Heroes (A-F, G-L, M-Z) | NPCs and Merchants | Darkest Dungeon: Monsters | Darkest Dungeon II Monsters | DLC Monsters
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Wandering Enemies
The Creatures
Creature Dens can be found in any biome, the homes to packs of wild scavengers and predators grown bloated and pestilent on the feasts of carrion that the world's end has provided them. Exterminate them for a reward - or provide them their next meal.
For Webbers, Spitters, Carrion Eaters and Rabid Gnashers, please look here.
In General
- Bringing Back Proof: In order to collect your reward for clearing out a Creature Den, you have to carry a body part drop to the next inn.
- Glass Cannon: All of the creatures are pretty puny, health-wise. But they have a range of ways to generate tokens to protect themselves, and they all can hit very hard.
- Scavengers Are Scum: These are mostly necrophages that aren't anywhere near the top of the threat chart in Darkest Dungeon's apocalypse. However they do clearly like eating humans, and are riddled with disease. One of the most dangerous aspects of taking a Creature Den on is in fact the risk of one of your heroes getting infected with something.
- Took a Level in Badass: Darkest Dungeon veterans will recognize almost every face here. However, the beasties who return are tougher than they were in the first game.
Carrion Devourers
- Big Eater: Carrion Devourers in II possess an ability called Necrophagia, which allows them to consume corpses to heal themselves and give themselves Armor and Crit tokens.
- Call-Back: Carrion Devourers are essentially Large Carrion Eaters, only they are Elite Mooks instead of Smash Mooks. They even have the latter's Weaken Prey ability in the form of Pulverize, which puts two Weak and Exposed tokens on the affected hero, though it no longer applies Marked/Combo.
- Elite Mook: They're stronger, more durable versions of Carrion Eaters that have more powerful attacks.
- Evolution Powerup: If a Carrion Eater gets a meal, it will quickly transform into the larger and tougher Carrion Devourer.
- Lamprey Mouth: They have a lot of teeth, and they are eager to insert them into your heroes.
The Cultists
The Avatars of Oblivion, clergy of the Spreading Stain.
—The Academic
Returning from the first game, the Cultists have undergone a startling shift in both power and priorities, going from the weakest and least dangerous of the common enemies to the single deadliest faction overall.
In General
- Achilles' Heel: Movement and token-destroying abilities. Evangelists, Heralds, Cherubs and Altars all hate being pulled out of position since it prevents them using their powerful abilities. Cultists are good at generating tokens to protect themselves, so abilities that can get rid of them without wasting an attack are highly useful against them.
- From a meta gameplay perspective, their threat level is their weakness. It's fairly common for not all heroes to want to participate in a fight against regional enemies, which in turn can damage relationship values. The cultists are so dangerous that every hero option against them will be to initiate a fight, making it trivial to salvage relations between two heroes at each other's throats by throwing them at enough cultists.
- Arc Symbol: Like the Cultists from the first game, all of their headwear bears the stress symbol (named in-game as the Iron Crown).
- Body Horror: Whereas in the last game, they only really developed this in the Darkest Dungeon itself, now all Cultists have mutated sufficiently for this. All of the Cultists are horribly mutated and barely keep a humanoid form. The most human-like are the Cherubs, which resemble winged big mutated babies, while the rest are even less human; for starters, their lower limbs have become fleshy cephalopod-like tentacles.
- Combat Medic: Size 1 Cultists have a nasty habit of healing their tankier allies whenever they acquire the Worship status effect, which a lot of their other moves give them.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To the original Cult.
- The Cultists of the first game were weak, predictable, but widespread Mooks who only gained some proper menace in the titular Darkest Dungeon, while the Cultists of the second are hardened veterans who act as the forces of Darkness' elite legion.
- The original Cultists used poorly-made weapons, wore rags and crude metal skulls, and numbered only three identifiable ranks (Brawler, Acolyte, and Priest). The new Cultists are universally clad in ominous black robes and sleek chrome helmets, wield powerful magic and mutations alongside much more conventional weapons, and have a much more expansive hierarchy organised along the lines of a Religion of Evil.
- The original Cultists were mostly unaugmented humans driven by their faith, with those strengthened and mutated by the Heart of Darkness only appearing in the final dungeon. The new Cultists are all Cosmic-type enemies rather than Human, with even the rank-and-file showing similar mutations. In a similar vein, these mutated Cultists appear very early on rather than in The Very Definitely Final Dungeon.
- Elite Mook: They're far tougher and have a wider movepool than other enemies, quite deliberately: The rank and file of the cults were already culled, so the survivors are brutally effective veterans.
- Evil Wears Black: All the cultists wear black robes with dark blue trims, although it is completed with a sleek chrome helmet. The Cherubs make do with black rags.
- Gate Guardian: There are two Cultist fortresses situated in front of the Ziggurat in the Mountain, meant to prevent the party from reaching the final boss. The enemy formations are are particularly challenging and your party pretty much needs to be at optimal health, stress level, and power to get through them.
- Large and in Charge: The Deacons and Cardinals are quite big, towering over most humans and occupying two enemy slots. Taken to the extreme with the Exemplars, who take up three enemy slots and easily dwarf the normal humans.
- Lovecraftian Superpower: The Cultists of course use powers bestowed to them by whatever new eldritch deity they now follow to impede your heroes. The Cultists in this game have fleshy mutations that resemble cephalopod limbs like vampire squid legs for the Evangelists or octopus tentacles for the Deacons, Cherubs, and Cardinals. Much like the original game, the Cultists use shadowy powers to inflict stress, debilitate your heroes, and even empower themselves.
- Malevolent Masked Men: Except for the Cherubs, the Cultists all wear chrome metal skull masks adorned with the Arc Symbol of the game.
- Religion of Evil: The Cult is much more organized than in the previous instalment. Their ranks are not just Brawlers, Acolytes, and Priests, but Evangelists, Deacons, and Cardinals all fully devoted to the worship and protection of their god.
- Tamer and Chaster: In contrast to the thinly-clad and tattooed Cultist Acolytes and Brawlers from the first game, these Cultists are universally dressed in concealing robes and scarred by hideous mutations granted as gifts by their Gods. Particularly applies when comparing the Acolyte and Evangelist — whereas the Acolyte was a skimpy sorceress who attacked from afar with stress-affecting abilities, the Evangelists are the Cultists' primary frontliners, menacingly wielding a pair of simple longswords and potent destructive magic, all while wearing obscuring black robes and helms like the other Cultists. It serves to be a visual cue that the Cultists are much more serious and much more focused than the last time around.
- Took a Level in Badass: The cultists in the first game were dishevelled and dressed in rags and gaudy-looking metal skulls, and were among the simplest and most predictable enemies, only gaining some menace in the Darkest Dungeon itself. Now they've become far more organized, ominous, and inhuman and serve as the forces of Darkness' elite legion, and to top it off, you run into them early in your journey rather than in the final level itself. This is even reflected storyline-wise; with all the fighting the Cult did in the last game, only the smart, strong, and capable survived, and those veteran survivors reformed the Cult into this deadlier incarnation.
- Was Once a Man: All the cultists are now Cosmic type enemies, showing that they've ascended to the point of not counting as human anymore.
Cardinals
- Arc Symbol: Whenever the Cardinal uses Exaltation, a mass of energy forms an Iron Crown above their head in such a way that it resembles a mitre.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: They are usually the primary heavy hitters of enemy compositions they're in and can pack a punch while taking a lot of damage, but they're not as dangerous or disruptive as fully-fledged bosses like Exemplars are.
- Combat Tentacles: The Yawning Void has them shoot out a bunch of tentacles from a portal, inflicting Stress and shuffling your party.
- Damage Over Time: The Hollow Vessel attack applies 2 Bleed, Blight and Burn to one hero.
- Gathering Steam: As with Deacons, Cardinals can only use Exultation once their allies have applied two Worship tokens to them, which they themselves can only do by using the Worship ability, which they can only do by gaining 2 Worship tokens themselves by using other abilities. This means the longer the fight goes on, the more danger you're in.
- Genius Bruiser: Cardinals are almost as large as their axe-wielding Deacon comrades, and just as resilient. Contrasting the Deacon, however, the Cardinal is focused on magic-based attacks and (somewhat) buffing his team.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Cardinals' eyes glow bright white whenever they prepare or cast a spell.
- Limit Break: They can use Exultation upon gaining two Worship tokens, giving all of their party a Dodge+ token; the heroes each gain a Weak and Vulnerable token, along with losing any Ripostes and taking stress damage.
- Power of the Void: The cardinals use spells themed around this, with names such as "Entropic Star" and "The Yawning Void".
- Status Infliction Attack: Entropic Star allows them to apply Stress and an Exposed token to all of your heroes.
- The Right Hand of Doom: Their left arm is grotesquely outsized and swollen-looking, while the right hangs limply at their side.
Cherubs
- Enfante Terrible: They have the heads and proportions of little children, but their bodies are warped and their attacks are monstrous.
- Support Party Member: Their job is to inflict stress, Weak, and Blind tokens onto your heroes and generally be an annoyance while you deal with bigger threats. They can still generate Worship tokens and pass them on to Deacons, Cardinals and Exemplars, though, so be wary.
Deacons
- Boss in Mook Clothing: They are usually the primary heavy hitters of enemy compositions they're in and can pack a punch while taking a lot of damage, but they're not as dangerous or disruptive as fully-fledged bosses like Exemplars are.
- Damage Reduction: A Deacon will always immediately use The Flesh Warps at the start of the fight from Confession 3 onward, which alternates between a 50% ranged damage resistance buff and a 50% melee damage resistance buff every turn.
- Gathering Steam: As with Cardinals, Deacons can only use Exultation, their most powerful attack, once their allies have applied two Worship tokens to them, which they themselves can only do by using the Worship ability, which they can only do by gaining 2 Worship tokens themselves by using other abilities. This means the longer the fight goes on, the more danger you're in.
- Giant Mook: They stand taller even than Cardinalsnote , and can take a lot of punishment, notably with their alternating damage resistance.
- Glowing Eyes of Doom: The Deacons' eyes constantly glow bright white, and they're one of the most powerful enemies in the Cultist faction. These notably persist during Relationship barks, where the field is otherwise blacked out.
- Limit Break: They have a different version of Exultation from Cardinals. Instead of a debuff-inducing AoE, the Deacon's Exultation targets the hero in rank 1, does a ton of damage to them and inflicts 10 Bleed and up to 5 Stress.
- Mighty Glacier: Whenever the enemy formation contains a Deacon, he's usually the slowest to act out of the bunch. He's also going to be doing the majority of their damage in most scenarios, not helped by the fact that he both automatically buffs himself to resist melee strikes at the start of the fight and has several allies that can heal him whenever they proc a certain status effect, meaning that he's probably going to keep whaling on (and stressing out) your squad until his backup's down.
- Smash Mook: They're the most damaging out of the non-Exemplar Cultists, brandishing a huge axe which they can slam down for massive damage.
- Status Infliction Attack: Flesh From Bone applies a ton of Bleed to one of your frontline heroes.
- You Will Not Evade Me: Weight Of Worlds is a party-wide attack he has that possesses the potential to Immobilize targets.
Evangelists
- Achilles' Heel: Being moved to the back ranks will make them unable to use any of their powerful Commune abilities, and they will have to use Rush Judgment, an attack that only does around 3 damage, to get back into position.
- Charged Attack: Nocturne Commune gives them a Crit token and a Block+ token, meaning their next attack is about to hurt.
- Dual Wielding: The Evangelists dual wield swords.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Unlike other combat-focused Cultists, Evangelists start the fight with either two Block or Block+ tokens depending on the Confession, meaning they can take a lot more punishment than their 30 health suggests, especially if an Altar is using Bone Weaving on them.
- Power Floats: The Evangelists of the cult levitate above the ground.
- Shock and Awe: The Evangelists use lightning spells.
Heralds
- Anti-Debuff: Inversion allows it to remove all negative tokens its allies have and apply them to itself.
- The Bard: Of the Cultist faction. Unlike the other bardlike characters in the game, the Herald's instrument is itself, or at least whatever fleshy pipe-like growths are growing out of its head.
- Brown Note: Attacks by generating noises unpleasant enough to cause stress and inflict burn and bleed.
- My Brain Is Big: Its head is a swollen mass of pink flesh covered in sucker-like protrusions, through which it 'trumpets'. It also carries around an organ-like growth which it seems to use almost like a bagpipe.
- Status-Buff Dispel: Clarion Call is a move that gives a party member 2 stress and removes their positive tokens, but doesn't do any damage.
- Status Infliction Attack: First Trumpet is a powerful cleaving move that hits ranks 3 and 4 hard and applies both Bleed and Burn.
Altars
- Action Bomb: Don't let them be the last cultist standing, or they'll use an ability called Azoic End, which does massive damage and inflicts a lot of stress on 2 party members.
- Adorable Evil Minion: Small and animal-like, they support the rest of the cultists with enthusiastic, dog-like animations which are weirdly cute.
- Candlelit Ritual: They're festooned in candles, walking rituals basically.
- Mook Commander: At the beginning of a Cultist battle with an Altar in it, the Altar will apply a unique buff to its comrades that persists until it is killed, which changes based on the current Confession being completednote .
- Shoot the Medic First: There are two very good reasons as to why you'll want to kill them before their comrades; one is that every turn they'll be applying either Flesh Weaving or Bone Weaving to another cultist, giving them either Block tokens or a ton of Regen, as well as maintaining a unique buff depending on the Confession. The other reason is that leaving them as the last thing alive will cause them to use Azoic End and blast two of your party members, which is bad news if you scraped through the fight and have people on Death's Door.
- Support Party Member: Altars don't do anything but hand out powerful buffs to the rest of the cultist team. Bone Weaving applies Block tokens, while Flesh Weaving applies 10 Regen. As such, they're likely your number one priority.
The Gaunt
Zombie-like enemies that wander the Earth. They are the first enemy that you confront in the tutorial, and groups of them can be fought later in Resistance Encounters.
In General
- The Highwayman: Gaunt are primarily found in Road Battles, though they can sometimes be encountered as part of Resistance Encounters or in Lairs. Given the state they're in, it's unclear if they're deliberately trying to kill and rob you and your party or if they're just shambling about and happened to get in your way, but they definitely possess enough intelligence to construct amateur roadblocks out of furniture.
- Lean and Mean: They're not called Gaunt for nothing. Every one of them is shriveled and emaciated.
- Our Zombies Are Different: The Gaunts are zombified people who have taken a cadaverous look and have gone feral, though they still retain a small amount of intelligence, enough to emote. They're clearly not ghouls, since Ghouls already exist in the game and aren't listed as being Gaunt, though they will fight alongside each other. They also aren't Unholy creatures like the Bone enemies, so they're not considered undead, meaning they could be anything from people acting very zombie-like due to the Stain's influence or even people who are cursed by the Stain to forget who they are and act as mindless servants.
Lost Souls
- Elite Mooks: Unique Champion versions of them called Patients can be found at the Chirurgeon's Table.
- The Goomba: The Lost Souls are the weakest, most basic enemies that can be fought in Darkest Dungeon 2, replacing the Bone Rabble in that regard. They are weak to all DOT effects, have no particularly nasty attacks, and are easily dispatched.
- Man Bites Man: The Chomp attack of the Lost Souls consists of them leaning forward to bite the heroes. It is quite weak, only inflicting 2 damage, but has a chance to give a random Disease.
- Plague Zombie: The biggest thing to worry about with Lost Souls isn't the measly damage they do; it's if they'll give your heroes a random Disease, and this can happen as early as the Valley since there's a guaranteed Gaunt encounter there.
- Status Infliction Attack: Filthy Morsel allows them to move forward and apply a paltry amount of blight.
Urchins
- Achilles' Heel: Abilities and items that remove Stealth tokens, since it can't use Haunting Melody without one.
- Charged Attack: It has to use Song of Shadows to give itself a Stealth and Crit token before it can use Haunting Melody, its most highly damaging attack.
- In the Hood: The Urchin wears a red hood, adding to his The Sneaky Guy archetype.
- Musical Assassin: The Urchin doesn't fight directly, but uses a music box which can generate different songs with different effects. With Song of Shadows, the Urchin can apply Stealth and guarantee a crit; with Haunting Melody, he applies significant stress damage and hurts the target.
- The Sneaky Guy: The Urchin is a particularly elusive enemy. His Song of Shadows skill applies Stealth to him on top of giving him a Crit token, which makes him untargetable unless your heroes are using specific combat items or skills to negate his stealth.
Widows
- Don't Look At Me: Don't Look! is an ability she only uses if she is pulled to the front ranks, and it moves her back while inflicting Blind and stress.
- Mirror-Cracking Ugly: The Widow bears a broken mirror. During her idle animation, she looks at the mirror, despairing at her horrific looks. Her Gruesome Reflection also applies Horror to her target, suggesting that she's become so ugly that the mere sight of her is stressful.
- Status Infliction Attack: None of her attacks do very much damage, but Gruesome Reflection applies stress and Horror and Desperate Grab has a small chance to Stun its target.
- Support Party Member: Her only real job in Gaunt battles is to inflict a little stress and sometimes prevent heroes from attacking.
Woodsmen
- Degraded Boss: Just like the Brigand Bloodletter, the Woodsman is the boss of the Prologue. After that he's just a pretty strong enemy in a predominantly weak enemy group.
- Empathy Doll Shot: The Woodsman has a bandolier on which are attached many toys, which he looks with a sad look during his idle animation. This implies that he at one point failed to protect a child or several children. When he reaches Death's Door, he collapses and looks longingly at one of his toys which looks like a child.
- Giant Mook: Unlike the rest of the Gaunts, the Woodsman is a huge, broad-shouldered woodcutter who stands as tall as a Ghoul, if not taller since he's got a hunchback.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The Woodsman seems to not really be aware of what's going on, with Carve the Toy and Protect the Child implying that he thinks he's defending and taking care of children rather than murderous undead.
- Smash Mook: The closest thing the Gaunt faction has to one. He can put out some frightening damage with Fell The Tree, but he doesn't use it very often.
- Story Breadcrumbs: A few trinkets imply that the Woodsman is actually the same Woodsman who was the adoptive father of the Runaway, with carved toys being the link between them.note
- Top-Heavy Guy: The Woodsman has a rather large chest, and his powerful attacks confirm that his large frame is not just for show.
The Pillagers
"The worst kind of parasite: opportunists."
With the collapse of society, many gangs of pillagers now roam the world. They are mostly encountered on the road during road encounters, having set up barricades to stop travelers. They have close-range Hatchetmen and long-range Crackshots, support in the form of Firemouths and Mongrels, and Implication and the Antiquarian acting as Minibosses.— The Academic
In General
- Badass Normal: Similar to the Brigands. They're not eldritch cultists, undead warriors, or mutated victims of eldritch horrors, but just regular bandits and highwaymen who can lay down the pain as effectively as the other monstrosities plaguing the world.
- Dress-Coded for Your Convenience: As the Brigands did in the first game, the Pillagers do wear a rough, color-coordinated uniform which highlights each of their roles. Notably the Crackshots wear figure-concealing shawls, hinting at who their new boss is before she shows herself.
- The Highwayman: The modus operandi of the Pillagers. As they are often fought in Resistance Encounters, it gives the impression of them setting up barricades specially to stop travelers, then rob and kill them.
- In the Hood: Much like the Brigands from the first game, the Pillagers are all hooded. The Hatchetmen wear green hoods while the Crackshots wear red hoods.
- Opportunistic Bastard: As their names suggest, the Pillagers are taking advantage of the chaos to rob and kill the innocent. This earns them the scorn of the Academic, who calls them "the worst kind of parasites".
- Outside-Genre Foe: The Pillagers are ordinary human robbers, which contrasts greatly with all of the horrifying monsters that the heroes can fight along the way.
The Antiquarian
Once, she had a sliver of decency... now, only greed.
"The Antiquarian wants what we have—and she will not be denied."
An avaricious woman consumed by her own lust for rare treasures, the Antiquarian returns from Darkest Dungeon as the leader of the Pillagers, a conglomerate of cutthroats, robbers and bandits who plunder the world of its valuables as it burns. She can be encountered in Pillager Road Battles and drops a large amount of both Relics and Baubles as well as unique trinkets upon her defeat. Since she runs from battle each time you face her, she can be encountered multiple times in a single run.—The Academic
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: Serves as one to Brigand Vvulf from the original game. While both are boss enemies associated with normal brigands, Vvulf was a towering giant of a man, employing explosives, an intimidating shout, and a powerful shield to protect his underlings from significant harm. The Antiquarian in contrast needs her underlings to protect her, as she is relatively frail and will primarily play a support/disruption role rather than being the immediate main threat.
- Face–Heel Turn: Went from a self-interested Nominal Hero driven by Greed to a remorseless bandit leader preying on people even as the world slips into madness.
- Fallen Hero: Downplayed. She was never a proper hero, being transparent about her interest in the Hamlet only being in search of its profits, and is even implied to have sacrificed a woman in pursuit of power. Nonetheless, she was still on the side of the Heir and other heroes. Now she's a remorseless bandit leader, even during a time where the world is falling apart.
- Flunky Boss: She's not that strong by herself, but she has two actions with which to buff her Pillager comrades, who will do the fighting for her. Abilities that can bypass or negate Dodge and Armor are critical when fighting her, as she stacks them up on her allies quickly.
- Greed: Her motivation for joining the Pillagers was the desire for greater riches. The Academic even comments on this when she appears during battles.
- Support Party Member: Same as always, the Antiquarian prefers to let her comrades do most of the fighting for her. The player can now find out just how annoying the Protect Me ability is to play against.
- Took a Level in Badass: Her skills allow her to actually be extremely useful in combat now; unfortunately she's fighting for the Pillagers and not your side. Festering Vapors is now a party-wide attack, and Nervous Stab does legitimately dangerous damage on top of applying a Dodge+ token to herself, giving her both a lot more offensive capability and survivability.
- Villain: Exit, Stage Left: Implied. Killing her in battle doesn't produce a gravestone or corpse, as it does with other enemies, and she can re-appear later in the run with no signs of damage. In light of her original characterisation as a self-interested Dirty Coward and the precedent * set in the first game, this is most likely the reason why.
Implication
- BFG: Once again, the resident bandit faction of the game has acquire a huge bombard on wheels to blast your party with.
- Boss in Mook Clothing: The Brigand Pounder returns as a normal enemy, but now it no longer needs a Matchman to fire, making it more dangerous in a way since it's no longer possible to completely prevent it from attacking.
- Call-Back: Its name is a reference to the Ancestor describing the original Brigand Pounder as 'A war machine of terrible implication'.
- Degraded Boss: Implication is a weakened version of the Brigand Pounder from the first game. They gain in autonomy since they can function without anyone near them like the Matchman from the first game, but their attack is considerably weaker, dealing less damage and being unable to hurt the back ranks.
- I Call It "Vera": Unlike the other Brigand Pounders, Implication has been given a nickname, either by the Academic or the Pillagers themselves.
- No-Sell: With over 180 resistance to all kinds of damage-over-time effects, causing any of them against the cannons is pretty much impossible.
- Tank Goodness: As with the Brigand Pounder, the apparatus that Implication is mounted on basically turns it into a self-propelled howitzer.
Crackshots
- Expy: Crackshots are Brigand Fusiliers with a more varied weapon choice. Unlike the Fusiliers, who relied on a huge blunderbuss to hit your party with AoE attacks, the Crackshot is capable of doing good single-target damage with Blister Shot and Front Mortar, as well as wreaking havoc on your backline with Shell Shock.
- The Gunslinger: Crackshots are decked out with both a precise long-range pistol and a scattergun of some kind, and they use them both to great effect.
- Long-Range Fighter: The Crackshots prefer to fight in the back ranks, as their most powerful skills are only usable at long range. For instance, the Shell Shock attack which damages the two back ranks with the Crackshot's scattergun and can daze. However, they also possess an ability called Front Mortar, which involves blasting a frontline hero with their scattergun, doing big damage, knocking them back and potentially stunning them.
- Short-Range Shotgun: Averted. The Crackshot is capable of using an ability called Shell Shock to blast your backline with their scattergun, dealing a bit of damage and potentially dazing them.
Firemouths
- Bald of Evil: These women stand out from the other Pillager enemies due to not wearing a hood over their heads, instead having shaven heads.
- Booze Flamethrower: Their Breath of Fire skill combines a mouthful of booze with a lit torch to damage and burn a single target.
- Damage Over Time: While they don't do that much direct damage, they're capable of applying loads of Burn to your party, softening them up for Crackshots, Hatchetmen and Mongrels.
- Playing with Fire: Their primary combat tool is blowing fire at your party.
Hatchetmen
- Combat Pragmatism: The Hatchetman uses his dagger to perform a Low Blow, which causes Bleeding and adds a Combo token on the target. He combines it with the Finishing Blow attack.
- Combination Attack: Since Hatchetmen almost always come in pairs, the idea is that one of them hits your party member with Low Blow, applies Combo and the other hits them with Finishing Blow, dealing a bunch of damage.
- Combo: They will hit your heroes that have the Combo status effect on them with a move called Finishing Blow, which has them bring down their axe hard and do quite a chunk of damage.
- Groin Attack: Implied with Low Blow, which judging from the angle involves him shoving a knife into your hero's nuts.
- Dual Wielding: The Hatchetman wields a hatchet and a dagger.
Mongrels
- Beware of Vicious Dog: Mongrels are extremely bloodthirsty attack dogs that will repeatedly Gnash your party, dealing loads of chip damage and inflicting a lot of Bleed.
- Support Party Member: The Brigands' Canine Companion help them out by casting guard on them, teeing that up with riposte for even more misery.
- Right-Hand Attack Dog: They're mean dogs that maul the Brigands' enemies on command. They are also capable of using an ability called Watchdog, which allows them to Guard their allies and give themselves Riposte.
Regional Enemies
The Fanatics
Emboldened anarchists, desperate to exercise their nihilism. Unhinged by the impending apocalypse, the fanatics burn book and building alike.
—The Academic
"Rubble and flame... as far as the eye can see. Our great cities burn. All our beauty and knowledge, ash on the wind."
The Sprawl is occupied by a mob of crazed Fanatics, Human-type enemies who have lost their mind to blind fanaticism and laid ruin to the city. They roam in the streets of the Sprawl, occupied with burning all the books and defacing all the statues they can find as well as killing anyone they cross paths with.In General
- Achilles' Heel: Due to their exposed skin, they have very low resistance to blight and bleed. Heroes like the Plague Doctor and the Graverobber can make short work of them.
- Body Horror: The bodies of the Fanatics are all horribly burned with patches of red flesh having melted and barely hanging onto their bodies. They almost look like they're made of melting red candle wax.
- Book Burning: The Fanatics are busy razing enlightened cities and in the Sprawl, piles of books and the sight of Great Libraries in flame is very common.
- Elemental Absorption: They all have moves that involve setting themselves on fire to heal themselves. Somehow.
- Incendiary Exponent: The aforementioned self-immolation also buffs their attacks and grants them new moves.
- In the Hood: All the fanatics save the Pit Fighter (whose eyes are melted shut anyways) wear black hoods hiding their face which are decorated with various marks. This dehumanizes them further and makes them more sinister.
- Knight Templar: The Fanatics are burning whole cities to the ground, notably the enlightened ones. Not only do they destroy statues and burn books, they also have executed and put on display many people whom they viewed as enemies or heretics, and the heroes are no exception.
- Playing with Fire: The Fanatics use fire in several ways. For instance, the Shaman uses the Fire Beads skill, the Whipper can Ignite! their flails to apply Burn damage and heal themselves, Pit Fighters set fire to their fists when attacking, Immolatists project fire onto their foes, and so on.
- Turns Red: Almost all Fanatics have an ability called Ignite! which they can use at willnote , which sets them ablaze, gives them a small heal, adds fire damage to all their abilities and unlocks the use of powerful new attacks that usually target multiple ranks. The Immolatist can buff other Fanatics into this state, but doesn't have such a form herself.
Flayer
- An Arm and a Leg: They've replaced their arms with long metal skewers and spiked blades, and their legs with thin stilts.
- Dual Wielding: They have removed both their arms and attached both a flensing blade and a spiked gauntlet to the stubs.
- Flaying Alive: Their name gives off this impression.
- Fragile Speedster: They can do a fair bit of damage and have high Speed but only around 12 health. This is why they come with a Dodge token pre-applied.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: Their primary weapon is a needle-like blade attached to one of their arms, which they can use to great effect with skills like Stab and Burning Skewer.
Immolatists
Her Ladyship
The spiritual and field leaders of the Fanatics, Immolatists direct the zealots in their rampage through the Sprawl. In battle, they specialise in supporting their fellows by buffing and providing them with beneficial tokens, or directly attacking the heroes with burn damage and stress.
- Creepy Souvenir: Her robes are decorated with several severed arms, presumably from people she and her allies killed during their rampage.
- Elite Mook: They have a Champion variant called Her Ladyship, distinguished by her white robes, elaborate, crown-like headdress, and stronger buffing capabilities.
- Facepalm: When she hits Death’s Door the Immolatist slumps over slightly while clasping a hand over her face, apparently in fear or exhaustion.
- Fan Disservice: If you look closely enough, you'll see they're topless. They're also horribly burned, with patches of reddened, half-melted flesh all across their bodies.
- Godiva Hair: Her hooded cloak drapes over her chest in this manner. A decidedly unsexy example, due to the severe Body Horror from her burns.
- Heal It With Fire: Funeral Pyre allows her to heal herself and her allies by igniting the corpse of one of her allies.
- Playing with Fire: Their basic schtick, even more so than most of their allies. Their moves focus on either buffing other Fanatics' attack and dodge (by setting them on fire), or inflicting a Burn DoT to a single hero.
- Shoot the Mage First: She can put other Fanatics into the Ignited state with The Fire Rises before they can Ignite themselves normally, so it's important to take her down quickly before you have two Ignited Whippers on your hands.
Pit Fighters
- Acrofatic: The Pit Fighters can use the Accelerant skill to accumulate Speed, which turns them from Mighty Glacier to Lightning Bruiser in a few turns if the party doesn't get rid of them quickly enough. Coupled with how big they are, it makes them especially terrifying to fight, as their bulk no longer matters when they can just react faster than you and beat your party to paste.
- Arc Symbol: His gut-plate features the Iron Crown's iconography.
- Bare-Fisted Monk: The Pit Fighters are fat yet muscled fighters who only fight with their fists. Thus, they use Skills named Pummel and Jawbreaker which are variations on punching the heroes.
- The Brute: The Pit Fighters are some of the biggest enemies in the Sprawl, and don’t bother with tactics beyond punching the crap out of your frontline heroes and using Accelerant to make their beatings hit harder.
- Eyeless Face: The Pit Fighter's face has been so badly burned that his entire face has melted and has no discernible eyes anymore.
- Facial Horror: The Pit Fighter no longer has a face because of how badly he's been burned, just a mass of flesh that looks vaguely like a melted candle.
- Giant Mook: They're the largest members of the Fanatic faction, have a ton of health and have ample Death's Door resistance, too.
- Incendiary Exponent: Accelerant causes them to become even more on fire than before, giving them a hefty Speed buff in doing so.
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: First thing they'll do will be to use an ability called Accelerant, which gives them a speed buff and applies Burn to their attacks, and continuously increases said buffs every turn. If they manage to do this multiple times they can start becoming Lightning Bruisers, especially with their two actions per turn.
- Mighty Glacier: They start the battle out as this, with a relatively low speed but high health and strong damage potential. Allowing them enough uses of Accelerant turns them into more of a Lightning Bruiser by constantly increasing his speed.
- Punched Across the Room: Jawbreaker is a move where they hit a frontline hero with a deadly uppercut, knocking them back and potentially stunning them.
- Smash Mook: Pit Fighters don't do anything except punch your heroes over and over until one of them is dead. They also get two actions per turn, which means double the punching potential.
Sacrificials
- Action Bomb: If it moves to the very front, it will explode in a blaze of glory, taking itself out but dealing massive damage to your party.
- Heavily Armored Mook: They start with two Armor+ tokens to make up for their absolutely abysmal health, so abilities that can quickly remove armor are paramount for removing them from the equation before they can explode.
- Meaningful Name: Their main attack is to explosively sacrifice themselves and damage your party.
- Suicide Attack: If they get to the front of the enemy formation they'll immediately use A New Sun and explode, instantly Deathblowing themselves but dealing heavy damage and possibly inflicting a party-wide Burn DoT.
Shamans
- An Arm and a Leg: Close inspection of them reveals that one of their legs has been burned away into pulpy sludge, and they support themselves on one side with a makeshift splint. When they cast a spell, they teeter dangerously on it before regaining their balance.
- Glass Cannon: They can do a fair bit of damage with the spell Burning Beads, especially when Ignited, but have almost no health to make up for it.
- Shoot the Medic First: Ignited Shamans are capable of using the ability Blazing Aegis, which heals one of their allies for 20% of their health, gives them two Dodge tokens and applies Guard tokens to itself. This makes it way harder to kill both the Shaman and the other Fanatic, so taking Shamans out earlier in the fight is crucial.
- Skeletons in the Coat Closet: The Shamans wear a necklace made of skulls.
- Support Party Member: The Shaman's job is to inflict Blind tokens on your party and buff its allies.
Whippers
Masterful Kinred
A crazed, flail-wielding fanatic who specialises in pulling your back-line heroes out of position.
- Elite Mook: They have a Champion variant called Masterful Kinred, distinguished by their Horns of Villainy and iron faceplate. They are able to use Infernal Taskmaster without being Ignited and can use what is effectively the Immolatist's Flaming Lasso ability, but it targets the front two ranks rather than the back ones.
- Epic Flail: The Fanatic Whippers have replaced their left hands with large spiked flails with which they attack the heroes. Their attacks Whip Trip, Whip Crack, and Fiery Haze all consist of the Whippers whipping the Heroes with their flails, with Fiery Haze applying a Blind token on its target whereas Whip Trick pulls the target forward and applies the Immobilized token.
- Heal It With Fire: The Whippers have the Ignite! skill, which allows them to self-heal by burning themselves.
- Glass Cannon: They have low health and zero Deathblow resistance. In exchange, they’re fairly damaging in their regular state and their Ignite! gives them both an Extra Turn and an attack capable of burning, debuffing, and stressing the entire party at once.
- Video Game Flame Throwers Suck: Averted, though it's a villainous Mook example. Infernal Taskmaster allows a Whipper to throw out a huge gout of flame from their flail like an aspergillum, dealing party-wide damage and inflicting a lot of burn. It's important to kill Whippers before they ignite specifically because this move is often the first thing they do after powering up.
The Fisherfolk
Desperate to survive the rising tides, the fisherfolk of the coastal provinces resorted to a debased worship of the sea. They prostrated themselves before the primigenial power of the obelisks, and were rewarded for their supplication.
— The Academic
These slovenly creatures worship the sea. Let us return them to it.
When the world plunged into chaos, the settlers of this coastal shanty town turned to a debased worship of the sea to survive, praying to strange obelisks to ask for the protection of a higher power. Thus, the Leviathan answered. Now, the fisherfolk living in the Shroud are all mutated monsters, half human, half Fish People. If the party dares venture into the Shroud, they will be attacked by mobs of mutated Bosuns or Wharf Rats and Dockers, supported by other monsters like the Fish Mongers and led by their Captains. Should the heroes be foolish enough to trespass into the Sacred Pier, then they will meet the Leviathan, the towering sea god of the Fisherfolk.
In General
- Caltrops: The Barnacles status effect functions as this, inflicting bleed to any hero who moves to another position. This synergizes with attacks from the denizens that pulls or knocks back any unlucky afflicted hero.
- Deal with the Devil: A faction-wide example; they became Fish People after striking a deal with the Leviathan to survive the impending apocalypse.
- Expy: Continuing series tradition, the Fisherfolk are all heavily inspired by The Shadow Over Innsmouth, this time referencing the ill-bred populace of Innsmouth itself rather than the Deep Ones. The Church Of The Change is very similar in role to the Esoteric Order of Dagon, and several Fisherfolk bear a heavy resemblance to descriptions of the "Innsmouth Look", most prominently the Fish Monger and Docker.
- Fish People: These once human sailors are now mutated monsters — half-human, half-fish. They notably have large bulbous black eyes, grey hairless skin, and rather large mouths. Some even have jellyfish-like parasites attached to them.
- Mysterious Mist: The Fisherfolk of the Shroud are sometimes helped by a mysterious fog that rises and blinds the heroes. It's the Leviathan's breath, as is revealed in its boss fight. Defeating it will prevent the fog from showing up for the rest of the Shroud.
Bosun
The Hull Keeper
- Boring, but Practical: These humble sailors with polehooks might not seem like much compared to the more exotic monstrosities that make up the rest of the Fisherfolk, but they can wreak absolute havoc on unlucky parties by pushing and pulling heroes all out of position and dishing out stuns to keep them locked down.
- Call-Back: Their Spearfishing move is named after and works exactly like a move that Pelagic Groupers had.
- Elite Mook: Has an elite variant named "The Hull Keeper" who is armed with a harpoon and wears a feathered hat.
- Improvised Weapon: The Bosun is armed with a boat hook whose tip is rather sharp. With Heave Ho! the Bosun will hit and push away somebody with the blunt end, while with Spearfishing, he will hook somebody and try to pull them closer. With Sodden Rigging, the Bosun whacks someone on the head and stuns them.
Cabin Boy
- A.I. Roulette: Depending on how nice the game is feeling at that particular moment, the Cabin Boy could transform into an easily-dispatched buffed Wharf Rat or Bosun, a buffed Captain or Fish Monger, or worst of all a buffed Docker.
- Fetus Terrible: The Cabin Boy is a Fish People fetus floating inside of a large parasite. It isn't really dangerous yet, but it can quickly transform into another monster.
- Heavily Armored Mook: They apply two Block+ tokens to themselves and have a buff that allows them to potentially gain a Block token upon being hit if they manage to transform into a different Fisherfolk. They are very vulnerable beforehand, however, so taking them out quickly is key.
- Metamorphosis Monster: The Cabin Boy's gimmick is its ability to morph into any other Fisherfolk, being an unstable fetus dormant inside of a parasite. With Unstable Incubation, the Cabin Boy can buff and self-heal himself. When using Spawning Ground, it transforms into another monster altogether with extra buffs.
- Transformation Is a Free Action: Averted. The Cabin Boy cannot transform into another Fisherfolk on the first round of combat as a means of balance. This gives you a chance to kill it on the first or second round if you're strong and fast enough.
Captain
Admiral Marsh
- Call-Back: His All Hands On Deck! skill is named after an ability the Captain of the Drowned Crew had which summoned a Drowned Anchorman. Fittingly, the Drowned Crew was a Cove boss and the Shroud is heavily reminiscent of the Cove.
- The Captain: The supposed more mundane leader of the Fisherfolk. With the skill All Hands on Deck!, the Captain can rouse his crew to battle and give every monster several bonus tokens like the Critical Hit or Dodge token.
- Elite Mook: He has a Champion variant called Admiral Marsh.
- The Faceless: The Captain's face is constantly hidden in the shadows behind his collar and hat.
- Hook Hand: The Captain's right hand has been severed and replaced with a large sharp hook. With Keelhaul, he can stab one hero, inflicting bleed and decreasing their movement resistance.
- Pun: One of his moves is called Coral Grief.
- Shout-Out: The name of the Champion variant, Admiral Marsh, is likely an allusion to Obed Marsh, the primary human antagonist and Greater-Scope Villain of The Shadow Over Innsmouth, of which the Shroud takes heavy cues from as mentioned elsewhere.
Docker
- The Brute: The Docker is a hulking specimen whose size and large buckets make him occupy two slots in the enemy party.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: The Docker can inflict party-wide damage with Make Way, which consists of the Docker basically charging into the heroes because he wants to pass through. It also shuffles the party.
- Giant Mook: Compared to the rest of the Fisherfolk, they are huge. They're also clearly very strong, as they're capable of holding a giant yoke carrying two giant buckets full of squid.
- Improvised Weapon: Hull Breaker has the Docker swing the buckets of fresh squid he's lifting on his shoulder at the heroes, possibly pushing them away.
- Smash Mook: Dockers are incredibly strong and have the highest non-boss single-target damage output in the game. With Hull Breaker they can easily atomize a hero's health bar unless they have Block tokens, and Make Way allows them to pulverize your entire party and shuffle them around. The shuffling only gets worse if any of your party has Barnacles on them, which the Docker can also inflict with Brine Bucket.
- Status Infliction Attack: Brine Bucket is the only one of their moves which doesn't do a ton of damage, instead inflicting Barnacles on one unlucky hero.
Fish Monger
- Charged Attack: Whetstone allows them to apply a Crit token to their next attack, which they can immediately take advantage of thanks to their two actions per round.
- Eye Scream: One of the parasite's tentacles goes right into the left orbit of its skull.
- Glass Cannon: They have very little health but can put out some serious supporting damage, and prefer to stay far in the back, preferably behind a lot of Bosuns or a Docker.
- Long-Range Fighter: They are content to stay in the backline and hurl knives at your heroes, dealing loads of damage with a high crit rate.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Despite being Fish People(or at least half fish people), they are perfectly willing to carve up and eat other fish.
- Psycho Knife Nut: The Fish Monger possesses several knives it continuously sharpens with a whetstone. With Flense, it will throw one of the knives at one hero, inflicting significant damage.
Wharf Rat
- Combat Pragmatism: Their primary form of attack is a move called Sucker Punch, which deals a bit of damage and applies Bleed.
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: They primarily serve to harass you with small amounts of damage and Bleed infliction, but leaving them unchecked for several turns will result in them piling tons of Bleed onto your heroes, especially if there's multiple of them due to their tendency to come in groups.
- The Goomba: The least dangerous of the Fisherfolk, being a corpse manipulated by a sea parasite. The worst it can do is to sucker punch the heroes.
- Puppeteer Parasite: The Wharf Rat’s naked skull encased in the translucent parasite on his head, as well as the tentacles tangled around his limbs, suggest that he’s merely a dead corpse manipulated by said parasite.
- Status Infliction Attack: Briny Spray allows them to blast one of your heroes with filthy seawater and apply Barnacles to them.
The Lost Battalion
"Emptied of mind and spirit by some existential shock, the poor devils roam aimlessly amidst the trees."
Slow, vacant, and resigned, the lost battalion shambles on. They had honour once. Now they have nothing at all.
—The Academic
The Tangle is the territory of the Lost Battalionnote , an army of animated undead soldiers who lurk in the outposts and ruined keeps scattered there. Even in death, the Lost Battalion has kept its cohesion and their foot soldiers fight in close formations, supported by Drummers and Bishops while their General slumbers in the deepest parts of their Keeps.
In General
- Achilles' Heel: As they are covered in plants, they burn very easily. The Runaway can use her abilities to stack on burns quickly to snuff them out.
- Botanical Abomination: The Lost Battalion are all covered and overgrown with flora and plant life, which possesses their corpses to fight off intruders.
- Cool Helmet: The Foot Soldiers and Drummers all wear a helmet inspired by the real-life Coventry Sallet, with a distinctive jawbone visor with a plate protecting the brow. Funnily, the Drummer feels the need to lift the visor in order to see.
- Despair Event Horizon: Upon seeing the horrors of the cult, the Battalion collectively crossed this and did not resist as the Cultists swept over their lines.The Academic: When the cult came, no orders were shouted, no swords were drawn. There was only stupefying horror, and the catatonic lethargy that follows it.
- Fallen Hero: The Lost Battalion was once an army which fought for the Light. However, they've been slain and then turned into undead, so they now fight against the heroes.
- Gameplay and Story Segregation: They are somehow vulnerable to burn even though it's constantly raining in the Tangle, and realistically they should be too wet to set on fire. Similarly, despite unambiguously being undead they're still vulnerable to bleed.
- Heavily Armored Mook: They're all wearing armor to some degree, and most of their strategies involve applying Block tokens to themselves or their allies in some way.
- Large and in Charge: The biggest enemies of the Lost Battalion are their officers. The Knights tower over the heroes and occupy two slots, and the Dreaming General is so big they occupy three, though they are laying on a root and thus don't appear to be that tall.
- Mighty Glacier: As a faction, the Lost Battalion are slow and lumbering, but they hit like trucks and are highly resilient. Even their most basic Mooks have Deathblow Resistance, meaning it's impossible to one-shot them.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Cadavers embody a different flavor of zombie than the Gaunt. While the Gaunt may potentially still be alive to some degree, the Lost Battalion are unambiguously the animate dead. Its unclear whether the arboreal growths that cover them are supposed to represent how they've abandoned all sense of upkeep in undeath or whether the plants are actually controlling them somehow, given how the Tap Root works in the Dreaming General's fight.
- The Remnant: They are the remains of the army sent to fight off the cult. The Academic and Dreaming General heavily imply the Battalion is stuck mentally reliving the lead-up to their first (and last) encounter with the cult, hence why they attack anyone nearby.
Arbalists
Bullseye Barrett
In life, the Arbalists of the Lost Battalion were well-trained marksmen charged with providing ranged support to their comrades. Though their bodies and minds have been overtaken by the forest, their skills remain as sharp as their bolts, serving as the Lost Battalion’s dedicated backline snipers and ranged support.
- Achilles' Heel: Due to being backline Glass Cannons they're nearly helpless when pulled up to the front ranks, only using the weak Hip Shot skill.
- Armor-Piercing Attack: Piercing Bolt bypasses Armor tokens, meaning it can quickly disintegrate a hero's defenses and soften them up for Foot Soldiers and Knights.
- Captain Ersatz: They are quite literally just Bone Arbalists with a new coat of paint, some differently named attacks and a new move called Serrated Bolt. Their weakness is even the same, only being able to fire a weak Hip Shot when in rank 1 and 2.
- Elite Mook: They have an elite variant called Bullseye Barrett, distinguished by his full-face helmet and ability to immediately Mark a hero at the start of the battle.
- Glass Cannon: They are squishy backliner foes who don't have Armor Tokens like Foot Soldiers, but they are capable of putting out serious damage, especially when buffed by a Drummer to be able to use Piercing Bolt Volley.
Bishops
- Back from the Dead: At the cost of two Benediction tokens they can use Serve Once More, reviving a dead Lost Battalion enemy.
- Beard of Evil: The plants growing out of the Bishop's mouth and face create this effect.
- Cast from Hit Points: Penance gives them Benediction tokens at the cost of five HP per use. They won't use it if they're at 25% HP or lower, presumably to prevent them hitting Death's Door too easily.
- Church Militant: Wearing distinctive mitres and carrying a big book that probably is holy scripture, Bishops of the Lost Battalion are priests who act as support for the troops but are also dangerous in their own right. They have religion-themed Skills such as Penance, which unlocks other attacks, Purge the Unworthy, which causes damage and stress, or Smite, which does straight damage.
- Eye Scream: Has tree branches growing out of their eye sockets.
- Mana Meter: A Bishop starts a battle with two Benediction tokens, which allow it to use its most powerful abilities, Purge The Unworthy and Serve Once More. Using either of these abilities removes a Benediction token (two for Serve Once More), and when they're both gone it will spend its whole turn using the Penance ability to regain Benediction.
- Memory Trigger: In The Binding Blade, showing the Holy Standard to a Bishop reminds them of who they are long enough to give you the Antique Reliquary to help track down the Crusader.
- Shoot the Medic First: If you down one of his cohorts whenever he has Penance active, he can use Serve Once More to revive said fallen comrade, inflicting a full-party stress hit on your heroes in the process as the enemy keeps getting back up to fight. Given his tendency to spawn in the back ranks of the enemy formation, shuffling abilities or damage-dealers who can reliably inflict backline damage are your friends whenever this foe turns up.
- Status-Buff Dispel: Purge The Unworthy is a powerful spell they can use which removes all of a hero's positive tokens, but it uses up Benediction.
- Squishy Wizard: Bishops start with no Block tokens and can't get Foot Soldiers to Guard them like Drummers, and only have around 22 health. This means they can be quickly dispatched with enough firepower, unlike the rest of the Battalion.
Drummers
- The Bard: The Drummer uses his instrument to buff and coordinate other through various drum beats. For instance, he has the Order: Defensive formation skill that marks an ally with extra protection plus a taunt token to draw enemy fire, or uses Focus Fire to mark one hero with a taunt token.
- Cycle of Hurting: Them applying Focus Fire to a hero not only directs all of their allies' attention onto that one hero, but also increases the likelihood that they'll be forced to use Focus Fire on them again, which reapplies the Taunt tokens and causes them to use Focus Fire again, and so on and so forthnote . This is but one of myriad reasons why killing Drummers quickly is extremely important.
- Better to Die than Be Killed: Drummers are a pure support unit. If one is completely without allies, it will use a move called Death Before Dishonor, which kills itself and stresses your party.
- Drums of War: The Drummer is a war drummer of the Lost Battalion, and is capable of rallying its allies with the sound of its drums and giving them orders to devastate your party with.
- Mook Commander: This is its primary function. At the beginning of every round that it's alive, it will give out Orders to one of its allies, either buffing them or allowing them to use a powerful attack. Volley allows Arbalists to target your whole party with an upgraded version of either Serrated Bolt or Piercing Bolt, Slay The Wounded allows Knights to hit both rank 1 and 2 with a new ability called Flashing Blade, and Defensive Formation moves a Foot Soldier to rank 1 and gives them an Armor+ token. In addition, on its turn it can either use Focus Fire, which applies two Taunt tokens to one of your heroes, or Marching Orders, which grants it and all its allies a speed buff.
Foot Soldiers
- Death of a Thousand Cuts: Atrophic Cut doesn't do a whole lot of damage, but the resistance debuffs it applies stack up after a while and it can still hurt, especially if three or four Foot Soldiers are all focusing on a single hero.
- The Goomba: Downplayed. Foot Soldiers are bog-standard infantry units with only one attack, but their durability makes them still pose a threat, especially when paired with more dangerous foes like Knights or Drummers.
- Heavily Armored Mook: Foot Soldiers wouldn't be nearly as tough if they didn't start the battle with two Block tokens and have Death's Door resistance, making them take a lot longer to kill.
- Status Infliction Attack: They have a single ability, Atrophic Cut, which prevents heroes from gaining Block tokens and lowers all their resistances.
- Sword Drag: The Foot Soldier let the tip of their swords drag on the ground, as they are not living and don't properly act like soldiers anymore.
Knights
Fallen Templar
Towering warriors of the Lost Battalion, the Knights found their plate armour was no match against the Cult’s horrors. They now serve as the Cadavers’ frontline tanks and elite troops, specialising in enduring damage from heroes before responding with heavy blows from their BFS to inflict heavy damage and bleed.
- Achilles' Heel: Being moved to the very back will force them to use a weak attack called Have At You to get back into position.
- BFS: Wields a huge flamberge.
- Bring It: En Garde is an ability which gives them two Block and Riposte tokens. When activating this move, they will defiantly shake their fist at your party, as if encouraging you to attack them.
- Critical Status Buff: Knights are the only Mooks in the game to actually get stronger upon reaching Death's Door, gaining a hefty damage bonus and stun resist. And they have pretty good Death Armor, too, so you'll want to finish them off with abilities that bypass it like the Highwayman's Wicked Slice.
- Elite Mook: They have a Champion variant called Fallen Templar, distinguished by their darker, gold-trimmed armour and the rotted vegetation clinging to them.
- Giant Mook: They're one of the tallest-standing Mooks in the game, towering over the likes of Foot Soldiers and only being matched in height in the Tangle by Bishops.
- Gold-Colored Superiority: The Fallen Templar's armour is trimmed with gold; they're also more powerful than the basic Knight.
- Horns of Villainy: The arboreal growths covering its helmet have grown into crude approximation of horns, giving it this effect.
- Mighty Glacier: They're huge, armor-clad guys wielding massive swords and are capable of decimating squishy frontline heroes like the Grave Robber or Jester, and they only get stronger if a Drummer buffs them and allows them to attack two ranks at once with bonus damage. They also have over 50 health, which is a lot for a normal non-Cultist encounter, and can buff themselves to give themselves two Block tokens and two Riposte tokens.
- One-Handed Zweihänder: They wield giant two-handed greatswords, but only attack using them in one hand.
The Plague Eaters
Plague Eaters - feeding on the tainted crop. Toothy and corpulent, slaves to their hunger.
—The Academic
"The farms and fields of our kingdom, overrun with putrescence and rot."
The Foetor was once a prosperous farmland in which peasants lived a simple life as they tended to their crops and herds. However, when news of the upcoming end of the world is heard by the inhabitants, they dealt with it by gorging themselves on their larders, feasting on everything before all is swept away. Now, it is overrun by masses of putrescent flesh, covering the crops and houses in fleshy tendrils. Its inhabitants were all corrupted and mutated into Plague Eatersnote , covered in cancerous growth and filled with an unending appetite. The victims of the Foetor now form a grotesque parody of the families they once were.In General
- Achilles' Heel: Any move that gets rid of corpses will prevent them from eating them for health and from using their most powerful attacks. In addition, they're vulnerable to Bleed due to their bloated flesh.
- Autocannibalism: The Academic remarks that they turned upon themselves to sate their hunger once their larders were empty and their animals gone.
- Big Eater: They gain buffs from eating, similar to the vampires from The Crimson Court. Some have a buff that lets their allies take a bite out of them in the middle of combat. According to the Academic, the first symptom of their illness was that they got really hungry and started eating anything they could catch hold of.
- Body Horror: The Plague Eaters were once humans and farm animals, but they were all corrupted and their bodies are covered in grey tumors from which extra mouths have developed.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: To the Bloodsuckers of the Crimson Court. Both factions are grotesquely mutated humans obsessed with gorging themselves on their enemies and each other, while still clinging to a parodic facsimile of what they once were. Unlike the Bloodsuckers, who were a Decadent Court of nobles and their servants, the Plague Eaters were humble local gentry and peasant farmers, families with their workers and livestock. Furthering the contrast is the object of their hunger - while the Bloodsuckers crave blood and try to drain it out of the heroes, the Plague Eaters are Big Eaters who prefer to eat their allies' corpses or take bites out of the Livestock.
- Fat Bastard: The only skinny enemies in the group are the Butcher and the Maid. The rest are cannibalistic, bloated monsters driven purely by their hunger.
- Evil Is Visceral: The level's theme. Fleshy tendrils and growths snake and tower throughout the background as you traverse the route, not to mention the corrupted denizens who are possessed of a ravenous hunger for any fresh meat with the nerve to pass through their territory.
- The Faceless: You'd be forgiven for thinking that their faces have been replaced entirely by their gigantic mouths, but the reality is that most still have them. Their mouths have simply grown so much it's pushed them out of place.
- Horror Hunger:
- Their theme and combat revolves around this as they can consume corpses of their slain brethren to gain combat buffs. Not that snacking on the corpses of their neighbours will dissuade them in any way, shape, or form from devouring the bodies of any of your heroes (offscreen, mercifully) who have the misfortune to fall in their festering lands.
- Experiencing this was the start of their transformation into Plague Eaters. Driven mad by the oncoming end of the world, they dealt with the news by gorging themselves on anything they could find; when their stores of foodstuffs were empty, they turned to the rotting flesh of their animals to sate their hunger, and when their animals were gone, they turned upon themselves.
- Limit Break: The Dinner Cart, Lord, and Lady can consume a corpse through Inhuman Appetites, giving them access to a unique, powerful attack in the process. It also heals them by 25% of their health and removes any active DoTs.
- Mid-Battle Tea Break: If you take "tea" to mean "lunch". They'll stop fighting to gobble up the nearest corpse, which grants them combat buffs, similar to the Crimson Court's "Gather the Blood" from the previous game.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: They'll eat each other if they can get away with it (in the case of Livestock, alive to boot), but are generally content to wait for someone else to kill their friends so they can have them for lunch.
- More Teeth than the Osmond Family: The mouths of the Plague Eaters have multiple rows of oversized teeth.
- No Zombie Cannibals: Zig-Zagged. They won't eat each other alive unless they have the "Fodder" status (and even then it's just a nibble.) Dead Plague Eaters, on the other hand, are free game for cannibalism.
- Overly-Long Tongue: The mouths of the Plague Eaters also have sharp purple tongues they attack with.
- Too Many Mouths: All the Plague Eaters have cancerous growths from which mouths have formed. The Lady in particular has a Belly Mouth which she attacks with.
- Villainous Glutton: Their overall theme as a faction; they're predatory, gluttonous monsters more than willing to eat people (and each other).
- Their origin is also this where they dealt with the end of the world by emptying their larders and throwing feasts before everything will be swept away by the apocalypse.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Many of their attacks involve barfing half-digested offal at you, which you get to see up close and personal.
- Was Once a Man: While the Lords and Maids are still kinda recognizable as once-human, Butchers, Ladies, and Dinner Cart pushers... aren't.
- Zombie Puke Attack: If they've eaten recently (see "Big Eater"), they can vomit the mangled, acid-soaked remains at your heroes.
Butchers
Tohno the Carver
The former labourers and farmhands of the Foetor, responsible for taking care of the landowners' animals and meat. They serve much of the same role as the Foetor's footsoldiers, alternating between cutting up the heroes with their cleavers and healing their allies with flesh cut from the Livestock.
- The Butcher: They wield huge meat cleavers and meathooks, and they can and will butcher the party if given the chance. They will also cut up Livestock and feed it to their allies if they're low on health.
- Dual Wielding: Butchers have both a meat cleaver and meat hook to attack your party with.
- Elite Mook: They have a Champion variant named Tohno the Carver.
- Hooks and Crooks: They wield a meat hook in addition to their huge meat cleavers, and use it to pull your backline closer.
- Licking the Blade: They do this with their cleaver after using Carve.
- You Will Not Evade Me: Meat Hook allows them to pull backline party members forward.
Dinner Cart
- The Blank: Unlike the other Plague Eaters, Dinner Carts are pushed by tiny faceless humanoids with a Lamprey Mouth.
- Body of Bodies: Looks like a humanoid hauling around a nest of shapeless flesh with a huge toothy mouth and a cow's udder on a small wheelbarrow. The two are attached to each other by the humans body, implying they've fused with the mass and now act as one.
- Breath Weapon: Sickly Sweet has them exhale green gas that blights your heroes.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: They can vomit out Putrid Meat, which is a key mechanic in the Foetor's Lair Boss fight with the Harvest Child. This can be even more literal if you encounter a Dinner Cart in the second Lair fight and they use this move.
- Jabba Table Manners: Averted, of all things. They will actually pick up a butcher knife and cleaver attached to their cart and use them to eat when consuming a corpse with Inhuman Appetites, despite being nothing but a giant mouth.
- Smash Mook: They hit your party relentlessly with the highest-damaging attacks in the Foetor. Sickly Sweet is a high-damage projectile attack, and Excoriate is a brutal frontline attack that inflicts bleed. Don't let them eat corpses or they'll be able to use Bilious Mortar, which has a reasonably high chance of inflicting Disease on your backline. And sometimes you can face up against a Resistance encounter consisting of nothing but two of them.
- Zombie Puke Attack:
- Regurgitate lets it vomit on heroes while spawning a corpse available for consumption.
- Bilious Mortar gobs acid on your back row.
Lady
- Belly Mouth: Their whole body below the ribcage is nothing but a lump of meat and a single tentacle, with a huge, circular maw in the middle.
- Brown Note: Mother's Embrace has them sing, which hurts and disturbs the heroes.
- Every Proper Lady Should Curtsy: After performing one of their non-biting moves, they'll do a mock-curtsy while holding up their fleshy lower bodies.
- Noblewoman's Laugh: They tend to behave like high-class nobles, complete with the laugh as part of their idle animation.
- Twinkle Smile: Humorously, they make sure to clean their Belly Mouth's teeth with a rag every time they attack, ending with this.
Livestock
Black Philip
The prized animals of the Foetor's farmowners, the Livestock specialise in shuffling your heroes about through damaging charges, in addition to serving as a convenient snack for any wounded Plague Eaters.
- Elite Mook: Has an elite variant named "Black Phillip", whose main difference are the ram horns, black coating, and a unique move that can steal positive tokens from a Combo-marked hero.
- Gathering Steam: While Livestock don't have much health or otherwise seem especially noteworthy at first glance, the other enemies found with them in the Foetor can buff them as the fight goes on and you'll quickly see that their health is low for a reason.
- Glass Cannon: They hit like battering rams, particularly after Gathering Steam through other Plague Eaters' buffs, but they have low health and absolutely zero deathblow resistance. A particularly powerful crit or consistent targeting of Livestock can take them out of the battle within a round or two.
- Gruesome Goat: And how! It's body is covered in huge tumors and pustules, and it's got a second mouth growing out of its first one. Beast of Burden has it vomiting out what appears to be its own intestines at your heroes.
- Let's Meet the Meat: Comes with a buff that allows other Plague Eater-type monsters to take bites off of them for healing.
- Nested Mouths: Looking closely at their model reveals that a second mouth is growing out of their first one, pushing the upper jaw back.
Lord
- Adipose Rex: Being a lord of the Gentry and also a Plague Eater, he's extremely obese.
- Big Fun: They're grotesquely fat, and laugh constantly. They also stumble around comically when they get hit. Quite frankly, they're the game's comic relief enemy, despite being thoroughly awful at the same time.
- Bitch Slap: Fleshy Backhand is a powerful slapping attack they possess which is capable of sending your heroes flying to the backline.
- Breath Weapon: Baneful Breath allows them to stress out your party and inflict debuffs with just the smell of their rotten, corpse-addled breath.
- Expy: The Lord has a resemblance to
◊ the Great Unclean Ones of Nurgle in appearance, furthered by his constant jolly manner and propensity for sickness and gluttony. - Fat Bastard: He's a loathsome, disgusting, evil Plague Eater like the rest of his kin, and he's also both horribly bloated from teratomic tumors all over his body and just overall revoltingly corpulent.
- Giant Mook: Unlike other large frontline enemies, Lords are more of a support/damager hybrid. 'Tongue Lashing allows them to buff their allies, while Baneful Breath inflicts Weak tokens and applies Stress to your whole party. Their primary damage-dealing moves, Fleshy Backhand and Bilious Cannon, also inflict status effects alongside damage.
- The Hyena: They are always perpetually haughtily laughing, until they reach Death's Door, upon which they collapse panting to their knees with their head in their hands.
- "I Can't Look!" Gesture: Upon reaching Death's Door, a Lord will cover their eyes with their hands and cower in fear, almost as if they know the game's up and they are about to die.
- Jabba Table Manners: His version of Inhuman Appetites involves him picking up a corpse off the ground with his bare hands and tossing it into his mouth before gulping it down his throat.
- Our Ogres Are Hungrier: Invokes this. He dwarfs his allies and the heroes, is horrendously overweight, and gains buffs from eating corpses.
- Punched Across the Room: Fleshy Backhand hits like a bus and launches the victim into the back row.
- Slasher Smile: Their default expression is a wide, mock-friendly (and very, very toothy) grin, giving off this impression.
- Too Many Mouths: Aside from the one taking up most of his face, he's developed a second mouth on one shoulder.
- Villainous Breakdown: At Death's Door, they fall to their knees panting with their head in their hands.
Maid
- The Blank: Their entire head has become a huge mouth.
- Covered in Gunge: One move has them throw out a slop bucket onto a hero, blighting them.
- Support Party Member: Their role during fights. If they are not blighting your heroes with their rot ridden bucket, they are busy buffing the other Plague Eaters.
The Swine
The pitiless stamp of cloven hooves can be heard ahead... Hidden in warrens and ancient waterways, the swine proliferate unseen and unchecked.
—The Academic
"Tread carefully and quickly. This is swine country."
The Sluice was once a network of tunnels presumably used by miners or as safe passage for weary travellers. Now, during the world's end, it has been overtaken by the Swinefolk. The dark, maze-like tunnels that comprise the Sluice are now decorated with gruesome charms and trophies that the Swinefolk have made out of their unfortunate victims. The Swinefolk skulk in the dark, seeking to pick off your heroes with wild savagery.For Swine Skivers, please look here.
In General
- Big Eater: The Swine are as hungry for human flesh and victuals as ever - the tunnels of the Sluice are littered with huge piles of half-eaten human corpses, and the rotting remnants of their victims.
- Call-Back: Their faction information notes they were first encountered by a small hamlet on the western coast.
- The Highwayman: The Swine are the only Region enemies that can be encountered in Road Battles, essentially replacing Pillagers in the Sluice. This makes sense, since they would kill and eat the Pillagers same as any other humans who crossed their path.
- Pig Man: Natch, for a faction descended from the Swinefolk of Darkest Dungeon.
- Sinister Swine: As in the first game, the Swinefolk are ruthless man-eaters who live in filth and terrorize anyone who crosses their path. It's unclear if they're still trying to raise an army to Take Over the World by breeding as quickly as possible or if they're camped out in the Sluice permanently and content with murdering anyone stupid enough to travel through and try to steal their treasures.
- Treasure Room: If you're lucky, you'll stumble across the Swine's Cache while in the Sluice, which is where the Swine collect their ill-gotten plunderings. Mechanically speaking, they're better versions of the Academic's Caches, having better loot in higher quantities.
Swine Brutes
- The Brute: Duh. They have a lot of health and deal a ton of damage.
- Foe-Tossing Charge: Gore allows a Brute to charge headfirst at one of your heroes and slam into them with its tusks, dealing ample damage and inflicting Stun.
- Giant Mook: They're the tallest and biggest creatures in the Sluice.
- Large and in Charge: As mentioned, they're the biggest things you can encounter in the Sluice, and their armor suggests that they're sergeants or group commanders of some kind, potentially even being Evil Counterparts to the Man-At-Arms. Wilbur, presumably the Swinefolk's leader, is also a Swine Brute.
- Smash Mook: Their whole thing is hitting your party hard while their allies wear you down. One of their moves is even called "Smash", and flattens your heroes in the first two ranks.
- Super-Scream: Squeal has them let loose an ear-shattering squeal which does moderate damage and inflicts Stress.
Swine Skulkers
- Blade Spam: Their most damaging attack, Pigsticker, consist of them somersaulting around and unleashing a whirlwind of strikes with their daggers.
- Devious Daggers: They wield two of them, and are also The Sneaky Guy.
- Dual Wielding: They wield two knives at once which they will gleefully gut you with.
- Psycho Knife Nut: Their design gives off this impression, with their tongues lolling out their mouths and a knife clutched in each hand.
- The Sneaky Guy: Their preferred tactic is to Skitter to give themselves two Stealth tokens and then use either Ragged Hook or Pigsticker while you can't hit them. Killing them before they can use Skitter or having Stealth-removing abilities are very strong against them for this reason.
- Status Infliction Attack: Fouled Shank allows them to throw a poisonous knife that inflicts Blight at one of your heroes.
- Target Spotter: They act as this if they accompany Wilbur (or Fulgore) in battle, effectively serving as his old role in the fight with the Swine King and inheriting his classic moves, End This One and End These Two. These moves apply Combo to one or two of your heroes respectively, causing Wilbur's attacks to deal more damage to them.
- You Will Not Evade Me: Ragged Hook allows them to pull backline heroes closer.
Wilbur
- Boss in Mook Clothing: Wilbur gets no fanfare, no Academic voice lines and no achievement for beating him, so the game basically considers him a unique Swine Brute rather than a full-fledged boss, even though he is still quite powerful and capable of bringing your party members to Death's Door in a hit or two.
- Call-Back: Wilbur, perhaps in the honor of his former king, uses some of the Swine King's signature moves like Obliterate Body and Obliterate Masses. Unlike the king, however, he doesn't need Marks to hit you with them.
- Elite Mook: Wilbur is essentially an elite version of the Brutes encountered.
- Not So Harmless: Despite seemingly killing him back in the first game, Wilbur shows up again as a miniboss that is part of the ever expanding threat that is the Swinefolk. Wilbur has grown to be a towering hulk and is now far more dangerous. Wilbur now seeks to crush the slayers of his dead king with his newly gained muscle and fighting prowess.
- Large and in Charge: Being a Swine Brute, Wilbur towers over the other encounterable Swine and his regalia suggests that he's a chieftain or general of some kind, if not the Swinefolk's actual leader.
- Palette Swap: Unlike the other minibosses with their own unique models, Wilbur is just a Swine Brute with dirty blonde hair and more Skeletons in the Coat Closet.
- Super-Scream: He has enhanced his Bit O' Squeal ability over the years, upgrading it into Shattering Squeal, a more damaging and stress-inducing version of the Swine Brute's Squeal attack.
- Took a Level in Badass: Wilbur has now gone from a tiny little piglet hiding behind the Swine King to a fully grown brute capable of tearing through your party all by himself and leading Swinefolk warriors of his own.
- Unexplained Recovery: The Heroes almost certainly killed him during Darkest Dungeon, considering they took his flags as a trophy. Except now he's somehow alive again.
Hero Shrine Enemies
The Grave Robber's Enemies
Enraged Husband
The lord of the Grave Robber's manor, who it's implied she was in an Arranged Marriage with. His abuse leads the Grave Robber to kill him by poisoning his drink.- Asshole Victim: Even though he died from his wife poisoning him, the game makes him completely unsympathetic by showing how he was an abusive drunk who beat the Grave Robber in between benders. Notably, when he reappears as the Grave Robber's Specter during the Body of Work fight, she is the only character who is completely unrepentant and actually takes glee in getting to kill him a second time.
- Domestic Abuse: The Husband beats on the Grave Robber in between drinking and vomiting.
- Oh, Crap!: After realising she'd poisoned him, his last moments were spent pleading with and insincerely apologising to the Grave Robber for his treatment of her.
- Tampering with Food and Drink: The Grave Robber killed her husband by poisoning his drink.
Coffins
- Booby Trap: Some of the coffins you have to search is armed with a hidden blade, dealing large stress damage to the Grave Robber.
Night Watchmen
- Patrolling Mook: His gimmick is that he designates a couple ranks every other turn to be searched and also watches one of the coffins. If the Grave Robber is in one of the marked ranks when he searches it, or if she tries to loot the coffin he's watching, problems ensue.
The Hellion's Enemies
Soldiers
- Hopeless Boss Fight: The soldiers have tons of health and the clansmen go down in just a few hits, forcing you to use the move Cower. The second battle is against a never-ending crowd of Grieving Widows until you reach max stress.
- I Shall Taunt You: When there are no more clansmen for the soldiers to fight, they taunt the Hellion until she goes into hiding and cowers.
Grieving Widows
- Comforting the Widow: The only way to defeat them is to use Pleading Apology.
- Hopeless Boss Fight: They can't be beaten in combat anymore than the soldiers could, and they don't stop coming.
- Produce Pelting: The Grieving Widow's Spoiled Slops move involves pelting the Hellion with spoiled food, causing her stress to increase.
The Highwayman's Enemies
Gaolers
- Blow That Horn: The Gaoler can use the move Inhale to blow the alarm horn. If the Highwayman does not use Stone Missile to interrupt him, he will deal a large amount of stress damage.
Treasury Guards
- Hero Antagonist: They are simply guards trying to stop the stagecoach's inhabitants from being robbed and harmed.
- Respawning Enemies: They continue to spawn until the stagecoach is dealt with.
Stagecoach
- Mook Maker: Its main function is to summon more Treasury Guards whenever the Highwayman kills one. If none have died since the last summoning, it buffs the guards with protection and with strength enhancements.
The Jester's Enemies
In General
- Puzzle Boss:
- The main gimmick of his battles is that they're music-themed, with vague to no hints given to the player.
- The battle against the Violinist has both him and the Jester wielding moves named after the components of a song; the battle requires you to understand the structure of a song, and respond to the Violinist's attacks with the corresponding move (such as following up a Verse with a Chorus, or answering a second Chorus with a Bridge). Using the right moves will cause the Violinist to misstep and become open to damage, while the wrong ones cause the Jester to take stress damage.
- The battle against the court requires you to use the Jester's moves to change the musical notes on his side to mirror the notes on the opposite side, with the Jester acting as a wild card that can represent any note. This demands careful planning by the player, as all bar one of his moves inflict stress on himself during this battle.]]
Violinist
- Ambiguous Situation: It's not clear from the second hero shrine if the Violinist actually dies from the Jester playing against him, which could make the Jester a Musical Assassin as well.
- Ambiguously Related: He resembles the Squiffy Ghast from the first game, but it's not clear if they are the same person.
- Brown Note: Hearing his music drove the Jester to stumble "deliriously" in search of him. The Jester would later play the piece in a noble court that abused him, which "loosed the leash of [his] inhibitions" and drove him to massacre the nobles in the court at the end of it.
- Expy: The Violinist is very clearly based off of Erich Zann from The Music of Erich Zann, right up to the hauntingly stellar music that drives people mad.
Courtiers
- Decadent Court: They viciously abuse the jester during his first performance for them, resulting in him playing an eldritch tune and slaying them all.
The Leper's Enemies
Royal Advisors
- Decadent Court: Viciously so, they don't even want the king to show basic compassion.
- Dirty Coward: Constantly try to get behind fellow conspirators so that the others can be thinned out and so that there can be as few survivors as possible.
- Evil Chancellor: They serve as this, urging their king not to show compassion to the sick and dying.
- Opportunistic Bastard: Won't even wait till the king dies of his illness to usurp him. Deconstructed, as said king is quite Genre Savvy and saw it coming from a mile away.
- Too Dumb to Live: Had they simply waited for the Leper to actually perish from his disease, they might've actually accomplished their goal. Unfortunately, they've proven far less patient than him.
- Villain Has a Point: They weren't particularly concerned about the king's health, but them trying to stop the king from hugging possibly diseased peasants turns out to be a correct call.
Supplicants
- The Disease That Shall Not Be Named: They have leprosy. The last supplicant actually gives the Leper the disease because of his prolonged interaction.
The Man-At-Arms's Enemies
Enemy Soldiers
- Unwinnable by Design: There is no way to kill all of the enemy soldiers. They will keep respawning until the Man-At-Arms hits maximum stress and ends the battle.
Fallen Comrades
- Due to the Dead: The only way to defeat them is to put their spirits at ease. The Man-At-Arms can also use the move Pour One Out to stun them.
- Vengeful Ghost: They blame the Man-At-Arms for their death due to his poor leadership and haunt him during his bedridden state.
The Occultist's Enemies
Shades
Representations of the Occultist's virtues, which seek to prevent him from striking a Deal with the Devil.- Anthropomorphic Personification: While they look like ghostly versions of the Occultist, they're actually mental representations of his virtues (such as his conscience, reason, and selflessness.)
- Hero Antagonist: They're trying to prevent the Occultist from striking a Deal with the Devil that almost certainly won't end well for him.
- Kicking My Own Butt: When fighting them, the Occultist is essentially destroying his own virtues in order to become a host to a greater power.
Dimensional Shambler
A star-spawned horror of the cosmos, which the Occultist seeks to defeat so that he may harness its power.- Call-Back: The Occultist's tendency to spout off lines in eldritch language in Darkest Dungeon is explained to be the result of the Shambler turning him into a "beacon" for Eldritch Abominations, along with it stalking him for revenge.
- Demonic Possession: Its attack names and the context of the battle imply that it's trying to possess the Occultist throughout the fight; while he ultimately defeats it and harnesses its power, it hasn't given up on going after him.
- Eldritch Abomination: It's still a Shambler, and it's a cosmic entity that's borderline incomprehensible to normal beings.
- Puzzle Boss: This Shambler fight is less about defeating it and more about balancing the Occultist's moves carefully to become a beacon. It's nowhere near as tough as its regular encounters.
The Plague Doctor's Enemies
The (Living) Professor
A sickly professor of the Plague Doctor's academy.- Incurable Cough of Death: If the Plague Doctor successfully rebuts the argument, The Professor will break into a Coughing Fit which depletes a large amount of his health. Looking at the token before this yields a tooltip referring to this move as a "symptom of incurable illness."
- Nerdy Bully: The students in the podium laugh at you if you fail to rebut The Professor correctly, dealing extra stress damage.
- Stern Teacher: If the Plague Doctor attempts to rebut his argument before the correct opening during the lecture, it will automatically prompt him to use SIT DOWN! and deal a bunch of stress damage to her.
The Reanimated Professor
The unfortunate results of the Plague Doctor's extracurricular experiments applied to the body of her former professor.- And I Must Scream: Subverted, as screaming is all the professor could do after the Plague Doctor's horrific attempt to revive him.
- Came Back Wrong: The Plague Doctor manages to bring her professor back to life, but he could barely move without bleeding and can only wail.
- Cast from Hit Points: His Wail attack stresses the Plague Doctor, but causes him damage and inflicts Bleed on him. This will eventually deplete his health and cause him to hit Death's Door, upon which the Plague Doctor has to Mercy Kill him.
- Mercy Kill: When it becomes clear that she cannot save the Professor, the Plague Doctor can only use Stab to instantly Deathblow him.
The Runaway's Enemies
The Prioress
One of the sadistic nuns who ran the St. Martha's Orphanage where the Runaway was sent.- Nun Too Holy: The Prioress is a nun who tries to burn the Runaway with a branding iron for minor infractions.
- Orphanage of Fear: Judging by the presence of this and other sadistic nuns, St. Martha's Orphanage was not a pleasant place to live.
The Vestal's Enemies
The Torturer
The torturer in charge of the Vestal's punishment. As Word of God confirms, he is the Flagellant during his time as the church's punisher before he was kicked out for his cruelty.- Blood Magic: As a Call-Back to his original appearance, the Torturer uses the original Bleed-based Punish, Rain of Sorrows, and Exsanguinate, albeit with the new animations of their Blight counterparts.
- Combat Sadomasochist: It's the Flagellant, so it's a given.
- Dueling Player Characters: Both of them are playable in the game, but the Vestal must defeat him to escape.
- Early-Bird Cameo: The Torturer appears in the Early Access version of the game long before the Flagellant as a playable character was revealed for the full release.
- Mythology Gag: His design is based on one of the Flagellant's earlier concepts.
Bosses (Wandering)
For the Collector and the Shambler, look here. The Chirurgeon
- Anti-Debuff:
- Trephination bestows a buff on one of its Gaunt allies which removes all negative tokens from them and gives them a huge damage boost for each token removed (similar to the Plague Doctor's Indiscriminate Science ability) but it also does a little damage to them, meaning he can inadvertently kill them with this move.
- Conversely, Trepanation does more damage to one of your party members, but also removes their negative tokens. However, instead of granting a damage buff, it increases the amount of damage the hero takes per negative token.
- Artistic License – Medicine: He carries a bucket of leeches around with him which he uses to heal the Gaunt he fights alongside by throwing them at them. Obviously, in real life throwing leeches at somebody doesn't instantly heal them and will probably make them more sick.
- Combat Medic: He can support his Gaunt patients with powerful buffs and healing, but can also dish out some serious damage, especially with Bone Saw.
- Counter-Attack: Any attack that hits him will apply 1 Bleed to the attacker, identically to the Spiked Skullcap trinket that he drops. Also like the Spiked Skullcap, enemies with Bleed applied to them give him a plus fifteen percent crit chance.
- Deadly Doctor: Of the deadliest kind. He bolsters his patients with leeches, slashes into your party with his bone saw and can heal himself by giving your party brain trepannings.
- Flunky Boss: Like a Creature Den, the Chirurgeon's Table consists of two waves, so you'll have to fight through some Gaunt to even reach him, and some more Gaunt accompany him in battle. While there are other Gaunt alive, he'll primarily be healing them with leeches and softening your party members up with Trepanation. The real danger, though, comes from his Leucotomy ability, which heals one of his allies and grants a powerful unique buff depending on what kind of Gaunt they are, so killing his minions quickly is essential to defeating him, especially if he's being supported by a Ghoul or Woodsman.
- Harmful Healing: It's clear that his methods do actually work, but because they primarily involve leeching and bloodletting and are conducted in a non-sterile area, they wind up becoming this.
- Healing Factor: The Chirurgeon has a unique buff applied to himself at all times that causes all Damage Over Time applied to him to be converted into Regen and dispelled at the end of his turn, functionally identically to the Appalling Apron trinket that he drops.
- Meatgrinder Surgery: His whole vibe gives this off. The Chirurgeon's Table is an area caked with blood, body parts and organs, and the Chirurgeon's combat techniques are more on the invasive end of medicine, such as amputation and trepanation. He also wears a blood-spattered apron and skull cap, further reinforcing this image.
- Non-Malicious Monster: Like the Woodsman, he appears to think that he is merely continuing his duties as a Chirurgeon and performing surgery on the the sick. In fact, he'll even target your diseased party members with a unique move called Bloodletting, which cures any diseases they have, and then immediately go back to trying to kill them.
- Not the Intended Use: Even though the Chirurgeon is meant to be a dangerous encounter which rewards good loot, it's perfectly viable to pay him a visit purely because you don't have the cash to cure your party members' Diseases at a field hospital so that he can cure them instead with Bloodletting for free.
- Skewed Priorities: When on Death's Door, he will drop to his knees and try to pick up all the leeches he's dropped during the fight.
- Status Infliction Attack: Bloodletting is a nasty debuff which inflicts a lot of Bleed and lowers the amount of damage you can do for the rest of the battle, but also cures you of any diseases the afflicter character has.
Death
Death
Death has come to claim her elusive prize!
The Flagellant's continuous defiance of death over the years has not gone unnoticed, and having him in your party runs the risk of a nasty encounter. Death herself has come to hunt for the Flagellant, and she will get her prize regardless of the collateral damage she may cause in the process.—The Academic
- Achilles' Heel: Death spawns when the last enemy in a resistance encounter is killed, but doesn't act until the next round. If a fast hero kills the last enemy early in the round, this gives the other three heroes a free round to beat on Death and cut down her health before she starts fighting back.
- Arch-Enemy: The Flagellant. It's implied that the Flagellant is a unique case to her because he hasn't kicked the bucket at all when others have at least died and come back.
- Berserk Button: Judging by how she only appears if the Flagellant is in the party, there's good indication that someone just plain refusing to die enrages her to the point she comes to kill them personally, instead of simply letting them die naturally.
- Deliberately Monochrome: The field turns grey and washed out whenever she appears.
- Duel Boss: The Flagellant's first encounter with Death in his Shrine of Reflection acts like this. The Flagellant fights her with no backup with both having two turns per round, and manages to beat her.
- Dynamic Entry: When she appears in a Resistance encounter, she rises up out of the ground with a bloodcurdling shriek and turns everything around her black and white.
- Enemies with Death: She's developed quite the enmity with the Flagellant for having defied her and living without having died once. She can arrive at the end of any Resistance encounter as long as the Flagellant is in your party, coming after her quarry when you least expect it. During one of these encounters, the Flagellant will have a minus fifty percent Death's Door resistance debuff, to contrast how he's normally the party member who's the most durable at Death's Door and to signify how Death really wants him dead.
- Eyes Do Not Belong There: Her design invokes the idea, but instead there are empty sockets on her and her horse where they would be.
- Fighting a Shadow: The Pale Rider is merely a physical manifestation of the greater being. Her defeats amount to her postponing the retrieval of her vaunted quarry.
- Gratuitous Latin: The ability she uses to give the Flagellant a gigantic Death's Door resistance debuff and some Horror at the very start of the fight is called Memento Mori ("Remember you will die" in Latin). Knowing what it means and considering her animation for the move, it sounds like Death is directly threatening the Flagellant with the phrase.
- Giving Someone the Pointer Finger: She does this at the very beginning of the fight when she uses Memento Mori on the Flagellant, singling him out as the target of her wrath.
- The Grim Reaper: The setting's take on the reaper.
- Hellish Horse: She rides a horse whose face and body is pockmarked with holes in the same manner as her face, and she is the Pale Rider, after all.
- Horrifying the Horror: When brought to Death's Door, her idle animations shift to confusion and worry, as if she's frightened that the embodiment of Death itself is about to be killed.
- Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Explicitly called The Pale Rider, implying the existence of the other three (unseen) horsemen.
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: Death spawns with a permanent +25% DMG buff against bleeding targets; this increases as her health decreases, up to a maximum of +75% DMG against bleeding targets when at 25% of her starting health. Since her frequently-used Soul Reaver and Trample attacks both apply Bleed to targets, this results in her becoming much more lethal against the heroes as the battle goes on.
- It's Personal: The entire reason she's hunting the Flagellant is because she's personally miffed that he simply will not die, no matter how much punishment he puts himself through or how close he comes to her Door.
- Kicking Ass in All Her Finery: She's dressed quite elegantly, but she's also the grim reaper of the setting, and is a boss level enemy as a result.
- Lady of War: She shows incredible calmness, precision, and poise as she swings her scythe around; even her Death's Door animation has her look unsettled rather than tired.
- Lone Wolf Boss: She has no affiliation with any of the cosmic horrors and abominations that blight the land. Just personal beef with a man too insane to die.
- Marked to Die: She uses a unique, actionless ability at the very beginning of her fight called Memento Mori, which applies a minus fifty percent Death's Door resistance debuff and a lot of horror to the Flagellant and ONLY the Flagellant. Preventing him from reaching Death's Door therefore suddenly becomes your top priority in this battle, since it basically ensures him a guaranteed death if he gets hit by anything while on it.
- The Problem with Fighting Death: Defeating her means she lets go of her physical form to try again later. She will always return to try again.
- Sinister Scythe: As Death herself, she wields one. Since she's the one whose door the heroes are knocking on, her scythe swings will often deal stress and bleed alongside the usual damage.
- Villainous Breakdown: A downplayed example. When put on Death's Door, she breaks from her previous calm to seemingly gasp in shock or fear as though surprised that the heroes have managed to defy her.
- Villain-by-Proxy Fallacy: A variation. She'll never appear if your party doesn't have the Flagellant in tow. But if you do, when she finally shows herself, she has no qualms with butchering the rest of the party while still trying to kill the Flagellant, indicating that it doesn't matter if you didn't personally wrong her - just associating with someone who did is enough to lump you in with them.
Exemplars
“..But gaze not upon the high Exemplar, for you are not worthy of such an honor.”
Loathing made manifest!
A terrifying boss that will appear at the end of the third region’s Oblivion's Rampart starting from Confession 3 onward, blocking your party from their final rest before the Mountain. Exemplars are extremely hard-hitting and dangerous foes, but their strongest attacks need a moment to charge up, meaning preventing them from gaining Worship tokens is a great strategy for defeating them.—The Academic
- Achilles' Heel: Downplayed. Unlike Deacons and Cardinals, who are completely unable to gain Worship tokens if their subordinates are killed, Exemplars are capable of generating their own Worship tokens, either by using The Fall on one of your party members or by consuming its minions with Pillars of Sacrifice. However, they are still vulnerable (though not defenseless) to other forms of stalling or preventing them from getting Worship tokens, such as the rarely-found Shred of Decency combat item which removes 1 Worship.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: The Academic's intro quote for it and the unique method by which it spawns both imply that the Exemplar is a physical embodiment of the Loathing.
- Arc Symbol: The Iron Crown permanently floats above the head of the exemplar. Notably, it doesn’t seem to be made out of anything, it’s just there.
- Beef Gate: An Exemplar always guards the Oblivion's Rampart just before the Mountain’s Inn On confession 3 or higher. This is intended to prevent an underleveled team reaching the Confession's Final Boss ahead of time.
- Combat Tentacles: The Exemplar has several tentacles of varying size protruding from its right side, which it will use to batter a target during its Prelude attack.
- Darkness Equals Death: They have a chance to appear in the cultist ambush if your Torch runs out. This is guaranteed to happen on confession 5. Do not let your torch run out.
- Enemy Summoner: Exultation allows the Exemplar to summon a fresh cultist unit to the battle. It can summon any of the size 1 Cultist enemies, so you could get lucky and have it summon a weak Cherub, or get really unlucky and have it summon an Evangelist.
- Frickin' Laser Beams: Unleashes one whenever it uses Rapturous Beauty.
- Gathering Steam: The Exemplar's whole gimmick is that it takes a while to charge up its most powerful attacks, but when it does they will hurt. It needs to apply Combo to a hero with Prelude before it can use The Fall, and over the course of the fight will be generating its own Worship tokens to use Exultation, which hits like a truck and summons a Mook to fight alongside it.
- Gods Need Prayer Badly: All its most powerful attacks require Worship tokens. Subverted in that, unlike any other enemy in the game, it can generate its OWN worship at the start of its turn for free.
- Monstrous Cannibalism: Once other cultists have worshiped enough, it will devour them, granting itself worship tokens along with a massive heal and ripostes.
- Our Centaurs Are Different: Exemplars are headless human torsos on top of a tremendous mound of flesh, limbs and tentacles that appears to have a second face. It almost looks like it's been turned inside out, since there is a spine and ribcage running back upward toward the upper torso.
- The Right Hand of Doom: Its lower left arm(?) is much larger than the rest of its limbs, which it uses to great effect during The Fall.
Bosses (Regional)
The Dreaming General
The Dreaming General
"He has retreated, undying, into a dream - and there he must stay."
Locked in a nightmare slumber, he is tortured by failures both real, and imagined.
The leader of the Cadavers within The Tangle. A once great general that intended to meet the cultists in battle, he was cursed with an eternal, nightmare-ridden slumber. He still remains at the General's Keep, trapped within his own mind and haunted by failure.—The Academic
- Achilles' Heel: Long-range and party-wide attacks. The Tap Root can only target two people at a time with Creeping Growth, meaning if you have a way to hit the Tap Root twice in a turn you can force it to recede from both heroes it just targeted and completely stonewall its efforts to restrain your party. They don't even have to be damaging attacks, either; combat items which inflict status effects and party-wide debuff moves like the Man-At-Arms' Bellow work just fine. Keep in mind that the Tap Root will retaliate by stirring the soil under your heroes and allowing the General to use The Waking Dead, but it's substantially less hard to deal with than having your party members Constricted.
- And I Must Scream: Trapped within his decayed, vine-twisted body and forced to endure guilt-ridden nightmares within his sleep, while his body still reacts without his conscious input.
- Botanical Abomination: The biggest threat in this battle is the Tap Root rather than the general himself. It can attack you from above with Creeping Vines or from below.
- Combat Tentacles: The Dreaming General and his Tap Root use Creeping Growth to tangle the heroes and strangle them. The only way to free the heroes is to hit the Tap Root, making the vines recede but at the cost of the Tap Root spawning a token on a random party member which marks them to be attacked by The Waking Dead.
- Counter-Attack: Countering the Tap Root's attempts to Constrict your party will cause it to randomly apply The Soil Stirs to two ranks, upon which two turns later the Dreaming General will hit with a powerful attack called The Waking Dead, dealing loads of damage and inflicting Stress and Bleed.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: Clocking in at a mighty 210 health, the General outweighs every other lair boss in the game. This is further exacerbated by the fact you have to focus some of your attacks on the Tap Root to stand a chance. His is a long and grinding battle.
- Expy: Of all things, the Dreaming General can be seen as the Darkest Dungeon version of Sleeping Beauty. Like the fairy tale, the General is in some kind of magical slumber which has caused his surroundings to become overgrown with impenetrable foliage. Where he differs is that instead of a fairy-cursed princess, he is the commander of a battalion of now-overgrown undead soldiers who protect him even in death.
- Finishing Move: If every hero in the party is fully entangled by Creeping Vines, the General will unleash Nightmare, which causes massive damage to stress and health to the party.
- Forced Sleep: Whatever dark magic has permeated the forest has put him into a permanent sleep, locked forever in a nightmare.
- Impaled with Extreme Prejudice: He's impaled on a large Tap Root.
- Mind Rape: Despite his large body and sword, the Dreaming General actually specializes in stressing out the heroes. His Unsettling Whispers inflict significant stress damage to the heroes, and once they are tangled by the vines, the heroes are forced to use Whispering Darkness, which inflicts a party-wide stress damage.
- Shout-Out: His highly-damaging Counter-Attack is called "The Waking Dead".
- Stationary Boss: Neither he nor the growth that he's impaled on move around during the fight, meaning he's easy pickings for front-rank heroes.
- Talking in Your Sleep: What his Unsettling Whispers are - he verbally shares what he's dreaming about to the rest of the heroes, stressing them out in the process.
- When Trees Attack: The Tap Root will perpetually use a move called Creeping Growth on two random ranks at the start of every round, attempting to ensnare your heroes in its many vines. If it manages to use this move twice on the same rank without its growths being pushed back, the party member in that rank will become Constricted, which causes them to be Immobilized as well as take damage every turn and be forced to waste their turn dealing Stress damage to the rest of the party. The only way for Constricted to be removed is if the Tap Root Constricts your whole party and the Dreaming General uses Nightmare on them, meaning preventing your heroes from being Constricted is priority number one in this fight.
The Harvest Child
The Harvest Child
"The harvest is here. Pity those with a place at the table."
Born to a corpulent, half-eaten mother, the child is a ravenous avatar of degeneracy!
The leader of the Plague Eaters within The Foetor. This abhorrent infant is a living symbol of the degenerate abundance that has swept the farmlands. The abomination rests within the Harvest House, blessing those who are graced by its presence with unending gluttony and fetid meat.—The Academic
- Achilles' Heel: Being Immobilized and Damage Over Time. The Harvest Child is very good at distracting DPS heroes with its Putrid Meat, preventing them from doing damage and eating up valuable turns in your action economy, but also doesn't have that much health and its attacks don't do that much damage unless it's in rank 1. For this reason, if you can stack Bleed, Blight or Burn onto it while preventing it from getting to Rank 1 with Immobilizing tools (such as Bear Traps), it can't really out-damage your healers and will crumble in just a few turns.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: The Harvest Child will spend its entire turn using either Tantalizing Tidbit or Sapid Drippings to move forward, unless it is in rank 1, where it will use a new ability called Maws Of Life, which does a ton of damage to your heroes in ranks 1 and 2 and sends it flying back to rank 4. For this reason, combat items and abilities that can restrict its movement are key to defeating it.
- Berserk Button: Destroying the Putrid Meat around it will cause it to only use Maws of Life, obliterating the two front heroes.
- Enfant Terrible: He looks like a child stuffed into a cornucopia with tentacles. He can slaughter unprepared parties entirely by himself.
- Even Evil Can Be Loved: The Plague Eaters are fond of the horrible thing they have helped birth, having put it in a cornucopia and put a wreath on its head.
- Horror Hunger: The Harvest Child surrounds itself with food which tempts your heroes to take a bite if they do not resist the allure, giving said hero a minor stress heal and causing their maximum health to decrease for the remainder of the fight (it is rotting meat, after all). Due to this, the fight often boils down to calculating whether it's worth destroying the meat first to prevent the constant formation shuffles and risking an endless barrage of frontline damage as described above, or if one should just focus on pulling the Child towards the front ranks so that everyone can pile on damage regardless of their positioning.
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: The Harvest Child's attacks don't really do a lot of damage by themselves, not even Maws of Life. However, as your heroes start losing more and more of their max HP to Horror Hunger, its attacks will start doing more damage proportionately, meaning if you can't kill it quickly it will soon be capable of one-shotting them every turn.
- Man Bites Man: Tantalizing Tidbit has it chomp down on a single target and pull itself and its cornucopia forward.
- Maximum HP Reduction: The Putrid Meat it surrounds itself with will force rank 1 heroes to take a bite, reducing their maximum HP by 15%.
- Super Spit: Sapid Drippings has it ralph up a cocktail of stomach juices to hit your backline party members with.
- Turns Red: Similar to the Swine Prince, destroying its companion enemies will send it into a frothing rage and prompt it to begin spamming the extremely powerful Maws of Life attack at you.
- Was Once a Man: The most horrific part of the Harvest Child's fight is that unlike other bosses who leave no corpse, the Child leaves behind a human gravestone, just like the ones your party leaves behind when it's killed, signifying how even if it was a horribly mutated infant it was still a human baby.
The Leviathan
The Leviathan
They must be made to see that their monstrous god is mortal.
The leader of the Fisherfolk in The Shroud. As the tides of the coast grew higher, the Leviathan washed ashore. Worshipped as a god by the Fisherfolk, the Leviathan's origins and motivations are unknown. It resides within the Sacred Pier, exhuming a deep fog that creeps throughout The Shroud.—The Academic
- Achilles' Heel: Movement Resistance. The Leviathan's Hand's Undertow move can fail against high movement resist, allowing the party to remain intact in order to be able to attack at full power and make the fight, at the very least, more tolerable. A Sergeant Man-at-Arms is the absolute best choice for this, as his ability to guard another marked hero synergizes with his high move resist in the battle.
- Cognizant Limbs: The Leviathan's Hand is treated as a separate entity during the boss fight, and it has its own set of attacks. With Undertow, the hand grabs someone from your party and pulls them into the water, making them slowly drown. Or it can simply batter the heroes, being a massive hand.
- Eye Beams: With Eyes of the Storm, the Leviathan emits a baleful light from its eyes and inflicts significant damage to the whole party.
- Expy: If the Pelagics from the Cove in Darkest Dungeon were expies of the Deep Ones from The Shadow Over Innsmouth, then the Leviathan is an Expy of Dagon himself, being a massive fish-man worshipped by the Fisherfolk.
- God Guise: When the Fisherfolk started praying to the ocean, the Leviathan answered their call. It acts as the god of the Church of the Change, being responsible for the transformation of the Fisherfolk, but as the Academic declares, it is just as mortal as its own worshipers.
- Kraken and Leviathan: The Leviathan is a giant humanoid with fish-like features and a tiara resting on its head. Indeed, its head alone towers over the heroes during the fight, occupying two ranks.
- Large and in Charge: The god of the Fisherfolk cult, Leviathan is so large you can only see its head and one of its hands, with the rest of it submerged. As a trophy you take a bit of its finger, which by itself is the largest trophy available.
- Shout-Out: The move where it summons its hand out of the water is called Deep Rising, after the movie of the same name.
- The Spook: The other lair bosses are just as much victims of the ailments that plague their respective areas as the rest of their faction. The Leviathan, meanwhile, simply appeared at the Shroud, perhaps lured in by the appearance of the mysterious idols, or perhaps arriving of its own will. Its motivations are unknown, as is whether it's an intelligent being or a mindless monster. All that is certain is that it caused the Fisherfolk to obtain their new forms, and has become an object of worship for them that needs to be taken down.
- Super Spit: Of two sorts. With Breath of the Sea, the Leviathan coughs up a large mist cloud that can blind or even render vulnerable the heroes. With Tidal Surge, it vomits a large quantity of sea water, with every fish and piece of junk that it may have swallowed. The heroes can notably be covered in sharp barnacles that will hurt if they move through the ranks.
- Token Non-Human: Of the region bosses, the Leviathan is the only one that wholly unambiguously is not, or was once before, a human.
- Waterfront Boss Battle: The fight against the Leviathan takes place on the very end of the Sacred Pier. A core mechanic of the boss involves it trying to pull your party members underwater with its huge ichthyoid hand.
The Librarian
The Librarian
"The conflagration must be stopped! The Librarian Must. Be. Destroyed."
He teeters madly upon his ladder, reveling in the fiery destruction of human accomplishment!
The leader of the Fanatics within The Sprawl. Once a protector of knowledge before the city's fall, the Librarian has since become the most zealous of the Fanatics, burning away his once-cherished tomes within the depths of the Great Library.—The Academic
- Achilles' Heel: Being shuffled around. The Librarian's whole moveset is built around burning the books in front of him and moving forward, but he will not Ignite until all of the books have been burned, so throwing him out of formation so some books are behind him completely screws him up while making him easy pickings for your frontline heroes. He does have the ability to move back behind all the books again while bestowing a debuff, but that can be easily countered by getting him into rank 2 rather than rank 1. A single Thunderclap Grenade is often all it takes to secure a kill on him.
- Advancing Boss of Doom: The main mechanic of his fight. He starts out at the back of the enemy formation, blocked by several stacks of books which he'll damage with each turn. If he reaches the frontline, he'll set himself alight then endlessly spam a powerful attack until the party or he dies.
- Became Their Own Antithesis: Once a keeper and guardian of knowledge, the Librarian now burns his books as a means to destroy his enemies. Unlike with other bosses, the heroes find this so egregious that they'll issue disgusted or horrified barks throughout the fight.
- Blindfolded Vision: Unlike the hoods used by the other Fanatics, he's wrapped a scroll around his eyes.
- Book Burning: Natch, as the leader of the Fanatics (who have this as their hat). The Page Burner move also features him burning some of the books in the stacks surrounding him.
- Evil Librarians: He's a "librarian" in name only, instead being a Fanatic hell-bent on incinerating all of the Great Library's knowledge.
- Incendiary Exponent: Like all the Fanatics, he can use Ignite! to gain new attacks. Unlike the others he'll hold off on using it until all his books are burned, after which he'll start endlessly spamming Burning Bright until he or (more likely) the party dies.
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: If the Librarian runs out of books to burn, he will set himself on fire, then endlessly repeat an attack that damages and burns your whole party.
- Ironic Name: A Librarian who burns books, rather than preserve them.
- Logical Weakness: Categorize only forces the move if the heroes are not currently in alphabetical order. Therefore, the move can be an utter No-Sell on parties which are incidentally already categorized as such, or at least won't completely disorganize them. One such party composition that remains unaffected by this is "The Usual Suspects" (Crusader, Highwayman, Plague Doctor, Vestal).
- Rush Boss: The Librarian has the least amount of health of any lair boss, but once he gets to rank one he will quickly destroy your team with Burning Bright spam. The fight is all about stopping him from getting there by bringing plenty of backline attacks and countering his stalling tactics.
- Shout-Out: His most dangerous move is a party-wide Burn-inflicting attack called Burning Bright, which is an allusion to William Blake's "The Tyger". It also references the third chapter of Fahrenheit 451, fitting with the boss's theme of Book Burning.
- Throw the Book at Them: His Mandatory Reading attack involves throwing a burning page into a hero's face, damaging them and inflicting a Burn.
- Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: His unique Categorize move forces your heroes to put themselves in alphabetical order based on their classes, which is represented by him shouting at the heroes.
Bosses (The Mountain)
At the end of every confession, you will enter the final region, the Mountain, the focal point of the coming apocalypse, to face down against the heralds of the world's end. In General
- Anthropomorphic Personification: They are each based on a flaw of the Scholar that went into causing the apocalypse.
- Boss-Altering Consequence: If the Loathing of a given confession fills up completely, the Confession boss will gain a massive health and damage buff for the battle.
- Evil Is Visceral: All of them are titanic, fleshy horrors based on the organs of the human body.
- The Heartless: They are all manifestations of the Scholar's negative emotions and personality traits created by the Iron Crown. Defeating them in the order that they were developed is the only way to undo the apocalypse.
Confession 1: Denial
The Shackles of Denial
Pity the Great Denier - chained by its own command!
The collective psyche of the world, conjured into physical form and bound by eldritch chains.—The Academic
- Animate Body Parts: It's a giant brain that seems to be at least somewhat self-aware.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: For a given value of "Anthropomorphic". The Brain of Darkness is a physical representation of the world's collective psyche, and of the Loathing's effects on it.
- Arc Symbol: The Iron Crown hangs behind it, with several spikes seemingly piercing the Brain itself.
- Brain Monster: A gigantic brain manifested via eldritch energies and kept shackled by shadowy chains and padlocks. Interestingly, the brain never directly fights - it's the chains and padlocks that do all the fighting.
- Call-Back: The locks binding it resemble the Abomination's trinkets. Any connection between them is unknown at the moment.
- Increasingly Lethal Enemy: Each time one of the locks dies, the others will receive a Status Buff that lasts for the rest of the battle. These include an extra 20% damage on all locks' attacks, 10% higher Critical Hit chance, a one-off heal for 33% of the other locks' health, or the ability to apply a 10% Blind or Weak debuff to a hero with each attack.
- Non-Malicious Monster: The Brain itself isn't actually a threat and serves mostly as a looming background figure; unlike the other chapter bosses, it can't be targeted in any way and is not killed at the end of the battle, instead floating off-screen once the Iron Crown and its bindings are broken.
- Power Nullifier: Each lock has a unique move to disable one of your abilities such as healing, ranged attacks, and melee attacks. Once only one is left, whichever type of skill it locks you out of will be permanently disabled for the rest of the fight.
- Rush Boss: Its action economy will completely overwhelm you if you don't focus each lock down hard and fast. Their DPS doesn't really let up even as each lock is killed, as they'll all give a permanent buff to the others to compensate for their advance. Not a boss you can take your time with.
- Wolfpack Boss: Instead of the brain itself, you fight four locks that each get a turn and have their own moves. At the start of the round, one of the locks is randomly selected to disable either melee, ranged, healing, or stress healing skills, which can limit your ability to focus down specific ones.
Confession 2: Resentment
The Seething Sigh
The Seething Sigh, stertorous avatar of ill-concealed rage!
A grand menace of heaving lungs, hidden within the mountain ziggurat.—The Academic
- Achilles' Heel: Damage Over Time. Because the difficulty of the Sigh's fight stems from having to dedicate valuable turns toward dealing damage to its lungs to prevent it from blasting your entire party, applying Bleed, Blight or Burn to it in great quantities allows you to still do lots of damage to the Sigh itself while dealing with the lungs, especially due to its two actions per round.
- Alpha Strike: It's capable of using other damaging and Status Infliction Attacks, but at the end of its turn it will use Sundering Exhalation if its lungs haven't been damaged, which is a party-wide attack that deals tremendous damage. Preventing it from using this attack by sacrificing damage to the Sigh itself to attack its lungs is the secret to defeating it.
- Animate Body Parts: A pair of giant lungs and a trachea, all of which seem at least marginally sentient and very, very angry at you.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: Of Resentment in general, but also of a much more specific action than any of the other Confession bosses: The Sigh is the literal personification of the seething, angry huff of air a person makes when they're mad at someone but trying to rein it in.
- Blow You Away: It fights by breathing in deeply, then using Sundering Exhalation or a similar move to blast your heroes with great gusts of wind.
- Body Horror: What little skin it has is stretched over massive lungs, which are themselves encrusted with a layer of tumorous barnacles.
- Breath Weapon: Very literally — it fights by inhaling, then blasting the breath out at your heroes with extreme force.
- Charged Attack: Both of its lungs take turns using Shallow Breath, allowing it to use Sundering Exhalation unless they are damaged.
- Critical Status Buff: Once half of its health has been depleted, it will upgrade Shallow Breath to Deep Breath, which causes both of its lungs to prepare Sundering Exhalation, requiring you to damage both of them in order to negate it.
- Suppressed Rage: It embodies this trope, as it's a much more lethal application of a rage-filled exhalation of air from someone who's trying to keep it in, bu tit still leaks out.
Confession 3: Obsession
The Focused Fault
Obsession's unshrinking gaze, focused to a fault!
A great mass of eyes and teeth, gazing out from the mountain's heart.—The Academic
- Achilles' Heel: Draw Aggro abilities. Putting loads of taunt tokens on a character with a lot of HP in it first phase will cause all the eye stalks to focus on them, meaning the Focused Fault will only be able to use Limerence on that one character until it uses Behold on another party member, which you can also counter by putting Taunt on somebody, leaving it massively exposed to your other party members. Granted, that hero who's targeted still probably doesn't have very long to live, and once they are dead the Fault will refocus its gaze on the rest of the party, so killing it quickly and applying Block tokens to the targeted hero is imperative.
- Dynamic Entry: After all four stalks of eyes in its first phase are killed, the Focused Fault itself comes rushing in at high speed from the corner of the screen, unleashing a roar and distorting the screen.
- Eye Beams: The Focused Fault's main attack, Limerence, involves blasting a giant beam of light at your heroes to cause heavy damage. Figuring out how to direct it to a hero who can tank it is the focus of the Puzzle Boss.
- Flunky Boss: It initially attacks you with its mass of secondary eyes before its main body attacks - while pretty weak, the real danger is that they'll apply Seen tokens to your heroes so that the Fault can use Limerence on them in phase 2- plus the longer you fight them, the more weak you get from their Stress attacks and magic, so phase 1 is all about directing their attacks onto your beefiest heroes while taking them out quickly.
- Glass Cannon: It has 275 health (less than that of the prior two bosses, who clock in at about 300-350 total HP each) and very low resistance to all three forms of Damage Over Time. However, it can absolutely butcher your team without healing or careful preparation due to Limerence's high damage output and tendency to target several members of the party at once, and is fought after a Flunky Boss first phase.
- Ironic Death: The embodiment of obsession is best beaten by focusing it in a self-destructive direction.
- Puzzle Boss: As a party member realizes when it attacks you directly in phase 2, it can only use Limerence against heroes it or its eyes have Gazed at beforehand - attacking its eyes causes them to lose focus on whoever they're looking at, before focusing on someone else. Moreover, the Fault will only attack after all four eyes are dead. Thus, phase 1 is based around tricking them into all looking at a hero who has a great deal of health, causing the Fault to waste its Limerence and give the heroes time to wear down its low health and poor status resistance before it can target them as well. However, it will also alternate between other Status Infliction Attacks, making it harder for your party to work cohesively, and no longer spams Limerence until its target is dead like it used to, downplaying this aspect in its second phase.
- Trial-and-Error Gameplay: The Fault's mechanics used to be very heavily designed for you to not figure out how they work on your first attempt and get wiped in the Fault's second phase. There was no indication given what the Gaze tokens did in the first phase or that letting all the eyes achieve maximum growth was the way to progress the boss, meaning a first-timer would likely have spent a long time trying to unsuccessfully kill the eyes as they wore down their party, only to have their weakened party get immediately obliterated by Limerence when the Fault itself appears. Luckily, Red Hook took these complaints into consideration, and the boss was reworked to no longer have this problem.
Confession 4: Ambition
The Ravenous Reach
Ambition's reach forever exceeds its terrible grasp!
An army of grasping hands that seek to crush the world in their palms.—The Academic
- Body of Bodies: Its entire body is made out of arms and hands.
- Counter-Attack: Its desperation strategy in its third phase is to give itself three Riposte tokens and start railing into your party, meaning if you have heroes on Death's Door you may have to take a big risk to damage it.
- Giant Hands of Doom: It's made out of them, and will slap and punch you for massive damage.
- Glass Cannon: Its three forms are all pretty low-health, with its final form having a mere 100 health. However, it can rapidly mark Heroes and build crit tokens before launching a powerful targeted attack at them, putting out a high degree of damage.
- Meaningful Name: The embodiment of ambition is a creature made of grasping hands that is a Glass Cannon; its reach exceeds its grasp.
- Megaton Punch: Its first phase involves marking a hero in the backlines, and then steadily punching the ones in front to the back in order to bring its target closer.
- Punched Across the Room: Several of its most dangerous attacks are capable of sending your frontline heroes flying back to rank 4. Movement resistance is vital during the fight because of this.
- Rush Boss: If you do not progress the Ravenous Reach's phases quickly, you are DOOMED. The sheer amount of damage it can output will tear through your party like butter if you start trying to regroup or heal up, and it will quickly overwhelm you. Healing Combat Items are your friend here, as you'll be able to heal your party while simultaneously keeping the pressure up. This goes double for its third phase, where it will do a lethal attack that targets your whole party at the end of every round and apply Horror to them at the start of the round, as well as giving itself Riposte. This means that time is of the essence and you'll need to carefully pay attention to each of you heroes' health, because if two or three of them start dropping to Death's Door, you may have already lost.
- Sequential Boss: It has three phases total, with it altering its strategy for every phase, increasing its reach, but also making itself more vulnerable in the process.
Confession 5: Cowardice (FINAL BOSS SPOILERS)
The Body of Work
Behold the hateful God upon His throne - your failures made flesh!
Gaze now upon your great achievement - the sum total of your failings. Your Body of Work!
The source of the Loathing whose howl tears the world asunder, and the Final Boss that you must destroy.—The Academic
- A.I. Roulette: Beating the Specters that it summons after using Face Your Failures in its third phase can be a lot easier or harder depending on what abilities your hero currently has restricted. You could potentially easily crit the Specter to death or waste several rounds having your melee abilities locked and being unable to act.
- All Your Powers Combined: The Body of Work uses the previous Confession Bosses' unique tricks, albiet with the moves renamed - the torso's mechanics revolve around using Glare to target a Hero (like the Fault's Gaze) then deliver a powerful punch to the targeted hero with one arm (similar to the Reach's attacks) which can be weakened if you reach a damage threshold before the move is used (like the Sigh). Its final phase also opens with a party-wide variation of the Shackles of Denial's ability-nullifying moves.
- Back for the Finale: When it uses "Face Your Failure", it will summon a chosen hero's shrine enemy for one final confrontation of their past.
- Bishōnen Line: Downplayed, in that it is very much a Humanoid Abomination; where the previous Confession bosses were weird ambulatory organ creatures, the Body of Work is a humanoid giant controlled by the transformed body of a sorcerer that resembles a human figure in a Black Cloak, and is the ultimate hateful god of its pantheon. It's still covered in Body Horror, however.
- Bring It: In the intro cutscene, it notices your Heroes and mystically flashes the sigil of the Iron Crown at them, clearly eager to harshly punish the adventurers that have proven such a hassle to it and its pantheon.
- Colossus Climb: The battle against it involves your Heroes moving up its body with the aid of a rocky pillar, defeating its stomach and chest before reaching and battling its head.
- Contrasting Sequel Antagonist: The Heart of Darkness was the mastermind of the previous game, an inhuman creature bound to awaken one day and destroy the earth and was speeding up the process, as well as (it claims) the creator of humanity. The Body is ultimately the creation of one misguided human. The fact that there are Heroes to oppose it indicates something went very wrong with its gestation, as the soul of the human it used to be is actively working against it - at the end of the game, it just dies, taking the Iron Crown with it. This is best represented by its signature attack, Face Your Failures, a stark contrast to the Heart's Come Unto Your Maker; the hero you choose must duel an illusion based on their past failures, which grants the hero a massive damage boost and heal if they succeed. Rather than accept death, your heroes must accept life.
- Cosmic Flaw: The Body is the source of the Spreading Stain, which means that it's the thing keeping the universe out of alignment, which is allowing the Iron Crown to spread its malignity across the stars and plunge the world into oblivion and chaos.
- Cutting the Knot: The Body's final phase has 999 health, which you are mainly meant to chew through by having all four heroes successfully face their failures. However, it's entirely possible to ignore this entire mechanic and just kill it the hard way. This allows for hero compositions with support hero(es) who can't kill their respective Spectres to defeat the Body of Work, even without all four Hero Exultations.
- Damage-Sponge Boss: The Body of Work has three phases, and the third phase, the head, has 999 health. Downplayed in that defeating the Spectre summoned by Face Your Failure allows the hero to deal 200 damage and this can happen once for each party member, but that's still at least a total of 199 health you'll have to cut through.
- Deity of Human Origin: The Body was created as a physical manifestation of both the Iron Crown and the Scholar's negative personality traits, forming an Eldritch Abomination that fractured the natural order of the universe.
- Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Perhaps because it manifested in a mortal human rather than the purity of the Heart or because the Scholar is fighting back, but this dark god is ultimately mortal; destroying it not only stops the apocalypse in its tracks, but banishes the influence of the Iron Crown, the very Arc Symbol of the series!
- Enemy Without: The Void-possessed mutated human body of the Scholar, filled with all their most negative personality traits that led to the reckless experimentation that provoked the apocalypse. It will also summon Specters of the pasts of Heroes to torment them with the Face Your Failures move.
- Face Death with Dignity: It manages to salute the heroes as it dies.
- Final-Exam Boss: Though it doesn't use the direct mechanics of every single previous Confession Boss, it still feels like this. In order to defeat it, you will have to juggle the ability-blocking debuffs of the Shackles of Denial, the Ravenous Reach's and Focused Fault's Marked to Die abilities, and the Seething Sigh's debuffs all at once.
- Flunky Boss: Its third phase has it become this. The Body itself doesn't pose much of a threat, hitting your party with weak Status Infliction Attacks. The real danger comes from the Proclaimers it summons which can give it Worship tokens to use Spreading Stain and the Specters your heroes will have to confront, while the Body's shackles prevent you from using certain moves and it shuffles your party around, making it more difficult for them to work cohesively.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Defeating one of the Spectres it summons through Face Your Failures grants the affected Hero the powerful "Exultation" attack for one turn, letting them deal the Body 200 damage. Exultation is also a move that its Cultists use when they gain Worship tokens.
- Humanoid Abomination: Twofold. The Body of Work itself is overall humanoid in structure as seen during its introduction, albeit with a heaping dose of Body Horror and an overtly eldritch appearance. Additionally, its "head" is the heavily-mutated physical body of the Scholar.
- Irony: The thematic organ is a set of wriggling guts. Normally, cowardice is synonymous with gutlessness, a lack of guts.
- Limit Break: Every two rounds in its first phase, the Body will use Catabolize on whatever ranks are currently marked by Gastric Juices, converting all accumulated Blight on the heroes occupying them into pure damage. Therefore, abilities that can keep the Blight level which accumulates massively due to Gastric Juices down are a godsend.
- Marathon Boss: The whole fight is like this, having almost 1500 health cumulatively across its three phases, but its final phase takes probably the longest time to wear down, due to it having 999 health and using Samsara to resummon minions in between facing your heroes' Specters that you'll have to defeat. It's likely that the fight will go to round 30 or 40 because of this, and even longer if you have a handful of heroes who can't hit the frontline and you don't think will be able to defeat the Specter to gain the Exultation power-up, meaning you'll have to knock off another 200 health the hard way.
- Meaningful Name: The term "body of work" refers to the sum total of an individual's work and achievements; appropriately enough, the Body of Work is a physical manifestation of all the Scholar's failings and flaws, capped off by the corrupted physical body of the Scholar.
- Nightmare Face: As shown by the ending cutscene of the game, the one time we get a good look at the Scholar's body's face, it has already been hideously mutated and is covered in weird fleshy growths and eyes, much in the manner of the denizens of the Darkest Dungeon from the first game.
- Not Quite Dead: Not the Body of Work itself, but rather the Iron Crown it was created to summon. While its evil is banished by the Scholar at the cost of their own life, the ending shows darkness gathering above the earth as the tentacles of an eldritch creature appear in the sky, suggesting that it's only a matter of time until the cosmic spirit of tragedy and madness itself manifests once more.
- Physical God: The Body is the flesh-and-blood avatar of the Sentient Cosmic Force that is the Iron Crown, and killing it is the only way to undo the Spreading Stain and set the world back into order once again.
- Power Nullifier: Similar to the Shackles of Denial's special move, "Shackles of the Past" renders inflicts a position-specific debuff on the entire party, preventing them from using one category of move for the duration.
- The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You: While fighting the final phase of the boss, attempting to use the compendium to look at its moves will only get you a chilling message:“Pity those who glimpse into the mind of God.”
- The Right Hand of Doom:
- On the Body itself, its left hand tapers off into useless tentacles while its right hand is a conglomeration of several smaller arms, which it can use to trap your heroes in place with Trammel or just smack the living daylights out of them with Hammer and Haymaker.
- The Scholar's body's left hand has grown into a huge fleshy mass and become fused with their throne, rendering it useless. They instead cast spells and attack with their free right hand.
- Sequential Boss:
- Its first stage is the "carious gut of the coward," a set of murderous intestines with faces on them that fight by puking gastric acid onto your Heroes, attempting to wear them down through Blight Damage Over Time.
- Second is the Body of Work's chest, which has a large eye set into it. Using a combination of the Focused Fault and Ravenous Reach's mechanics, it will try to mark a Hero and then launch a powerful attack against them.
- Finally, there's the Body of Work's head - the Void-corrupted body of the Scholar, flanked by a pair of Cherub-like creatures known as Proclaimers. During the battle, it will attempt to inflict Horror and debuffs on your Heroes while its minions attack; upon killing enough of them, the Body of Work will unleash Face Your Failures, summoning a targeted Hero's Shrine enemy.
- A Sinister Clue: The Scholar's Body's left hand is gigantic and swollen, as well as being fused to its throne. The Scholar is also the source of the ultimate evil that you've been trying to dispel the whole game.
- Status-Buff Dispel: Its second phase has the ability to remove all of a hero's positive tokens and apply them to itself. If you had just buffed your Leper to have two Armor+, Dodge+ and Crit tokens, you're going to be in serious trouble.
- This Is Something He's Got to Do Himself: The hero made to face their failure is the only one capable of damaging the summoned spectre. Everyone else is incapable of dealing damage, pure or over time. They can still apply some negative tokens, however.
- Worf Had the Flu: It is normally so impossibly powerful that its health outstrips that of every other boss in the series, including the health of all the Heart of Darkness's phases put together. However, the fact that the Scholar, the source of its summoning, is acting against it leads the power of Hope to heal the heroes facing it and deal immense damage to it every time they face their failures, causing it to be banished.
- Zombie Puke Attack: The guts of the Body of Work fight by puking gastric acid onto your Heroes, inflicting Blight DoT.
