Currently Playing: Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon

Okay, so all the guides I’m reading (hints and tips guides, not walkthrough guide) say “everyone’s expendable! Throw their lives away!” and you know what? I’m gonna try and keep people alive as much as I can. Raleigh my Vestal has saved my ass more times than I can count already, thanks to her targeted heals and party healing. She’s also good at not cracking under stress; rather than getting massive debuffs when at max stress, she’s ended up buffing herself to ridiculous amounts!

Dismas is my Highwayman and he’s also proved to be a very capable combatant. When he crits, he hits like a truck! His Bleeds are very useful too, when used in combination with Blights from my Plague Doctor, Strivelyn. He and Auber the Crusader round out my current primary team. Stuns, heals, debuffs galore!

Here’s Reynauld. He died fairly early on. RIP!

Here’s Raleigh’s stat screen. The game’s really interesting in that abilities and quirks are randomised. They always get 4 combat abilities, in this case she has a melee attack if she gets pulled to the front, a ranged attack for when she doesn’t need to heal, and 2 healing abilities. One heals the whole party for a small amount, one heals a specific target for a bit more.

On the left, you see Quirks. Now, every character also gets a quirk or two, and will acquire more as you play the game. In Raleigh’s case, Eagle Eye gives her +3% crit chance with ranged abilties, and Hatred of Eldritch makes her damage Eldritch-type enemies more, and reduces her stress gains from them.

She also has red quirks, which are negatives. Bulimic means she heals 20% less when you make camp and eat food, and Ruminator reduces her stress healing by 10%.

 

While we’re here, let’s look at another character, Auber. He recently went into a dungeon, and unfortunately hit maximum stress and developed an affliction as a result, but let’s look at that in a minute.

He has 2 melee attacks. One is Smite, and it a basic “hit enemy, deal damage” ability. The other is Stunning Blow, and deals damage with a chance to stun an enemy! Very useful indeed. He also has a heal, which comes in handy in an emergency situation, and a third melee ability that has slightly lower accuracy, in favour of a higher critical strike chance.

His quirks? Steady reduces the stress he gains, Quickdraw boosts his speed by 4 in the first round of battle, and Bloodthirsty means he has a “fascination with injury, wounds, and torture,” meaning he forces himself to interact with torture devices and dead animals in dungeons.

As I mentioned, he has an affliction, and it’s called Masochistic. He occasionally damages himself in battle, ’cause he likes the pain, he moves himself to the front lines so enemies will hit him more, he even occasionally rejects healing, preferring to keep his wounds! He also builds up everyone ELSE’S stress by saying how he wished he was hurt instead of them, or about how much they love being hurt. This can cause a massive chain reaction where everyone then gets stressed, and comes down with an affliction.

When you hit maximum stress, it’s not always an affliction you come down with. Sometimes, your characters respond positively. Raleigh hit max stress twice so far, and ended up with Heroic Bonuses. Powerful buffed her damage by 15%, and came in very useful as she smashed enemies to bits with her mace! Another bonus was Vigorous, which boosted her speed by a massive +5, which meant she went first every turn, and could blast out some heals before bad things happened!

Anyway, enough blah-blah. I’ll talk about more things about this game in the future. For now? Better get onto playing!