i suck at "lighting the way"

[waouh]

so, as an opener, i had huge difficulty with the first dd quest despite going through the game (champion dungeons and bosses included) with relative ease. now, after two wipes and one more sacrifice, i need to know exactly why i'm so bad at these darkest dungeon quests. i thought i knew enough about the game to get through but at this point maybe i'm just making bad decisions?
for my most recent attempt, i scrounged reddit and the steam forums for tips both general and specific to this quest. furthermore, i've put nearly 150 hours into the game now and i think i have a decent understanding of what's good and what isnt'.
that being said, here is my party compisiton that nearly got wiped by the two templars (impaler and stinger), as well as their trinkets:
rank 1: maa with talisman and heart trophy (50% bleed resist and 15% hp boost)
rank 2: bh with pen (8% crt for melee) and vvulfs tassel (damage and crit against marked)
rank 3: hm with talisman and fusemans matchstick (spd and ranged buff for dog)
rank 4: vestal with talisman and prophets eye (speed, acc, and stress buff)
admitidelly, the prophets eye was a pretty terrible choice looking back on it. but as for the rest, i need to know what i'm doing wrong. thanks in advance for your advice!

[Skinny Pete]

You're not the only one. For whatever reason I absolutely suck at this mission myself. I have managed to do it the last couple times without losing anyone, but every party I send into this thing gets completely wrecked.

DD2 and DD3? No hitch whatsoever, I just kick those every time.

I guess I'm just bad at DD1. Every time I send a party into this it is with complete dread, because I know I'm about to get my ass kicked.

[No One]

Some minor tweaks should get DD2 down. The double boss pull is really hard, don't feel too bad about it going poorly.

Put +heal on the vestal, she needs at least one, and I prefer two.

It helps a lot to have +spd on the MAA, I use ancestor's candle, but even something like a swift cloak is worth thinking about, because the last thing you want is revelation to go off on your squishy target.

I staunchly maintain that vvulf's tassel is a bad trinket. All I can say for it is it's better than an empty slot. I suggest going for +stun instead, and uppercutting almost exclusively. It cuts the damage almost in half, and, fun fact: 50% is a lot.

The HM seems fine. Maybe swap it to row 4 and use the prophet's eye on him instead, which is just sort of a matchstick but better.

Make sure you brought all the antivenom. The healing potential of those gets pretty rad if they start stacking the blight.



For DD1, Use HM-PD-CRU-FLG. I use the flesh's heart on the FLG, meaning he's immune to his own bleeds, which turns out to be plenty of healing for DD1. I found this by accident, my teams for DD 2-4 were set and I had to improvise something for DD1, and got especially lucky.

You may note it has triple stress management, it's complete overkill and it's awesome. That said it may have something to do with having a tremendous trinket set.

I used the prophet's eye on the HM, getting to use that overpowered piece of junk is really nice. Spiked collar for utter murder. Non-euclidean hilt on the CRU, the blight lands a lot more often than I estimated it would. That and his +heal CC trinket, because I'm actually going to use battle heal to top off the FLG. FLG gets ancestor's scroll with his heart, so both frontliners have +stress healed. If you do need to use redeem/exsanguinate, the extra heal is super handy. I used the CC set for the PD, the extra HP is surprisingly convenient, she can use her overpowered stab from row 3, and it still has +stun on it. Finally there's only one trinket across all characters which has any +stress.

Bears repeating that the team has a PD, meaning you can laugh at all those crit-bleeds.

[Sir Francis]

Pro tip:
If you stun the Warlords/impalers once a round they
1. never gain resistance (it drops with their second turn)
2. they always use revelation before their other attacks, so you can easily keep them locked in a perpetual state of revelating for no damage.

[waouh]

thanks guys. ill try using hm fourth and vestal third, maybe without a talisman this time. also, ill keep in mind to stun the warlords. i forgot that, since they go twice each round, the stun resist is gone by the next time i go.

[Stal Hamarr]

It's been a while, but I found some notes from my last stygian zero deaths run.
My comp for DD2 was vestal - houndmaster - leper - MaA.
Leper with acc and +dmg vs eldritch trinkets. MaA guards the leper.

[Skinny Pete]

引用自 𝔉𝔯𝔞𝔫𝔠𝔦𝔰：

Pro tip:
If you stun the Warlords/impalers once a round they
1. never gain resistance (it drops with their second turn)
2. they always use revelation before their other attacks, so you can easily keep them locked in a perpetual state of revelating for no damage.

This is why DD2/DD3 just aren't very difficult other than before you know what you're doing, because every fight in both levels is completely manageable other than, arguably, that very first fight in DD3 with the Flesh Hounds. Which you do while you still have all your campfires available, so even if you do get wrecked in it you can generally fix it up.

[waouh]

so one thing i have learned is that everything that happens is not because of rng but its because you made a bad decision. that being said, what if i miss a stun check on the templars? how should I deal with that? my last dd2 run, I got through one round and retreated because everyone was blighted and on death's door. while i was lacking in blgiht resistance, i still suffered massive damage from their non-revelation attacks. how do i recover from that assuming a stun fails?

[No One]

引用自 Packs Laden with BREAD：

what if i miss a stun check on the templars?

Then you get hit twice that round. You might even miss your stun check the following round too. If this is fatal then the problem started a lot earlier.

Maybe vestals without +50% heal can't keep up? Were you at full health when you started the fight? There's lots of things it could be.

[waouh]

yep, full health, near-0 stress. admittely i was a little unlucky and both hits were crit on one hero. blight was terrifying and my bh and hm were nearly at deaths door. maybe it is my vestal but even still recovering from that seems very difficult, especially with the significant blight. after retreating at the end of that round i saw no future in the run so i left. i even had max food (36) and no recovery in sight beucase i would've gotten immediately wrecked when i reentered the fight. worth noting that i have no dlc on this run, as this was my original dd run and it is my first time encountering the endgame.

[No One]

If your vestal's turn has already gone, and the blight is going to tick them down to death's door when they go, then retreating is probably the correct option. What you need to do is drop a nice meaty heal on them and then clear the blight with antivenom. If they'll have 1 hp or more after the blight tick it's usually safe enough to hope for correct turn order, but if not, then turn order can screw you over and it's definitely not safe.

As I said, the double boss pull is quite difficult.

You can prevent this from being a problem by bringing a flagellant or plague doctor. With both a vestal and a secondary healer, turn order has a very low chance of screwing you, especially since FLGs and PDs are super fast, and they both have blight management. As a bonus, a PD would bring a second stun, and sometimes even go after the BH and work as a backstop.

Without altering your party, then you'll probably succeed just by trying again, since the odds of a double crit like that are quite low. But low is definitely not zero.

Because this is the final zone, you probably shouldn't have abandoned the mission, but fooded up and tried to stall your way back up to full health on lesser fights so you could try again. The DD is one reason why total RNG control is necessary: abandoning a mission isn't really an option anymore.

I typically use HM-OCC-♥♥♥-MAA in this fight. MAA has guard, tons of HP, and is slower than the OCC, so he's not really in danger. Meanwhile everyone else can heal themselves, so hitting death's door on their own turn is no issue.

[waouh]

yea a pd sounds like a really good option. that being said, your combo also sounds really good, but shouldn't you have occ in 2nd or is abomination more useful as the beast?

[No One]

Abominations are stunbots. I keep wanting a set up to have him transform, but it's almost always a terrible idea. The stress hit from transforming is huge, around 40 total. Meanwhile his stun is one of the best in the game; tied for fastest, good reach, and second most damaging. Also he only needs one +stun trinket, meaning the other trinket slot is flexible. Though I tend to go double +stun anyway, for various reasons.

Occultist in row two without a backup healer is asking for a dead occultist. OCC is the squishiest hero. Plus abyssal artillery is an efficient attack.

[waouh]

fair enough. thanks for the tips!

[Skinny Pete]

If you can start the double templar fight with a stun that knocks one out of place, like MAA's with the Rampart Shield (who you should have anyway), they're less effective. Also MAA is very good for his battle buffs in that fight, so make sure you camp right before it. The minus: using Rampart Shield at all, ever.

[waouh]

yea none of his trinkets really stand out as being great to me. they're all gimmicky. however i still don't have, and have never seen, a stun amulet- im at week 155! also i forgot about camping beforehand. i didn't look up the map or anything so i didn't spoil it for myself, but, now that i know where those nasties are, i have a good chance at beefing up before the double templars.