Darkest Dungeon

Ronne_sl said:

Anyone found a use for plague doctor or grave robber yet? Only two I can't really seem to fit in to a party. Jester is...almost good? The stress thing is kinda nice, but not sure I can afford one dude sitting in back spamming his lute all day.

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Plague Doctor needs the AE stun skill to be good, none of her other skills are very impressive. Even with it she's one of the weaker classes really. Grave Robber does decent dps but can't hold a candle to Highwayman for example, she has ok skills but just not enough base damage.

I'm stunned at the delta between this game's design (point and click on a hand-drawn background!) and its atmosphere and gameplay. Bought it last night after lots of Twitch viewing and I absolutely love the style, writing, setting, narrative and straightforward but engaging strategy. What a gem. "Emerald - the color of molten envy". Nice. I just played through the first tutorial dungeon but I love this game. If only AAA games had 10% of this game's character.

Drajakur_sl said:

I'm stunned at the delta between this game's design (point and click on a hand-drawn background!) and its atmosphere and gameplay. Bought it last night after lots of Twitch viewing and I absolutely love the style, writing, setting, narrative and straightforward but engaging strategy. What a gem. "Emerald - the color of molten envy". Nice. I just played through the first tutorial dungeon but I love this game. If only AAA games had 10% of this game's character.

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Fuck you now I'm impulse buying it. Thanks, jerk.

The narration reminds of Bastion, but not quite as good given the different game types. I am finding that stress builds up too quickly, and isn't offset enough by victories. It would also be nice to get back some portion of the gold spent on provisions that don't get used up during a dungeon.

I really like Lepers and Hellions so far, haven't gotten a Jester yet. I've also noticed what was mentioned above about keeping the last mob stunned while you heal your party up, seems effective if you can do it. Do you have to have 2 squads going in order to have one running a dungeon while the other is getting their stress/quirks removed? Or if not, how long does it take a trip to the bar/church/sanitarium to work?

Loving the game so far.

The first dungeon was a lil tricky but after following the % on attacks as I went through each battle made a big difference.

Just pick a attack then mouse over the enemy to see the % chance on each attack.

Also I think certain types can find better loot or a higher chance of loot in the appropriate items on screen.

Zindan_sl said:

I really like Lepers and Hellions so far, haven't gotten a Jester yet. I've also noticed what was mentioned above about keeping the last mob stunned while you heal your party up, seems effective if you can do it. Do you have to have 2 squads going in order to have one running a dungeon while the other is getting their stress/quirks removed? Or if not, how long does it take a trip to the bar/church/sanitarium to work?

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Later on you will have a lot of adventurers available. You send your last unfortunate team to the inn/church and send a new team in. Also notice that sanitarium does not remove stress, only quirks (90% positive about that). Also later your level 3 adventurers won't want to do level 1 dungeons, so you'll have many teams going at once. I think a good strategy is to gear up only your best team to the teeth so they can kill bosses and survive high level dungeons, while you have some expendables/new arrivals to make money with.

Also about stress, the start of the game is really the worst for stress. Once you send level 1 and 2 dudes in level 1 dungeons stress goes up way slower, you will end up doing dungeons where stress did not go up in a significant matter, or barely at all. Also obviously, you'll get better at the game. There's a lot to learn but it makes a huge difference in the difficulty.

Twitch

TB starting a stream of this right now.

Alsothis guideis pretty good for people who are starting the game.

If you find a Hellion with the double stun, get her. Auto-hit, stuns 2 targets for a round. Big help early on. And while we're on the subject of Hellions; I also got one that hits 3 targets at a time, fairly hard. Ran both in a group together along with a Vestal who had AoE heal; did pretty well.

I've been playing this game for a couple of days now and have been enjoying myself for the most part but once my guys get to level 3-4 the grind has really started to become apparent because of the lack of dungeon/mob variety, stats/skills/perks, and meaningful loot. There are only so many linear corridors that I can walk down while spamming the same abilities ad nauseam at near identical mobs whilst repetitive scenery scrolls by before the fun becomes a mere time sink to get gold.

I know that the game isn't finished yet, which is obvious if you've played it but these are my suggestions:
It really needs to look back to the classics and implement special rooms, random mini bosses, meaningful loot, secret areas, up/down stairs + pit traps and a wider array of enemies and enemy abilities. As you venture deeper into an area it should be reflected by what you see and face; you should not be fighting the same things and seeing the same items, traps and scenery. Take a page from Diablo and all the ascii crawlers.

Verdict: Fun for a few hours but excessively grindy and incomplete.

Yea, it needs work. Class balance seems super off in a lot of ways. The biggest offender is that I'm not sure you can actually run a party without having a priest, as there is just no other available source of healing you can really use. I tried running with the cthulu cultist dudes using the 0-10 heal, but it's just too random and bleeds stack so it'll eventually just kill you.

Right now I've got 4 priests of varying levels I have to keep sane because without them you just can't complete anything.

Still can't find a use for plague doctors or jesters. Plagues have an okay stun, but the targeting is limited and gets fucked up by the fat mobs, and later on stuff boasts such big resists anyway that you're almost always better off just going for permanent removal (damage).

Ronne_sl said:

Yea, it needs work. Class balance seems super off in a lot of ways. The biggest offender is that I'm not sure you can actually run a party without having a priest, as there is just no other available source of healing you can really use. I tried running with the cthulu cultist dudes using the 0-10 heal, but it's just too random and bleeds stack so it'll eventually just kill you.

Right now I've got 4 priests of varying levels I have to keep sane because without them you just can't complete anything.

Still can't find a use for plague doctors or jesters. Plagues have an okay stun, but the targeting is limited and gets fucked up by the fat mobs, and later on stuff boasts such big resists anyway that you're almost always better off just going for permanent removal (damage).

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Jesters are great for removing stress and giving buffs.

dp

This game is fun as shit. I want the whole game now.

My first run got totally screwed when Reynaud(who can only pray for stress relief) got another attribute that said he could only meditate(which essentially let him do neither).

Yeah, that is what happened to me. I removed one attribute but still couldn't relieve the stress. I'm a broke ass mofo.

Got a pretty awesome setup going right now: Priest, Plague Doctor, Hellion, Crusader. So much crowd control = so much healing. Yaulp is one of my favorite skills since it allows me to indefinitely prolong a fight so I can heal up all my guys. Love this game.