+52.5-60% Weak Spot Damage (Enemies with Bleed Stacks).
+1-4 Bleed Stacks on non-Weak Spot Hits.
+30-60% Rending on Critical Hit.
+10% Critical Chance for every 0.3-0.45 second while aiming. Stacks 10 times. Discharges all stacks upon firing.
I don't understand how the combat knife has remained this overturned for this long. It's good on the veteran, but on the Zealot, it is downright broken. I see a lot of players hesitant to try a stealth Zealot build because it looks too difficult to master. I'm here to tell you, it really isn't. It's absurdly strong and with even a basic understanding of Darktide's mechanics, can have you sprinting around, slaying everything in sight. Just don't be one of those knife zealots that tries to speedrun the game and leave your team behind. Those are the reasons this playstyle gets a bad reputation.
STAY WITH YOUR TEAM! I see far too many Knife zealots run ahead and abandon their team like Rambo. Dropping aggro with Shroudfield means that those threats will now attack your teammates. I see far too many players try to speedrun the mission, rushing ahead and dropping aggro if they get overwhelmed. In a normal mission, all this does is send everything towards your team who now has to deal with your slack. The only time you want to be playing like this is if you are speed-running in a premade team, not with randomers who don't know what you are doing.
With that PSA out of the way, the playstyle focuses heavily on speed and mobility. With the Catachan Mk VI Combat Blade, holding on to heavy attack will allow you to move faster 30% as you are lunging. This can help you close the gap on ranged enemies. You will also have better mobility overall, allowing you to dodge-slide and get insane distance, allowing you to weave in and out of combat to avoid damage. It's surprisingly easy to engage with Monstrosities and dodge their attacks whilst keeping their aggro. The knife does heavy damage on weakspot hits and backstabs hits. Backstab hits technically do not count as a weakspot hit, so will proc Lacerate automatically from the back. If you are fighting an Ogryn or monstrosity, hit them once quickly in the body to gain a bleed stack before going for heavies on the head to benefit from Mercy Killer.
If you are not able to close the gap, or if you need to take a specialist from a distance, you have two options. Blades of Faith & Zarona Mk IIa Quickdraw Stub Revolver. Knives are quick to use and do not require you to change weapons. However, they struggle against armour, especially carapace. So I like to use Knives to respond to quick threats immediately (Trappers, Poxhounds and sometimes Dreg Ragers), and the revolver for tougher enemies (Maulers, Dreg Ragers, Crushers).
We move down the right tree, picking up Backstabber. Should be obvious, but we want to be going for backstabs so an increase in backstab damage is incredibly helpful to us. You will be inflicting bleed on most enemies you attack, so Scourge just increases your chance of a critical hit, and dealing more damage, as well as stacking bleed stacks faster. This synergises well with Enduring Faith as you will be hitting crits frequently enough to have a semi-permanent 50% Toughness reduction up. Second Wind is a great node on any Zealot build and one I never go without. Being able to replenish toughness every time you dodge (something you will constantly be doing) with only a 0.5-second internal cooldown is one of the best toughness replenishment nodes in the game, and especially for Zealot. It works on ranged attacks, not just melee, so dodge frequently to keep your toughness up.
We mosey on over to the left to pick up Duelist. You will be dodging a lot, so proccing this throughout the game. Whilst we are here, we might as well pick up Until Death. Getting a free second life when things go pear-shaped is invaluable, and I've become so accustomed to this on my Zealot builds that I feel naked without it. Ideally, you don't want to ever use it, but it can be handy to stop yourself instantly going down if you fail to avoid that Crusher overhead.
Down the right key, we pay the price to pick up Dance of Death, which does very little for us as the Revolver is already extremely accurate. This is to pick up Thy Wrath be Swift. This is an excellent node that stops you from getting stunned and is so freaking strong. It is hard to articulate just how impactful this node is, but the ability not to have your movement interrupted in a build that focuses on mobility for survivability, it is simply invaluable, and well worth the investment. Grievous Wounds can assist in stun-locking bigger threats, Like Ragers and Ogryn's, although it is not something to be relied upon given the knives' low stagger values. Loner is... trash sadly, and desperately needs to be either reworked, or changed completely. It is a terrible node that promotes a terrible playstyle. However, we need to pick it to carry on for the point economy.
Shroudfield is your, 'I don't want to play the game' button. Popping it drops all aggro on you, allowing you breathing room and to get into a better position. It also provides a huge Finesse and backstab bonus, allowing us to absolutely chunk down Monstrosities once we are in a good position. This 3-second window is increased to 6 seconds with Master-Crafted Shroudfield allowing you more time to get into the correct position. Invigorating Revelation allows our ability to serve as defensive utility, in addition to offensive burst damage. It is not an instant Toughness replenishment like the Veteran's ability, but can still provide decent defensive utility.
Sustained Assault increases our damage in situations where we are constantly attacking the same target. Pious-cut throat Is what enables our hit-and-run style of play. It doesn't have to be a heavy attack. Every backstab kill, whether that is an intended one backstabbing that scab gunner, or just spamming light attacks into a horde. Shroudfield has a pretty short cooldown already at only 30 seconds. Any backstab kill will reduce this by 6 seconds. If you're careful about your placement, you can spend very little time actually visible to enemies.
The Catachan Mk VI Combat Blade is the preferred combat knife for this type of playstyle. Both heavies are strike downs, allowing you to deal more damage, and more reliably hit weakspots during combat. Many like to run Flesh-Tearer, however I find this blessing to be unreliable at consistently applying a bleed effect. The idea of running this blessing along with Mercy Killer is that you don't have to worry about landing non-critical weakspot hits in order to apply that bleed effect to benefit from Mercy Killer. I think this idea works better for builds that are running Blazing Piety which you see more use on Chorus of Spiritual Fortitude builds. I prefer Lacerate for its guaranteed ability to apply bleed. Bear in mind that despite gaining a massive increase in damage, attacks which hit the back DO NOT count as weakspot hits. As such, Lacerate will apply on these backstab hits instead, which means you then have options to either go for further backstab hits, or to aim for the head. Given how rapid the knife's light attacks are, it's easy to quickly stack up bleed damage before going for the kill. This helps both at bringing down Monstrosities, and at more quickly cutting through hordes by slicing lesser enemies to ribbons.
The Zarona Mk IIa Quickdraw Stub is the meta-ranged weapon on Zealot and for good reason. Whilst its ammo count leaves something to be desired, and the long reload time takes some getting used to it, it's a weapon which perfectly compliments a melee-focused class like the Zealot. The limited ammo can be mitigated by prudent use of out knives, freeing the revolver to be used for taking out distant targets and armour. The Zarona deals monstrous damage, and benefits massively from both weakspot hits and critical chance. We take Surgical to better benefit from this fact, as well as to synergise with Hand-Cannon. By aiming down sights for a few seconds, we can guarantee both a critical shot and 60% rending. It is capable of 2-shotting crushers with critical headshots, and extra damage to Carapace, and 1-shotting most other elites and specials. If you are unfortunate enough not to get a critical shot, the recoil is manageable enough, and the weapon accurate enough to follow up with another shot and dispose of them, or even use knives if all else fails.
After 1,000+ hours in Darktide, I have a few simple rules when it comes to Curios. Melee classes (Ogryns and Zealots) should take 2x Toughness and 1x Health Curios to provide a good mix of defensive stats. Veterans should take 3 Toughness Curios, as they benefit more from Toughness than other classes due to their larger toughness pools and skills such as Iron Will. Psykers should run 2x Toughness and 1x Stamina Curio to make up for low base stamina and to benefit from their faster stamina regeneration. Obviously, there are some caveats to that. A melee-centric Veteran might want to run 1x Health Curio, and certain knife and stealth builds might want to run a Stamina Curio. But for the most part, I find this a good rule to stick to in order to ensure you have Curios that are effective for the vast majority of your builds, especially when starting out when it is difficult to find any Curios, much less good ones. Oh, and Wound Curios should only ever be used on Zealot Martyrdom builds. Having Wound Curios actually means that health stims will heal you less. I know some people like to take a Wound Curio 'just in case they go down,' but in higher difficulties, there is no guarantee your team can pick you up. It's far better to invest in defensive abilities that prevent downs as much as possible.
For perks, always take Extra Toughness and Gunner Resistance. Gunner Resistance is the most useful resistance node as it applies to Scab Gunners, Scab Shotgunners, Dreg Gunners, Dreg Shotgunners, and Reapers. This is the largest collection of enemies out of any of the resistance perks. These enemies can absolutely shred you in seconds and make up a significant portion of the enemies encountered in Auric Maelstroms. The ability is multiplicative, so it does have some diminishing returns. 0.80 × 0.80 × 0.80 = 0.512, meaning that we end up with a total gunner resistance of 0.488, just below 50%. I can certainly see the argument for only running two Gunner Resistance Curios (with an overall damage resistance of 36%) and opting for something else (potentially Sniper or Flamer), but I still value that extra 12.8%. The one exception is Ogryns. For these, I like to take extra Sniper resistance instead of health on the Health Curios.
For the final perk, it depends on your build. If you are using a build that relies heavily on your ability, then run Cooldown Reduction to more frequently make use of said ability. I find this to be especially powerful on builds that make use of Voice of Command, for instance. If your build is not too heavily reliant on your ability, then go for Extra Health. Again, you can tweak this to suit individual playstyles (and the mercy of the RNG gods as Hadron bricks yet another piece of equipment), but this is a pretty good rule to aim for. As this build benefits from Cooldown Reduction (and Psykers naturally have low health), we naturally go for Cooldown Reduction.
Knife zealots are arguably the strongest builds in the game right now, because they fundamentally break and change the way the game is played. You move so fast and and use up so little stamina with heavy attack lunges, that you can kite the majority of enemies around without ever taking health damage, provided you have the room to manoeuvre. I actually had a match recently where I met with someone on the Darktide Discord. They required the zealot penance for completing a mission in under 20 minutes with only 1 wound for 75% of the match. We did this privately with two bots, which naturally died quickly and we left them. We ran to the end of the Chasm Station HL-16-11 and began fighting the Scab Captain. As we had speed-ran the mission, we also dragged along a horde with us. A beast of Nurgle, A chaos spawn, dozens of elites, hordes from the event and of course, the Scab Captain. Two Knife zealots, at less than 50% health, were able to kill all of this and complete the mission in 15 minutes. I really wish I had recorded it, as it would have been a much better demonstration of the build's capability.
Your teammates will give you grief as they will likely assume you're going to run off by yourself and ALT + F4 as soon as you go down. Honestly, I find it hard to think of many weaknesses. Knife Zealot is seriously overpowered at the moment and destined for a nerf at some point in the future. One could argue that you are not the best at ranged fights, and your horde clear is a little bit on the weaker side, but that's about it.
Question: Why do the stats, weapons, and abilities in the video not match what's written in this guide?
Answer: I am constantly evolving and refining my builds. As patch notes are released, certain weapons and abilities may change in effectiveness. Additionally, as my skills and knowledge grow, my preferred builds can shift. I aim to provide videos demonstrating the effectiveness of my builds in a Damnation level Auric run as proof of concept. However, these videos may sometimes be outdated. While I strive to keep everything current, Darktide is my hobby, and I may not always have the latest updates in the videos. The information in these guides reflects my most recent thinking and should be considered more accurate than what is shown in the videos.
