Darktide: How is Rending Different from Brittleness? Answered

Not a lot of people know the difference between Rending and Brittleness, since the game doesn’t attempt to explain how they differ. In this guide, I’ll go over what you need to know about Rending in Darktide and how it’s different from Brittleness.

What is Rending in Darktide, and How is It Different from Brittleness?

I’m a big-man player. My only character is my Ogryn, and all of my 530+ hours are clocked Ogryn time. And just like I support the punies I get sent on missions with, I’ll give you an injection of important Darktide info: Brittleness is better, but Rending shouldn’t be avoided.

Both Rending and Brittleness give an extra 5% damage per stack, but they couldn’t be functionally identical, could they? They’re, indeed, not functionally identical, and the target of their effect is different.

Brittleness Explained

With Brittleness, the damage increase is applied to the target as a debuff. Your three teammates will be able to take advantage of the damage increase just like you will. This makes this an amazing Blessing addition on weapons with Blessings with Brittleness effects, like Cap Opener on any Ripper Gun. Can Opener is a must-have for most Ripper builds because multi-stabbing with a ripper’s secondary can just tear through Maulers and Crushers in new and exciting ways.

Redning Explained

Rending is different in that it only applies to you. Rending could be considered a passive buff in most cases, applying an extra 5% damage to all targets under circumstances where it’s applied. The trick is that it’s more effective against armored enemies than unarmored ones, so it’s not great for waveclear weapons. It’s amazing for high-damage, slower-firing weapons like the Kickback, but it’s not entirely recommended for something like a Stubber.

Hopefully, knowing what Brittleness and Rending do in Darktide will help you come up with more cohesive builds. It helped me when I first learned about it (+5% Rending talent when using a Kickback, every time), and it might be that extra oomph you need to more efficiently blast down heretics. Check out some of our other Warhammer 40K: Darktide guides here on GameSkinny.