Darktide blasts dudes good and with understanding the mechanics the game does not document for you, you can blast even better.

Enemies have hit points (HP), and weapons deal damage to those hit points, and when the HP goes to zero, the enemy is dead. This guide isn't worried about that part.

When a shot or stab hits an enemy, a setting on each weapon for the attack's cleave is compared to the target's hit mass in a function to see if the shot keeps going: this is the guide's major concern. More bullet cleave means more blasting per bullet, and melee weapon cleave means bigger knifery.

Similarly, shots have an Impact rating separate from their damage. If the impact is bigger than the target's stagger resistance by enough of a threshold defined by enemy, you can get one of many types of stagger and knock folks around. This part of the guide is a work in process.

Strength increases increase weapon power which increases damage, cleave, and impact. Blessings and talents can increase strength and other guides cover what those do.

Short version is weapons have cleave values built in and enemies have hit mass values and your attacks go through dudes with hit mass reducing your cleave until the cleave value hits zero. E.g. if you have 11.7 cleave on a Power Sword charged attack and enemies have 1.5 hit mass you can get 8 dudes in one swing (7 * 1.5 = 10.5 leaving 1.2 left and so the 8th guy brings it to 0).

Different attacks distribute damage across targets different too - even if you have a bunch of cleave you might only damage 2-3 targets on a big heavy strikedown attack with the main target having 100% damage and the second/third targets getting 25% while a sweeping vanguard attack might go 100/75/50/33/25 with the remainder getting 25%. Eviscerators used to be notable with huge cleave and their lights could only damage 4 targets per swing with the rest getting stagger – this is now changed in the modern day and they now literally rip. These can be found in the weapons damage settings profiles in the source code. Most ranged weapons keep their damage as they cleave; Ogryn heavy stubbers are notable in they scale down.

Brutal Momentum ignores the step down in damage for 3 dudes and you do full damage to the next guy because the step down gets ignored because of the weak spot kill and that's why it does great clear because all the dudes are getting first hit damage. Check out kuli's Darktide blessing guides for additional blessing specific information!

Carapace armor stops cleave cold unless you have a source of ignoring the attack stopping property of super_armor. Those are rarer - see Sunder, Plasma Gun, Perfect Strike, Unstoppable Force blessings.

Staggering a dude will reduce hit mass consumed by 10% to 25% to 50% and you can cleave harder so Impact blessings can indirectly help cleave.

If you're curious what the hit masses are for dudes it's in the source code here and varies by difficulty on the mooks (the mooks also have a special setting for a mystery sixth difficulty that isn't used):
scripts/settings/difficulty/minion_difficulty_settings.lua

If you're curious what the cleave values are for different gun functions it's also in the code for each weapon profile, and it's messy to list them all, so we'll get to that part in a later section.

Cleave is a property assigned to a weapon damage profile. One weapon can have several damage profiles – aiming a shotgun uses a different damage profile from shooting from hip fire. Cleave can be a weapon stat too and the percentage roll of it will determine where on the spectrum within a min and max it lands - 80% roll on a single_cleave weapon with minimum of 1 and maximum of 2 would be 1.8 cleave while a 70% roll would be 1.7. This usually only applies to melee weapons within the 0-80% roll and the ranged weapons default to 50% within a range. E.g., Agripinaa braced revolver with double_cleave with a range of 2 to 4 has 3 cleave on ranged attacks.

Damage cleave and impact/stagger cleave are separate values on each weapon - a weapon can damage less people than it staggers, for example.

The base type can be found in the source code at:
scripts/settings/damage/damage_profile_settings.lua

A weapon's particular cleave settings will be found at their damage profile settings. For an autogun, it'd look like this:
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/autoguns/settings_templates/autogun_damage_profile_templates.lua

To look at a particular weapon like autoguns that have multiple types (infantry, vigilant, braced), the marks are separated with "m" and the general family is separated by "p" - the braced autos are known as "sprayandpray," or "snp," the vigilant autoguns as "burst," the infantry autoguns as "assault".

The different base cleave types look like this:

• damage_profile_settings.no_cleave=
  {attack={0.001,0.001},impact={0.001,0.001},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.single_cleave=
  {attack={1,2},impact={1,2},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.single_plus_cleave=
  {attack={1,3},impact={1,3},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.double_cleave=
  {attack={2,4},impact={2,4},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.light_cleave=
  {attack={3,6},impact={3,6},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.medium_cleave=
  {attack={4,9},impact={4,9},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.large_cleave=
  {attack={5.5,10.5},impact={5.5,10.5},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.big_cleave=
  {attack={8.5,12.5},impact={8.5,12.5},}
  
• damage_profile_settings.fold_cleave=
  {attack={2.5,2.5},impact={2.5,2.5},}

Each enemy has a hit mass value that affects your stabbery, and what that hit mass is is affected by the difficulty setting and whether or not there's the Tox gas in play (any source, not just bombers). There's the Threat 1 through Threat 5 we all know and love, and some of the minions have hit mass settings for a 6th unknown difficulty.

These values can be found in the source code under the file scripts/settings/difficulty/minion_difficulty_settings.lua.

• chaos_beast_of_nurgle = 20
  
• chaos_daemonhost = 20
  
• chaos_hound = 4
  
• chaos_hound_mutator = 2
  
• chaos_ogryn_bulwark = 12.5
  
• chaos_ogryn_executor = 12.5
  
• chaos_ogryn_gunner = 12.5
  
• chaos_plague_ogryn = 20
  
• chaos_poxwalker_bomber = 2.5
  
• chaos_spawn = 20

• cultist_berzerker = 4
  
• cultist_captain = 20
  
• cultist_flamer = 2
  
• cultist_grenadier = 2
  
• cultist_gunner = 4
  
• cultist_mutant = 10
  
• cultist_mutant_mutator = 8
  
• cultist_shocktrooper = 4

• renegade_berzerker = 10
  
• renegade_captain = 20
  
• renegade_executor = 10
  
• renegade_flamer = 2
  
• renegade_flamer_mutator = 2
  
• renegade_grenadier = 2
  
• renegade_netgunner = 3
  
• renegade_plasma_shocktrooper = 4
  
• renegade_sniper = 2
  
• renegade_twin_captain = 4
  
• renegade_twin_captain_two = 4

The calculation for how hit mass is consumed in an attack can be found in this part of the source code:
scripts/utilities/attack/hit_mass.lua

Pox Gas from any source applies a buff to the enemies that increases their hit mass by 2.5. It can be found in this script (thanks kuli!):
scripts/settings/buff/mutator_buff_templates.lua

The same .LUA file also shows us that folks with the green nurgle blessing on Maelstroms count 10 times towards the hit mass consumption function!

Impact is a function of the gun power. It has different multipliers based on the armor type it's hitting, bonuses from blessings and talents, and strength bonuses. Each enemy type has a stagger resistance rating which is a multiple on how hard you need to impact them to hit a stagger threshold. Each type of weapon impact can do different categories of stagger, some of which are easier to hit the big stagger animations. If an enemy has stagger reduction, which is a flat malus to your stagger amount separate from the multiplier of stagger resistance, it'll be baked into an animation or state of being. This is in their "breed" settings.

To find the stagger categories by weapon type, they're in this chunk of the source code:
scripts/settings/damage/stagger_settings.lua

The stagger calculation is performed in:
scripts/utilities/attack/stagger_calculation.lua

To look at a enemy's settings for stagger thresholds and their stagger reduction, the folder to look in is this:
scripts/settings/breed/breeds

For example, Dreg ragers are easy to stagger normally and when they're attacking they have 50 stagger reduction and ranged attacks have to stagger 20 harder - this is in their breed LUA. Instead of flinching at 1 stagger you'd need to hit them with 71 ranged stagger or 51 melee stagger to get them to sit down.

Poxbursters have 2.0 stagger resistance in general, stagger reduction of 1 vs non-ranged, and stagger_reduction_ranged = 15, so you need double the stagger to trigger an animation and guns need at least 17 to trigger a light stagger. When they're making the jump to blow up, it's in the breed_actions as a melee attack, the stagger reduction to ranged and killshot stagger is 60, so you need like a shotgun to bust through that! (Though at that point you might just pop the bomber!)

Many weapon special attacks ignore enemy stagger reduction so they're good for busting through stagger resistance. E.g., the Ogryn bully club slap has a weakspot_stagger_resistance_modifier = 0.1 so if you slap them in the face the stagger you need to trigger an animation is reduced by 90%.

Pushes and Finesse hits also consider stagger reduction 50% of what it would be!

Default Stagger Thresholds look like this:

• stagger_settings.default_stagger_thresholds = {
  
• [stagger_types.light] = 1,
  
• [stagger_types.medium] = 10,
  
• [stagger_types.heavy] = 20,
  
• [stagger_types.explosion] = 40,
  
• [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.sticky] = 0.25,
  
• [stagger_types.electrocuted] = 0.25,
  
• [stagger_types.killshot] = 2,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_block] = 0.25,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_heavy_block] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_broken] = 10,
  
• [stagger_types.wall_collision] = 0.25,
  
• [stagger_types.blinding] = 0.25,

Individual enemies will have stagger threshold overrides in their breed data too - here's one for the poxwalker_bomber breed:

• stagger_thresholds = {
  
• [stagger_types.light] = 1,
  
• [stagger_types.medium] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.heavy] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 100,
  
• [stagger_types.killshot] = 5,
  
• [stagger_types.sticky] = 100,

This means that melee and pushes push it good while ranged attacks really gotta add up compared to the defaults.

Staggered enemies consume less hit mass when you blast them so you can cleave crowds better. Thanks to kuli in the comments, the amount is 10/25/50% less hit mass consumed based on the severity of the stagger state - light/medium/heavy. That data is in:
scripts/extension_systems/behavior/nodes/actions/bt_stagger_action.lua

Going back to stagger_settings.lua, it's got the types of hit mass reductions coded by type to where the debuff amount is coded with a 1,2,3,4; Transliterated, it looks like this:

• stagger_settings.stagger_impact_comparison = {
  
• [stagger_types.explosion] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.heavy] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_broken] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.wall_collision] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.medium] = 25% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_heavy_block] = 25% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.killshot] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.light] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.shield_block] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.sticky] = 50% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.electrocuted] = 10% hit mass reduction,
  
• [stagger_types.blinding] = 10% hit mass reduction,

Stagger you apply that doesn't do a stagger goes into a pool that by default in stagger_settings.lua looks like this:

• stagger_settings.stagger_pool_decay_time = 1
  
• stagger_settings.stagger_pool_decay_delay = 0.2

If you keep punching them every less than 0.2 seconds, your stagger keeps adding up, and after a full second of no impact the stagger goes away.

Pushes do a certain amount of impact based on if enemies are close in a cone in front of you or further away and based on what kind of push it is. Push impact information is in this script:
scripts/settings/damage/damage_profiles/common_damage_profile_templates.lua

This section walks through practical examples of how to look at your weapon stats in game, look at the code for an enemy, and gauge whether or not it will fall over when you punch it in the face.

The good news is the weapon inspect screen tells you accurate values on what your impact ratings are versus different armor types and weak spot hits, just based off the weapon.

Bonuses to impact from blessings and talents you can do napkin math on - Zealot Grievous Wounds gets +50% impact on melee weak spot hit and also has the middle tree +30% impact node for ranged and melee impact, and impact_modifier tag is an additive bonus, so you'd take the listed melee impact from the inspect screen and scale it up to 180% of listed value (e.g., 30 to 54) for the impact that's punching the monster.

Whether a bonus is additive or multiplicative is listed in this settings file:
scripts/settings/buff/buff_settings.lua

When stagger calculations are performed, based on impact comparison to stagger thresholds (after stagger resist multiplier and first doing stagger reduction additive malus), you either get a stagger or you don't (at which point the impact is banked), and if you get a stagger the type of stagger you get is determined by the weapon damage profile's stagger types. (Most make sense for what they are called, and I'll note "sticky" stagger usually refers to chain weapons or foldable shovels that "stick" to the target while doing the attack).

stagger_settings.stagger_categories =

• melee = {light, medium, heavy}
  
• stab = {light_ranged, medium, heavy}
  
• sticky = {sticky}
  
• electrocuted = {electrocuted}
  
• flamer = {killshot, medium}
  
• hatchet = {killshot}
  
• uppercut = {light, medium}
  
• killshot = {killshot, medium, heavy}
  
• ranged = {light_ranged, medium, heavy}
  
• explosion = {light, medium, heavy, explosion}
  
• force_field = {light}
  
• blinding = {blinding}

These categories can be found in:
scripts/settings/damage/stagger_settings.lua

We want to look at an Ogryn Crusher to see if punching it with a Veteran's shovel will make it fall over, and so first what we have to do is find the damage profile for the standard issue shovel special stab, find its stagger type, figure out whether it ignores stagger reduction, figure out its special multiplier for stagger resistance, compare it to the Crusher's modified stagger thresholds, and if the impact is bigger, you get a stagger and now you know why it's a stumble and not a flinch.

Turns out the shovels are actually coded as a third type of combat axe (regular combat axes are p1, tactical axes are p2, shovels are p3), so for the standard shovel we're looking for the m1 data because the foldable shovels are p3_m2 and p3_m3.

Script file for the standard-issue shovel:
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/combat_axes/combataxe_p3_m1.lua

Damage profiles for the different axe actions are in this script:
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/combat_axes/settings_templates/combat_axe_damage_profile_templates.lua

Because all the axe attacks and shovel attacks are in one file, doing a CTRL+F for "Special" in the damage_profile_templates LUA jumps us down to the actions coded as special actions for the different axes, and conveniently the one we thought we wanted is labeled for the shovel as "light_shovel_special," except it's just a bunch of overrides of the axe_stab action for a bazillion damage and turns out it's actually the p3_m3 foldable shovel folded bonk. The way we actually verify which action we actually want is to go in the p3_m1 template LUA, CTRL+F for "special," look at which damage profile template the special has, and find out that it's actually the axe_stab action in the weapon's DamageProfileTemplates LUA.

Magic keywords on axe_stab we're interested in:

• ignore_stagger_reduction = true,
  
• stagger_category = "uppercut",
  
• weakspot_stagger_resistance_modifier = 0.0001,
  
• cleave_distribution = single_cleave,

This means that the enemy's stagger reduction doesn't happen, any staggers that do happen cap at medium stagger (based on uppercut categories), and the stagger thresholds become 1/10000 of what they were.

Based on the Chaos_Ogryn_Executor_breed LUA, we find the following information about the Crusher's stagger_threshold overrides:

stagger_thresholds = {

• [stagger_types.light] = 20,
  
• [stagger_types.medium] = 80,
  
• [stagger_types.heavy] = 160,
  
• [stagger_types.explosion] = 200,
  
• [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 60,
  
• [stagger_types.killshot] = 60,
  
• [stagger_types.sticky] = 10,

And the following interesting stagger tags on the crusher:

• stagger_reduction = 15,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 15,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,

Normally it'd take 35 impact to do a light stagger and 95 to do a medium stumble with an uppercut, and thanks to the power of ignore_stagger_reduction that would be 20 and 80 respectively, and thanks to a weak spot hit the weakspot_stagger_resistance_modifier divides your stagger on weak point hit by a 0.0001 multiplier to make 54 impact on weak spot hit vs carapace turn into 540,000, so that 80% damage shovel is gonna stumble that Carapace armor weak spot guaranteed with the medium stagger. Because it's an uppercut, it won't bowl over the crusher with a heavy stagger, and that's okay, you still bought time for the team!

Recapping the cleave settings at 50% ratings like you might see on a ranged weapon or a melee weapon with no “cleave targets” stat, and 80% ratings for those that do:


You’ll notice these map cleanly to Poxwalkers which clock in at 1.5 hit mass each. The other two napkin math hit masses to be aware of are Scab Bruisers at 3.5, Scab Maulers / Scab Ragers at 10, and Ogryn enemies at 12.5. You won't be cleaving through Bulwarks unless you have some kind of cleave bonus or you stagger them: 12.5 reduced by 50% on a heavy stagger is 6.25. Scab Bruisers are numerous and to get a 2nd Scab Bruiser usually requires a strength bonus or cleave bonus and to get 3 tends to require a horizontal attack with medium_cleave and a strength/cleave bonus.

Strength (what used to be called Power) and Cleave take maths to feel out because the increases from strength are additive to each other and then increase the base cleave multiplicatively then the cleave bonuses are additive to each other of that. Power Sword on Veteran has 11.7 cleave with an 80% cleave targets roll and the special turned on. Wrath blessing stacks 50% per stack 5 times for +250% cleave at peak. This gets the Power Sword to 40.95 cleave at 5 stacks, and if you do Slaughterer for +40% Strength at 5 stacks that gets you up to 57.33 cleave, which is a clean 5 crushers or 6 Scab Ragers.

This section gets into the weeds on specific stagger overrides for friends we know and love - you can skim past it unless you're doing napkin math on knocking people over!

Dreg Rager:

• stagger_reduction = 1,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 5,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 10,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 30,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 10,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 10,
  [stagger_types.sticky] = 3,
  
• While Melee Attacking:
  stagger_reduction = 50,
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  killshot = 20,
  ranged = 20,
  
• While Doing Melee Combo
  stagger_reduction = 50,

Scab Rager:

• stagger_reduction = 1,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 5,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 10,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 30,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 10,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 10,
  [stagger_types.sticky] = 3,
  
• While Melee Attacking:
  stagger_reduction = 50,
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  killshot = 20,
  ranged = 20,
  
• While Doing Melee Combo
  stagger_reduction = 50,

Scab Mauler:

• stagger_reduction = 10,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 25,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 5,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 40,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 80,
  [stagger_types.explosion] = 100,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 10,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 3,
  
• While Melee Attacking:
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  melee = 30,
  ranged = 30,}

Dreg Gunner:

• stagger_reduction = 0,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 10,
  
• stagger_resistance = 2,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 1,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 10,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 20,
  [stagger_types.explosion] = 50,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 1,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 10,
  [stagger_types.sticky] = 2,
  
• While Shooting:
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  killshot = 60,
  ranged = 60,}

Scab Gunner:

• stagger_reduction = 3,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 35,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 10,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 25,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 50,
  [stagger_types.explosion] = 80,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 10,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 3,
  
• While Shooting:
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  killshot = 60,
  ranged = 60,}

Dreg Shotgunner:

• stagger_reduction = 5,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 15,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 5,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 20,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 40,
  [stagger_types.explosion] = 60,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 10,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 3,
  
• While Walking and Shooting:
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  ranged = 10,}

Scab Shotgunner

• stagger_reduction = 5,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 15,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 5,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 40,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 60,
  [stagger_types.explosion] = 80,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 15,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 5,
  
• While Walking and Shooting:
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  ranged = 10,}

Reaper:

• stagger_reduction = 3,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 35,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 20,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 50,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 90,
  [stagger_types.explosion] = 120,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 20,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 20,
  [stagger_types.sticky] = 10,}
  
• While Shooting:
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  killshot = 50,
  melee = 10,
  ranged = 50,}

Crusher:

• stagger_reduction = 15,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 15,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 20,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 80,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 160,
  [stagger_types.explosion] = 200,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 60,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 60,
  [stagger_types.sticky] = 10,]
  
• While melee attacking:
  stagger_type_reduction = {
  melee = 50,
  ranged = 50,

Bulwark

• stagger_reduction = 5,
  
• stagger_reduction_ranged = 10,
  
• stagger_resistance = 1,
  
• stagger_thresholds = {
  [stagger_types.light] = 30,
  [stagger_types.medium] = 60,
  [stagger_types.heavy] = 120,
  [stagger_types.explosion] = 200,
  [stagger_types.light_ranged] = 60,
  [stagger_types.killshot] = 60,
  [stagger_types.sticky] = 1]
  
• 170 stagger to pop the shield from the front!

With the Ogryn rework to their tree, there's exciting new possibilities for cleave and impact combos to hit all sorts of breakpoints!

General nodes to be aware of:
Crunch: while it says 15% damage and 30% impact, in the code it's 10% each per stack, 4 stacks for 40% impact on full charge.
Slam: 1 time per second, 25% impact bonus
No Hurting Friends!: 12.5% strength at 10 stacks, very handy for cleave and impact.
For the Lil'Uns: 10% strength, good for pushing breakpoints, not reliable.
No Pushover: +250% stagger on push every 8 seconds, very useful on weak points.

Bottom left tree mutually exclusive melee buffs:
Great Cleaver: 15% cleave bonus per stack, 8 stacks, 120% cleave total
Impactful: +10% impact per stack, 8 stacks, 80% total.

Whether to use Great Cleaver or Impactful is dependent on weapon - Shovels and Bully Clubs don't have cleave blessings so I like to use Great Cleaver, while Pickaxes and Cleavers and the Power Maul get really wild with the Impact bonuses.

Taking Thunderstrike 4 blessing (+40% impact when staggered, up to 80%) can get some real good synergy with the "No Pushover" super push by banking impact in the stagger bank - push the face, follow up attack, then keep punching with heavies, and you'll be knocking bulwarks and crushers around like a candy shop spilling candy everywhere!

Because Arbitrator has much customization of impact boosts and cleave boosts, there’s many breakpoints hit on the individual enemies of Darktide as they’re being flung around. Here's a couple practical examples of taking the lookups from the previous sections and putting them into practice.

Maulers and Scab Ragers have 10 hit mass, and if you do the medium Stagger that they’re stumbling back, they’re down to 7.5 – this means that a 25% cleave bonus on the Arbitrator Exterminator shotgun Mk 3 (5.3 base) gets you to 6.625, but if you have the 50% cleave bonus from Forceful bottom right node Targets Acquired you’re at 9.275 cleave, enough to get the second mauler behind the first – first shot staggers with 45 impact to the body to Flak, second shot goes through and cleaves since it’s 7.5 effective hit mass instead of 10. 50% bonus on its own gets you to 7.95, which is enough to beat 7.5. If you only have the 25% cleave node, then you would want Full Bore for 20% strength – the 5.3 cleave becomes 6.36 with the strength bonus and then hits 7.95 from the 25% cleave node. If they’re ragdolled from heavy stagger, then they only count as 5 hit mass and you can hit 2 of them real good!

Scab Gunners have 5 hit mass and Dreg Gunners have 4 hit mass so it’s easier to hit breakpoints with weapons like the combat shotguns and the autoguns – starting with a 3 base cleave weapon like a Zarona combat shotgun or a Agripinaa Braced Autogun or Agripinaa Infantry Autogun, you can hit 3.75 cleave with just the talent point and then 32.5% strength from Deathspitter blessing 4 gets you to tragically only 4.96 cleave, but a light stagger (10% reduction) cuts that hit mass to 4.5 effectively so you can tag a second gunner behind the first.

Ranged weapon cleave is the fun kind: the more it goes through people the better because most guns keep all the damage it would have at that range. The damage still goes down on as ranges change, and it isn't the cleave doing that but the range step down. (Grim Protocols gave us Ogryn Heavy Stubbers and they ramp down in damage on cleaved targets!)

Weapons that cleave then explode like the Bolter bolts will do full damage until they stop cleaving at which point they explode. Bolt pistol used to have no cleave and now it goes through 2.0 hit mass - single_plus cleave range of 1 to 3 with 50% standard ranged cleave gets you 2.0.

Plasma Guns can stagger Mutants on headshot critical hit which is neat. Light shots have 3 cleave and charged heavies do 100.

Most ranged weapons don't have a Cleave Targets stat so they default to 50% of the cleave for their damage profile.

Most hitscan guns are single_cleave so they go through 1.5 hit mass (50% between 1 and 2) and thus 2 groaners or 1 poxwalker on Damnation.

The Heavy Accatran Recon Lasgun and the Heavy Infantry and Braced Autoguns (Agripinaa pattern) have better cleave (double_cleave) so they blast folks better.

Psyker 100% cleave on peril talent does affect ranged weaponry which is enough to get a Zarona revolver to blast through Maulers and Bulwarks though Crusher carapace still stops the attack. Zarona revolver has medium_cleave for 4 to 9 and at 50% that's 6.5, Psyker talent gets it to 13, and that's enough to get through a 12.5 hit mass Reaper or 3 whole Dreg Ragers (at 4.0 mass) and change.

In particular shotguns can be tricky because they load multiple projectiles - the projectile states have their own cleave values. Aim Down Sights (ADS) on the combat shotgun under the "killshot" has a manual 2 to 4 cleave distribution for 3 in practice. Zarona shotgun used to have 1.3 cleave when not ADS and now is standardized at 3 so it cleaves the same from the hip or when ADS. Zarona special shells now have medium_cleave for 6.5, to blast 5 poxwalkers. Accatran’s buck shells have 3.5 on attack, 3 on impact, while the fire shells have light_cleave for 4.5 (50% of 3 to 6). Agripinaa shotgun slugs have double_cleave (3.0 functionally) while the Agripinaa buck has 2.5 non-ADS, 2.5 ADS.

Arbitrator shotguns are kind of fun – the Mk 3 executioner shotgun has 5.3 cleave, the Mk 8 has 5.7, and the shot pistol has 3.5.

Notably, the stagger_category when ADS on a shotgun is "melee" instead of "ranged" so you get better light staggers when aiming on the sights.

This shotgunnery is all documented in
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/shotguns/settings_templates/shotgun_damage_profile_templates.lua

Shotgun pellet counts can be found in shotgun_shotshell_templates.lua in the same folder.

Ogryn ripper guns are notable since they have double_cleave on all marks (3.0 functionally) and the ripper gun stab has the same kind of stagger as a flamer (and ignores stagger reduction!)

Weapon blessings and talents and strength that boost cleave will affect both the damage and impact cleave amounts (strength helps ranged weapons too, you just see it more on melee). The amount of damage that passes through is based on each weapon's damage profile setting which hooks into the lerp tables for the damage stepdown.

Weapon damage profile settings can be found:
scripts/settings/equipment/weapon_templates/

Lerp tables for stepdown can be found:
scripts/settings/damage/damage_profile_settings.lua

It's easier to use a damage calculator to see how much damage passes through on a given melee attack than to look at the individual moves and their attack and stagger step downs because it's long - a community damage calculator is linked at the end of the guide. However, that calculator is old and creaky from version 1.4 and needs update – Darktide is on 1.8.

In general, if you boost cleave super high, your impact will be more notable than the damage because of the step downs. Strikedown attacks tend to only damage 2-3 targets, while vanguard attacks can attack many. Test in the Psykhanium how your favorite feels!

Your weapon's impact values in the Inspect Screen will be generally correct for a neutral hit, they're just not showing boosts to Impact from blessings or conditional buffs, so generally you'll punch harder than you'll expect.

A couple of practical notes, to be expanded upon in future iterations of the guide:

• While the heavy and light uncharged power sword attacks have different cleaves (usually double_cleave on the sweepy lights and single_cleave on the strikedown lights and medium_cleave on the heavies), when you charge the power sword with the special, both marks gain big_cleave on all the attacks so zip zap slice away - with Wrath and an 80% cleave targets roll you can get over 40 cleave to stab many many ragers!
  
• Carapace armor will stop the cleave unless you have a blessing that ignores super_armor. Scab ragers now have carapace chests and scab maulers have had carapace helmets, so aim appropriately.
  
• Blessings like Thunderstrike and Skullcrusher that put debuffs on stagger will put those debuffs on when you do the first stagger, and then the next hits will be buffed up, and hitting them again in a staggered state adds more of the debuff; they go to 8 stacks.

Zealot

• Relic Blade: Charged mode has big_cleave on most attacks, medium_cleave on the big powered stabs, light_cleave on the light attack powered stab. Non-charged mode light overheads and stabs are single_cleave, heavy overhead is medium_cleave, heavy horizontal large_cleave. The explosion from the power leakage blessing does 62 impact close and 35 far for about 90 total which is nice, except it's uppercut stagger category so will not knock down with heavy stagger, just medium.
  
• Eviscerator Freshly buffed in Battle For Tertium / Arbites update! Medium_cleave on the default light attacks, single_cleave on the overheads on Mk 3 (1.8 if you have 80% cleave targets), big_cleave on the tank lights (11.7 on an 80% cleave targets roll), revved specials have no_cleave and sticky stagger, large_cleave on the Mk 3 heavy sideways swipes (9.5 at 80%). You’ll want a cleave blessing to stab past Maulers and Scab Ragers.
  
• Thunder Hammer: -40% hit mass on Shock and Awe 4 Blessing means you cleave 1.6x as hard. Trauma 4 blessing extends stagger times 40% also. Single_cleave on the vertical bops, large_cleave on the sweeps.
  
• Crusher: Shares a lot of DNA with the thunder hammer - there's not a separate damage_profile template for it in the source code link so can't verify exact numbers, budget for big_cleave on the horizontals and single_cleave on the verticals.
  
• Purgation Flamer: Bash is a shared push with the revolver bash.

Psyker

• Force Blade: Special has infinite cleave and drops off in damage quick. Force greatsword swoopy wave does full damage to 8m, drops to 10% at 16m and beyond, has 450 base damage at 1 pip and 850 base damage at 2 pips, and each pip extends the min and max ranges 2m each (e.g. 12m to 20m at 2 pips) so if you're gonna slam the wave go big. Non-powered light horizontals have medium_cleave, the overheads and stab have single_cleave. Heavy horizontals have large_cleave.
  
• Force Sword: Deimos second heavy thrust has 10000x weak spot stagger. Obscurus/Deimos special has sticky stagger. Illisi special has big_cleave and ignores stagger reduction. Force sword push is a projectile that goes 12m and has 100 impact rating, so will knock folks down like a melee attack on weak spot hit.
  
• Force Staves: 0.01 cleave on the tiny force orbs.

Veteran

• Light / Medium Helbore: Stab has a charged mode that stabs 25% harder. Double_cleave on the charged shots. Double_cleave on the bayonet.
  
• Heavy Helbore: Chop has medium_cleave. Charged ranged shots have better cleave. Hotshot cleaves twice as hard at rank 4. Battle for Tertium made the bayonet chop faster!
  
• Power Sword: Charged hits have identical cleave between lights and heavies (big_cleave).
  
• Shovel (Mk3): 10000x stagger multiplier on weak spot hit with the special stab. "p3" combat axe in the code. Big_cleave on the sweeping clonk heavies.
  
• Shovel (Foldable): Clonk. Fold 'em for sticky stagger.
  
• Plasma Gun: 3 cleave on light shots, 100 cleave on charged shots.

Ogryn (melee):

• Cleavers: Uppercut has uppercut stagger, not explosion, and double_cleave. Double_Cleave on the overhead stabs, 3 to 9 cleave on the horizontal lights (6 in practice), 5 to 35 on the horizontal heavies (20 in practice). Strength bonuses and cleave bonuses get real big real fast.
  
• Bully Clubs: Slap is explosion with a tiny stagger amount and 10x weak spot stagger multiplier. Ignores stagger resist. Big_cleave on the light horizontals, double_cleave on the overheads, medium_cleave on the slap, 10 cleave on the horizontal push follow up, 0.2 on the vertical push follow up, medium_cleave on the light diagonal attacks.
  
• Shovels: Uppercut is coded as explosion. Large_cleave on the light horizontal and heavy diagonal, medium_cleave on the post-uppercut light, big_cleave on the horizontal heavy, single_cleave on the overheads, medium_cleave on the diagonal lights.
  
• Pickaxes: Lights have medium_cleave, verticals have double_cleave, push has big cleave, big sweeping heavy has 18 cleave with 80% roll, 5 to 25 range. Pull counts as an uppercut for stagger, Branx bash has big_cleave.
  
• Power Maul: Single_cleave on the light vertical, double_cleave on the heavy vertical, big_cleave on the sweeping lights and heavies.
  
• Slab Shield: 12.5 cleave on the heavy smack, Second heavy (the forward shield stab) has infinite cleave.
  
• Ogryn Charge: Coded as an explosion, has math.huge cleave.

Ogryn (ranged):

• Heavy Stubber: Achlys heavy stubber has 8 cleave instead of 6.5 on the Gorgonum/Krourk. Non-Krourk stubbers (Gorgunum and Achlys) actually do less damage and stagger to targets cleaved past the first.
  
• Twin-Linked Heavy Stubber: 4.5 cleave on the shots, 10 cleave on the heavy attack, consistent across marks.
  
• Ripper Gun: 3 cleave on the buckshot, double_cleave on the bayonet stab.
  
• Kickback: 4 cleave on the buckshot for attack, 2.5 for impact. 10 cleave on the swing.
  
• Rumbler: No_Cleave on the projectile. 10 cleave on the swing.
  
• Grenadier Gauntlet: Horizontal melee attacks have big_cleave, vertical have medium_cleave on the uppercut/smash. 0.1 cleave on the gauntlet shot.

Arbitrator

• Shotpistol and Shield: 3.5 cleave on the shot, 12.5 on the heavy swipe, 13 cleave on the light push.
  
• Executioner Shotgun: 5.3 cleave on the Mk 3 shock one, 5.7 cleave on the choked brittleness shell Mk 8 one. Brittleness shells add 0.5 stacks per pellet, 24 pellets, for 12 brittleness on a clean shot. Shock shells add 0.5 stacks of zappy per pellet on 13 pellets for 5 stacks of zappy total.
  
• Arbites Shock Maul: "p2" in the power mauls, does a zappy if you shock first then do the special, single_cleave on the smiter lights, light_cleave on the linesman lights, big_cleave on the tank lights and heavies, and light_cleave on the smiter heavy.
  
• Arbites Shield and Shock Maul: light_cleave on the linesman, big_cleave on the tank hits and shield bonk, single cleave on the light smiter hits and double_cleave on the shield bonk. Zippy zap special is the sticky kind of stagger.

Shared weapons (melee):

• Combat Axes: Achlys has no_cleave on lights, medium_cleave on pushes. Antax has cleave targets stat compared to Rashad Finesse.
  
• Heavy Sword: Smiter heavies have big_cleave and turbo kill two targets and do way less past that. Medium_cleave on the light linesman attacks. "p2" on the combat swords in the code. Special attack has uppercut stagger.
  
• Dueling Sword: Light_cleave on the slashing lights. Single_cleave on the stabs. Medium_cleave on the push attack. "p3" on the combat swords in the code.
  
• Devil's Claw: Counter-attack has medium_cleave. Light_cleave on the linesman lights. "p1" on the combat swords in the code.
  
• Chain Sword: Mk 4 sword has large_cleave on the heavies, single cleave on the vertical lights, medium_cleave on the middle light combos. Mk 13g sword is the same but the vertical first two heavies have no_cleave because they're sticky.
  
• Chain Axe: Mk 4 chain axe has no_cleave on the lights, large_cleave on the heavies, medium_cleave on the push attack. Mk XII chain axe has no_cleave on the heavies, double_cleave on the push stab, large_cleave on the lights.
  
• Shock Maul: Big sweeping heavies have big_cleave, lights have single_cleave and light_cleave. Special attack is sticky stagger.
  
• Combat Knife: The punch ignores stagger reduction. Not a lot of damage persistence on the cleave though damaged mooks take flesh tearer stacks.
  
• Tactical Axe: "P2" combat axe in the code. Double_cleave and single_cleave on the lights and heavies. Special bonk counts as uppercut.

Shared weapons (ranged):

• Revolvers: Zarona has medium cleave for 6.5 hit mass of busting, Agripinaa has double_cleave for 3.0 mass of blasting, both shoot 10cm radius spheres.
  
• Shredder Autopistol: Single_cleave on the bullets.
  
• Heavy Laspistol: Both have single_cleave. Push counts as a ninjafencer push in the code unless you're Psyker.
  
• Infantry Lasgun: All have single_cleave. "lasgun_killshot" in the code.
  
• Recon Lasgun: Mk XIV (the heavy) has double_cleave compared to single_cleave on the other two.
  
• Braced Autogun: Agripinaa braced auto has double_cleave compared to single_cleave on the other two. "snp" (for Spray and Pray) in the code.
  
• Infantry Autogun: Agripinaa infantry auto has double_cleave compared to single_cleave on the other two. "assault" in the code.
  
• Vigilant Autogun: Charged stock bash has 10x stagger resistance reduction multiplier on weak spot hit. Regular bash has 5x weak spot stagger multiplier. Both ignore stagger reduction. All ranged shots do single_cleave.
  
• Combat Shotgun: ADS and hip fire have different cleaves for each mark. In particular shotguns can be tricky because they load multiple projectiles - the projectile states have their own cleave values. Aim Down Sights (ADS) on the Zarona combat shotgun under the "killshot" has "3" cleave now and 3 cleave when not ADS, while the cleave special now goes through 6.5 hit mass. Agripinaa shotgun slugs have double_cleave (3.0) and Accatran fire shells have light_cleave for 4.5 (50% of 3 to 6) while the Agripinaa buck has 2.5, and the Accatran buck has 3.5 attack cleave ADS or non-ADS and 3 impact cleave.
  
• Double-Barreled Shotgun: Light_Cleave on the shotgun pellets (4.5). Alt Fire does 25% more damage at the cost of less minimum pellets. Heavy bash is copy of vigilant autogun; 10x weak spot multiplier. Light bash is an uppercut stagger with 5x stagger multiplier on weak spot hit.
  
• Speargun Boltgun: Double_cleave on the shot (3.0). The special push has an outer layer that does less stagger than the main part of the push. Punches through 0.75m of material. 10cm radius sphere hitscan.
  
• Bolt Pistol: single_plus cleave on the shot (2.0). Can punch through 0.75m of material. 10cm radius sphere hitscan.

While much time was spent in the Psykhanium punching dudes to confirm cleave data, it's important to cite sources, like the Darktide Source Code repository here:

https://github.com/Aussiemon/Darktide-Source-Code

This repository is regularly updated with each patch and if you ever need the latest numbers, this is where to go diving.

There's a community damage calculator that pulls from the source code where you can easily see your cleave values by attack type and how they're affected by strength. As of June 2025 it's still on patch 1.4.0 (game is on patch 1.8.1 as of guide latest update) so check the version of the calculator on the top left to confirm which version of the data is being worked with. It’s more of a general reference at this point on damage step downs.

https://dt.wartide.net/calc/

The Darktide page on GamesLantern has a lot of nifty data, builds and pictures, so if you want basic enemy stats (not modified by difficulty) including stagger resistance multiplier, this page is a good starter:

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/enemies

In case you were wanting to run builds similar to what I do on quick play Damnation and Auric, they can be found on the GamesLantern community builds section here for 5 loadout slots for the 5 classes. Veteran gets a few more, as a treat, especially now there's 8 loadout slots. Now with Arbitrator guides!

https://darktide.gameslantern.com/user/clemcuddlecakes

I do strictly pickup groups for Havoc and am only Havoc 23 since I do 1 a week, and I'd still trust these builds in a premade party. Focus on good boss damage and you'll do fine!

As Darktide continues to get patched by Fatshark, this guide will be updated with the latest and greatest in clowning around. Battle for Tertium update in June 2025 is a banger and the Arbitrator class comes with all kinds of cleave clownery, and a puppy!

Because of the myriad impact and cleave buffs on the Arbitrator and after the Ogryn rework, the guide now has some hard numbers to help guide weapon selection – there sure are a lot of options.

There's some Arbitrator notes added after a week with the class - this will be expanded with Ogryn notes too because bottom left Ogryn has a lot of options with building for cleave or for impact.

If people want to see a particular topic that isn't covered and want more detail, continue to leave comments! Your input is appreciated!