Toughness
In Warhammer 40K: Darktide, Toughness is a temporary, blue-bar health pool that acts as a damage reduction layer, absorbing damage before your actual health bar is affected. It behaves differently for ranged and melee attacks: ranged attacks are fully absorbed as long as you have any Toughness, while melee attacks cause a percentage of their damage to bleed into your health, with the amount of bleed increasing as your Toughness depletes. Replenishing your Toughness, typically by killing enemies or staying near allies, is crucial for survival.
Whenever your character’s health bar is yellow instead of blue, it indicates the amount of Toughness your character has.
How Toughness Works
Ranged Attacks:
Any amount of Toughness will fully absorb a ranged attack, preventing it from damaging your health bar. Only once your Toughness is entirely depleted will ranged attacks begin to deal health damage.
Melee Attacks:
When you take a melee hit, a portion of the damage is reduced based on the percentage of Toughness you have remaining.
If your Toughness is at 100%, a melee attack will deal zero health damage and instead deplete your Toughness.
The less Toughness you have, the more health damage the melee attack will inflict.
Health Damage:
If your Toughness bar is depleted by any attack, or if your Toughness is completely gone when hit by melee, subsequent attacks will begin to damage your health directly.
Why Toughness is Important
Survivability:
Toughness provides a crucial layer of protection, allowing you to endure enemy fire and melee blows without immediately losing your actual health.
Damage Resistance:
It functions as a damage reduction mechanic, reducing the amount of damage that makes it to your health bar.
Stagger Prevention:
If you have no Toughness and take damage, you can become staggered, making you vulnerable to further attacks.
Toughness Management
Regeneration:
You can restore Toughness by staying in coherency with teammates and by killing enemies, particularly with melee weapons.
Talents & Blessings:
Certain character talents, class abilities, and weapon blessings can increase your maximum Toughness or improve its regeneration speed.