Darkest Dungeon | “The Road” of dungeon crawlers, on Kickstarter, GAFfer-made

Encouraging to hear people talk so positively about this game and that it has come out of the other side of the bog that seems to be KS/EA projects.

Sounds like I will not be waiting for a sale to pick this one up.
 
Wait if you can handle it: only 4 days till its availbale for all in early access, you can do it.

How long is it going to stay in early access? I really don't like this new trend of early access. I feel that developers basically get lazier and slow down the development of the game because they're basically getting money before the game is finished.
 
How long is it going to stay in early access? I really don't like this new trend of early access. I feel that developers basically get lazier and slow down the development of the game because they're basically getting money before the game is finished.
This isn't some open world zombie survival. All game mechanics are there and work perfectly so far. The dev just have to add stuff and fluff at this point.

lAnd of course fix some bugs. I had my game crashung once and staying in an endless loading screen also once. But that is not tgat big of a problem here because the game autosaves anyway at every opppurtunity.
 
One thing that isn't clear to me from the videos I've watched: are there an infinite amount of dungeons to do, or can I redo old ones for loot, or something to that effect?
 
One thing that isn't clear to me from the videos I've watched: are there an infinite amount of dungeons to do, or can I redo old ones for loot, or something to that effect?
You can repeat as far as I have experinced now. It generates a new dungeon every time anyways. Just with a certain size and certain enemies.
 
How long is it going to stay in early access? I really don't like this new trend of early access. I feel that developers basically get lazier and slow down the development of the game because they're basically getting money before the game is finished.
Yeah, Broforce, Prison Architect, Door Kickers, Infested Planet, XenoRaptor, Betrayer, Cavern Kings, Distance, Space Engineers, Don't Starve, Kerbal Space Program, Invisible Inc, etc. say otherwise

I never got these blanket statements, especially when numerous examples of the opposite far outnumber the devs that do abuse Early Access
 
How many dungeon that is available now ?
So far I see four locations. I don't know if I unlock more as I go or if there are just those four in this version or if there will be more. If no one else does, I am going to makr a screenshot when I'm home.
 
Woah, I don't know how I missed this game before but it looks AWESOME! It might be the first early access game I actually buy while its in early access. Especially if as you guys are saying, its just bugs that need to be fixed. Very cool style.
 
Difficulty spikes, difficulty spikes everywhere.

Doing fine, then bam, get demolished.

Game needs a flee button in battle. Even the party members are saying "Lets flee!"

Well, I concur, run away!

That and psychology damage accrues too quickly. Can't even make it through an entire dungeon with fresh people without your party going insane in the membrane. And then you gotta pay to remove some of it only? I said fuck it and just used insane people in one run. Which was just frustrating; stopping every 5 steps and having them gibbering about something. And not following 50% of my commands in combat.
 
Difficulty spikes, difficulty spikes everywhere.

Doing fine, then bam, get demolished.

Game needs a flee button in battle. Even the party members are saying "Lets flee!"

Well, I concur, run away!

That and psychology damage accrues too quickly. Can't even make it through an entire dungeon with fresh people without your party going insane in the membrane. And then you gotta pay to remove some of it only? I said fuck it and just used insane people in one run. Which was just frustrating; stopping every 5 steps and having them gibbering about something. And not following 50% of my commands in combat.

That's what's intended...it's why you buy a stable of characters that you're supposed to be continually cycling in and out. This is definitely not (nor intended to be) having one party to rule them all.

And you do get items and upgrades that do decrease the sanity loss.
 
Difficulty spikes, difficulty spikes everywhere.

Doing fine, then bam, get demolished.

Game needs a flee button in battle. Even the party members are saying "Lets flee!"

Well, I concur, run away!

That and psychology damage accrues too quickly. Can't even make it through an entire dungeon with fresh people without your party going insane in the membrane. And then you gotta pay to remove some of it only? I said fuck it and just used insane people in one run. Which was just frustrating; stopping every 5 steps and having them gibbering about something. And not following 50% of my commands in combat.
...there is a escape button in the fight. There is not even chance, you flee with 100% chance.
Also get a jester, the song that heals minds is damn valuable.

How many dungeon that is available now ?
I have to correct myself. There are five dungeons, two of which are not available yet.

--

I made a few screenshots. Many people know about the combat and the insanity, but not so much about the rest of the gameplay that's why I focused on the other aspects of the game.

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Welcome to the Estate. It's called after yoru savestate, which is in my case "Blackest Night". The buildings are unlocked very quickly after the first 2-3 runs. On the right you can see my list of heroes. You can have up to 10 at the beginning, upgrading the cart can give you more slots. The outgreyed once are some building and can't embark unless you pull them out of the building.

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For example the Abbey, where he heroes can pray or abolish to calm their minds. You can upgrade the different aspects of the closter, reducing costs in the process, improving the effect and adding more slots. You can upgrade the buildings with different kind of heirlooms you find in the dungeons. The guy with the glasses is some NPC who randomly takes one slot in one of the buildings.

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A hero sheet. Showing the different negative and positive traits, stats, equipment, abilities, combat skills, resistances. The preferred position is very important since most skills require a certain position to be used.

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Next to consumable items, heirlooms and gold you can also find trinkets that can aid your heroes, but also may have a price in using them.

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After every run and whenever you want you can look into the activity log to see what happened with the guys in the town. For the most part it shows the success of the interaction with the buildings, but a hero may also decide to embark on a journey of virtue or bad deeds. If you miss a hero, don't worry, he'll come back. Probably. And maybe not as good as he was before.

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The embark screen. You can pull your choosen four heroes in the boxes in the bottom in walk order. For now you can visit the Ruins, the Warrens and the Weald. Cove and Darkest Dungeon are planned for the future. You can see different symbols under the name. Those are different quest that decide when you can leave the dungeon with success. There are scout missions (explore 90% of the rooms), skirmishes (kill all monsters in the dungeon) or boss battles as seen in the screen. It informs also about the difficulty of the mission and the base reward. To get to a boss battle, you have to absolve a certain amount of runs in skirmishes and scouting.

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When you embark, you have to prepare provision. At the minimum food and torches. Light in the dungeon influences the quality and quantity of loot and the moral of your heroes and from time to time they have to eat or they will suffer heavy penalties. In dungeons that are bigger than "short" you get a piece of Firewood that you need to set up a camp where your guys can use their camp skills and heal up with food. Shovels are very important too. You can clean rubble with bare hands, but that costs hp and mental health, both very valuable resources.

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It's not always about winning. When you feel that you can't accomplish the quest, escape the dungeons. The heroes that were on said quest get heavy mental health damage, but they may live to die another day and you keep all the items you so far collected.

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If you win or lose, your heroes may get new positive and negative traits. If you win, they get resolve xp. The heroes don't get stronger due leveling up, but more resistance to the terrors of the deep. To get your heroes better abilities and equipment, you have to sue the Guild (skills) and the Blacksmith (Equipment)

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You need to upgrade both, to even be able to upgrade your heroes' skills and equip above level 1. You can buy new skills of the class or improve the ones the hero already has. The improvement seems small, but sometimes the edge is all you need.
 
Wait how are you guys playing? I wanna play!
We backed the game on Wanderer level or above ;D

edit:
Another good part of the game I forget to mention: you can rename the heroes. Finally you can send your friends and family to death and insanity!
 
That's what's intended...it's why you buy a stable of characters that you're supposed to be continually cycling in and out. This is definitely not (nor intended to be) having one party to rule them all.

And you do get items and upgrades that do decrease the sanity loss.

Also that shit be scary.
 
Game's looking great. Should have backed it when they did the kickstarter. I missed the date:( How much will the Steam release be going for?
 
I'm a kinda confused, for people that just got the base tier (Nomad), codes will be given out on Feb 3rd with the launch of the game? How were the codes given out, via Humble Bundle like Shovel Knight or some propriety service like Wasteland 2? If it's the former, should I already see the link (without the code) in my library like Cosmic Star Heroine?
 
I'm a kinda confused, for people that just got the base tier (Nomad), codes will be given out on Feb 3rd with the launch of the game? How were the codes given out, via Humble Bundle like Shovel Knight or some propriety service like Wasteland 2? If it's the former, should I already see the link (without the code) in my library like Cosmic Star Heroine?
You should get the link on the 3rd and yes, it's humble bundle.
don't know about already seeing the link in your library.
 
You should get the link on the 3rd and yes, it's humble bundle.
don't know about already seeing the link in your library.

Hmm alright. My humble bundle and kickstarter email are different so hopefully I didn't miss something in a backer update.

edit: I checked for download pages associated with my kickstarter email and Humble bundle links were apparently sent out. Should be all set for Feb 3rd now.
 
Sweet merciful gaming gods this game is good. I just went after the Necromancer Apprentice, did pretty good getting up to him. The battle wasn't going too hot until my Bounty Hunter managed to get a marked crit off on the boss pretty much knocking off half of its health. It was all good after that. Man, I actually cheered again for such a lucky crit.
 
Sweet merciful gaming gods this game is good. I just went after the Necromancer Apprentice, did pretty good getting up to him. The battle wasn't going too hot until my Bounty Hunter managed to get a marked crit off on the boss pretty much knocking off half of its health. It was all good after that. Man, I actually cheered again for such a lucky crit.
It was a longer drawn out fight for me with two of my front liners at death's door.

Then I killed him...

And he skeletons remained :P

I did make it through without casualties, but there's a nice bit of strategy involved using the bounty hunter to control enemy placement.

I LOVE pulling archers into close quarters and forcing them to use weaker attacks while the heavy hitters lose a turn and I can chip at them from afar.
 
I love the moments when I miscalculated or didn't just have the money for enough resources and my team is without light and food and I still push them forward because there is only one room left and I bite my nails that they don't run into a trap and that they survive the possible last battle.

Btw: Jester is killer. I rather have a Jester and no healer, than a healer and no Jester. His motivational song is so good to keep the troop from spiraling into the despair avalanche.
 
I'm not liking the 'There's a Thing here. Poke it Y/N?' gameplay.

There's no informed decision making there, it's just a roll of the dice, unless I'm missing something.
 
I'm not liking the 'There's a Thing here. Poke it Y/N?' gameplay.

There's no informed decision making there, it's just a roll of the dice, unless I'm missing something.
You can avoid stuff with items. Like opening a chest is trouble, but with a skeleton key you just get the loot. Not entirely sure about books and corps wagons (then again, what do you even expect from telling your guys to look into a corps wagon). And then you have stats that influence things, like disarming traps or scouting chance.

Roll of the dice is an important part of the game, no doubt. However tactics, planning and common sense are far more important.
 
Game is SO good. I feel like I'm missing something in regards to gold, though. I never seem to have enough of it. (I know, I know, 'game is hard' etc).

But you have to spend ~3K to restore sanity to everyone after each battle dungeon, spend to outfit the next expedition, and so-on. I never seem to get ahead - only break even, or even slowly draining money just to gain some heirlooms that slooowly upgrade town. The progression path isn't as clear as in a game like Rogue Legacy.
 
Game is SO good. I feel like I'm missing something in regards to gold, though. I never seem to have enough of it. (I know, I know, 'game is hard' etc).

But you have to spend ~3K to restore sanity to everyone after each battle, spend to outfit the next expedition, and so-on. I never seem to get ahead - only break even. The progression path isn't as clear as in a game like Rogue Legacy.
Heroes are free and require no fee. Have stock of heroes and swap through them. Do a lot of easy quests to gather assets. Don't forget to upgrade your buildings to lower the cost of treatments!
 
Heroes are free and require no fee. Have stock of heroes and swap through them. Do a lot of easy quests to gather assets. Don't forget to upgrade your buildings to lower the cost of treatments!

Yeah, but even cycling through heroes feels like I'm treading water, because I put 3-4K into the easy ruins expedition, and I get 3-4K out. I guess I'll slowly get ahead as my heirlooms reduce costs...
 
I'm mostly running with:

1. Hellion - the barbarian looking woman with a poleaxe. She's really good at dealing heavy damage, bleeds (they stack x2!), has a pretty cool self-buff (+dmg, acc, cure bleed/blight), high health and dodge, and good survival skills. I managed to find an "Ancient" accessory for her that's pretty awesome.

2. Bounty Hunter - stocky dude with an axe. I gotta say this is probably the most well rounded class in the game from what I've played with so far. He's got a knockback that's extremely useful for forcing enemies to lose turns or ranged attackers to use weaker attacks. His Mark skill doubles the damage of his initial attack, and he also gets an attack that can hit anyone from any range and does more damage to stunned monsters. Good survival skills as well.

Those are my two front liners. My back liners are:

3. Cleric type class (forget the name) - Gotta have a healer. She gets a heal all spell that does 1-2 HP for everyone (don't knock it! It saves people at Death's Door), which for some weird reason still does 1-2 HP restoration at the second rank (wonder if that's a bug). She also gets a single target heal. I keep her in the third position so she can use Judgement (ok damage + self heal), and Blinding Light which is a stun.

4. The Jester - I first overlooked this guy and went for a run without him. Then I took another look at his skills and he has, hands down, one of the best skills in being able to do a full party Mental restore. I keep in the back row and have him use it constantly. It'll save gold in the long run. He also has a decent crit rate and can use his dagger attack from the back row, though that forces him to the front. I use it as a finishing blow on random battles sometimes. He also gets a really good Mental health restore survival skill when camping.

Other class thoughts:

The Leper is kind of meh, though pretty hard hitting, but has a huge drawback of having initially a lower accuracy than others. He gets a move that does +15 Accuracy as a self buff, but when you need to self buff to be on even grounds on accuracy with pretty much any other melee class, it's kind of ridiculous. He has a similar +protection self buff to the Crusader.

The Crusader is pretty decent. He gets some good melee skills and a good self buff. He gets some good survival skills to. I don't like him as much as the Hellion.

The Highway man, the Occulist, and the Grave Robber I've used sparingly and can't really say much on. The Highway man's pistol is kind of nice with that AoE damage, I guess.
 
Yeah, but even cycling through heroes feels like I'm treading water, because I put 3-4K into the easy ruins expedition, and I get 3-4K out. I guess I'll slowly get ahead as my heirlooms reduce costs...
Why do you invest 3-4k? Cut down on the provisions. On a short easy expedition I take 12 rations with me, 16 if I feel paranoid. 6-7 torches, 1-2 shovels and maybe 1-2 skeleton keys. This about 2k, when I remember right. Also as said, the Jester is immensely powerful. Get one and put him in the back position and just let him play the motivational song all the time. It's far superior to more damage or more healing.
 
Yeah, but even cycling through heroes feels like I'm treading water, because I put 3-4K into the easy ruins expedition, and I get 3-4K out. I guess I'll slowly get ahead as my heirlooms reduce costs...

It's about spending gold wisely. As I mentioned, the Jester has a really good Mental restore that, if used nearly all the time, will keep your Mental health in good shape and you'll rarely have to send someone to cool off. I've been managing to consistently get over 10k gold the last few runs. Also, here's what I spend gold on:

Short run:
10 food (probably only need 4-5 to be honest, but I like to be safe)
5 torches
1 shovel
1 key

Long Run:
15 food
7 torches
2 shovels
1 key

You don't actually really need bandages or antivenom potions if you're using a dedicated healer like I am. Shovels are really good to have to clear rubble in your way to save HP and Mental, and having at least one key will save you from a trapped chest which has (so far) paid off for me. My provisions use little gold, maybe around 1-1.5k. If you're spending 3k on provisions, you really don't need that much at the beginning of the game. Maybe later on when the runs get longer and harder.
 
So I've just spent all evening (5 hours) playing and I've had to force myself to stop.

Slowly getting the hang of cycling my heroes in/out and putting together a semi-reasonable party.

My jester is death machine - no idea what trait he has, but I don't think he's missed yet, and on a run he always gets > 70% of the last hits.

Hellion is awesome with her attack that hits the first 3 enemies, occultist's artillery attack is brutal and the bounty-hunter - my god he's a beast.

I think you get a little screwed starting with the crusader and highwayman, until you get a decent selection of heroes it can be tough going, but when you have enough it starts to come together.

Stacking bleed damage on the necromancer's apprentice was my strategy, so long as you can get rid of the added skeletons each round, then his health just ticks down.

Loving this.
 
Why do you invest 3-4k? Cut down on the provisions. On a short easy expedition I take 12 rations with me, 16 if I feel paranoid. 6-7 torches, 1-2 shovels and maybe 1-2 skeleton keys. This about 2k, when I remember right. Also as said, the Jester is immensely powerful. Get one and put him in the back position and just let him play the motivational song all the time. It's far superior to more damage or more healing.



It's about spending gold wisely. As I mentioned, the Jester has a really good Mental restore that, if used nearly all the time, will keep your Mental health in good shape and you'll rarely have to send someone to cool off. I've been managing to consistently get over 10k gold the last few runs. Also, here's what I spend gold on:

Short run:
10 food (probably only need 4-5 to be honest, but I like to be safe)
5 torches
1 shovel
1 key

Long Run:
15 food
7 torches
2 shovels
1 key

You don't actually really need bandages or antivenom potions if you're using a dedicated healer like I am. Shovels are really good to have to clear rubble in your way to save HP and Mental, and having at least one key will save you from a trapped chest which has (so far) paid off for me. My provisions use little gold, maybe around 1-1.5k. If you're spending 3k on provisions, you really don't need that much at the beginning of the game. Maybe later on when the runs get longer and harder.

I'm counting the cost to heal up their mental state after. This is ~1K per character, and 2-3 will need it after every run.
 
I'm counting the cost to heal up their mental state after. This is ~1K per character, and 2-3 will need it after every run.

Ah. I see. Definitely get a Jester or two and rotate them in and just spam their mental restore song, and make sure to get it from the guild if they don't come with it. I haven't had to put my party in to any of the Mental reducing places in the last several runs because of the Jester. He truly saves a lot of gold, time, and effort.
 
So is this game perfectly playable in its current state? Should one wait for the full release or is the early access build good enough? Is all the content there or should one wait for the final version?
 
I got to ask, how bad are the random effects in battle? Like could you be winning then suddenly one bad dice roll screws everything up? Or alternately could something as bullshit as missing three times in row happen?

Cause it's that kind of nonsense that I felt was too much in XCOM.
 
I'm counting the cost to heal up their mental state after. This is ~1K per character, and 2-3 will need it after every run.
Yeah, definitely get a Jester. Things have to go really bad for your people to ever get mad. He restores 4 mental health every turn on level 1 and if he has no other jobs, then this keeps your party really low.

So is this game perfectly playable in its current state? Should one wait for the full release or is the early access build good enough? Is all the content there or should one wait for the final version?
Yes! Gameplay is finished, maybe needs some tweaks and there is surely be a bug to be found here and there, but it's a perfectly playable game. A few classes and the last two dungeons are missing, but you can have plenty of fun with the first three and the amount of traits and skills a hero can have. It's like Prison Architect from the state of affairs I would say.

I got to ask, how bad are the random effects in battle? Like could you be winning then suddenly one bad dice roll screws everything up? Or alternately could something as bullshit as missing three times in row happen?

Cause it's that kind of nonsense that I felt was too much in XCOM.
Well, RNG can fuck you pretty bad, because critical hits of enemies not only hurt, but goes on mental health too. On the other hand, your critical hits may restore mental health. And as in every turnbased rpg, the enemy may decide to attack your crucial figures or focus on one person, which can hurt pretty bad. When your party collapses, then usually pretty badly. But as said, the core is still tactics. How do you position your heroes, what abilities to use, etc.
 
Well, RNG can fuck you pretty bad, because critical hits of enemies not only hurt, but goes on mental health too. On the other hand, your critical hits may restore mental health. And as in every turnbased rpg, the enemy may decide to attack your crucial figures or focus on one person, which can hurt pretty bad. When your party collapses, then usually pretty badly. But as said, the core is still tactics. How do you position your heroes, what abilities to use, etc.

Yeah I can deal with some setbacks, but I needed to know that it's not to the point where even if you do everything right it doesn't matter because of the dice roll. The harder the game, the more consistent the rules should be.
 
Yeah I can deal with some setbacks, but I needed to know that it's not to the point where even if you do everything right it doesn't matter because of the dice roll. The harder the game, the more consistent the rules should be.
Well, RNG so far didn't fuck me especially over, however every point of damage more is important than in most other games.
The kicker is the downwards spiral. When one of your guys dies or goes for his event horizon and gets a bad trait like "abusive", it has huge influence on the other guys. And then you may end up with a team that is unwilling to fight or do what you want them to do. So a unlucky crit that kills somebody can cost you the whole fight. When the situation is in your favor, you're pretty safe, but more often than not, you're in a risky space with a worn out team and then things can get from bad to worse in a hinch. So keep your people in good shape as much as possible.
 
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