In the singleplayer campaign, everytime you finish a chapter you will earn skill points which unlock different abilities only used in the campaign.

There are several flaws with the campaign:

• Once you start a new campaign it wipes out your previous progress and you have to start the skill tree again from scratch.
  
• You can't replay Chapters with your upgraded squad.
  
• If you equip anything other than the default loadout on Nahum the apothecary they can't use their healing skills.
  
• There are no bot animations for the Thunder Hammer and Storm Shield.
  
• There are random cutscenes through out the early levels. When they take over your character you can still take damage so it's possible to die due to cutscene.
  
• You can only redeem your skill points inbetween levels.
  
• The Mechanicus Cult points are broken.
  
• Mission accomplished screens will show up inconsistently throughout the chapters when completing objectives.
  
• Leaving the game with unspent skill points means they are lost forever.
  
• You only get skill points for Chapters 1 to 8 and anything you do in Chapter 9 is meaningless (apart from major relics required for the Time Lord Achievement) as you do not get skill points for completion.
  
• When you finish Chapter 9 a cutscene plays and then you're dropped back to the main menu with no mission debriefing screen or a satisfying ending to the campaign.

Before you start I highly suggest you turn on "Display weapon actual aiming" in the options menu. It will make a big difference being able to see your cursor through the visual effects.

"NPC Terminator hold current order after action" makes the bots "sticky". Once they finish an order they will wait for another before they do anything. Personal preference, experiment and see what works for you.

There is a seperate achievement for completing each branch of the skill tree and another two you will unlock naturally as you complete the Psychic branch.

Unfortunately you won't earn enough skill points on a single playthrough to complete all the branches so you have a couple of options to get the achievements.

• Play the campaign multiple times. *
  
• Play the campaign and save up all your skill points up until you complete chapter 6. Put your points in to a branch of the skill tree to complete it and hit continue. Once the achivement pops go back to the main menu and reload the save, finish the level again and do the same for the next branch of the skill tree. **

* As a new player you should play through the campaign aiming for the Command and Psychic skill tree completions. That way when you play through a second time you will be familiar with the game and be able to survive without the Command and Psychic skills as the Devotion branch is very lackluster.

** You need to do this in one sitting as leaving the game with unspent skill points means they are lost forever. This also assumes you're getting enough skill points for 4 per chapter as described in the Skill Tree Mechanics Section.

In Deathwing Skill points are called Fervour Points.

The maximum amount of skill points you can get is 5 per chapter, this means a theoretical 40 skill points for a playthrough.

You gain skill points from :
Finding relics - between 4 & 6 per level to max the bar
Honour Kills - Headshots, melee and psychic powers kills - 150 to max the bar
Total Kills - 500 to max the bar
Mechanicus Cult - Destroying and hacking doors and turrets - unsure of how many are needed
Psygate not used - Bar starts maxed and everytime you use a psygate your bar will go down



As you can see from the Mission debriefing screen everthing is maxed out but I'm only getting 4 points. There's a bug with the Mechanicus Cult bar not showing the correct values. Hacking a turret to destroy it doesn't even register either.

From a normal run using all the psygates and grabbing all relics in a chapter you will end up with 4 per chapter giving you 32 skill points for a playthrough.

You don't really need to overthink things. Even if you max out your fervour points on each chapter you're still not going to have enough to max out all the skill trees in a single playthrough.

If you're a new player I'd suggest playing through the campaign multiple times as you'll learn the maps, mechanics and how to deal with the janky AI. If you already know what you're doing and are just finishing off your achievements then I'd suggest the saving up your skill points method mentioned in the achievement section.

All the skills in all of the Skill Tree Branches require a certain amount of points to unlock because you have to put points into the bars connecting the skills.

These bars do nothing apart from soak up skill points, so that's why I made this guide. It was disappointing to spend all my points on my first playthrough and then realise I didn't have enough to get any of the achievements!

In my playthroughs I use a Stormbolter and Force Axe (Force Sword until it's unlocked) if I want to use lots of powers. Chain Lightning will be on a 1 second cooldown so you can spam it a lot. You can use any other weapon combination though your power cooldowns will be higher as you are forced to use the Power Fist.

I use Chain Lightning and Inferno for the whole campaign. Inferno is great for clearing hallways and Chain Lightning will one-shot all turrets. My other skill is one of the single target explosion skills or the Vortex of Doom. I save this for use on Scythe-strains and Brood Lords or even the odd Aberrant or Psyker. Lion's Shadow is a teleport but if you use it on an enemy you can't physically path to, it seems to works just like Spontaneous Combustion but without the area of effect explosion.



On a second playthrough to get the Devotee achievement I start out levelling the same as my first playthrough (Chapter 1) and put 4 points into the Psychic branch to unlock both Inferno and Lion's Shadow.

I have to use Inferno and Lion's Shadow as my main skills for the whole campaign as all the other points will need to go into the Devotion branch.

You will have some points left over so you can put two points in to the Command branch at some point to unlock the Plasma Cannon for Barachiel.

The bots are janky as hell. Sometimes they will walk through a door you told them to lock and will lock it from the wrong side. Other times they'll get stuck on a random pipe or just refuse to follow commands. They also wait until an enemy is up close to attack, so be prepared to baby-sit them as they don't deal well with enemies from range.

I suggest using the control wheel sparingly and instead memorize the keybinds. *

You can't command a bot with the Move to command and then use the Defend command to get it to defend said location. They always want to come back to you to Defend. Sending a bot to a location means they will Move To and stay there until you issue a different command such as Follow Me.

Once Barachiel has his hammer and shield he can tank really well. On a defend objective you can position him ahead with Move To whilst you hang back with Nahum and deal with stragglers.

Most of the campaign you will be taking the lead so that's why I suggest saving the Devotee achievement on your second playthrough. You'll be more aware of what to look out for as you'll have to baby-sit your bots a lot more whilst also lacking some good Psychic skills.

* Seriously, the bots are terrible. Learn the keybinds or bind your own so they're usable!

Although you can't replay missions, it is possible to keep saves from the start or end of each level. It's technically possible to share a save file from the start of level 7 or 8 where someone else could play the level and unlock the achievements at the end.

This can and will break the progression in your campaign if you get it wrong!

On Steam in windows you can navigate to the save games folder:
You need to copy both mapbegin.sav & meta_mapbegin.sav and save them somewhere on your computer. This will be the start of the current chapter in your save games. If you look at the Load Menu in game, this is the save titled "Chapter Begin" with the Chapter name in the center.



At a later date if you want to replay the level, copy the files you saved and overwrite the exiting files in your folder. Bear in mind this will wipe the current chapter starts you have saved!

I exit the game before importing save files. I've had no issues myself but it's also possible steam cloud could interfere with your saves so once again, use at your own risk!

It's best to do this after a level has just started as there are only 9 save slots in the game and they are normally used up during a level with autosaves. Saving the mapbegin.sav & meta_mapbegin.sav for Chapter 1 is pointless as it's just the start of the campaign. If you wanted to skip the intro you could copy over the first Dialogue save (dialsave.sav & meta_dialsave.sav).

You can also do this with the console saves (consolestory.sav & meta_consolestory.sav) and Psygate saves (psygate.sav & meta_psygate.sav).



In the singleplayer campaign when you interact with one of the in game consoles it acts as a save point. Using a Psygate also creates a save point. You can do this as many times as you like in a Chapter, though there can only be one save file of each at a time.

I'll happily take any feedback or additional information to add to this guide.

All descriptions are taken direct from the game as is and the spelling is in UK English.