Tips for the New Hamlet

[nuther]

If you start a new Hamlet, pay attention to any scouting bonuses you can get from a hero on the Coach. You might luck out and get a scouting trinket. Always keep keys on you and pretty soon you will be finding the secret rooms. In 10 weeks I had a stash of 40K. But hold on devs before you nerf it, I know how to get by without spending.

The next thing is stay in the Ruins and only do a few Weald missions to upgrade the Coach. I think you want to be able to improve the Sanitarium to 2 slot each and then make it cheaper on quirk removal/lock down. So, stay at 12 Heros at first. That should be enough for awhile.

Lastly, pay attention and lock down any Death Blow resists you can get: trinkets or quirks. You will save weeks of grinding by avoiding death or at least choosing death on your terms. If you do the first two things above, you should be able to afford number 3.

FYI - a second start over got me the Holy Orders off of the Necro on like week 5, 22K in bank, two upgrades to Treatment Center for lower cost. That's a good start.

[Madmax]

Originally posted by nuther:

Lastly, pay attention and lock down any Death Blow resists you can get: trinkets or quirks. You will save weeks of grinding by avoiding death or at least choosing death on your terms. If you do the first two things above, you should be able to afford number 3.

You are better off (particularly for end game) locking down +ACC, +damage, and +speed quirks. Deathblow resist is incredibly situational, since ideally you should be avoiding deathblows as much as possible.

Generally, I find better to focus on disease treatment over quirk treatment, at least at the beginning. Given the current XP increase rate, spending too much on quirk removal will hurt you in the long run, as you'll lack money to upgrade skills/armor/weapons for Champion dungeons. Once you have 2 disease-treating cells, you should be OK, particularly if you upgraded disease treatment. In that sense, I would recommend doing Weald/Warrens runs for as long as you can, focusing on developing the Guild and the Blacksmith, getting the upgrade levels you need and as many discount slots as you can.

Agreed on scouting though. That extra 7500g is great when you're starting out.

[wolkenwand]

Also try to always do the long quest. The rewards for long level in weald is 12 deeds regardess of difficulty level which is nice for your blacksmith upgrade.

[nuther]

Continuing on with this strategy, it is now week 8 and I have 4 out of 5 upgrades in the Treatment Library complete. The Prophet is unlocked. There is 30K in gold in my account and it costs $4500 to lock a quirk. That is quite affordable.

A team of 2 level 2s and 2 level 1s are ready to kill the Prophet and that will give the right Heirlooms towards the final upgrade.

[Ham]

My advice for new hamlet/new player is:

Upgrade coach first, mainly barracks, stopping at 4 new per week heroes is usually plenty. Keep a full roster, look for good starting quirks (lots of guides for that)

Upgrade tavern /medical ward etc for some cheaper stress healing and treatments but don't spend too much there. If a low level hero gets heavily stressed/diseased just dismiss them and get a new one.

Farm the low level dungeons with low level heroes, don't upgrade skills or armor. Play cheaply using your large roster, and upgrade cost reductions in guild and blacksmith. Learn all the curios they will generate a lot more loot.

You can equip some common trinkets but you really don't need any upgrades until you hit level 3 heroes, you should have plenty of gold for stress relief. You can unlock a skill if it's a core skill but usually you can work with what they have.

If you haven't upgraded low level heroes you won't mind so much when they die. Playin this way will also give you some time to learn the classes, dungeons, enemies and will give you some experience with decision making in battle.

As for locking in quirks it's definitely something you should be doing, but they won't get pushed off until your hero has run a bunch of dungeons, so again it's better to wait till they have a few levels and are getting close to having a good quirk bumped.

Hopefully by the time you are running L3 dungeons you should have your blacksmith and guild upgraded so upgrading weapons and armor will be much cheaper.

Things can go bad fast in darkest dungeon, sometimes the best you can do is not loose as much.

[a basic bitch]

Unless you have a serious problem with choosing a few of your characters, look up a list of backer heroes. Being able to choose a class or two can make a gigantic difference in the early game.

[nuther]

And finally on week 11 the Treatment Library was fully upgraded. This was also the first week that I located a secret room. $48K in the bank. One full team is level 3. Locking down quirks on low level Heros costs $3750. All this from doing Ruins first.

[nuther]

I wanted to continue to give feed back on this early Hamlet because there is so much discussion about over leveling the Heros and not being able to win a level 3 mission.

At week 16, I have just 5 Heros that are level 3. Thats enough to take a chance on a short level 3, but at this point, The Blacksmith cannot make level 3 gear and I dont want to risk it.

So, I am now shifting the focus from the Ruins to the Weald. Here is a picture of the next mission. I could choose to go after the Pounder, but instead I will take the long run. I just finished a long run in week 15 and got about 20 Deeds. In a week or so I will be able to get the level 3s the gear they need.

http://images.akamai.steamusercontent.com/ugc/316744920732878349/2ED4B3088D552EC76400A343E4365F4ACEE1EE99/