[Update]: Vermintide 2's Winds of Magic expansion has now arrived for PC players. The console versions are still under development, though no release date has been announced just yet.

After a very long time with no release date, Fatshark has recently announced that Vermintide 2's Winds of Magic expansion will be coming next week - on August 13th. However, in a bit of a surprising turn of events, they have now also made the expansion fully playable to those that have pre-ordered it. In other words, the true release date isn't August 13th, it's right now!

When it comes to content, the expansion is divided into two parts: the free update and the DLC itself. On the free front you're looking at a massive overhaul of the combat system, five new levels to acquire, a rework and rebalance of the talent system, as well as some lovely new banter between the heroes. Best of all, if the host has the expansion installed, you will also be able to meet the Beastmen in your matches!

As for the paid content, Winds of Magic brings with it the Beastmen as a brand new race, one brand new weapon for each of the characters, as well as an extremely tricky Cataclysm difficult setting. There's also the Weaves, predetermined mini-levels designed to offer a brand new set of challenges to those that seek to be the best rat-slayers around. A bit of a departure from Vermintide 2's usually randomized gameplay, but it still could be interesting depending on how unique the later levels become.

You can get a bit of an idea of what all of this looks like in-game through the recently posted trailer down below. Have a gander:

I haven't played Winds of Magic myself so take the following with a few grains of salt, but there's quite a few complaints surrounding the expansion right now. It seems like a sizable chunk of the playerbase isn't happy with the focus on pre-set challenges and slower combat pace, so if you consider that sort of thing to be problematic, you might want to do a little bit of extra reaserch on Winds of Magic before diving in.

Speaking of which, you can learn more about Winds of Magic and all of the changes it brings with it, over at Steam. Have fun smacking Beastmen around!