"As the age old saying goes; how much is your life worth?"
Beyond the Estate, far off to the east, there is a land which contains the cradle of Ancient Evil and dormant power. Our talents are needed to disrupt a swelling terror deep beneath the crags and sands. In its wake we will struggle and suffer, but there are few others who could face the darkness through its veil of sandstorms, and march on to confront... the Black Reliquary.
Black Reliquary is a total conversion mod for Darkest Dungeon and replaces the entire story campaign while restructuring the game's combat and progression. The player will be put to the test against more clever and dangerous opponents in a world that is both familiar and fresh. The project utilizes every tool available to bring in an exciting new experience, going beyond what other mods can do because of compatibility limitations. You'll fight against new enemy factions (namely, the Levantine, the Wildlanders, the Troglodytes, the Cactonids, the Lost Legion, and the Kvarotz) and in unique regions all touched by the influence of the Black Reliquarynote . Taking talent from all corners of the Darkest Dungeon modding community, it has over twenty-one contributors in various roles of development.
Its current version can be found here
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This game provides examples of:
- Attack of the 50-Foot Whatever: The Greater Sandwurm, one of the bosses in the Caverns; so big it coils around the entire battlefield as background, and with the health to match, necessitating the Flameseeker's assistance in bringing it down.
- Abusive Precursors: The Kvarotz, an extremely nasty necromantic empire that left miles upon miles of catacombs, treasure, and berserk nocturnal semi-undead golems.
- Awesome, yet Impractical: The Contraband trinkets, while potent, often come with drawbacks that prove too severe for practical use.
- The Veiled has the Precipice Vessels, which have him inflict Enraged on a target of his healing. Sounds like a great way to boost your damage and give a Healing Factor? Except it also gives Frantic, which not only disrupts your formation, but unless you’ve brought Laudanum or someone able to cure Horror, will stack up stress like nobody’s business.
- Ballistic Bone: Kvarotz Totakh (a human skeleton stretched to giraffe-like proportions and encased in stone) can devour a Corpse and then unleash it in a devastating salvo the next turn. Kvarotz Golem instead starts with a corpse that it fires out in its opening attack, and can later suck back up (or any other corpse) to recover Health.
- Character Narrator: Features its own custom, voice-acted one. Taking over from the Ancestor (and Wayne June) is a dashing, ex-navy fantasy-Arabian sky captain, who guides the player across the sand dunes. In particular, he's more friendly than the morbidly gothic Ancestor but is also a huge Deadpan Snarker.
- Chest Monster: The Cactonid schtick - many of the valuable things in the Treasury are sleeping Cactonids, and interacting with them wakes up the hungry plant monster who quickly calls a full party to fight you. Beating them gives you valuable items, more so than just normal interactable objects, making greed a gamble on if you are able to fight the Cactonids.
- Church Militant: A faction of them named The Lost Legion, wandering enemies that may show up in Radiant Light or Dim Light. Many of them are able to Expiate and deal increased damage to Pagan heroes.
- Cool Airship: The Zeppelin Non-Observer "The Flameseeker" is your base of operations, replacing the base game's Hamlet.
- Duel Boss: A downplayed variation with the Levantine Janissary. Every three combat rounds he designates a party member as his duelling opponent, giving that character alone an accuracy buff high enough to match his monstrously high Dodge — and then focusing all of his attacks on that one party member for the rest of those three rounds. The Levantine mooks he summons via Keep Them Busy will ignore the specific party member he has reserved. Other party members can still take swipes at him, but with only around a 1-in-5 chance of hitting.
- The Empire: Two very expansionist ones are featured with the Levantine, being the ones who kickstarted the plot by invading the Hamlet to reach the Darkest Dungeon;
- The Levantine: Very Ottoman inspired, the Levantine is a massive desert-Empire spanning a huge distance, composed of multiple tribes and conquered peoples who have fallen under the boot by their vast legions, wielding advanced technology and Black Magic hand in hand. Fielding a peerless professional military, they are currently focused westward, being relatively new to the scene, and now threaten the safety of the Hamlet.
- Ancient Kvarotz: While the Levantine are nominally aggressive, but still human, conquerers, the Kvarotz are straight up evil, being described as a "black-hearted" empire that praises one's power and the suffering of others. Torture and torment are celebrated, as are offerings to the dark gods. Streets are patrolled by automatons, lumbering about in the darkness and fueled by the corpses of the disobedient. With miles upon miles of ruined territory, their golems still infest the ruins of their fallen cities.
- Enemy Summoner:
- All Cactonids summon an entire squad of their fellows via Provoke the Grove.
- Wildlander Grinhound can summon a pack of Stray Hyenas if it's the last enemy alive.
- Horned Toad can vomit up a weak Wildlife unit (or an occasional Bone Rabble) while damaging the front lines.
- Kvarotz Gagahl can use a Corpse to spawn either a Nerazz Mekhrub or a Kvarotz Tatuth - and can keep spawning them from those Corpses as well.
- Swarm-type Troglodytes can use Swarm! to effectively become a unit of two small Troglodytes, complete with doubled HP and two actions per turn.
- Evil Counterpart:
- Notably, the Levantine feature several enemies that can be considered counterparts to other heroes. For example, the Levantine Terpsichorean is one to the Jester, as he buffs his allies, then shanks his way to the front ranks before landing a powerful Finale-like attack.
- The Janissary is meant to be one to the Highwayman, since he wields a firearm and blade and also has a riposte.
- The Levantine Pursuer is one to the Houndmaster; both fight in tandem with an animal (a massive eagle in Pursuer's case), are able to mark targets, inflict Bleed, and while Houndmaster can heal Stress to the party, the Pursuer deals party-wide Stress damage.
- A Head Swap of the Hellion is among the Wildlanders ranks, and has much the same weaknesses of the normal counterpart.
- The Legion Judicator is one to the playable Judicator; both are able to Expiate and capitalize on Expiated targets, on top of wearing very similar armors.
- Fanservice: A lot of the artwork in the mod is quite revealing, to say the least. The main artist, Spurple, is known for making their own custom H-Games. Hell; one of the new factions called the Wildlander Tribes is entirely composed of scantily clad barbarians.note
- Guys Smash, Girls Shoot: Played With with the Wildlanders. Most of their units are muscular women and tend to fight in melee. The other two male units, the Harrier and the Hecatomb, are a fairly squishy archer and a squishy weaponized sacrifice respectively, and other men encountered in the Exposed Interior are either enslaved or victims of Human Sacrifice. That said, there are three female Wildlander enemies that wield ranged weapons; the Bombard, the Raptor, and the Warhawk Matron. The Bombard wields a blunderbuss, the Raptor wields her Harpoon Gun with Chainsaw-Grip BFG while the Warhawk Matron is a boss enemy with a literal Arm Cannon.
- Hard Mode Perks: Using an Alum Censer on any Cactonid-spawning curio will instead spawn a Malignant Cactonid; the party will heal less and receive more stress during the fight, but will receive a guaranteed Malignant Vestige on victory.
- Heinous Hyena: Wildlander Grinhounds are attack animals of the Wildlanders; they have an axe strapped to their backs and are extremely lethal to Marked heroes. Normal hyenas can also show up as Wildlife enemies or summoned by a Grinhound should it be the last enemy standing.
- Interface Spoiler: A very deliberate example is used to indicate the presence of a Kvarotz Otekh during an encounter. Rarely, one may notice that a basic mook-type enemy (e.g. a Levantine Grunt or Wildlander Hellion) has a tag that reads 'Stonework?' in their mouse-over info. Their stats and skills are completely par for the course unless they're left 'til last.
- Lady Land: The Wildlanders are a matriarchal tribe where the women positively tower over the men in all respects; the latter are archers at best and statusless thralls at worst.
- Plant Aliens: Cactonids are, as the name suggests, sentient succulents that have taken over Kvarotz's old Treasury and now use it to lure greedy and foolish people as food.
- Qurac: The main setting of the game, taking place in the Darkest Dungeon universe's equivalent of the Middle East/North-Eastern Africa; going as far as a nightmarish savannah based on Darkest Africa, to an endless, dune-covered Thirsty Desert being fought over by the remnants of decaying Empires.
- Snakes Are Sexy: The Levantine Enchantress, full stop; a lithe, youthful, and buxom Snake Person (it's not immediately obvious, but she's classified as being in both the Human and Beast categories, and when she uses Serpent's Call, there's a frame showing her face and upper body coated in scales and her face becoming much more snakelike and monstrous) who uses snakes as her primary allies (including one perched on her shoulders and outstretched arm) and makes use of very smooth and sensual dance-like movements in combat (including one particularly common frame across her various attacks and abilities involving the aforementioned pet snake coiling around her while she's striking a graceful pose in a way that emphasizes her cleavage), with her even swaying her hips in her idle animation.
- Status Effects: Besides the ones returning from the base game, Black Reliquary introduces several different states that come with their own mechanics.
- Expiate will damage a target while healing the opposing group once if they use a skill that targets an opponent (i.e. attacks and non-damaging skills such as Mark For Death) and it doesn't kill the opponent. The heal has diminishing returns on subsequent Expiations.
- Amberblight will cause a target to either deal 15% less damage or receive 15% more damage if they either attack or use a friendly skill, respectively.
- Leeching activates if a target uses a friendly skill such as healing. It will then inflict blight on the target while giving the opposing party a restoration effect.
- Enrage increases a target's damage and will heal on killing an enemy, but reduces dodge.
- Frantic is a horror effect that not only inflicts horror on the affected target when they attack but will force them to retreat one rank in terror.
- Sultry Belly Dancer: The Levantine Terpsichorean is a rare male version and wears a skimpy and seductive bedlah outfit, although you wouldn't know he was a guy by looking at him.
- Suspiciously Similar Substitute:
- The Yngnolian is the Shambler stand-in. However, unlike the Shambler, it can only be encountered via activating the Beacon, due to it having a special Trinket that can be upgraded every time it's fought. It still snuffs out the torch and shuffles the party when encountered. It can also summon Y-Cell minions that, instead of gradually becoming stronger with each attack, they inflict a radioactive explosion, interpreted as causing both blight and bleed.
- The Sand Charmer is the Collector stand-in. It's a sandy snake-like being, and summons sandy, skeletal versions of the Bounty Hunter, Occultist and Shieldbreaker.
- Token Heroic Orc: There are vendors in each area who are usually members of the factions you’re fighting against, but give loot in exchange for other resources.
- The Catacombs have either a Levantine Deserter who gives you gold and gems for supplies, or a Kvarotz Vending Machine with trinkets for Matakh.
- The Exposed Interior has either a Wildlander slave who flees and lets you have the chest he was carrying if you free him via Wildlander token, or a Levantine Archeologist who, in exchange for relics, gives you Lost Teknote .
- The Caverns have a small Troglodyte Purveyor (named Steve) wearing a merchant hat and surrounded by Amber, and gives you a bunch if you give him a gem. There is also an Amber Poacher who also gives valuable trinkets for amber and amber-based items.
- The Treasury has either a Cactonid impersonating a drink seller that gives you a different Status Buff or curing diseases with certain supplies, or a Wildlander Mythical Warrioress and her son who gives you gold and gems in exchange for a Malignant Vestige.
- Furthermore, The Captain's crew features a Levantine soldier and a Wildlander warrioress in the Training Hall.
- Was Once a Man: The Troglodyte faction is the descendants of abused human slaves of the Kvarotz, having degenerated into slug and beetle-like humanoids dwelling in the Caverns. Notably, they are strictly a Beast-type enemy rather than a Human/Beast hybrid.
