newbie player, what dlc should I use?

[SpaceSR]

bought the complete pack. Mostly wondering if I want to use Color of Madness, and, well, how to play it. my first attempt in farmsteads ended in tragedy.

[Arroba]

no one . you should playing base game .

[Shadeon]

My usual recommendation would be to start off vanilla first, just to have a feel for the game's gameplay mechanics and difficulty.

Once you feel more comfortable, you can start enabling the Musketeer and Flagellant classes for adding a bit more variety when recruiting from the stagecoach. Musketeer is pretty much an alternate appearance for Arbelest with an identical moveset, whereas Flagellant focuses on bleed damage, HP regen, and a powerful bleed/heal if his HP is low enough. In other words, he generally performs better on low HP and/or high stress.

Shieldbreaker is another class too, focusing on repositioning, ignoring enemy guards with Puncture and blight damage. Bear in mind however, that when camping with one in your team, you may experience one of her nightmare battles (7 total) which must be overcome if she is to ever sleep peacefully again. Best to grant her -stress% buffs, just in case.

As for Colour of Madness (CoM), the first level is recommended with a team of Lv.2 heroes. It's main mechanic (at the Farmstead) involves no dungeon exploring, but instead fending off waves of enemies. Level 2 will involve a boss at the end, whereas Lv.3 is a repeatable level known as Endless Harvest, in which you kill as many enemies as possible (to gain as much loot as possible) until you either retreat or get party wiped.
Just be aware that once you clear the first level, a wandering boss may be encountered at a random biome (Ruins, Warrens, Wield or Cove) each week; killing it may yield a generous reward, but it's a tough one so be careful.

Districts is another way to spend your hard earned meta resources, allowing you to construct other buildings which grant passive buffs (i.e. buffs for certain hero classes, gained money interest each week, and so forth).

And finally, there's Crimson Court (CC), which I strongly do not recommend to newcomers. Includes a new storyline, a new area (Courtyard), new bosses (including a very difficult wandering boss), and a disease known as Crimson Curse, that's both contagious and deadly if not well managed.

Tl;dr, Start off vanilla, once more comfortable, enable the hero classes and Districts. Later you can enable Colour of Madness. Crimson Court not recommended for a first playthrough.

[Justice]

Originally posted by Shadeon:

Tl;dr, Start off vanilla, once more comfortable, enable the hero classes and Districts.

Isn't vanila experience if you enable dlc heroes and districts. These 2 dlc heroes are pretty overpowered. Town districts are game breaking with bank and food upgrades as well as specific hero permenant buff

[Shadeon]

Originally posted by Justice:

Originally posted by Shadeon:

Tl;dr, Start off vanilla, once more comfortable, enable the hero classes and Districts.

Isn't vanila experience if you enable dlc heroes and districts. These 2 dlc are pretty overpowered and districts are game breaking with bank and food, upgrades as well as specific hero permenant buff

Not sure entirely what you mean, vanilla is without any DLC (or mods). Once the player feels accustomed enough to the gameplay, then something like hero classes can be enabled first.

I say that, since hero classes have little impact on the overall gameplay complexity, compared to say, Colour of Madness or Crimson Court.

[SpaceSR]

Originally posted by Shadeon:

My usual recommendation would be [...]

Tl;dr, Start off vanilla, once more comfortable, enable the hero classes and Districts. Later you can enable Colour of Madness. Crimson Court not recommended for a first playthrough.

Well, I'm kind of a returning player, played a few hours of the base game years ago (from Twitch Prime or something?), so I do know the very basics. I'll go ahead and enable all the DLC that makes things easier, and hold off on CC. I'll let Color of Madness sit there, if I understand it won't alter difficulty until I actually start doing farmlands run.

I enabled three mods, one to speed up the UI, one that shows a suggested supplies loadout for each level, and one to make tooltips clearer. Hoping this'll give me a somewhat scrub-friendly yet balanced run.