PC Steam release of the new Hive Scum DLC for Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, in which we prepare some stimms and annihilate our enemies with dual-wielded weapons.
Choosing this class gives you a little bit extra to choose from in some of the customization options at the start. You can choose a Cartel Affiliation since the Hive Scum are members of underground cartels in Tertium, so it is only natural that you select your colors and flag as well. These are only visible selections and give you access to that cartel’s colors down the road. You also have new backgrounds and backstories to pick from. Furthermore, in the visual customization options, you also have some more hairstyles and body tattoos which are limited to the cartel you pick. Apart from this, these options are only limited to Hive Scum as well, so if you pick any other class, these customization options will not be there for you. These are part of the new DLC class only.
The most prominent addition to the Hive Scum class is a brand-new skill tree called Stimms and in this section, you can invest points and gain access to the class’s unique selling point. These Stimms are either offensive or defensive, and you can use them during different situations to either deal damage to your enemies or get buffs or debuffs yourself. Like the main Skill Tree, the Stimm Skill Tree also has branching paths, and you must choose a path to pick. You can either go defensive or you can go offensive with these stimms. These stimms range from giving your increased toughness to boosting your attack speeds. If you prefer, you can also infuse them with your grenades and deal different types of deadly status effects to your enemies. This is a great highlight of this class and really sets them apart from the remaining classes. You can also apply these toxins to your weapons to add a bit of added damage.
The Hive Scum also come with unique weapons, which are suited to their playstyle. You will find three new weapons in both the melee section and the ranged section. As I mentioned earlier, Hive Scum can dual-wield weapons. You can find the new Autopistols and Shivs in your inventory, which are both dual-wielding weapons. While the Autopistols take the win for me, you also have the option to dual-wield the new stub pistols or the needle pistol, which comes in standard single-wield. Depending on your build, you can choose the weapon that suits you the best, but I used the Autopistols throughout my review playthrough, and they never disappointed me in any situation. If you prefer using stimms and toxins a lot, you can use the armor-piercing needle pistol that allows you to infect literally any enemy in the game with the toxin of your choice.
If you prefer using melee over ranged weapons, you can pick from the dual wielding shivs, a saw which can be coated with the toxins of your choice or the crowbar which is also a double-edged sword. While it may sound generic, the crowbar allows you to deal two different types of damage. With its sharp side, you can land armor damage, but with its blunt side, you can smash some skulls by dealing crushing damage. Out of the three options, I prefer using the crowbar the most, despite the shivs offering a dual-wield option. While the shivs do give a more rugged look and you feel like a ninja slicing through the enemies with both hands, the crowbar excels at raw power despite lagging a bit in the speed department.
Coming to Blitz abilities, you have three brand-new abilities to pick for your toxic-spewing character. These include Blinding Grenade, Boom Bringer, and the Chem Grenade. Naturally, the best one of these three is the Boom Bringer because it is a rocket launcher that causes massive explosive damage to your enemies. On the downside, it only has a small amount of ammo, but it is good because it would have been devastating otherwise and bad for other classes. The Chem Grenade allows you to throw grenades that prefer status effect damage rather than explosive damage. The Blinding Grenade, as the name suggests, blinds all enemies, giving you a chance to kill them before they recover.
Finally, we have the Combat Abilities of the Hive Scum. As you progress through the Skill Tree, you can unlock one of the three Combat Abilities for your character at a time. The first one is called Rampage, and it is for players who prefer melee builds. Activate Rampage, and it boosts your attack speed and damage, so you deal additional damage to anything that comes in the way of your slicing and dicing. Under this ability’s effect, you are also immune to suppression and stun, so nothing stands in your way. The longer you keep hitting the enemies, the longer it can last, so it all boils down to your skills to make this combat ability even more deadly.
If you are suffering from incoming ranged attacks, you can pick the Desperado, which allows you to spring indefinitely and also makes you immune to all sorts of incoming ranged damage. I think this is a great Combat ability for players who want to make the game a little easier for themselves if they find it hard to dodge incoming attacks. If you land ranged kills while it is active, you can nab some ammo as well. My personal favorite is the third ability called Stimm Supply because I always play a support, and this is right up my alley. With this ability, I can deploy a special medic crate and provide the Cartel Special benefits to all of my team instead of just myself. This does remove healing, but your team becomes powerful enough to just plough through anything with the buffs.
The formula of Hive Scum is the same as compared of other classes in the game. During an exclusive press preview event before its launch, Fatshark detailed that no class is superior to the other one and every class sits in a balance when compared to other classes, and Hive Scum is the same. While it may excel in one aspect, it lacks certain aspects as well. They may be agile and can spew cans of death, but they are not as tough as some of the other classes in the game when it comes to taking damage. This is countered by their superior agility which gives this class a chance to avoid incoming fire by dodging around and movement. Another unique aspect of this class is that since you are dual-wielding shivs, if you place your attack in the right position, each shiv can attack two different enemies. This is a little difficult to pull off in the game, but if you try, you can certainly see it happening.
With all that said, some issues with Hive Scum bothered me during gameplay. First and foremost is that while dual-wielding is excellent when it comes to shooting and dealing damage, it suffers in loading time because you have to load two guns at the same time instead of a single one. The damage output of the class is just decent, and you have to level up and put in a few hours before you can unlock some Stimm powerups and some progress in the main Skill Tree before you actually start seeing some solid response to tougher situations. If you are sticking to the ranged builds, you will have a much better time with this class because the melee still requires some optimization when compared to other classes in the game.
Despite the dual shivs, you are unable to land as much damage as you would expect from this class. While you can change this after investing some hours into the skill tree and only focusing on the melee skills, it still lacks when it comes to raw melee power, and it is something that not a lot of players will look forward to doing because the result is not promising enough. If you are sticking to a ranged build and are complementing that with stimms, you are going to have a blast. This does not bode well for a class that is supposed to be balanced at both ranged and melee combat. Hopefully, some future balancing will help counter this.
The Hive Scum class DLC will set you back $11.99, which is the same price as compared to the Arbites class; however, it is much more fun and offers a lot more when it comes to builds and customization. Sliding around the map while shooting your dual Autopistols is something that no other class in the game is capable of doing and the stimms add a nice tough into the whole chaos as well. I will suggest that, for the time being, just stick to Autopistols and go for a ranged build while the devs cook up some balancing updates for the melee skill tree of the class. You can still manage easier difficulties with a decent melee build, but if you prefer jumping into the game at the highest difficulty, you will get into some trouble with a build that is only focused on melee.
Final Verdict:
The new Hive Scum class sits perfectly within the world of Warhammer 40,000: Darktide. This is because this class comes from the underbelly of Tertium rather than some other fancy place that was forced into this life. I loved the gameplay style and appearance of the previously released Arbites class, but the Hive Scum actually makes more sense to be added to the game. This class is vicious, knows the scene, and is perfectly capable of handling themselves in the streets. The Stimms tree adds another level of customization to this class, giving you even more power over how you can dish out pain and torture on your enemies before killing them. If you skipped picking up the Arbites class due to some reservations, I will suggest that you go and try the new Hive Scum class right now because it brings some new ways to customize your character and kill your enemies.
Final Score: 8.5/10
