Grimoire

Grimoires are foul tomes filled with and protected by Skaven (or Chaos) magic. They have a very disturbing appearance, as they are bound with twitching skin and have multiple moving eyes and tentacles protruding from them. The heroes take these in order to keep them out of the hands of the Pactsworn, but they do so at a high risk, as the grimoire is cursed.

Gameplay
In Vermintide 2, there are always two grimoires present in a mission. They are typically well hidden, often requiring that the player solves a puzzle to access them. Once a grimoire is picked up, it fills a player's [Items#Potions|potion]] slot. The maximum health of each player in the party is decreased by roughly 30% for each grimoire held by the team. If a grimoire is dropped (by holding the grimoire, holding the 'block' button and pressing the 'attack' button) or a player carrying a grimoire it killed, the grimoire is lost, and the health penalties are removed.

If the mission is finished with one or two grimoires still in possession of the players, each grimoire will give additional xp depending on the difficulty level, and 75% progress to the next Loot box tier in the Loot screen.

Curse Resistance
Holding a grimoire decreases the maximum health of all players, but this decrease can be minimized by wearing Trinkets with the Curse Resistance Property. As the decrease in party health significantly increase the difficulty of a map, it is advised to equip a Trinket with this property when planning a full book run. Nowadays it is generally considered standard that Quickplay groups do full book runs, so it is advised to have this property equipped by default.