I really enjoy playing with bots in a lot of games because they are predictable, relaxing, and you can move at your own pace. Vermintide 2 is no exception but I've noticed there's been quite a few people asking for help regarding this topic, especially while leveling up lesser played characters or trying to outfit their bots for legend. It honestly feels like you're playing an RPG when setting up your team, which I really enjoy, and they're actually not that terrible to run with if you gear them correctly. However, the most common complaints I see from people on either steam discussions or the fatshark forums is that the bots die extremely quickly while doing nothing, refuse to pick up tomes/waste healing, and run off on their own and die randomly. These are all valid issues but you can work around them to make your runs a smooth process.

These are just my personal opinions and observations to help anyone looking for information on how to run with bots in the game, which may not be 100% the very best way but work well enough for me that I keep using them so if you have any suggestions please do not hesitate to leave a comment. That said, I have a very high success rate doing 3 tome 1 grimoire legend runs and am confident that you can make this work for you.

1. Bots will always be chosen from the following four characters in Vermintide 2: Kruber, Bardin, Kerillian, and Sienna. Poor Victor is always left out, but if you pick Victor yourself then you usually will get Kruber, Kerillian, and Sienna as allies.

2. Bots use whatever equipment the host is using on them so you can customize their gear to whatever you need them to use. This also applies to talents which is important because for certain bots you need to pick things that you may not use normally and underleveled bots will not use talents at all.

3. Bots use the last class the host selected, meaning if you used ranger veteran in the keep and swapped away to another character then later on Bardin bot will be ranger veteran when you play solo.

4. Bots scale with the hero power of the host.

There are a few important quirks that bots do that will change the way you play with them.

• Like the screenshot above, bots will get stuck in certain areas and will not be able to get to you. You need to keep these areas in mind and either move forward enough that they teleport to you then backtrack or just avoid them entirely by going through alternate routes. Screaming Bell first grim on those crates are a notable example. The bots will constantly try to jump over them and fail but since the horizontal distances are so small when you have to climb up the house to the first tome they will not teleport to you, leaving you exposed to an entire horde yourself for a notable distance. (DO NOT HOP ON THEM AS A SHORTCUT! TAKE THE LONG WAY!)
  
  
• Bots love to block then shove rather than dodge hordes, but most of the time will dodge an overhead swing from a chaos warrior. They're also pretty good at avoiding damage due to their reaction times. This makes stamina stats more important than usual for them which opens up certain properties, talents, and traits that a player would find sub-optimal.
  
  
• Bots love to run off and chase a single special that's hidden behind like 5 walls. This will leave you very exposed for a bit or the bots will get caught out inside a horde which makes it more important than usual to deal with specials yourself. They're proficient enough at dealing with hordes where you can afford to disengage as slayer for example and whack that gas rat to death while they're surrounded or just fall back so the bots tether towards you to a safer position.
  
  
• Bots excel using weapons that have simple attacks, that don't require any specific combos or block canceling, and that recover from swings quickly. This is something that needs to be taken into account while equipping your characters because certain loadouts perform much worse than they would in a player's hand.
  
  
• Bots can either be better than most of the player base at dodging bosses or completely useless. For most bosses they can perfectly dodge all of their attack combos assuming they have the space to do so. When you first hear boss music you want to immediately pull a 180 and rush to whatever the most open area you can find so they don't get stuck on a wall and get pounded to death with unblockable attacks. It took quite a few losses where they'll stack up as 3 on the corner of a stairway and die immediately before I figured out how to prevent that.
  
  
• Bots can be very frustrating with the slot 3 items (Healing and Tomes). At the moment it seems like they will never pick up anything unless all players (or only the host in this case) have that slot occupied. They will always prioritize healing and drop the tome so I recommend you bumrush any healing you see before they get a chance to pick it up if there is not a free slot in one of the bots inventories. Luckily on legend the friendly fire modifier is quite high and you can simply shoot them in the head to force them to consume their healing items or if you're the mage just blow yourself up and let them use a medkit on you or give you a potion if your 3 slot is empty.
  
  
  
  The high and mighty elf can't shoot straight! Or can she? >:(
  

"Alright! Kill for old Kruber!"

Kruber is possibly the best bot on your team and will be the lynchpin for dealing with mixed trash, one shotting armored or ranged specials, and chunking bosses.

Sub Class: Mercenary
Melee: Executioner Sword. Properties: +Crit, +Attack Speed /w Trait: Swift Slaying
Ranged: Handgun. Properties: +Crit, +Power vs Infantry /w Trait: Conservative Shooter
Necklace: Properties: +Stamina, +Health /w Trait: +30% Healing Taken
Charm: Properties: +Attack Speed, +Power vs Infantry
Trinket: Properties: +Crit, +Stamina Recovery/Cooldown Reduction

Talents:

• And Stay Down!
  5% Crit, Synergizes extremely well with his entire build.
  
• The More the Merrier!
  More power for every nearby enemy and bots love running into melee so this is always up.
  
• Strike Together
  The best part of Mercenary. Will ensure your team constantly has a 10% attack speed buff
  
• Soldiers Spirit!
  Temp health on kill
  
• Gabbler
  Since bots don't really know when to use their F abilities, this ensures a constant stream of temp health to everyone so it's imo the best option for him.

Why mercenary over foot knight?
Mercenary helps both the player and the team much more than foot knight imo. You CAN use foot knight if you want a more tankier Kruber but I think the pros of mercenary outweighs that too much to pass up. Merc also gets additional cleave, crit, and attack speed which synergizes way more with the executioner sword and even when he wastes his F ability you still benefit from the temp health. If you want to use foot knight just equip them with a mace (+Attack Speed, +Block Cost Reduction /w parry) or halberd to make them as tanky as possible while being able to deal with armor but I would still recommend using the mercenary class.

Why executioner sword and not halberd?
There are a few reasons for this. While a halberd is the superior choice on a player, bots excel using simple weapons with basic attack patterns and from my observations the halberd doesnt perform as well because of this. With the executioner sword he can deal with trash using basic attack spam while using the overhead swing to hit bosses hard and one shot stormvermin. These factors lead me to believe that the executioner sword is the right choice.

"Shoddy armor, these kazaki'dum, just like I told you!"

There's actually a couple different loadouts you can do with Bardin and I'm not sure which is the best. I think it really depends on how you want to build your team which I will discuss later on too.

Sub Class: Iron Breaker
Melee: Axe and Shield. Properties: +Stamina, +Block Cost Reduction /w Trait: Off Balance
Ranged: Handgun. Properties: +Crit, +Power vs Infantry /w Trait: Conservative Shooter
Necklace: Properties: +Block Cost Reduction, +Health /w Trait: +30% Healing Taken
Charm: Properties: +Attack Speed, +Power vs Infantry
Trinket: Properties: +Crit, +Stamina Recovery

Talents:

• Stoutfellow or Shield of Valaya
  Personal preference. Normally I would say take Stoutfellow in every case but Ironbreaker with a shield takes no damage so you might get more mileage out of the Shield of Valaya. Use Stoutfellow if using any other weapon though.
  
• Miner's Rhythm
  Very good for stamina recovery and bots won't make good use out of the other talents
  
• Tunnel Fighter
  Any on this tier are good.
  
• Grudge-Borne
  Temp health on kill
  
• Heart of Gromril
  It doesn't really matter what you take at this tier. The bot wastes taunt randomly which is kind of dissapointing.

OR

Sub Class: Slayer
Melee: Dual Axes. Properties: +Crit, +Stamina /w Trait: Swift Slaying or Parry
Ranged: N/A
Necklace: Properties: +Stamina, +Health /w Trait: +30% Healing Taken
Charm: Properties: +Attack Speed, +Power vs Chaos
Trinket: Properties: +Crit, +Stamina Recovery

A very important thing to note (according to breakpoint sheets) that I have not been able to verify is that if you can get perfect +10% power vs chaos on the dual axes, +10% power vs chaos and +10% power vs infantry on the charm for +30% total on top of 3 stacks of Trophy Hunter (the passive) it will let each swing 1 shot a fanatic. If this is true then I would definitely prioritize those stats instead.

Talents:

• Hack and Slash or Stoutfellow
  Not actually sure which one is better here, they're both pretty good on slayer though if you use Swift Slaying then I would say take Hack and Slash.
  
• Oblivious to Pain
  Turns Slayer into a suprisingly tanky bot
  
• Moving target
  The bot can't really make good use of the other cooldown reduction talent so you might as well decrease the damage they take from stray hits, especially on bosses.
  
• Grudge-Borne
  Temp health on kill
  
• No escape
  The movement speed is pretty useful for Slayer bot because I notice they like to save their F ability until they see a special at medium range and rush them.

What is the difference between the two?
Iron Breaker will compete with the player for least damage taken (Seriously, he's almost unkillable and will always be the last bot alive). Unfortunately, he will also just shove units around instead of killing them, but will be able to hold the mobs in place and ocassionally beat on a stormvermin or chaos warrior with their axe while proccing Off Balance on a number of enemies. He will also use his career skill randomly which is quite disapointing. Slayer on the other hand will tear through everything with his dual axes including armored units which is a huge plus but is less adept at dealing with hordes and dense trash. They also seem to save leap to rush through crowds and run up to a flame rat or special just out of reach. Slayer will take noticeably more damage than Iron Breaker (but is still decently tanky) and lose it's handgun to snipe specials with but offer more consistant output so it's up to you which one you want to use.

Alternative weapons?
I haven't actually experimented much with Bardin bot unfortunately but I feel like a 1h hammer (/w Parry) would work well on either while a miner's pick would act the same as Kruber's executioners sword on slayer. I have not tried the 1h hammer but I am interested to see how it works on Iron Breaker and you might want to try it out yourself instead of the axe and shield.

"Lumberfoots with a Lumber aim!"

I mostly play Kerillian just due to how our group of friends decided on characters when we first started plus I really like her kit so my experience with her as a bot is the lowest. Overall I think she's the weakest out of the bots though, but I think I found something I like.

Sub Class: Hand Maiden
Melee: Dual Swords. Properties: +Crit, +Attack Speed /w Trait: Swiftslaying
Ranged: Longbow. Properties: +Crit, +Power vs Skaven /w Trait: Conservative Shooter
Necklace: Properties: +Stamina, +Health /w Trait: +30% Healing Taken
Charm: Properties: +Attack Speed, +Power vs Infantry
Trinket: Properties: +Crit, +Stamina Recovery

Talents:

• Asrai Vigour
  +1 Stamina is nice with dual swords since the block angle doesn't get a huge benefit
  
• Eldazor's Precision
  Makes it easy to be able to 2 shot fanatics with light sweeps, though you can use Triumph of the Cadai too if your power vs chaos/infantry is high enough but I would rather have attack speed and crits tbh.
  
• Hukons Tenacity
  The extra stamina regen is very useful on bots!
  
• Khaine's Thirst
  Temp health on kill
  
• Gift of Ladrielle
  The bot seems to use dash randomly so I figured dropping agro on her might be the best when she goes straight through a big horde.

Why Hand Maiden over Waystalker and Shade?
Shade has no innate defensive bonuses and the bot never knows when to use the F ability properly so it seems kind of pointless. For waystalker however, the choice becomes a bit harder. Waystalker offers team wide healing up to 50% health as well as an extremely clutch F ability that the AI will spam to take out pesky specials from all sides. I do think Hand Maiden wins out though because Kerillian seems very fragile and will frequently go down which you do not want for your bots because they don't know how to prioritize healing properly. Healing up chip damage is nice, but bots prefer to block and shove a lot which leads me to believe that the 25 extra hp of hand maiden class with the team wide stamina regen buff ontop of her own increased blocking abilities is the better choice.

Why dual swords and not glaive or spear?
If the bots could actually use the latter weapons correctly I'd always equip the glaive. Unfortunately, though the bot kills everything really well with it, they also seem to take a very large amount of damage due to not being able to time shoves and swings correctly. Kerillian is not very sturdy and I'd rather have more staying power in this case. There are some similar issues on the spear too - although it's very good on a player and one of the best in the game at dealing with trash while not taking damage with its block attack-sweep combos, the bot kind of just sits there and shoves the enemies around and pokes them occasionally. If you want a pure tank the other characters fill that roll much better so in my opinion there's no real reason to use a spear on her. I tried a few of her other weapons and settled on dual swords because it offers simple attack patterns, quick recovery time from weapon swings, and although you remove her ability to deal with armored targets it allows her to mow down trash while taking little damage.

"Burn! Burn! BURN!"

Sienna is often thought of as the worst bot on the entire roster and sometimes considered completely useless, but this is simply not true. If built correctly she can be incredibly hard to kill and can easily pull her weight. I think the reason people have these misconceptions is that they judge the bot from what a player should be doing rather than what the bot itself is capable of doing and don't adjust their expectations.

Sub Class: Unchained
Melee: 1h Sword. Properties: +Crit, +Block Cost Reduction /w Trait: Swiftslaying or Resourceful Combatant
Melee: Mace. Properties: +Crit, +Block Cost Reduction /w Trait: Parry or Resourceful Combatant
Ranged: Fireball Staff. Properties: +Power vs Monster, +Power vs Skaven /w Trait: Doesn't matter, maybe Barrage?
or
Ranged: Bolt Staff. Properties: +Crit, +Power vs Skaven /w Trait: Doesn't matter, maybe Barrage?
Necklace: Properties: +Block Cost Reduction, +Stamina /w Trait: +30% Healing Taken
Charm: Properties: +Attack Speed, +Power vs Chaos
Trinket: Properties: +Crit, +Stamina Recovery

Talents:

• Volcanic Body
  Unchained gets double the effective health due to her trait (50% of damage goes to overcharge) and since the bot barely casts spells you'll get much more mileage than from Form of the Fire Wind.
  
• Feurerbach's Fury
  Bots use a lot of stamina so this is offers a lot of synergy.
  
• Natural Talent
  The bot does not vent high overcharge except in rare circumstances so it's probably better to prevent it in the first place
  
• Soul Snare
  Temp health on kill
  
• Tick, Tick, Tick...
  Like all bots, Sienna will randomly use her F ability so it's best to have this up as often as possible

Why Unchained over Battle Wizard or Pyro?
First of all you need to have her set as Unchained. This is non-negotiable. I don't know why people insist on using the pyromancer sub-class but I'm assuming this is where she gets her bad reputation from. I mean sure the pyromancer can throw a homing missle and snipe a special once in awhile but pyro can take hits like a wet noodle and will get put out of action more often than not. Unchained is super tanky and will actually be able to stay inside hordes and kill things for awhile since it's a melee focused class. I don't really see them explode either except once in a blue moon so you don't have to worry about that. Battle Wizard gets an interesting build where you can get her 100% block cost reduction (free blocks!) while tranquility is up but honestly you might as well use Unchained for way more effective staying power since Battle Wizard won't be casting spells enough to justify her use.

Sword vs Mace?
This mostly depends on your team composition as well as what you want your bot to do. In my experience there are a few pros and cons which make both equally a good choice. The sword makes sienna able to mow down trash with ease and never take damage due to how fast she seems to block with it. She also likes using the charged attack on the sword which procs Feurerbach's Fury which I think is the reason for that. The mace on the other hand is only alright at dealing with trash but lets Sienna boop stinky rats and chaos warriors on the head to give her some armor piercing that the sword lacks, meaning she is entirely self sufficient. I'd say if you have at least 2 others on the team with armor percing weapons with low trash clearing (Like dual axe Bardin) then give her the sword, especially if you need crowd control, but if not give her the mace.

Bolt vs Fireball Staff?
This is largely personal preference. I don't think it matters much because they don't use staves that often. One thing to note about the bolt staff is if they have a bit of breathing room they will charge up a spell and snipe far off specials like blight stormers and ratling gunners while the fireball staff is decent against packmasters and other closer specials even in light combat. Use whatever you feel is best.

You can actually play whatever class you want including Slayer (which there are screenshots of in this guide) so don't worry about not having the correct character leveled! If you want to make it easy as possible for yourself though I have a few tips which I think will help you:

Most wipes I find happen when a boss spawns ontop of a wave (Like most legend runs!). This is good practice in general, but try to time your waves before moving forward to a boss spawn location. Bots have a hard time dealing with both trash and a boss because they cannot split like players can. It might be a good idea to play a class that can deal high amounts of boss damage yourself like Huntsman, Shade, Pyromancer, or Bounty Hunter but it's not mandatory.



For example: Wait in this cave for a wave to spawn before moving forward because the area ahead has a trigger for a boss spawn, which with my luck always does.

There's also an argument for playing classes like Zealot, Unchained, or Iron Breaker with a jack-of-all trades weapons like the flail, beam staff, or the 2-handed hammer because it allows you to deal with specials yourself while being being much more resistant to dying. When you die it's really a dice roll if the bots will get you up and if you go out of action that's the end of the run which makes playing the 100 hp classes a bit more risky. Luckily bots are pretty good at protecting you and sticking close in general so if you have your mechanics down you can make either work.

Since I play Kerillian a lot I want to give a special mention to her classes. Waystalker is excellent as a generalist and is the best at dealing with specials from unlimited arrow spam and trueflight. You also get health regeneration which lets the bots hog most of the healing and stay healthy while being able to spam your arrows into a boss from a safe range. Shade on the other hand lets you wreck bosses and chaos warriors quickly which are the biggest threats to your bots and gives you an emergency escape if you need to use F. At level 25 it might not be a bad idea to get "Ranged attacks don't break stealth" so you can deal with specials yourself in a big time window. Lastly, I want to give a special mention to the Hand Maiden because although this class is typically used in speed running, it's actually very good in full bot runs too because it makes you very defensable and you get a low cooldown reposition/escape button which gives you enough time to fire a shot off at a special while invisible. You also get that stamina regen aura which greatly helps your bots out and makes them take a lot less damage. However, perhaps the most important thing is that you can use the glaive with the power boost talent and a bit of power vs chaos/infantry to be able to 1 shot fanatics ontop of your excellent stamina. Try different builds out out and see what works for you.

I hope this guide helps anyone looking for information on this topic and wish you luck in your games!

Righteous Stand:




As soon as you start Righteous Stand you want to go to where the healing is and either wait for a wave to trigger in this area if you've taken awhile or push forward to hold at the first tome location. This is a boss spawn location but it's early enough in the level where it's not a big deal if you have to restart.



Shoot the bots in the head to make them pick up the tome if they dropped it at the healing spawns then clear out the arena. There will be no waves spawning when the doors close so you have lots of time to move around. Trigger the portcullis (I think that's what it's called?) opening and then move to one of the corners closest to them. The reason why you don't want to hold out at the portcullis itself is because the bots will randomly move in and out of combat and won't stick to a side like a player would so you'll have random mobs poking you in the back. Make sure to deal with gas rats and flame rats yourself as they spawn.



Next, move forward a bit while clearing up to the first grim and a wave should trigger. Fall back past the door and hold there to clear the wave. You don't have to grab the first grim if you don't want to, but I find that the bots get a bit stuck at the second one so I grab it to be safe rather than sorry. I've lost a few tomes because they get grabbed by a packmaster and can't be saved in a reasonable amount of time but if you can grab the second grim quickly and then run forward enough so that they teleport to you then it's not a problem.



Where this enemy is standing is another potential boss spawn location as well as where I usually hold out and fall back to if a wave spawns on the second floor.



There is another potential boss spawn in this room so it's up to you if you want to wait for a wave to trigger or not before moving in there. It doesn't happen as frequently as the next one though.





DON'T enter this building before the wave spawns. This is a potential boss spawn area and if you get a wave at the same time you will probably wipe. If it does spawn a boss you want to IMMEDIATELY pull a 180 and run outside to the open. The corners/stairs inside there are a death trap for the bots and they will stack as 3 and die to unblockable boss attacks. Luckily the area behind is nice and open so it's easy to deal with it there. In my experience I seem to get a boss here more often than the other areas and it's been long enough from the last wave that it will trigger a new one at the same time.



Get the second tome and by then you'll usually have a wave which you can hold out at the door.




Hide in this corner if a wave spawns after clearing the yard then lowering the cannon. The reason?



Enemies will drop through here or jump through the wall if you've activated the cannon. Simply wait out the wave and then go through.



IMPORTANT:
Bots will get stuck here and will only teleport to you after you go past the doors in this building, so make sure the coast is clear and you don't hear any assasins or pack masters because this is where you can end your run if you get disabled.



Another potential wipe location before the health. You're not in the clear just yet, carefully pull units then run down to the open area. Bots will get stuck on the stair corner going down and get overhead swung by the chaos warriors without being able to dodge. You may have to deal with a patrol or a wave here so use your judgement when to pull them.



Sorry Kruber, its for the greater good of the team!



Same corner strat as players. I do want to note that you DO NOT want to stand on any benches or elevated terrain though because it messes up the bots dodges and movement as they bug out a bit. Just stand on flat ground and deal with gas rats and grabbies.



Collect your loot =)