Darkest Dungeon - psychological gothic roguelike RPG

Yeah except that sometimes you don't have that choice. Some times this game drives me up the wall. Not because there's an element of chance, but because some stuff is just unreasonable or poorly balanced.

Like the one time I've had a total party wipeout was when I was doing the quest for the Hag. All was going well, my party had no stress, full hp. I had gotten a scouting proc and I knew which room the Hag was in. So I camped, buffed my guys and went in... and had absolutely no chance against her due to my party comp. This was my first time fighting her so I didn't know what to expect. All my ranged abilities were such that they either hit for too little or were position dependent in a way that was screwed by the fact that she throws one of your guys randomly into the pot, so you only have three guys to position with. The pot wasn't worth killing, since as soon as you got your guy out, she'd throw another one in without losing her normal attack. You can't pull her to the front row and the cauldron won't despawn. My healers were good enough that there was no way for her to kill me either, so I just sat there 20 minutes, slowly chipping away at her, getting like a half way trough her HP before she got a string of lucky hits and one of my guys died, things coming to an end shortly after that.

There needs to be a way to retreat from ongoing battles so you aren't locked into them once you can see things not going your way. There can be a high cost to that or it might require preparation in the shape of a flashbang item or something, but the game needs it. Because you can never know for sure how that next encounter is going to go or what you'll face before you walk into it.

That's not even my worst experience with the game. The first time I launched it, for some reason it didn't create a save file or something, so the next time I launched it I had to start from the beginning and lost hours of progress.

There are bunch of balance issues, a slew of bugs and some questionable design choices, but early access so I shouldn't complain too much. Overall design wise my biggest gripe is that it relies a bit too much on just learning stuff through trial and error for a strategy game. Even with its roguelike roots.

I really regret buying into early access and would advice anyone thinking about it to wait until the game is complete. It's an interesting game with a cool concept but really suffers from being unfinished.

edited 5th Feb '15 7:09:12 PM by GabrieltheThird

There is a way to retreat from on going battles. It is a button in the top left of the mini map screen. As far I can tell^note I haven't played the game, I've just watched a let's play there is no disadvantage whatsoever for doing so. There is a pop up that appear when you first character dies that tells you that. Maybe you missed it.

edited 5th Feb '15 7:24:09 PM by Heatth

Some tips to prevent a party wipe from screwing you over is to have an A-squad of your favorite and bestest dudes, and a bunch of interns. When your A-squad is destressing or at the hospital, just send your intern/cannon fodder with minimal shit and hope they don't die too fast.

Have at least 4k, this should be enough for 2 runs. Don't load too much on upgrades.

Dump the people with too many bad quirks and diseases.

It's a roguelike, some people are expected to die.

Healers OP. It's kinda absurd. They should prevent you from just spamming it and probably make food not so useless.

edited 5th Feb '15 10:16:14 PM by HazzyHaz

So it appears. Yeah, I must've missed that pop up. I had a bug when I started which had the tutorial boxes pop up again every time I'd restart the game and since I played in short burst that kept happening all the time. Pretty soon I just started closing them as soon as they, well, popped up.

I'd still argue, though, that it's not the most intuitive place to have that small button considering where the escape from the map button is when you're out of combat.

edited 6th Feb '15 5:46:40 AM by GabrieltheThird

Bloody hell, those damn Swine Wrtech are BULLSHIT! Seriosly, I don't mind taking bad quirks from bad scavenge rolls, or take it from rare enemies like bosses...but why the fuck does the devs see fit to give a rather common enemy an attack that can give bad quirk, that can be used from any range, always start in back rows, AND have dodge bonus? If you're really unlucky you can get MULTIPLE bad quirks from a single Wretch!

^^ The devs took notice of that, and they'll probably try to formulate some fix later.

edited 6th Feb '15 8:09:55 AM by onyhow

The diseases from those seem to go away on their own with time though. I assumed that they were the stuff that the herb thing you could buy in prep screen would heal, but only got both at the same time once and the item was still grayed out, so might be wrong.

I think they should allow you to buy one extra camping log per dungeon, at a high cost, but make the hallways respawn as a result.

I think I'm going to give advice to anyone considering the game at the moment. If you want to support the developers and provide feedback, go ahead! If not, not a problem, but the mechanics need a bit of work.

I've been encountering some occasional slowdowns (Not a big issue), along with the game crashing once, but never encountering it again. The Wizened Hag is way too entheusiastic at throwing whoever at front into the pot, if you get said hero out, she'll throw whoever at front again, almost instanly, what a Troll... On the other hand, the developers are listening to the community with wide open ears, almost all the time, so there is that.

I gotta admit, though, this is probably one of my best Early Access purchases.

"Your party died because your Leper got a cold! A fatal sneeze!" as amusing as that would be, I hope they don't implement it.

edited 7th Feb '15 10:50:23 AM by YoKab

Ah, there you go, they fixed the Sanitarium not fixing stuff.

Game's getting rave reviews. $20 on Steam, am leaning towards it.

It's pretty fun. Pretty difficult, but fun.

Listening to Rebel FM, am more into the personnel management aspect.

...fuck me, lv 1 dungeon just murder my lv 2 occultist...fuck you turn order! Really wish the turn order is shown more explicitly...

Been watching this on my friend's Twitch stream: the adventuring party are given the names of her subscribers. Much amusement.

...so before I go add it to the page, has anyone else found the spiders to be Demonic Spiders? The first two total party wipes were to them because the spiders stun-locked everything. Spider curse was broken today though, probably through a better understanding of surprise mechanics and lots of counter-stunning.

It's in the YMMV section, it'll stay there for now as not everyone seemed to have the same view on it. A lot of enemies who weren't spiders managed to fit the trope in some way. Do what you must but until further notice I'd rather leave it in YMMV.

edited 3rd Mar '15 3:56:33 AM by YoKab

Eh with spiders. I find the Swine Wretch fucking nightmare...though it seems like infection rate is down.

/me remembers when a swine wretch inflict like 3-4 disease to my characters in a single fight

/me shudders

Also the worst thing ever: getting everyone hit by critical Drums of Doom...

edited 3rd Mar '15 7:50:21 AM by onyhow

I'm surprised only one of the Brigands (the whip guy) is on the Demonic Spiders section, since they all were DESIGNED to be D Ms: it was one of the stretch goals to add them and they were described as mini bosses.

Well, I just defeated tier 2 Necromancer in 3 turns...woo! (though the whole fight was like 4-5 turns due to needing to kill its minions)

edited 3rd Mar '15 7:37:53 PM by onyhow

Anyone have any idea when the other dungeons will be added in? I'd love to see what the other bosses look like. I wonder if the Eldritch Abomination seen in the game's opening will be the Final Boss, or at least a Climax Boss...

I'm calling it right now. The Featureless Protagonist will fall into madness, and end up in a mental institution with the Caretaker greedingly taking everything in the estate, but again, such a twist is now seen coming from like miles away!

Anyway, I added a WMG, so you can throw your massive guesses there!

edited 20th Mar '15 3:47:13 AM by YoKab

The Kickstarter backers just received this message regarding the next major patches:

edited 11th Apr '15 6:04:14 AM by Psyclone

Awwwwwwwww yiiiiiiiisssssssssss

Motha

Fuggin'

Arbalests.

edited 11th Apr '15 10:33:46 AM by VutherA

Finally...also yay Arbarest?

Looking forward to the new bosses. Pity that the new levels aren't available yet.

Got the game just last night.

It's my first Roguelike game. Hope this goes well!

So, started with a Crusader and Highwayman. Escort me to estate. Bandits. Boss. Made it out OK.

Schmuck Bait chest that was even tagged "Trapped Bandit Chest" so of course I open it. If it's trapped, there has to be something good inside, right?

Nope. Just blight. And I don't even have the sanitorium yet. Fuck.

Added a Vestal and a Plague Doctor to the team. Bought a blight cure for the blight sided Crusader. I really like the plague doctors design.

First real dungeon! nothing too difficult. Fought maggots, cultists, bandits and Dem Bones. Looted a crate.

I really need to pay attention to who in my team is "in charge" before clicking things. Having the Velstal mess with the alchemy lab didn't end well, maybe should have had clicked the doctor first...

Also an Iron Maiden. Either it was a trap or theres loot inside... Since it's an ominous object, of course there has to be loot inside!

... Nope. Just MORE BLIGHT. I really need to stop checking every object I come across.

But then again, if it looks dangerous the devs MUST have put something of value in it? Or not? This game is fucking up with my genre savvyness. Well, fantasy RPG savvyness...

I had almost every room explored, when suddenly cultist ambush!

Avoided a Total Party Kill by a hairs marging and just legged it out of the dungeon, but atleast my quest was complete, apparently.

My Velstal also developed paranoia.