[Update]: Patch 1.0.8 has now arrived to the live servers. You can find out more by heading over here.

As promised during last week's update, Vermintide 2's absolutely gigantic Patch 1.0.8 has now made its way to the beta servers. It brings with it noticeable improvements to performance across the board, significant changes to level geometry in order to prevent enemies from shooting through walls, the much-needed ability to adjust the light adaptation system, a plethora of bug fixes, and just as a little bonus, some rather nice hero buffs as well. The only downside is that the patch is gigantic in more ways than one, by which I mean it's around ~20GB in size!

You can find the full list of changes, as well as brief developer explanations, by heading over to Steam. If you don't feel like browsing through all of those changes, however, allow me to list out what I feel are some of the most important ones. The list is still a little bit on the hefty side, but I don't think I can cut it down any more without losing out on important information. Anyway, have a gander:

Maps

• There's been literally hundreds of changes to the game's levels - in order to fix positions where players could get stuck, moving around patrol spawn points to make sure we reduce the chance of them spawning in your face, and improving points where enemies could target you through structures.

Bots

• Added difficulty reaction times for opportunity targets - specials which have not attacked yet.

• Increased the range at which bots can shoot at to 22.5 meters, up from 15.

• Fixed an issue where bots would keep attempting - and failing, to use healing items when an item with the "Natural Bond" was equipped.

• Improved bot Sienna's staff weapons. She will now fire the beam on Beam Staff for longer periods of time and can use the charged attack of Beam Staff and Fireball Staff when there are obstructing enemies nearby. She will also fires her Bolt Staff rapid fire attacks at a greater pace.

Sound

• Added new voice lines for all heroes.

• Banter and curses between heroes should now play a little less frequently.

Graphics

• Comprehensive optimization for all graphics, which affects all meshes, and textures, and other game assets. This will yield a performance increase on all systems.

• Added a setting for Auto Exposure Speed which enables adjusting the convergence time of auto exposure.

• Fixed issues with particle effects not appearing correctly on lower graphics setting

Items

• Added an extra headshot sound for melee weapons.

• Fixed an issue where the trait "Proxy" wouldn't work for clients. Proxy should now correctly apply its effect to the nearest ally.

Skills & Talents

• Unchained Sienna can now use Living Bomb during its Overcharge explosion to prevent the explosion and clear overheat.

• Changes to Huntsman Kruber's Thrill of the Hunt: Reduced the reload speed increase after headshot to 20%, down from 35%. Increased duration to 5 seconds, up from 2.

• Fixed issues with certain Career Skills doing damage to players and props, i.e. Witch Hunter Captain Saltzpyre won't scream loud enough to shatter glass or ignite explosive barrels anymore, and Ranger Veteran Bardin won't kill himself with his smoke bomb.

• Fixed an issue where the aiming animation could get stuck while holding down the activation key for Career Skills, while being grabbed by a Lifeleech or Chaos Spawn.

Misc Tweaks

• Many quality of life improvements to playing with gamepads.

• Added guaranteed health and ammo drops before fighting Spinemanglr.

• Fixed an issue where players wouldn't respawn in the arena during the fight with Spinemanglr.

• Added more chests and crates to Fort Brachsenbrücke, to improve the chances of getting loot dice.

• Damage calculations should now correctly apply melee power boosts effects from talents and traits to training dummies. Also, talents and traits should now trigger properly.

If you would like to give Patch 1.0.8 a try for yourself, you'll need to head on over to Warhammer: Vermintide 2 in your Steam Library. Right click on it, select Properties, and then under the "Betas" tab enter the following code: "NoGoingBack20GBdownload". Once you've confirmed the code you'll be able to select the 1.0.8_beta from the dropdown menu, after which the download will start automatically.

While the 20GB download might seem a bit daunting, it is worth mentioning that you will need to download all of this data for the full release anyway. As such you can treat this beta as a pre-load for the actual patch, though you will lose the ability to play on the current version (1.0.7) due to incompatibilities. On the positive side, all of your progress on the beta server will carry over, so if you don't mind the occasional bug it's well worth giving the new patch a try.

Have fun, and make sure to take Sienna's Unchained specialization for a spin - it's pretty darn good now!