Lods Emone: Making the Most of the Antiquarian

With the worst damage in the game and a mediocre set of abilities, new players may wonder what the point of the Antiquarian even is. She is, in fact, one of the most useful characters in the game, able to drive your terrible quest onwards using the sheer power of unbridled capitalism. This guide is aimed at helping you get the most out of your mysterious smoking lady.

Introduction

I see a mysterious woman from the East in your immediate future. She is armed not with a broadsword or musket, but a censer and a backpack. She doesn't have much health, she can't scout, she can't disarm traps, her resists are poor, her attack is quite frankly crap and her abilities mostly revolve around hiding behind somebody else. I urge you to hire her, though. Why? Because:

• Any curio in a dungeon the Antiquarian successfully interacts with, and every enemy a party containing her defeats, will usually drop an Antique, worth either 500 or 1250 gold. You can stack 20 to a slot of the former, 5 of the latter. Because of their stackability these things are more valuable than anything else you will find in a dungeon, beating out even Puzzling Trapezohedron over the long run.
  
• Any party containing the Antiquarian can stack gold to 2500, rather than 1750.
  
• These effects are cumulative. You will roll for an antique for every Antiquarian you have in your party, and each one will raise your gold limit by 750.
  
• If somehow your backpack is still not full towards the end of a medium/long dungeon, the Antiquarian can cheaply produce random trinkets in camp.

These abilities make Antiquarian the workhorse of your hamlet. She turns any mission into a potential bonanza, enabling you to purchase all those upgrades and cures that have frustratingly remained out of your fiscal reach. In New Game+ she is actually essential - with time limited, you desperately need the extra gold she provides to keep pushing towards those all-important L5 upgrades.

The Crimson Court DLC/general update did not buff Antiquarian directly, but did a fair bit for her indirectly, most notably by giving all her trinkets significant buffs. DLC only stuff is marked.

The trick is to make sure a mission involving her is successful, because make no mistake, the only thing Antiquarian is good at in combat is avoiding damage. As ever in Darkest Dungeon, it's all about smart party composition. Let's first look at her abilities in full, and then discuss the best way of making the most of them.

Combat Abilities

Nervous Stab

The Antiquarian's only straight up damaging move. It does little, but AQ can use it from any rank against any of the enemy's front three ranks, making it surprisingly versatile. Although it certainly shouldn't be relied upon to do anything significant, because of her speed AQ is actually a decent cherry tap, able to finish off badly hurt enemies or tip them into the range where their blight/bleed will before they can act. For this reason, your AQ should have this.

Festering Vapours

The AQ can use this blighting attack from any rank against any enemy rank. That's where the good news about it ends. It deals a pathetic amount of damage over time (12 damage over three rounds at its very best) and the blight-weakening feature is worthless: spending a turn weakening a blight-resistant creature just so another blighter has a better chance of inflicting it is the epitome of wasting time. I strongly recommend ignoring this one entirely.

Get Down!

Moves the AQ back a rank whilst boosting her speed and dodge. The move back bit is the important part - this ability gives the AQ synergy with one or two other heroes whilst boosting her ability to go first and make the enemy whiff shots. It's also good if you get surprised, helping your team get back into position whilst not wasting a turn. Worth having.

Flashpowder

Judging the least useful of the AQ's combat abilities is tough, however congratulations must go to Flashpowder for going that extra mile. Whilst doing no damage, it lowers a single enemy's ACC a bit. For it even to work in the first place, AQ has to both hit the enemy and pass their debuff resist; this is why debuff abilities have to be good to consider using. And Flashpowder isn't. It lowers a single enemy's ACC a bit. A similar effect - only much better and spread across your whole team - can be achieved by focusing on the AQ's dodge abilities, and they can't fail. Don't waste your money upgrading this.

Fortifying Vapours

From the back two ranks, the AQ can use this healing ability on anyone. A bad mistake inexperienced players can make is imagining this allows AQ to act as a healer. "1-1" is not a typo: it does almost nothing. All it enables the AQ to do, thanks to her quick speed, is get someone off death's door, or do a small heal whilst waiting for the last enemy to be finished off by blight/bleed. You can boost it using the Arbalest's own heal, or via her Candle of Life trinket, but it's never going to enable her to act as your Vestal/Occultist.

Invigorating Vapours

Boosts the whole party's dodge a bit. Aside from the fact it's limited to the back two ranks, this is one of AQ's better abilities, particularly if you're running a dodge build with her. It's a stat that's easily underestimated but there's no better defence than the enemy not hitting you in the first place, particularly at higher difficulties. +9/+10 Dodge at its best is not bad, and will probably save you taking one or two hits.

Protect Me

Forces guard on another character, and bestows upon them some PROT and dodge. I regard this as the AQ's most useful ability. It can be used from any position, enables some good synergy with other characters, and even if you're lacking those it buffs one character and puts another out of harm's way for a while. I strongly recommend levelling it up.

Camp Abilities

AQ isn't so bad in camp, providing some utility options which are good for eating up morsels of time between the big investments.

Resupply (1)

This one is like an improved version of GR's Pilfer, producing a random supply item for a single unit of time. Uniquely you can use it three times in a single camp. Good if you're generally running low and want to gamble on getting something you need.

Trinket Scrounge (2)

I generally don't use this because I rarely have space for trinkets, but I know other players who swear by it. 17/25 chance it gives you a common trinket, otherwise something better. Even common trinkets sell pretty well, so if you've got the space using 2 time units to gamble isn't the worst thing you can do.

Strange Powders (2)

This gives another character a resist buff right across the board. This is great to use on Leper if he's present, or otherwise on the AQ's designated buddy.

Curious Incantation (1)

AQ gives herself a 50% stress resist. Battles involving the AQ have a nasty tendency to drag on, increasing character's stress. This is a great way of stopping the AQ from flaking out at least for a bit, and is well worth a single time unit.

Tactics

A successful mission featuring the Antiquarian can easily pay out twice the amount of loot than without her. Choosing to use her, then, is a form of risk assessment: Is the rest of the team strong enough to carry her, or are you better off taking a fully combat-focused group?

The most important thing, when designing your AQ team, is to make sure she's got a buddy. This is the guy who she is either going to be casting Protect Me on, or the guy who is going to be casting guard on her.

Riposters

The best options are the two classes who set up riposte on themselves: Man-at-Arms and Highwayman. Although the riskier choice, HWM is my personal favourite. With Duelist's Advance, he moves forward, does decent enough damage and then slashes anyone that tries to attack him back - or the Antiquarian, once she has cast Protect Me on him. HWM's low health has to be offset, though, by boosting his dodge even further. Dodgy Sheath and Feather Crystal are good choices for trinkets, and AQ can help him out using Invigorating Vapours.

An even more gratuitous tactic you can chase with these two is exploiting AQ's Get Down! with HWM's Point Blank Shot. If positioned in the front two rows with him, AQ can continually push HWM forward whilst making herself increasingly difficult to hit. It makes HWM very one-dimensional but extremely powerful, particularly if he's been given ranged attack-boosting trinkets like Gunslinger's Buckle. The other useful thing about HWM is that he's a good trap disarmer and scout, making up for the AQ's deficiencies there.

Man-at-Arms is the sturdier choice. He works in much the same way as HWM - get AQ's Protect Me on him and then use Retribution - however he's more about tanking damage than dishing it out. If you're minded to use AQ's other abilities he can cast Defender on her, boosting his own PROT significantly. Something like the Book of Sanity is a good trinket choice for him, because whilst damage isn't as serious a concern for him he is likely to eat a lot of stress attacks.

Other Options and Synergy

With their ability to heal off damage and stress as well as place PROT on themselves, Leper and Abomination both make strong AQ buddies. Indeed having them as well as the HWM/MAA has the makings of a very solid team.

Two other options are Graverobber and Houndmaster. Through Shadow Fade and various trinkets GR boosts her own dodge immensely, enabling her to work as a brilliant Protect Me target. If you have her in the second row and AQ in the third, AQ can use Get Down! to push her buddy forwards to use it again, if you don't want to use the GR's Lunge. It can be difficult to set up a team to support them both but if you can do it do it, it works extremely well!

Similarly to MAA, Houndmaster can use Guard Dog on AQ. Again, the key to making this work is boosting HM's own dodge with trinkets so nobody can touch him - and making sure you have plenty of firepower in the other two ranks.

Finally, as already mentioned, Arbalest can boost AQ's own heal using Battlefield Bandage so it doesn't completely suck. If you have Healing Greaves Arbalest + Candle of Life AQ + somebody who can heal themselves like Leper at the front, you can get away with not taking a healer.

DLC Only

Flagellant makes for a truly excellent AQ partner. Since he actually aims to get hit, somebody who forces Guard on him is exactly what he's looking for. Make sure to have both his powerful <50% health abilities for best results.

Supplies, Other Loot and Quirks

• Take generous amounts of supplies with you if you're using Antiquarian. Firstly, you very much want her to be able to interact with every curio you run into. Study the curio chart to see what supply item you need for what![darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com] She will repay the investment several times over if the quest is successful. And a quest is successful if your heroes don't die of bleed, blight or stress.
  
• Some forms of loot are outmoded by the Antiquarian. Unless you have the space for them on a short run, citrine bars and jade are not worth keeping at all. You can only stack four, so that's 1000 gold at best. Jet and emeralds represent a decent gamble without the Antiquarian, since there's a chance you'll find four to stack and end up with 2000 gold. With her, they're probably no longer worth the gamble - throw them to stack more gold if you have less than four, since you're more likely to find that. Even sapphires and rubies might be worth chucking if you're really stretched! They're extremely rare so you might wind up with 1000 gold when you could have had 2000.
  
• Try and get any form of curio-interaction-forcing quirk off Antiquarian as soon as you can. Things like Curious, Kleptomania and Compulsive are absolute poison to her, and if an AQ has these you shouldn't hire her in the first place. Evasive and any kind of stress reducer are the ones to lock in for her, if you've got the money.

Trinkets

Red Hook had no problem giving all of Antiquarian's unique trinkets no downsides, presumably because her base is so weak. Or maybe she's just better at finding good ones?

Bag of Marbles

+10 Dodge

This remains a good choice right until the end, particularly if you're fixing to run AQ without using Protect Me. Ultimately her best combos don't really need it.

Bloodcourse Medallion

+33 Healing Received

Eh. It makes her own heal suck slightly less, but you should be aiming to make sure she doesn't take damage in the first place.

Carapace Idol

+25% PROT

Decent enough. You can run this with the Medallion and suddenly she can take hits like a champ (relatively speaking). Although the aim should still be to avoid hits, there are worse things that could be run on her.

Fleet Florin

+4 Speed
+30% Debuff Chance

I thought this was her best unique trinket before they chose to buff it. AQ is already fast - with this she's pretty much guaranteed to go first, enabling her to get her buffs down straight away. It's really useful to know which of your heroes is going to act first, particularly if you're using movers like HWM, MAA and GR. It also makes her two least useful attacks better, particularly Flashpowder, if you want to run her a dedicated DODGE build on her.

Candle of Life

+50% Healing Skills
+25% MAX HP

Only sounded crazily good when it was just the Heal buff, now actually is with the HP buff on top. Maxed out, Fortifying Vapours is still only healing 5-6 HP, which is like a bad Wyrd Reconstruction roll. As mentioned above if other characters are buffing it using abilities or trinkets (Recovery Charm, for instance) you can just about get away with using AQ as a healer, but you need to be doing literally everything possible to make it work.

But with the 4-11 HP increase as well, you'd be foolish not to be running this thing if you have it. Use her fast speed to top heroes off with her heal wherever you can.

Hope this guide helps, and happy antique hunting!

[Pant Eater]

They changed her a lot, actually. I keep meaning to update these guides... but I'm chronically lazy.

[Ichthyic]

don't know why this guide got high marks. it's terrible.

maybe they buffed the aq since it was written, but other than pure offensive damage, her other abilities are far more useful than was alluded to here.

reducing accuracy stacks each turn. after two turns, you are making bosses whiff your entire party regularly.

that's not useful?

whatevs.

people... don't pay attention to guides... just play the game and learn.

[Quartic Quetzalcoatlus]

Thank you for writing this guide. Your guide has helped me immensely, however, I was wondering about the AQ's Crimson Court Trinkets. Just reading the effects as well as the set bonus makes me think that RedHook liked the idea of buffing the everloving shit out of the AQ. The base effects of the Master's Essence and Two of Three make an incredible case for bringing Festering Vapors, with The Master's Essence boosting blight and debuff skill chance as well as +50% to healing skills. Two of Three further encourages Festering Vapors or a blight team in general with a +50% DMG and +5% CRT against blighted enemies. Individually these tinkets make a strong case for a blighter AQ, but together they provide the Fleet Florin's speed buff (+4 SPD) and the Bag of Marbles's dodge boost (+10 DODGE). What do you think about running an AQ set with the moveset Nervous Stab, Festering Vapors, Invigorating Vapors, and Fortifying Vapors while carrying The Master's Essence and Two of Three?

[invokeVoid]

About Flashpowder - it is more effective if you fight bigger enemy that is still possible to debuff more or less reliably, than to buff your team. Since +Dodge is basically same as enemy -ACC, assuming we interact same character, and Flashpowder got bigger debuff than a respective buff. I you have more than one enemy or that enemy can't be debuffed with a good chance - buff would do better, obviously. Also debuffing accuracy in case you have many high dodge characters is actually a good idea.

[Dead2Rights]

My favorite loot team is this - Antiquarian / Highwayman / Man at Arms / Jester.

Starting off the first round it's always like this:

Antiquarian - Invigourating Vapours.
Highwayman - Duelist Advance
Man at Arms - Bolster or Bellow
Jester - Solo

After that the Antiquarian puts "Protect Me" on the Highwayman and the Man at Arms guards the jester. Jester does Finale and goes to the back rank. Highwayman does Point Blank.

You can also synergize the Highwayman and the Man at Arms by using Advance on the HWM and Rampart on the MAA so that you get 1 stun and 1 strike any rank every turn. Jester can then boost crit or use a stress heal or solo again.

This team has like zero healing because as you said the Antiquarian is crap even when given good trinkets, but debuffing enemy accuracy and boosting dodge mitigates most damage anyway.

[Rer]

This was extremly helpful, thank you very much!

[Looking]

Good god, i play like a jew, i have around 50000 gold sitting around in my bank by week 20 and i had to see this, dammit, im going to take 4 antiquarians next dungeon.

[Chen]

Flashpowder is one of my favorite skills. Any boss being hit with this + dodge on party... the boss can't even hit us. I wouldn't say to waste money upgrading the said skill; that skill saved our arses a lot. Lo and behold, it's still effective on higher tier dungeons!

[Ihodael]

My 5 cents on using Antiquarian: level 2 of them with Stab, Festering Vapours and whatever, together with a Vestal (stun + heal) and a Helion (stund + damage). Get them to level 2 and equip them. Once level 2 go on Long and Medium lvl 1 dungeons and make sure to collect as much loot as possible but NEVER finish the dungeon (quit before that). Keep one camp for the end of the dungeon for healing stress. You will be swimming in tons of gold.

[Triggered]

Thank you for this guide i never knew what she was capable of until you enlightend me man. good guide