Since the second edition is lacking in animal and daemons other than nurgle, I was thinking about using creatures from the 1st edition books. Has anyone else done this and are there any conversion problems I need to be aware of?

You'll want to check about talents and skills that are no longer in use.

Should be easy enough to convert. Just apply new talents/skills where appropriate. The stat block, wounds and armor all pretty much the same!

Though I would recommend summarizing the stat blocks of enemies in a less...comprehensive format.

I would represent the Creatures Anathema Genestealer, for instance as...

WS 65 | A (U12) 60 | T 60 | S/Per 55 | WP 45 | Int 27 | BS/Fel --

Soak: 10 (4A+6T) Claw Damage: 1d10+7 p7

Talents: Three Attacks (65) & Two Dodges (70) per round. Bites makes you preggers. Fleet of claw. Fearless.

Skills: Sneaky/Athletic

I want to convert the Edge of Darkness campaign. I am new to DH though. You guys are saying I can leave everything as is. I just need to swap talents and skills to the new versions?

I want to convert the Edge of Darkness campaign. I am new to DH though. You guys are saying I can leave everything as is. I just need to swap talents and skills to the new versions?

Yup.

You might also check if the gear the NPC uses are in DH2, as some weapons got like +1 or -1 or pen or similar. But it wont make a difference if you dont bother.

Yup. To echo what's already been said, the two editions are close enough that directly porting NPCs is relatively trivial.

There will be some overlaps and/or gaps in the skills, talents and traits, but they're quite minor and on the whole it's a 1:1 conversion.

What's more challenging is converting PCs as the new edition doesn't include ranks.

Also, given the various little tricks available via the new homeworld/background/role package does make the PCs slightly more powerful for a given level of XP.

Additionally the lack of ranks means that while PCs will power up at roughly the same rate, that power will tend to be far more focused as the players can specialise very quickly in a single area at the expense of balancing the character with secondary skills and talents while they wait to rank up to get the higher powered skills.