Darkest Dungeon - Survival Horror RPG Dungeoncrawl

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Darkest Dungeon - Survival Horror RPG Dungeoncrawl

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

What happens when you put Final Fantasy, X-COM and Dark Souls in a blender?
its....

DARKEST DUNGEON

Successfully Kickstarted for $313,000 in March 2014, its a very promising new RPG on PC and coming to PS4. ~~Now available on Steam Early Access!~~ Now finished! Buy it!

The art style is reminiscent of Hellboy's Mike Mignola and generally looks absolutely gorgeous. It looks even slicker in motion, using a combination of puppet animation and a diorama-style 2d/3d environment.

You venture deep into dungeons with a 4-man party of heroes, wandering through randomly generated dungeon arrangements, dealing with the traps and monsters that lay within. Combat is turn-based and highly strategic, based on party member positioning and special attacks.

Your party is formed from the heroes you recruit in town. Only four can be sent into a dungeon at a time, and you must send four. You have to pick a party order, so that one person is in front, one behind, one behind him, and one in the last place. Party members can change positions over time.

Once you venture forth, you head into one of 5 randomly-generated dungeon tilesets. (Ruins, Warrens, Weald, Cove, and The Darkest Dungeon) Each dungeon changes each time you go into it, and has its own tileset and themes and enemies and traps. Each dungeon also has a boss at the end which must be vanquished. You explore by picking a heading using the map, and then manually walk right to left through a hallway until you encounter a trap or an enemy and then have to deal with it before moving further.

Each class has several abilities which can be trained, but only 4 can be used at a time. All heroes also have a 5th "move" ability for free that simply allows them to shift 1 position in combat. Heroes gain skill upgrades to do more damage over time and through training which increase how effective certain abilities are. Their armor and weapons can be upgraded over time, and they can gain special items which boost certain traits. There are no mana bars, and abilities are simply used per-turn.

Many abilities have positional requirements on who can use them and who they can be used upon, and as such the party order is extremely important to strategy. Melee attacks can only be performed if you're in the spaces closest to your enemy. Ranged attacks are the opposite and require distance, and can often only be performed against enemy units in the rear positions. Some attacks hit more than one enemy, but again only in certain positions. Some moves have a range of positions they can attack, but you have to choose one at a time. Some abilities will change the party order, and other abilities can be used to alter the opponents' party order. (Say to pull an annoying archer to the front so you can melee him quickly)

Heroes have health (red bars) and can perform different actions or use items inside and outside of combat to heal themselves. Once at 0 hp, heroes do not die instantly, but instead are on death's door. At this point any further damage they take will have random chance to kill them permanently, but any healing will return them to normal status.

Heroes gain stress over time (black bars). Stress comes from many sources, such as walking in the front of the party, suffering grievous wounds, or taking certain actions. Other actions can relieve stress, and spending time in town resting can greatly reduce stress. Over-stressed party members may act wildly in combat, skipping their turns or attacking wildly ignoring your instructions, or even attacking allies or themselves!

High stress also causes them to gain afflictions as they are stressed; "Kleptomaniac" adventurers will sometimes steal loot from the party. They can become Paranoid, Selfish, Depressed, God-fearing, and more.

On the other hand, successfully resisting the effects of stress can give them virtues which grant small bonuses under special conditions and will not take control away from you the way afflictions can.

There are also multiple status effects such as bleed, poison, etc. Typical RPG fare.

There is also a light level mechanic as you venture through dungeons, and you have to burn torches to maintain the level. Darkness invites harder opponents, increasing stress, and possibly more rewards?

The party can camp by using up firewood, which allows them to use special respite abilities on the party to reduce stress. Each class has different respite abilities used only outside of combat for recovery which cost time.

Treasures include magical trinkets, gold, heirlooms (Busts, Portraits, Crests and Deeds used to upgrade the town) and supplies to keep you venturing. Objects you encounter in dungeons can be looted for treasure, but are sometimes trapped and will harm the person opening the treasure. Some heroes are better at avoiding traps than others.

Quests are given to the player which require you to enter a certain dungeon and perform a certain task, such as exploring or killing certain enemies.

The Town has several buildings which are used between adventures into the dungeons:
The blacksmith lets you upgrade your warriors' gear, the guild allows you to upgrade skills, the tavern and church allow them to relieve stress (but require them to sit out on the next adventure to do so) the sanitarium allows you to force remove certain traits they've picked up from stress, you can recruit new heroes at the stagecoach (which come with random skills already learned) or visit a graveyard to look at all your fallen adventurers, and more.

You can only camp on medium or longer quests. You will automatically be given firewood for camping as part of your provisions, free. You can use it at any time to gain buffs or to heal. You need food when you camp or you suffer hunger penalties. there's a chance you can be ambushed while camping.

Adventurers that reach higher levels (3, 6) will refuse to go on lower-level quests. This prevents you from power-leveling your lower level party members, but be aware that if you're powering up a team for a boss fight, if they get too experienced they may refuse to go on the quest!

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjiBB3nBR-w

Official website: http://www.darkestdungeon.com/
Original Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1460250988/darkest-dungeon-by-red-hook-studios
Steam: http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/

Useful Information: (SPOILERS)
-----------------------------------------------------

Wiki: http://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/

Curios Guide: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=386706480

Curious Guide in convenient image format: http://i.imgur.com/xnPaUX8.png

Hieronymous Alloy's guide: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=385431020 out of date but still useful

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Jan 27, 2016

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 22:08

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:24

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

New Player Guide: :toot:

Glidergun posted:

The first and most important piece of advice is to accept that you are not going to get through this 100% everything perfect. You're going to take characters into dungeon with all sorts of negative quirks and it won't be feasible to cure them all, you're going to make runs with characters you don't have the cash to upgrade fully, you're probably going to have a few people die just from the vagaries of chance, and you're going to cut your losses and retreat from dungeons before you finish the mission.

IN-TOWN ADVICE:

The very first thing you should do once you have access to the town is upgrade the stagecoach so that it gives you 4 new guys every week. If you ever need to, you can grab all four of them, throw them into whatever mission looks interesting without any more than the barest minimum of supplies (or even no supplies at all), run through grabbing as much loot as possible, retreat before all of them die, and kick out the half-broken messes that survived. This carries no penalty except time, and if you're death spiraling really badly it can give you enough cash to fit out a reasonable expedition.

Don't be afraid to dismiss heroes. Especially before you've upgraded the Sanitarium, Abbey, and Bar, getting low-level heroes back into fighting trim can cost way more than it's worth, compared to just grabbing another guy off the stagecoach. On the other hand, high level heroes take a huge amount of time to replace, so think carefully before dismissing anybody above level 2.

The Tavern and Guild compete for upgrade items, as do the Stagecoach and Blacksmith, and the Sanitarium and Abbey. Make your upgrade decisions appropriately. The skill upgrades in the Guild boost accuracy, special effect power, and crit rate; weapon upgrades boost damage, speed, and crit rate; armor upgrades boost HP and Dodge. Skill, armor, and weapon upgrades require that the hero be high enough level - don't bother upgrading your blacksmith to level 5 weaponsmithing if your roster is all at level 2. (Early game, I like to put Busts in the Abbey, Portraits in the Guild, and split Deeds between roster size and Blacksmith upgrades, but feel free to do whatever feels good to you.)

Most quirks aren't that big a deal. The only quirk which is pretty much demands a cure is Kleptomania, which will cost you way more in lost items than it will to cure. If they directly impact your character's primary in-battle function, you may want to cure them, otherwise you can probably live with it.

You can sell trinkets by open up the trinket menu and shift-clicking them. After a while you will have a lot of low-level trash trinkets which can give you a good emergency boost. The Nomad Wagon is not very important to me; there are plenty of other good ways to spend your gold, and you will get enough trinkets just from running through dungeons. If you have a lot of spare money it can be worth it to check sometimes, in case something good but rare shows up.

EMBARKATION ADVICE:

Tailor your party the challenges you are about to face. The Weald and Warrens have many enemies which are resistant to blight and the Weald frequently blights your characters; the Ruins and Cove are resistant to bleed and the Cove inflicts a lot of bleed. The Ruins have a lot of Unholy enemies; the Warrens, Beasts; the Weald, Humans; and the Cove, Eldritch monsters.

After your heroes level up past a certain point, they will refuse to go on low-level missions. This is annoying, but constantly grinding low-level dungeons with overpowered heroes would be boring and more annoying. Go on the higher-level missions. Don't worry if they aren't completely upgraded; even a level 0 hero fresh off the coach can be carried through a high level dungeon if their companions are good. As long as you're smart about cutting your losses you can get through dungeons with a team of suboptimal characters.

Train up your whole roster, don't just focus on one A-team and one B-team. This spreads out your effectiveness so a single loss isn't crippling, lets your heroes have more time passively losing stress which can save some cash, and gives you more leeway on catching boss fights before your characters level past them.

For a high-mid light run, I like to take 8 torches + 4 per camp. (So, 12 on a Medium run.) I also like to take 2 meals + 1 meal per camp + a feast at each camp; this totals to 8 food + 12 per camp, though it may be more or less if you get the right trinkets and quirks. Take 1 shovel + 1 per camp to clear blockages, or an extra if you want to be on the safe side. I like to have at least one key in case I find a secret room. Whether to take other items depends on the dungeon you're going to; they can either be used on curios, or in response to status effects. (Note that Medicinal Herbs will clear any debuff, including things like the Hellion's self debuff)

"100% room battles" missions are usually the shortest, and therefore easiest, type, though if you're unlucky they can require you to visit every room; "explore 90% of rooms" the next easiest but more consistent; and "use/find 3 items" the worst because the items fill your inventory and can be hidden in corridors. Bosses are, as far as I can tell, universally found in the room farthest away from your starting position.

I usually find Long runs not worth it. They're more difficult, and your inventory will be filled up enough that you'll have to throw stuff away unless you are literally 100% done with town upgrades and don't care about heirlooms any more. You'd get about as much stuff from a Medium, so don't bother unless the reward is a trinket you really want. Whether Short or Medium runs are easier depends on your party's camping skills; in the right circumstances, taking your party to a Medium dungeon can actually serve to destress your team.

When you're starting out, you will probably want at least one healer on any non-suicide run. I count Vestal and Occultist as healers and Plague Doctor, Crusader, Arbalest, or anyone with a self-heal as half of a healer. You can also take along extra food for supplemental healing. As long as you're killing stuff reasonably quickly and taking advantage of stuns, you won't actually need as much healing as you think, but it's still nice to have in an emergency.

DUNGEON WANDERING:

Retreating is sometimes the right choice. Pushing on because you are determined to beat this goddamn mission and the next room can't be that bad is the #1 cause of hero death. To do so, click the white flag at the top left corner of the screen.

You will lose 6 light per unexplored corridor tile, and 1 light when backtracking over a tile. This means, approximately, 1 torch per corridor. Low light stresses you out more and makes monsters more dangerous, but also gives you more loot and critical hits.

Curios (the things in the background that you interact with, like treasure chests) can be good or bad. You can experiment to try to discover what items are good on what, or you can look it up. If you aren't sure what a curio does and you're having a hard time in a dungeon, better safe than sorry.

You can hover over the symbols on the dungeon map to figure out what the symbols mean. On the 3-Item quests, the quest targets have the same image on the minimap as curios, but a different hover text.

You can find secret rooms by scouting, which happens randomly when entering a room. To use them, move to the correct corridor tile, then either press W or click on the background. If you have a key, you can use it on the chest to get a huge amount of cash.

When to camp, and what to do while camping, is a difficult question to answer. Generally, you can use it either to recover HP and stress or to buff up for the next 4 fights, depending on what camping skills you have unlocked. The Grave Robber and Plague Doctor can also use it to clear diseases. Every time you camp, unless you use one of a few camp skills, you also have a chance to get ambushed while sleeping, which will shuffle your party and throw you into a fight at 0 light. I like to use camping primarily for buffing and only moderately for recovery.

You can swap out camping and battle skills while in a dungeon, but not while in the middle of a fight or while camping. This means you can, for example, swap between the Crusader's heal and stress-recovery abilities between fights depending on which you are lower on right now.

IN-COMBAT ADVICE:

Be proactive. Attacking an enemy is usually better than healing, buffing, or debuffing; killing a damaged enemy and wasting a bunch of potential damage is better than damaging a healthy enemy and leaving both alive. On the other hand, stuns are extremely powerful. Even denying a single enemy a single turn has a good chance of preventing more than the healing ability you are itching to use would restore. Healing is usually best done when a fight has been reduced to one or two enemies and the rest of your team can lock them down, or when someone is in a crisis RIGHT NOW and you need to fix it immediately.

DOTs tick immediately before the character or monster takes their action. If an enemy has 2 HP and a 3-damage-per-turn DOT, they are already dead. Ignore them.

If your character is above 0 HP they are not at immediate risk of death; you have to take damage while already at Death's Door in order to die. (But be aware that they could be hit twice in a row by monsters, or take an attack that inflicts a DOT and die to that.)

Most random encounters are, approximately, one or two guys at the front being hard to kill, and two guys at the back spamming annoying things (damage/stress, sometimes status effects or diseases). Focus-firing the last two rows down, or knocking them far enough out of position, will usually make your day a lot easier.

Retreating, once more, is sometimes the right choice. Top-left corner again, though it takes up the active hero's turn and has a chance to fail. Afterwards you may wish either to fight the battle again (if, for example, your party got shuffled way out of position) or just to leave the dungeon entirely.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jan 25, 2016

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 22:10

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

DrManiac posted:

I really like the whole death's door mechanic so far. As long as you can desperately cling to at least 1 HP sonic style you still have hope.

Yeah, my first thought is that you can kinda cheese it by having somebody "tank" constantly going back and forth between death's door. The amount of damage he took would be meaningless, because it stops at death's door, and then you could heal him for just 1 point to get him off it again. The only problem is that there's no easy way to force enemies to attack him (that I know of, there could be a taunt ability on some class) other than positioning which isn't going to soak up all the hits, and also the danger you're putting that person into if they take hits from multiple sources in a turn.

You could have a rotating party of 3 high level adventurers and 1 cannon-fodder who you let sit on death's door and if he dies, you just hire another level 1 newbie to be the cannon fodder, but its probably not really an effective strategy overall, which is good.

I do like the idea that sacrificing certain heroes could be a very effective tactic. The theme of this game is so strong.

I really like how little health everybody has but how hard it can be to actually land hits on the people you want to. It makes you worried about EVERY blow :ohdear:

You're constantly like, is he gonna dodge? is he gonna get hit for half is loving life bar? Are multiple enemies going to gang up on my one wounded person? Its really good.

Compared to Final Fantasy where these days you have 999999 hit points and you get hit for 500 + 200 + 199 + 599 and its like... who cares?

Also great are all the little in-battle moments of tension, I had my highwayman critical a gunshot at just the right moment, and not only did it really cripple the enemy, but my entire team got inspired from him rolling a crit, and they all lost some stress! That's a great moment.

I also love how the game chronicles everything you do into a narrative that you can view. This game is more about allowing things to happen then giving you a particular set narrative, and I'm all over that.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 22:21

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Shlapintogan posted:

Getting to death's door will also add way more stress than a normal attack or a crit. Going back and forth between death's door and fine is a very good way to end up with afflictions.

Yeah that's a good point, stress is a major mechanic. But again you could kinda mitigate by taking a cannon fodder dude with you that you plan on letting die or releasing after the mission.

Still that's 1/4 of your party that's constantly being sacrificed, probably not worth it opposed to just having 4 tough dudes to begin with.

Solomonic posted:

Man this is fun as poo poo. It's kinda like a grim fantasy X-Com, but with old style RPG combat. I basically dove in with minimal knowledge of how to actually play the game so it's been a real meat grinder so far, but that's half the fun of this kind of thing. My vestal is both abusive and bloodthirsty, and basically spends most of her time in the dungeon making the rest of the party as miserable as possible (whether it's by insulting them every time they miss or opening iron maidens that I would really rather stay closed).

Figuring out the mechanics without a whole lot of help has been easy enough so far but I was kinda surprised by how short the torches last. Sometimes I lose a light level just going through a hallway.

Yeah I didn't realize that items stacked at first so I bought a bunch of food and torches and filled up my inventory and couldn't pick up more things, so I forced-ate all my food and then ran out of food and starved :doh:

But I'm learning fast how this game works and I really really like it.

Your vestal sounds hardcore.

I just got a leper and a jester and there's some really interesting abilities in their trees. I really like how you can only have a subset of 4 abilities of the class at any given time, and different new hires come with different skills already unlocked. So you could have two members of the same class that perform entirely different roles.

The hellion has an AOE damage move that hits the first three positions and I love it. And the apothecary's ability to poison the last two positions is really useful, you can do that early on and then let poison chip away at them while you're using melee against the ones in front.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 22:44 on Jan 30, 2015

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 22:37

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Easily the best RPG I've played since Bravely Default.

Just really loving all the atmosphere and story and character development. I think this is more of what I wanted out of Sunless Sea, but it didn't quite deliver on. Maybe because the combat here is so extremely tight where in Sunless Sea it was really sloppy.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jan 30, 2015

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 23:07

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Eonwe posted:

Really wished I had backed it now

You can buy into early access in 4 days

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 23:13

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

The leper has an interesting ability where he can take off his leper mask to lower his stress, at the cost of everybody else in the party gaining stress.

They really came up with some cool poo poo in this game. :allears:

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 23:15

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Lotish posted:

Only had enough time to get through the tutorial during my lunch break but I'm looking forward to more, boy howdy.

Yeah, its good stuff. The tutorial level is brutal as hell because you have no way to recover health, but I think its designed to give you a "barely survived by the skin of my teeth" experience to get you in the right mindset for the game. You get the vestal after that who is pretty much the whitemage/cleric of the game and it makes things a bit less stressful. (not really)

grrarg posted:

I am glad to read the positive reactions. I did not back the Kickstarter since it seemed more about marketing and glorified pre-orders instead of funding a project that would not exist otherwise. Might pick up the Early Access version next week since they have said the final version will not be cheaper, barring sales.

I usually reccomend against Early Access because playing too much of an unpolished game can turn you off from it even if they eventually sort everything out. But this is by far one of the most polished early access games I've ever bought, it feels really done.

I get the feeling they pretty much are done except for some extra content (2 dungeons and everything that entails, some quests and bosses and the end story) so that makes for a good experience. You can pretty much buy the final game now, you just can't play it all the way to the end. They will definitely end up tweaking a few things as they get more people playing it and testing the RPG balance, but so far I would really recommend it even as early access.

That said, I haven't gotten that far into it yet so it could start to show some more warts later on. I'll continue to post my experience with the game.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 23:28

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Thyrork posted:

E: Oh man, and the narrator! The narrator is great!

Yeah the narrator alone is worth the cost of entry. This is like Bastion where the narrator kinda steals the show. :allears:

Innerguard posted:

My only real quibble is the damned cost of curing stress. 1k minimum, assuming the caretaker is not occupying that slot. I'd like maybe to see some kind of slight boon to players in the form of not losing all your food/torches etc if you abandon a quest, or perhaps at least refunding a percentage of that cost. Maybe even lowering the cost of curing stress depending on how many heroes you have left.
As in, if you only have 4 heroes total, cost is like 250 gold.

My first two delving attempts ended in complete disaster and I'd plugged so much money into the runs. I know that is the point, but it left me unable to do anything with any future guys

Yeah, that's the challenge with this game. Sunless Sea has the same problem where they're trying to keep you constantly stressed and feeling like you're just barely holding on, just barely staying afloat. And that's cool... when it works. But there's times where things don't quite go your way, and then you feel like you're down in a pit and every time you try to claw your way out you just dig it deeper and deeper and there's no recovery.

Welp, I guess that's roguelikes for ya. :v:

As more and more people buy into early access they'll get a ton more people playing the game and commenting, and they should hopefully take steps to address balance and keep you from falling into that feeling of not being able to recover no matter what you do.

Percentage costs sound like a good idea.

Gyoru posted:

I backed at the $49 tier and just finished playing/streaming it for almost 5 hours. It's fantastic.

I feel like I've stumbled upon a great party comp:

[back to front] Jester, Plague Doctor, Highwayman, Leper.

The Jester's songs buff the party and help relieve stress. Doc can stun the back row and hand out damage buffs. The Leper and Highwayman have great aoe attacks so my strategy is basically to burst everything down and not worry about healing due to the Deaths' Door mechanic.

There's so many possibilities for great party comps its fantastic. Already tons of ideas are running through my head.

The bard's "solo" ability makes me want to try starting battles with him in front, but then immediately move him to the back.

I'm thinking something like:

Vestal, Crusader, Crusader, Jester

Open with Jester doing his solo move. Then after he debuffs the whole enemy team, you have both crusaders use the holy lance ability to deal tons of damage and shift forward. The Jester gets moved back to safety and he can harass the enemy, the vestal heals from the back (as usual), and the two knights switch off doing slashes and holy lances based on positioning.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 23:48 on Jan 30, 2015

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 23:45

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Geokinesis posted:

Another good combo is the Cultist and the Plague Doctor; use the cultist heal (which sometimes causes bleed) if it does use the plague doctor to cure it. On average the skill heals more than others at the first level so it is quite good for single target healing.

Cultist seems really interesting, yeah. He's got lots of abilities for moving the enemy's order around (cthulu tentacles :stare:

), and then he's got that weird random heal that sometimes bleeds...

I like his style.

# ¿ Jan 30, 2015 23:52

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

AnonSpore posted:

Are there any passive abilities in combat, or are they all active?

Abilities are all active, but the traits you pick up from stress can give you passive modifiers in combat, and I think trinkets can as well.

My Crusader has killed so many 'humanoids' that he now has the "manslayer" trait and does like ~~+20% damage~~ +10 Accuracy +3% Crit to humanoids, for instance.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 01:23 on Jan 31, 2015

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 00:06

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

That's amazing.

What does second wind or tough do?

E: Just downloaded a 1.5MB patch after work, that was quick. I guess some kind of emergency bugfix.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 00:49 on Jan 31, 2015

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 00:46

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Arrrthritis posted:

RIP Jester, you soaked up 20 hits while you were at death's door.

What a badass

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 00:50

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

One thing that sucks is, be careful when looting that you don't hit close until you're done. You're only ever given a chance to loot anything (chest, trap, battle spoils, etc.) ONCE.

They need to make it so you can interact with the object again if you leave something and pick it up later.

Minor gripe but it would be really nice. I just lost some boots because I mis-clicked :smith:

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 01:30

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

My vestal died :v:

so I've been forced to run a balls to the wall team. Sometimes I use an occultist but healing while bleeding feels like you're dumping water out of a sinking ship with buckets. Works well for Hellion though, she resists bleeds all day, and then if she does get bleed she can just cure herself with one turn.

I loving love the Hellion in general. And the Leper. And the Bounty Hunter. And the Crusader. They wreck faces HARD.

The Grave Robber feels weak. I get what they were going for, but she's just too weak right now all around.

Pavlov posted:

My Plague Doctor was an alcoholic, and after a dungeon she decided never to drink again, so I had to put her in rehab. Game is fantastic.

Demiurge4 posted:

My brigand liked it so much he refuses to do anything but flagellate himself now.

And I didn't realize that plague doctor skill was a thing, I'll spec into it from now on.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 03:33

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Shlapintogan posted:

I think they're just super rare trinkets with good benefits and easier-to-swallow downsides.

e: Holy poo poo my Hellion is the toughest lady ever. She's been walking around with 100 stress this entire mission and nothing else seems to be fazing her. She's just wandering around looking for poo poo to kill and she doesn't give a poo poo at all about what the dungeon's trying to do.

Yeah my Hellion regularly drops a clutch crit and kills somebody, then lets out a hearty laugh and a taunt which then lowers the stress of everybody in my party. She's amazing.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 06:04

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Lotish posted:

My game on Steam says "update queued." Is there something I need to do to actually apply said update?

They just pushed a 1.9M update (after the 1.5M update earlier) if you try to play or of if you go to downloads and click the arrow it should force the download.

Just general Steam hiccups.

Nice to see the devs are working hard to make sure everything goes smoothly.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 06:05

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Tagichatn posted:

Goddamn gently caress bandits. My party was doing great even after 5 rooms with about 80%. Then I run into the rear end in a top hat bandits and get fusilier crit for 7 on all my dudes.

Yeah they're brutal. They're not too hard to kill, but they're going to hurt you baaaaad before they go down.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 06:54

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

My crusader got syphilis from a worm :stonk:

Ugh they do need to reduce the costs of the stress relief services and increase their efficiency. 1000+ each for only like 50% stress removal? Not cutting it.

Edit: Oh yeah, duh. Upgrades make them more effective. Okay.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 07:46 on Jan 31, 2015

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 07:43

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

I feel like losing all the resources you buy when you win or lose is unfair. I just bought a bunch of supplies, got wrecked by bandits, and had to leave. Now I can't afford to rebuy and I'm pretty screwed.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 07:55

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

CommissarMega posted:

What happens if you abandon a dungeon prematurely? I'm going to keep my first two dudes alive no matter what, even if it does mean I pussy out.

Demiurge4 posted:

You get to keep the gold and heirlooms you picked up along the way, but you don't get the quest reward and your guys have a higher chance of picking up quirks.

Also quitting adds stress to all party members. But its not a lot, so its definitely preferable to death.

Especially in the early game you do often need to withdraw before you're done.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 11:36

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

RightClickSaveAs posted:

High five $95 investment buddy, that was such a tempting reward tier This is already proving itself as one of the few worth dumping that kind of Kickstarter money at, now I'm really excited about designing the trinket and character.

This game exceeded expectations already, which have been slowly raising to worryingly high levels.

I was feeling super smug because I got through the tutorial and first run without losing anyone, then the RNG gods and my hubris swung back around and I wiped two entire parties in the same place.

I only backed at the $20 level so I'd get the game + early access, but I bought the art book a la carte for another $20 and I'm so loving glad I did, because an art book for this game is going to be insane.

I'm regretting not backing at a level that gets me the exclusive class, though. I really hope they'll offer it as DLC later, but would that be a dick move to the backers?

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 19:42

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Since upgrading the tavern (or church) gives you both more slots and makes them cheaper, it seems like a good idea to focus on one particular slot (say the bar) and upgrade it as far as you can.

Then you can put 3 people into that slot, and each one will be at a heavy discount.

The only problem is then if people develop aversions to that form of therapy, but you can always take them to the sanitarium!

They need to let you skip the tutorial once you've played it once if this is supposed to be a roguelike. Starting a new game needs to get rolling faster, maybe make a different mode where you're allowed to pick your 4 starting classes and then it dumps you on the town screen with everything already unlocked. That'd be nice. Also considering we can't savescum for this game at all.

Magitek posted:

This game is loving stressful. For the player, I mean.

Yeah seriously. I love how small the health values are, so the game is constantly tense. A single critical hit from the enemy or a couple misses in the row by the party can mean a sudden huge shift in morale. Its extremely tense.

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 19:49

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

I have yet to see a houndmaster or a arbalest in game, anybody else seen those? Probably not done yet.

Also it occurs to me that we don't have any standard wizard class. That's kinda lame. I'd love to have a black mage that's sadistic and yelling at all my other party members for how poo poo they are. :haw:

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 20:59

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Was fighting the wizened hag and losing pretty badly, so I decided to retreat.

My Crusader was inside the pot at the time, and I didn't realize that would mean that he got left behind.

My best character :negative:

I'm really upset. If I'd known, I could have easily stalled a couple rounds and then retreated later. Nobody was on death's door yet, they were just all getting close.

Tried to go back to save him, but he's just gone. And now my whole party is gonna die. gently caress this.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 21:37 on Jan 31, 2015

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 21:35

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

TheNabster posted:

Small question, what is DOD?

Illumination on the Vestal inflicts -20 DOD, but I am not entirely sure what that does.

If you right click on a party member, you can see their character sheet, and if you mouse over any values it explains what they do.

DOD = dodge

# ¿ Jan 31, 2015 23:45

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Megasabin posted:

How feature complete/how much replayability does this game have in its current state? Just reading the stories its incredibly tempting to pick it up on Tuesday, but I usually exhaust a game in 1 period of playing it, and rarely ever go back, so I may want to hold off until there is more content.

Its pretty good, its got the roguelike thing going for it so if you enjoy it enough it could be immensely repayable. But its hard to say how much fun you'll have with it, you could just not like it or find it too stressful or something. :shrug:

AnonSpore posted:

Is there any way to see turn order ala HoMM or is it random to an extent?

I don't think so. They need to add a little more information IMO, like you don't know (as far as I know) when hunger is suddenly going to kick in and require food. It'd be nice to have a building bar.

I mean, turn order is random. You have a speed stat which gives you a bonus, but it changes each round for each hero/enemy. But you could still show the order after it rolls each turn... but maybe not knowing is part of the challenge.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 04:47

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

2) KEEP YOUR TORCH LIT. You want to keep your torch above 75 at all times. Lower torch = you get surprised and brutalized + you suffer more stress when it happens because low torch. High torch and you surprise them and get a bunch of free attacks which help lower your stress (as you get crits etc).

This has made the biggest difference in my play. Buying tons of torches and keeping torch light level at the highest bracket religiously keeps everybody in good spirits throughout the crawl. If you let it get too dark, you start missing like crazy and your stress goes up super fast, and once you've got maximum stress bad things happen.

I downed the Swine Prince or whatever his name was without too much trouble, so I'm feeling pretty badass. Getting some much higher level quests now, afraid to try them.

Still reeling from losing my Crusader to the Hag lady boss. Not quite sure how to approach that fight other than just having high level armor and weapons so you can kill her FAAAAST. Because god drat her mechanic is brutal.

Hieronymous Alloy posted:

Where does stun resist even come from? Trinkets?

Yep. Trinkets can do some pretty powerful things. That building that sells them just sold me an amazing one. It cost me 6K gold, heft price, but it gives you a massive DOD bonus if you're above 75% health or below 25%. That's fantastic.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 08:42

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

AnonSpore posted:

Is there any advantage to having a low light level? Like, you have a better chance of finding treasure or you gain more exp or anything? Or is it solely a "Torches are expensive/limited" thing?

There is. If you mouse over the torch bar it'll show you the current effects. Higher light gives a chance of scouting ahead and surprising enemies. Lower light level gives more treasures.

It seems really risky in practice. Certain trinkets or quirks can make you more effective at low light level, though.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 09:08

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Apple2o posted:

Isn't there some thing about letting your light levels tank for big loot though? Everyone spamming torches might just be fun-hating babies.

We JUST finished describing it earlier on the very page you posted on. Lets not go in circles.

TLDR: Its not worth it. Early game keeping stress down and making it through the full quest is way more important, quest payouts are pretty huge. Keep your light topped off constantly and abuse all the special moves you can.

Eonwe posted:

so every stream I've watched, they walk into two rooms and are at 100 stress

how are you supposed to get through these dungeons below 100 stress?

I've gone from finishing every level with full stress and having to switch between an A team and a B team while putting people in the bar, to only filling up my bar about 30% on each quest. Huge improvements.

You definitely learn the game and get better at it over time.

MotU posted:

I would assume that is more viable + sensible when you have a couple levels in the Guild or Blacksmith so you can use gear or skills to mitigate some of the negative aspects of low light (although you do get +Crit % for being in low light)

Exactly. If your group is over-leveled for a certain quest, then you can push things and let the light level lag and get dangerous.

But if you're getting your rear end kicked then keep it high! And if you're trying a new mission on a higher level, keep the area lit. Bring torches.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Feb 1, 2015

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 21:43

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

RightClickSaveAs posted:

Don't underestimate the Jester's value for this either, stress management got many times easier once I started running with one. I typically let him hang out in the back for a few rounds buffing everyone's accuracy and using his stress reduction ability as needed, then have him come flying to the front and tear some poo poo up at the end. Shuffle him into the back of the group when combat's over, repeat.

I tried that but even with a Jester going full stress song every turn, it still didn't seem to make a huge impact :shrug:

And somebody earlier said that upgrading heals didn't upgrade how much they healed for, which is totally false. Upgrading heals at the guild will increase the ranges.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 21:51

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

RightClickSaveAs posted:

I've found it to be a cumulative effect throughout the whole run, if you pop it at least once every round, the first rank heals 4 stress and will often hit more than one party member, which I've found adds up over time.

Yeah but I was using it every round and having it hit 3-4 party members each time and it still didn't feel like much :shrug:

MotU posted:

The Vestal Group heal stayed 1-2 for me from lvl 1 -> 2, not sure if it goes up at a higher level or what

Well yeah, its a tiny range, that's how its gonna play out. Think about it, the value is 1-2. Each rank is going to increase the ability like 10%. If upgrading group heal went from 1-2 to even 1-3 or 2-3 that's a HUGE change. That's a 50% increase. Hitting all 4 party members means you're going from 8 to 12 total healing.

With group heal I bet you'll have to get it to the 3rd or 4th or even 5th rank before you see a healing upgrade.

Same with the crusader's dinky 1-1 heal/buff, I bet you'd have to get it to like 5th rank before it heals for more. His 1-3 heal on the other hand probably goes to 1-4 at like 2nd or 3rd rank.

But the Vestal's main 3-5 heal or the Occultist's 0-10 heal both go up to like 3-5 and 0-12 on the first rank up. (Because a small percentage of a bigger range is more noticeable than the same percentage of a tiny range)

Now some of them may not upgrade at all, its possible the 1-1 heal just upgrades the buff and stays 1-1 forever, or even the party heal maaaay stay the same (I doubt it though) but the single target heals at least absolutely go up as you upgrade them.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 22:16

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Valicious posted:

What are the controls like? Is it just point and click, or is the keyboard required? Wondering if I can play this on my Windows tablet

Either/or. You can play with mouse and keyboard or you can play with just mouse. Everything is turn-based so you should be fine on a tablet. I think pure mouse controls are actually more comfortable.

I actually really like that about it after playing lots of 'active time' RPGs lately. The game is stressful enough as is, it doesn't need to rush you.

I'm not sure if it has controller support, but presumably its going on PS4 at some point in the future.

# ¿ Feb 1, 2015 23:57

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Leper is a beast. After favoring Crusader for awhile, losing my main one forced me to try Leper + Hellion for my melee and I love it. Hits like a truck.

Just downloaded a 15MB patch. The devs are super active this weekend.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 01:39

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Pavlov posted:

I want to like the Leper, but it can only attack in the front and has no movement abilities. Any time I get surprised he's almost useless.

That's true, there's some times I get surprised and he's in the back row and its like fuuuuuuuck.

Order is super important so getting your order scrambled sucks.

I feel like the "move" ability should let you swap with any position, not only move 1. Having to swap your dudes around 1 by 1 by 1 takes forever and gets you killed.

Some classes have movement abilities, yeah, but either all of them should or the basic move command should be a little better.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 02:05

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Poison Mushroom posted:

The Crusader's Holy Lance seems really good for that. Has anyone tried running two of them, so they can both use their Holy Lances continuously?

Yeah, its really good for killing archers who hang out in the back row.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 02:10

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

My vestal had a night on the town and lost the trinket I just bought her for 6k gold :stonk:

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 04:49

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

S.J. posted:

Anyone else been seeing an issue with recruiting? After you recruit someone, people in line underneath them 'fall' up in the line but their graphic doesn't move, so you have to rclick where they were to view their information rather than where they are currently, and can cause you to recruit the wrong people as well.

Yeah, its a bug. They aren't updating the indexes after you pull people over. Ideally you should close the stagecoach each time you hire somebody.

If you try to right click on people after hiring somebody, weird poo poo happens. I've had a crash to desktop happen that way, or characters opening other characters' sheets.

Hopefully they'll sort it out soon.

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 08:04

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

Vargs posted:

Been running with an AoE blitz combo of Vestal-Highwayman-Hellion-Hellion and it's been working quite well. Two break-throughs and a grape shot isn't usually enough to kill everybody on the first turn, but by the second turn they're hosed. Not a whole lot of CC, but it tends to end fights very quickly.

Great minds think alike! My composition right now is very similar.

The triple Aoe on the first round with the gunshot and the two cleaves is just nuts.

My tweak is that instead of Vestal I have Occultist, with his bleed heal. The two Hellions have the self-buff that cures bleed and also gives a damage bonus, so I use that strategically to maximize the heal effects.

Anatharon posted:

This looks kinda cool, I'll probably check it out when it's not Early Access because I'm not a sucker.

It doesn't seem to be any more survival horror than say Diablo, though.

Are the characters supposed to be specific people, ie they talk and stuff, or are they all silent?

Supplies are much more limited than Diablo, though. You can't just pop back to town whenever you like, you've gotta try to push all the way or suffer huge losses for your investment. It has this almost Oregon Trail aspect to it. Maybe survival horror isn't right, but its kinda got its own thing going on. I guess roguelike would be more apt, but roguelike can mean anything.

Zaphod42 fucked around with this message at 09:53 on Feb 2, 2015

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 09:51

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# ¿ Apr 28, 2024 11:24

Zaphod42: Sep 13, 2012; If there's anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and shot now.

RubberBands Hurt posted:

All the save games are plain text .json files...

You can edit everything.

Oh my loving god :allears:

This is dangerous information

Mmmmm I love me a nice JSON

# ¿ Feb 2, 2015 20:08

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Darkest Dungeon - Survival Horror RPG Dungeoncrawl

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