After getting sliced up into tiny steaks for hungry Skaven whelps and turned into Nurgle zealot delicacies, I've finally gotten a breakthrough and learned a couple things about Vermintide 2. I'm now confident in sharing said things and will be updating as I can between actually playing because the window is closing for Closed Beta time.

I'll also try and port this to the actual game because I couldn't resist the game's charm.

General tip: if you are Siena the Bright Wizard or using flamebased weapons like Bardin's Drakeguns, hitting R/reload will vent the weapon's heat. However, if you are venting in the large middle or far right sections of the bar you will take damage, without talents/skills, as opposed to just switching to melee to contribute to fights.

Witch Hunter: that pistol in your offhand while using a sword is not for show! Mouse4, your mouse's side button, will fire the offhand pistol which seems to share a separate ammo pool than your slot #2 ranged weapon. It's sort of known by the Devs, they are working on making that keybind editable again.

Box opening issue (?): do not waste your hard-earned high tier boxes by opening them on low level characters. You will not get the same kind of awesome rarities and stats at lvl 1 that you have been at your lvl 10 for instance.

TL:DR Don't use high tier loot boxes on super low level characters or else you will not get Greens or Blues (unconfirmed).

This is a huge thing that might be overlooked or even misused because of a possible hidden system.

When in the Loot screen there is a tooltip to the right stating that you will receive items pertaining to your currently selected character. Awesome! You can grind out boxes with your favorite high level breadwinner and then port the Tier 3 or 4 boxes with hard earned tomes and grimoire runs over to a new character who is a lowbie!

WRONG!

You will definitely get nicer loot but I found something that is unconfirmed. I didn't start getting Green/Uncommon rarity until lvl 5 or so with my Barik. Blue/Rare until lvl 8ish. At lvl 12 I got my first Orange/Legendary.

Out of curiosity, took a Soldier and General strongbox to a level 1 Kruber. I did get rather high power items, including an Arquebus, BUT they were still White/Common. Opened another General back on Bardin and it spat out two Blues and a Green.

Mileage may vary, I just thought it could be important. If you are willing to sacrifice your own boxes to help test, please report back. Otherwise, I myself am just going to keep using commendations on said lower level guys and hoard boxes for later levels to see if Item Power is tied to the time the box was given or the current character's level.

TL:DR Each of these items improve your chest quality if you win the match. There are guides on locations of all Tomes and Grims since they are static in a level, loot dice are random. (PLEASE don't be that guy who picks up the Grim without asking as it can't be dropped without consequence!)

Tomes occupy your Heal slot but can be swapped with said healing items you find some, making the Medic Bag most preferable for your other companions to carry when mobile.

Grimroires occupy the Potion Buff slot but reduces your max HP by 33%, which also affects the temporary health from revives, out while being held, and cannot be dropped or else they disappear.

Loot Dice are completely random spawns. Sometimes you will see Rats with Bags that could drop them or just goodies in general.

Remember, you only get this chest reward if you win. Completing the objective is paramount but so is sticking together and not rushing headlong into a humiliating defeat, no chest at all. Just 1 person needs to be in the portal to finish, assuming other people have downed, but it's not recommended at all to split up!

More commonly encountered than loot roll items, there are four different ambient resources you will find on a level.

Ammunition comes in three flavors. Static giant boxes which can be reused over and over again are present, but you might be punished by the game for camping on top of one. There's small sacks of ammo that are ambient placed items as well and will refill one person's ammo count. Lastly, the Ranger Veteran spec for Bardin allows specials to sometimes drop... a tiny amount of ammo on kill. Not much but each round or arrow counts, especially with high armor penetration on many of them.

Usually you will start the match with a Healing Potion in your #3 slot (heal slot), a bright and icky tasting green. It's a quick quaff, restores a good part of your health, can bring you up out of the gray temporary health. You can also enable an option to give the potion to a teammate with Block/mouse2, provided they have an empty slot. However, you can't do this if they are holding a Tome.

The Medic Bag heals for a larger amount and has the added bonus of being able to directly heal another person. This is essential for runs where 3 of the party are carrying Tomes, causing the 4th to prioritize having a Bag to heal the others.

Buff Potions occupy slot #4 (buff slot) and come in 3 varieties: blue for Speed, purple for Concentration, yellow for Strength. Yellow massively increases damage and can help devastate heavily armored specials as well as the boss giants. Speed increases attack speed and move speed but I am not sure what else. Concentration does something but I'd appreciate if someone could let me know in the comments, but I think it has to do with Crit Chance.

In slot #5 we have explosives. Now, there's two kinds. (PSA: If you hold down Attack/mouse1, you can also snuff the wick/cancel throwing with Block/mouse2) There are equipable boom-on-impact bombs that are awesome for clearing armored packs, and incendiary fire AoE bombs good at holding a chokepoint that a character can throw.

The second kind of explosives are ambient barrels of Lamp Oil (AoE burn) and Explosive Barrels (boom). You can pick these up, using mouse1 to throw or mouse2 to use a high cooldown shove. As far as I know, tossing and then trying to blow up the barrel is unreliable. However, whacking the barrel with a melee weapon once and then throwing seems to activate it. Make sure you throw that sucker far or else you will damage your team.

Please contribute in comments and I will do my best to edit!

I am starting off with the enemies first because I'm more familiar with them than the classes by this point. To kick off the roster, let's start with easily the scariest first encounters for a person's first run.

There's so far 4 "giants" which I like to call Boss Giants because of their, you guessed it, giant stature. An important thing to know is A, Block shields can be completely broken in one swipe; B, Dodge is important; C, I have no idea how Dodge works.

Also, in general, if you have a Strength potion, give it to your heavy hitter and wipe the dance floor with the sucker. If you have someone that can take hits, try and let them take aggro as we say in the MMO world, tanking the brunt of the blows. Switch off if needed.

The Chaos followers of Nurgle sport the Bile Troll and the Chaos Spawn.

The Bile Troll is an ugly brown and green colored dude with a club. His favorite pastime is puking his acidic stomach bile onto your party with extraordinary range and precision but is easily avoided enough. Periodically after taking enough damage it can be staggered and driven to its knees. Then it has a regeneration ability but honestly by this point I am just hacking and slashing until the guy is down for good.

• Keep moving.
  
• Don't stand in the fire bile.
  
• "Bring it down, bring it down, BRING. IT. DOWN!" - wise words of King Theoden I

The Chaos Spawn is a tongue demon. It likes to slap people around and smash them. I don't know the weakpoints but if it looks like exposed flesh, which is hard to discern with how Chaos Horrors take weird forms in the Warp. One thing for sure is that his special grab attack sucks.

• It does this charge thing, stomps in a straight line.
  
• Its special attack is grabbing some poor sod, flips them over, and starts chomping on their head for serious damage. Teammates need to focus and stagger the Spawn, otherwise it begins literally stuffing its health bar with the captured person. Eventually it will smack the captured person on the ground before chucking them a distance.
  
• Funny thing, friendly Kruber had the worst luck and was tossed clear over the city walls to the town below. Instant death.

The Skaven's boss giants have the same pattern, one simple and one complex.

The Rat Ogre is a giant hulk that may as well have the same attack pattern as the Chaos Spawn but more emphasis on knockback and chasing one person around.

• Go for the eyes, boo, go for the eyes!

Aaaaand that brings us to the lovely, and my least familiar with, StormVermin.

It's a giant rat with a massive sweeping flamethrower. Covered in metal plates. Flamethrower. Armored plates.

• There's apparently another small rat on its back as a weakpoint.
  
• Don't stand in the fire!

If there isn't someone with good armor penetration then I'd like to consider these two units as Bosses.

Chaos specials come in three flavors, but the highest tier is the literal walking tank that is the Knight. High HP pool, full armor, a full block breaking overhead smash with its 2handed Axe, massive shove. Definitely a challenge for a fresh recruit. At most I have had two of these nuts spawn... alongside another horde of specials but that was earlier in the beta.

• Block-shove is not as effective in quick succession.
  
• Shoot it in the head.
  
• Shoot the head.
  
• Stab the head.
  
• The head!
  
• Maybe get around to his backside too.

Storm Vermin are Skaven that basically look like the Roman Legionnaires of the barbarian horde of ill-equipped scum. They are fully armored, have excellently crafted steel weapons, solid shields. I am considering these guys bosses because they can actually spawn as a small squad of 4-8 patrolling the area, or hiding as the leader of various packs of other enemies in an area.

• In the head, shoot it you must.
  
• Shields can sometimes protect the Storm Vermin's head.
  
• A well-timed shove can leave an opening long enough to hit it in the head.
  
• Some use long-ranged polearms, others sword and board.

Remember to tag specials with default T. As always, go for the head. Kill these first. Seriously.

Player Stunners

• Hook Rat: Skaven with a big stick with a hook on it. Average speed, prioritizes players who are alone. Sometimes two of these guys can spawn, or did before shadow-tweaking the AI Director spawns.
  
• Gutter Runner: reminiscient of Left 4 Dead Hunters who pounce on players and rip into them while knocking down. These guys are faster, do a ton of damage, and if you don't kill them quickly will teleport away.
  
• Leech Witch: fatty Chaos bastard who teleports. Basically a ranged Hook Rat.
  
• Fart Tornado Windmaker: another fatty Chaos bastard that teleports. You will see him begin to cast a green flaming tornado, particle effects leading back to him.

Ranged

• Ratling Gunner: Skaven with a giant minigun, shoots green tracer bullets and will completely wreck you if caught out in the open. Get to cover or take him out immediately.
  
• Globadier: throws AoE acid bombs which also screw with your vision. Rather slow and can explode if you shoot the backpack tank.

Melee

• Plague Monk: ♥♥♥♥ these Skaven guys, scream when they see you and sprint. Quick and lightly armored, lots of HP, drop them as soon as you can. They do massive amounts of damage and quickly burn your block shields and even a shove barely helps.
  
• Chaos Berserker: dual wields two 1H axes. Super dificult to block and shove, go for the head.
  
• Chaos not-Knight: like the main "boss" Knight, but lacking the full suit of armor. Wields a 2H axe, overhead smash will break all block shields. Easier to shove.

will update play now