What is Corruption in Warhammer 40k: Darktide? Answered

When you are playing Warhammer 40,000: Darktide, you might have noticed you don’t have as much health as usual, or the purple creeping into your health bar as you fight. This is thanks to Corruption, a feature that aims to provide challenge and encourage teamwork in your battles through the hordes of Chaos. So what does Corruption do, and how does it work? Our guide will give you details on this feature and some tips on how to deal with it.

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What is Corruption in Warhammer 40k: Darktide?

Corruption is a feature that affects how much health your character has, or rather, how much you don’t have. This growing debuff prevents your character from being able to fully heal themselves and reduces your maximum health the more Corruption you have. During your missions, you’ll likely have noticed this by the purple bar slowly filling up your health from the right side.

You gain corruption in a few ways, the first being when you are downed and need to be revived, which gives you a sizable amount of Corruption and therefore cuts into your overall health. You also can gain Corruption when fighting certain enemies, namely Elites and Specialist units, though these increases are noticeably less than being downed. Then you have the Grimoires, a collectible item for one of the game’s secondary objectives, which gives both you and all your teammates a 25% health reduction that cannot be undone for the rest of the mission in exchange for larger rewards, meaning you’ll want to be sure that you and your allies are willing to take on the additional challenge.

The only way to get rid of Corruption is to find a Medicae Station, which can be found at certain points during a mission. These stations will heal you back to full health and undo any Corruption you have, excluding any gained from Grimoires. These are usually situated at the beginning, middle, and end of levels, and kind of act like markers for your progress. A couple of things to mention with Medicae Stations, they can have a maximum of four uses, but this varies between each station and what difficulty you are on, meaning at higher difficulties, there are fewer chances to use them, so you’ll need to prioritize those who need it most. There are also instances where you need to find a power supply to get them working, which can usually be found nearby to the station.