How To Build Up Heroes

[Saint Rocco]

I just bought the new DLC and kickstarted my enjoyment of the game. While working through some dungeons, some of my heroes have begun to really wrack up good and bad statuses. I know the Sanitarium can lock in the good ones, prevent them from changing, and remove the bad - but that is really costly. Some of the other guides make it seem that I should be basically excusing these heroes from the party once they become nearly unuseable, but is there any other option?

Should I be spending the money early, focusing on key heroes to keep "stable" and letting others come and go as the weeks/missions progress?

I'm on Radiant and still making sense of the system.

Just wish I had stayed out of the courtyard so some of my good heroes didn't contract the Crimson Curse.

[Sillicha]

You dont have to dismiss anyone, but if you do it like that you have to pull your guys trough and maybe focus a bit more than others on upgrading the sanatarium so its cheaper to get rid of diseases and bad quirks, also the stress facilitys will be more important since you cant just kick an inflicted hero out of your hamlet, you have to treat them. If you play like that you better want to do full light runs so stress is less of a problem and look up wich curio interactions cause you to get bad quirks.

Also, always keep your cursed and your healthy guys seperated, if you put them in the same facility the curse will spread.

Also also, you might have to abandon quest if your party runs danger in loosing members, but that only if you realy want to keep everyone alif and care for them.

[Shakja]

You can play however you want to.

Some people keep all their heros and maintain them through the sanatarium. You can save money for deseases by using camping skills in medium and long runs.
Others ramp up the "experienced heros" option on the coach as fast as possible and dismiss everyone who has too many really bad quirks to replace them with new ones from the coach that rea already upgraded.

Both strategies are valid and on radiant you have enough gold to keep things going even when you spend the occasional 5k on a negative quirk that's become crippling.

[Pseudok]

There are very few bad quirks that you really, really have to remove. Some combinations of extra stress can become troublesome, and personally I hate forced curio interactions. But with a keen eye you can check the quirk list - if the hero has Fear of Eldritch, don't send that hero to the Coves, for example.

You can save a pretty penny by removing bad quirks via some curio interactions.

Diseases, on the other hand, are pretty severe. Removing them isn't all that costly, though.

When a hero with mostly bad quirks maxes out on stress and you want to save a little money, ditch him or her.

Locking good quirks is not advisable in early game. If you really want that, you might want to look for quests in Weald that give you "Caregiver's Convention" - that makes Sanitarium free from all costs for a week.

Hope this helps.

[Uncle Al]

There's a definite hierachy of how bad quirks are, from completely harmless, like torn rotator on an arbalest because she has no melee skills at all, to some quite annoying ones, like compulsive and kleptomaniac.

If you limit yourself to only removing really deleterious quirks, and do it before they're locked which increases the cost about fivefold, it shouldn't be a huge drain on your resources.

Don't let anyone with forced interaction quirks (ones like curious, bloodthirsty etc.) party with an antiquarian. In order to get the benefit from her she has to be the person to interact with a curio, so party members with those kind of quirks can really ruin the benefits of using her.

There are zones that are particularly good for removing negative quirks for free:


The cove and the warrens. Using torches on the scrolls in the warrens or herbs on the eerie coral in the cove removes a random negative quirk, even if it's locked. Always take herbs to the cove!

[1Erik1]

On my Stygian Mode save I absolutely cared for pretty much everyone except lvl 0 characters that failed a mission(and did not have exceptionally good positive and possibly negative quirks like negative melee for arbalest or negative ranged for Hellion/Leper).So I naturally pretty much valued the sanitarium as much as the guild/smith,most of the time even higher and focused on getting the extra slots for quirk removement and price reduction asap.

Granted though I got very lucky by having my first Ancestral Trinket,which I got very very early (thank you Shambler), be the Map,so I kinda had the funds due to secret rooms and other benefits like stress heal from traps.

And I also min/maxed and was very carefull,like switching trinkets to make the character with most stress disarm the trap safely with the map.

And I got most of hamlet upgraded and completed the Darkest Dungeon somewhere between 60-70.

And I activated the dlc near the end so I had to spend a couple weeks on dealing with mosquitos and stuff(not because I had to,but because I wanted).I probably could have completed it between 50-60.

I also didn't loose any characters until the final battle,but even if I had I would have still had enough for all the DD missions as my rooster was pretty much full of champions with locked in positive quirks for DD missions like Eldritch Hater.

So yeah,caring is good for ya.Especially since it's an investment that pays off even if it ain't too obvious.Like being able to cleanse curios because no one has a negative quirk associated towards it thus gaining back the lost resources through extra loot.

The system basically favors caring for your people,but that also depends on your experience and ability to evaluate risk & reward,either by going for curios or evaluating what negative quirk NEEDS to be removed and what can stay forever/is not that hindering on gameplay for now.

And the sanitarium is also pretty much mandatory for me in conjunction with higher lvl heroes from stagecoach as they have sooo many negative quirks in exchange for their higher lvl.It's like getting a stray dog,you need to give him ALL the flu shots before you even let him into the house(dungeon).

Like for example people fascinated with corpses are really bad if you go into weald/warrens as you can't get food cheaply from carcasses thus you have to prepare accordingly,but not a real issue in ruins because there aren't any food curios there.So removing a bad quirk like that on someone with many ruin specific positive quirks should not be your highest priority as you will use him in ruins anyways for now.

With experience you will sooner or later go the route of caring.It's more beneficial and actually faster for gameplay in my point of view,but for beginners not.So don't get too fixated on the "Don't care" strategy.Once you feel familiar with the game ramp up the difficulty maybe and start investing in characters from the beginning.

[Saint Rocco]

A lot of great suggestions, I really appreciate it everyone. I think my first task is to focus more on upping the Sanitarium. So far I've sort of spread out the upgrades and might have handled the stress ineffectively. As the weeks roll on, does the game punish in any way?

Like, will there be a point in which I can't go into the Small/Medium dungeons anymore because the areas have simply become too powerful from me jerking around?

[Panfilo]

The main issue people tend to have is accidentally over leveling too many people before you can afford to upgrade their skills, weapons and armor. If you are stuck with ten level 5 heroes that are like 2/2 then it will be a problem when they can only go to champion dungeons but are woefully under equipped for it.

The key to avoiding this is to have a large stable of heroes you can rotate through, so that most of your guys are still doing apprentice or veteran and their upgrades aren't insanely expensive. With these guys you can save up money to equip your high level guys.

[Sillicha]

Originally posted by Saint Rocco:

A lot of great suggestions, I really appreciate it everyone. I think my first task is to focus more on upping the Sanitarium. So far I've sort of spread out the upgrades and might have handled the stress ineffectively. As the weeks roll on, does the game punish in any way?

Like, will there be a point in which I can't go into the Small/Medium dungeons anymore because the areas have simply become too powerful from me jerking around?

No, you wont get punished for taking your time. Its random if the quests are short/medium or long and the difficulty depends on the heroes in your roster. If you only have lvl6 heroes you can expect to only get champion missions. And even with every dungeon "finished" and week 200 or so you will still get apprentice missions if you have some low level heroes.