Does the game *end* or can you play on after the final conclusion?

[Stallionista]

I'm in week 85 and still not even activated the courtyard! My first ever playthrough and I've been biding my time, collecting trinkets, nearly all the bosses killed, been doing the farmstead too.. If I went to finish the Darkest Dungeon four times and pretty much "complete" the base game, can I still go and do the courtyard in the same save file or would I need to start and complete the Crimson Court DLC before the final Darkest Dungeon assault? I'm happy to go and experience the courtyard (why buy the DLC otherwise!!) but I'm admittedly anxious of the curse management and having bloodsuckers turning up all over the place and infecting my precious lv 6 heroes.

Anyway I've posted here a few times since I bought the game a while ago, fantastic community and very helpful. I've come a long way since the time I naively put a torch in the shambler curio and got party wiped by the minions even AFTER killing the shambler itself.

PS I will definitely boot up Courtyard much earlier on in my next save I do, I promise!

[PalmTree]

You can continue playing after beating the final boss, you've got nothing to worry about. I always recommend starting a new save for CC though, it really is best played from the beginning of a game though. Just know that if you activate it at the end of a save you'll need to have a good number of lv.2 and lv.4 heroes for the Apprentice and Veteran Courtyard quests.

[Stallionista]

Originally posted by PalmTree:

You can continue playing after beating the final boss, you've got nothing to worry about. I always recommend starting a new save for CC though, it really is best played from the beginning of a game though. Just know that if you activate it at the end of a save you'll need to have a good number of lv.2 and lv.4 heroes for the Apprentice and Veteran Courtyard quests.

Thank you for the reply! I'm two bosses away from beating all the vanilla bosses and one farmstead boss away, with half the the lv6 roster goals done so I'd love to get the CC bosses done too for the caretaker goals in the same save file. I definitely intend to start it much earlier in a new game though to experience the CC mechanics in the heat of the early/mid game. I asked the question because I honestly wouldn't mind ditching some lv 6 characters or whatever after the final assault to start assaulting the CC bosses.

[PalmTree]

Originally posted by Stallionista:

Originally posted by PalmTree:

You can continue playing after beating the final boss, you've got nothing to worry about. I always recommend starting a new save for CC though, it really is best played from the beginning of a game though. Just know that if you activate it at the end of a save you'll need to have a good number of lv.2 and lv.4 heroes for the Apprentice and Veteran Courtyard quests.

Thank you for the reply! I'm two bosses away from beating all the vanilla bosses and one farmstead boss away, with half the the lv6 roster goals done so I'd love to get the CC bosses done too for the caretaker goals in the same save file. I definitely intend to start it much earlier in a new game though to experience the CC mechanics in the heat of the early/mid game. I asked the question because I honestly wouldn't mind ditching some lv 6 characters or whatever after the final assault to start assaulting the CC bosses.

You should actually just pick people up off the Stagecoach, actually. Heroes that go into the Darkest Dungeon and emerge victorious no longer require slots in your roster, so you should be able to get 16 more heroes off of the coach.

[Stallionista]

Originally posted by PalmTree:

Originally posted by Stallionista:

Thank you for the reply! I'm two bosses away from beating all the vanilla bosses and one farmstead boss away, with half the the lv6 roster goals done so I'd love to get the CC bosses done too for the caretaker goals in the same save file. I definitely intend to start it much earlier in a new game though to experience the CC mechanics in the heat of the early/mid game. I asked the question because I honestly wouldn't mind ditching some lv 6 characters or whatever after the final assault to start assaulting the CC bosses.

You should actually just pick people up off the Stagecoach, actually. Heroes that go into the Darkest Dungeon and emerge victorious no longer require slots in your roster, so you should be able to get 16 more heroes off of the coach.

Thank you! I just did the first DD assault today and found that out, a nice surprise!

[SirQuestinghood]

There is actually no reason not to continue your original playthrough Stallionista :) I went the later route and picked them off the stage coach like PalmTree is saying. Because of the ability to have multiple game save profiles... I started adding mods to my original save game. Mostly lore-friendly cosmetic mods and monster/dungeon adding sets.

It also gave me the time to do stuff I wanted to do... like collect all of the trinkets and complete all of the districts. Stuff like that. :)

Sadly, my achievements broke long ago. I'm not sure if it was mods or what... so you might wait till you have all of your achievements. For example, I have completed all of the Caretaker's goals but never entered a darkest dungeon. o_O

anyway, good luck and game on :)

[Stallionista]

Originally posted by SirQuestinghood:

There is actually no reason not to continue your original playthrough Stallionista :) I went the later route and picked them off the stage coach like PalmTree is saying. Because of the ability to have multiple game save profiles... I started adding mods to my original save game. Mostly lore-friendly cosmetic mods and monster/dungeon adding sets.

It also gave me the time to do stuff I wanted to do... like collect all of the trinkets and complete all of the districts. Stuff like that. :)

Sadly, my achievements broke long ago. I'm not sure if it was mods or what... so you might wait till you have all of your achievements. For example, I have completed all of the Caretaker's goals but never entered a darkest dungeon. o_O

anyway, good luck and game on :)

Excellent, thanks for the response! I'm yet to do 2nd DD but I'm collecting all the ancestral trinkets now simultaneously with hunting the last two vanilla bosses and the final farmstead boss. After those I'll probably alternate the Crimson Court stuff with my last few DD assaults so a plan is in place!

I do want to do a new save file soon to experience the CC mechanics during the early-mid game where my skills will be tested more than managing it "post-game" with not much else to worry about

[RedRock]

I DID IT I FINALLY FINISH THIS DAMN, BUT VERY ENJOYABLE GAME !!! I think I'll write that on my CV...

[Stallionista]

Originally posted by RedRock:

I DID IT I FINALLY FINISH THIS DAMN, BUT VERY ENJOYABLE GAME !!! I think I'll write that on my CV...

CV: Finished Darkest Dungeon on Stygian
Employer: Get this guy in!!

Well done for beating it though, I'm going to try beating the second DD today but I'm very anxious with what party composition I should use (I have no MAA eligible unless I raise one up from Lv 1!). Hopefully I'll join you in the Darkest Dungeon hall of fame soon!!

[Smuckem]

The cool thing about post-game is that you can constantly set up all kinds of silly goals for yourself, so that you never run out of things to do, even if the pseudo-lack of bosses makes that slightly tougher to do. I also find that, having so many mods available to toy with, means that you can treat your original base game Darkest Estates as a sort of "causal" game where you can just mess around and play without worrying about the consequences too much. For example, I have three 'finished' Estates going and:

- original Darkest run: trying out every named team composition out there, running into enough snakes to collect 100 Aegis Scales
- 1st Radiant run: currently trying to collect all Legacy Darkwraith-based trinkets, getting to two-million-gold mark, Memory farming
- 2nd Radiant run: currently trying to collect all Hero-specific (Link-specific) trinkets, getting the Flesh Curse on the six vanilla roster members (so as to give them Flesh trinkets), spreading Marked by the Flock around to enough people so as to start actively Talon Brigand hunting, getting four Riftwatchers to Legend level, collecting enough Shards to buy Crystalline trinkets for about eight specific classes I'm really getting into, making time for one more occurrence of "Shrieker's Prize" so as to complete the Shrieker trinket collection, etc, etc.

[PalmTree]

Originally posted by Smuckem:

\
- 2nd Radiant run: currently trying to collect all Hero-specific (Link-specific) trinkets

Oh lord, that must be a nightmare. I have 9 or 10 of them and still missing at least 4 or so, I think. He has so damn many, collecting them all takes forever.

[Smuckem]

Originally posted by PalmTree:

Originally posted by Smuckem:

\
- 2nd Radiant run: currently trying to collect all Hero-specific (Link-specific) trinkets

Oh lord, that must be a nightmare. I have 9 or 10 of them and still missing at least 4 or so, I think. He has so damn many, collecting them all takes forever.

Oh, you're a fair bit further behind than 4, unfortunately; I have 12 of them and am still missing:
- Duelist Hookshot
- Mirror Shield (although I could buy the damn thing rn if I wanted)
- the CC set
- Bigger Bomb
- Farore's Wind
- Din's Fire

I'm legitimately terrified he's going to end up patching more stuff in soon too, he has so much more source material he could crib from...

@Caedwyn, please give us some time to collect, no more updates for a bit, 'kay?

[SirQuestinghood]

Originally posted by RedRock:

I DID IT I FINALLY FINISH THIS DAMN, BUT VERY ENJOYABLE GAME !!! I think I'll write that on my CV...

Congrats

@Smuckem I'm a complete sucker for trinkets. Every time I have them all I download a new mod that has me obsessing all over again. lol

GL on the 2 mil mark... I had no idea that it stopped there until I hit it :)

[Smuckem]

Oh, it doesn't actually stop at 2 mil...it's just that, next to 9 mil or so I have on one save, and the 14 mil I have on another save...the 1.4 mil on this particular save is looking a tad wan.

@PalmTree: Fate appears to want me to get this done:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1848132574
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1848132827

[Skinny Pete]

Speaking of long games, I have a game well over 200 weeks and have seen neither hide nor hair of Vvulf. I believe the chances of him showing up increase for every actually random event and tend to farm the quests that trigger mandatory events.

I have a fair number of mods in that save including characters, the Sunward Isles, MLD Ruins monster packs, things like the Falconer that bring along their own quests, trinkets, events, etc. so probably have more non-random town events than usual.

But is there some reason he isn't showing up? If it's just odds, what to edit to just trigger it next time?

[PalmTree]

Originally posted by Smuckem:

Oh, it doesn't actually stop at 2 mil...it's just that, next to 9 mil or so I have on one save, and the 14 mil I have on another save...the 1.4 mil on this particular save is looking a tad wan.

@PalmTree: Fate appears to want me to get this done:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1848132574
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1848132827

Well, that's two more down. Good luck getting the rest!

I haven't used either very much, but I can say that the Bigger Bomb is pretty powerful, especially with the crit boost, but the extra stress taken and massive speed loss make it a bit tough to use. It's good if you can get a decent speed increasing trinket like a Feather Crystal to help make up for the speed loss, because -3 speed is a really bad drawback.

Din's Fire is an extremely weird trinket though. The damage boost sounds good at first, but it's really bad for two reasons- he only has three moves that work in rank 4, and of them only Steady Shot actually does damage worth mentioning, so it's the only thing that benefits from it. R3 has Big Bomb, which also benefits from it but not nearly as much since the R3 boost is a lot lower. The random target chance is also very counter-productive to the trinket itself, as it makes it very difficult to hit what you want him to to benefit from the damage. The buffs are really strong though. It's good if you want to make him more support oriented so that you don't get affected by the random target as much, so it's good to use support moves like the Hookshot and Boomerang that can mark, stun, or inflict status effects.