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Supraluminal
Feb 17, 2012

ZypherIM posted:

More accuracy in general is good on everyone, things tend to do more damage and have better success rates. Upgrading equipment is a bit more expensive but is a really big increase: damage, speed, hp, dodge. You should be able to afford it pretty easily, if not you might be spending money on stuff unnecessarily or missing out on curio loot. If you want suggestions on that go ahead and ask, I know some people don't want that but I'd be happy to outline how I go about it. Other options are to do a fresh group on a dark run, just take a stack of food and a couple shovels on a short run.

Don't worry about level 2's out leveling things. All the bosses can be beat by a decent level 1 party, and higher level stuff usually has better quest payouts so you want to get up there eventually.

I would like to hear more. I also just picked this up in the sale, and while I'm enjoying some aspects of it I do have a hard time earning enough gold to feel like I can make much headway. I get wanting the player to have to make hard choices but it's kind of not fun when I'm struggling to meet the bare necessities of stress management and supplies let alone paying for training, equipment, and sanitarium visits.

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the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe

Supraluminal posted:

I would like to hear more. I also just picked this up in the sale, and while I'm enjoying some aspects of it I do have a hard time earning enough gold to feel like I can make much headway. I get wanting the player to have to make hard choices but it's kind of not fun when I'm struggling to meet the bare necessities of stress management and supplies let alone paying for training, equipment, and sanitarium visits.

The early game can be a real meatgrinder because characters level up too quickly to keep up with upgrades and you don't have the tools to clear missions efficiently. Early on you shouldn't be spending too much at the Sanitarium--if someone's quirks and diseases are manageable you live with it, and if they're not feel free to cut them loose unless you're really attached to them (e.g. zomeone with upgrades on them and/or really good positive quirks.)

Characters are an expendable, renewable resource--don't go overboard jettisoning them because that just wastes valuable experience, but recruit new ones freely and concentrate your investments on the best ones. There's a happy medium between being broke because you're trying to coddle everyone that walks in the door and being short on experienced heroes because you keep firing everyone after a couple missions.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!
Regarding characters out leveling content, and the eponymous only one guy is level 2 thing: remember that dudes can fight UP content just fine, they will not refuse to do so though their barks will have them saying its suicide or whatever. If you have someone in an awkward spot, just saddle them on a shorter Veteran quest with a couple folks who know what they're doing and you will probably be fine.

FourLeaf
Dec 2, 2011

Supraluminal posted:

I would like to hear more. I also just picked this up in the sale, and while I'm enjoying some aspects of it I do have a hard time earning enough gold to feel like I can make much headway. I get wanting the player to have to make hard choices but it's kind of not fun when I'm struggling to meet the bare necessities of stress management and supplies let alone paying for training, equipment, and sanitarium visits.

What I did was grind constantly using newbies on no-light runs to get better treasure until I had 150,000 gold. At that point I had enough money to remove negative quirks on the few heroes I didn't immediately fire, and enough heirlooms to fully upgrade the important buildings in town. But the vast majority of heroes were being fired.

Today, all my heroes are levels 5-6, and they are all negative-quirk free with fully upgraded equipment. When you no longer need heirlooms and can focus purely on getting treasure, finishing long-level dungeons at levels 2 and 3 typically nets around 25,000-35,000 gold. So even though getting rid of all negative quirks was super expensive, I still have ~100,000 gold right now.

The obvious downside to this is that it takes a very, very, very long time to grind up that much gold using newbies (I am currently on week ~200). But once you have a level 3-4 team that can handle long dungeons you quickly start making insane amounts of cash.

My advice? Take the "heroes are disposable" thing to heart until you are rich.

FourLeaf fucked around with this message at 03:08 on Oct 11, 2015

sullat
Jan 9, 2012
Also, you get more loot if you do runs in the dark. So if you need some cash, just grab 4 dudes and throw them in the dark. A long level 1 mission will usually net about 20k in gold if you finish it, and the nervous wrecks can be either fired or rehabilitated depending on your whims afterwards.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Ok so the basic rule of thumb is 8 food+8 torch+1 shovel per dungeon length. Take one extra shovel for the weald, it likes to spawn extra walls. I take a bit more curio stuff for medium than short lengths, but for long lengths I don't take extra usually, since you'll have enough fights to fill everything up. If you want it is pretty cheap to extend the food per length to 12 (1 stack), which gives you a bit of a buffer for bad luck or some out of combat healing. Longer length dungeons 16-24 torches will get to be too much, but I'm not sure a good amount, and some of it depends on how you manage your camping.

Also keep in mind that the 250gp gems are worth the least, so once you're looking for stuff to throw, straight gold coins are 500 more for that inventory slot. 500 gp gems are great because you'll almost always get 3-4 of them, the 1k gems can be a bit weird because you could get up to 4k but often you'll just have the one. If you just need a pile of cash to upgrade guys, go ahead and chuck the heirlooms as you find more money stuff, or if you find usable items that don't have a use in that area you can chuck those.

Do short runs with fresh level 0 guys, but if they're level 1 and you're not so broke you can't go try to do medium. Camp skills are great and can make some parties have an easier time, and you're more likely to fill your inventory.

Here is a link with the curio list, and what resolves them. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=386706480


Ruins. 1 herb, holy water, and key. Bump up to 2 for medium length. Herb is for alchemy table or iron maiden, holy water is just for the urn, and key is display case or locked tomb. If you know there are no walls, shovels can open display case or tomb for almost as good loot.

Warrens. 1 bandage, holy water, and torch. Bump to 2 for medium. Bandage is for knife board, holy water only on pile of bones, and torch on the scrolls removes a negative quirk. Make sure you don't torch the pile of BOOKS, that gives you 100 stress.

Weald. 2 bandage, 2 antivenom. 3 bandages, 2 antivenom, and a key for medium. Bandage is spider web tree and mummy. Antivenom is the old tree and left luggage. Key is just left luggage. You can shovel shallow graves, and if you find holy water the effigy gives a positive quirk.

Cove. 1 shovel, 2 herbs. Medium I do a full stack of shovels and herbs. Shovel opens barnacle chest and the giant oyster. Herbs on the fish carcass gives loot, herbs on the eerie coral removes a negative quirk. In a long cove taking even more herbs hoping to get lucky is a thing I've thought about.

Personally I don't open stuff I don't have an item for, if you have a complete throw-away party its probably worth it to click everything. Lower light gives better loot but can be a bit dangerous, if you know what you're doing it is perfectly possible to run no torches.


For upgrading the hamlet, I'd make sure you get stagecoach to bring you 4 guys a week, then expand it slowly as you want to. Probably around 12-ish is good to let you have 2-3 teams. I try to keep blacksmith/guild unlocked to my highest guy, which uses all my scrolls/portraits so my stress relief is usually abbey stuff, and ignoring most of sanitarium except the really bad stuff.

Pre-emptive edit: fourleaf's strategy is valid, but I'd want to stab my eyes out doing that. It also isn't really needed, an extra one here and there should be more than fine.

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
What, no herbs for the warrens? You can cleanse the food carts/tables for huge piles of food (good for healing in a pinch) and detoxify the liquor casks for a MASSIVE buff until the next time you camp.)

Wafflecopper
Nov 27, 2004

I am a mouth, and I must scream

Coolguye posted:

Regarding characters out leveling content, and the eponymous only one guy is level 2 thing:

That's not what eponymous means :eng101:

merriam-webster posted:

Definition of EPONYMOUS

: of, relating to, or being the person or thing for whom or which something is named

eg: When the game is released, we will have access to the eponymous Darkest Dungeon.

FourLeaf posted:

What I did was grind constantly using newbies on no-light runs to get better treasure until I had 150,000 gold. ... (I am currently on week ~200).

Counterpoint: I played normally and had my heroes and hamlet maxed out before week 100 and also can afford to cure all serious negative quirks and diseases and am sitting on 100k.

Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 04:12 on Oct 11, 2015

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Gabriel Pope posted:

What, no herbs for the warrens? You can cleanse the food carts/tables for huge piles of food (good for healing in a pinch) and detoxify the liquor casks for a MASSIVE buff until the next time you camp.)

No, because it isn't really worthwhile. Stacks of food don't really do stuff, and the damage buff is nice but not something you really need. I'll bring herbs if I'm doing a boss, and sometimes I'll bring 1 on a medium+ length mission. If you're playing risky click then using them just lowers chances of actual loot as well.

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe
Eh, I suppose the damage buff is somewhat less important now that the damage calculation has changed but it was pretty fantastic before.

Food is pretty useless most of the time and I normay don't bother either, but having that source of emergency heals available when/if you need it is pretty great.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

It can be nice to have the buffer, agreed. This is focused more on making the dollars though.

Another tip: if you're in the last room and the quest is done, snuff the torch before looting any things in the room. Bonus loot for low light for up to 1 inter-actable with no risk.

FourLeaf
Dec 2, 2011

Wafflecopper posted:

Counterpoint: I played normally and had my heroes and hamlet maxed out before week 100 and also can afford to cure all serious negative quirks and diseases and am sitting on 100k.

drat, how did you manage that? When I was playing normally at the beginning my people were constantly dying, wasting the cash I had spent to fix them, and I was always running out of money. Finally I just said "gently caress it, I'm not investing in anyone else until I have a nice cash buffer."

I know I wasted a lot of time by only doing suicide runs through short dungeons. Less risky, but it gives you less treasure so it takes many more weeks to accumulate gold.

In a strange way, the upper level dungeons are almost easier than the lowest level dungeons. The only time I had people over level 2 die was fighting the Swine God.

Wafflecopper
Nov 27, 2004

I am a mouth, and I must scream

FourLeaf posted:

drat, how did you manage that?

I dunno man, I just played. Lost a few dudes along the way, mostly in boss fights, but it was all good. I guess my overall strat is to always bring a healer (usually a vestal, occultist works too though, they average out about the same despite the variance), have someone able to hit the back ranks and prioritise killing bad guys who have stress attacks, then ranged DPS, then melee DPS, then tanks. Having a pull can be really handy too, pull ranged bad guys to the front so they and the melee guys that are now behind them have to use a weak attack and your melee guys can hit them. I know some people run stun or guard/dodge parties to avoid damage and I know it works but personally I usually just go with dedicated heals, it's worked for me. You can cheese the system a bit by dragging out fights by hitting corpses when there's only one guy left to give your healer time to heal your team up before proceeding, but it's not usually necessary. Remember you can run away from fights and abandon quests if necessary, you still get the loot you've picked up so far.

Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Oct 11, 2015

Typical Pubbie
May 10, 2011
Picked the game up on the Steam sale. I really enjoyed the first few hours but I definitely agree with the criticism about a lack of variety. The game lost steam pretty quickly for me. I'm also not convinced about tacking town management onto roguelikes. In my experience this either has the effect of reducing the difficulty of the game down to a trivial level, or in Darkest Dungeon's case, adding an additional grind to the game that's more frustrating than it is rewarding. Still a decent game but I wouldn't recommend it at full price.

Fleve
Nov 5, 2011

Thanks for the additional tips on gold and provisions, I think I was spending way too much on provisions and when it came to upgrading stuff I was out of money really quickly.

I haven't seen it on the wiki or anywhere else, but does stress relieve just by having your guys in the hamlet? I could swear I've seen the 'stress relief' white flicker when I got back on some of my previous guys, without putting them into any therapeutic drinking sessions, but I don't remember how high they were exactly.

Iron Chitlin
Sep 3, 2011

I need to use the bathroom!

Fleve posted:

Thanks for the additional tips on gold and provisions, I think I was spending way too much on provisions and when it came to upgrading stuff I was out of money really quickly.

I haven't seen it on the wiki or anywhere else, but does stress relieve just by having your guys in the hamlet? I could swear I've seen the 'stress relief' white flicker when I got back on some of my previous guys, without putting them into any therapeutic drinking sessions, but I don't remember how high they were exactly.

Yes, people who have sat out a mission will recover a small amount of stress every week. It's not much and a high stress character will be better off visiting the tavern or the chapel, but its a nice little bonus.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

I think when I see people complain about the lack of variety I also see them not exploring stuff with the party makeups. You can build your party to handle combat very differently, and from area to area different things are better or worse. Taking a bunch of blight options to the warrens is bad, as is bleed in the cove, but swap the two and you've got a decent to good attack. You can make parties where all your attacks are using +forward and/or +back attacks, juggling your party order and handling surprise attacks really well. You can set up a marking party, or one with dodge/guards, and then you have low/high light variations as well. There are more as well, those are just ones I thought of off the top of my head.

If you build all your parties in a similar way then of course it is going to be similar. That is like always playing the exact same class/race in a rogue-like and then saying every run is pretty similar.

I think the town is supposed to be a little frustrating, because it sort of forces you to not always have an optimal state for your guys, which adds tension. Combined with running low light, I find a nice amount of tension as I feel I need to make good choices and handle fights properly, while still having the risk of a huge crit or something putting me in a bit of a scramble situation. More tension than I've had doing crawl or tome runs for sure.

hooman
Oct 11, 2007

This guy seems legit.
Fun Shoe
I restarted with the most recent patch, two of the first trinkets I got were +% healing.

Having +50% healing on a vestal is pretty amazing for keeping the entire party full on health.

Fleve
Nov 5, 2011

I don't envy the developers for having to balance the game. They seem to have things just right at the start, though it's probably a bit too harsh for anyone new to it (including myself). But once you're over the hump, the tiny incremental upgrades have far more impact than I thought they would. Unless I accidentally take a misfit group, like dudes with bleed into ruins/cove, running low level short or medium dungeons barely even raises stress anymore.

When and with what upgrades is it a good idea to advance to the veteran stuff? I'm getting a decent amount of level 2 guys, but unlocking the level 2 upgrades will take a bit longer.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

You'll want to wait until your guys are level 3, with at least the level 2 upgrades. It'll go smoother if you get them fully upgraded to level 3 stuff before going. If you bring level 2 guys into the veteran dungeon they'll start off with some stress (like level 0 guys in the level 1 dungeons), and stuff in veteran can be a little rough. They'll be some new enemies in each area, and everything will have more hp/dmg/resists which is generally more dangerous, but also some enemies are going to be living through stuff that was killing them before.

This holds true for going up to the level 5 dungeons as well. If you start to feel things in general are just too easy, go ahead and try running some dark runs. Basically 0 torch gives you 3% crit and a lot of extra loot, but monsters hit a lot harder, are more accurate, and you're more likely to be surprised.

botany
Apr 27, 2013

by Lowtax

ZypherIM posted:

Ok so the basic rule of thumb is 8 food+8 torch+1 shovel per dungeon length. Take one extra shovel for the weald, it likes to spawn extra walls. I take a bit more curio stuff for medium than short lengths, but for long lengths I don't take extra usually, since you'll have enough fights to fill everything up. If you want it is pretty cheap to extend the food per length to 12 (1 stack), which gives you a bit of a buffer for bad luck or some out of combat healing. Longer length dungeons 16-24 torches will get to be too much, but I'm not sure a good amount, and some of it depends on how you manage your camping.

Also keep in mind that the 250gp gems are worth the least, so once you're looking for stuff to throw, straight gold coins are 500 more for that inventory slot. 500 gp gems are great because you'll almost always get 3-4 of them, the 1k gems can be a bit weird because you could get up to 4k but often you'll just have the one. If you just need a pile of cash to upgrade guys, go ahead and chuck the heirlooms as you find more money stuff, or if you find usable items that don't have a use in that area you can chuck those.

Do short runs with fresh level 0 guys, but if they're level 1 and you're not so broke you can't go try to do medium. Camp skills are great and can make some parties have an easier time, and you're more likely to fill your inventory.

Here is a link with the curio list, and what resolves them. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=386706480


Ruins. 1 herb, holy water, and key. Bump up to 2 for medium length. Herb is for alchemy table or iron maiden, holy water is just for the urn, and key is display case or locked tomb. If you know there are no walls, shovels can open display case or tomb for almost as good loot.

Warrens. 1 bandage, holy water, and torch. Bump to 2 for medium. Bandage is for knife board, holy water only on pile of bones, and torch on the scrolls removes a negative quirk. Make sure you don't torch the pile of BOOKS, that gives you 100 stress.

Weald. 2 bandage, 2 antivenom. 3 bandages, 2 antivenom, and a key for medium. Bandage is spider web tree and mummy. Antivenom is the old tree and left luggage. Key is just left luggage. You can shovel shallow graves, and if you find holy water the effigy gives a positive quirk.

Cove. 1 shovel, 2 herbs. Medium I do a full stack of shovels and herbs. Shovel opens barnacle chest and the giant oyster. Herbs on the fish carcass gives loot, herbs on the eerie coral removes a negative quirk. In a long cove taking even more herbs hoping to get lucky is a thing I've thought about.

Personally I don't open stuff I don't have an item for, if you have a complete throw-away party its probably worth it to click everything. Lower light gives better loot but can be a bit dangerous, if you know what you're doing it is perfectly possible to run no torches.


For upgrading the hamlet, I'd make sure you get stagecoach to bring you 4 guys a week, then expand it slowly as you want to. Probably around 12-ish is good to let you have 2-3 teams. I try to keep blacksmith/guild unlocked to my highest guy, which uses all my scrolls/portraits so my stress relief is usually abbey stuff, and ignoring most of sanitarium except the really bad stuff.

Pre-emptive edit: fourleaf's strategy is valid, but I'd want to stab my eyes out doing that. It also isn't really needed, an extra one here and there should be more than fine.

Hey can we put stuff like this in the OP please? It's very helpful for people like me, who are bad & dumb at games. Thanks

Freaking Crumbum
Apr 17, 2003

Too fuck to drunk


botany posted:

Hey can we put stuff like this in the OP please? It's very helpful for people like me, who are bad & dumb at games. Thanks

here is another link to a similar list of every dungeon interaction, along with what items have what % effect of causing which outcome.

Magical Zero
Aug 21, 2008

The colour out of space.
Is it just me or does this game completely lack the charm of actual roguelikes? After playing for a few days it seems to be basically an enormous amount of repetitive fights where a string of bad rolls can remove hours of progress. There's no cool poo poo like using an unidentified scroll at 1HP and getting away from certain death - or getting sent to the abyss. It also feels so incredibly slow to play since apparently adventurers can only travel by slowly shuffling through various identical rooms. The combat system itself is good and every now and then you get a fight that actually makes use of positioning etc, but it seems pretty drat rare. Maybe my expectations were just wrong.

Cream-of-Plenty
Apr 21, 2010

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering."

Magical Zero posted:

Is it just me or does this game completely lack the charm of actual roguelikes? After playing for a few days it seems to be basically an enormous amount of repetitive fights where a string of bad rolls can remove hours of progress. There's no cool poo poo like using an unidentified scroll at 1HP and getting away from certain death - or getting sent to the abyss. It also feels so incredibly slow to play since apparently adventurers can only travel by slowly shuffling through various identical rooms. The combat system itself is good and every now and then you get a fight that actually makes use of positioning etc, but it seems pretty drat rare. Maybe my expectations were just wrong.

Out of curiosity, what were you expecting? I understand the "sameness" of the hallways and rooms, but that seems to be really common thing in roguelikes.

I definitely wouldn't mind a little more "unknown" in the game, though. Mysterious scrolls and potions. Class-specific weapons that may or may not kill you. That sort of thing.

Magical Zero
Aug 21, 2008

The colour out of space.

Cream-of-Plenty posted:

Out of curiosity, what were you expecting? I understand the "sameness" of the hallways and rooms, but that seems to be really common thing in roguelikes.

I definitely wouldn't mind a little more "unknown" in the game, though. Mysterious scrolls and potions. Class-specific weapons that may or may not kill you. That sort of thing.
I don't think that's necessarily a common issue in roguelikes, for instance games like Dungeon Crawl has a bunch of different terrain with various properties that you can (try to) use to your advantage. And even if sameness was a major problem the differences in enemies, items, shrines, traps, etc more than make up for it. Not to mention the ability to actually traverse terrain in different ways - ie. flying, teleporting, jumping. In this game you can... shuffle forwards in the same direction.

I guess I was just expecting a bit more freedom in movement and exploration, more random and weird things, more item choices, more difficult combat. For me the game becomes formulaic and repetitive fairly quickly. It looks good, though.

Sigma-X
Jun 17, 2005

Magical Zero posted:

Is it just me or does this game completely lack the charm of actual roguelikes? After playing for a few days it seems to be basically an enormous amount of repetitive fights where a string of bad rolls can remove hours of progress. There's no cool poo poo like using an unidentified scroll at 1HP and getting away from certain death - or getting sent to the abyss. It also feels so incredibly slow to play since apparently adventurers can only travel by slowly shuffling through various identical rooms. The combat system itself is good and every now and then you get a fight that actually makes use of positioning etc, but it seems pretty drat rare. Maybe my expectations were just wrong.

I had pretty much the same feeling, and yeah it ultimately comes down to a lack of wildly variable content and glacial pacing.

Coolguye
Jul 6, 2011

Required by his programming!

Wafflecopper posted:

That's not what eponymous means :eng101:


eg: When the game is released, we will have access to the eponymous Darkest Dungeon.
It gave the identity to the issue, hence my usage of the word. It might not be 100% correct, but it is more than close enough to not require a 'WELL ACTUALLY..............' post.

docbeard
Jul 19, 2011

I definitely think there's room for them to add more variety to the game. They've absolutely got a solid foundation to build on, and I'm hoping they continue to do so.

SlothBear
Jan 25, 2009

docbeard posted:

I definitely think there's room for them to add more variety to the game. They've absolutely got a solid foundation to build on, and I'm hoping they continue to do so.

I wonder how "finished" is the game at the moment? I see on the map there's just the Darkest Dungeon left but is that just a placeholder or will there be more?

Also man, level 3 dungeons are brutal. I thought I had the game figured out after being able to do level 1s easily enough. Nope! I run into a giant that one shots my bounty hunter and the next aoe attack deathblows him. Ouch.

Azran
Sep 3, 2012

And what should one do to be remembered?
There's the Darkest Dungeon planned, two classes (Merchant and the Lord-tier backer class) and from then on I guess they could eventually add some expansions to the game after release.

ZypherIM
Nov 8, 2010

"I want to see what she's in love with."

Magical Zero posted:

I don't think that's necessarily a common issue in roguelikes, for instance games like Dungeon Crawl has a bunch of different terrain with various properties that you can (try to) use to your advantage. And even if sameness was a major problem the differences in enemies, items, shrines, traps, etc more than make up for it. Not to mention the ability to actually traverse terrain in different ways - ie. flying, teleporting, jumping. In this game you can... shuffle forwards in the same direction.

I guess I was just expecting a bit more freedom in movement and exploration, more random and weird things, more item choices, more difficult combat. For me the game becomes formulaic and repetitive fairly quickly. It looks good, though.

I typed a bunch of stuff, but I think it basically boils down to you and sigma wanting a game much closer to something like crawl or qud, where you have a plethora of choices and you use a very small set of them. Combined with a more open concrete map instead of a more abstracted one. I can go into more detail about why, and crawl is full of perfect examples of basically all your complaints about darkest dungeon.

Out of curiosity, what level did you two get to, and what parties were you using? I'm taking a guess that you guys didn't do any low light adventuring either.

Fleve
Nov 5, 2011

Those paragraphs and list of curios have been a wonderful help, especially for whenever I don't want to feel dumb for having forgotten what item to use again.

I'm also slowly learning what damage-type to bring where. Does this sound about right? Bleed doesn't work well in the ruins or the cove, but it's decent in the warrens and weald. Blight doesn't work well in the weald, but it's ok in the ruins & cove, middling in the warrens.

I feel like I'm getting stuck with a preferred setup too often and can't quite get comfortable with the other heroes, and whenever I bring them it feels like they need to be carried by the 'proper' guys. I love all the melee guys for rank 1 & 2, except the leper. Crusaders are great, man-at-arms are ok, hellions are awesome I only wish I had more than one. I don't mind bringing a leper, but not being able to attack the back two rows feels really bad when that's usually where all the poo poo lives. For my own back rows, usually I go with a highwayman and vestal, graverobbers are ok too, especially for blight on bosses.

I like the plague doctor's stun, but that's it. After the two back rows are dead, there's not much point to the doctor, his blight is usually too late to make any difference. I'd rather bring a grave robber or highwayman. And I just can't get my head around the guys that rely on mark heavily (bounty hunter mostly, but also the arbalest). I can understand that marking something and then killing it, taking two actions, might be about equally effective as two guys attacking once (though a hellion and crusader can often one-shot things for me now), but that seems a lot less flexible than allowing two guys to do their thing, and a lot of other guys can also one-shot stuff with a lucky crit. I want to like the jester and hound master, but apart from the jester solo-finale thing I can't seem to make them to anything significant in combat. Perhaps it's because I don't have a level 2 houndmaster yet. (edit: Huh, also forgot about the dog treat, seems that thing can be pretty awesome)

Fleve fucked around with this message at 10:47 on Oct 13, 2015

Wafflecopper
Nov 27, 2004

I am a mouth, and I must scream

Yeah mark is only really good against bosses and big tough targets where you can get a few attacks in before it dies, like swinetaurs and bone generals, which you might not have run into yet if you're just starting. If you're running a leper you might want to bring a pull. The occultist's is especially useful as it also clears corpses even if the pull is resisted, so you'll always have something for your leper to hit. That said I don't really use lepers much myself, I'd sooner have a hellion or two crusaders cycling holy lance to hit the back ranks without having to use someone else's turn to pull them to the front. (Pulls are still great for messing with the AI's formation though.) Personally I don't both much with blight or bleed (aside from If It Bleeds which I use more for its ability to hit the third rank), normal attacks work just fine. They have the same problem as mark where my other guys can usually finish the target off before the DoT has ticked more than once. Most high prot enemies aren't that dangerous and can just be left to last anyway.

Wafflecopper fucked around with this message at 11:11 on Oct 13, 2015

dogstile
May 1, 2012

fucking clocks
how do they work?

ZypherIM posted:

I typed a bunch of stuff, but I think it basically boils down to you and sigma wanting a game much closer to something like crawl or qud, where you have a plethora of choices and you use a very small set of them. Combined with a more open concrete map instead of a more abstracted one. I can go into more detail about why, and crawl is full of perfect examples of basically all your complaints about darkest dungeon.

Out of curiosity, what level did you two get to, and what parties were you using? I'm taking a guess that you guys didn't do any low light adventuring either.

I kinda agree with them. I had a blast with this game and still pick it up every now and again, but I don't really have any stories to tell. I don't come away from it thinking "brilliant, my other DD playing buddies would find that great". The occasional moment where instead of snapping from stress your guys gets buffed is a good example of what gets me talking about games.

Maluco Marinero
Jan 18, 2001

Damn that's a
fine elephant.

dogstile posted:

I kinda agree with them. I had a blast with this game and still pick it up every now and again, but I don't really have any stories to tell. I don't come away from it thinking "brilliant, my other DD playing buddies would find that great". The occasional moment where instead of snapping from stress your guys gets buffed is a good example of what gets me talking about games.

I think that's part of the problem with having no real lose state. Sure you can lose some characters, but its a set back and nothing more. Also the difficulty of the dungeon crawling tends to be less variable, like if a run goes south its very unlikely you'll pull it off, but if you're rock solid and well supplied there is not much that can stop you aside from getting hosed by the RNG.

That might actually be the other key element, is that there's not enough risk vs unknown reward play in the dungeons themselves. All the interactive elements can be solved with the right consumable. Very rarely do you have to risk over exploring to fill up your loot stack. In fact most of the time you can just do a full clear without too much drama.

It's like DD needs to put more pressure on you to get in and get the job done quickly, so there's more dangerous situations to skirt, not just an unexpected gently caress you encounter that you couldn't have planned around.

THE BAR
Oct 20, 2011

You know what might look better on your nose?

Azran posted:

There's the Darkest Dungeon planned, two classes (Merchant and the Lord-tier backer class) and from then on I guess they could eventually add some expansions to the game after release.

I hope the lord tier back class will be an actual Lord class, like an empoverished noble or something.

the holy poopacy
May 16, 2009

hey! check this out
Fun Shoe

Maluco Marinero posted:

It's like DD needs to put more pressure on you to get in and get the job done quickly, so there's more dangerous situations to skirt, not just an unexpected gently caress you encounter that you couldn't have planned around.

This is kind of self selecting, though. You can take things slow and careful if you want, but that's the less interesting and more time consuming way to play. The game gets a lot more fun if you're willing to play it fast and loose.

I agree 100% about the lack of enemy/dungeon variety, though. The devs have said they'd like to do another pass of the first 3 dungeons to put in some more interesting enemies, so I really hope they get around to it before release.

GladRagKraken
Mar 27, 2010

THE BAR posted:

I hope the lord tier back class will be an actual Lord class, like an empoverished noble or something.

The impoverished noble already exists. It's the graverobber

THE BAR
Oct 20, 2011

You know what might look better on your nose?

GladRagKraken posted:

The impoverished noble already exists. It's the graverobber

I suppose there already is a supporting class, akin to what I want, in the man-at-arms, but point taken.

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sullat
Jan 9, 2012
Yeah, I think the game does need some sort of time pressure. Some sort of eldritch horror gaining strength while we are messing around

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