Darkest Dungeon

[Nefaro]

Turn-based dungeon crawler coming out tomorrow (in EA?)...

http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/


Was watching Quill18's Lets Play.  Sold me.

[Great Ajax]

I've been following this one for awhile and will be picking it up tomorrow.  The stress mechanic along with negative traits seems to make for some pretty epic dungeon crawls.

Trey

[tgb]

I haven't seen Quill's, although I'll probably watch it tonight.  I've been following this closely all weekend, and tomorrow will be all over it like stink on a baboon.

[spelk]

I was an early Kickstarter backer on this, and have the alpha code to play with on Steam..

It's really good and very polished even now. And quite punishing. Once things start to go South, they tend to snowball a bit, because bad things happening to your party, increases the likely of bad things happening to your party. Fighting to the bitter end, doesn't end well. Every conflict you encounter there is always a chance it begins to topple over. No matter how trivial or good a party setup you think you have. Healing is very weak so far, in the early game. So you're better off with Damage mitigation through the use of buffs and stuns. Bleeding and blighting are good falls backs for slow over time damage. Not so much if you're up against Skeleton warriors though.

The fact that you have to rest your heroes means your adventuring party is always in constant flux, and you have to be careful when putting together a team to make sure their skills enhance one another. A weak character in a four man team is a real dead weight to carry about. Positioning is everything.

I've not played a massive amount but what I have played of it shows me that there is a lot of close fought battles, that can turn on a sixpence (dime) and you need to have your wits about you and know when to attempt a flee before the big corpse laden snowball of doom starts a rolling.

[Nefaro]

Thanks for the info & tips.  I'm looking forward to trying it out.

[Tpek]

I've been playing it for a while now (another KS backer),
It's pretty neat.
But can get really really hard early on, at least until you get the sanitarium and some means of reducing stress.

[airboy]

Sounds like it is an intentionally difficult, rogue like game.

"Darkest Dungeon is a challenging gothic roguelike turn-based RPG about the psychological stresses of adventuring.

Recruit, train, and lead a team of flawed heroes through twisted forests, forgotten warrens, ruined crypts, and beyond. You'll battle not only unimaginable foes, but stress, famine, disease, and the ever-encroaching dark. Uncover strange mysteries, and pit the heroes against an array of fearsome monsters with an innovative strategic turn-based combat system.

◾ The Affliction System – battle not only monsters, but stress! Contend with paranoia, masochism, fear, irrationality, and a host of gameplay-meaningful quirks!

◾ Striking hand-drawn gothic crowquill art style

◾ Innovative turn-based combat pits you against a host of diabolical monsters

◾ Ten (and counting!) playable hero classes, including Plague Doctor, Hellion, and even the Leper!

◾ Camp to heal wounds or deliver inspiring speeches.

◾ Rest your weary, shell-shocked characters in town at the Tavern or the Abbey to keep their stress in check.

◾ Classic CRPG and roguelike features, including meaningful permadeath, procedural dungeons, and incredible replay

Can you stem the tide of eldritch horrors erupting across your family's ancestral estate?

Descend at your peril! "

I'm going to wait for the reviews on this one.  Something that is hard as hell simply to be challenging is not for me in a game.

[Nefaro]

I dig roguelikes so it'll be insta-purchase.  When I say "roguelike", I mean the real turn-based RPG ones with permadeath and randomized areas to explore.   O0

[JasonPratt]

Promptly wishlisted. :)

[tgb]

OK.  I just had a character get syphilis from examining a dusty bookcase.  I think my mother must be one of the designers.

I wish there was more specific information as to the various buffs and afflictions.  I had a character examine a confessional and become "absolved of sins", but I have no idea what that actually did.  Another maxed out on stress and became "abusive", but other than making rude comments I didn't see any difference in her performance.

I wonder if characters can get Tourette's.

[Nefaro]

OK.  I just had a character get syphilis from examining a dusty bookcase.  I think my mother must be one of the designers.

I wish there was more specific information as to the various buffs and afflictions.  I had a character examine a confessional and become "absolved of sins", but I have no idea what that actually did.  Another maxed out on stress and became "abusive", but other than making rude comments I didn't see any difference in her performance.

I wonder if characters can get Tourette's.

I think some of those afflictions are intentionally vague.  Not an unusual thing in some roguelikes.  From what I've read, you can check the wiki for better details on stuff.  I will probably do so eventually, but I've been enjoying the surprises.

Most of those afflictions give you combat penalties to some degree.  You can hover the mouse over your stats and see what's affecting them.  The time I looked, the affliction modifier was categorized as "Other" IIRC.

I also had one with the 'Abusive' affliction.  I noticed that sometimes when another party member struck an enemy, that character would spit out a ridiculing text bubble and the target of that ire would gain Stress.  Same kind of thing with some of the other afflictions regarding Stress loss for other party members at certain times, depending on the nature of the affliction.


It's difficult, as expected after watching some vids.  You gotta expect your characters to die and have all kinds of debilitating issues.  And not being able to afford much of what you want to buy in town.  But damn am I enjoying it.   O0  The theme, art style, and mood is superb.  My only concern might be the variety of monsters & items available to be found but I've not seen all the current stuff yet and it will probably take awhile even with what's in this early access version.


I also installed Apotheon but Darkest Dungeon won't let me get away at the moment.  :))

[Nefaro]

Sweet baby raptor jesus is this addicting.    O0

And brutal.  But I'm doing okay now that I understand it a bit.

[Nefaro]

There is a lot of complaining about the difficulty, but I think part of that is due to people not understanding how to handle the various parts. 

It was pretty tough for me, the first few runs, but I didn't lose many characters.  You can replace them with fresh level 0 characters after every run anyway.  The real management challenge has been keeping my characters' Stress levels minimized during and between runs, but at Week 14 I'm already returning with less than 10 Stress on my  level 1 characters on Small and Medium missions.  So the Stress becomes manageable and less costly after you get your characters up to level 1 and upgrade your buildings a bit to save money reducing it. 

The real challenge is to choose parties with effective mixes of classes/skills and keeping your Light level at 75+ the whole time (lots of torches) if you want to avoid excessive Stress and the extra bad Quirks such high levels can add. 


Getting easier after Week 15 or thereabouts:

[tgb]

The thing with light, though, is it has a negative impact on loot drops.  The less light, the better the loot.

[Nefaro]

The thing with light, though, is it has a negative impact on loot drops.  The less light, the better the loot.

Much of the equippable loot isn't all that great in this game, unless you get lucky with a specific combination.  It's all about the money and upgrade items.

Not sure whether the extra amount of loot is worth the extra expenditures in getting rid of stress and the bad quirks (because those are expensive even after some building upgrades).