Darkest Dungeon

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Gather around the bonfire, fellow heirs to the accursed manor above the Darkest Dungeon. Let us share tales of narrowly making it out of a quest with our parties barely sane or alive, compare battle scars from those times we fought a boss unprepared and lived to tell the tale, huddle together while we reminisce the horror of running out of torches, boast proudly about your heroes whose resolve was tested and came out virtuous, raise a cup of watered-down wine to those who didn't make it—while silently praying for them to stay confined to their graves. Come come, don't be shy, for there are worse things to fear than the warmth of camaraderie. Far, far worse things that are waiting for you to go to sleep.

For those who don't know...

Spoiler

Darkest Dungeon is a Sidescroller Strategy RPG malformed by the unholy influences of Lovecraft's brand of horror. It is a brutal experience, with perma-death, constant auto-saving, very limited inventory space, and enemies that hit just as hard (if not harder) than your characters. You'll often find yourself scrambling; for food (hunger mechanic), HP, gold, light (darkness mechanic), and even sanity (stress mechanic); with your ability to make the most out of a terrible situation being your biggest asset. This isn't a game that's trying to play fair with you, it is not a power fantasy nor is it gonna hold your hand. It is a game about risk-management, and the risks are at an all-time high. More so than the actual enemies you are gonna face, carelessness, impatience and overconfidence will be your worst enemies—and sometimes even your own heroes.

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Probably the most nobel thing the game introduces is stress as a numerical value to measure the mental health of the poor saps you keep sending to cleanse the land from monstrous evils. While your party makes it's way through dungeons, they will accumulate stress due to a variety of factors (light-level, traps, hunger, enemies, etc.), if the stress level of a character reaches 100 their resolve will be tested and if your are lucky they will come out virtuous, but more often than not they will end up afflicted. Afflictions are mental states (Masochistic, Hopeless, Fearful, etc.) that will compel them to take self-destructive actions, sowing even more stress among your crew. If stress levels reach 200, they have a heart-attack and die immediately. So yeah, on top making sure your characters are in tip-top shape for combat, you also gotta try to manage their sanity; coupled with all the other mechanics and hurdles this game throws, this makes for a stupidly fun and engaging experience. Your heroes are mostly disposable, you can always replace them if they die with level zero units (not ideal but better than game over), yet, you'll almost inevitably find yourself getting attached to the poor fucks that have made it through more than a handful of quests, and when they die, boy is it a harrowing experience.

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There are 14 hero classes (so far). Also a Hamlet (/town) with facilities that provide a variety of services (stress-relieving, blacksmithing, disease purging, etc.), all of which you can upgrade to make them better and cheaper. Did I mention your heroes can get sick? That they can develop "quirks" that can be either beneficial or detrimental? That they can sometimes "go on a personal journey" without notice and be unavailable for weeks at a time? That there is an absolutely delightful voice-over narration occasionally interjecting to offer advice and ominous quotes? There are a myriad other complexities to this game that give it an enormous amount of depth, but better for you to find that out on your own. Suffice to say, this isn't your run-of-the-mill Turn-based RPG.

The game was kickstarted, greenlit and got fully released last month after a pretty successful Early Access run. It is available for PC in GOG and Steam, and it's minimum specs are so humble, if your PC/laptop can run minesweeper, it can probably run Darkest Dungeon.

If you have been playing it tho, please share your thoughts, impressions, frustrations, stories of "holy crap I can't believe I made it!" moments (or the contrary) and/or questions below! I'm on Week 50 and almost half of my roster has finally made it to level 5. I still haven't tried any Champion quests 'cuz I wanna finish off all the Veteran bosses beforehand; the Brigand 12 Pounder in particular is giving me a lot of trouble. I'm hoping I can sweep all Veteran bosses before all my heroes are too over-leveled to take on those quests ;_;

With all that said, come into the light, partake in the exchange, gather your strength, and with renewed resolve take on the horrors lurking beneath the shadow of the...

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The game has been so wildly successful I don't doubt you'll see it ported elsewhere down the line. Right now, Red Hook is focusing on their post-launch support (there's a new class and town events coming), so you may have to wait a little while. If I had to guess tho, I think the first port you'll see will be to iOS and Android, since the fact that you can do everything via Mouse means they don't have rework the control scheme for touch interfaces.

 

HAHAHAH I don't blame you. Nobody would.

The game is hard as hell in a very arbitrary way that is not gonna appeal at all to the Dark Souls crowd that are used to difficulty being dictated by skill. Here is all about managing the odds, and they are never in your favor. That's where the most hardcore strategy elements come into play.

Gotta think hard and ahead, expect the worst, and come to terms with the fact that you'll never be fully prepared, but you still gotta make it through. Definitely not for everyone. Chance plays too big a factor for most to stick with it through the end. Heh, and the eponymous Darkest Dungeon is worst than anything else that comes before it, as it should be.

 

Back-of-the-box quote right there.

 

Well well well Kasey, you were right! I just checked the developer's site and here is what they have to say regarding a port to Sony's consoles:

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Oh yeah, the stress bar is even more important than your HP bar, in my opinion.

Spoiler

• HP heals in between quests no matter in which state your heroes made it out, stress does not.
  
• Paying for stress relieving activities can make it very costly to keep your heroes sane, specially because the more stress said activities relieve, the more expensive they are—and prices scale according to your hero's resolve level, meaning managing stress on high-leveled heroes costs much more (Most of my characters are lvl. 5 now and boy don't I know it).
  
• A character at Death's Door can always swing back, and, if you are lucky, they can even take more than a few hits without kicking the bucket. On the contrary, a character that reaches 200 stress dies immediately, no questions asked. There is no recovery from a heart-attack.
  
• Afflicted characters can raise the stress of all your party members, sabotaging your group from within. So not only is that character slowly making their way towards a heart-attack, they are bringing the whole party down too with them.

For those reasons, keeping stress low is always top priority for me. During Medium or Long quests, I usually try to make it through the whole quest without camping just so I can camp right before heading back to the Hamlet, and focus on healing as much stress as possible (as well as purging diseases). Way cheaper than paying for a visit to the Brothel

First off, I'm afraid sharing contact information through EC in any way other than PM is against the rules :/

Second, what do you mean exactly? Darkest Dungeon doesn't have a multiplayer as far as I know... Or maybe you meant that we could rename some of our heroes after EC users and roleplay as if they were part of our parties?

 

Huh, sounds like you play pretty defensively. I'm the complete opposite, I play a very aggressive game. My approach basically boils down to "kill them before they kill me," so I almost never have a designated healer (of any kind) in my party. I have a 25 character roster and only one of them is a Vestal lol. Even when I do bring a Jester, I focus on their offensive skills; I only resort to their stress heal if and after they've been debuffed by "Finale." I do like to have at least one member with a healing skill (Arbalest, Occultist or Crusader would do), or someone that can defend (Houndmaster, Man-at-Arms, Crusader...) in case someone hits Death's Door, but it's not a must. I don't sweat it with heals is what I'm saying lol, tho that may change for Champion quests, since I got my ass handed to me in the one I tried recently ;_; (Pro-tip: Occultist's heal + Cleansing Crystal = OP).

As far as party composition goes, I'm always mixing it up. A constant with me tho, is that I rarely ever bring two characters of the same class. My favorite classes are definitely Highwayman and Grave Robber, since they have excellent ranged and melee skills, they can exploit marks, they can reach all the ranks on the enemy party, they are useful in any position, and they have unparalleled mobility through your ranks. Hellions are great too, they are particularly well-suited to my aggressive approach. Abominations too.

Holy crap, that escalated quickly lol. You are not lacking in ambition, that's for sure :rolle: I do plan on making a game down the line, but that's on hold for the time being. This year my main focus is getting my bachelor's and getting the fuck out of college (finally!), after that, it's fair game!

 

Can you believe some people think the vanilla game is too easy? The most popular mod right now is called Pitch Black Dungeon and, as the name suggests, it's an overhaul mod that makes everything even harder than in the base game—which I find insane.

I didn't play the game in Early Access, but a lot of people who did got used to the game being easier before the devs added some of the final features (like corpses and heart-attacks), so the devs added options in the settings to toggle some mechanics on and off. You know, to make the game a little more enjoyable for those who find it too punishing. Maybe try tweaking those?

 

They added the eponymous Darkest Dungeon! That's the endgame, and it sounds absolutely ridiculous. Apparently not only is it hard as hell, but just going there takes such a toll on your character's psyches that if they manage to come out alive they will get permanently debuffed and those heroes can never re-enter the Darkest Dungeon again. So, basically, the Darkest Dungeon chews them and spits them back like pate. You only get one use out of them, and afterwards you might as well dismiss them, for all the good they will do you.

I don't know how long ago you played, but I know the Houndmaster (my third favorite class) and the Abomination were recentish additions, so hopefully you have as much fun with them as I! Almost all of the classes got re-balanced too, except for the Leper, who still kinda sucks, but the devs are working on it.

---------- Post added 15th Feb 2016 at 06:08 AM ----------

Yuup, we play in completely different ways :lol: Even when I bring my one Vestal, when going into the Ruin (lots of Unholy creatures) I will put her in Rank 2 and have wreck shit with her mace and her holy hand of light or whatever that's called. I used to heal a lot when I started playing, but I quickly realized the enemies always deal more damage than what you can heal (unless you get lucky with the Occultist), so I see trying to keep up with them a losing battle. I barely even use food to heal anymore either. You'll have your Vestal, say, heal 6, only to have an enemy hit your character for 8-10 Dmg (sometimes with bleed and/or blight to boot), so I started wondering what's the point? Lol Instead I opt to potentially kill that enemy before it can deal 8-10 Dmg in the first place.

Characters with stun are godsend, I will use the first turn stun the biggest heavy-hitters in the enemies' party and focus all my fire on the small-fry while they can't move. The Plague Doctor in particular in Saint Patron of Stuns and Blight, a speedy character that will more often than not be the first one to act and manages to stun/blight two enemies a pop. Motherfucker can also blight for 5 dmg per turn! And her bleed skill crits a lot too. Love her.

Then again, I'm mostly always dungeon-crawling with little to no light, which severely boosts my crit chances, so that may play into how I can kill most enemies so fast—and I use a lot of trinkets that boost my characters in low-light conditions.

Nah, they are more resilient than you give them credit for, or rather, more dodgy. They have the highest dodge on the roster. Plus, not all enemies can reach the back-row, and "Finale" has an insanely high percentage of crit, so whatever it hits, it will likely kill (or leave ripe for the killing).

Not that I'm aware of. It has never happened to me and, trust me, I've been at Death's Door many, many times lol.