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2) Stop messing with curios. Seriously. Unless you know what to use on a curio and want it's result, don't touch it. Conversely, don't buy up everything in huge lots when you are equipping. short run 8 torches, 12 food, a shovel (maybe 2 if you're flush and definately if you're in the Weald), a key or two, maybe a few other items that you know are likely to lead to big scores with curio interaction. That should be it. Be ready to drop stuff in favor of treasure if you are near the end of a run. Fill treasure space intelligently. A single saphire is worth a full stack of jade. Gold is more common then gems. Trinkets can be sold for good money - often more then a stack of gold.
3) Figure out your tactics - there's a bunch that work, but mostly it's about stopping large stress build up in exchange for HP. Also remember that it's nice to have everyone at max HP, but it doesn't matter when you are done with the dungeon if your heroes are all on death's door. Stress holds over to the next mission, health is fixed.
Dismiss low level heroes that would be too expensive to fix. Just hire new ones.
Don't bring too much provisions, because the money is lost, if you don't use them.
A quick "trash-run" with 4 level 0 heroes without provisions can easily give you a profit of 3k and more. Retreat an inch before everyone is dead :D ...then send the traumatized survivors home
The urge to lock in quirks can be strong, but you should first focus on having all important town stuff at minimum cost and then a nice cash buffer, like 100k.
When a medium or long dungeon goes especially well, you can use the camp after you have achieved the mission goals, just to reduce stress therapy costs.
Once the town is fully (or reasonably) upgraded, you will swim in cash, because heirlooms are no longer needed, so every gold coin and gem will be brought back home.
Don't be too quick to sell 'crummy' trinkets. At low levels, the low level trinkets can give you that slight edge. What will be junk later on can give you that bit of survivability to edge out a successful mission.
I've been pretty successfully doing dark runs in short dungeons with teams freshly recruited from the stage coach, with modest trinkets and equipped more fully than what DarkSkay describes. Giving those heroes a bit more of a buffer in terms of equipment and trinkets means that I can complete the missions - which then are tending to clear nearly 10k gold! A few of those can make a big difference in your cash flow. Depending how badly it went I may even get another dark run out of them. I run them into the ground on dark runs and then dismiss.
Even heroes I'm not intentionally grinding into the dust, I dismiss once they have more than 2 locked negative quirks (doesn't take long), high stress levels (never mind afflictions) and one or more diseases. Those guys will cost on order 8k to fix up, which just isn't worth it.
I upgrade the town with an eye towards no more than I need - I'm not bothering with level 3 skills, armor or weapons because I'm not doing any of the apprentice boss runs yet.
So, at 25 weeks, I've got about 8 level 2's, a roster of about 20, 3 deaths, MANY dismissals, MANY afflictions, 30k and a modest handful of trinkets that give my party comps a little edge. My roster has lots of negative quirks, and more than a few that are locked. BUT there are a few gems starting to shine through in my roster. I've locked a few quirks (accuracy on a Leper!) and am grooming heroes for the boss battles.
It feels much more strategic than prior builds. There is NO way to keep up with the treatment costs at low levels, and you don't have treatment slots to do so anyway. It makes you live with the people you have or callously cut them loose. I've done far more dismissing with this build than prior, and I never did dark runs before. But the need for cash to be able to keep even a few heroes in non-basket case condition mandated it!
You can have cool stuff happen like your last guy standing near death's door fighting against the last 1-2 monsters in a gamble to complete the quest. Something you obviously never see and do with valuable parties.
Although from a profit standpoint bringing a single shovel (250g) and maybe even a bit of food (like 1 food to get off death's door) increases your chances of success enormously.
Yeah, no hurry to sell them, as long as you have enough cash to finance your expeditions.
- Don't abandon quests with level 0-1 characters. They are expendable. Finish the quest, or die trying.
- You can sell trinkets. Shift click.
- Upgrade the Stage Coach ASAP, then the Guild, and the Smith. Upgrade the skills at the Guild, and Weapons and Armor at the Smith.
- Guide studying is good, study gear and curios. You can get a lot of loot, and buffs by using the right gear on curios. And know which curios you will encounter on each stage.
- You can bring any and all classes on every stage, but some will be more helpful than others. For example in The Ruins a Plague Doctor or a Grave Robber will help because they have skills that cause Blight (useful against the Unholy, which are immune to Bleed).
- Equip classes with skills that can target any enemy rank, and Dots for enemies with prot.
- Each class is usable and effective, it's just a matter of knowing how to play or gear that class. Example: A Leper naturally has low acc, but with the proper trinkets and leveled skills the Leper can be a killing machine (he can clear all corpses too).
1)The Weald seems to be much more difficult. At least with regards to stress... Is there a reason why this would be?
2)The piles of thorns or stone that you clear with a shovel... It seems whether I use a shovel or not, they do damage AND a lot of party stress. There seems to be little difference in doing it with or without. Am I missing somethig on how to deal with these?
Thanks again! Keep the tips coming!
The <variation> Gnashers have high dodge, so if you have a Jester/MAA with Command it helps clear them faster, but they are usually not problematic. The <variation> Giant has a lot of HP, but is vulnerable to bleed/debuff and pretty easy to stun, like most Weald monsters. Houndmasters with their AoE bleed and stun (esp. with +30% Stun trinket) really shine in the Weald.
Ectoplasms should be killed first and quickly. If you feel you're gettting overwhelmed by them, bring them all to low HP (so they have no space to duplicate), then dispatch all of them in one round. This tactic works, since Ectoplasms have low speed.
2) You have to click on the shovel, not the button on the left!
Id say dark runs arent worth it... personally
If you provision well you can easily pull 8 to 10k gold from a short mission with full to medium torchlight, I dont honestly feel dark makes that much of a difference. Maybe in level 5 dungeons it starts to notice but then its even more risky. I have a full roster of 5s and 6s now and honestly once you figure out how to pull in the cash and how to maximise profits getting 8 to 10 per short run is a breeze ive come back with 15 to 20 many times from mediums with full torchlight.
The other downside of dark runs (aside from the higher chance of death) is your guys tend to accumulate more stress and negative quirks and over time the modest amount of extra gold is easily eaten up by the increased stress healing and sanitarium stays you need.
I think the economics of dark runs actually works best at apprentice level. You have $0 invested in the heroes, so your ROI is high - it is only relative to the costs of the supplies you send in. If you send them with no supplies, the ROI is infinite, technically. That's a bit of a joke, but more seriously, the level zeroes have no opportunity cost for using (and losing) them.
If I send a bunch of level 3's on a veteran dark run, there's one of two scenarios. Either I've upgraded them at the Guild and Armorer, so they have a decent chance of actually competing, or I haven't and they are unlikely to be able to make full use of the dark run. If I've upgraded them, then those costs massively decrease the ROI. Even if the veterans haven't been upgraded, just burning them represents an opportunity cost in terms of the weeks spent leveling them up - all that will be for naught if you burn them out and dismiss them.
So, I'm not sure I would go for dark runs at higher levels - the risk ramps way up in terms of lost investments.
Upgrade the stagecoach first, so you've got a decent pool of recruits to pick from.
After that, blacksmith/guild.
It gets easier later on.
Early game, you're taking level 0 characters into level 1 areas, and level has a big effect. There's a whole world of difference between an upgraded level 1 character with improved weapons, skills and armour and a level 0, and it doesn't help that you probably haven't gotten a feel for the system yet.
Don't focus too much on healing - it's better to kill the enemy than to heal a character, since healing is a catch-up game; best case, your healer can negate the damage being done by one enemy.
Speaking of healing, it's a lot easier to heal HP than stress, so if you've got a choice between killing a Bone Courtier or a Cultist Brawler, get the skellington erry time.
Every character is useful, but some are easier to handle.
Buffs/debuffs aren't usually worth it, unless it's something that does both at once or is, say, Vulnerability Hex. A Plague Doctor with a stun amulet and a speed item is really nice; pretty decent odds of locking down the enemy back rows for the first turn. The Hellion's stun is cool too, but it's situational. Again, you want to kill stuff fast, and the stuff you want to kill first is the enemy back ranks; they generally do nasty things, and anything that puts them out of action is good. In the case of the Plague Doctor, that means seriously considering using her stun to keep them quiet while you kill them with the rest of the party.
Camping skills are great - the Arbalist, Hellion and Highwayman stand out for sheer 'HOW much damage?' but most classes have at least one that's cool.
Bring food, torches and shovels - I like 12/10/2 for a short run; starving and blockages do so much stress damage that I figure 1500 gold or so worth of insurance is worthwhile even if I don't run into any blockages or hunger events.
You can sometimes shortload food when going into the Warrens or Weald, if you know what to use on what curio for a free lunch, but it's occasionally unreliable. As with most occasionally unreliable things, it'll often seem that your luck runs out at just the wrong moment.
And finally, speaking of luck: it's not biased, it's just that you only notice the streaks when the enemy gets them. You can go a whole quest with a non-stop parade of Wyrd Reconstruction 8s and 10s and Grapeshot crits and Surprised enemies and hardly notice; when the enemy's the one getting lots of crits and concentrated damage, it's a lot more apparent.
Occasionally everything goes wrong fast; if someone dies or gets Afflicted, it's time to follow Brave Sir Robin and run away, because if you continue you'll almost certainly get into a failure spiral and THAT train has no brakes.
Works OK with an overleveled party of characters you're not especially invested in, especially something like Grave Robbers who won't even notice a Surprise! shuffle.