History Characters / AmidEvil

* SequentialBoss: It goes through six phases, transporting the Champion to a different arena and wielding a different weapon in each.

The Evil is the true reason behind the corruption, devastation and chaos of many realms Champion visits. A being of unknown origin, he spreaded his malicious influence way beyond his homeworld, [[EldritchLocation The Void]].

TBA

Being a send-off to the ''{{VideoGame/Heretic}}'', Amid Evil has a huge number of different characters and foes belonging to various factions.

Note: the current list is a placeholder used for example. Also, spoilers for Darkest Dungeon(the whole game, since the enemy and boss list is used as basis for this one).

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[[WMG:Equinox Acolyte]]

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[[WMG:Lunar Deacon]]

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[[WMG:Astral Angel]]

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[[WMG:Starlight Defender]]

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[[WMG:Apostle of the Moon]]

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After the Ancestor's short-sighted revival of the powerful Necromancers he had just killed, they moved into the Ruins that once housed your family’s lineage. There they desecrated the graves of the soldiers and nobles that once served there, and brought them back as a mindless skeletal horde to serve as their undead army.

* AchillesHeel:
** The Crusader class, who has a damage bonus against all Unholy-class enemies in the game. Being a dungeon that's occupied almost entirely by the Unholy, the Crusader is at his best here where he can one-to-two-shot most enemies with his sword.
** Blight damage to a lesser extent. They might have a skyrocketed bleed resist, but their blight resistance is pitifully low, meaning they can be eroded away by the toxins very easily. As such, The Ruins are where an offensively built Plague Doctor can thrive and melt the opposition.
* DemBones: They're the reanimated remains of your long-deceased ancestry, and the soldiers who served them.
* ExpressiveSkull: Most obvious with the basic Bone Rabble and Bone Soldiers, but most of the enemies react with pain when defending.
* HellIsThatNoise: Let the torchlight fade too much, and the chittering and hissing of reanimated bones stalking your heroes can be heard in the ambiance.
* NoSell: In regards to attacks and characters that rely on bleed damage, such as the Houndmaster and offensive Jesters. Being skeletons, they are incapable of bleeding to death.

[[WMG:Sons of the Scrounge]]

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The standard rank and file soldiers of the Estate's army in their past life, now they're under the control of their new Necromancer masters.

* BoringButPractical: Even though their low HP can qualify them as TheGoomba, the damage they can deal in a sword swing is fairly average all around, and gets the job done when it comes to adding to the DPS that the skeletons can deal.
* TheGoomba: Only a step above the wandering Bone Rabble in terms of health and protection, with the only huge difference being that they deal way more damage than their club-swinging allies, and as such are usually low-priority targets that can felled with one or two hits.

[[WMG:Eye of Pain]]

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The Shieldbearers of the army, their low damage and slow speed is made up for with very good protection and the ability to protect their allies with their own bodies.

* AchillesHeel: Their high protection buffs can be pierced very easily by DamageOverTime, which ignores protection and gets straight to dealing damage every round. With their very low blight resistance, it's very easy to pull off.
* EvilCounterpart: Is basically a diluted version of the Man-At-Arms. They both make up for their lowered damage with good protection and ally Guarding, can ShieldBash for a stun/disruption of formation, and are meant to establish a nigh-unmmovable StoneWall for their parties.
* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: The shield isn't just there to add flavor to the skeletal ranks, they will likely use their better armor and shield to their advantage by using the move Foul Warning, which guards a potentially more powerful but fragile ally, redirecting most forms of damage towards themselves instead.
* ShieldBash: One of their attacks, called Dead Weight. It has a chance to stun and a chance to move the target backwards, potentially ruining your formation.
* StoneWall

[[WMG:Sentinel Knight]]

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Once noblemen for the royalty of the Estate, now they're the Ruins' premier [[SanitySlippage stress dealer]] with their wine-filled goblets. What they lack in raw damage, they make up for in speed, dodge, and the ability to drive parties to the brink of insanity with just a few splashes of wine.

* EmergencyWeapon: Making a Courtier move to the front 2 positions one way or another forces them to forfeit their Tempting Goblet and instead use the pitifully weak move Knife In The Dark instead. And unlike most other backrow supports, this move doesn't move them back to their favored position.
* FoodSlap: That wine must be ''really'' bad if it causes physical harm when splashed in a hero's face...
* FragileSpeedster: Fast enough that most rounds in a fight will begin with the Bone Courtiers attacking first, unless your party is built with buffed speed in mind. Additionally, their low HP is compensated with a higher-than-average chance to dodge any incoming attacks.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: Wields a goblet filled with wine that they love to splash on their victims when they aren't drinking from it.
* RareRandomDrop: Killing Bone Courtiers at Champion leveled dungeons could very rarely reward you with their Tempting Goblet. Letting a hero hold it lets them move faster, dodge better, and gives them an HP buff, [[AwesomeButImpractical but gives them a 50% increase in stress damage taken.]]
* ShootTheMageFirst: If you value your party's sanity, the Courtiers need to be removed ASAP.
* SquishyWizard: They can completely wreck a team's sanity left if unchecked, but their HP and protection is severely lacking compared to the actual bone soldiers and are highly vulnerable if caught out of position.
* WineIsClassy: Fitting for a former blue-blooded noble.

[[WMG:Sentinel Mage]]

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The arbalists for the army, they have the simple job of remaining as far away from your attacks as possible while sniping your backrow heroes.

* BayonetYa: Their EmergencyWeapon in a pinch. It's not very strong, but it does allow them to retreat back to their effective range where they can get back to sniping your heroes.
* CriticalHitClass: While the damage from their regular shots are nothing to scoff at, they can quickly turn the tide of an encounter thanks to their increased CriticalHit chance.
* EvilCounterpart: To the Arbalest class you can recruit; both wield similar weapons, can cause loads of precise damage at range, and are equally as helpless when forced to the front of the formation.
* LongRangeFighter: They're in their prime in the back rows of their parties, but once moved up they're only able to use a weak move called Bayonet Jab.

[[WMG:Watcher]]

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A hulking leader in their past lives, they still retain the position of leadership over their smaller allies now that they've been reanimated. While they can certainly deal a Crushing Blow to a single target, their main threat comes from their [[StatusInflictionAttack party-wide stun]] capabilities.

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: The designated Commanders and Generals for their armies, both in life and in death, and perfectly capable of ruining any would-be heroes' day.
* CarryABigStick: An absolutely massive mace they use to bludgeon your party to death.
* GroundPound: The name of their party-wide stun move, though thankfully it deals ScratchDamage.
* LargeAndInCharge: Large enough to occupy two spaces of the enemies' formation.

[[WMG:Flesh Walker]]

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* BoringButPractical: They have no gimmicks to their moves, they exist solely to deal great damage to your heroes from any position they find themselves in.
* CriticalHitClass: What makes them so frightful when combined with their ability to deal damage wherever they stand. They have an increased chance to score a CriticalHit that can easily wipe out half of an HP bar on a hero, or erase it entirely when a light class is targeted.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Their specialty, and they do it well enough that they can drive their lance through 4 armored adventurers at once.

When the Ancestor banished The Hag to the Weald after being disgusted by her appearance, she began to use her discovery of an odd, parasitic fungus to transform the woodland into something more sinister. Now the road leading to the town is blighted with a fungal infestation that has taken over the ecosystem, hiding the hordes of zombified victims under the control of the fungus being spread by the witches that serve under The Hag.

* FesteringFungus: A particularly nasty and toxic infestation.
* FungusHumongous: The woods leading to the Hamlet have been blighted by mushrooms of varying size, sometimes even thick enough to replace the trees entirely.
* NoSell: On account of them being a fungus that specializes in spreading blight, they have a high resistance to the poison themselves.
* HellIsThatNoise: If the torchlight goes too low, the growling, gurgling, and howling of the fungal horde and the Wealds monsters will slowly take over the ambiance.
* MushroomMan: From possessed humans to animal-like crawlers. The Viragos that work for The Hag have the luxury of being only hunchbacked from a mass of fungal growths instead of losing their entire heads and bodies.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: Unfortunate victims of a fungus that's taken over their bodies. Seems to range from being obviously dead skeletons, represented by the Fungal Artillery, to living bodies under siege by the fungus, represented by the Fungal Scratcher and Unclean Giant.

[[WMG:Stone Fish]]

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A bloated body that's now host to a fungal infection, these zombies now serve as the frontline attackers of the horde.

* BodyHorror: A bloated, leathery body that has had its head replaced with a huge poisonous mushroom, along with smaller growths scattered about the rest of of its body.
* StoneWall: Under normal circumstances, they're a slow but sturdy mob of enemies with an inaccurate set of attacks that don't deal a dangerous amount of damage, and thus only serve to block your frontline heavy hitters from getting at the threats in the back row. However, if a hero is Marked by an enemy[[note]]and the Weald made sure to have a lot of enemies capable of doing this[[/note]], then they can use the move Rend The Marked for a sizable damage bonus, turning them into [[MightyGlacier Mighty Glaciers]].

[[WMG:Creeper]]

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The infestation in the Weald doesn't always need a fresh living host to thrive; it can do just fine with even skeletal remains. The Fungal Artillery serves as the horde's most common and reliable blight dispenser and as one of its many target markers, allowing their two-legged allies to do their work.

* BodyHorror: A corpse that has had its limbs twisted into walking upside down in a spider-like manner. Its head is missing its skin and lower jaw, as well.
* ShootTheMageFirst: Their strategy of melting your heroes with blight and marking them for increased damage means that taking them out first is usually the best idea.
* SmokeOut: One of their attacks is called Escape Cloud; though they won't leave the fight, it does allow them to retreat to the back rows while potentially blighting one of your heroes.
* TargetSpotter: When they aren't raining blight down upon your heroes, they're using the move Mark Prey to allow their Scratcher allies to use their stronger Rend the Marked attack.

[[WMG:Flame Wraith]]

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Sometimes the infection is unable to completely overtake a body, though that doesn't mean that they're free from its mutations and mind control. The Unclean Giant is the result of the fungal infection causing its host to grow to gigantic proportions. These Giants can issue party-wide shuffles, blighting heroes from the growths in their back and the occasional swing of a tree [[BlownAcrossTheRoom to send a hero to the back of the line.]]

* AIRoulette: While present in all enemies, the Giants are an especially obvious case, they might use their poison spores attack which hits only one character for what amounts to ScratchDamage with a possible [[DamageOverTime blight]], or they can use their [[ThatOneAttack Treebranch Smackdown]] and wallop away half to three quarters someone's health with a shuffle and stun added on for measure.
* BodyHorror: Along with their gigantism, the skin on their backs can split open to reveal more fungal growths, which then dispels toxic spores towards your party.
* CreepySouvenir: Is wearing a necklace of toes/fingers.
* GiantMook
* MightyGlacier: Infamous monsters known for their massive amounts of HP and tide-turning attacks.
* PowerfulButInaccurate: Treebranch Smackdown not only takes away a large chunk of its target's health, but can smack them out of the front lines. Mercifully, this move is not used that often, and it's very likely to miss.
* TelephonePolearm: Has a move called Treebranch Smackdown, where they'll swing an uprooted tree they use as a weapon. It's the attack they're least likely to use and it's fairly inaccurate, but it hurts like all hell when it hits.

[[WMG:Protector]]

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As the servants of The Hag, these witches move around the Weald to help further the spread of the fungal infestation taking over the land. In battle, they can slowly snuff out your torchlight while stressing your party out, mark them for death so their fungus-ridden allies can deal killing blows, and spread blight and disease with their censers if they need to defend themselves.

* CrownOfHorns: Has two antlers wrapped around their heads with a cloth; not nearly as impressive as their Hag leader's headdress, though.
* HellIsThatNoise: In a game filled with masterfully horrible audio, it takes a lot for the Crone's death scream to be on a different level of unpleasant.
* TheNapoleon: Are rather short, and definitely capable of issuing debilitating blights and insanity with their herbal mixtures and [[TheDarkArts dark magic]].
* ShootTheMageFirst: As another TargetSpotter for the fungal hordes, it's important to wipe her out of the picture before she can ensure that the Scratchers she's fighting with can reliably hit your party.
* WickedWitch: They don't quite fit the expected appearance like their Virago sisters, but they can cast wicked magic just the same.

[[WMG:Fire Visage]]

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The wildlife itself isn't free from the corruption spreading in the woods. Packs of beasts have gone rabid as a result, traveling in groups with an eye out for any adventuring party to devour.

* BewareOfViciousDog: It is a half-rotted canine with Rabies that attacks your party on sight.
* BlessedWithSuck: Capable of inflicting Rabies on any hero they attack. There's a sizable damage boost in contracting the disease, but the victim's accuracy suffers as a result.
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Normal Gnashers encountered in lower-leveled dungeons will show them as a brown-colored dog. More dangerous Gnashers will be colored white in the Champion dungeons.
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: The only attack they're capable of doing, Rabid Rush, deals rather low damage and can issue a modest bleed, but due to the chances that you'll always encounter at least 3 at once, the damage and bleeding will stack up very quickly.
* EliteMook: It has a unique variant in ''II'' called Gander, which seems to have once been a war dog of the Lost Battalion.
* FragileSpeedster: They have one of the highest speed stats in the game, and thus are able to move first in nearly every encounter. Their HP is low enough that they can usually be removed in one hit, though that'd mean managing to hit them past their dodge rating first.
* YouWillNotEvadeMe: Fetch allows them to pull heroes forward, disrupting your party composition.

[[WMG:Shrub Niggurath]]

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Though weak on their own, these corrosive blobs of corruption that can easily turn a situation FromBadToWorse by constantly multiplying themselves every other turn. A seemingly easy battle against a lone, weak blob can quickly turn into an exhausting brawl against a massive gelatinous menace.

* AIRoulette: The entire strategy around fighting them involves hoping they don't use Cytokinesis to drag the fight out longer by summoning more of themselves, and ''especially'' hoping they don't use Ectoplasmic Profusion to summon a Large Ectoplasm with more than 40 health.
* BlobMonster: Ectoplasms are giant blobs of an amorphous, acidic substance with multiple dissolved skeletons inside.
* DeathOfAThousandCuts: They might not deal the best damage all around, but let them linger for too long, and you'll be taking damage every turn as they continue to multiply as they're killed.
* {{Expy}}: Their appearance matches up almost one to one with every description of a [[TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons Gelatinous Cube]], right down to the half-dissolved skeletons floating inside them.
* GiantMook: Large Ectoplasms are size 2 and have as much health as a Ghoul. Running into one unexpectedly can mean a long and exhausting fight.
* TheGoomba: Ectoplasms have a measly eight health and can be one-shot by practically every damaging move in the game, but this is downplayed and mitigated by the fact that they can [[SelfDuplication duplicate themselves]].
* OhCrap: The reaction your party will have if the Ectoplasm decides to start multiplying their numbers before them. Each time they use Cytokinesis to multiply is another small bit of stress added to the heroes' SanityMeter. Witnessing them summon a Giant Ectoplasm will freak them out quite a bit.
* SelfDuplication: The Ectoplasm can use the move Cytokinesis to split into more of their kind, but if they're feeling [[AIRoulette particularly evil]], they can use Ectoplasmic Profusion to create a much stronger version of themselves, a Large Ectoplasm.
* StatusInflictionAttack: Large Ectoplasms have a move called Slimesmack, which can potentially stun your heroes in ranks 1 and 2.
* SmashMook: Large Ectoplasms hit much, much harder than regular ones, and will do so relentlessly while ''continuing'' to summon more Ectoplasms on top of themselves.

[[WMG:Giant Protector]]

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A new Champion enemy added in the Radiant Update, these vile witches are the devoted enforcers of the Hag's experiments. They secretly slip through the Weald, spreading more of the infestation wherever they go. If confronted, though, they have an array of Ruinous Hexes to mark their enemies for death, making them an easier target for the fungal horde to maul. Unlike the crone, though, their condition allows them to grow the Necrotic Fungus whenever a suitable corpse shows itself, which blocks all methods of healing.

* AntiMagic: The Necrotic Fungus will block all forms of healing, effectively rendering Vestals and certain other moves useless until it's destroyed.
* BreathWeapon: Has a move called Putrefying Breath where they'll cough out a thick cloud of blight on a hero.
* BodyHorror: Their transformation process in the Hag's cauldron has made them tall and lanky, gave their skin a sickly tone, and allowed a severe growth of the fungus to live on their backs, giving them a hunchback. Unlike the other horrors of the Weald, though, this was what they wanted.
* TheFaceless: You'll never see what their faces look like behind their sack hoods and skull masks. The closest there is in their corpse sprite, but by then it's been reduced to a bloody, mangled skull from the killing blow.
* ShootTheMageFirst: Like the Bone Bearer, they're capable of making your life hell until they're dead.
* SinisterSchnoz: It's hard to see thanks to their headwear and the gloomy atmosphere the Weald has, but they sport a very long WickedWitch nose. It's easiest to see when they're attacking.
* TargetSpotter: And probably the most dangerous target spotter in the Weald. When using Ruinous Hex, the affected heroes will gain a -20 to their dodge stat and suffer a penalty to their accuracy, further ensuring that they won't be able to avoid any attacks anytime soon, especially from the Fungal Scratchers' Rend The Marked.
* VoodooDoll: Wields one made of straw in one hand. When using Ruinous Hex, they'll stab into it with their knife, causing damage to the targeted heroes and debuffing their accuracy and ability to dodge.
* WickedWitch: Fits the bill entirely.

While the Ancestor was trying his hand at blood rituals, he used the ancient Warrens as a dumping grounds for his failures and underwhelming results. By the time the Heir arrives, the Warrens are now home to the descendants of those experiments called The Swine, a warrior race of pig-men whose only desire is to butcher and feed on any human they can get their hooves on.

* AchillesHeel:
** The Warrens are populated almost entirely by Beasts, meaning that the Houndmaster's damage bonus against Beast-class enemies can be put to its best usage. The dungeon itself is populated by a good amount of low-HP [[SquishyWizard Squishy Wizards]], so there's potential for many enemies to be killed in one Hound's Rush in lower-leveled dungeons.
** Bounty Hunters also shine here, as nearly every Swine is a human half-breed, letting the Bounty Hunter get a damage bonus to his already impressive DPS.
** Flagellants are also highly effective against Swine, taking full advantage of their low bleed resistances to quickly wear them down. Moreover, the risk of catching Diseases (which is particularly high in the Warrens) is considerably reduced thanks to the Flagellant's high resistance and his camping ability, which allows him to purge himself of illness.
* AnimalisticAbomination: The Swinefolk: once humble pigs that were used as vessels for demon-summoning rites by good ol' Ancestor.
* BigEater: The Swine have colossal appetites, and while they love to eat human flesh, they'll settle for more conventional foodstuffs like grain. One possible mission in the Warrens is to loot the Swine's grain stores both to starve them out and to fortify the Hamlet's food supplies.
* ExplosiveBreeder: The Ancestor's quotes imply that the Swine are capable of this, [[GameplayAndStoryIntegration explaining why the ranks of their armies never seem to thin no matter how many times you go down into the Warrens]].
-->'''The Ancestor:''' They breed quickly down there in the dark, but perhaps we can slay them even faster.
* {{Expy}}: While most of the monsters in the game are inspired by the Franchise/CthulhuMythos, the swinefolk have their roots in William Hope Hodgson's ''Literature/TheHouseOnTheBorderland''.
* HellIsThatNoise: Let the torchlight go too low, and the sounds of squealing pigs closing in on you will slowly begin to take over.
* ImAHumanitarian: It's no secret that they love to dine on human meat; the fact that their home is absolutely littered with human remains only confirms it.
* NauseaFuel: In-universe, the Warrens and The Swine are described as horrible smelling due to all of the rotting flesh and sewage that the Swine live in and leave everywhere. One of the town events even implies that the stench is so strong that the side of the Hamlet that faces the Warrens can smell it from there.
* NothingButSkulls: All that's usually left of the victims eaten, which you can encounter in the hallways between rooms.
* PigMan: And are just as ravenous as you'd expect one to be.
* SigilSpam: A modified version of the [[ArcSymbol Iron Crown]] (inverted with two middle prongs, making it resemble a pig's tusks) is scattered everywhere in the Swine's home, from flags hung up on the walls to stone statues erected in the center of rooms; even the Swine Drummers carry it around on their backs. One of the possible missions to do in the Warrens is to find and destroy the effigies that they worship in an effort to demoralize them.
* SinisterSwine: The Swine are disgusting man-eating monsters who live in filth and are [[ExplosiveBreeder breeding like rabbits]] in order to raise an army to march on the Hamlet with.

[[WMG:Sun Seeker]]

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The Swine are simultaneously meat butchers and warriors, so a fighter armed with a serrated butcher's cleaver was inevitable. The Swine Chopper serves as the Swines' front-row damage-dealer, issuing heavy bleed damage with their chops and using their trusty flail to knock the back row out silly.

* EpicFlail: They can use their flail in a move called Ball & Chain to stun any heroes in the back row, with a chance to move them backwards in the formation if they aren't already at the very rear.
* MightyGlacier: Slow in terms of speed, but they're still the primary damage dealers of the Swine, who can take a hit as well as they can deal it.
* SerratedBladeOfPain: Their meat cleavers have gruesome serrated attachments on them, and fittingly enough, they'll inflict bleeding on your heroes.

[[WMG:Solegionaire]]

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Being a primitive warrior race, the Swine have trained members of their kind into learning how to play the war drum. The Swine Drummers act as the rallying point for the pig monsters, exciting them with the sounds of their makeshift drums as the signal for new prey spotted.

* ArcSymbol: They wear a variant of the game's stress symbol on their backs.
* TheBard: Their only two attacks are Drum of Debilitation and Drum of Doom; the former Marks a target for death while the latter issues a party-wide stress attack.
* BrownNote: Drums of Doom inflicts stress damage on its listeners.
* CombinationAttack: Though their marks make targets a more tempting target in general, Carrion Eaters gain a damage bonus from attacking marked heroes. A common team composition that can be encountered is 3 Carrion Eaters and a lone Drummer that marks a target in an attempt to sic the Eaters on one person for a huge amount of damage.
* CruelAndUnusualDeath: Whoever was killed had the unfortunate fate of having their face peeled from their skull and stretched out to act as the drum head for the Swine's war drum.
* DrumsOfWar: Drummers keep the armies of the Swine marching in step and demoralize and strike terror into their enemies with the infernal beating of their drums.
* ShootTheMageFirst: With a beat of their drum, they can stress the whole party out and encourage the other Swine to focus on one particular target, meaning they should be taken care of quickly.
* TargetSpotter: Their primary usage in a battle is to Mark a target for death, reducing their ability to dodge attacks.

[[WMG: Solar Seraph]]

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Either the result of the Ancestor's failed rituals or years of inbreeding, the Swine Wretch is the Swines' premier stress-dealer and disease spreader. Offensively, they pose little threat, but their true danger lies in the permanent[[note]]permanent in the quest unless you brought a Plague Doctor or Grave Robber; the sanitarium can cure any diseases the heroes might've caught when they get home[[/note]] debuffs they can spread through their disease-ridden vomit.

* BodyHorror: The Swine weren't the picture of health to begin with, but the Wretch takes the cake with its atrophied legs, disproportionately long arms, and the human skull embedded through its torso.
* FragileSpeedster: Similar to the Bone Courtier, they have a speed stat high enough to ensure that they go first most of the time and a high dodge chance, but are lacking in HP and protection.
* ShootTheMageFirst: A first move in any fight should be taken to killing the Wretches before they can do their work.
* SquishyWizard: Horrible at taking hits, but can really put the pressure on your heroes with stacking stress damage and a chance at debuffing their overall effectiveness with debilitating diseases.
* VomitIndiscretionShot: Their one and only attack, which can spread an array of diseases if they aren't resisted.

[[WMG:Confessor of Dawn]]

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The Swines' attempt at augmenting their flesh bodies with metal has created the Slasher, a vicious bundle of rusty spikes and disease-spreading hooks.

* AchillesHeel: They have enough protection to classify them as [[MightyGlacier Mighty Glaciers]], but they also have pitifully low health, maximizing at 16 HP. Stacking bleed damage instead of bothering to break through their defenses makes very short work of them.
* BodyHorror: The Slashers' limbs have been replaced with metal spikes embedded through their flesh, including a particularly large metal hook they use as a weapon.
* CombinationAttack: Their hook synergizes with both the Chopper and the Wretch with the debuff it can apply, allowing their allies to throw out bleeds and diseases a little easier.
* CriticalHitClass: They have among the highest crit chances of any enemy in the Warrens (up to nearly one in four hits will be a crit), which also gives them a better chance of having their debuffs stick.
* HookHand: The weapon they use is a large meat hook they use for a hand, which is capable of dealing a good amount of damage, but also serves as a combo weapon for the Swine Chopper and Wretch, as it can apply a debuff to the target's resistance towards bleeding and disease.
* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: Wields a wooden shield, to further improve their protection.

[[WMG:Sol Butcher]]

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The champions for the Swine, these hulking beasts will charge and impale their prey with one savage stab with their lance, assuming they have the room to maneuver.

* CripplingOverspecialization: The Swinetaur relies on his party to move backwards for charging room to unleash their most devastating attack, with them either being alive and fighting or as corpses taking up space. If the rest of their party has been killed and their bodies were cleared, their overall threat diminishes greatly, as they're forced to use their less effective attack.
* ImpaledWithExtremePrejudice: Their best attack, Boar Rush, has the Swinetaur charge and impale a hero for a huge amount of damage and a chance to [[PunchedAcrossTheRoom send them flying to the back of the formation]]. Their second-most destructive attack, Pig Spear, lets them run through the ''entire'' party.
* LogicalWeakness: A large, equine-like pig with a lengthy lance? He suffers from the same weakness as any large cavalry with a lance: he's deadly at a distance where he can set up a devastating charge, but if you lock him in close combat he's much more vulnerable.
* MightyGlacier: Sports a great amount of health, a devastating attack, compensated with very low speed and the need to spend turns telegraphing those strong attacks. The moment all of their allies are dead and their bodies get swept away is the moment they become {{Stone Wall}}s instead, losing their best moves while they're bound to a single spot.
* OurCentaursAreDifferent: A towering pig centaur, though there's more pig than man in this example.

The Ancestor once used the Cove as a means to deliver some of his more controversial artifacts, as well as a location to perform his pacts with the ancient beings in the water when money was scarce. The ancient Pelagics that lived there were roused by the activity around their home, making it a habit to sink and kill any sailors that come near their domain, making them a threat to the marine shipments of provisions that the Hamlet relies on.

* AchillesHeel:
** Occultists have several skills and trinkets which make them a lot more effective against Eldritch enemies.
** While the fish folk are resistant to bleed, they're vulnerable to blight, so a Plague Doctor or Shieldbreaker can work their magic, especially against the heavily-armored enemies.
** Almost all of the Grave Robbers abilities help her fight against the fishmen, and her high dodge attribute takes advantage of their generally lower-than-average accuracy.
* {{Expy}}: Of the Deep Ones from ''Literature/TheShadowOverInnsmouth''. This would make the Ancestor into an analogue of Obed Marsh, since he dealt with the Pelagics for treasure. Of course, the Ancestor didn't willingly copulate with them in order to consolidate power over his coastal hamlet, choosing instead to exchange a young girl to them which they used as their [[MarsNeedsWomen breeding slave]].
* FishPeople: They come in two variations, from piranha-like swordsmen and shaman to shield-bearing Cephalopods. The odd members out are the Ucas, who are {{Giant Enemy Crab}}s.
* HellIsThatNoise: Let the torchlight fall too low, and the gurgling of the very agitated Pelagic society will replace the ambiance.
* HumanSacrifice: If sailors and trespassers aren't killed on the spot, they're captured and sacrificed for the Pelagics' own purposes.
* TheRuntAtTheEnd: They are the one enemy faction that the Ancestor's narration doesn't describe as being created or summoned by him. They were already there, and he engaged in less-than-ethical business transactions with them. The only reason the game gives for why you're fighting them is a brief mention that the territorial jerks are sinking merchant ships trying to bring the hamlet much-needed supplies.
* SeaMonster: Various tentacled beasts reside in The Cove, ranging from man-sized trappers residing under the water to leviathans dragging down sea craft. Thankfully, [[AttackOfTheMonsterAppendage you'll only ever see the tentacles of a smaller monster trapping your heroes in the hallways for a moment to give them a long-lasting and serious debuff.]]
* TerrestrialSeaLife: The Pelagic and the sea creatures trailing are this, minus the [[GiantEnemyCrab Ucas]], who have the justification of being crabs.
* WasOnceAMan: According to some notes left behind by a previous expedition, one of the members was attacked by a sea creature and slowly turned into one of the Pelagic horrors overnight, which suggests that some of the Groupers were once human.

[[WMG:Metal Fish]]

[[caption-width-right:250:some caption text]]
These green FishPeople act as the Pelagics' soldiers; armed with a sword in one hand and a harpoon ready to be drawn, they're The Cove's most versatile fighters.

* BoringButPractical: One of the more dangerous enemy formations in The Cove isn't a balanced team of supports, defenders, and attackers, but instead a 4-fish party of Groupers capable of attacking from any position for a considerable amount of damage.
* JavelinThrower: If they're not slicing up your front rows with their swords, they'll be throwing harpoons and [[YouWillNotEvadeMe dragging your back row heroes forward]].
* JackOfAllStats: The Groupers have a mixture of stats that allow them to do well in any composition you'll find. They're not damage sponges like the Guardians, but they're definitely not frail. They're not as fast as a Deep Stinger, but they aren't slow. Their main show is that they will always deal damage compared to the others' status debuffs, stress attacks, and damage-over-time abilities.
* PiranhaProblem: They're bipedal piranhas, who are just as ravenous and capable of [[MeaningfulName grouping]] up in packs to tear up intruders as their Hollywood counterparts.
* YouWillNotEvadeMe: An effect that the move Spearfishing can have, as in they'll pull a hero in the back of the party towards the front and disrupt the synergy or pull them in range of their stronger Seaward Slash.

[[WMG:Spike Drone]]

[[caption-width-right:284:some caption text]]
The spiritual leaders for the Pelagics, they perform the human sacrifices and deep-sea rituals for their kin. In battle, they'll use their magic to terrorize intruders, heal and augment their allies' combat capabilities, and if the need arises, [[EmergencyWeapon stab an intruder]] that's gotten too close for comfort.

* BlackMagic: What they'll be using for their benefit and your suffering.
* EmergencyWeapon: If they find themselves in the front rows of the formation, they'll use their sacrificial knives for a Ceremonial Cut.
* PiranhaProblem: Like the Groupers, they're piranhas that have gone upright, and are extremely vicious and territorial over their salty homes.
* SanitySlippage: They're capable of making your heroes experience this with the move Stress Wave.
* ShootTheMageFirst: They have massive utility for the Pelagics with their magic, making them high priority targets in any fight. Also, unlike most other enemy supports in the game, [[ShootTheMedicFirst they're actually capable of healing.]]
* SquishyWizard: As usual, they can employ magic to their side's benefit but have low health.
* SupportPartyMember: Most of their abilities are designed to help their allies directly.
* WitchDoctor: Resembles one, though with an undersea theme.

[[WMG:Forge Peon]]

[[caption-width-right:284:some caption text]]
The protectors for the Pelagics, these octopus-like creatures will make their priority to guard their allies with their shields so that they can decimate the intruders in safety.

* AchillesHeel: Like all high-protection characters, DamageOverTime is great for ignoring their protection in favor of stacking damage. Blight in particular works well since they're fairly resistant to bleeding.
* LuckilyMyShieldWillProtectMe: Capable of guarding an ally and themselves for a great damage reduction.
* RedEyesTakeWarning: Has blood-red eyes, though they're serving for the slightly more noble role of protecting their allies.
* StoneWall: Like the Bone Defender, they make up for their lack in damage and speed with a huge shield capable of giving considerable protection through a move called Barnacle Barrier to both themselves and an ally.
* TentacledTerror: They're hostile octopuses standing upright.

[[WMG:Saw Drone]]

[[caption-width-right:228:some caption text]]
Among the society of the Pelagics are the Ucas, a race of gigantic crabs who adorn themselves with the pieces of shipwrecks. In battle, they trade their direct damage capabilities for a more defensive approach, preferring to play a long waiting game filled with stunning blows so their enemies can bleed themselves out while they desperately try to damage their sturdy shells.

* AchillesHeel: Their shells ensures some of the best protection in The Cove, but they can't protect themselves from DamageOverTime. A team that can stack blight damage on an Uca has little to worry about while they watch its health bar drain for potentially 20 damage every turn.
* ArcSymbol: The broken ship's wheel they wear around their necks takes the form of the stress symbol.
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Weaker Ucas come in red, while tougher Ucas come in a blue/purple tint.
* DamageOverTime: The Ucas specialty. The move Arterial Pinch will have them pinch a hero and inflict 10 bleed damage every turn, [[OhCrap which can stack if they feel like targeting a specific hero.]]
* GiantEnemyCrab: ''Darkest Dungeon's'' brand of crab enemy.
* MightyGlacier: Big, slow, and tough. However, unlike other examples, they favor [[DamageOverTime a terrifying amount of bleed damage per attack]].
* WoundThatWillNotHeal: Inflicts a debuff that reduces the effectiveness of healing, making it more difficult to recover from or mitigate bleeding.

[[WMG:Laser Guard]]

[[caption-width-right:274:some caption text]]
Either the society where the Pelagics come from has different creatures from our own, or the sea life around The Cove has taken a more eldritch form as a result of the corruption. The Sea Maggot exists to absorb damage while spitting out slime at the heroes to issue speed and dodge-lowering debuffs with a chance of a debilitating disease.

* AchillesHeel: They have the highest protection level of any enemy in the game but no more than 10 hitpoints in their strongest incarnation. This makes them disproportionately vulnerable to an ArmorPiercingAttack as well as damage-over-time, which will usually get them in no more than two turns. This is not helped by their very slow speed.
* NonIndicativeName: Sea Maggots are giant sea snails.
* ScratchDamage: Don't be surprised to see attacks dealt to it deal 1 damage at most, though this is mitigated by their low HP.
* StoneWall: A ridiculous amount of protection thanks to their shell, but unlike other Stone Walls, they lack the HP to make the best use out of it.

[[WMG:Flame Spirit]]

[[caption-width-right:252:some caption text]]
Floating, giant jellyfish that roam around The Cove, they attack and immobilize their prey with paralyzing stings and then drain them of their blood with spiked appendages.

* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Tougher Stingers will be colored differently, with green and blue being weaker than their violet counterparts.
* CombatTentacles: Inevitable since they're massive jellyfish, though they hold a spike in the tips of their tentacles to give a surprise to prey.
* ElectricJellyfish: Though their main damage comes from retractable spikes that bleed targets out, their other attack, Shocker, is also there to administer a stunning shock to targets.
* FragileSpeedster: Boasts a high speed and dodge chance to compliment their role of stunning heroes and bleeding them out for their allies, but tend to be easy to take out.

[[WMG:Overseer]]

[[caption-width-right:340:some caption text]]
Sailors and adventurers that die in The Cove risk being reanimated by the Pelagics to serve as another soldier for their wicked goals. These particular victims were drowned in the ocean, and then revived mid-decomposition. They walk among their fish allies, ready to detonate themselves in one gory burst over any intruders.

* ActionBomb: They'll always use the move The Revenge on their second turn, exploding all over your party for a huge amount of damage and stress.
* BodyHorror: Whatever the Pelagics have done to these corpses, it has turned them into shambling, bloated, exploding horrors. Close examination during their attack animations shows that their ribcages have been pushed down into their stomachs and are visible through large, gaping holes in their sides.
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: The more dangerous Thralls tend to be shaded blue and purple, over their less sturdy green-shaded relatives.
* DeadWeight: While probably not overweight in their time while alive, time spent decomposing in the water has made them big and bloated.
* GlassCannon: They have very little-to-no protection to their HP, which means that getting rid of them is an easy sword swing or two away. They also explode and deal massive damage if they aren't taken care of for whatever reason.
* OurZombiesAreDifferent: A drowned corpse reanimated through the fish-men's magic to serve them.

[[WMG:Painmaster]]

[[caption-width-right:340:some caption text]]
A new enemy added in the Radiant Update, the Squiffy Ghast is a ghostly being cursed with undeath, similar to the Drowned Crew. In the deepest and darkest parts of The Cove, the Ghast wanders around the caverns, constantly playing its fiddle accompanied by a limitless liquor supply. Any adventurer who encounters the Ghast risks being driven to insanity by hearing its cursed music, and it's said that those who dance to its tune [[InvoluntaryDance are doomed to dancing with it forever.]]

* TheBard: They have no offensive ability, but their drunken music is fully capable of stacking a horrifying amount of stress damage to heroes.
* BrownNote: The music they play is this in its entirety.
* ChillOfUndeath: Their breath lets out a blue, ghostly cold air.
* DreadfulMusician: Dreadful enough [[BrownNote to induce insanity and heart attacks]], but also the names of their moves implies that they're playing rather poorly.
* EvilCounterpart: To the Jester. Both have extremely high mobility, play stringed instruments and spend much time changing the party's stress levels. As if to recognize this, there's an achievement called "[[Film/ThisIsSpinalTap Mine Goes To 11]]" for killing a Squiffy Ghast with a Jester attack. It's even written into the game's code: If there is a Jester in the party and the Ghast uses Maddening Shanty, it is guaranteed to target the Jester. This is the ''only'' attack in the game programmed to target a specific class.
* GhostPirate: Of the shanty music-playing variety.
* GlowingEyelightsOfUndeath: Like the Drowned Crew, their eyes are missing in favor of a blue light coming from their sockets.
* ShootTheMageFirst: The Squiffy Ghast should be killed first as it can inflict stress and the Horror status effect.

When the Ancestor finally managed to dig up the HellGate under his manor, he was horrified and DrivenToSuicide from the cosmic entity he unleashed. Others, though, saw this creature as a deity that’s to be worshiped and protected. Now devoted Cultists patrol around the estate, making a pilgrimage to join their much more powerful brothers and sisters in the manor. There, they give their lives to protect their God and its spawn of fleshy monstrosities.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
** In the Darkest Dungeon, Enemies will never perform a nighttime ambush on camping heroes, meaning that camping in the Darkest Dungeon is risk-free of waking up to a mob of enemies surprising the party.
** Hunger checks are much less frequent than in other dungeons, meaning more food is available for camps.
** The Darkest Dungeon has scripted encounters in both hallways and rooms. This means that someone can memorize the spots where they encountered trouble and what kind of enemies populate those locations and build their team accordingly if they were wiped out the first time.
** The third Darkest Dungeon is the largest in the whole game and is the only dungeon classified as Exhausting. Four campfires are given for this dungeon.
* BodyHorror: The Cultists who patrol the halls of their temple are not quite human anymore. The Cultist Priests aren't even classified as Humans anymore, but as Beast and Eldritch.
* DamageOverTime: The enemies here adore inflicting heavy bleed damage, with ''6'' being the average amount inflicted for most attacks.
* DemonicSpiders: A whole dungeon filled with them, done intentionally to drive the point home that this is TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon.
* EldritchAbomination: The Cultists that pestered your party in the regular dungeons are now this. Other hellish non-human creatures can also be found in the deeper parts of the Dungeon.
* EyesDoNotBelongThere: Most of the creatures have multiple, smaller black eyes scattered across their bodies.
* LovecraftianSuperpower: People who give themselves to protecting and worshiping whatever came from the portal are rewarded with grotesque new forms and terrifying powers.
* MoneySpider: Averted. Unlike the usual twisted wildlife in the other dungeons, the encounters in the Darkest Dungeon, barring the Shuffling Horror, yield no loot on defeat.
* TookALevelInBadass: Those Cultists that liked to annoy your party with their bleed and stress damage? Their Ascended siblings are far more terrifying with their much more potent movesets.

[[WMG:Cryspider]]

[[caption-width-right:284:some caption text]]
A Cultist Brawler who was rewarded with a powerful new form for his loyalty by his eldritch god. Their attacks are identical to the regular Brawlers that can be found in any dungeon, save for the fact that they've been given new names and were given a huge power boost to fit in with the difficulty of the Darkest Dungeon. In battle, they'll inflict heavy bleeding with a swipe of their claws, specifically targeting any hero marked by their Witch allies.

* ArcSymbol: The symbol of their god is their headdress.
* BodyHorror: Their bodies have been augmented with a fleshy profusion that forms into a serrated scythe appendage when they attack.
* CombinationAttack: The move Rend For The New God has a good chance to inflict a +20% stress damage debuff on targets, a great opening attack to compliment their Witch allies' Fate's Reveal, a sanity-draining attack.
* LightningBruiser: Is packed with a passable speed stat, good HP, and a dangerous ability to cause heavy bleeding for your party so as long as they're on the front rows.

[[WMG:Cryserpent]]
[[quoteright:222:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cryserpent.png]]
[[caption-width-right:222:some caption text]]
A Cultist Acolyte who was rewarded with a powerful new form for her loyalty by her eldritch god, like the Ascended Brawler. Also like the Ascended Brawler, their attacks have been powered up and renamed to fit with the difficulty of the Darkest Dungeon. In battle, they prioritize in driving party members to insanity, preferring to target the heroes who have taken more stress damage than the others. They'll also attempt to ruin formations by dragging heroes forward or pushing them backwards with the usage of BlackMagic.

* ArcSymbol: Wears the symbol of their god as a headdress.
* BodyHorror: Their bodies were augmented with tentacles that seep out from their robes and wrap around their arms.
* CombinationAttack: Heroes hit with Fate's Reveal will be Marked in addition to taking heavy stress damage. The Brawlers that accompany the Witches will then capitalize on the increased damage with powerful hits from the move Rend For The New God.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Will try to inflict this on your party with enough usage of the move Fate's Reveal.
* TargetSpotter: In addition to stressing heroes out, the move Fate's Reveal will mark its targets so the Brawlers can deal increased damage against them while targeting them in particular.
* YouWillNotEvadeMe: The move Fate's Pull will have the Witch summon a tentacle through a portal to drag a hero to the front of the party.
** Inversely, Fate's Push will do the opposite, by [[BlownAcrossTheRoom pushing targets away from the front rows with one hard push from a summoned tentacle.]]

[[WMG:Cryshark]]

[[caption-width-right:241:some caption text]]
Deranged worshipers of the thing under the manor, they'll give their lives away to protect their fellow Cultists while healing them, acting as the Darkest Dungeon's dedicated support unit.

* BrokenSmile: Has their mouth agape in fanatical devotion to their god.
* EyesDoNotBelongThere: Multiple black eyes are scattered on their chests and legs.
* FragileSpeedster: They have an impressive speed stat, but are lacking in HP, and are especially devoid of dodge and protection.
* HumanShield: Rapturous Cultists will use the move Flesh Wall to provide a turn of protection to the target.
* ShootTheMedicFirst: Any turn not spent on getting rid of these Cultists is a turn where they make their much more dangerous allies immune to direct damage or possibly even undo your progress with a heal. Thankfully, they have nonexistent stats to protect themselves with, so it's fairly easy.
** On the other hand, though, bearing through their heavy healing and protection and leaving one Rapturous Cultist alive means a few turns to heal risk-free, thanks to their complete lack of fighting power unlike other supports.
* SupportPartyMember: Has no offensive capabilities whatsoever, only the abilities to protect their allies or heal them.

[[WMG:Arcane Acrobat]]

[[caption-width-right:340:some caption text]]
Some of the most devoted and righteous Cultists in the temples are blessed by their god with a new form that ascends them beyond humanity, with increased durability, speed, and ferocity. These Priests rank highest in the Cultist hierarchy, which in turn makes them the most dangerous of the non-boss enemies in the first two Darkest Dungeon missions.

* BodyHorror: [[https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/549807312816154876/5AE2702175E903957CC260807266A49D6F382C09/ And how!]]
* TheFaceless: Their hoods completely shadow whatever counts as their face.
* HighPriest: They serve as these for the Cultists.
* LightningBruiser: Is possibly one of the toughest standard enemies in the dungeon, sporting a good amount of HP, high damage and heavy bleeding, and a speed that ensures they can move first against most of the damage dealers in your party.
* WasOnceAMan: The Priests were apparently once human, but a granted favor from their god has turned them into something nearly unrecognizable. Notably, they're the only Cultist who aren't classified as a Human in any way.

[[WMG:Order of the Eclipse]]

[[caption-width-right:339:some caption text]]
The fleshy spawn of the Darkest Dungeon tend to grow on anything they can latch onto. Unlike the growths that'll haunt your party in the background, these growths will take the initiative to attack your party while supporting their own. The Malignant Growth dedicates itself to the offensive, stunning and bleeding your party dry. The Defensive Growth, meanwhile, will protect, heal, and buff their allies with the occasional stress attack against your party.

* ArcSymbol: The growths have attached themselves to broken parts of the arc symbol.
* AntiFrustrationFeature: A rare one for the game, but the Defensive Growth will only ever use the move Grand Guard once every 3 turns, which is understandable as they're capable of absorbing a ridiculous amount of damage for their allies.
* DesperationAttack: When the Defensive Growth is the last unit standing, they'll use the move Unbearable Tremors to deal a party-wide stress attack against your team.
* EarlyBirdCameo: The Growths appear only once as encounters in the first Darkest Dungeon mission before they become common enemies in the second mission.
* MightyGlacier: The Malignant Growth is a powerful and sturdy unit thanks to the statue it's attached to, and capable of inflicting heavy damage and stuns.
* NoSell: Being made mostly from stone, they have a bleed resistance just barely behind the skeletons in The Ruins, making bleed-reliant attacks next to useless on them.
* ShootTheMedicFirst: It's difficult to pull off on the Defensive Growth without the usage of blight damage, though, meaning that either stun-locking them or killing off the rest of their allies can be more worthwhile than wasting turns hitting a stone statue.
* StoneWall: The Defensive Growth is exceptionally sturdy, even more than the Malignant Growth, making them perfect for defending their damage-dealing allies.
* SupportPartyMember: The Defensive Growth, contrary to the Malignant Growth, are dedicated protectors, damage buffers, and healers for their parties, and are deceptively fast enough to pull their tricks off before most of your party can move.

[[WMG:Crystal Master]]

[[caption-width-right:340:some caption text]]
The Templars are monstrosities commonly found guarding important ritual sites in the deeper parts of the Dungeon. Though significantly stronger than the usual mobs scattered around the Dungeon, their number usually has them classified as mini-bosses.

* AchillesHeel: [[SignatureMove Revelation]] may hit like a truck on both physical and mental fronts, but the Talisman of the Flame trinkets from the first Darkest Dungeon mission near-totally nullifies their impact. However, there's only enough for three party members, so one is left vulnerable.
* ArcSymbol: The Stress symbol forms the frame of their golden headdress.
* DegradedBoss: The third Darkest Dungeon mission also contains Templars -- the Templar Gladiator and Sniper. These lack the minibosses' headdress, cannot use Revelation, and take only one action per turn.
* DualBoss: One of the Iron Crowns is guarded by the Templar Warlord and Impaler, which means one must deal with two rounds of Revelation each turn.
* EyesDoNotBelongThere: Besides the usual numerous black eyes typical to Darkest Dungeon enemies, they have a particularly large one beneath their human torso, which they use for their Revelation attack.
* ScaryScorpions: They have a general scorpion motif throughout their design and their manner of attack.
* SignatureMove: The Templars are scripted to use Revelation on the first of their two actions each turn, which deals massive physical and stress damage.
* TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow: It is implied their Revelation attack exposes the target's awareness to incredibly stressful things.

[[WMG:Alpha Battlemage]]

[[caption-width-right:340:some caption text]]
When the Cultists fail to stop the intruders in the first two sections of the Dungeon, the animal-like monstrosities found in the deeper sections will take over. The Flesh Hound is one of them, who specializes in biting into heroes for a damaging Gnash, and lashing out at heroes in the back to Fetch them all the way to the front with their long tongues.

* AnimalisticAbomination: Vaguely resembles a dog with its form and attack names.
* EarlyBirdCameo: Flesh Hounds make an early appearance in the second Darkest Dungeon mission to accompany the Templars, before they become the standard enemy in the third mission.
* YouWillNotEvadeMe: The move Fetch has the Hound lash their tongue out to try and yank a targeted hero to the front of the formation. As an added bonus, it also has a chance to stun the same hero.

[[WMG:Crybeast]]

Vaguely bat-like spawn of what's hiding under the manor, these flyers dedicate themselves to spreading their Venomous Phlegm to your party and using Banish to toss heroes to the back rows.

* BlownAcrossTheRoom: Their specialty and main source of drawing hatred from you, if they manage to get a front-row hero away from their position.
* EarlyBirdCameo: Polyps can be encountered fighting alongside the Templars in the second Darkest Dungeon mission before they become regular enemies later on.
* LongRangeFighter: From a distance, they can easily spread blight and ruin formations, but they're incapacitated for a turn should they find themselves in the front, as they'll have to use Violent Hack to push themselves back to their preferred spots.

When the Ancestor finally managed to dig up the HellGate under his manor, he was horrified and DrivenToSuicide from the cosmic entity he unleashed. Others, though, saw this creature as a deity that’s to be worshiped and protected. Now devoted Cultists patrol around the estate, making a pilgrimage to join their much more powerful brothers and sisters in the manor. There, they give their lives to protect their God and its spawn of fleshy monstrosities.

* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
** In the Darkest Dungeon, Enemies will never perform a nighttime ambush on camping heroes, meaning that camping in the Darkest Dungeon is risk-free of waking up to a mob of enemies surprising the party.
** Hunger checks are much less frequent than in other dungeons, meaning more food is available for camps.
** The Darkest Dungeon has scripted encounters in both hallways and rooms. This means that someone can memorize the spots where they encountered trouble and what kind of enemies populate those locations and build their team accordingly if they were wiped out the first time.
** The third Darkest Dungeon is the largest in the whole game and is the only dungeon classified as Exhausting. Four campfires are given for this dungeon.
* BodyHorror: The Cultists who patrol the halls of their temple are not quite human anymore. The Cultist Priests aren't even classified as Humans anymore, but as Beast and Eldritch.
* DamageOverTime: The enemies here adore inflicting heavy bleed damage, with ''6'' being the average amount inflicted for most attacks.
* DemonicSpiders: A whole dungeon filled with them, done intentionally to drive the point home that this is TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon.
* EldritchAbomination: The Cultists that pestered your party in the regular dungeons are now this. Other hellish non-human creatures can also be found in the deeper parts of the Dungeon.
* EyesDoNotBelongThere: Most of the creatures have multiple, smaller black eyes scattered across their bodies.
* LovecraftianSuperpower: People who give themselves to protecting and worshiping whatever came from the portal are rewarded with grotesque new forms and terrifying powers.
* MoneySpider: Averted. Unlike the usual twisted wildlife in the other dungeons, the encounters in the Darkest Dungeon, barring the Shuffling Horror, yield no loot on defeat.
* TookALevelInBadass: Those Cultists that liked to annoy your party with their bleed and stress damage? Their Ascended siblings are far more terrifying with their much more potent movesets.

[[WMG:Darkness]]

[[caption-width-right:250:some caption text]]
A Cultist Brawler who was rewarded with a powerful new form for his loyalty by his eldritch god. Their attacks are identical to the regular Brawlers that can be found in any dungeon, save for the fact that they've been given new names and were given a huge power boost to fit in with the difficulty of the Darkest Dungeon. In battle, they'll inflict heavy bleeding with a swipe of their claws, specifically targeting any hero marked by their Witch allies.

* ArcSymbol: The symbol of their god is their headdress.
* BodyHorror: Their bodies have been augmented with a fleshy profusion that forms into a serrated scythe appendage when they attack.
* CombinationAttack: The move Rend For The New God has a good chance to inflict a +20% stress damage debuff on targets, a great opening attack to compliment their Witch allies' Fate's Reveal, a sanity-draining attack.
* LightningBruiser: Is packed with a passable speed stat, good HP, and a dangerous ability to cause heavy bleeding for your party so as long as they're on the front rows.

[[WMG:Umber]]

[[caption-width-right:340:some caption text]]
A Cultist Acolyte who was rewarded with a powerful new form for her loyalty by her eldritch god, like the Ascended Brawler. Also like the Ascended Brawler, their attacks have been powered up and renamed to fit with the difficulty of the Darkest Dungeon. In battle, they prioritize in driving party members to insanity, preferring to target the heroes who have taken more stress damage than the others. They'll also attempt to ruin formations by dragging heroes forward or pushing them backwards with the usage of BlackMagic.

* ArcSymbol: Wears the symbol of their god as a headdress.
* BodyHorror: Their bodies were augmented with tentacles that seep out from their robes and wrap around their arms.
* CombinationAttack: Heroes hit with Fate's Reveal will be Marked in addition to taking heavy stress damage. The Brawlers that accompany the Witches will then capitalize on the increased damage with powerful hits from the move Rend For The New God.
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: Will try to inflict this on your party with enough usage of the move Fate's Reveal.
* TargetSpotter: In addition to stressing heroes out, the move Fate's Reveal will mark its targets so the Brawlers can deal increased damage against them while targeting them in particular.
* YouWillNotEvadeMe: The move Fate's Pull will have the Witch summon a tentacle through a portal to drag a hero to the front of the party.
** Inversely, Fate's Push will do the opposite, by [[BlownAcrossTheRoom pushing targets away from the front rows with one hard push from a summoned tentacle.]]

[[WMG:Shadow]][[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/eyeofevil.png]]
[[caption-width-right:250:some caption text]]
Deranged worshipers of the thing under the manor, they'll give their lives away to protect their fellow Cultists while healing them, acting as the Darkest Dungeon's dedicated support unit.

* BrokenSmile: Has their mouth agape in fanatical devotion to their god.
* EyesDoNotBelongThere: Multiple black eyes are scattered on their chests and legs.
* FragileSpeedster: They have an impressive speed stat, but are lacking in HP, and are especially devoid of dodge and protection.
* HumanShield: Rapturous Cultists will use the move Flesh Wall to provide a turn of protection to the target.
* ShootTheMedicFirst: Any turn not spent on getting rid of these Cultists is a turn where they make their much more dangerous allies immune to direct damage or possibly even undo your progress with a heal. Thankfully, they have nonexistent stats to protect themselves with, so it's fairly easy.
** On the other hand, though, bearing through their heavy healing and protection and leaving one Rapturous Cultist alive means a few turns to heal risk-free, thanks to their complete lack of fighting power unlike other supports.
* SupportPartyMember: Has no offensive capabilities whatsoever, only the abilities to protect their allies or heal them.

[[WMG: Obsidian]]

[[caption-width-right:340:some caption text]]
Some of the most devoted and righteous Cultists in the temples are blessed by their god with a new form that ascends them beyond humanity, with increased durability, speed, and ferocity. These Priests rank highest in the Cultist hierarchy, which in turn makes them the most dangerous of the non-boss enemies in the first two Darkest Dungeon missions.

* BodyHorror: [[https://steamuserimages-a.akamaihd.net/ugc/549807312816154876/5AE2702175E903957CC260807266A49D6F382C09/ And how!]]
* TheFaceless: Their hoods completely shadow whatever counts as their face.
* HighPriest: They serve as these for the Cultists.
* LightningBruiser: Is possibly one of the toughest standard enemies in the dungeon, sporting a good amount of HP, high damage and heavy bleeding, and a speed that ensures they can move first against most of the damage dealers in your party.
* WasOnceAMan: The Priests were apparently once human, but a granted favor from their god has turned them into something nearly unrecognizable. Notably, they're the only Cultist who aren't classified as a Human in any way.

[[WMG:Night]]

[[caption-width-right:340:some caption text]]
The fleshy spawn of the Darkest Dungeon tend to grow on anything they can latch onto. Unlike the growths that'll haunt your party in the background, these growths will take the initiative to attack your party while supporting their own. The Malignant Growth dedicates itself to the offensive, stunning and bleeding your party dry. The Defensive Growth, meanwhile, will protect, heal, and buff their allies with the occasional stress attack against your party.

* ArcSymbol: The growths have attached themselves to broken parts of the arc symbol.
* AntiFrustrationFeature: A rare one for the game, but the Defensive Growth will only ever use the move Grand Guard once every 3 turns, which is understandable as they're capable of absorbing a ridiculous amount of damage for their allies.
* DesperationAttack: When the Defensive Growth is the last unit standing, they'll use the move Unbearable Tremors to deal a party-wide stress attack against your team.
* EarlyBirdCameo: The Growths appear only once as encounters in the first Darkest Dungeon mission before they become common enemies in the second mission.
* MightyGlacier: The Malignant Growth is a powerful and sturdy unit thanks to the statue it's attached to, and capable of inflicting heavy damage and stuns.
* NoSell: Being made mostly from stone, they have a bleed resistance just barely behind the skeletons in The Ruins, making bleed-reliant attacks next to useless on them.
* ShootTheMedicFirst: It's difficult to pull off on the Defensive Growth without the usage of blight damage, though, meaning that either stun-locking them or killing off the rest of their allies can be more worthwhile than wasting turns hitting a stone statue.
* StoneWall: The Defensive Growth is exceptionally sturdy, even more than the Malignant Growth, making them perfect for defending their damage-dealing allies.
* SupportPartyMember: The Defensive Growth, contrary to the Malignant Growth, are dedicated protectors, damage buffers, and healers for their parties, and are deceptively fast enough to pull their tricks off before most of your party can move.

A huge bandit serving as a boss during the tutorial, he recurs later in the game as one of the more powerful members of the Brigand faction.

* BadassNormal: Like all the Brigands, the Bloodletter has no supernatural powers, just size, gunpowder, and a mean streak.
* DegradedBoss: Guys like the Blooodletter occasionally appear as a regular enemy after the tutorial.
* DentedIron: His bare chest is covered in scars.
* GiantMook: A huge brute of a man, he fills two spaces and looms over all the other Brigands and the party alike.
* InTheHood: Wears a green hood, like his fellow bandits.
* LargeAndInCharge: He is noticeably taller and larger than any other humans, to the point that he occupies two positions in the formation system.
* NoRangeLikePointBlankRange: Like the Highwayman, he carries a flintlock and sometimes uses it at point blank range.
* OutsideGenreFoe: A heavily armed highway robber isn't high on the list of bosses one expects in a game about eldritch horrors and other supernatural beings.
* ATasteOfTheLash: Two of his attacks, ''Punishment'' and ''Rain of Whips''. One is single-target, the other hits your whole party, and both inflict bleed.
* WarmupBoss: He first appears in the second fight of the game, during the tutorial. Generally speaking, he's not all that gimmicky compared to other bosses later encountered.
* WalkingShirtlessScene: Wears nothing above his belt, except a hood on his head.

The Ancestor invited several scholars to study with him, only to [[SlainInTheirSleep murder them in their sleep]]. To show off his newfound powers, he had them brought back through necromancy, with their skills and knowledge intact to boot. This proved to be yet another of the Ancestor's grievous mistakes, as the undead sorcerers began raising the dead themselves of their own volition. The Necromancers now lurks within the ruins among their ever-growing army of corpses. As long as they live, the dead will never know peace. Hunt the leaders of the growing horde, destroy them, and ensure the reclamation of your Ancestral home.

* AchillesHeel: A Crusader with an Unholy Slayer's Ring trinket trivializes the skeletons he summons at Apprentice difficulty and leave the rest of the party free to wail on him, and two will probably achieve a similar result even at harder difficulties. Four Crusaders are actually a pretty good method to kill him [[labelnote:Explanation]]The front two Crusaders use Smite, which has a 15-35% damage boost against Unholy enemies like the undead, to chop through the skeletons summoned by the Necromancer then tear into the Necromancer's health pool. The back two Crusaders can either use Holy Lance to hit the Necromancer and move forward to take the pressure off the front two, or use Inspiring Cry/Battle Heal to deal with the Necromancer's stress-inducing attacks and damage. Repeat until he goes down.[[/labelnote]].
* ArcSymbol: His robe's collar is identical to the stress symbol.
* BlackSpeech: Hisses in a horrible, hoarse voice whenever he takes a hit or delivers one.
* ChainedByFashion: The Necromancer has a giant steel collar around his neck, and his belt looks like chains wrapped around his waist.
* FlunkyBoss: Summons undead minions to support him with every blow, while shuffling back and forth between their ranks.
* GoneHorriblyRight: They are one of the few, if not the ''only'' things, that the Ancestor managed to get right in his pursuit of the dark secrets of the world, as he brought them back completely intact. Unfortunately, their resurrection came back to bite him later on.
* InTheHood: Has his face completely covered by one.
* TheLeader: Of the Undead faction, as they're the ones constantly summoning new undead to replace those slain by your heroes.
* MonsterProgenitor: They are the source of all the unholy undead haunting the ruins and the Hamlet in general.
* {{Necromancer}}: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Goes without saying.]]
* OurLichesAreDifferent: While never referred to as one, they do fit the trope -- they're intelligent undead with enough magical power to raise other, lesser undead and were well-learned in necromancy before being killed and brought back as undead.
* UndeadAbomination: Whatever he is, between the claws and hidden tentacles, he's definitely not human any more.
* WarmUpBoss: Will most likely be the first boss you face in the game, and is fairly straightforward. His fight doesn't have any gimmick beyond summoning enemies with every attack, and his lack of ContractualBossImmunity means pretty much any skill will work on him. The biggest problem is keeping on top of this summons, since he will always conjure up a new minion with every attack, and on higher difficulty dungeons he may summon stronger undead or they'll start off in stealth. Some of his attacks do inflict stress across the entire party, so he'll need to be killed fast.
* WasOnceAMan: The Necromancer was one of the many scholars and visiting sorcerers that came to the estate at the Ancestor's invitation. He later killed them and raised them as the creatures they are now.

Once there was a man, a homeless lunatic who dwelt in the Hamlet, who decried the Ancestor as a harbinger of doom. Nothing the Ancestor did could stop this prophet, and all murder attempts failed as well. Drowning, poison, blades; seemingly nothing could kill the maddened prophet. So the Ancestor gave the man exactly what he wanted; he told him everything. ''[[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow Everything.]]'' The prophet's mind snapped, and he tore out his own eyes and fled into seclusion. He continues his apocalyptic ravings in the darkness of the Ruins, as the leader of the cultists there, and it is the task of your heroes to do what your ancestor could not — kill him.

* AchillesHeel: The Man-at-Arms guarding and shooting him with mark-benefiting attacks. The former will make his normally-fearsome rubble little more than an annoyance ([[OhCrap aside from the instances when he decides to mark two heroes that aren't the Man-at-Arms at once...]]), and the Prophet is otherwise fairly simple to kill outside of being immovable way back in the last rank. To a lesser extent, put some stun resistance on the Man-at-Arms to limit him being stunned when you really don't want him to be (which is always) and bring a Plague Doctor or antivenom to deal with the other most threatening attack he provides — blighting ''everyone''.
** Another possibility is bringing at least one Occultist with Curse of Weakness, as the damage debuff will enormously reduce the danger posed by the collapsing rubble. Two Occultists with a well-trained Curse can quickly destroy his offensive capability entirely.
* ArcSymbol: The knives protruding out from his hunched back combined with the stocks he is locked to form the shape of the game's stress symbol -- five spikes embedded through an arc.
* BlindSeer: He clawed out his own eyes, but still receives visions. He also [[{{Squick}} holds them in his hands while he fights]].
* BrokenSmile: Possesses a rather deranged grin and is utterly, hopelessly insane.
* CassandraTruth: Averted; he was a threat precisely because the people of the hamlet believed him. Only the Ancestor ignored his warnings.
* CollapsingCeilingBoss: One of his attacks causes two large blocks of stone to fall on the party from the Ruins' ceiling, dealing heavy damage to two heroes.
* CrazyHomelessPeople: He wasn't the picture of mental health to begin with, and the Ancestor's BreakingLecture broke him completely. Perhaps he had some contact with eldritch forces in the past...
* CrosshairAware: He marks two character positions with red light via one of his attacks. The following turn, rubble will drop on those positions for huge damage. And getting someone tough to take the hit will either damage your formation or take up their turn to set up their guard skill.
* EyeScream: Tore his own eyes out during his revelation.
* FallenHero [[HeroAntagonist Antagonist]]: He repeatedly risked death to warn the Ancestor against his excavations. He was then exposed to the portal, [[GoMadFromTheRevelation went insane]], [[EyeScream tore his own eyes out]], and began ''serving'' the horrors beyond the portal, which is [[ShootTheDog where you come in...]]
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: How the Ancestor [[RasputinianDeath finally disposed of him]] — he showed him the excavations, "The Thing", and told him everything he planned. The prophet promptly tore his eyes out and ran away, screaming and blind. Now he is the leader of the cultists, seeking only to hasten the end.
* ImplacableMan: The ancestor tried to murder him multiple times, and each time he miraculously survived. He still carries the stocks and knives in his back as taunting mementos.
* ImplausibleDeniability: The Ancestor, even in death, claims his warnings are 'mindless drivel'. Despite the fact the Prophet was ''one hundred percent right'' and the evidence is... well, the entire plot of the game.
* TheLeader: Of the Cultist faction, serving as the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin prophet]] of their master's cause. This notably marks the cultists as *not* a KeystoneArmy, as they continue to serve the Darkness well into the depths of the Darkest Dungeon itself and [[MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning what comes after]] even stronger than before.
* MonsterProgenitor: The source and spearhead for the unholy cult which stalks the surroundings of the Hamlet in search for sacrifices.
* PuzzleBoss: Relatively straightforward, as bosses go... but protected by three ranks of tough wooden pews. [[MoneySpider They're worth a lot of money chopped up]], and doing so exposes him to your melee heavy hitters... but it ''also'' causes your party to be subject to the collapsing ceiling for that much longer.
* RasputinianDeath: He was locked in the stocks to die of thirst or exposure, plunged into icy waters to drown or freeze, and in a final act of exasperation, the Ancestor repeatedly stabbed him in the back with several different knives. Each time the Prophet returned, and even now he clings to a twisted facsimile of life in death.
* StockPunishment: Is restrained this way, although his left arm is free to hold his eyes in his hand.
* TheUndead: He's marked as an Unholy enemy, so either he's undead or being kept alive by dark magic. Notably, the cultists he leads are all still marked as Human.
* TheUnintelligible: Makes gurgling sounds when he attacks or as he gets hit.
* WisdomFromTheGutter: He quite accurately predicted what the Ancestor's digging would lead to despite being, by all appearances, just a random homeless person.

The Ancestor attempted to summon beings from the "outer spheres," with his initial attempts failing. He decided to try using pigs as vessels, resulting in the creation of the swinefolk. He eventually managed to summon a particularly powerful entity, and the pig it possessed grew to a gargantuan size. While the entity was indeed powerful, it was also brutish and stupid. The Ancestor moved the resulting abomination into the Warrens, where it now rules over the swine due to being larger and stronger than the rest of them. The threat of the swinefolk was bad enough before they had a guiding ruler. The King must be dethroned before his actions form them into an unstoppable horde.

To see Wilbur's tropes as an EliteMook and the miniboss of the Sluice in ''II'', look [[Characters/DarkestDungeonIIMonsters here]].
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* AchillesHeel:
** Ripostes, due to Wilbur having multiple actions and the King generally using multi-target attacks. Note, however, that this is ''not'' necessarily a good thing, as Wilbur tends to get himself killed very quickly against a riposte-heavy party, and [[UnstoppableRage the Swine King takes that poorly.]]
** The Arbalest and Musketeer with their ability to clear marks render the Swine King far more manageable, since he relies on Wilbur's marks to deal a large amount of damage.
* AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: The swine unanimously declared it their king because it was the biggest and strongest among them.
* BerserkButton: Attacking his minion, Wilbur, will cause him to retaliate with a very powerful strike that hits everyone in the party and has a high chance to stun. Killing Wilbur outright will enrage the King
* {{BFS}}: Wields a giant blade the size of one of the heroes. [[OneHandedZweihander With one hand, no less.]]
* BigEater: According to the Ancestor, the King required prodigious amounts of meat to sustain itself after being summoned. It's heavily implied that he solved this issue by feeding Hamlet-dwellers to it.
* BodyHorror: He's covered in open sores, his brain is exposed, his bones have torn through his flesh in places, and he sits in a massive pile of his own viscera.
* CherryTapping: Wilbur only causes 2 damage per hit, but this can still kill heroes, especially if he uses the Bit O' Squeal skill [[CycleOfHurting to stun the entire party into another use of it]]. One of your heroes ignobly dying to a small pig child squealing at them [[AchievementMockery is even a secret achievement]].
* CombatAndSupport: The Swine King is the Combat, using direct attacks on your party for huge damage. Wilbur acts as the Support, marking characters for the Swine King to attack, while also causing them to take increased damage from his already-powerful attacks.
* DemonLordsAndArchdevils: It's heavily implied that the Swine King is a demon lord or other powerful hellish entity, bound to Earth in the form of a pig.
* DumbMuscle: It needs Wilbur to direct its attacks for it and lacks many tactics beyond "Swing at the Marked". The Ancestor even derisively notes how stupid it is during his narration of the King's backstory.
* EldritchAbomination: The Swine King is the result of ''something'' from another plane of existence [[DemonicPossession taking over the body]] of a common pig.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: While it does need to rely on Wilbur's directions to be able to do anything other than just attack wildly, it does seem to care for him, as shown by him going ''utterly ballistic'' if Wilbur goes down first.
* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe: He's nothing but intestine from the waist down, though it's questionable whether he ''ever'' had more.
* HandicappedBadass: The hulking giant appears to be eyeless and blind. This is probably why Wilbur directs its attacks. Notably, using the Arbalest's Rally Flare to clear the marks from your party causes the Swine King's attacks to be aimless and far less effective, as it loses its direction and swings blindly.
* HopeSpot: Wilbur's Bit'o Squeal skill can still ''stun the entire party'', turning a narrow victory into a frustrating defeat due to the party getting [[CycleOfHurting stunlocked]] by a small pig child [[CherryTapping squealing at them]].
* TheLeader: Of the Swinefolk faction, if the name didn't give it away.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Like other bosses, his title changes depending on the difficulty level, from Swine Prince, to Swine King, until it escalates to Swine God.
* PigMan: Like all the Swinefolk, the King resembles a humanoid pig, though he's much more deformed and disproportionately built than the rest.
* RedEyesTakeWarning: It normally seems eyeless except for when a bright red glow shining out its left socket whenever it attacks. If Wilbur dies, however, the glow instead comes from his arm and starts slaughtering the party.
* ShootTheMageFirst: [[AvertedTrope For once, this is actually a terrible idea.]] If Wilbur falls first, [[TurnsRed be prepared]] for a TotalPartyKill unless the Swine King itself is close to death.
* SuperScream: In addition to his role as TargetSpotter for the Swine King, Wilbur will sometimes use Bit O' Squeal, which has a chance of stunning one or more of your heroes. Once the King is dead [[DeathWail he starts spamming it until he's dead as well]].
* TargetSpotter: On his turn, Wilbur will either use End This One or End These Two, Marking one or two of your party members respectively with his flags and allowing the Swine King to Obliterate them.
* TrickBoss: Do not kill Wilbur first. [[UnstoppableRage This will enrage the King]]. In a rare case of AntiFrustrationFeatures for this game, the first time Wilbur's hit, one of the heroes will shout that it's a bad idea, explicitly warning not to do this.
* TrueCompanions: The Swine King is very fond of Wilbur. It's ill-advised to slay him before the king.
* TurnsRed: Killing Wilbur enrages him, changing his single-target attacks to [[TotalPartyKill party-killing]] multi-target attacks. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9l4kDYcXx4 Unless you're particularly]] CrazyPrepared to do so, that is.
* WeaksauceWeakness: He has a rather crippling weakness to the Arbalest's Rallying Flare, which clears all marks and stuns from the party. Given that his fight revolves around him dealing massive damage to whichever heroes Wilbur marks, it's easy to spend the entire fight with him ineffectually flailing.

The Ancestor eventually got tired of his disastrous attempts at demonic summoning, with his most successful creation being the uselessly stupid and ravenous Swine King. He was left with the problem of a massive amount of demon-possessed pig flesh that couldn't easily be disposed of. The Ancestor found the solution to this problem once his excavations broke into a vast, ancient system of tunnels and aqueducts. He poured the nightmarish, shape-shifting flesh into the Warrens and promptly forgot about it as it mutated together into increasingly-hideous and deadly forms. It must be destroyed, utterly and completely.

* AchillesHeel: The Formless Flesh's forms are nigh-impossible to debuff or stun effectively with them constantly shifting, have powerful attacks that can inflict bleed or blight, and are usually highly resilient to damage; aside from that, it can ''heal'' itself. But because it is mechanically treated as four separate enemies that share one health bar, multi-target attacks are particularly effective against it, and multi-target DamageOverTime attacks are ''supremely'' effective. Special mention goes to the Houndmaster's "Hound's Harry", which can potentially inflict bleed on every segment of the flesh at once every turn.
* AIRoulette: How it transforms is entirely random, so what you're fighting shifts to something with different resistances each turn. It's by no means certain it will generate a weak spot. At the same time, it has been known to put a given component in a position where it cannot actually attack.
* AssKicksYou: One of its body parts is the backside of a hog... with multiple tentacles sticking out of it. Which it will then fire at your heroes as an attack.
* AttackItsWeakPoint: It is possible to harm the flesh at any point, but all but one of its spots are armored and will absorb some of the damage thrown at it, with many being armored quite heavily. The only non-armored point are the gigantic heart-shaped lumps it uses to heal and regenerate, so it's advisable to attack them whenever they show up.
* BarrierChangeBoss: Its four different parts shift into different forms randomly, each of which has different resistances to different statuses. Only one "form" has no protection, however.
* BodyHorror: The Ancestor himself says it is more horrible than he can describe.
* BodyOfBodies: The Formless Flesh is formed from countless half-living demon-possessed pigs fused into one unstable, shape-shifting nightmare.
* CombatTentacles: The main form of attack from its rear end involves firing a Blight-dripping tentacle from what remains of a hog's backside. It also has a toothy mouth on the end, just in case that wasn't disturbing enough.
* EldritchAbomination: A beast with a pig's head, multiple eyes, a spine jutting out from its back, and a body composed of a single large tentacle. Sometimes. Sometimes it's one, none, or all of those things. [[MeaningfulName Clue's in the name.]]
* HeavilyArmoredMook: Each of the individual parts has a different level of PROT - except for the heart-like blobs, which are completely unarmoured.
* SharedLifeMeter: It's technically made of four targetable enemies, with all of them sharing a health pool.
* StatusInflictionAttack: All of the Flesh's attacks inflict either Bleed, Blight, or stun.
* TooManyMouths: Every last one of its parts has at least two mouths on or in it, giving it over half a dozen mouths at any one point. And those are just the ones we can see.
* TransformationHorror: Spread across the whole of the enemy formation, it is a many-mouthed pile of diseased, mutant pig-flesh that shapeshifts every round so that something different but equally abhorrent is in each rank. [[BodyHorror It's actually even worse to look at than that sounds.]]

Once, a young woman came to the Ancestor, offering him mastery of alchemy and medicine. However, the woman was prone to experimenting on herself, and said experiments twisted her into a cannibalistic monster. [[EvenEvilHasStandards Disgusted]], the Ancestor exiled her into the Weald, where she continues her experiments. Since then, she has amassed many Eldritch abonimations raging from infested corpses, some mushroom beasts and even getting a family of witches along the way.

* AchillesHeel: Because she has relatively low health, piling on rapid high damage or high DamageOverTime backline attacks can rapidly deplete her limited health. She is also vulnerable to area-of-effect attacks that hit both the front and the back, as this damage both the Hag and the Pot and can knock it over to free the trapped hero. The Hellion, in particular is very effective against her by combining her Breakthrough, Bleed Out, and Iron Swan skills. Having multiple Hellions is a viable strategy in this instance.
* ArcSymbol: The antler crown she wears bears a similar resemblance to the stress symbol.
* CrownOfHorns: She sports a deer skull with attached antlers as a hat, giving off this look. Her minions, the crones, are also fond of this trope.
* DropTheHammer: Her main attack, aside from the pot, is to smash the party with a giant meat tenderizer.
* EvilMakesYouUgly: Played entirely straight. The Hag's constant experimenting turned her from an attractive young woman into a fat, hideous cannibal. The change was drastic and horrifying enough to gross out the ''Ancestor''.
* FatBastard: Not only is she a depraved cannibal, but she's also quite large. She takes up two spaces in the enemy formation.
* GlassCannon: While she can disable one of your heroes and does a lot of damage to the others with her meat tenderizer, the Hag has significantly lower health overall than most bosses, to make up for the fact that she'll be cooking — or trying to cook — one of your party members, leaving only three heroes available to fight her. A legitimate strategy against the Hag is to just blitz her as fast as possible with high-damage backline attacks.
* ImAHumanitarian: Her M.O. is to toss your heroes into her cooking pot and [[StewedAlive try and turn them into stew]]. One of her attacks is her tasting the stew while a hero boils inside, which will understandably stress a hero out, and the multiple turns she can take at once will stack it up fast.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: Fights with a ladle, a meat tenderizer, and seasoning.
* IWasQuiteTheLooker: According to the Ancestor, she was quite attractive when she was still human. Her hideous transformation was what drove him to exile her.
* MadScientist: Much like the Ancestor, though her fields of expertise were botany, alchemy, and chemistry.
* NonStandardGameOver: Normally, the cook pot spits out its victim when they reach Death's Door. But if there's a character in the pot and the rest of the party is dead, the mission is lost — presumably because the Hag finishes cooking the last one.
* ProfessorGuineaPig: The Ancestor mentions that she had a penchant for self-experimentation, which is likely the cause of her current appearance and diet.
* PuzzleBoss: Requires very careful planning and specific team composition to defeat her. In particular, teammates who can only attack the front ranks will have trouble pulling their weight.
* StewedAlive: She does this to the heroes during the battle; if the party flees while someone's in the pot, they're dead.
* WakeUpCallBoss: The Hag is requires a very different strategy compared to the other dungeons' bosses. The party's ranks are constantly shuffled from being thrown into the pot and then dropped into rank one when freed. The Hag sits behind her pot, both fully immune to being moved, making it impossible for classes that can't target the back ranks to hit her. The pot itself invokes a SadisticChoice on whether to free its hapless victim or focus on the Hag herself.
* WasOnceAMan: The narration before the mission to kill her mentions a comely young woman who constantly sought your dead relative's attention. It's implied that this "young woman" is now the Hag.
* WickedWitch: Goes without saying. She's also a fan of throwing whatever character is in front of your party into her pot to cook them alive.

The true BigBad, and the thing responsible for the horror plaguing the Hamlet.

The Heart of Darkness is the source of all the horror and corruption plaguing the state, an eldritch god of unknown origin. Through the shade of your Ancestor, it claims it created humanity, then went to sleep in the depths of the world until it was roused during the Ancestor's foolish quest for knowledge. It is a slumbering, ethereal, and omnipresent deity manifested through your Ancestor's misdeeds, whose form became a vessel for the creature to cross over, and is revered by the cultists and priests of the Darkest Dungeon who have, under the influence of its cosmic power, became distorted entities of multiple mouths, eyes, and tentacled appendages. Just as a kicker, it takes some resemblance to humanity to try and prove its point.

* TheChoserOfTheOne: She picked the Champion after she saw him fight through the Black Labyrinth.

His default skills are near-identical in both games, consisting of a basic shooting attack, a piercing shot in the form of Full Metal Jacket (renamed Phase Round in the sequel), the Tactical Dive which makes him briefly invulnerable, and Suppressive Fire, which rapidly fires out stunning shots.\\\

His unlockable alternative skills in ''Risk of Rain 2'' are Phase Blast, which shoots out two shotgun-like blasts of energy, Frag Grenade, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin which throws a frag grenade]], and Tactical Slide, which lets him slide around while firing but offers no invincibility.\\\

The starting survivor, the Commando combines offense and mobility. Well-rounded, versatile, and very effective in the hands of an expert.\\\

Available from the very beginning in both games.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:"...and so he left, with everything but his humanity."]]
** [[spoiler:{{Downplayed}} in the sequel after the ''Anniversary Update''; a bit less bitter: "...and so he left, with new orders and new questions."]]
* BoringButPractical: There is ''nothing'' flashy about Commando's kit, but you'd be hard-pressed to find situations where any of his moves ''aren't'' useful.
* DoubleTap: The name of his basic attack.
* GunsAkimbo: The Commando's "Suppressive Fire" ability can be used to fire two machine guns and attack enemies in front of and behind the player.
** In the sequel, he dual-wields pistols.
* JackOfAllTrades: The Commando's skillset means he can engage single targets, lines of enemies, evade attacks, and attack enemies on both sides when surrounded. He doesn't really shine in any one area, but can still dish out a lot of hurt with skill and a good set of items.
* MoreDakka: He pulls out two machineguns at the same time when using Suppressive Fire.
* OneHitPolykill: Of all the {{Herd Hitting Attack}}s, the Commando's "Full Metal Jacket" skill is the only one specifically described as piercing through enemies.
* UnnecessaryCombatRoll: Barring the unnecessary bit. The Commando's dodge roll is key to surviving when surrounded, as he cannot be harmed by enemy attacks while rolling.
* VideoGameSliding: An alternative skill to his Tactical Dive in the sequel is Tactical Slide, which doesn't make him invincible but still allows him to attack during it.
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!!The Huntress - [[AC:Judge, Jury, Executioner]]
-->''Risk of Rain:'' The Huntress is extremely proficient at "kiting" (running and firing while remaining unhurt). Remember that Laser Glaive does the highest damage on the last bounce! Blink can be used to reposition or re-aim abilities, and Cluster Bomb can take out grouped enemies at range.

An extremely mobile character, in ''Risk of Rain'' the Huntress is the only survivor who can use ''all'' of her attacks whilst moving -- and without facing her target, too. She handles groups of melee-oriented enemies well, but is vulnerable to ranged attackers.\\\

In ''Risk of Rain 2,'' she retains her ''Strafe'' shot that can be fired while moving, but with the additional third dimension she emphasizes vertical mobility as much as horizontal, as both her ''Blink'' and her ''Arrow Rain'' allow her to propel herself higher than her ranged peers. Her ''Laser Glaive'' now forces her to stop in midair for a second to throw it (allowing pseudo-gliding), and ''Arrow Rain'' must also be targeted while granting a similar window to float in the air.\\\

The Skills 2.0 update gives her two new skills: Phase Blink, a shorter-range alternative to Blink that recharges faster, can be used multiple times, and cannot be used vertically, and Ballista, which lets her teleport a short distance backwards to fire three powerful piercing projectiles.\\\


In ''Risk of Rain'', she's unlocked by collecting fifteen different Monster Log entries from fallen enemies. In ''Risk of Rain 2'', she was originally unlocked by clearing 3 stages without dying, but after the Anniversary Update, she was made available from the start.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler: In the first game. "..and so she left, her soul still remaining on the planet."]]
* BountyHunter: Her lore from the second game reveals her to be this.
* DeadlyDisc: Her second ability, ''Laser Glaive'', bounces between up to four enemies (''six'' in the sequel) — dealing more and more damage with each one it hits. It also passes through walls.
* EarnYourHappyEnding: [[spoiler: Her ''Risk of Rain 2'' ending quote following the ''Anniversary Update'': "and so she left, yearning for her next great hunt."]]
* FlashStep: Her third ability, ''Blink'', teleports her forward a short distance. In the second game, it instead teleports her a considerable distance in the direction the camera is facing, which means it can be used as a pseudo-jump in addition to its utility for dodging attacks.
* FragileSpeedster: She can attack while moving in the first game and attack while sprinting in the second (and auto-targets on top of that), but she has the lowest health of any survivor in both games.
* HomingProjectile: In the second game, her arrows automatically home in on the current target.
* MsFanservice: She has a highly noticeable hourglass figure in ''2'', and her SpyCatsuit doesn't leave much to the imagination.
* {{Multishot}}: Her alternate primary attack in the second game replaces her single shot with a barrage of three arrows that do 100% damage each, compared to 150% for the standard shot. A critical strike fires six arrows. As a tradeoff, the firing speed is slower, only slightly better than firing three single shots.
* OneHitPolykill: Ballista in the second game pierces all enemies in its path and can be fired three times. Good against clustered enemies, but the Huntress hangs in the air and doesn't move while firing, so it can be a liability if you don't know precisely what you want to shoot.
* RainOfArrows: In the second game, her fourth ability lets her unleash this on an area, appropriately dubbed ''Arrow Rain''. In addition to taking heavy damage, enemies in the area of effect also get slowed, allowing the Huntress to rack up even more damage on them. It has the secondary effect of launching the Huntress into the air so it can be targeted, which can be used to hop out of a group of enemies.
* TheSmurfettePrinciple: In the original game, she's the only playable character identified as female. Averted in the second game, which introduced the Artificer as another member of the initial roster and later brought back a [[GenderFlip gender-flipped]] Loader with the Skills 2.0 update.
* TheStraightAndArrowPath: The Huntress's basic and final abilities in are bow-based, with the latter being an explosive arrow in the first game and a storm of arrows or 3 massive piercing arrows in the second.
* TeleportSpam: Her Phase Blink in the second game has three uses and recharges much faster than her normal Blink, but only teleports forward.
* TrickArrow: In the first game, she gets one with a cluster bomb on it. Cool ''and'' practical, as the damage is impressive, particularly if the target's big enough to soak up all the bomblets.
----

His default skills are near-identical in both games, consisting of a basic shooting attack, a piercing shot in the form of Full Metal Jacket (renamed Phase Round in the sequel), the Tactical Dive which makes him briefly invulnerable, and Suppressive Fire, which rapidly fires out stunning shots.\\\

His unlockable alternative skills in ''Risk of Rain 2'' are Phase Blast, which shoots out two shotgun-like blasts of energy, Frag Grenade, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin which throws a frag grenade]], and Tactical Slide, which lets him slide around while firing but offers no invincibility.\\\

The starting survivor, the Commando combines offense and mobility. Well-rounded, versatile, and very effective in the hands of an expert.\\\

Available from the very beginning in both games.

* BittersweetEnding: [[spoiler:"...and so he left, with everything but his humanity."]]
** [[spoiler:{{Downplayed}} in the sequel after the ''Anniversary Update''; a bit less bitter: "...and so he left, with new orders and new questions."]]
* BoringButPractical: There is ''nothing'' flashy about Commando's kit, but you'd be hard-pressed to find situations where any of his moves ''aren't'' useful.
* DoubleTap: The name of his basic attack.
* GunsAkimbo: The Commando's "Suppressive Fire" ability can be used to fire two machine guns and attack enemies in front of and behind the player.
** In the sequel, he dual-wields pistols.
* JackOfAllTrades: The Commando's skillset means he can engage single targets, lines of enemies, evade attacks, and attack enemies on both sides when surrounded. He doesn't really shine in any one area, but can still dish out a lot of hurt with skill and a good set of items.
* MoreDakka: He pulls out two machineguns at the same time when using Suppressive Fire.
* OneHitPolykill: Of all the {{Herd Hitting Attack}}s, the Commando's "Full Metal Jacket" skill is the only one specifically described as piercing through enemies.
* UnnecessaryCombatRoll: Barring the unnecessary bit. The Commando's dodge roll is key to surviving when surrounded, as he cannot be harmed by enemy attacks while rolling.
* VideoGameSliding: An alternative skill to his Tactical Dive in the sequel is Tactical Slide, which doesn't make him invincible but still allows him to attack during it.
----

These foes don't stick to one dungeon, instead preferring to wander around the Estate, and as such can be encountered pretty much anywhere except the Darkest Dungeon. Bandits, Cultists, giant bugs, the undead, they can all be found stalling your progress in between hallways.

Look in the Darkest Dungeon folder information about the Cultist Brawler and Acolyte, as their upgraded versions are [[MovesetClone Moveset Clones]] to the ones you can encounter normally.

* BadassNormal: They're not cultists blessed with dark magic, undead warriors, or even eldritch things from the far beyond, just bandits who can lay down the pain just as effectively as everything else plaguing the Estate.
** Taken a step further with the upgraded Brigand Raiders and Hunters that show up in the Wolves At The Door quest, which has the same difficulty rating as the Darkest Dungeon itself.
* BanditClan: The hired thugs formed one to more effectively steal from the region when their payroll ended.
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: A Brigand's toughness can be determined by the color of their attire. Weak Brigands wear green, tougher variations wear brown, even tougher ones wear a dark blue, and the strongest of them all wear wolf pelts and coats in dark blue.
* CombinationAttack: The Bloodletters and Cutthroats assist each other, where the Cutthroat will issue multi-target bleed debuffs while the Bloodletter will deal a multi-target bleed attack.
* GlassCannon: The Brigand Cutthroats don't sport a whole lot of health or protection, but their swords are capable of inflicting huge amounts of damage thanks to their increased critical hit chance and good bleed damage.
* LongRangeFighter: The Brigand Fusilier wields a blunderbuss, but rather than taking precise and damaging shots, they prefer to lay down some Blanket Fire to cause minor damage to everyone in the party, as well as debuff their dodge skill. It's normally not very dangerous until their debuffs stack up, allowing their Bloodletter and Cutthroat allies to put multiple heroes on Death's Door with their multi-target attacks, giving them a high chance to deal killing blows on several characters at once.
* OutsideGenreFoe: The other factions contain the undead monsters, pig-demons, fishmen, fungal monstrosities, and cosmic horrors one would expect from a game like ''Darkest Dungeon''. The Brigands, as a heavily armed goon squad of highwaymen, thugs, and hired guns, go decidedly against the grain. Tellingly, they're the one faction in the game that the Cultists will not work alongside.
* PsychoForHire: They were an army of brutal mercenaries, in it for the pay and the chance to lord it over the townsfolk. They've now gone rogue, and are as mad as the rest of the enemies around the Estate.
* SupportPartyMember: Oddly enough, the Fusilier are this for the Brigands, who are there to debuff your chances to dodge stronger incoming attacks with Blanket Fire, and at the highest levels act as their stress dealer with each Blanket Fire having the ability to stress the entire party out.

Madmen driven insane by the thing in the manor, they shamble around the Estate spouting apocalyptic ravings and accusing the sane of terrible things. Madmen can appear randomly with other monsters in any dungeon. Though physically unimposing, their crazed rants deal massive stress damage, and they're infuriatingly evasive. It's worthwhile to fight them; they always drop loot, and, once in a blue moon, intricate music boxes of uncanny power...

* DamageIncreasingDebuff: His "Accuse" move will make its target take more stress damage until the next camp, or if you have no camp, the whole quest!
* InstitutionalApparel: He wears a straitjacket with its straps ripped apart, freeing his arms that will be clutching his head while he's not shouting at your heroes.
* MadOracle: He shouts terrible revelations and accuses your heroes of their deepest, darkest sins.
* RareRandomDrop: They have a 4% chance to drop one of three music box trinkets (Aria, Overture, and Crescendo), which grant your heroes powerful buffs.
* TheUnintelligible: Constantly shouts in panicked gurgles and moans.

Giant Maggots that have grown large from the corruption, they will show up in the hallways of the Weald, Ruins, and Warrens between rooms to nibble at your heroes for stress damage and a chance to spread disease.

* BigCreepyCrawlies: Maggots about the size of a torso who love to leap up for a bite out of their targets.
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: A Maggot's difficulty depends on its shade, the weakest being white, the Veteran dungeon Maggots being shaded yellow, and the toughest being orange.
* TheDividual: Two Maggots take up one space and act as one unit.
* FragileSpeedster: Very quick, but it's not uncommon at all for them to be taken out in one hit from most attacks.
* TheGoomba: Very easy to take out in one turn and weak in their attacks, though encountering them runs the risk of mounting stress and disease that can hinder you later.

Giant spiders that mutated from the corruption, they are encountered in hallways in Warrens, Weald, and Ruins where they'll ambush your heroes, and Creature Dens in ''II''. the Spitters attacking with blighted spit and the Webbers with their movement-slowing webs.

* AllWebbedUp: Webbers will try to do this to make targets more vulnerable by slowing their speed down or even stunning them for a turn.
* BigCreepyCrawlies: Giant fanged spiders.
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: Spitters and Webbers distinguish themselves by being colored either green or orange, Spitters as the former and Webbers as the latter.
* CombinationAttack: The move Web will stun and mark targets for the Spitters to focus down with blight attacks. Individually weak, the two combined can quickly down heroes on higher difficulty levels.
* CreepyCamelSpider: Their redesign in ''II'' makes them look like a cross between regular spiders and this.
* FragileSpeedster: The spiders are fast, have high Dodge, but have so little health that they can get squashed in one hit.
* GlassCannon: Spitters definitely more so than Webbers, but still. If the Webbers manage to apply [[DamageIncreasingDebuff Marked/Combo]] on your heroes, they will take some serious damage, and you'd better hope it doesn't crit. That being said, high-damage party members can often one-shot them if they can actually hit them.
* LongRangeFighter: Spitters are especially deadly at range when striking a marked target, as their attacks will deal double damage with a high percentage chance of a critical hit. Against unmarked targets or up close (where they are forced to use their weak bite attack), not so much the case.
* SuperSpit: Spitters can do massive damage and inflicit serious Blight on heroes with Marked/Combo on them. In ''II'' their spit gains a high chance to apply Blind tokens, making them even harder to hit if they keep spitting at your damage dealers.
* TargetSpotter: Webbers function as one for a Webber-Spitter combination. They mark a target, stunning them, increasing the damage of spit attacks, and encouraging the whole spider group to gang up on the helpless hero.

A skeleton come to life again, they're common encounters in the Ruins but can show up in the hallways of the Weald and the Warrens. Unlike their soldier counterparts, though, they're not very well-armed or protected in the slightest.

* CarryABigStick: A large bloodied club, though they aren't very good with it.
* DemBones: And not limited to the Ruins, like most other examples.
* TheGoomba: Probably the straightest example in the game, having lackluster stats and pose a very small threat with their weak attacks that don't even have the benefit of dealing stress damage or debuffs at lower levels. The only saving grace they get is a low chance to apply a dodge debuff with the move Bump In The Night at the highest-leveled dungeons.

Stone Gargoyles animated by evil forces lurking in the Estate, they can be encountered often in the Ruins but rarely appear in the hallways of the Weald and the Warrens.

* AchillesHeel: Like other high protection/low HP monsters, DamageOverTime is the bane of their existence. Eroding them away with blight damage usually ends them quickly without the hassle of trying to break a stone statue. Likewise, they have poor health and heavily depend on their Protection stat, so any attack that ignores Protection will slaughter them with ease.
* LivingStatue: Tellingly, they're the only (non-[=DLC=]) enemy of the Stonework type.
* RedEyesTakeWarning: Their eyes are bright red, and they're bent on killing your heroes.
* StoneWall: High protection, low-damaging attacks that help their party with formation-ruining moves and stuns.
* TailSlap: The move Lash Of The Tail is this, with a chance to stun and move targets.

TBA

-->''Risk of Rain:'' The Commando is characterized by long range and mobility. Effective use of his Tactical Dive will grant increased survivability while Suppressive Fire deals massive damage. FMJ can then be used to dispose of large mobs.\\\

TBA

! Enemies
The many denizens and creatures of strange worlds corrupted by evil force, standing between the Champion and his mission of restoring order to the universe.
!! Introduced in the main game
[[folder:Astral Acolytes]]
[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/e1logo.png]]
[[caption-width-right:200:"The holy sect of the moon inhabits the Astral Equinox. They were corrupted by the Evil Force. The evil influence has spread throughout their society including their leader, the Moon Guardian. He now dreams of death and pain."]]
These foes don't stick to one dungeon, instead preferring to wander around the Estate, and as such can be encountered pretty much anywhere except the Darkest Dungeon. Bandits, Cultists, giant bugs, the undead, they can all be found stalling your progress in between hallways.

Look in the Darkest Dungeon folder information about the Cultist Brawler and Acolyte, as their upgraded versions are [[MovesetClone Moveset Clones]] to the ones you can encounter normally.

[[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cultist_priest_8.png]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/growth.png]]

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/265px_templar_warlord.png]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/281px_templar_impaler.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fleshy.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pol.png]]

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/brawler.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/witch_9.png]]

[[WMG:Shadow]]
[[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cultist_5.png]]

[[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cultist_priest_8.png]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/growth.png]]

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/brawler.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/witch_9.png]]

[[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/cultist_5.png]]

[[quoteright:300:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/chopper.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/drummer_2.png]]

[[quoteright:150:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/swine_wretch.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/slasher_2.png]]

[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/swinetaur.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/groupers.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/shaman_7.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/guardian.png]]

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/uca_9.png]]

[[quoteright:187:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/maggot_8.png]]

[[quoteright:128:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/stinger_6.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/thrall.png]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/squiffy.png]]

[[WMG:Ascended Brawler]]

[[WMG:Ascended Witch]]

[[WMG:Rapturous Cultist]]

[[WMG:Cultist Priest]]

[[WMG:Malignant Growth and Defensive Growth]]

[[WMG:Templar Warlord and Impaler]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/265px_templar_warlord.png]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/281px_templar_impaler.png]]
The Templars are monstrosities commonly found guarding important ritual sites in the deeper parts of the Dungeon. Though significantly stronger than the usual mobs scattered around the Dungeon, their number usually has them classified as mini-bosses.

* AchillesHeel: [[SignatureMove Revelation]] may hit like a truck on both physical and mental fronts, but the Talisman of the Flame trinkets from the first Darkest Dungeon mission near-totally nullifies their impact. However, there's only enough for three party members, so one is left vulnerable.
* ArcSymbol: The Stress symbol forms the frame of their golden headdress.
* DegradedBoss: The third Darkest Dungeon mission also contains Templars -- the Templar Gladiator and Sniper. These lack the minibosses' headdress, cannot use Revelation, and take only one action per turn.
* DualBoss: One of the Iron Crowns is guarded by the Templar Warlord and Impaler, which means one must deal with two rounds of Revelation each turn.
* EyesDoNotBelongThere: Besides the usual numerous black eyes typical to Darkest Dungeon enemies, they have a particularly large one beneath their human torso, which they use for their Revelation attack.
* ScaryScorpions: They have a general scorpion motif throughout their design and their manner of attack.
* SignatureMove: The Templars are scripted to use Revelation on the first of their two actions each turn, which deals massive physical and stress damage.
* TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow: It is implied their Revelation attack exposes the target's awareness to incredibly stressful things.

[[WMG:Flesh Hound]]
[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/fleshy.png]]
When the Cultists fail to stop the intruders in the first two sections of the Dungeon, the animal-like monstrosities found in the deeper sections will take over. The Flesh Hound is one of them, who specializes in biting into heroes for a damaging Gnash, and lashing out at heroes in the back to Fetch them all the way to the front with their long tongues.

* AnimalisticAbomination: Vaguely resembles a dog with its form and attack names.
* EarlyBirdCameo: Flesh Hounds make an early appearance in the second Darkest Dungeon mission to accompany the Templars, before they become the standard enemy in the third mission.
* YouWillNotEvadeMe: The move Fetch has the Hound lash their tongue out to try and yank a targeted hero to the front of the formation. As an added bonus, it also has a chance to stun the same hero.

[[WMG:Polyp]]
[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/pol.png]]
Vaguely bat-like spawn of what's hiding under the manor, these flyers dedicate themselves to spreading their Venomous Phlegm to your party and using Banish to toss heroes to the back rows.

* BlownAcrossTheRoom: Their specialty and main source of drawing hatred from you, if they manage to get a front-row hero away from their position.
* EarlyBirdCameo: Polyps can be encountered fighting alongside the Templars in the second Darkest Dungeon mission before they become regular enemies later on.
* LongRangeFighter: From a distance, they can easily spread blight and ruin formations, but they're incapacitated for a turn should they find themselves in the front, as they'll have to use Violent Hack to push themselves back to their preferred spots.

[[WMG:Antibody]]
Stationary stalks sprouting from the walls of the Darkest Dungeon, functioning as a self-defense mechanism. Often paired with Flesh Hounds and Polyps, Antibodies are more annoyances than threats, only capable of spouting Stunning Secretions.
----
* MeaningfulName: Like real-life antibodies, they form part of a biological self-defense mechanism.
* PaletteSwap: Highly similar to the White Cell Stalk, shown below.

[[WMG:Mammoth Cyst and White Cell Stalk]]
[[quoteright:350:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/teleports_you_away_heh_nothin_personelkid.png]]
Flesh walls that are scattered across the hallways in the belly of the Darkest Dungeon. These minibosses can be encountered at any time to block your progress to the center of the dungeon until they're dealt with. Their main source of danger comes from the unique enemy they can summon, though; the White Cell Stalk, who aids the Cyst by healing it and displacing heroes. Most importantly, though, it can Teleport the party into a random room in the Dungeon.
----
* AntiFrustrationFeatures:
** The White Cell Stalk will never use Teleport the first turn to avoid possibly every encounter immediately opening up with a teleport. Instead, the chances for the move to be used gradually increases with every turn before the inevitable happens, if they're not killed.
** Teleporting will not reset the White Cell Stalk's health; if they were almost dead, they'll still be almost dead upon return.
* BossInMookClothing: There are multiple Mammoth Cysts in the dungeon, yet they're built like boss battles in each and every encounter.
* BigGuyLittleGuy: For a loose definition of 'guys', but the Mammoth Cyst takes up 3 spaces while their support Cell Stalk takes up only one.
* EnemySummoner: The Mammoth Cyst will summon new White Cell Stalks as they're killed, who support the Mammoth with healing when they're not teleporting your party away.
* {{Expy}}: Visually very similar to the beholders from ''TabletopGame/DungeonsAndDragons'', they can even attack your party by gazing at them with their large central eye.
* MeaningfulName: The White Cell Stalk acts like a real White Blood Cell in a body, venting and wiping out intruders to protect the body. In this case, the party is that has to get past the White Cells to find and kill what came from the portal.
* MightyGlacier: As well as hitting like a truck, Mammoth Cyst sports a hefty protection stat that it can buff. Both it and White Cell Stalk can heal
* RandomTransportation: The White Cell Stalk's specialty, where it'll teleport the party into a random room in the largest dungeon in the game.
* ShootTheMageFirst: The White Cell Stalk should be killed as soon as possible, as it will teleport the party to a random location otherwise..

!! Introduced in the Black Labyrinth DLC
TBA

! The Bosses

The greatest evils of the universe the Champion must vanquish to restore order, residing in the sanctuaries in the heart of each world. Be it brainwashed leaders of factions, terrible beasts or otherwordly beings, they present a much greater threat than your usual foes.
!! Introduced in the main game
[[folder:Moon Guardian]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/moon_guardian2_5.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:"Our leader, guardian of the moon. He now dreams of death and pain..."]]
A huge bandit serving as a boss during the tutorial, he recurs later in the game as one of the more powerful members of the Brigand faction.

* BadassNormal: Like all the Brigands, the Bloodletter has no supernatural powers, just size, gunpowder, and a mean streak.
* DegradedBoss: Guys like the Blooodletter occasionally appear as a regular enemy after the tutorial.
* DentedIron: His bare chest is covered in scars.
* GiantMook: A huge brute of a man, he fills two spaces and looms over all the other Brigands and the party alike.
* InTheHood: Wears a green hood, like his fellow bandits.
* LargeAndInCharge: He is noticeably taller and larger than any other humans, to the point that he occupies two positions in the formation system.
* NoRangeLikePointBlankRange: Like the Highwayman, he carries a flintlock and sometimes uses it at point blank range.
* OutsideGenreFoe: A heavily armed highway robber isn't high on the list of bosses one expects in a game about eldritch horrors and other supernatural beings.
* ATasteOfTheLash: Two of his attacks, ''Punishment'' and ''Rain of Whips''. One is single-target, the other hits your whole party, and both inflict bleed.
* WarmupBoss: He first appears in the second fight of the game, during the tutorial. Generally speaking, he's not all that gimmicky compared to other bosses later encountered.
* WalkingShirtlessScene: Wears nothing above his belt, except a hood on his head.

[[folder:The Scrounge]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/scrounge.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:"The pools of pure water are now inhabited by The Scrounge and his parasitic young."]]
The Ancestor invited several scholars to study with him, only to [[SlainInTheirSleep murder them in their sleep]]. To show off his newfound powers, he had them brought back through necromancy, with their skills and knowledge intact to boot. This proved to be yet another of the Ancestor's grievous mistakes, as the undead sorcerers began raising the dead themselves of their own volition. The Necromancers now lurks within the ruins among their ever-growing army of corpses. As long as they live, the dead will never know peace. Hunt the leaders of the growing horde, destroy them, and ensure the reclamation of your Ancestral home.

* AchillesHeel: A Crusader with an Unholy Slayer's Ring trinket trivializes the skeletons he summons at Apprentice difficulty and leave the rest of the party free to wail on him, and two will probably achieve a similar result even at harder difficulties. Four Crusaders are actually a pretty good method to kill him [[labelnote:Explanation]]The front two Crusaders use Smite, which has a 15-35% damage boost against Unholy enemies like the undead, to chop through the skeletons summoned by the Necromancer then tear into the Necromancer's health pool. The back two Crusaders can either use Holy Lance to hit the Necromancer and move forward to take the pressure off the front two, or use Inspiring Cry/Battle Heal to deal with the Necromancer's stress-inducing attacks and damage. Repeat until he goes down.[[/labelnote]].
* ArcSymbol: His robe's collar is identical to the stress symbol.
* BlackSpeech: Hisses in a horrible, hoarse voice whenever he takes a hit or delivers one.
* ChainedByFashion: The Necromancer has a giant steel collar around his neck, and his belt looks like chains wrapped around his waist.
* FlunkyBoss: Summons undead minions to support him with every blow, while shuffling back and forth between their ranks.
* GoneHorriblyRight: They are one of the few, if not the ''only'' things, that the Ancestor managed to get right in his pursuit of the dark secrets of the world, as he brought them back completely intact. Unfortunately, their resurrection came back to bite him later on.
* InTheHood: Has his face completely covered by one.
* TheLeader: Of the Undead faction, as they're the ones constantly summoning new undead to replace those slain by your heroes.
* MonsterProgenitor: They are the source of all the unholy undead haunting the ruins and the Hamlet in general.
* {{Necromancer}}: [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Goes without saying.]]
* OurLichesAreDifferent: While never referred to as one, they do fit the trope -- they're intelligent undead with enough magical power to raise other, lesser undead and were well-learned in necromancy before being killed and brought back as undead.
* UndeadAbomination: Whatever he is, between the claws and hidden tentacles, he's definitely not human any more.
* WarmUpBoss: Will most likely be the first boss you face in the game, and is fairly straightforward. His fight doesn't have any gimmick beyond summoning enemies with every attack, and his lack of ContractualBossImmunity means pretty much any skill will work on him. The biggest problem is keeping on top of this summons, since he will always conjure up a new minion with every attack, and on higher difficulty dungeons he may summon stronger undead or they'll start off in stealth. Some of his attacks do inflict stress across the entire party, so he'll need to be killed fast.
* WasOnceAMan: The Necromancer was one of the many scholars and visiting sorcerers that came to the estate at the Ancestor's invitation. He later killed them and raised them as the creatures they are now.

[[folder:Corrupt Spirit]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/corrupt_spirit.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:"You are being watched."]]
Once there was a man, a homeless lunatic who dwelt in the Hamlet, who decried the Ancestor as a harbinger of doom. Nothing the Ancestor did could stop this prophet, and all murder attempts failed as well. Drowning, poison, blades; seemingly nothing could kill the maddened prophet. So the Ancestor gave the man exactly what he wanted; he told him everything. ''[[TheseAreThingsManWasNotMeantToKnow Everything.]]'' The prophet's mind snapped, and he tore out his own eyes and fled into seclusion. He continues his apocalyptic ravings in the darkness of the Ruins, as the leader of the cultists there, and it is the task of your heroes to do what your ancestor could not — kill him.

* AchillesHeel: The Man-at-Arms guarding and shooting him with mark-benefiting attacks. The former will make his normally-fearsome rubble little more than an annoyance ([[OhCrap aside from the instances when he decides to mark two heroes that aren't the Man-at-Arms at once...]]), and the Prophet is otherwise fairly simple to kill outside of being immovable way back in the last rank. To a lesser extent, put some stun resistance on the Man-at-Arms to limit him being stunned when you really don't want him to be (which is always) and bring a Plague Doctor or antivenom to deal with the other most threatening attack he provides — blighting ''everyone''.
** Another possibility is bringing at least one Occultist with Curse of Weakness, as the damage debuff will enormously reduce the danger posed by the collapsing rubble. Two Occultists with a well-trained Curse can quickly destroy his offensive capability entirely.
* ArcSymbol: The knives protruding out from his hunched back combined with the stocks he is locked to form the shape of the game's stress symbol -- five spikes embedded through an arc.
* BlindSeer: He clawed out his own eyes, but still receives visions. He also [[{{Squick}} holds them in his hands while he fights]].
* BrokenSmile: Possesses a rather deranged grin and is utterly, hopelessly insane.
* CassandraTruth: Averted; he was a threat precisely because the people of the hamlet believed him. Only the Ancestor ignored his warnings.
* CollapsingCeilingBoss: One of his attacks causes two large blocks of stone to fall on the party from the Ruins' ceiling, dealing heavy damage to two heroes.
* CrazyHomelessPeople: He wasn't the picture of mental health to begin with, and the Ancestor's BreakingLecture broke him completely. Perhaps he had some contact with eldritch forces in the past...
* CrosshairAware: He marks two character positions with red light via one of his attacks. The following turn, rubble will drop on those positions for huge damage. And getting someone tough to take the hit will either damage your formation or take up their turn to set up their guard skill.
* EyeScream: Tore his own eyes out during his revelation.
* FallenHero [[HeroAntagonist Antagonist]]: He repeatedly risked death to warn the Ancestor against his excavations. He was then exposed to the portal, [[GoMadFromTheRevelation went insane]], [[EyeScream tore his own eyes out]], and began ''serving'' the horrors beyond the portal, which is [[ShootTheDog where you come in...]]
* GoMadFromTheRevelation: How the Ancestor [[RasputinianDeath finally disposed of him]] — he showed him the excavations, "The Thing", and told him everything he planned. The prophet promptly tore his eyes out and ran away, screaming and blind. Now he is the leader of the cultists, seeking only to hasten the end.
* ImplacableMan: The ancestor tried to murder him multiple times, and each time he miraculously survived. He still carries the stocks and knives in his back as taunting mementos.
* ImplausibleDeniability: The Ancestor, even in death, claims his warnings are 'mindless drivel'. Despite the fact the Prophet was ''one hundred percent right'' and the evidence is... well, the entire plot of the game.
* TheLeader: Of the Cultist faction, serving as the [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin prophet]] of their master's cause. This notably marks the cultists as *not* a KeystoneArmy, as they continue to serve the Darkness well into the depths of the Darkest Dungeon itself and [[MyDeathIsJustTheBeginning what comes after]] even stronger than before.
* MonsterProgenitor: The source and spearhead for the unholy cult which stalks the surroundings of the Hamlet in search for sacrifices.
* PuzzleBoss: Relatively straightforward, as bosses go... but protected by three ranks of tough wooden pews. [[MoneySpider They're worth a lot of money chopped up]], and doing so exposes him to your melee heavy hitters... but it ''also'' causes your party to be subject to the collapsing ceiling for that much longer.
* RasputinianDeath: He was locked in the stocks to die of thirst or exposure, plunged into icy waters to drown or freeze, and in a final act of exasperation, the Ancestor repeatedly stabbed him in the back with several different knives. Each time the Prophet returned, and even now he clings to a twisted facsimile of life in death.
* StockPunishment: Is restrained this way, although his left arm is free to hold his eyes in his hand.
* TheUndead: He's marked as an Unholy enemy, so either he's undead or being kept alive by dark magic. Notably, the cultists he leads are all still marked as Human.
* TheUnintelligible: Makes gurgling sounds when he attacks or as he gets hit.
* WisdomFromTheGutter: He quite accurately predicted what the Ancestor's digging would lead to despite being, by all appearances, just a random homeless person.

[[folder:Solar Saint]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/solar_saint2.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:"The Saint awaits... From his home, the sun."]]
The Ancestor attempted to summon beings from the "outer spheres," with his initial attempts failing. He decided to try using pigs as vessels, resulting in the creation of the swinefolk. He eventually managed to summon a particularly powerful entity, and the pig it possessed grew to a gargantuan size. While the entity was indeed powerful, it was also brutish and stupid. The Ancestor moved the resulting abomination into the Warrens, where it now rules over the swine due to being larger and stronger than the rest of them. The threat of the swinefolk was bad enough before they had a guiding ruler. The King must be dethroned before his actions form them into an unstoppable horde.

To see Wilbur's tropes as an EliteMook and the miniboss of the Sluice in ''II'', look [[Characters/DarkestDungeonIIMonsters here]].
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* AchillesHeel:
** Ripostes, due to Wilbur having multiple actions and the King generally using multi-target attacks. Note, however, that this is ''not'' necessarily a good thing, as Wilbur tends to get himself killed very quickly against a riposte-heavy party, and [[UnstoppableRage the Swine King takes that poorly.]]
** The Arbalest and Musketeer with their ability to clear marks render the Swine King far more manageable, since he relies on Wilbur's marks to deal a large amount of damage.
* AsskickingLeadsToLeadership: The swine unanimously declared it their king because it was the biggest and strongest among them.
* BerserkButton: Attacking his minion, Wilbur, will cause him to retaliate with a very powerful strike that hits everyone in the party and has a high chance to stun. Killing Wilbur outright will enrage the King
* {{BFS}}: Wields a giant blade the size of one of the heroes. [[OneHandedZweihander With one hand, no less.]]
* BigEater: According to the Ancestor, the King required prodigious amounts of meat to sustain itself after being summoned. It's heavily implied that he solved this issue by feeding Hamlet-dwellers to it.
* BodyHorror: He's covered in open sores, his brain is exposed, his bones have torn through his flesh in places, and he sits in a massive pile of his own viscera.
* CherryTapping: Wilbur only causes 2 damage per hit, but this can still kill heroes, especially if he uses the Bit O' Squeal skill [[CycleOfHurting to stun the entire party into another use of it]]. One of your heroes ignobly dying to a small pig child squealing at them [[AchievementMockery is even a secret achievement]].
* CombatAndSupport: The Swine King is the Combat, using direct attacks on your party for huge damage. Wilbur acts as the Support, marking characters for the Swine King to attack, while also causing them to take increased damage from his already-powerful attacks.
* DemonLordsAndArchdevils: It's heavily implied that the Swine King is a demon lord or other powerful hellish entity, bound to Earth in the form of a pig.
* DumbMuscle: It needs Wilbur to direct its attacks for it and lacks many tactics beyond "Swing at the Marked". The Ancestor even derisively notes how stupid it is during his narration of the King's backstory.
* EldritchAbomination: The Swine King is the result of ''something'' from another plane of existence [[DemonicPossession taking over the body]] of a common pig.
* EvenEvilHasLovedOnes: While it does need to rely on Wilbur's directions to be able to do anything other than just attack wildly, it does seem to care for him, as shown by him going ''utterly ballistic'' if Wilbur goes down first.
* HalfTheManHeUsedToBe: He's nothing but intestine from the waist down, though it's questionable whether he ''ever'' had more.
* HandicappedBadass: The hulking giant appears to be eyeless and blind. This is probably why Wilbur directs its attacks. Notably, using the Arbalest's Rally Flare to clear the marks from your party causes the Swine King's attacks to be aimless and far less effective, as it loses its direction and swings blindly.
* HopeSpot: Wilbur's Bit'o Squeal skill can still ''stun the entire party'', turning a narrow victory into a frustrating defeat due to the party getting [[CycleOfHurting stunlocked]] by a small pig child [[CherryTapping squealing at them]].
* TheLeader: Of the Swinefolk faction, if the name didn't give it away.
* NamesToRunAwayFromReallyFast: Like other bosses, his title changes depending on the difficulty level, from Swine Prince, to Swine King, until it escalates to Swine God.
* PigMan: Like all the Swinefolk, the King resembles a humanoid pig, though he's much more deformed and disproportionately built than the rest.
* RedEyesTakeWarning: It normally seems eyeless except for when a bright red glow shining out its left socket whenever it attacks. If Wilbur dies, however, the glow instead comes from his arm and starts slaughtering the party.
* ShootTheMageFirst: [[AvertedTrope For once, this is actually a terrible idea.]] If Wilbur falls first, [[TurnsRed be prepared]] for a TotalPartyKill unless the Swine King itself is close to death.
* SuperScream: In addition to his role as TargetSpotter for the Swine King, Wilbur will sometimes use Bit O' Squeal, which has a chance of stunning one or more of your heroes. Once the King is dead [[DeathWail he starts spamming it until he's dead as well]].
* TargetSpotter: On his turn, Wilbur will either use End This One or End These Two, Marking one or two of your party members respectively with his flags and allowing the Swine King to Obliterate them.
* TrickBoss: Do not kill Wilbur first. [[UnstoppableRage This will enrage the King]]. In a rare case of AntiFrustrationFeatures for this game, the first time Wilbur's hit, one of the heroes will shout that it's a bad idea, explicitly warning not to do this.
* TrueCompanions: The Swine King is very fond of Wilbur. It's ill-advised to slay him before the king.
* TurnsRed: Killing Wilbur enrages him, changing his single-target attacks to [[TotalPartyKill party-killing]] multi-target attacks. [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9l4kDYcXx4 Unless you're particularly]] CrazyPrepared to do so, that is.
* WeaksauceWeakness: He has a rather crippling weakness to the Arbalest's Rallying Flare, which clears all marks and stuns from the party. Given that his fight revolves around him dealing massive damage to whichever heroes Wilbur marks, it's easy to spend the entire fight with him ineffectually flailing.

[[folder:Forgemaster]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/forgemaster.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:"The Forgemaster awaits..."]]
The Ancestor eventually got tired of his disastrous attempts at demonic summoning, with his most successful creation being the uselessly stupid and ravenous Swine King. He was left with the problem of a massive amount of demon-possessed pig flesh that couldn't easily be disposed of. The Ancestor found the solution to this problem once his excavations broke into a vast, ancient system of tunnels and aqueducts. He poured the nightmarish, shape-shifting flesh into the Warrens and promptly forgot about it as it mutated together into increasingly-hideous and deadly forms. It must be destroyed, utterly and completely.
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* AchillesHeel: The Formless Flesh's forms are nigh-impossible to debuff or stun effectively with them constantly shifting, have powerful attacks that can inflict bleed or blight, and are usually highly resilient to damage; aside from that, it can ''heal'' itself. But because it is mechanically treated as four separate enemies that share one health bar, multi-target attacks are particularly effective against it, and multi-target DamageOverTime attacks are ''supremely'' effective. Special mention goes to the Houndmaster's "Hound's Harry", which can potentially inflict bleed on every segment of the flesh at once every turn.
* AIRoulette: How it transforms is entirely random, so what you're fighting shifts to something with different resistances each turn. It's by no means certain it will generate a weak spot. At the same time, it has been known to put a given component in a position where it cannot actually attack.
* AssKicksYou: One of its body parts is the backside of a hog... with multiple tentacles sticking out of it. Which it will then fire at your heroes as an attack.
* AttackItsWeakPoint: It is possible to harm the flesh at any point, but all but one of its spots are armored and will absorb some of the damage thrown at it, with many being armored quite heavily. The only non-armored point are the gigantic heart-shaped lumps it uses to heal and regenerate, so it's advisable to attack them whenever they show up.
* BarrierChangeBoss: Its four different parts shift into different forms randomly, each of which has different resistances to different statuses. Only one "form" has no protection, however.
* BodyHorror: The Ancestor himself says it is more horrible than he can describe.
* BodyOfBodies: The Formless Flesh is formed from countless half-living demon-possessed pigs fused into one unstable, shape-shifting nightmare.
* CombatTentacles: The main form of attack from its rear end involves firing a Blight-dripping tentacle from what remains of a hog's backside. It also has a toothy mouth on the end, just in case that wasn't disturbing enough.
* EldritchAbomination: A beast with a pig's head, multiple eyes, a spine jutting out from its back, and a body composed of a single large tentacle. Sometimes. Sometimes it's one, none, or all of those things. [[MeaningfulName Clue's in the name.]]
* HeavilyArmoredMook: Each of the individual parts has a different level of PROT - except for the heart-like blobs, which are completely unarmoured.
* SharedLifeMeter: It's technically made of four targetable enemies, with all of them sharing a health pool.
* StatusInflictionAttack: All of the Flesh's attacks inflict either Bleed, Blight, or stun.
* TooManyMouths: Every last one of its parts has at least two mouths on or in it, giving it over half a dozen mouths at any one point. And those are just the ones we can see.
* TransformationHorror: Spread across the whole of the enemy formation, it is a many-mouthed pile of diseased, mutant pig-flesh that shapeshifts every round so that something different but equally abhorrent is in each rank. [[BodyHorror It's actually even worse to look at than that sounds.]]
[[/folder]]

[[folder:Twin Terror]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/twin_terror.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:"The summoned ones await..."]]
Once, a young woman came to the Ancestor, offering him mastery of alchemy and medicine. However, the woman was prone to experimenting on herself, and said experiments twisted her into a cannibalistic monster. [[EvenEvilHasStandards Disgusted]], the Ancestor exiled her into the Weald, where she continues her experiments. Since then, she has amassed many Eldritch abonimations raging from infested corpses, some mushroom beasts and even getting a family of witches along the way.
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* AchillesHeel: Because she has relatively low health, piling on rapid high damage or high DamageOverTime backline attacks can rapidly deplete her limited health. She is also vulnerable to area-of-effect attacks that hit both the front and the back, as this damage both the Hag and the Pot and can knock it over to free the trapped hero. The Hellion, in particular is very effective against her by combining her Breakthrough, Bleed Out, and Iron Swan skills. Having multiple Hellions is a viable strategy in this instance.
* ArcSymbol: The antler crown she wears bears a similar resemblance to the stress symbol.
* CrownOfHorns: She sports a deer skull with attached antlers as a hat, giving off this look. Her minions, the crones, are also fond of this trope.
* DropTheHammer: Her main attack, aside from the pot, is to smash the party with a giant meat tenderizer.
* EvilMakesYouUgly: Played entirely straight. The Hag's constant experimenting turned her from an attractive young woman into a fat, hideous cannibal. The change was drastic and horrifying enough to gross out the ''Ancestor''.
* FatBastard: Not only is she a depraved cannibal, but she's also quite large. She takes up two spaces in the enemy formation.
* GlassCannon: While she can disable one of your heroes and does a lot of damage to the others with her meat tenderizer, the Hag has significantly lower health overall than most bosses, to make up for the fact that she'll be cooking — or trying to cook — one of your party members, leaving only three heroes available to fight her. A legitimate strategy against the Hag is to just blitz her as fast as possible with high-damage backline attacks.
* ImAHumanitarian: Her M.O. is to toss your heroes into her cooking pot and [[StewedAlive try and turn them into stew]]. One of her attacks is her tasting the stew while a hero boils inside, which will understandably stress a hero out, and the multiple turns she can take at once will stack it up fast.
* ImprobableWeaponUser: Fights with a ladle, a meat tenderizer, and seasoning.
* IWasQuiteTheLooker: According to the Ancestor, she was quite attractive when she was still human. Her hideous transformation was what drove him to exile her.
* MadScientist: Much like the Ancestor, though her fields of expertise were botany, alchemy, and chemistry.
* NonStandardGameOver: Normally, the cook pot spits out its victim when they reach Death's Door. But if there's a character in the pot and the rest of the party is dead, the mission is lost — presumably because the Hag finishes cooking the last one.
* ProfessorGuineaPig: The Ancestor mentions that she had a penchant for self-experimentation, which is likely the cause of her current appearance and diet.
* PuzzleBoss: Requires very careful planning and specific team composition to defeat her. In particular, teammates who can only attack the front ranks will have trouble pulling their weight.
* StewedAlive: She does this to the heroes during the battle; if the party flees while someone's in the pot, they're dead.
* WakeUpCallBoss: The Hag is requires a very different strategy compared to the other dungeons' bosses. The party's ranks are constantly shuffled from being thrown into the pot and then dropped into rank one when freed. The Hag sits behind her pot, both fully immune to being moved, making it impossible for classes that can't target the back ranks to hit her. The pot itself invokes a SadisticChoice on whether to free its hapless victim or focus on the Hag herself.
* WasOnceAMan: The narration before the mission to kill her mentions a comely young woman who constantly sought your dead relative's attention. It's implied that this "young woman" is now the Hag.
* WickedWitch: Goes without saying. She's also a fan of throwing whatever character is in front of your party into her pot to cook them alive.
[[/folder]]


[[folder:The Final Boss ('''SPOILERS''')]]
!!The Evil
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/the_evil.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:"WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE."]]

The main antagonist of the game is not the person or a creature controlling the evil forces - it's the evil itself!

The Evil is the true reason behind the corruption, devastation and chaos of many realms Champion visits. A being of unknown origin, he spreaded his malicious influence way beyond his homeworld, [[EldritchLocation The Void]].
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[[/folder]]

[[folder:Secret Boss ('''SPOILERS''')]]
!!Wee John Clan
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/wjc.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:250:"Yahaha, Big John, haha, yeah, that's me."]]

The true BigBad, and the thing responsible for the horror plaguing the Hamlet.

The Heart of Darkness is the source of all the horror and corruption plaguing the state, an eldritch god of unknown origin. Through the shade of your Ancestor, it claims it created humanity, then went to sleep in the depths of the world until it was roused during the Ancestor's foolish quest for knowledge. It is a slumbering, ethereal, and omnipresent deity manifested through your Ancestor's misdeeds, whose form became a vessel for the creature to cross over, and is revered by the cultists and priests of the Darkest Dungeon who have, under the influence of its cosmic power, became distorted entities of multiple mouths, eyes, and tentacled appendages. Just as a kicker, it takes some resemblance to humanity to try and prove its point.
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[[/folder]]

[[quoteright:200:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/crone.png]]

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_2023_05_24_at_16_14_48_rabid_gnasher_darkest_dungeon_ii.png]]
[[quoteright:250:[[labelnote:Gander]]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_2023_05_29_at_10_21_22_gander.png]][[/labelnote]]
[[quoteright:250:[[labelnote:Click here to see it in the first ''Darkest Dungeon'']]https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/gnasher.png]][[/labelnote]]

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_2023_06_18_at_15_57_44_ectoplasm.png]]
[[caption-width-right:250:An Ectoplasm]]
[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/screenshot_2023_06_18_at_15_58_08_large_ectoplasm_3.png]]
[[caption-width-right:250:A Large Ectoplasm]]

[[quoteright:250:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/hateful.png]]