Darkest Dungeon

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AlexMdle
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Darkest Dungeon

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"Ruin has come to our family."

































Darkest Dungeon is a game by the affectionally named Red Hook studios. Kickstarted and kept on early access for a year, it was finally released on 19th January, 2016 on steam and is still available there. The game sports the "Turn Based Combat", "Dark Fantasy", "RPG" and notably "Difficult" as it's genre tags, alongside "Roguelike" and "Lovecraftian" as other important descriptors.

What it is, from I can summarize, is a game more akin to X-Com than Dungeon Crawl. Where you assemble your dudes and send them to fight on difficult, fatiguing treks through hostile territory, where you have to strategize against the game in order to make sure that all the dudes you send out also come back alive.

Since it's also a game where you can rename your dudes and get attached to them, it's also perfect for another LP where I rename everyone as members of the UFF, which is the premise for this whole thing.

As for the premise of the game, well.

It's dark times. You receive a letter from your Ancestor. Enclosed is a deed to his estate and the outlying lands and a plea to accept it and return. It appears that in his pursuit of power and knowledge, the Ancestor has accidentally unleashed something really, really bad upon the world, and the estate is the epicenter of the evil. If you're wondering who this Ancestor is and what the nature of the threat your characters are gonna fight is, we will definitely discover more about it later.

Suffices to say, if you have watched the intro video, like you should have, the Ancestor is the guy narrating it. The one that commited suicide. This should set up the mood for what we're about to get into.

I will write the commentary for what's happening, as it's happening or shortly afterwards, with about one or two dungeons visited per update.
I will also explain the game mechanics as they appear and probably ramble at length about the enemies and the individual strategy of vairous situations.
I WILL also bitch about rng pretty much constantly, for if there is a consistent thing about this game, it's how inconsistent it is. Which at least, makes for exciting update material. Never a moment without suspense here.



Once we start the game and sit through another intro, we have immediate control over our first two characters.

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The game always starts out with these two, Dismas the Highwayman and Reynauld the Crusader in what is essentially a pretty hardcore tutorial for the game. Already, you can die and the death is permanent.

Before we continue though, let's cast the REAL names.

How I'm going to do it is as following: When we get more guys, you guys can call dibs on who you wanna pick and I'll give them your name. If we don't get volunteers, I'll probably pick from a pool of people who aren't calling dibs and once we run out of those it's game over or something. I'll call that a self-imposed challenge.

So with these two, I'll wait for dibs and then we'll proceed with the tutorial. See you guys then.
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Re: Darkest Dungeon

Post by TheMMM »

So can we get dibs right now?

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Re: Darkest Dungeon

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Yes. I actually have the game open and waiting for the last 6 hours.

If you don't wanna call dibs on a characters, you can suggest somebody.
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Re: Darkest Dungeon

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And so our first two heroes are named by the virtue of Dabir. I like the idea. May as well run with it. From now you can assign new characters whatever name you want. Just make it snappy enough for me.

Anyway, first in the spotlight, Sneaker Ballbag.

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Ballbag here is probably the closest the game's got to a mage. He's got the damage and doles it out generously. That said, roles in this game aren't all very clear cut. They are MOSTLY defined by what skills you got, which are displayed on the right here.

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At any given moment, a character can only rely on four out of possible seven combat skills. The ones you don't start with are locked and gotta be unlocked later and switched to. Thankfully, the switching part can be done anywhere outside of a battle, so you can always prepare accordingly.

The camping skills down there are irrelevant for now, but will be very important later.

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As for our Crusader, Saracen, he's a very straightforward kind of fighter with an edge against undead enemies. He's got more health, more damage than our Highwayman, but can't really deal with ranged enemies and is additionally slow as molasses, with 1 SPD against Ballbag's 7(Which is really damn high, Ballbag's likely to always be the first guy to attack in any given combat).

I won't really explain the whole interface now, but the last point of interest that I wanna intrigue you with are the Quirks.

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Quirks shape what kind of character you get and I think were also secretly made to drive your average munchkin player fucking insane. Every one of them provides some small alteration to your character's strengths and weaknesses. However, positive quirks can get overriden randomly by new positive quirks and negative quirks are costly to remove. As a result, most of the time you just roll with it and get this sort of flawed characters that have to rely on their good sides to outweight their negative sides.

For example, Saracen is a Kleptomaniac, a quirk that I will remove as soon as I can because it's fucking awful and I hate it, causing him to just randomly disintegrate loot (pilfer it for himself), but God-fearing probably gets to stay. And to balance it out he's a Warrior of Light, which is essentially a straight up 10% damage boost.

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Now that we're done with introductions, we'll get moving. As the line to the top left says, we gotta find our way to the Hamlet. The bottom right shows the map. The big square is a room, like the one we're in, the small squares draw a path between those.

Walking is as easy as holding A or D, or Left/Right and will move your entire party, which always faces right, regardless of what direction you go in.

Now, I zoom out the map and click on an adjacent room and...

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...we begin to move there. Every small square between two rooms represents a space you gotta pass and may contain things like combat, traps, loot and etc. They are, almost universally, four squares long.

We pass the first square with no problems, then enter the second one and OH FUCK

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We get our first enemy. A Brigand Cutthroat.

While I wanna say that it's just a basic mook, it's not really. These guys can actually really fuck you up if left unchecked.

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Ballbag is, predictably, the first to strike. You may notice that only two of his skills are available and there's a good reason for that.

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This is one of those neat things I dig about this combat system. It's got a cool spin on combat positioning.

In combat, you and enemies can only ever have a maximum party size of four people and where you put your guys determines what kind of skills they can use. The yellow points in the picture above show what row you have to stand in to be able to use it, while red dots show what enemy rows the ability can hit.

So in this case, in order to Open Vein, Ballbag's gotta be in the first three rows and the attack can only hit the enemies in the first and second enemy rows.

His second skill, Pistol Shot, can't be used because it can't hit an enemy in the first enemy row.

The two other skills are Grapeshot Blast, which is oftentimes a relatively useless Area of Effect attack and Tracking Shot, which buffs him and may come in handy if we encounter a prolonged fight - we can't use this one at the moment because it can only hit an enemy who is standing in the back three rows.

We'll go with Open Vein.

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It hits for massive damage, maximum even I think. Ballsack pretty much wipes out two third of the brigand's hp bar in one strike here, which is pretty impressive and if you caught the tooltip, it can also inflict bleed, which it did for 2 more damage.

The brigand went next, sadly I couldn't catch it's attack, but it dealt roughly 5 damage each.

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And the last, Saracen is basically stuck with the mop-up job. Or is he..?

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Being a savvy player I opted to use one of his buff moves instead, one that replenishes torchlight (We'll get to that), because the brigand was still bleedin'. The bleed was for 2 more damage and the brigand only had 2 health left. He was a dead man walking.

As soon as his turn came up, he bled out. And with that, we got our first victory.

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Winning a fight has a good chance to net you some loot, though almost never this high, holy shit. I think it must be a tutorial thing. The inventory space to the right is limited. It may not look like it yet, but deciding what you wanna keep is going to become a big underlying issue for the whole game.

For now we just stash the cool grand and move on.

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The third square is uneventful, fourth one though, contains a tent. There is a number of interactable objects like that in the game. You can investigate them at your own risk, as they can be good, bad, or really fucking bad. Similar to FTL, some also net purely positive effects if you have some kind of matching item to use on them.

Let's check this one out I guess.

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Ah, sweet. The black shiny stuff are Onyx jewels, worth 500 gold a piece, so we come out of this with a cool 600 gold profit. That may sound good, but in general, I'm gonna avoid most interactable objects unless I have a good reason to use them, because honestly, the negative effects can easily overpower the positive ones. On we go and enter the next room.

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Rooms can have exactly two things inside. Nothing. Or something and combat.

In this case, it's combat and a chestful of bounty. On the right side we got a Brigand Fusilier manning the back row, protected by a Brigand Bloodletter. By the size of his hp bar you can guess that he's gonna be somewhat of a pain. That's what some enemies are gonna be like: BIG. With huge healthpools and occupying two rows at once.

This can be a curse and kind of a blessing. With a max party size of four, big enemies basically represent the power level of two normal enemies and there's never ever more than one of them in a single fight.

This here is kind of a tough battle to be honest, though we have struck some goodwill from RNGesus it seems:

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We got 'em by surprise.

This can happen sometimes and is very, very good. It basically sets enemy speed to 0 for the turn, so we can act first.

The trade-off is that the same thing can actually very much happen to you. It has a different effect, but one that is nonetheless devastating and leads to much fun.

Anyway, I decide to test Ballbag's hitting spree and focus on the fusilier first. Open Vein can't reach him, since he's hiding behind the bloodletter, so we go with a Pistol Shot. It hits for 6 damage, which is modest. We can finish him next turn.

Now, I don't really want bloodletter to actually act. He's got some decently nastly attacks, so as for Saracen...

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I go with a stun. It connects for 4 damage and succesfully stuns the bloodletter, robbing him of a turn.

Then the fusilier comes around and uses Blanket Fire. A full-party AoE damage attack.

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Yeah, it's usually pretty weak. He also goes with it again first on the next turn and actually scores 2-3 damage, which is a bit more dangerous, but not really. Blanket Fire only really inspires terror when it crits. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

Ballbag's next and fires a shot - missing.

Saracen follows up, somehow actually going before bloodletter, implying that the big guy's literally got 0 SPD. Would be nice to stun him again, but it's not really a good idea anymore.

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You see, back in Early Access, the devs of the game decided that stuns were too strong. So whenever you land a stun on an enemy now, they'll get more resistant to it, so there's a certain cooldown to that. We'll just whack the guy instead.

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Decent damage. In return the bloodletter uses Point Blank Shot, the much more dangerous of his two abilities. It deals 5 damage to our Crusader and much worse, knocks him back.

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This... is not a good situation to be in. Can't use pistol shot out of this position. It might as well be a stun, because I gotta spend a turn swapping the position of one of the guys with another. The alternative is to use Tracking Shot, but it actually deals very little damage and will very likely not kill the fusilier.

Additionally, I really don't want Ballbag to eat a Point Blank Shot. He's not built for that. Into the back row he goes.

The fusilier fires and mercifully misses on both counts. That's another thing I gotta add, Blanket Fire is inaccurate as fuck, same applies to Ballbag's Grape Shot. The rest of the turn is left to Saracen and since the big guy's stun resistance is gone...

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Unfortunately the stun is resisted and the big guy retaliates with Rain of Whips. It deals minor damage, but also bleeds both of our guys.

I'm kinda afraid to admit that the fight is relatively even. One crit or dodge right now can be fate-deciding.

Saracen somehow lucks out and goes second. Since stun is apparently scam, I just whack the big guy again. For 12 damage, nice.

Actually never fucking mind, we got this. With the bloodletter on critical hp Ballbag immediately executes him.

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The fusilier scrambles to fight back with a max-power Blanket Fire, but it just doesn't matter anymore. With the big guy down he's toast. Except. The fuck is this.

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That is a corpse. Most enemies in the game leave one and they act more or less as temporary obstacles. In practical terms, it means Saracen still can't actually reach him and has to cut his way through the cadaver first. Which sucks, because Ballbag misses another TWO fucking shots on the fusilier, which gets to fire 3 more times.

Thankfully the fusilier misses once and by the third turn, I've gotten rid of the corpse and so he was now in the first row, from which he can't use Blanket Fire anymore, just Rushed Shot, which only hits one guy and does so with terrible accuracy(spoilers: he misses).

After that Ballbag goes for open Vein and, of course, misses.

Saracen just rolls his eyes under his helmet and finishes the job.

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Now that we're done with here we can end this quest and get to the hamlet, but first, let's check out that chest.

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You know I think I'll pass on that one. Let's just get over with this, our guys are almost dead.

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At the end of every run you get a small report on the stuff you collected and the experience you got. Levels here work differently, but we'll get to that.

Your characters will also aquire new quirks.

In this case we got Ballbag a Warrior of Light which is, damn.







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"Welcome home, such as it is. This squallid hamlet, these corrupted lands. They're yours now. And you are bound to them."




We'll start with the village management and the game proper next time. And until then...

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...who are these assholes?
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Re: Darkest Dungeon

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Last time we checked we got duped into administrating a literal ghost town. I'm not even being hyperbolic, we literally can't use any of the buildings yet. There's actually nobody else here but us, the Caretaker and the new guys. Speaking of which.

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Please, a warm welcome for Chris Eccleston, she'll be your doctor for today. Who's responsible for the name? SS's who.

Plague Doctors are among the most fragile of characters in the game and a lot of their abilities are indirect, supportive or deal damage over time. That may sound unimpressive, but with the right setup they are one of the hardest MVPs in the game and you'll see why eventually.

For now, this one can kinda, stab people, toss plague grenades, cure people of bleeding and blight and most usefully, stun people and shuffle them.

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Second we got Sheba, courtesy of Garo. She's Vestal, which is basically a battle nun.

Vestals are probably the game's most dedicated healers, though actually not always the most powerful ones. That said, any kind of healing is invaluable, really and she's got another stun move to boot, so it's all cool.

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We'll take a short peek in the only place in the Hamlet we can visit at the moment, which is the Graveyard. For now, it's empty.

With nothing else to do, it's time to prepare for an Embarking.

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There are several dungeons which we can raid, though most of them are locked at the moment. For now we have the choice between the Ruins and the Darkest Dungeon. In case you might wonder, entering the latter now would be most unwise.

So, as the text tells us, we have a Scouting mission. Those can vary and have sort of different objectives, but usually are all a spin on the theme of exploring rooms and killing enemies. The Apprentice level shows how tall you should be to enter this ride, though is very much just a suggestion, the game is fully comfortable with letting you send your dudes to their doom if you will it so.

Finally, the Rewards show what you get if you complete the quest. It's almost always gold, heirlooms and equippable items. Heirlooms aren't of any use to us yet, but are going to be a secondary set of resources once we get the Hamlet running.

Anyway, we put the only four guys we got in the party grid on the botom.

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That's actually not me being funny. These four characters are guaranteed to be your starters in every new game and darkest dungeon automatically gives cute party names to special combinations of characters. In this case it's "The Usual Suspects".

Once we click on Provision we can proceed

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to Provision.

Here you pick up all the stuff your guys are gonna need on their adventure. The supplies offered are limited, but the actual subtle dickery lies in the fact that it's all pretty costly and takes up inventory space you could use for loot.

Look at that shit, I've only really taken bare necessities and half of the inventory space is already gone. Not even counting quests where they saddle you with multiple quest items which all take up individual spaces.

Anyway, we stock up on as much food as we can carry, which imo is always wise, pick up a bunch of torches, a few shovels, keys and some miscelanous shit like an antidote (Provided for free by the presence of the plague doctor) and two bottles of holy water. I think we're ready.



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These are the Ruins. A comfy gothic place, which apparently used to be the Estate? The architecture of this branch is all over the place to be honest. It's more like a huge set of catacombs, which would be really fitting, because it's mainly staffed by the undead.

The map says we got seven more unexplored rooms, 90% of which we have to un-unexplore. That usually means we can leave about one room unexplored. Luckily, the path we have there is relatively straight, that shit can get pretty labyrinthine at times. In this case we'll go up, turn right, take a short detour down, then explore the last two rooms on the right.

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Halfway to the second room we find an unburned torch. This is one of the rare objects which are always positive and should always be picked up and contain a torch (I use this one immediately). Torches, replenish torchlight and torchlight is what keeps you lit and safe. It diminishes naturally over time and some good things can actually happen if it falls really low, like for example, your guys get extra chance to crit and find more loot.

The BAD things that can happen if you let it fall really low though are as follows:

- People get stressed out.
- People miss more often.
- Monsters are more likely to surprise you.
- Monsters deal more damage.
- You step into every fucking trap.
- A fucking Grue eats your entire fucking party.

The last one is not literal, but it's pretty much what happens. Always keep your torch up.

A few steps later we arrive in the room and are accosted by what are the actual mooks of this game.

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Bone Rabble, at 8hp, 1 SPD and with their only attack being a gentle drubbing. They're always the least threatening enemy around and in a large group, can be safely ignored while you deal with some actual enemies. The actual vermin in this game poses more of a danger than them.

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They suck so hard there's not even any fight here. They get stunned, then dispatched without landing a single hit themselves.

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The chest is thanfully untrapped and contains some nice goodies. The shovel is a bit superfluous, but might come in handy and the portrait just another type of heirloom. On we go.

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Few steps down the next room we run into the reason why we need shovels: Rubble. Doing it without them is not advisable, it deals damage, increases stress and drains torchlight, all in some pretty big chunks. Fortunately, we're very good on shovels right now, and usually about 2-3 shovels should be all we ever need in Apprentice dungeons.

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Right before the next room, we get cut off by our first real fight.

Way in the back is our main source of concern, a Cultist Acolyte. These do not, in general, deal much damage, however, they represent a major threat to the stress of your dudes.

Stress is a thing I've only been alluding to until now, but it's a very real thing that needs careful management. It's represented by the black bar under your dudes' health bar and goes from 0 to 200.

Well, actually it goes from 0 to 100, then from 100 to 200. You see, what happens is, if it reaches 100, the character snaps. This may mean a number of things. They may get paranoid of their teammates and refuse to accept heals, go berserk and refuse your control, maybe abandon all hope and stress out everyone else being by being such downers. The only way to remove this sort of affliction is to let your guys relax outside of the dungeon, which unfortunately means that if somebody snaps inside a dungeon, they're gonna stay that way until you're done.

Oh and if it reaches 200 they get a heart attack and die. rip

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Anyway, we catch these guys by surprise and Chris wastes no time flashing the fuck out of the acolyte, stunning it and shuffling it to the front.

Deciding that he would rather like to instakill something, Ballbag takes aim for the bone rabble, but fails to actually kill it, leaving it on low health, where it is immediately annihilated by the Vestal.

Saracen, not to be outdone, swings at the remaining skeleton. With the bonus damage to undead, it should die immediately.

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It should, but doesn't, for this guy's not ordinary bone rabble, it's a Bone Soldier. These guys wield a sword and are considerably more dangerous than their ordinary counterpart. Saracen falls one point short of killing it.

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Almost to prove my point, it immediately goes for Chris and obliterates more than half her health in one critical strike, stressing out the entire party in the process.

The next turn starts and Ballbag, with some assisance from Chris, manages to take down the acolyte, without letting it act first.

Sheba tries to finish off the bone soldier, but misses, giving it the opportunity to shank Ballbag for some minor damage.

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Saracen is decidedly not in the mood for that shit though.

Some nice loot drops, including another portrait, some good and bandages.

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After the fight, Chris wolfs down some of the food. It's an excellent way to recover injuries, healing about 10% max health per use. It's one of the main reasons to pick up all the food you can before a dungeon.

The next room and the road after are relatively calm, only some idle loot on the road, until we hit the top left room of the map.

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The party eyes their melee opponent suspiciously, a Cultist Brawler.

As soon as the fight breaks out, Ballbag shoots the acolyte, wounding it gravely. Sheba follows up with a stun, but it is unfortunately resisted and the acolyte gets to use it's main attack, Stressful Incantation.

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Just like that, Chris gains 20 stress. And before I forget - stress itself carries over between dungeons. Any stress gained is stress that has to be rid of somehow lat-

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Suddenly the brawler snaps at ballbag, connecting a hit and causing bleeding. This is basically all those guys do. It advances them up two rows too, so you can always be sure that if a brawler isn't in the front, it will be eventually.

Fortunately we still have those bandages we looted earlier. Ballbag dodges another attack and uses them to staunch the flow, while Chris and Saracen deal with the bone soldier and the brawler.

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Ballbag himself deals a powerful finishing blow.

The acolyte acts again and uses another incantation, again, on Chris, who's sitting at 60 Stress now.

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Sheba attempts another stun, but misses, so it falls to Saracen to end the battle.

A peculiar thing happens afterwards.

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Scouting can happen randomly when entering/clearing a room and reveals adjacent rooms and the events stored in the paths between them. The chance seems to be related to some specific characters more than others and some skills and trinkets may also influence that, along with torchlight.

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In this case we see that the way to the next room is fairly uneventful, save for a trap. And it's a good thing we scouted it out.

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Now we can actually disarm it.

Traps can be spotted without scouting them out first, but not reliably. And even if you do scout it out, the chance to disarm it isn't 100% and also varies based on character type, which is why our Highwayman here is the one doing the disarming.

Sometimes you're gonna see a trap ahead and still walk into it and sometimes, if not scouted out, it will just not be visible at all.

Point in case:

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And of course it's Chris, too. 75 Stress now and more food downed.

Down the corridor and in the room we have yet another battle.

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Fairly standard setup, complicated maybe only by the Bone Arbalist there. They like to target your back rows and I absolutely can't have any more of that shit right now. Christ once again uses a flashbang to stun it and drag it out to the front row, while Ballbag fires a salvo at one of the bone soldiers. Sheba stuns the other one and then Saracen takes out some light reading.

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That's Zealous accusation, his second skill. Hits the front two enemy rows for reduced damage, but is still very effective against undead. The illiterate undead are shamed to death.

After the arbalist is dispatched Saracen finds the lone bone soldier out of reach, behind the corpses and uses his fourth skill, Bulwark of Faith.

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This one interacts with the game's Marking mechanic. Marked party members are the top picks for enemy attacks, so it makes sense for a crusader to use this to protect your other guys from strong hits.


Or this shit can happen.

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They don't even usually attack third row :/. Chris is literally on the game's shitlist.

Oh well, Ballbag crits the next round, destroying the final skeletal adversary.

With this done, we can turn to the shrine in the room. Let's see what happens if we use Holy Water on it.

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12 hp and minus 20 stress. That was sorely needed.

With that business concluded, we backtrack to the upper right room, with no conflict inbetween.

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And here is the second reason why you need all the food you can stock. Periodically your guys need to eat. Feed them and they will recover a bit of hp, fail to do so and they will take major damage to health and stress. We're definitely well stocked though, so this probably won't be a problem unless we waste too much food on healing and since the mission is almost over, we have a safe surplus.

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The room turns up empty and with that, we have technically fulfilled our quest.

But to be honest, we're doing so well, we might as well explore that last room.

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Scouting happens and it seems that the last room contains treasure and combat. We're definitely going there now.

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Heeeey, see what I told you? Always bring 2-3 shovels.
Before we enter the room we use up the second bottle of Holy Water on Chris, to up her bleed, blight and debuff resistances for the upcoming fight.

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Welp. Figures they saved the hardest fight for the last.

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See this asshole? He's the worst. He's pretty much an undead version of the acolyte, except somehow even faster, capable of dealing respectable damage if forced into front rows and just look at that smug fucking jackass shit eating grin.

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Fuck Bone Courtier.

The fight starts and there's immediately two misses, from Christ and Saracen. Ballbag fares much better and nails down the courtier with a pistol shot, leaving it within inches of death, to be then smitten down by Sheba. (Smiting is a thing she can do btw)

The enemy party retaliates. The bone soldier targets Saracen, barely scratching him, while the Bone Defender goes for Ballbag, scoring a slighty stronger hit. The arbalist then gets flashed by Chris and lands right behind the defender, stunned.

Ballbag springs to action, takes aim, fires and misses. The count's at three misses now. Four if I count the fact that Chris tried to use Plague Grenade and missed BOTH the arbalist and the courtier. The count then rises to fucking five as Saracen's swing goes wide and away from the arbalist.

Then this shit happens.

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Ball bag is left on 10 hp and is in relative danger. I just hope nobody else goes for him.

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Motherfucker. At the very least the hit goes for only 3 damage and fails to either stun or knock Ballbag back. In the meanwhile Chris crits the bone soldier to death and Saracen manages to miss another fucking swing (6).

The arbalist, with nowhere to run, resorts to Bayonet Jabbing Ballbag, who mercifully managed to receive a small heal from Sheba prior. It wouldn't be fatal regardless, but could have easily put him there.

The next turn, it's over. Sheba shanks the arbalist to death, after which the entire party tows on the defender until it collapses.

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Yeah, I think it was worth it. Time to go home.


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Not a bad haul. We've definitely made some profit there and got a bunch of heirlooms for the near future.

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And some purely positive quirk gains? Maybe the game doesn't hate me after all.



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Back at the town, we see that two buildings have become operational. That's good news, our Plague Doctor and Vestal are stressed out and we need to switch them out. The idea is that we dump them off to the abbey and the tavern to recover some stress and meanwhile use whatever new guys we find in the stage coach.

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...
Well bollocks to that. See you next time.
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Re: Darkest Dungeon

Post by AlexMdle »

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Last time we got, out of the possible fifteen classes, the worst one to start out with. Twice.

This is actually a really, bizzarely awful start and there's nothing I can do about it. I can't afford to pick both of them, because one Antiquarian on the team is already bad enough. So I guess, I'll drop Chris off at the Abbey to meditate, so she'll calm down.

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Fucking scratch that, she's praying instead. That asshole occupying the Cloister is the caretaker, that guy from the second intro. More likely to be remembered as the stagecoach guy from 1 screenshot ago. He'll be around, occupying random places for the week and generally being an annoying shit in the early game. Nothing like a critical stress-relieving option being hogged by the computer.

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At least he's got fun flavor texts.

Anyway, I think I've been stalling this long enough. Let's pick the less useless of the two.

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I name thy Scroodge, as foreshadowing.

If you remember the stats of our other guys, then take a look at the stats the Antiquarian got, you might notice that they're fucking shit across the entire board. Better have great skills to offset that, right? Pfffthahahah.

This one we got can either stab people for pathetic damage, blight them for even more pathetic damage, literally use somebody else in the party as a meatshield or, in the case of the last skill, basically waste a turn doing nothing.

And that's the GOOD one. The other antiquarian couldn't even stab people.

There is of course a specific reason why you would want an Antiquarian around, but Red Hook decided it's not worth telling that to people. If you're playing this game blindly you're excused for pondering why somebody would ever pick this class. And to be honest, even not playing blindly, I would not have picked Scroodge here and I don't expect them to survive for too long.

/end rant

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Oh right, there's also the Tavern. It's the pepsi to Abbey's cola, functionally almost the same. It's a tad worse in some respects, but for now we don't really have any real reason to visit it.

Off we go.

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We're still shackled to Ruins, but at least have four different quests we can go on. Well, two, really. The prongs indicate 'longer' quests, which I think we're not prepared to go on yet. In fact, we're probably the least prepared for one of those or just in general. I'll go with the "Explore 90% of the rooms" on the left.

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Scroodge slots well into the third row, at least. No witty team name this time though.

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We load up on some essentials and the party can start.

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Not bad, mostly a straight shot. We'll go explore the room directly above us, then just path it in to the end. Since we only have to explore 90% of the rooms we can ignore one of the offshoots on the right.

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Welp. The very first segment we step into a trap we can't see. And Saracen eats 8 damage/15 stress. Fantastic.

Thankfully nothing much else down the corridor, a backpack with a torch and some coins and

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an Iron Maiden. Uh. Those things are literal traps. I don't know if they ever have any positive effects, they mostly just trap whoever touches them and give them Claustrophobia. We'll be skipping those.

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Inside the room is a pretty meaty combat and oh shit, IT BEGINS.

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Whew.

The fight itself goes relatively ok. The arbalist gets a shot on Sheba, after the Antiquarian fails to finish it off. Bone soldier is annihilated the moment Saracen can act and the courtier finally lands the goblet on the Antiquarian the second time around.

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Oh shit, the pathetic blight move *did something*.

The remaining skeletons don't hold out much longer. Sheba gets off a lame party-wide 1 heal and the fight's over. Overall, Ballbag took it the worst damage-wise, while the Antiquarian's racking up stress.

We got to the loot and oh-ho, what's that?

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An antique? Might it have something to do with our Antiquarian? Yes, yes it does. That's their entire gimmick: Extra money. Having them around gives you more stacks for money and specific extra loot. It's honestly not worth it. Some extra loot doesn't outweigh the financial hell of outfitting a new party after the old one gets destroyed because Antiquarian is such a weak link.

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Backtracking towards the unexplored rooms, we run into a small brigand party, which is quickly dealt with. Some significant damage is taken by the front guys, but Sheba's got it under control.

Yes, heals can crit too.

The next four rooms are mercifully uneventful, with some light loot scattered inbetween, mostly food and loose change. Guess these guys happened.

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And went down in two turns, hurting mostly Ballbag's pride.

Passing towards the fifth room we encounter these:

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Some actual vermin, Webbers. Not particularly dangerous, absolutely not in a pack of 2. In larger groups though, they're totally are, with their stuns, marks and blight attacks. These two don't get to attack more than once before getting squashed by Saracen and Ballbag.

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In the fifth room itself we got a variation on the classic skeleton adventurer party, except the courtier is replaced with an extra arbalist for more damage. This could go ugly.

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Oh shit. There goes over half her health. At least everyone else fares better. Ballbag dodges a bolt, Sheba takes one, but only for 4 damage, then heals most of the damage taken by Scroodge.

Saracen, characteristically, pulverizes the bone soldier before it can get another slash off. Not to be outdone, Ballbag takes aim.

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Crits are always followed up by snappy one-liners. And such is the power of their awesome mojo, it recovers stress and sometimes also heals some stress for adjacent mates.

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AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH.

Jesus, she's on 2 hp. Code fucking red. Time for a meatshield.

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...this turns out to be a very wise decision.

Thankfully Sheba lands a critical heal on Scroodge, then a very good critical heal on the entire party. Then Ballbag crits the remaining skeletons into oblivion.

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Welp, fuck you too game.

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Scount happens and reveals that both last rooms are empty. I guess I'll pick the one without a trap on the way, though it barely matters. Once we reach the room we complete the quest and get the hell out of dodge.

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Decent loot, but was it worth the risk?

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Another kleptomaniac!? Jesus. JUST.

Bleh, on the return to town I upgrade our Stage Coach.

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Mostly because I want to get some good actual classes already, because this is what we got for now:

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Riveting. Until next time then, where we decide which redundant class we pick.
Now under new management.

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TheMMM
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Re: Darkest Dungeon

Post by TheMMM »

I think the Plague Doctor should be named Beakface.

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Re: Darkest Dungeon

Post by ShadowSpectre »

Name the Highwayman Shoot Dogg.
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Out for lunch. Return uncertain.

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