Tips for THEE Darkest Dungeon? (lvl 6)

[Hadley333]

Attempting a first run at the darkest dungeon where you have to kill shuffling horror. It's my first run, so kinda terrified. First thing I noticed is that I can't see the layout of the map.

How long is this dungeon? I'm trying to figure out when to use campfire. So far I cleared about 6 rooms. Even when scout kicks in, It doesn't show what's in the room. I'm terrified lol.

[Pixel Peeper]

It's actually not very long. If you take the most direct route, it's about the length of a Short dungeon... there's like three, maybe four fights before the boss? Just make sure you''re not running in circles. It should be quickly apparent what kind of layout you're dealing with.

You've already fought in it, so you know the deal. Loads of stress, very serious damage, and strong bleeds. And the boss' name itself is a strong hint: it will shuffle your party.

Remember that, should you succeed, all your characters will become unavailable for further Darkest difficulty missions. Fortunately they won't count towards the roster anymore, and their experience will impress lower-level characters if they run together with your DD survivors.

[Solo Death]

I had a really ridiculously in depth explanation that I'll go find real quick, brb. Mostly about party comps so i won't post it unless you want it.

Edit: found it. let me know if you wanna see it. Forward warning if you do, it is basically an essay.

The first dungeon, just keep going right, really. Not much else to it. For campfire use, when you see a hallway that appears to be really long heading to the right that isn't the first one, that's where you want to camp, as that's the home stretch.

Definitely bring a stress healer, and definitely bring a party that can handle shuffles well. Trust me, you WILL regret it if you take a Leper, Arbalest, or Crusader.

[LaserGuy]

My tips:
-Bring a full set of bandages. You will definitely need them, even with a Plague Doctor in the party. Holy water for the boss at least and a few medicinal herbs aren't a bad idea.
-Most enemies are humanoid or eldritch, so plan for that.
-Generally kill enemies in the order Witch > Priest > Brawler > Cultists. An important note: If you get a battle with two cultists and nothing else, you can stall indefinitely, take no damage, and heal yourself to full. This is super useful in the 2nd DD area in particular. Cultists are healers/protectors though, so depending on how the battle goes, you might need to kill them earlier if your party damage isn't very good.
-High damage and/or battlefield control are essential. Damage is high, stress is high. You really need to limit the amount of incoming damage with kills or stuns. Brawlers are weak if pushed back to ranks 3-4, but most of the others are position independent, sadly.
-Supposedly you will never get ambushed on your camp.
-Boss is not that bad as long as you can tolerate some shuffles. Easily than Champion Shambler, IMHO.

[Xerkie]

Bring a lot of Bleed Resist. A Plague Doctor isn't ideal for the boss considering you could have other, straight-damage classes, and almost everything in the Darkest Dungeon causes bleed, from 1-3, bring full sets of bandages and some bleed resist on low-resist allies. Also, do NOT kill the Cultist Priest on The Shufflers fight. It may be tempting, but it'll only make the fight harder, as he summons a Defensive Growth with extremely high PROT that guards him every turn, or does a TON of stress dmg to all four of your units, I think +20 Stress for all. So, NEVER kill the Cultist Priest, bring tons of bandages, and lots of bleed resist. If, however, you need to, you can bring a PD if you're not using a damage-focused build, as the Shufflers fight can go on for a long time unless you burn him extremely quickly.

[Hedning]

The plague doctor is perfect for the final fight. You can stun the entire enemy party with her. Killing the cultist for a defensive growth is ok (although you are not guaranteed to get one possibly wasting the effort) as when it attempts to guard you just stun it, effectively wasting two of its turns. The growth won't crit you like the cultist will and it won't use its stress attack if it has an ally.

That said a hound master can take a big chunk of your stress away if placed in the back line. I am not as scared of straight up damage as I am stress, especially since the enemies have smart targeting unlike those in lower level dungeons, so I prefer hound master + crusader for a strong stress relief combo even though that doesn't leve room for the op plague doctor.

[Hadley333]

Originally posted by Tripoteur Ventripotent:

Remember that, should you succeed, all your characters will become unavailable for further Darkest difficulty missions. Fortunately they won't count towards the roster anymore, and their experience will impress lower-level characters if they run together with your DD survivors.

That is actually quite depressing :( I didn't realize that. I love the grind in the game but I think that tears it for me lol. I've read all the tips, thank you everyone.

[Arrrtyom]

Originally posted by Solo Death:

Definitely bring a stress healer, and definitely bring a party that can handle shuffles well. Trust me, you WILL regret it if you take a Leper, Arbalest, or Crusader.

What's wrong with crusader? The guy has holy lance. And since his other skills are all ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all you need is his holy attack skill (whatever), stun, holy lance and stress heal.

[Solo Death]

Originally posted by Artyom:

Originally posted by Solo Death:

Definitely bring a stress healer, and definitely bring a party that can handle shuffles well. Trust me, you WILL regret it if you take a Leper, Arbalest, or Crusader.

What's wrong with crusader? The guy has holy lance. And since his other skills are all ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all you need is his holy attack skill (whatever), stun, holy lance and stress heal.

Yes I forgot about Holy Lance, my mistake. How are his other skills ♥♥♥♥? Battle Heal and Bulwark of Faith are worse than useless, granted, but what's bad about Smite or Zealous Accusation?

[Hedning]

Battle heal is a great skill. The more healing skills to take allies off deaths door you have the better. Inspiring cry is not strong enough to heal a tick of bleed. Battle heal on the other hand may be. A crusader with Inspiring cry, battle heal, holy lance and smite is a good and safe pick for dd1.

[Arrrtyom]

Originally posted by Solo Death:

Originally posted by Artyom:

What's wrong with crusader? The guy has holy lance. And since his other skills are all ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all you need is his holy attack skill (whatever), stun, holy lance and stress heal.

Yes I forgot about Holy Lance, my mistake. How are his other skills ♥♥♥♥? Battle Heal and Bulwark of Faith are worse than useless, granted, but what's bad about Smite or Zealous Accusation?

The 'holy attack skill' I mentioned was smite, hah. Zealous accusation does fairly crap damage to hit 2 targets (-40%damage) and since it's ranged, it means stuff like the ancestor's whateverthatis (+melee damage) wouldn't work on that. I guess it's not that crap as his bulwark, but it's rarely useful. After reading the below post, I guess it could be possible that his stun could be swapped out for battle heal. But it's still an overall 69% stun chance in DD against the minions iirc.