The Hive Scum arrives in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide like something scraped off the bottom rung of Tertium and handed a gun out of pure desperation. It’s the first actual DLC class for the game, and Fatshark leans hard into the fantasy: you’re not a soldier, not a zealot, not a sanctioned anything. You’re a cartel fixer dragged up from the depths of the hive, cracked on questionable stimulants and ready to carve, poison, or blast your way through heretics with a kind of reckless swagger Darktide hasn’t really had before.
What immediately stands out is how aggressively the Hive Scum breaks from the clean archetypes Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has used up to this point. This isn’t a class built around discipline, faith, or tanking. It’s built around momentum, improvised violence, and a pocketful of toxins that will play really well in multiplayer. It’s a really good and faithful representation of the units. The class feels fast, twitchy, and perpetually a half-second away from losing control, which is exactly what makes it refreshing.
The Hive Scum’s toolkit is tied together by two core ideas: chaotic, high-pressure combat flow and a heavy reliance on homemade chemical enhancers. The Stimm Lab is the most interesting new mechanic Warhammer 40,000: Darktide adds here. Instead of relying on standard mission Stimms, you can craft your own “Cartel Special,” slotting in custom bonuses that follow you into every mission. The more powerful you make it, the longer the cooldown becomes on them.
“The Hive Scum arrives in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide like something scraped off the bottom rung of Tertium and handed a gun out of pure desperation.”
This forces you to find a good balance of power and cooldown. It’s a game-changer that, in play, shapes your whole run. Do you want a hyper-aggressive speed boost, or a damage-centric one that you pop only a few times per level? Either direction shifts the class and makes it feel genuinely unique, depending on the player, in ways the other Darktide classes don’t really touch.
The combat abilities push the Scum’s personality even further. Desperado turns you into a sprinting, guns-blazing menace completely immune to ranged fire and having unlimited ammo while the timer lasts. Rampage turns you into a melee-centric character, stacking buffs as long as you keep hitting something. If Desperado is chaos, Rampage is controlled carnage.
And then there is Stimm Supply, a placed crate that spreads whatever chemical mixture you created in your lab to the entire squad, giving the Scum something no other class offers: team utility handcrafted by the player.
“The class feels fast, twitchy, and perpetually a half-second away from losing control.”
The blitzes also reinforce the Hive Scum identity even further. The Blinder grenade is a concussive blackout that knocks enemies flat and buys you space, fitting well with the Scum’s dart-in, bail-out flow. Boom Bringer is the opposite. It is essentially a pocket missile launcher that can change the tide of a battle with well-placed shots. The Chem Grenade feels tailor-made for the Hive Scum fantasy, offering a toxic canister that turns an area into a poisonous trap where enemies explode as the gas breaks them down.
Weapon-wise, this class has some of the strongest identities Warhammer 40,000: Darktide has introduced. Dual-wielding is not just a gimmick here; it is foundational. The dual stub pistols make the Scum a mobile gunfighter, delivering solid damage while weaving through enemies.
The special spin flare move gives the next shot pinpoint accuracy and additional weak spot impact, which feels great, especially with a team that can work it into their rhythm. The dual autopistols focus on a high rate of fire that chews through close-range enemies while draining ammo faster than almost any other weapon in Darktide. At the other end of the spectrum, the Needle Pistol stands out. Against larger enemies, a few well-placed needles can bring them down quickly.
Melee choices round out the new class in a surprisingly cohesive way. The dual shivs are exactly what you’d expect: very fast, perfect for backstabbing and carving through unarmoured targets. The crowbar is the unexpected star, with two stances, one for multi-target stagger, and one for burying the hooked end deep into a single enemy before ripping it out for a second chunk of damage.
It’s all very grisly in exactly that Warhammer 40,000: Darktide way. And then there’s the Bone Saw, covered in some toxins that you can switch between. One melts flesh with Chem Toxin; the other weakens armour with Brittleness stacks. It feels like industrial equipment repurposed by someone who absolutely should not have access to industrial equipment.
Over the last few days playing the Hive Scumm class, it feels like it plays way faster and looser than any other class in Darktide. The whole point is that you dart in and out of enemies, messing around with toxic to chip away at them. Having played quite a bit of Darktide, it is also the most advanced and technical class. This also feels like a class that lives and breathes multiplayer instead of solo runs. It’s more of a class that can chip and aid in bigger battles than tanking a lot of damage.
The goal of the DLC was to introduce a class that feels fundamentally different yet completely at home in Warhammer 40,000: Darktide’s misery-soaked world. Fatshark nailed it. The Hive Scum isn’t clean, safe, or stable. It’s scrappy, chemical-fuelled mayhem, and that’s exactly what the game needed.
