f13.net

Pretty cool, f13-approved decent art rogue-like. Its pretty content sparse (lots of classes but not so much on environment or enemy variety) but remember this thread when it goes on a 75% sale sometime in the future. When you can buy this for $5 it will be an absolute steal and a blast for a single play through, especially if they add in a lot more content as its currently for sale listed as Early Access.

The stress mechanic is nice and adds tension, the setting is pretty fun/cool. Classes include things like Grave Robber, Leper, Highwayman etc.

It feels very Mordheim meets gritty webcomic art. It has some xcom vibes in the recruiting and leveling up guys who are then damaged and eventually killed off as you go on missions.

Some art here: http://cribs.deviantart.com/gallery/

This, Besiege, and that Castaway simulator are really testing the resolve on my "no early access" stance.

It looks real good.

This game is really good but needs many many balance tweaks.

Castaway simulator?

I broke down and got Beseige. So far I don't feel bad about it.

Think hes referring to Stranded Deep, which does look pretty cool.

Watched a few videos on it and right now it's too rough for my tastes

I am loving this so far, but yeah it needs some more variety.

Picked it up.  This is going to be a great game once it is more polished and has more content.  It's definitely fun though and I'm enjoying it.

Oh god one of my party members stressed out too much and became abusive, she then proceeded to spend the entire time talking shit about every one else.

Having not played this yet, but watching a few game play videos, it seems like they may want to tone down the stress levels.  The characters seem to get stressed out very quickly while reducing stress can take much, much longer.   Core game still looks pretty good and probably can be great if they fine tune things correctly.

The stress spiral is pretty bad. The RNG has two states: Not shitting on you, and totally taking a shit on you. There's no real thing in this game where you can luck out and gain some sort of cool advantage that gives you a solid edge for a while without breaking the game...you merely just don't get fucked by the RNG. Basically, that's the best thing that can happen to you in this game: not getting fucked by the RNG.

Yeah, but the whole idea of a stress mechanic is really fun. And to some extent if you could manage it so well that it never led to anything, you'd lose all that fun. I think the trick is to make it so it's not an insta-game-over when characters go completely nuts.

My guess is that the stress mechanic will get cranked around and tooled with and that's a large part of what this early access beta whatever is about. Sounds like it's their major addition to an extremely well-tread genre.

I have not found stress to be a problem. I regularly play without torches - careful prioritisation of enemies allows me to end most fights with very little stress gain. And even if characters hit their limit they can still play. Most of the time though, I'll rest before that happens and give the guy a pep talk.

Critical hits, on the other hand… almost all my my failures (forced to retreat with loot but no exp) at this point come from strings of enemy AoE crits.

I want to like this game. The RNG aspect of the game, however, is something I'm finding I cannot tolerate. Why? Because I have shit luck. On my eighth run (of which four failed on the tutorial because of luck) and over the past two runs (one in 75+ light all the time, the other a darkness run), and my runs went like this, respectively (went 13 and 15 weeks);

Hit % for my heroes: 64%, 62%
Crit % for my heroes: 3%, 4%
Dodge % for my heroes: 7%, 8%

Hit % for enemies: 82%, 89%
Crit % for enemies: 19%, 24%
Dodge % for enemies: 31%, 41%

Just let that sink in for a moment. My Hit % on most abilities was supposed to be 75%+ (often 80%+), yet I fell far short of that. Crit %, especially in the darkness run made me went to punch a wall. The enemies just couldn't help but hit, and hit hard. I actually managed to complete all but three quests over the two runs (one failed on the very first fight of the dungeon where I got surprised and suffered five straight crits that wiped out my entire party before I got to move, as one hero got stunned the move before I got the chance to retreat, the other was a boss run against the Hag where I simply couldn't make head-way due to luck and composition and only lost the poor Highwayman in the pot).

Stress was a constant problem (due to common crits against and few crits for), but the main issue was health; I just couldn't keep up with the damage against, even though I constantly had my guys upgraded in Skills and equipment and kept bad traits off. Don't think my party compositions were that bad, either (usually went with three groups; a Crusader, Helion, Highwayman, Vestal, a Leper, Helion, Highwayman, Vestal, and a Helion, Highwayman, Bard, Vestal, in my darkness run, as an example).

Want to like the game, but the game won't let me. Bah. I've never liked RNGs.. and this is why.

It definitely needs not just some balancing, but some way for the player to strategically hedge against RNG. I beat the Apprentice Necromancer with four fairly untrained guys after losing my four alpha guys entirely because in one battle the RNG left me alone, in the other it absolutely crushed me. Same mix of classes in both. I get that the fun of it is partly that it's not rock, paper, scissors, that you can't always win just by matching the right classes against the right enemy and doing it right, but still.

I really like a lot of the game, though.

I love the way you can be just holding on by your fingernails through a battle--the heal mechanic/Death's Door mechanic is great.

I have been trying to figure out if certain classes have weighted outcomes in terms of interacting with certain objects--do highwaymen etc. do better disarming traps, do plague doctors do better with books or scrolls, etc.? I can't tell, but if not, that should be the case eventually.

Grave robbers are supposed to be good at traps i think.

Grave robbers are a confusing class. Also for whatever reason I almost never see them in the available heroes list.

Keeping my eye on this one as it nears release. Watched a couple of videos of newer builds today, it still looks like there's considerable balance issues, but I'm so enamoured with the whole Mike Mignola smashes Castlevania into Final Fantasy aesthetic it's incredibly tempting to buy in now.

The high RNG factor has me weary of purchase.

Grave Robbers are one of the classes that can be used in two distinct ways; you can have a melee grave robber that uses the forward lunge move and the fade move to move back and forth in the lineup, and you can have a 2-3rd strata robber who just hangs out and throws daggers/clears debuffs. They're pretty weak overall IMO, as are plague doctors.

Out of curiousity, does this game have any more well known analogues?  I was kind of puzzled as to what kind of game this actually was.

I've seen people compare it to X-Com. Which I haven't played.
But you're managing a barracks full of characters, who go out on quests (dungeon crawls) in groups of 4.
As the game progresses, your toons level up, you can buy them upgrades, and buy them new skills.

I've also seen it called a rogue-like. Or a "rogue-lite". All it has in common with rogue-like games is the permadeath and the random dungeon layouts.

The RNG really fucks you hard sometimes.

Getting a good mix of classes is an interesting puzzle.

I think the whole point of the game is the RNG fucks you.  It isn't a traditional min/max RPG where you constantly climb in power until you can handle anything, and you take your chosen band from zeros to god killers in the course of the game...  you've got to be proactive in retreating and managing the negative quirks.  Even in good runs sometimes things just got pear shaped fast.

Don't be afraid to lose a guy to beat that boss, but by the same token don't be afraid to give up on a dungeon fast if you get unlucky and stress is high or you've been chain fucked with negative quirks.  Rotate your heroes around so that you aren't focusing too much on a couple guys as the A team.  Make sure you have a couple replacements in the wings, and don't give up on expanding your roster and running lowbies through low level runs.l


This sounds like a quirk problem.  Are you letting devastating negative quirks accumulate?  Are you running the guys with stress enhancing quirks through runs where they run into enemies they have huge negatives against?  Are you running all the trinkets?  Most trinkets aren't really worth using.  Also, target priority and having a stunner or puller to get that monster with the stress abilities locked down, dead fast, or in front where your front line can wreck him.

The scouting traits are really, really, really handy.  Reduces chances to be surprised and to surprise the enemy.  If you can constantly kill that cultist or vomiting pig thing before they get to inflict stress, your life is much easier.

Also, the ambiance is amazing.

It's a Lovecraftian setting (mostly "Rats in the Walls" plus "Call of Cthulthu"... the game studio is Red Hook, probably for "The Horror at Red Hook") with a Bastion style narrator.  It's a game where I don't automatically ESC out of the intro cinematic, since the intro is fantastic and puts you in the right mood to play.

This game....I'm so addicted, mainly because I'm so horrible at it.  I can't stop failing, but each time a little farther. Its ridiculously fun and its nice to see that Roguelikes finally advanced in a non Diabloesque manner.   This is worth every cent of 20 bucks even if you ditch it after 2 weeks.

So, I started up a new game last night. First mission, I got through it with no deaths, and everyone stressed in the 30-50+ range. And a minimal haul in terms of money and heirlooms.
So I threw a couple of them in the Abbey (couldn't afford to do all four at once) and then went to see what was on the meatwagon.

Two highwaymen, a grave digger, and a jester. No tanks, no healers. I grabbed them all and went for it.
Both highwaymen had Point Blank, so they went up front. The grave digger went third, for dagger throwing.
The jester had exactly one useful ability, the battle buff song. Whatever it's called. Buffs the whole party for, I want to say acc and crit.

I packed them off with a little extra food, since they had no healer, and crossed my fingers.
Well, the RNG was kind to me. The highwaymen were just mowing down their targets. Point Blank is sick, especially with the Jester buff.
Everyone in the party acquitted themselves pretty well. I did use all of the food. And everyone had a sliver of health left at the end of the mission. But also a sliver of stress.

It just goes to show, you can get good from the RNG. And an unconventional party can finish a mission.

Thanks.

Wasn't any of those; generally ran very few trinkets, except for ones that gave no ill-effects (generally because the negatives wouldn't apply due to the party either being a Light party, or a Dark party). I was also generally able to keep negative quirks to a minimum and almost always non-relevant (either they were non-combat/stress quirks or applied to dungeons that character didn't run). Finally, I was very concious of focus firing certain monsters (i.e., those that did big/multiple attacks, stress or health, died first, pulled/pushed as I could, etc., etc.). I even properly took advantage of the various curious by using cheat sheets.

My problem with the game wasn't that it was hard mechanically or that I didn't "get it". I just had shitty, shitty luck. As much as I enjoyed the game's intent and atmosphere I couldn't keep playing a game so based on luck when my luck was so very bad. From my first run to my last I had bad luck every run except one (and that one good luck run was incredibly easy the game was boring because my characters weren't even struggling against bosses due to how often they crit and dodged). That kind of variance from run to run based solely on luck is something I don't like in a game, so I eventually just put it down and haven't gone back.

Yeah, a string of crits from just about any enemy can completely destroy a run no matter how well prepared you are.

Well my resolve crumbled and I'm on day one with this game. My first healer became Masochistic halfway through a dungeon and refused to heal anybody anymore ("Pain makes you stronger!!").

Then she died.

No new healer has showed up yet.

I'm about to do a dungeon run with a Jester instead. At least he'll keep us entertained while we die.

I usually skip the healer. Only need one for boss runs.

This is still in Early Access, but just got a QOL update (http://steamcommunity.com/games/262060/announcements/detail/208631543179529644) yesterday.
- Color variations. Purely cosmetic. Each hero gets four color palettes; you can change them at will.
- Roster sorting. Sort by stress, resolve level, class, or activity.
(they need to add something like this, or some kind of tabbing UI, for trinkets)
- Speaking of trinkets, they did a balancing pass at the trinkets. The idea is to make more of them seem worthwhile.
- Party combo names. If you put the right combination of characters together, you will reveal the combo name. (I didn't discover any while I was playing last night.)

I loved party combos in Marvel Ultimate Alliance.

We need another one in that series (gamepad arcadey vs the Diablo-y kb/m of Heroes).

Just picked it up - it's actually good fun, frustrating at times without being obnoxiously punishing...

Well, except for that first boss I came across who wiped my party - that pretty much makes me have to restart I think.

A new (Early Access) content patch (and a handful of hotfixes) went live yesterday.
Patch notes here. (http://steamcommunity.com/games/262060/announcements/detail/209761440192663452)
Two new character classes.
Three new dungeon bosses.
QOL improvements in the UI.
Various balancing changes.

I started up a new campaign last night, and played a few missions. It seemed as if the early game has gotten tougher, in terms of how many of my toons ended up highly stressed, dead, and/or afflicted. That might be just the RNG talking though  :grin:

I will not get attached, I will not get attached, I will not ge........ Nooooooooooooo not Faceby.   :cry:

I'm going to buy this during the summer sale.

Yeah I can't wait to get it on sale right around when they finally finish releasing the game, if that is what early access gets us from here on out I'm thrilled with it. They are still missing 3 character classes, which is kind of a big deal.

Got this on steam sale, the brutal RNG is not bothering me as much as I thought it would. Last night, I had a dude go nuts, go to 0 hp and become an stoppable killing machine who refused to die. Very memorable moment.

This is a good and fun game. The two new classes are ridiculously good. The Man At Arms is particularly amazing.

Wow, I backed this via Kickstarter but wanted to wait for it to be ready before I play. Then after some particularily bad Xcom Ironman mission I caved yesterday. And man does it scratch the same itch.

This game is so much fun, but the RNG is really relentless.

Wiped the floor with the Necromancer with a Leper, Crusader, Grave Robber and Vestal.

A few runs later I try to tackle the prophet with a replacement Helion instead of the Crusader (who was in the insane asylum at the moment) and arrived at the Prophet with full health and minimal stress and get a total party kill. At least the Leper held out for 15 rounds before he went down as well.  :awesome_for_real:

A new update came out yesterday. (http://steamcommunity.com/games/262060/announcements/detail/60027529888973703) The game is still in Early Access.

The Cove dungeon was added.
A number of other changes have also been made.

I didn't get much time last night, but I do plan on playing this quite a bit.

I like this game, but having to continually relevel after the inevitable party wipes is grinding.

Without that mechanic the game would be done in a few hours, though.

At least if you have a total party wipe yon can grind them together up to the top. One person dying is worse. If all but one slot is filled with high level characters you have to kill some of them off to make place...

Sadly, that's how I got really bored with this game :( Love the artwork and atmosphere but the grindy feeling can't be shaken.

One of the changes they made was to reduce the xp required to level up, once you're level 3 or above.

I got to a Cove mission last night. It's fishmen and bloated corpses and flying jellyfish. And brigand packs, and cultists.

After a room battle, I found a "chest" that was a giant clam. Fearfully, I tried a blight potion on it, but it had no effect.
Then I tried a shovel, and it "kept the shell from snapping shut." So I have a feeling this thing will injure your toon if you just bare-hand it.

Release Date Announced: Jan 19, 2016 (http://www.darkestdungeon.com/darkest-dungeon-full-release-date-january-19-2016/)

 :drill:

I'm wildly addicted to this right now.

The Cove seems ridiculously nasty for some reason. Like on level 5 runs with my shitkicker A-team who are maxxed out and have great accessories  the regular fishfolk guys just do obscene amounts of damage and seem to literally never miss.

A friend gave me this as an early Xmas present, so I guess I'm going to start playing it soonish. Any tips for a noob? He also insisted I use the Community Remix mod, whatever that's all about.

Early on, you're going to be tempted to spend a lot of money de-stressing and curing your wee heroes.
This is one of the ways that the game stresses out you (the player). Before you know it, you're too broke to buy provisions for your next excursion.

Don't get attached to your lowbies. They are replaceable. They are especially replaceable if you haven't spent any money on them yet.

You may also want to wait until sometime in January when the game actually comes out of early access and is released.

Not that the game is not fun in the state it's in, but I had to make myself quit months ago when I realized I'd be totally burned out by release...

Today is the day! Darkest Dungeon leaves Early Access.

Patch notes. (http://steamcommunity.com/app/262060/discussions/0/458606248640648707/)

"Like me, you are now a part of this place."

How's the balancing, I've heard rumors they fucked it up trying to please veteran players.

Ahh, vetern players. The constituency no-one should listen to ever.

Anyway off to buy!!!  :grin:

It is certainly a different game now than back in April or May when I first picked it up.
But to be honest I haven't played it much at all lately; I've been putting it off until now.
Or more precisely, tonight after work.

It's Darkest Dungeon, so I expect that today's update will be followed up by a flurry of hot fixes.
And then probably more content and other tweaks down the road.

I have found in playing in the last month that it's gotten a bit easier? Or so it seems? In a welcome way--I have felt less fucked by the RNG without losing the sense that the expedition is always one encounter away from unexpected disaster.

Very nice note from the devs on the Steam Store page concerning the road to release. I was amused by the fact that they likened the dev process to the process of playing the game. RNG can be brutal in real life too.

I hope they change it so you don't have darkest dungeon as default. When I first started the game I ended up going to the darkest dungeon week 2 and 3, which resulted in 7 dead adventurers.

I'm something like 12 game-weeks in, having never played prior to official release, and it's certainly not a game I would describe as "brutal" so far. Granted, I'm still grinding apprentice-level missions because I can tell the ass-kicking is going to ramp up, but to date I've only lost three party members, and each of those was while I was doing something that could reasonably be described as "pretty stupid". Not quite the merciless death spiral I was led to expect.

I will be starting to play this tonight on my Surface book. Hope it likes my fingers doing all the work (that's what she said).

You get the first set of bosses basically for free. But once you get to L3 missions things stop fucking around.

Yeah I agree it can be rough, especially the RNG with crits and misses.  I've been doing the intermediate level stuff and I had a giant looking guy with a tree branch club crit my tankiest guy from full to zero in 1 hit.  Then he died the very next turn before I even got a move in.  It was pretty brutal.   

I'm killing bosses and making progress but it's slow.  I'm starting to put more effort into looking at people quirks as I get further.  In the beginning I just kind of ignored that stuff.  If you do that and for example a guy starts stacking -ACC quirks, things can get really bad.

Same with trinkets, in the beginning I thought most of them were trash (and I still think there are some real bad ones) but now I've found using some like +ACC and receives +% healing really help.

I still haven't totally figured out how to manage stress on long runs.  I try to put a priority on killing enemies that do AOE stress damage.  Also I've found that camping right before the bar fills the first time seems to work out better than if I wait until a couple guys are already into the second fill stage.

Basically the following things will totally take a shit on your runs:

1. Running into a Collector without a good group makeup for it.
2. Running into a shambler without a good group makeup for it (or being a retard and using a torch on a shambler altar without being prepared).
3. Specific enemies scoring a solid critical on any character (treetrunk guy, swine lancer, etc)
4. Several consecutive runins with the obnoxious +stress enemies (swamp hags, cultist witches, vomit pig things, those goddamn goblet skeletons).

Generally everything else is because you didn't pick a good group/skill makeup. With a group optimized for the area you should usually mop up most encounters without too much trouble.

Let me know how that goes ;  this was my plan for train journey to Aberdeen today, but God took a dump on my plans.  I'd be interested in how playable it is on the Surface.

In the doc it should be fine. Crashlands and Hex are perfect, I just keep forgetting to take the laptop upstairs and the hell if I'm coming back down after I'm in bed.

Both Hex and Darkest Dungeon were amazing on the book @ 3000x2000.

I've played about a bit with this game and I really like it so far.  It's a lot more complex than it first appears, eh ?  My party were gibbering wrecks that ended up being only a danger to themselves about five minutes in.

Awesome.  With all the depression and murder and psychosis it's like Glasgow Simulator 3000.

Annnnd, now I've found out about Camping.  Better tutorialz plz.

It plays great on my ancient ass mac I think surface would run it fine as would just about anything  from the last decade.

It is pretty grim that one of the best strategies early on is just don't bother trying to heal or maintain sanity of your party. Just work to improve your wagon to at least get four new hapless victims after each quest and just grind them to gibbering nothingness until you max out your wagon and other stuff and then have a lot of money stockpiled.

Christ, two of my level 4 chaps ground into the dirt by a goddamn pig.

Can't stop playing this game.   :heart:

Cleared all bosses for lvl 1 & 3 without losing a character. Its definitely harder at level 5, stress becomes a bigger factor, part is that fights take longer due to higher health and more resistance, all those crits takes its toll. Did a stupid thing and entered the darkest dungeon when i had 4 characters at level 6 but without the top weapon and armor available and lost two characters because of it. Worst is losing some of that gear.

This game is great.  Working my way through the second tier bosses now.  Lost one dude to an early Shambler fight and one to the Hags cookpot.  Glad to hear stress becomes an issue later because so far it's a non-factor.  I think I've used the stress reduce buildings about twice.

All the classes seem useful at various points except for the Man-at-Arms, who I can't find a use for.  I lean on Helions and Houndmasters the most.

The key so far seems to be in proper trinket stacking and knowing just how much you can stall trash fights while nudging your stress down and your health up.

Avoid using the riposte attack that the Man At Arms has during that fight because Wilbur will almost assuredly kill himself constantly marking your Man At Arms, which in turn will cause the giant pig monster to flip out and annihilate your whole party.

Oh, I got him. They just also died.

I have about 6 level 3 dudes who are decent, but leveling up additional heroes to add some flexibility to my A and B teams seems to be a bit of a grind. Don't suppose there's a shortcut other than "run some lowbie dungeons, n00b"?


e: also I seem to be getting missions for lowbie bosses (new ones), but my level 3 adventurers are all "this is beneath me" and shit. Guess it's time to level up a C team as well...

I started to feel the grind around the time i had a few lvl 3 and 4 guys. My suggestion is to start focusing on killing bosses in the lvl 1 and lvl 3 areas. I would also suggest you try out all sorts of constellations, particularly against bosses since the dynamics of those fights are very different from the regular dungeon mobs.

So, one of the Steam achievements is to get Reynald and Dismas to the Darkest Dungeon. So I've still got both of them on my roster.

Today, I did a level 1 medium Weald crawl, and found a Secret Room. The chest yielded up two massively valuable gems (2500 each) and a rare trinket called Dismas' Head.
I found this particularly amusing because Dismas was in that party.  :ye_gods:

I dunno. I killed the Necromancer and suddenly it became clear that I ned different parties for each area... and somehow that and the fact that I lost some of my best heros made me stop playing.

I don't know why, I was enjoying it bit the fact I had to specialize just killed it for me. I guess I liked the fact that I could pick from my roster of "ok who has the least stress"

Hrm...

You can generally complete an area with almost any team makeup; it's just that you'll need different skills unlocked and might have to shuffle them around to build an effective team.

Like everything in the warrens is resistant to blight but a Plague Doctor can still be useful in there if you just give them different skills and use them differently (i.e. buffing/healing/curing, using their bleed melee/shuffle/stuns instead of blight attacks).

Like most games of type ;  there are ways to have an 'optimum' party but I've found that almost all of them are fun.

It makes some sense to have different zone parties, if only because you get zone specific quirks.  But I still wouldn't.

This game is the most fun wee waste of time I've played in ages.

I'd add that you want at least one party member who has a "nuke all corpses" ability in addition to the common sense stuff (have someone with spot healing, some people with stuns, etc). Not having one screwed me up really badly when

RE: Bosses

Level 5 dungeons completely changed the dynamics of the game. Its harder to surprise them, you can't nuke them down at first round and many mobs will act first. Stress will build up, and some mobs had regular hits for 40 damage. I lost two more high level characters, due to a bloody stupid gamble, so down to 20 lvl 5+ characters now, worst is losing gear.

Problem is that all the grinding involved is getting to me, its hard to ignore how repetitive the game is and I really could use a totally different game now. I won't level up more characters that's for sure.

One thing I dislike even in easier dungeons is that on a surprise (when my party surprises monsters) I feel sometimes as if surviving monsters get two rounds of responding attacks afterwards before I get to go again? Meaning a surprise becomes actually rather anxious if I don't manage to take down one or more of the mobs with focus fire.

No biggie, but could we spoiler specific boss tactics? I'm actually trying to figure them out on my own this time (not that it's that hard at the lower levels, but you get my drift).

As for the "sudden loss of favorite party" syndrome, it's going to happen, but one way to mitigate it is to develop a sense of when to bail, and don't hesitate to do so. Sure, stress damage, but better than total wipe.

As for the grind thing, *shrug.* I guess we're back to the old "do you like the basic gameplay, or don't you" argument. I still enjoy running newbs through the lower dungeons, experimenting at low risk with different combos and strategies, so, no grind here for me yet.

Finding this to be very true.  Lost my two strongest heroes and their trinkets during my first medium length level 5 run.  I'm at the point where I have to risk fresh level 5 heroes, who don't have near enough upgrades, or dismiss people to make roster room in order to field a low-level grind team.  Not sure if I file this under my being dumb or just plain bullshit.  If I'd struggled more early on my town would have been more developed at this point.

What I want is a way to toggle hero exp off so I can spend more time in tier three.  Might break the game though.  Larger roster might help.

That's about where I'm at. I'm pretty sure the most efficient way to make progress for me is to just start kicking people to the curb as soon as they hit level three, pillaging the shit out of the low level dungeons so that I can afford to pamper the one party I actually level. I don't think it would break anything to make promotion an active thing - lock a hero at 2 until you click "promote to veteran" so that it's your fault when they get cocky. As-is, you have perfectly competent adventurers who one day arbitrarily decide that any dungeon where they don't instantly get their teeth kicked in is too easy.

It's frustrating because the actual dungeon-delving part of the game is so goddamn fun, but I feel like most of my *effort* goes into metagaming the town stuff.

Part of the game is roster management, though.

For those of you who (like myself) haven't reached the Darkest Dungeon yet, you should be aware that each toon can only go in one time. After that they get a "Never again" debuff.
(I don't know if they have to finish a quest to get the debuff, or if merely setting foot inside will do it.)

What this means is that you're going to have to raise more than four heroes to max level, if it is your intent to "finish" the game. Because I'm pretty sure the Darkest Dungeon won't be solved by a single party.

Just FYI.

Oh.  That's rather neat.

Unless you are willing to routinely ditch or kill off low level heroes, I'd argue roster management is the most difficult and non-obvious part of the game.

The dungeon gating and number of tier two bosses pretty much force you into having a broad roster anyway.  You aren't going to beat them without decently upgraded and levelled heroes.  The XP you get for winning means, at most, a hero will see three boss kills before she's tier three which makes her dead-weight until you unlock the top tier blacksmith and/or guild upgrades.

Haven't killed any top level bosses yet but I think I'm at the point where I can grind red dungeons and kit my people out properly. (Selling trinkets to the rescue!)

In hindsight I think the best way to mitigate things is to maximize, deeds, gold, and crests when bringing stuff back from missions.  With such a wide roster you can basically ignore the stress buildings completely.

I hear there is a NG+.  Might try it out after X-Com 2 and the new Fire Emblem.  Man this is a great time for games like this.

You have to finish the quest to get the debuff. Every character that gets the debuff no longer counts against your max roster size.


Right now I got 18 resolve 6 characters but pretty much all of them lack max upgraded weapon armor and skills. Can beat small dungeons fairly easily, will head to medium length dungeons now. A problem is that so many of my heroes have +stress disabilities and so much great gear has +stress on them, its definitely biting me in the arse now.

So what classes are you all finding to be useless? I'm not big on the Jester or Man-at-Arms, and find the Hound Master a bit superfluous. I'm also not big on the Plague Doctor or Bounty Hunter.

Plague Doctor is amazing, especially with +blight items. I have a comp that runs two of them along with a Bounty Hunter (for stunning and punting people into Plague Bomb range) and a Crusader (for stuns and heals). It's probably not as effective as something with a real healer but it sure is satisfying melting the shit out of all those annoying high-stress back row enemies.

Hound Master and Abomination top my "I have no idea what this is supposed to be good for" list, with Arbalest and Jester right behind. I'm also pretty meh about most frontline classes - Hellion outclasses them all in terms of versatility and has a fantastic stun to boot.

Abomination, jester, occultist and grave digger are the characters I haven't explored enough, my first experience of abomination was a disaster and the others I overlooked because I went for a heavy stun approach.

I loved hellion at start, then stopped loving him and now I like him again. Plague doctor went from favorite character to somewhat annoying to use at lvl 5 due to resistances, no more ez-mode stunlocking of enemy party and lacking the burst. I like leper a lot more than I did before because of that raw damage. Man-at-arms is handy, but lacks that real oomph. Hound master depends a bit too much on bleed instead of raw damage, what I originally liked about him was the stun but bounty hunter has a better stun. Vestal always been one of my favorites, the heals, stun and +torch attack.

If you aren't fond of man-at-arms I will assume you never used his camp skills of +10% damage, +10% dodge and 3-8% crit, highwaymen and hound masters 20% surprise chance improvement, it changes some boss fights completely. Leper's and hound masters self-heal can be handy. Gear also changes some characters. Then there is the marking party which is circumstantial.

I always tried to keep all classes in rotation, one healer (Vestral, Occultist), and three of whoever else is available depending the dungeon. I just can't get warm with the Abomination, but the Hound Master and especially Jester are a godsend in dungeons where bleed works (different bleeds stack and refresh each others running times). The Arlabest is a serious damage dealer for enemies that hide in the back.

I have an abom in my B team, and he's pretty amazing. I keep him in position 2 and human form for most fights, and either use the single target stun attack, or the double blight barf attack (it's just like the PD's grenade, but hits 2-3 instead of 3-4, and seems to be a bit weaker overall). The self heal is really good and also keeps his stress close to 0 for most of the fight. Then, in tough boss battles, I have him hulk out and spam the crap out of Rake for crazy damage against positions 1-2, shifting back to human form if I need a stun.

Houndmasters are a bit of a wildcard. Guard dog (protect on someone, +15% dodge on houndmaster) is pretty good against enemies that attack mainly one rank, and the self heal / group stress heal are cool. I also use my houndmaster to mark targets for my arbalest and bounty hunter so they can use their turns for attacking. The basic hound attack is also fairly decent against beasts.

fwiw, one of the top compositions at high levels seems to be houndmaster-houndmaster-abom-abom. Two aboms just wreck face up front, houndmasters keep stress low, and everyone can heal themselves when needed. This strat probably needs some +tohit trinkets (and maybe the -25% stress abom-specific trinket), though.

Interesting Fight with the Pirate Boss Last night :


Also had a bit of fun with the Necromancer, but just because he was actually quite easy and my Bounty Hunter just kept hooking him around the dance floor.  It's starting to get to the 'All of your 25 guys are smashing, so you don't want to lose any' stage of the game, which I must resist.  The thought of locking in some good buffs and then losing chaps makes me wince.

(Also, Corals removing your debuffs is utterly broken.  Take enough medicine in there and you can have heroes with 5 positives and no negatives.  Wow.)

Also, I like all the classes, but I'd probably put Jester and Arbalest in my 'Nah' camp.  They're too meh for me.  I also like the Abomination, but tend not to use him because why not just take a Crusader, Leper or MAA ?

The Leper in particular I really quite like.  Two smashy skills and a normal heal and a stress heal.  What can go wrong ?  (Oh yeah, he could get pushed to the back and then you're FUCKED).

That is fantastic.

According to today's patch notes (http://steamcommunity.com/games/262060/announcements/detail/719816400450505714), they are nerfing the xp requirements for levels 4-6, among other things.

Arbalest seems awfully useful for back end enemies, yeah. Sort of the leper of the back row.

Abomination seems very hard to use.

I find Jesters hard to work into many party makeups.

Arbalest has a single-target heal, so once she's out of snipe targets she's still helpful.

I found the bolster ability of the Man at Arms to be pretty fantastic.

I think I am going to have to spend gold on my low level guys to upgrade their weapons and armour before they head into their first quest.. Either they come back from a quest gibbering insane (which means they are out for a while) or with big negatives from almost dying. Hrm...

Level 0 fresh-off-the-stagecoach dudes sent on no-torch grind runs don't get upgrades. If they survive a few runs and get to level 2 without maxing out stress or getting any bad quirks... they may be worthy of joining the C Team and thus eligible for upgrades. If they don't, well... hey look at that, another set of 4 bright-eyed newbies just arrived!

As you can see, I'm a very benevolent taskmaster. :why_so_serious:

I always found it quite funny that the behaviour of the player starts to mirror the callousness of the Ancestor in that regard. The apple does indeed not fall far from the tree.  :grin:

"Battered. Broken. Cast aside like a spent torch."

12 Levels of hero chopped into hamburger.  Fuck that Prophet.

I feel like the amount of time added to the run from watching everyone go insane and die, plus the inefficiency of having to work with whatever comes off the stagecoach rather than putting a real comp together, isn't worth saving 600-1000 gold on torches. Especially if you're going to spend that amount de-stressing whomever you do end up promoting.

I waste a ton of gold overprovisioning every embarcation with food and torches from level 0 onwards, but my tavern and abbey costs are near-zero and my low-level runs are quick and easy, so I figure it's a wash.

Well, it's not just saving money on the torches themselves, it's getting 6-9k gold + quite a few heirlooms in a short dungeon run due to increased loot at 0 light. Interestingly, the noob groups almost always make it to the end... heck, most of the time nobody dies or even gets massively stressed. I think I had one instance where I had to make the judgment call to retreat before exploring the necessary # of rooms. I even have a level 2 abomination+houndmaster combo that made it through several such runs and are still at like 10 stress, plus they haven't accrued any significant negative quirks... they have ascended to the C Team aka. "the level 2 dudes that kill all these leftover lowbie bosses". Abomination stress heal too stronk!

Note that no-torch 0 light runs are only for those heroes that come with terrible quirks right off the stagecoach. If I get something like Eldritch Hater + Warrior of Light on a noob with an inconsequential negative quirk (like "can't use the gambling house" or "crap performance in the dark"), they may get preferred treatment and go together with other non-terrible heroes on high-light short/medium runs for xp and loot farming. But there's no way I'm blowing like 4k gold on some random level 0 to drop Kleptomania and Curiosity (yes, it does kill the cat... often).

e: btw, I agree that gameplay in general can feel a bit... ponderous. I've seen some dudes use a speedhack to run the game at 3x-5x speed, which may help especially if you're doing grind runs like this.

Ooh you get increased loot at 0 light. Mucho interesting...

One thing I dod notice about the AboMination is that it gets all its skills at the start so you don't have to train it at the guild hall. Noice.

Except that's offset by him driving his teammates up the fucking wall and simply not grouping with others.

Also, I didn't know about the loot thing dark thing till 2 days ago and now I can't break my habit of lighting torches.

It explains why I'm flat broke tho.

Two level 5 bosses down, necromancer lord was a pushover like usual, swine god got tight because I screwed up my preparations and setup, my crusader ended up dead with an achievement.....damn you wilbur

Meh, just took on my second boss, the Sonorous prophet, and it was a total wipe. I hate/love this game :S

And its a nice boost to healing as a buff for her target so if somebody is in emergancy need of a lot of health recovery she is good to keep them alive for a round until the healer can drop a big healing bomb on them.

I had my first Collector fight today. I've never seen this critter before, nor have I seen any videos or descriptions, so this is the first boss or mini-boss I've fought without spoilers.

As it happened, he turned up in the Weald, as I was on my way to take out the Hag (level 1).

It's week 17 of my current playthrough. My party consisted of Reynald (crusader), a Hellion, a Bounty Hunter, and a Vestal.
Not to spoil the Collector for anyone else, but it turns out that a party that's geared and equipped for the Hag can deal with this guy well enough.

All regular bosses at level 5 down. For the bosses at level 1 and 3 I played them blind, and it still worked, probably because I had such a good setup and were maxed for that level. I fought some of the level 5 bosses without maxing skills although the late ones I went with specialized setups. I only lost one hero in 24 boss fights,well 25 because I fled once, although I gambled like crazy on hag.

In most cases I bring a vestal with +heal trinkets, with a plague doctor on the side. In some cases arbalest and occultist works too, jester will be invaluable when stress damage gets crazy. Front row depends on where I go, I really like going with a leper though, hits hard and great self-heal.

My madness has finally come to an end. I really liked the boss fights and the long dungeons at max resolve, wasn't as happy about the darkest dungeon itself. The whole design with losing a hero if you abandon the quest stops people from experimenting their way forward. It also felt like there were bit too much grinding money to fully upgrade your hero.

Worst thing that happened was when I had worked on leveling up a jester, was done with the area at level 4, went up against the shambler and I had completely wrong characters to do the fight, everyone got stressed out, the spawn got really powerful and managed to kill my jester before the fight was over. Getting an ancestor's trinket for the effort was totally not worth it.

Loved the game though.

Wait, you lose a hero if you abandon a quest? Since when? Or is that only in the Darkest Dungeon?

Only in the darkest dungeon.

Thats a bit extreme  :uhrr:

It's the Darkest Dungeon dude.

In the Darkest Dungeon, nobody can hear you grind up yet another character from level 0 to level 6?  :why_so_serious:

I ran a level 0 group into the darkest dungeun last night for the giggles. I is cruel...

There's an achievement for that  :grin:

I had three characters in a row get the stress test and come out with Virtues.

It was awesome.

Do you have the lottery in Scotland?

This one is vestigal and useless cut him out.

I know.  I didn't get a chance to test it with the leper because one of the chaps got that cool virtue that removes stress on the others, so he didn't get stressed.

Oddest dungeon I'd been in yet, but really cool.

Pro Tip: In the Warrens (the Pig dungeon), if you find a pile of scrolls in the hallway, you can use it to remove a negative quirk.

Pick a toon that's got a quirk you want removed, and have them use a torch on the scrolls.
The quirk will be chosen at random, so if your toon has multiple negatives, you might not get rid of the worst one.
But it's still removed, and at the cost of a torch.

No, the protip is to take lots of ant-disease goo into The Cove and apply it to all the Coral.  It does the same thing and there's more of it.

A pro-tip would be to remove certain negative quirks before they get locked while keeping others. Remove anything that increases stress taken like zoophobia, reduces resistance, or the most annoying forced interactions like curious, kleptomania, compulsive and hylomania. Keep stuff that have little impact on your adventuring, the less annoying forced interactions, camp healing or the sort. My favorite is the bad gambler that isn't allow to gamble.

I personally hated warrens because of swine wretch that acts before you and have a chance to apply diseases. Every trip to warrens resulted in 2-3 characters suffering from diseases.

Coral gets rid of the 'locked in' ones though.

Then he gets shot in the eye.

Ok I don't play a lot of single player games but this on has me buy the nut sack. I just ran a suicide no torch no food and got quest complete with no deaths. Lotta stress but lotta loot for the town. Gold I'm a bit abut not a lot. I'm just amassed I could pull this off. But I know the rng will make sure I can't do it repeatably.

Oddly the RNG does not bother me as much in this game, not like it did in say Bloodbowl. Probably becasue while it can fuck you over it does actually use a bit of lube and buys you dinner first.

Ok this new class ( i,m not even gonna try to spell it) gives a lot more gold per run. So I restarted and of course I don't have one yet. But but if I expand the stage coach I'll get one in time. I donno i'ts a tough game, and thats kinda of the draw. I'ts a really tough game.

Having to do a healer lees run, or having 2 healers and losing a toon. Do you deal with there stress? Or put them on the road? It's such a simple game but there isn't a right way to play it. It is really fun and the more you try the more fun it gets.

Ok, this is what I'm comming to here. And you might wipe. or loose a toon. I mean It's a hard game but is it a fun game? I mean you might win or you might lose but it doesn't have anything to do with what your doing,

The fuck is this post?

Have you read the two before that?

It reads better as poetry:

Ok, this is what I'm comming to here.
And you might wipe. or loose a toon.
I mean It's a hard game
 but is it a fun game?
I mean you might win
 or you might lose
but it doesn't have anything to do with
what your doing,


This is a pretty apt description of the human condition.

 :Love_Letters:

Wasn't that from Jagged Little Pill?

I would think so.

Fantastic.  You're on track with your goals for the year.

Town Events were added this week.

I guess that each in-game week, there's a chance that one of these events will take place.
I haven't done any research, so I am rolling with them as they occur.

So far, I've had these events:
- Stress-healing bonus for idle toons
- Bonus recruitment of 2 Crusaders
- No Event

So I have to say I keep coming back to this. I dunno it's a hard game. But you might could win it.

I very recently did "beat" this game.  What I found very interesting in this game was that a lot of it was counter intuitive.  For instance trying to go through that game in "light" runs is just insanely difficult.  Doing "dark" runs actually made the game significantly easier.  From their it was a simple min max with the trinkets to figure out what you needed to do for your party.

This is half price on Steam right now. Finally caved and bought it. Wow does it suck time. Having a blast getting abused by the RNG.

PSA:
The Crimson Court DLC is now available on Steam.
I haven't tried the DLC yet, but Steam has put the base game on sale for $9.99 through June 22. (http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/Darkest_Dungeon/)
They've also got a bundle that includes DD, the DLC, and the soundtrack for ~$21, which is less than the full price of DD alone, if that interests you.
So if you've not played DD yet, now's about as good a time to get it as ever.

This expansion is getting wrecked by people, apparently its awful.

Is it the spergy "It's too easy" type, or the "this shit doesn't work" type?

I'd heard there was a disease you can't get rid of spread by a very common monster.  Not spoiling it here.  But apparently that alone sux baws.

Is it vampirism?

I got this and played a whole bunch yesterday. But by golly is it repetitive.

Well yeah, at its core, this is a clicker mobile game without the microtransactions. What sets it apart is the mood-setting and the narration.

They made a gameplay mode (Radiant) that cuts away half of the grind... if anything, I'd say that mode does too little.

 :awesome_for_real: :why_so_serious: :awesome_for_real:

 :Love_Letters:

Ok, so after like, 20+ hours with this I've just discovered:

A) You can interact with curios by using items. Did I miss a tutorial on this at some point? I've been buying those things and never using them, and now I find out I could have been using them to actually get good results from curious most of the time?
B) You use the shovel by clicking on the shovel when you hit the obstacle, not the hand. The shovel highlighted doesn't mean you necessarily use it, you have to click it..
C) Skeleton keys have nothing to do with secret rooms.
D) You can learn new camping skills as some small tent hidden away on the left of screen.

Probably a few more other things beside.

How much more obvious UI stuff am I missing?

Despite this, the game is fun, and to date somewhat easy. I'm probably played it very conservative, though, I'm like 50 weeks in and only run 1 level 5 dungeon or so, and have a roster of 28 level 3/4/5 heroes with maxed armor and skills and a few locked in good traits.

I assume shit gets real in the DD, and everything prior to that is jut a warmup?

There is a bunch of stuff in the game that doesn't make sense still, despite how long the game has been out. Stress relief areas (tavern, etc) are mostly a waste of time, and certainly a waste of time upgrading. A third of the classes are crap, or poor. Another third might be, but I dunno, because they never rocked up to be recruited.

I've mostly been running groups with Vestal, Jesters and Lepers. I have tried not to spoil much but I take it from some internet rumblings that they're not considered good. I guess this is because the DD needs more debufs than they provide? Because they stomp the other dungeons and come out with less stress than they went in...

1. Most of the curios have various effects when touched or have items used on them. You might want to look some up because there's a couple that have bad effects when you use items on them, or have no positive effects when you use them without any items. Some are pretty logical- you can use shovels to hold open the clams in the cove for example to guarantee loot.

2. Keys do have a use regarding secret rooms. Sometimes there's a secret room hidden in the path between two rooms. If you have a key you can open the chest in the hidden room which will have some huge money drops.

3. The game will kick the shit out of you under these circumstances:
-You pick a group makeup that doesn't suit the area you're going to
-You run into one of the really shitty monster packs in each area (some just synergize in really fucking obnoxious ways)
-You get rolled by a Shambler, The Zealot, or the Collector at a bad time
-Just some really super bad rolls, like say the fungal giants in the Weald critting one of your squishies.

4. The Darkest Dungeon is indeed pretty fucking brutal and anyone you take into it will refuse to go back in unless you turn the rule off from the game settings. People who go into the DD don't count against your roster space however.

As for UI stuff, there's a button on the right side of the screen next to the map- I can't recall if it shows up on the inventory tab or the map tab, but it resets your party to its original arrangement outside of combat. Useful after getting shuffled a lot. Holy Water provides a bunch of resistances for a handful of rounds if you use it on your party members instead of curios- there's a boss or two you can utterly break the gimmick of with this trick. In the hamlet you can also turn heirlooms into other heirlooms at a less efficient rate- like turn portraits into the busts, deeds into seals, etc.

I like Darkest Dungeon a lot but all three times I've run through the campaign I give up once I see the amount of grinding and fiddling involved with the final push through the three DD runs.

If you play even remotely well the stress buildings are useless until you're forced to chain level 5 runs.  Even then you only really need to open up second slots to deal with random stress quirk restrictions.

Every class has its use, which I think of as a real strength of the game.  If I'm picking favourites it's Hellion, Occultist, and Plague Doctor. On the flipside, Man at Arms seems like a really specialized class designed for a few specific fights and the Vestal only shines when you need the group heal to keep multiple heroes off death's door.  (Which should be rare).

This right here becomes more and more true has you approach end game and is the most important piece of advise.

I just came across this tidbit also: "You can change combat skills in between fights"

Seriously? Whoops. Tutorial is very bare bones.

Edit:

Finished the game, but really the fun stopped a fair while ago, it was just OCD pushing me to the end. Way too repetitive for such a long game.

Finally out for iPad. Which is where it should've been to begin with.

Yeah, pretty much.

I enjoyed it, I won't complain, but I felt no real motivation to do what was necessary to get to the end. It was a good experience--a great demonstration of what a smart sense of the aesthetic of a game can do for you.

Yeah, I gave up looong before the end. It just got way too repetitive, and the fact that you had to R&R your favorite team every time you used them was annoying.

Great game mechanics, but could have been made 2/3 shorter without hurting it at all.