by I think there must be few games out there where the start is as hard as it is in Darkest Dungeon ; game that for those who don’t know, it is a classic indie combat RPG (by turns and such) that stands out among many other things, for having a fairly high difficulty.
I must also say that when you know yourself well and in detail all its different mechanics, tricks, bosses and others… the game is no longer so complicated (which it is), but of course it is a game in which errors and also bad luck is very expensive.
Total, that after countless hours of play (and more that I will put into it because it is a tremendous game), I have decided to create this list of tips . These are things that I think I would have learned better before starting this game and I think that knowing them can help you a lot to take a more correct path in this game.
Of course it is not a magical and miraculous remedy, then you will have to delve a little deeper into all aspects, but for that I already have the other game guides in this blog (you have the link to the Darkest Dungeon section a little above) . Let’s go there then!
DEATH AND THE GATES OF DEATH
Undoubtedly one of the things that you have to be clearer in Darkest Dungeon is that here the death of a character supposes that, that he has died and you can forget about him . It is true that there is a Fiefdom event (the main base) that allows us to resurrect a character, but this is something that can happen with a very low probability; I personally have never seen it, but I am aware that it exists. So nothing, better not count on it.
The case, the characters have a health bar as in most games. But… when it reaches zero they don’t just die, instead they enter the “Gates of Death” state. In this state is when they can die when they receive a blow, it will depend on how high their Mortal Blow Resistance statistic is. For what we are going, in this state it will depend on the luck that the character is killed or not. This stat can be boosted with Trinkets (the items we can equip to boost stats and so on), but you’ll generally prefer to boost other stats; the idea is to never be at the Doors of Death (unavoidable given the high difficulty, but it is the idea).
To get a character out of the Gates of Death, all you have to do is heal him so that his life is no longer at zero; so it will be essential to have characters that can heal like the Vestal or the Occultist (the most prominent in that sense) and it never hurts to have another character that, although her role is not so much that of healing, has a cure to support if the thing gets tricky (since the characters/enemies have their order of turns according to their Speed and between the fact that you can heal the character they will still kill him); a good example of this would be the Arbalestera or Musketeer .
Oh, and I almost forgot, if your character dies you will have wasted all the buffs you have applied on it and you will even lose any Trinkets it had equipped, which is sometimes more problematic than losing the character itself.
STRESS
I already have a whole post talking about the mechanics of stress since it is undoubtedly one of the pillars of the game and knowing how to manage it well is essential.
To summarize a bit, there are many things that will generate stress for your characters (receiving a Critical hit, having low light or the mere fact of being on an expedition) and you will have to reduce it with different methods (the Jester is a character that stands out for its good stress reduction to the group) that I explain better in the post that I have already mentioned.
When the stress bar fills up completely, it will depend a bit on luck (actually it depends on how high the Virtue stat of said character is), but the character will be able to acquire a Virtue (which is what you want because that will alleviate everything the stress to the character and you will also get a buff that is usually very good) or an Affliction , which are things that will generally bother a lot because among many things that can happen, for example the character could start acting strange and stress his teammates , or he might even stop attacking or even hit his teammates (it will depend on the Affliction he gets, but they are all horrible).
When you miss an Affliction, the stress bar returns to zero, but then we will have a “new” stress bar, we will say, that this is the truly problematic one (and it will fill up quickly because Afflictions usually generate a lot of stress) because if that reaches up to the end… the character can have a heart attack and die .
DON’T UNDERESTIMATE CHARACTERS
This is something that happened to me back in the day and I think it usually happens to people who start playing the game and I think it is important to mention: All the classes in the game are good , you simply have to know in which situation one is more successful than other.
If you don’t like a character for whatever reason and it seems bad to you, it’s probably because you’re not playing it well or because you don’t use it in the right context. Obviously, there are better and worse characters in general terms, but each one is a little good in his role and in the end this is a gray scale.
If you don’t like a class for whatever reason, don’t play it, but try to be open-minded and experiment well with them since more than one will surprise you if you give it the chance. In my case, I didn’t like the Occult class at all and now I think it’s an incredible class (which doesn’t mean I know its failures very well).
And if you want to get to know all the characters a little better, feel free to visit the main Darkest Dungeon section of the blog (linked above in turquoise, there will also be a link at the bottom), since there you will find the guide for each one .
POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE TRAITS
As you play the game, your characters will gain both positive and negative Traits. These in the end will increase or reduce statistics and it will be vital to eliminate the negative ones and also (although this is a bit more High End now) to keep the good ones that interest us the most.
In the Manor (link to the guide where I better explain all the buildings) we have a building called “the Sanatorium”, there we can eliminate negative features and also block the positive ones.
Above all, it will be essential to get rid of the negatives (especially the most annoying ones, there are some that are so mild that you can even ignore them or at least not give them priority), it will be enough to place the character in the Treatment Room and for a cost ( It’s not cheap, really) we can cure it with the drawback that you’ll have to spend a whole day there, so you won’t be able to use it on the next expedition.
In addition, the negative traits start in a standard mode, and if you don’t treat them in a relatively short game time, they will acquire a red skull indicating that this trait has taken root in him and therefore, when he wants to treat it, the cost will be Way to old. So remember to prioritize the most annoying traits over all of your best characters. It will seem to you that you lose a lot of money (it is a fact), but in the long run it pays off because your performance in the expeditions will be much better.
In order to fix positive traits, I recommend it only when you have enough money saved because it is quite expensive. And even in those, I would only recommend it in the event that you get a very good positive trait in a character who is also very good (it will depend on what things each character needs the most, I mention that in the class guides on the blog ). I highly recommend that you invest a lot in improving this building. Oh, and if you miss the event that makes treating characters free, take advantage of it above all to set good positive traits (and negatives if you also have the character, which you can do both at the same time, it’s just not usually done because it would be very expensive).
But… this is not the only way, you can also cure negative traits of your characters more or less for free by interacting with some of the Curios that appear in the expeditions (things that you can interact with such as shelves, that those you shouldn’t touch them). So it will be important to know all the areas well to be able to take advantage of this. Later I will make guides on each of the areas and I will link them here.
THE DISEASES
Characters can also get sick and you will have to deal with diseases as well since they bring quite annoying debuffs, luckily these are much easier to treat.
We can heal them again in “the Sanatorium”, only these are much cheaper to treat. But… we also have a free form that is also very interesting and that is that the Plague Doctor and the Grave Raider have a camping ability that allows you to cure diseases in your group.
If one of the characters in your group falls ill during the expedition, then you take advantage of the camping and cure them for free. You could also take a sick character on an expedition accompanied by one of these characters to cure the disease while doing so; but it is always more advisable to take them directly cured, which does not mean that it is a good idea if you are short of coins.
THE RELICS
To improve the buildings of the Fief you will have to get a resource called “Relics”, there are different types, which are basically these:
- Busts: It is a head of a statue.
- Writings: It is a piece of paper, but do not confuse it since there is another piece of paper that if you interact with it shows you texts from Lore and others.
- Portraits: A painting.
- Emblems: I don’t know how to describe it, it’s like a medallion with a skull.
In the expeditions they will always give you a certain amount of a Relic at the end (before starting it they will tell you in the expedition data), so it is important in order to choose which one we want to carry out to also take this into account. In addition, depending on the area (Forest, Ruins …) some will appear in greater numbers than others.
LEVEL OF DETERMINATION AND EXPEDITIONS
This is a very important topic to take into account because the truth is that it gives a lot of headaches. The case, the Determination is the level that the character in question has and goes from 0 to 6 (you get it in the expeditions), up to here it is perfectly understandable.
The expeditions are categorized into 3 different difficulties (from less to more difficulty):
- Apprentice : Green in color.
- Veteran : Yellow in color.
- Champion : Red.
The problem is that depending on the level of determination of your heroes, they will not want to go on expeditions that do not concern them. These would be the ideal determination levels according to the level of the expedition:
- Apprentice: Levels 0, 1 and 2 .
- Veteran: Levels 3 and 4 .
- Champion: Levels 5 and 6 .
If you try to send a character with a level of determination higher than the ones I mentioned above according to the difficulty of the expedition, he will flatly refuse to go as it will seem too easy for him.
Which makes you have to control very well which characters are leveling up so as not to run out of the option of at some point, for example, not being able to go to an Apprentice level dungeon because you have run out of characters of those levels (and perhaps you there are bosses pending). You will have to manage your characters well and advance more or less in a comparable way in all the different areas of the expeditions to deal a little better with this problem (even so, at some point this issue will annoy you).
If, on the contrary, you send a character with a lower level of determination than recommended, you can take him, but when you enter the expedition your character will be stressed a lot. In any case, even if you can do it, it is not recommended because in the end, it would be much better to have a character with the ideal level.
COINS OR GOLD
Coins or gold (money comes) will be another essential element since we will have to use them for treatment of traits, stress, diseases, to buy forecasts… come on, you are going to need as much as you can .
We will be able to achieve it, especially in the expeditions, both by finding the gold itself (the image is of coins) and by collecting minerals or Trinkets (the latter can be sold at the base)… the thing is that you optimize very well the space that your group has to collect objects and you keep what interests you the most (which in general will be keeping the Trinkets, the Relics and the things that bring you more money).
By the way, if you are interested in getting a lot of gold in Darkest Dungeon, you should consider taking the Antiquarian as she is a specialized character in that field and is very worthwhile in that sense (the downside is that she is the weakest character in terms of combat, but to farm gold it is brutal).
FORECASTS AND CURIOS
And to finish we have the forecasts and the Curios, which we have already discussed a little above about the latter.
Before entering an expedition we will have to buy the forecasts for it. The most basic thing is to buy food and torches (the amount will depend on the area and difficulty, you will have to see that) and of course (this is what I am referring to in general forecasts) they will take up space in your inventory, so you are not interested in going too far because you will end up throwing them away to take more valuable items.
But… apart from the basics, it is very key to know the Curios in the area well to take those resources that are usually very worthwhile in that area. If you get it right you can get many more rewards and you could even remove negative traits for free. This is too much to comment on in this post since it would be better to make a guide focused on each separate area, I will do it later (I hope).
And nothing, if you want to continue learning things about Darkest Dungeon, here is the link to the main section where you will find a bit of everything. This game has so many aspects that I’m sure I’ve missed something important, but whatever you tell me for comments. Until another time!
