Unlocking Bosses and Difficulty

[GarbageCollector]

I can't seem to find an answer to what seems to be a relatively simple question: Does the difficutly of a non-boss expedition impact how much progress it makes toward unlocking that area's boss?

I know that the more difficult the boss, the less an expedition unlocks. I also know that the longer the expedition, the more it will unlock. But I can't find anything that explains whether green/yellow/red expeditions change anything.

So, put in example format. I need to unlock veteran hag. I have a long apprentice mission and a long champion mission both available for weald. Will it matter which I pick?

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by smokytehbear:

I can't seem to find an answer to what seems to be a relatively simple question: Does the difficutly of a non-boss expedition impact how much progress it makes toward unlocking that area's boss?

I know that the more difficult the boss, the less an expedition unlocks. I also know that the longer the expedition, the more it will unlock. But I can't find anything that explains whether green/yellow/red expeditions change anything.

So, put in example format. I need to unlock veteran hag. I have a long apprentice mission and a long champion mission both available for weald. Will it matter which I pick?

Yes.

I'm not sure how exactly it correlates to the Resolve XP awarded by level, but it progresses more for higher XP missions.

In the bar over the available missions on the Embark screen, there's a skull and if you mouse over it, there's a tooltip that tells you what % you have toward the next boss, which goes up if you finish a mission.

I wouldn't worry about overdoing it, though, because if you get more progress than you need, it rolls over to the next boss. The only real issue is if you want to take certain heroes to a specific mission, don't accidentally over-level them.

This article has a table of the different values.
https://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Resolve_Level

[GarbageCollector]

Oh right. Yes I know the resolve XP for heroes is higher, but what I'm referring to is the boss progression.

Oddly, the wiki here seems to sort of sneak around an actual answer:
https://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Expedition#Unlocking_bosses

It only clearly lays out that longer expeditions unlock a boss faster, but I'm unsure whether to take their omission of any discussion of difficulty levels as evidence that difficulty is irrelevant. I suppose I could easily just test it and report back.

The only reason I have any concern at all is because I'm playing on Bloodmoon, and also want that achievement that does the same thing, saying I need to win in 99 weeks. I'm totally cool with playing it safe with less difficult expeditions and taking less risks to avoid deaths, but not if it's going to bog me down too far and get me caught in a time crunch at the end of the game. Really, really want to avoid having 4 weeks left to do 4 darkest dungeon quests if you know what I mean.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by smokytehbear:

Oh right. Yes I know the resolve XP for heroes is higher, but what I'm referring to is the boss progression.

Oddly, the wiki here seems to sort of sneak around an actual answer:
https://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Expedition#Unlocking_bosses

It only clearly lays out that longer expeditions unlock a boss faster, but I'm unsure whether to take their omission of any discussion of difficulty levels as evidence that difficulty is irrelevant. I suppose I could easily just test it and report back.

That's also what I'm referring to. There's a progress indicator indicating how close you are, and it goes up after missions, and goes up more after longer missions, just like you get more XP from longer missions.

I'm not sure if it scales up with other things like +XP% town events or not.

[GarbageCollector]

So essentially, Resolve XP as a system works for the regions too? The same way it works for heroes?

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by smokytehbear:

So essentially, Resolve XP as a system works for the regions too? The same way it works for heroes?

I'm not sure if it does in every respect, or just some, i.e. length of mission seems to increase progress toward the next boss.

Oh, I just found the actual article. This answers it.

https://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Boss#Unlocking_bosses

Unlocking bosses requires successful expeditions in the relevant location. The longer the expedition, the more progress is made towards unlocking the boss. In detail:

For Apprentice bosses, successful short expeditions will increase the unlocking progress by 50%, medium by 75%, long by 100%.
For Veteran bosses, successful short expeditions will increase the unlocking progress by 33%, medium by 50%, long by 67%.
For Champion bosses, successful short expeditions will increase the unlocking progress by 25%, medium by 38%, long by *40%. *(source: ingame observation from July 8th, 2018, Bloodmoon difficulty).
Excess unlock progression from expeditions which unlock the boss DO appear to carry over to the next boss. (egs. at 50% progression to unlock apprentice Hag, a medium mission will unlock the boss AND progress to unlocking the apprentice Brigand Pounder by 25%)

So it would seem that length is the consideration.

[Narrowmind]

Okay, it seems to be saying that the harder the mission, the less the progress progression to unlocking the next boss. The length of the mission is the most important factor. Am I reading this right?

[GarbageCollector]

That's what that particular wiki entry seems to imply. But that strikes me as odd so I will have to check manually. I'll let you guys know what I find out.

[GarbageCollector]

Just positively confirmed that there is no difference in progress for unlocking veteran bosses between completing a medium veteran expedition vs a medium champion expedition.

Both increased the progress meter by 50%, as the wiki had predicted.

Difficulty of completed expeditions has no impact on region progress.

[Skinny Pete]

Originally posted by smokytehbear:

Just positively confirmed that there is no difference in progress for unlocking veteran bosses between completing a medium veteran expedition vs a medium champion expedition.

Both increased the progress meter by 50%, as the wiki had predicted.

Difficulty of completed expeditions has no impact on region progress.

Thanks. So that answers the question.

I guess this means in theory you could cheese your way to a boss you wanted on easy missions.

[GarbageCollector]

Right. There's a few nuances to that though. Most notably you don't get nearly as much gold for completing the actual quest at lower levels, though if you play it right you could make up for this with how much easier it is by grabbing boatloads of loot (thinking Antiquarian here especially). You definitely need this cash to level up items and skills for the higher levels which you'll of course have to do eventually.

Also and maybe more importantly, you'd have a harder time getting access to legit trinkets. Most of the early level ones are pure garbage. The vendor's prices are absurd so that's no alternative. You could in theory make up for this partially with the Shambler since he's so much easier in lower levels, but idk. I think you'd be counting on RNG a bit to not have one helluva time with underpowered gear when you're forced to finally do the champion level quests.

I guess last consideration is that you need to actually have heroes that can go on those quests for them to keep appearing. Having overleveled heroes taking up all your spots in the roster would stop you from having green missions from appearing so you're going to need to spend some stuff on stage coach upgrades it would seem. Not a bad idea anyway but it might come as a tradeoff.

Ultimately the best strategy would seem to be mixing early and higher level stuff as you can manage them to progress, unsurprisingly. But it's good to know definitely that expedition difficutly won't slow you down if you're trying to make sure you don't get caught in a bind time-wise late game.

It seems like the hard and fast takeaway that basically always applies is: Never do shorter expeditions unless you have to.