Darkest Dungeon: Tips?

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Hello, all. I usually don't post these sorts of topics, as I tend to be a believer in finding out ways that work and don't work in games personally, but for some reason, this game seems to be beating me at that.

I've now had 3 quests in a row fail. One of them ended in a total party wipe, and the other two ended with my abandoning a quest as hopeless due to the current state of health of my surviving party members.

For a reference point, I try to have at least 1 heavy hitter, 1 Plague Doctor (because being able to Blight an enemy regardless of where they are is a boon), a healer (usually a Vestal), and the 4th is up for grabs, usually reserved for any 0-rank recruits.

I'm aware that there is some element of RNG screw-over in roguelikes, as I am familiar with the genre, and have even beaten one (Rogue Legacy). But after 3 quests in a row failing, I have to wonder if it's just hardcore RNG screw-over, or if I'm just missing a trick.

 

[G00N3R7883]

Its a hardcore RNG screw-over.

I usually play games to completion, but this was a rare game that I had to abandon, after 57 hours of grinding the same missions over and over and over and over again, trying to slowly gain enough resources to unlock stuff in town, to make my guys stronger. I killed all the medium tier bosses but I lost motivation on the higher tier.

Its a shame, because the early part of the game was quite fun, and I suspect that alot of the positive reviews were written after 20-25 hours. But sadly the endless repetition wears you down the longer you play, or at least it did for me.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Sometimes a boss will just critical you three times in a row, that does happen. If you think anything is unfair before you venture into the actual darkest dugeon though, oh boy. A boss literally kills your chars without you having any recource, you just pick who dies lol.


As for tips, you wanna have a lot of options, don't default to one party because you won't always have all the members healthy enough. Marking is amazing when maximized, some chars do double damage vs marked foes and a healer that can also mark basically becomes a dder. Riposte is also great. Don't bother with AOE, just kill one thing at a time to minimize the number of hits you take. Wasting a turn killing corpses is better than wasting 3 turns bligting stuff you could have just killed with a single arrow to the face. Blight is there for stuff that has a ton of protection like the sea creatures which take barely any damage.


Finally, always, always unequip and reequip all accesories between each quest to optimize your loadout, healers need +heal%, dders need damage and either dodge or more damage, tanks need hp and protection.

 

[Zhukov]

Well, I can tell you how to almost break the game if you like. No cheating or glitching involved, but there's a lot of grind and it could be considered an exploit.

Otherwise, best hints I can give are to learn synergies (for example, houndmaster and arbalest combo destroys bosses), always keep the light level maxed and be sure to take two shovels on every run.

Also, this wiki page [http://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Curio]. Could be considered cheating, but will save you a lot of trail-and-error pain.

 

[The Madman]

Don't be afraid to run away and don't feel bad about having to do so. Better to have to send your veteran group for a bit of therapy while the B team recoups the runs losses than losing them outright.

Oh yeah, have a B team or two around. Hell, have a C team of expendable redshirts to vent stress with as well. Send them into the dungeons with minimal gear, knowing they're all expendable anyway and that if they return at all it will be profitable. Finally if any of those C team chumps live through the hell that is your indifference and become actually useful, congrats, they survived the trial by fire and you've got a new decent team member.

Don't just rely on one group of hero.

Also as Zhukov mentioned some characters and abilities have strong synergy which if used properly can mean the difference between life and death. Group composition is ridiculously important as is making sure you know how to use each correctly.

 

[MHR]

I went 23 quests without a single person dying. And that person died because they got targeted like 6 times in a row with horrible turn order and deathblow resistances not helping once.

My number 1 top tip is to actually pay close attention to the stats under the enemies as you are about to make an attack. There you will learn if the attack you're going to make actually has a chance of working and make enough of an impact to matter. You'll see the resistances, protection, dodge, and speed, all of which will help you make more informed decisions, even when selecting what abilities to train, making your party, and most of all deciding which trinkets to take with you.

People will cry and moan about the game being nothing but bullshit RNG, but most of the time there is something you can do to prevent things from having a tendency to swing the wrong way. I could have prevented that death if I had a healer, someone to protect her, or my crowd-control rolls went better. But instead the risks I took proved to be too much when enemies kept targetting her and her alone. I had made multiple healer-less runs and low-light runs before that death, and most of them were quite manageable.

The next 2 runs after that were massive successes with a bag filled with loot in every slot.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

My tip would be

Spoiler

"Delete Local Content"

Unless you're a true masochist.

But really, it's a neat little game. Just be prepared to spend lots of time micro-managing everything and near-endless grinding of the same type of missions to do well. The narrator is the best part of the game IMO. "Executed with impunity!" never gets old.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Sacrifice a goat to Fortuna, the Goddess of random luck and chance. And get ready to save scum.

 

[Baffle]

Abominations are pretty awesome, I wish they'd just get over themselves.

 

[Dreiko_v1legacy]

Abominations are pretty awesome, I wish they'd just get over themselves.

No, it's the other guys, the religious ones, that won't party with em. Abominations just want a hug.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I loved the game until I got to the like tier 4 and 5 quests. It just stopped being fun when you could go in with literally the best equipped party you could have and end up wrecked by rng.

Even so I would have probably kept at it, except I want the trophy for beating it in under X weeks and I also learned that any party you send into the Darkest Dungeon refuses to ever go back inside. If I would have known that I could have planned accordingly, but I've basically stopped playing. It was fun for a while though.

 

[meiam]

Well depending on your level this might not help and also this will probably break the game for you and make it very boring so read at your own peril (not a glitch or an exploit or anything).

Just retreat from dungeon, go trough most of the dungeon but make sure you don't finish them, when you retreat your guy don't gain any exp so you can keep grinding the same easy first tier dungeon until you have all the accessory/gold and artifact you need. You should have at least two full party, but probably a goo idea to have 3 vestal. That might sound super tedious and grindy and it is, but its the easiest less grindy way to make it trough the game. Prioritize getting cheap way to remove stress from your guy. If anyone die, no big deal cause you can replace them really easy.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I started out similarly as well. Just start a new save file if things aren't going your way, I did it twice before finally getting into it.

- Pay attention to the areas you're going into. Some areas require you to take different materials that will help: for example, ruins has a lot of enemies that inflict bleed, and a high chance of finding chests. The Cove's enemies are weak to Blight (which is a lot less useful in the Ruins), and the corals can be neutralized with herbs, granting great buffs and even positive quirks.
- Don't fuss about status effects too much. In the early game they're rather light, and can always be healed. Stress, on the other hand...
- Always, ALWAYS kill the stress inflicting enemies first. This is where having ranged attacks and/or debuffs is key.
- Upgrade your healing skills as soon and as often as possible. Healers are vital in this game.
- Brute force doesn't work. Buff your fighter guy, let him take damage while you debuff with others. Or buff your entire party and use movement-forcing skills on the enemies to mess up their attack patterns. Remember: some attacks enemies use only in specific positions.
- Upgrade the Blacksmith and Guild first, and whenever possible. Keep track of what materials you need to upgrade them, and prioritize those. Stress reduction treatment upgrades don't become relevant until the midpoint, so until then the basic level treatments will do just fine.
- Perhaps most importantly: Don't expect to actually finish the game. Ever. In 20-30 hours you'll likely get to the higher level dungeons, and by that point you've pretty much seen everything the game has to offer. When you get to lv 5 dungeons the game's progress slams the brakes and becomes the most grindtastic thing you'll ever see. The difficulty escalates like WW1, all the upgrades become insanely expensive, and half your heroes will be in stress recovery.