How to beat the Final Boss *Spoilers*

[Conditional Love]

Preface: Darkest Dungeon is awesome but the end boss needs to be fixed.

So you got to the final boss, congradulations. Now for the hardest level by far.


Too Long; Don't want to spoil it much, I recommend
- 2 Occulists each with stab, pull & heal
- Poison
- Bleed
- anti stress
- Stacks & Stacks of anti venom & bandages

(Part 1)

Killing: Boss & Clones. At this stage the boss is invulerable so you can only kill his clones. After killing his clones for awhile (at least 4 or so) he will spawn sometimes spawn "Flawed" Clones (B class) about 40% of the time approx which you can easily kill to take 1 hp from him (total 5 hp)

Surviving: Not a lot of damage really, but many many stress attacks from his A class clones and some high damage bleeds.

(Part 2)

Killing: Boss had something like 250-300 hp, nothing special. Although there are "3 Nothings" enemy which do nothing and you can't hurt. Their purpose is to make it difficult to attack the boss who occasionally does attacks which shuffles him to the the back. You'll need a pull or or attacks to hit him on the backline. One occultist with pull was enough for me

Surviving: Nothing special.

(Part 3)

Killing: nothing special. The boss takes up all four spots on his side. High prot. I recommend Bleed and Poison.

Surviving: Huge damage poison attacks.

(Part 4)

Killing: HUGE PROT and dodging. Your only real option is poison and bleed attacks. Suprising my Occultist with stab was getting in a few hits. Eventually I had to cheat "1 hit kill" because the boss wasn't losing any more health once he was at 46 of 250 or so (also I was down to one Occultist).


Surviving: The first three parts were difficult (in a difficult game), then this part is something you could say is now completely unfair. After rage quit after a wipe I went in again with cheat engine so I could freeze the value of my heroes health (so they couldn't lose or gain health, also freezing stress too otherwise the game will crash when you get heartattacks). Yes, I'm not ashamed to say I cheated here because it is utterly unfair.

In short, you won't survive this encounter. I'm talking getting hit by stress attacks of 100+ and group attacks all for 30+ damage easy.

But lets say you try again and are cheating so you can't lose health. The boss is still undoable because he does an attack which means you must chose one of your heroes to be the target - that hero WILL INSTANTLY DIE. If you have invincible heroes then you will be stuck in a loop of choosing until you disable invincible heroes.

[asdf]

... i actually found the last part of the darkest dungeon to be immensely easier than the rest of the darkest dungeon. You don't even need a healer (in fact, I'd argue you shouldn't even want to bring a healer since the 3rd stage will heal you to full anyway). The first stage is manageable through stuns - ideally you'd want a team that can alternate between killing 1 enemy and stunning 2 and then killing the 2 stunned enemies on the next turn and stunning the 3rd - I'm not sure if there's a way to do this reliably, but you should be getting as close to doing that as you can at any rate to minimize the number of attacks you take.

The rest of the stages can be rushed down by using a mark team (I think the ideal team for this fight would be 2x arbalest + houndmaster + bounty hunter probably). Mark him once, then just hit him over and over again with huge damage buffs on the marked attacks. If he's in the 4th position use the bounty hunter to mark, if he's in the first position try to uppercut him to push him back into range of the arbalests if you can (and the stun is always nice too).

I think if you had a good team composition and prepared for it well you could actually get through this fight with only 1 casualty fairly reliably even though he's scripted to use the deathblow attack twice, simply by killing him in 2 turns before he gets to his 2nd turn (I think with good RNG, ie. criticaling with everyone and/or getting lucky speed rolls that let you get back to back turns against him it might be possible to kill him before he ever takes an action and avoid casualties altogether).

[mattwinfield]

I agree with the above post. I found the final stage WAY easier than the others. I one shotted it unlike my failures in each previous stage.

I took the Red Hook team featuring Dismis, and Reynauld (poetic I know) and they were the last characters alive in the end. Fortunatly my Plague Doctor had the boss crazy DOTed up before she sacrificed herself.

Unfortunatly I didn't get my achievement for surviving with the original heroes :( Sad panda face

[Muscarine]

Err, yea, last boss is more of an atmosphere boss rather than an actual challenge.
First two parts are fun puzzles, one logic, one mechanic, sure you could lose over time, but it's not really the point.
You basically can't lose part 3, it's here to make sure you're at full health, and you can even stress heal. I had Reynauld spam Inspiring Cry. I think if you take to much time, Heart of Darkness will hatch with better stats scaled to how much life the Gestating Heart had left.

Heart of Darkness was designed so you could win even with a party of two.
Like mentioned above, by the time you reach end game you're supposed to know how to make a decent team comp, and this is all you need, the rest sort of plays itself alone.
It does have a bit of dodge, but nothing exceptionnal. If it really bothers you, grab an occultist or a MaA and have him debuff dodge, HoD resists are pathetic.
Also, pretty sure it has 0 PROT. I remember Reynauld and Dismas hitting for 20+ damage so i doubt it's the case.
Anyways, the only actual challenge is another puzzle : have a proper team line up, and don't mess it up by sacrificing someone who would make the survivors unable to use skills. Which in short means : kill your linebackers.

Originally posted by mattwinfield:

Unfortunatly I didn't get my achievement for surviving with the original heroes :( Sad panda face

Yes it's bugged, along with strict difficulty and NG+. It was ackowledged, now we just have to wait for a fix. Apparently Dismas and Reynauld only have to reach the end boss, it doesn't matter if they survive.

[CapAp]

Is the first phase really nothing more than repeatedly killing clones until he spawns 5 Flawed? I have only encountered it with probing raids (four level-0 heroes), and I had assumed I would have to kill all three clones at once to make the Ancestor lose immunity, making it a timing/DOT fight. This sounds like instead I just need to have as much DPS/stun as possible.

[Conditional Love]

Nope.

1) Once you have finished the first four(?) levels of the Darkest Dungeon (lighting beacons, killing a boss and etc.), the final level is what I described above. You have to do the darkest dungeon multiple times just like all the other areas.

NOTE: Once a hero has completed a level of the darkest dungeon, they CANNOT RETURN. You will need four new heroes to attempt the next level.

2) No special timing. Just killing many clones. Boss has immunity yo everything, although he only does minor damage

[CapAp]

Yes, I am aware of the way the DD works, I am currently on the final level. I just wanted to make sure that I was interpreting the mechanics of the Ancestor fight correctly. Thanks.

[AerinSwift]

After the previous sadistic "darkest" quests, the final boss is so easy. Setup: PD (Grenade, Noxious Blast, Battlefield Medicine) - Grave Robber (Pick, Dagger, Dart) - Hound Master (Rush, Whistle, Blackjack, Lick Wounds) - Hellion (Hack, Swan, YAWP!, Adrenaline Rush).
1st phase: stun 1-2 with Helion, 3 with Houndmaster. Kill everything with daggers and blight.
2nd phase: stack blight, bleed and throw daggers
3rd phase: repeat everything listed above
4th phase: blight and bleed stays after 3rd phase. This is so OP. Sacrifice PD and GR. Hellion and Houndmaster will finish the job.
Btw, don't forget to buy bandages and antivenoms.