screenshot [complete] Something Something Insidious Killer: Let's play Darkest Dungeon

[Benice]

2 hours ago, ping said:

Important takeaway #1: Flogging yourself has approximately the same effect as a visit in the brothel

Uhhh...

2 hours ago, ping said:

Important takeaway #2: The Vestal, who in some of her little quips talks about the chastitiy belt she is wearing, can find stress relief in the brothel. How does your precious science explain this, ATHEISTS?

UUUUUHHHHHHH...

3 hours ago, ping said:

Lucy the Occultist is Gifted (+20% Healing received) and has Deviant Tastes that nobody in the Brothel is willing to satisfy.

UUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHH... Dang, looks like the vestal might have found a new friend.

Speaking of which, can we name one of the healers Wyrs?

[eclipse]

Thing about chastity belts is that it would have to come off in order for her to relieve herself, among other things.

[Golb89]

1 hour ago, Benice said:

Speaking of which, can we name one of the healers Wyrs?

(Pretty sure you meant Wrys)

Lucy could definitely use this name instead.

53 minutes ago, eclipse said:

Thing about chastity belts is that it would have to come off in order for her to relieve herself, among other things.

Oh, that too.

[Benice]

37 minutes ago, Golb89 said:

(Pretty sure you meant Wrys)

Ah, whoops. Yep, Wrys. I don't know what a Wyrs is.

Thanks for the catch!

Edited May 16, 2020 by Benice

[ping]

8 hours ago, eclipse said:

Thing about chastity belts is that it would have to come off in order for her to relieve herself, among other things.

That is a good point, but you didn't take into consideration that characters in fiction never have to poop.
You're right of course and I fell prey to the tale that during the crusades, the noblewomen would have to wear chastity belts for years while their husbands went to Jerusalem to commit war crimes and atrocities but it's OK because it's all holy. It's still a little mechanics/story disconnect to poke fun at, that the extremly repressed nun can just visit the brothel the same way any other character does.

9 hours ago, Golb89 said:

She's Kroos now.

(Also, i know what i said before, but the Abomination is definitely asking to be called Vincent)

I swear this is getting way more Anime than I was expecting (not at all a complaint, keep at it)

Vincent is definitely very fitting. Abom is more werewolf- than vampire-inspired, but from what is shown about the Abomination, they seem to be very similar in how they've been made.

9 hours ago, Benice said:

Speaking of which, can we name one of the healers Wyrs?

Sure! I think I figured out why the hell "Lucy" - a certain Lightbringer comes to mind, so "the hell" indeed - so I think I'll keep that one, but two Occultists seems like a reasonable count.

[eclipse]

10 hours ago, ping said:

That is a good point, but you didn't take into consideration that characters in fiction never have to poop.
You're right of course and I fell prey to the tale that during the crusades, the noblewomen would have to wear chastity belts for years while their husbands went to Jerusalem to commit war crimes and atrocities but it's OK because it's all holy. It's still a little mechanics/story disconnect to poke fun at, that the extremly repressed nun can just visit the brothel the same way any other character does.

Maybe her "stress relief" is giving the workers the "wrath of God" speech.  Since she paid for the time, they can't leave.  😛

[Golb89]

14 hours ago, ping said:

Abom is more werewolf- than vampire-inspired

Vincent is pretty much all-in-one though.

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

Maybe her "stress relief" is giving the workers the "wrath of God" speech.

3 hours ago, eclipse said:

Since she paid for the time, they can't leave.  😛

[ping]

I keep overwriting my screenshot -.- Just opened the game to get some additional shots and forgot to change the naming scheme in Irfanview. Thank god I noticed very early and before losing any non-repeatable shots.

11 hours ago, eclipse said:

Maybe her "stress relief" is giving the workers the "wrath of God" speech.  Since she paid for the time, they can't leave.  😛

I like that headcanon I guess if she would get the Deviant Tastes quirk, the workers finally got fed up with her rants.

7 hours ago, Golb89 said:

Vincent is pretty much all-in-one though.

Right, I forgot about his Limit Breaks, so I was only thinking of his normal attire. Never used him too much when I played FF7, tbh.

• Update 5: Into the Weald

Spoiler

Since there's only two new classes arriving this week, let's get those over with first:

Shoot, bandage, and pillage­­ - the dancing steps of war!

See sweet little Herbert, I mean Kroo-- OH NO THE POOR LITTLE GIRL OH GOD OH NO

The Arbalest is a backrow damage dealer that works best in a team built around abusing marks. Without that, her damage output is a bit underwhelming - backrow characters always have lower base damage than brawlers such as Leper and Crusader, but the Arbalest trails a little behind the similarly-minded HWM and Bounty Hunter, as well.

On the plus side, the Arbalest's base attack can target 2nd to 4th rank, so she'll always be able to attack those nasty enemy glass cannons. She's also surprisingly tanky and has an array of interesting (if somewhat situational) support abilities, as well as a decent heal. On medium and long missions, her camp skills are quite excellent, as well. Her low speed is a bit of a mixed blessing: Of course you'd always rather kill the enemies before their turn, but it also makes it easier for another character (like the Occultist, for example) to set up a mark before her turn.

Like the Leper, she's very susceptible to shuffling - most of her skills require her to be in 3rd or 4th rank and she doesn't have any skills that move her back, so she'll have to spend her turn moving backwards instead of doing something of value if she gets pulled to the front.

Lv1: 27 HP | 0 DODGE  | 3 SPD | 6%  CRIT | 4-8 DMG
Lv5: 47 HP | 20 DODGE | 5 SPD | 10% CRIT | 7-14 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    40 | Move   40 | Blight 30 | Bleed 30 |
Disease 30 | Debuff 30 | Death  67 | Trap  10 |

Movement: 0 forwards, 2 backwards

Her basic attack. Great reach (and if the only valid target is in 1st rank, the fight is probably already won) and a BIG damage boost against marked targets, which goes up to +100% damage and +13% Crit (to a total of 32%) at max level. Great accuracy too, which is the case for most of her attacks.

If you have a long fight where the primary target stays in the back ranks, keeping them at -30 Acc and probably zero Crit might be a valid strategy. But most of the time, just shooting them seems like the more reliable option, even if this hits both 3rd and 4th rank at once.

You generally want the Arbalest to abuse the mark, not setting it up, but it's nice to have redundancies in case you're screwed by a Stun, Spd rolls, or something like that.

Her only way to (reliably) hit 1st rank, but it's an AoE with the usual -50% damage coming from an already middling base damage. If there's still a target in 2nd rank, the standard attack is the better choice most of the time. If there's only an enemy in 1st rank left, you might be better off using the Arbalest's turn to heal a little HP.

Ehhhhhhh. The speed bonus might make this passable, but random target and bad Acc means that the actual attack will be useless more than half of the time. It's probably meant to be a emergency attack when the Arbalest gets shuffled, but it doesn't even move her backwards.

A nice little heal, and setting up a nice BIG heal from the Vestal or Occultist, or just making the Vestal's multiheal a little more effective, is a neat little extra effect. Good skill to have.

This is a weird one. Very situational, but actually very good if the circumstances come up, to the point where this almost trivializes one specific boss fight.
Clearing Stuns usually means trading the Arbalest's turn for someone else's turn, so that's not too impressive. Being marked, however, can be very dangerous especially in the later stages of the game, so that part is the main draw of the skill, I think. Nice little combo with the self-mark skills of the Crusader and Leper, too.

The thrill of the hunt... The promise of payment...

See him at work here. No tragic, traumatic backstory? What is this madness?

The Bounty Hunter is another class that leans into Mark play really heavily, so I had a little smile when I drew a BH and an Arbalest at the same time. Unlike the Arbalest, whose complementary skillset is more defensively-minded, the Bounty Hunter rounds out his set with some Stun abilities and a Bleed.

The BH seems to stand on his own legs a bit better than the Arbalest - while he's still at his best when the team is specialized on Marks, I'd say that his other abilities are more universial, like a Stun always being a good skill to have on your team.

Stat-wise, he's very similar to the Highwayman, which means a little more Spd and base damage than the Arbalest. Basically, his damage is about as good as it gets on a non-frontline class instead of the Arbalest's "what you'd expect on a non-frontline class". What she does have over him, however, is much better damage potential against the enemy back ranks.

Lv1: 25 HP | 5 DODGE  | 5 SPD | 4% CRIT | 5-10 DMG
Lv5: 45 HP | 25 DODGE | 7 SPD | 8% CRIT | 8-16 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    40 | Move   40 | Blight 30 | Bleed 30 |
Disease 20 | Debuff 30 | Death  67 | Trap  40 |

Movement: 2 forwards, 2 backwards

The usual basic attack, with the baseline 1-2 reach, but a bit extra flexibility in where the BH can use it. The big thing is the +90% Dmg against marked targets, obviously - this doesn't increase any further, so the Arbalest will catch up in raw mark damage (and pull ahead because of the insane crit), but on low levels, this is pretty nuts. The bonus damage against humans (which does increase with level) doesn't hurt either, since there's cultists and brigands everywhere and more human-shaped monsters in some dungeons.

The obligatory Mark attack. The Prot debuff is very interesting - high-prot enemies are where Mark teams struggle compared to Bleed or Blight based team comps, so it's great to have some counterplay to that. The Spd bonus is nice, of course, although...

...I'd rather have had it on this second marking ability. See, this ability allows the BH to set himself up - pull the target into Collect Bounty's range and BÄM! - so it would be great synergy to make the BÄM! come a little faster next turn.
In a full Mark team, I think this isn't quite as good if there's an Arbalest in it. What's the point in marking a target while pulling it OUT of her range?

Stun. Good. -67% Dmg is to be expected on a Stun, and the secondary effect can be quite effective, if it forces a rank-sensitive enemy into a bad position.

No HP damage on this, but the reach is great, the Stun chance is a little higher, and it also has a shuffle effect, although it's a bit more random than the Uppercut's knockback. Pretty good.

I like this move, but for its increased reach and less so for the extra damage against stunned targets. It always feels bad to kill a stunned enemy because you "wasted the stun", even though it's quite often the correct play - you use that status to give you another turn to kill a monster without it getting an action. But honestly, having the option is still nice. It's not like you never stun one of those chonky enemies.
Setting himself up for this skill isn't really an option - chances are that the enemy would recover his Stun between the BH's turns.

An interesting move. The BH can't directly whack the 4th rank, but he has three other options - pull, stun, or this move. The Bleed is only moderately strong, but this also allows another hero to deal extra damage and maybe to outspeed the enemy, too.

Before we even had a chance of looking at our new heroes, the town crier brings news: The unique dungeon from the... mosquito-based? Huh... Crimson Court DLC can now be explored. Doing so will open some floodgates and more or less forces you to constantly try to progress on that front, so I'm going to delay that. (Even though iirc, the game will start poking me about it pretty soon)

Specter's stress heal rolled rather low, I think, and without any side effects. Maybe it' overly cautious, but I let her have another go at the roulette table.

Make no mistake, we will face ever greater threats. Our soldiers must be ready.

The two newly unlocked buildings are basically where our adventurers really level up. In the guild, we pay money to unlock and upgrade their skills, increasing most of their numbers except their base damage.

Instructor Mastery allows our characters to reach higher skill levels - in fact, getting past the lowest one requires us to get one upgrade here. Improving the Training Regimen decreases the gold cost by 10% per upgrade. Which adds up, because we're going to spend a LOT of money here over the course of the game.

The bellows blast once again! The forge stands ready to make weapons of war.

The Blacksmith is where we improve our heroes' base stats - better weapons increase damage, crit rate, and speed; better armour increases HP and dodge. No class has intrinsic damage reduction (prot) at any armour level, you only get that through trinkets and skills. Otherwise, all of a character's bulk comes from his HP, Dodge, and resist% against Bleed and Blight.

A glance at my heirlooms shows that I'm really low on deeds, which are needed to upgrade the Blacksmith - and the Stage Coach, which explains why they're so scarce. Something to keep in mind, for sure. The Guild competes with the Tavern over portraits for upgrades (another reason why I ususally stick with the Abbey) and I have enough to get the first upgrade for both Instructor Mastery and Training Regiment.

A strict regimen is paramount, if one is to master the brutal arithmetic of combat.

Before spending any gold at either guild or blacksmith (not that we can do the latter this week), I always check what dungeon to visit and what team to take - those upgrades are instantanious, unlike the stress heals, so it's most efficient to only invest into the team that you're going to send into the fight right now.

Although I'm not considering going there, let's take a peek at the Courtyard mission. These will always reward you with very powerful, class-specific trinkets that can only be found there. Every class has a pair of those and if they equip both at the same time, they get another boost in addition to the individual trinkets' effect - in this case, +7 Acc and +7 Dodge for the yet to be seen Hellion class.

This specific mission also gives us this invitation, which seems completely harmless and not foreboding whatsoever. I'm sure he's a decent chap that just wants to drink some... wine with us.

We also unlocked the second of the four normal dungeon locations, the Weald. For non-English users such as myself: it's an old English word meaning "forest", related to the German "Wald". Today, it seems to be only found in specific location names, in particular the Weald in South East England. There, saved you a trip to Wikipedia.

The missions in the Ruins give us pretty good trinkets (the Idol and the Chalice in particular), as well as heirlooms that are more immediately useful than the type that we already have 42 of. We also don't haven't met the goodest class yet, so the Whistle won't be of any use right now.
But the Weald is new, so we gotta, right?

This is the team were' going with:

• Gawain (Chop, Hew, Purge, Solemnity) to punch things, hopefully without missing too often.
• Lucy (Abyssal Artillery, Wyrd Reconstruction, Vulnerability Hex, Eldritch Pull) as a Healer and Marker.
• Damours (Collect Bounty, Mark for Death, Flashbang, Finish Him) to abuse Mark and as a Stunner.
• Kroos (Sniper Shot, Suppressing Fire, Sniper's Mark, Battlefield Bandage) to also abuse Mark and as a secondary healer.

I just notice that I didn't take a screenshot of Kroos' and Damours' quirks before embarking, so real quick:
Kroos got Early Riser (+2 Spd when torch above 75) and Tippler (will only drink as stress relief).
Damours got Fated (10% chance to turn miss into hit - basically a very small increase in hitrate), Unerring (+10% Dmg with ranged attacks - not too impressive on a BH), Love Interest (who apparently works at the Brothel, because that's the only stress heal Damours will go for), and Off Guard (-4 Spd, -5 Dodge on the first round of combat - pretty bad).

Here we go! Things start promising, with a (regular, one-hallway ranged) scout.

This time, we're on a Skirmish mission, so we have to find and fight every room battle of the dungeon. We can either go south to avoid a hallway fight, or we just march directly to the first room battle to our east.

OR we can take a little peek into the southern hallway first. The curio right in the first tile, so we can spot it immediately - if it was treasure, we could've snatched it and then walked backwards to the starting room. Adventurere HATE that, the reasoning being that they won't see an ambush coming because they're facing the other way and apparently turning around is not an option. It's a game balance thing.

But since it's just a torch, I just immediately go back into the room and go east instead.

Begone fiend!

The fight ist just the two Maggots, one Spitter that we already encountered last dungeon. Skip.
Damours does so much damage with Collect Bounty because Lucy put a mark on the spider - mostly because that skill also reduces dodge.

First curio and naturally it's the only food-related curio you can find in the Weald. And naturally, Lucy decides to lick the Beast Carcass.

And NATURALLY, we get a bad outcome, which is the Zoophobia quirk (more stress vs. beasts). Although, to be fair, it's exeedingly stupid to lick a rotten carcass, and there's a chance of ~40% of something bad happening.

If Lucy hadn't been mind-boggingly stupid, we would have had to cleanse the carcass with Medical Herbs, giving us two rations of food. Practically never worth it, so I would've just kept walking.

The room battle is against one Rabid Gnasher, one Fungal Scratcher, and two Fungal Artillery. Ew. Ew ew ew ew ew. (just kidding, this is fairly tame by DD standards)

Gnashers are very fast and fairly dodgy, so they tend to get one or two turns more than you would have hoped. The Fungal enemies have some Prot on them (15% on the Artillery, 33% on the Scratcher), but they can be both Blighted and (more reliably) Bled.

I'm being a little stupid (that's the problem with LPs. Not the Being Stupid part, I'm always stupid, but REALIZING it. And then showing that to the public.) here - I see "Eldrich", I remember that Ceiling Tentacles deal bonus damage against that monster type, and I neglect the "focus your goddamn damage" rule.

So Kroos sets up a mark herself, but Gawain and Damours only combine to 15 damage - slightly unlucky, I think, but it would've been an easy kill with Kroos' additional attack. Like this, all four enemies get an attack this turn.

Groping Swipe - just a fairly harmless attack with no additional effects.

Exposed to a killing blow...

Dammit. Rabid Rush, also causes a weak Bleed.

Grievous injury, palpable fear!

DAMMIT. Great start. Rain of Blight, AoE on 3rd and 4th rank that only deals 1 Dmg directly (unless, y'know, crit happens), but also carries Blight (2 damage per turn).

I'm not sure if I brought this up already, but crits also make status effects more likely to land (+20% chance) and they last 50% longer (usually 5 instead of 3 turns). Whoop-di-fucking-do.

The other Artillery uses Mark Prey instead, which is set-up move for the Scratcher, who has an attack with bonus damage against marked heroes. Doesn't come to fruition here since the Scratcher is already very low on HP and gets picked off before its next turn.

The Gnashers don't leave a corpse when they're killed, which forces this Artillery in the 2nd rank. There, it can only use Escape Cloud, which causes a weaker blight (1 per turn) and moves the monster back two ranks.

[Battlefield Bandage] That's about all about the fight, though. The HP damage taken isn't too bad, but the immediate stress from the crits is annoying.

Can you spot the trap...? Another scout revealed a Curio (which, like Treasure, is always guarded) in the top right, so that's where we are headed.
We find a couple brigands - Bloodletter, Cutthroat, Fuselier.

I think we've only seen Blanket Fire on the Old Road with Gawain and Dismas, right? Well, it hits ALL your heroes. Not terribly dangerous unless you're already low on HP, but it adds a fair bit of attrition.

The bigger the beast, the greater the glory.

I'll just jump ahead a bit since nothing spectacular happened. Gawain uses Purge here, which immediately clears the Bloodletter's (and the already killed Cutthroat's) corpse. This means that the Fuselier is forced to the 1st rank, so he can't do anything dangerous

OH COME ON!

Such a terrible assault cannot be left unanswered...

The Fuselier uses Rushed Shot when he's in the 1st rank, which would move him back one rank if possible. It also has a higher crit chance than his standard AoE attack, as I'm just now learning.

The Eldritch Altar curio that the bandits were guarding is an excellent find - cleansing it with Holy Water removes a random negative quirk from the hero. Damours' Love Interest and Off Guard are both Quirks I could do without, so he gets the honours and the RNG decides that Off Guard gets removed.

The Old Tree can safely be searched with an Antivenom, which I didn't bring any of (bit stingy, since Blight is fairly common here, but iirc the tree is the only curio that can appear here and that can only be cleansed with it). Licking it isn't too dangerous - 25% chance of Blight, 50% chance of finding some treasure - but this time, the tree is just a tree.

Things Darkest Dungeon has taught me: Reading books is VERY dangerous, but digging up graves in the wilderness is A-OK. (don't do so without a shovel, though)

The third room battle, this time in a treasure room, is against four Gnashers, which is honestly really unpleasant.

Their attack isn't terribly strong, but it carries Bleed...

...and the Rabies. Huh. RIP Damours, I guess?

Well, not really. Diseases in Darkest Dungeons aren't nearly as dangerous as their IRL counterparts and Rabies are especially harmless: -10 Acc, but actually a +15% Dmg boost.

Kroos catches them during this fight, as well, and I honestly have to wonder if it's even a debuff for her, given that her Acc is great and her damage a bit lackluster.

This is actually the last room battle, so the quest is already completed. Of course, I open the chest first, though.

Wealth beyond measure, awarded to the brave and the foolhardy alike.

What a coincidence, I'm feeling brave AND foolhardy today! Since there's still some room in my inventory, I decide to keep exploring a little to see if there's any hallway curios left.

There is this old tree, and the treasure chest happened to include an antivenom! Successfully cleansing a Curio will always have a positive outcome (treasure, in this case), even though a licked tree is sometimes just a tree.

Next, some Left Luggage, which can be cleansed by antivenom or a key. There's very little gold in it, but two more phioles of The Blood.

Next, another hallway battle, with no new enemies in it.

Eldrich Pull. No further comment.

Mortality clarified in a single strike.

Ughhhhh

UGGGGGGHHHHH (notice the HP on the Acolyte)

And of course the Acolyte gets her turn IMMEDIATELY afterwards. I ended up with wayyyy more stress from this fight than I would have liked, so I just pick up the loot from the fight and leave the dungeon.

The agents of pestilence will yet be driven from our woods!

Hard Noggin increases Stun resist, Ascetic reduces the amount of healing recieved by Wyrd Reconstruction. Annoying since the Occultist and Arbalest work well together in Mark teams. Egomania will compel Gawain to touch curios that count as "reflective".

Yesssssssss!
As we return to the village, we are greeted by one of the most fun classes in the game, the Shieldbreaker. She's a DLC character, so there's some extra content attached to her and this event is meant to make sure that you're guaranteed to get your money's worth before half the game is over. She will still randomly show up in the Stage Coach, too.

I'm going to do the class reviews next update, but as a little teaser: She's a Dancer (not in the Fire Emblem sense at all) and an Est (very much in the Fire Emblem sense). Very fun, and I honestly love the aesthetics of the class.

Unfortunately, Pierrepont joins with rather bad quirks - Fast Healer (better healing skills when camping) is underwhelming, Lazy Eye (-5 Acc on ranged attacks) sucks because she has a number of those, Off Guard (the 1st turn debuff that Damours just got rid of) sucks because you want your damage on turn 1 come out fast to deny as many enemy turns as possible.

We also find ourselves a Grave Robber - a dagger-throwing damage dealer class that can lean into Blight and/or Mark play. She's not as dedicated to the dance as the Shieldbreaker, but she doesn't mind if her team can give her some room to do so.

Finally, we get an Antiquarian, indisputably the weakest class in the game. However, bringing her on a mission can squeeze a lot of additional gold out of the run.

I say "finally" because the last two adventurers are yet another two Occultists. Even though I'm spending the heirlooms to get another four character slots, I don't even bother - I should really get the Blacksmith rolling (who needs the same heirlooms as the Stage Coach), so even this upgrade was probably a bit greedy.

The only new buiding unlocked this week is the Sanitarium, where we can treat our characters ailments - both in mind and in body. This is where we can spend money to get rid of negative quirks - for now, only one per week, but we can upgrade the Sanitarium to increase that number. First Order: Get rid of Kleptomaniac on Sigurd. Such an awful quirk that can easily cost you 1500 gold in a single mission.

We can also spend even more money to lock in positive traits. When a character reaches five quirks, he'll still get new ones, but they'll randomly replace the old quirks. Locking in does exactly what you'd think it does and I REALLY want Warrior of Light to stay, but locking in is REALLY expensive.

Chances are that I'll be removing Germophobe before bringing Sigurd again, so I'm pushing that decision back a little. With the Antiquarian, we might be able to earn some extra money to pay these outrageous prices.

The Medical Ward removes diseases, which is quite a bit cheaper than treating the sicknesses of the mind. Damours' Rabies will be healed first (Light knows how) and I think Kroos will follow suit. She still fairly accurate with the sickness, but we've seen where "fairly accurate" will take you.

 

[Golb89]

8 hours ago, ping said:

See sweet little Herbert, I mean Kroo-- OH NO THE POOR LITTLE GIRL OH GOD OH NO

You know, somehow i get the feeling that's not too far off from Kroos' own backstory (which might very well be even sadder)

8 hours ago, ping said:

Like the Leper, she's very susceptible to shuffling

Uh uh...

8 hours ago, ping said:

See him at work here.

Name him Rope Cliffheart.

8 hours ago, ping said:

Adventurere HATE that, the reasoning being that they won't see an ambush coming because they're facing the other way and apparently turning around is not an option. It's a game balance thing.

8 hours ago, ping said:

As we return to the village, we are greeted by one of the most fun classes in the game, the Shieldbreaker.

Pramanix.

8 hours ago, ping said:

We also find ourselves a Grave Robber

Haze.

8 hours ago, ping said:

Finally, we get an Antiquarian

Gitano.

[eclipse]

Antiquarian's job is to make up for that Kleptomaina until you can do something about it for good.

[ping]

9 hours ago, eclipse said:

Antiquarian's job is to make up for that Kleptomaina until you can do something about it for good.

The Sanitorium is unlocked, so I'm never going to bring a Kleptomaniac into a dungeon ever again.

I do like the concept of the Antiquarian, still. You weaken yourself by bringing her instead of honestly any other class, but you're rewarded with additional money, which is a pretty sparse resource in the earlier stages of the game. Nice risk/reward mechanic.

@Golb89: That video does look like a Leper or Arbalest's worst nightmare.
Names are noted!

[ping]

• Update 6: Money money money money

Spoiler

Little addendum to the Sanitory: Negative quirks will randomly become "locked in" as well, if a character goes into dungeons with them. It's still possible to remove them, but it's quite a lot more expensive, so the best course of action is to remove really bad quirks ASAP and just accept that every adventurer is going to be a bit of a mess and will lick the occasional Mummified Remains.

As last time, I'm going to start by talking about our new character classes. First...

Shifting, swaying - she mesmerizes her prey before the final strike.

No song, no dance.

The Est that is also a Dancer. Let's start with the "Est" part: The SB at low levels is honestly pretty bad. She wants to be in the 1st or 2nd rank to make use of her full array of skills, but her HP of 20 is awful, barely higher than the Occultist, although her dodge is fairly high. Her base damage is good (starts the same as the HWM), but not quite as good as other rank 1-2 classes. In addition, bringing her to a mission might even make it harder thanks to her unique mechanics (she's a DLC character, so there's some extra content attached to her), but that'll come up in time.

Now, where comes that "late bloomer" part come into play? For one, some her stats just grow better - she goes from her current, rather average Spd to being outsped by only one class in the game, for example. In addition, she has a very good set of class-specific trinkets, with the best ones including an HP bonus, which more or less fixes her survivability issues (although this one is less true without the Crimson Court and Color of Madness DLC). Long story short, she grows into a frontliner that's actually fairly tanky, has perfect reach, several options to deal with high Prot enemies, and the best AoE skill in the game.

Finally to the "Dancer" part: This came up a little before, but characters in Darkest Dungeon that base their strategy around changing their rank are often called dancers. We haven't seen it yet, but the HWM has that option, whereas the Shieldbreaker has a hard time not dancing: Only one of her skills doesn't move her back or forward.

Since she only moves by one rank, it's usually not too hard to pick a second frontliner that doesn't care too much about first or second rank, even if they don't participate in the dance themselves. But, for example, the Abomination really doesn't appreciate being pushed to 1st rank when in human form, while some skills or trinkets of other classes only work if they are in 1st rank (the Leper, for example, has a couple of those). But on the other side of the spectrum, the HWM's Point Blank Shot (+50% damage, only usable in 1st rank, moves HWM backward) can put out some insane damage over time if the SB can reset his position every turn.

Oof, that's a lot of ranting...

Lv1: 20 HP | 8 DODGE  | 5 SPD | 6%  CRIT | 5-10 DMG
Lv5: 36 HP | 28 DODGE | 9 SPD | 10% CRIT | 9-18 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    50 | Move   50 | Blight 20 | Bleed 30 |
Disease 30 | Debuff 30 | Death  67 | Trap  20 |

Movement: 2 forwards, 2 backwards

Minus 10% damage, but it has perfect reach, ignores Prot, AND has a fair chance to crit? Yes, please!

We haven't seen it yet, but more advanced tank-like monsters have the ability to Guard another enemy, absorbing attacks directed at them (and usually shrug them off thanks to very high Prot). This is a way around that, and it can also pull the target into your Crusader's or Leper's range for good measure.

The rank restriction means that this skill can't be spammed every turn unless you bring a partner to the dance. But when it can be used, it's an excellent skill - the standard attack with limited reach that all frontliners have, except this one has a decent Blight effect on top of that with no penalty to its direct damage.

You can't see it yet, but starting on Lv.3, Impale gets a weak Blight effect added. Two Shieldbreakers spamming Impale is actually a valid strategy despite the usual AoE grievances, simply because this move has great total damage output.

Situational, as all anti-Stealth moves seem to be.

The one non-dancing move. Geez, I didn't even mention that the Shieldbreaker is also a potential Mark abuser, did I? (although to be honest, I think it's not the best way to use her)

A "Block" negates all direct damage dealt once, but lets through any stress damage (including crit-induced, iirc), DOTs, or debuffs, so this isn't quite as good as it looks. It's still a way to prevent, well, dying, or just to take off some pressure from your healer in a long, attritionous fight.

To those with a keen eye, gold gleams like a dagger's point.

"Pray tell how I ended up out here with these half-wits?" (Stress does not always bring out the best in a person)

The Grave Robber is a damage dealer who works well on a Blight-oriented team. Not too much unlike the Shieldbreaker, down to the Armour Piercing attack, high Crit rate, and the option to dance. However, the Grave Robber is more well-suited for the 2nd to 4th rank and her lower base damage reflects that. Building a team around her needs a little more consideration, especially since her dance moves (which she kinda needs to put out enough damage to justify bringing her) are more disruptive than the Shieldbreaker's.

Her most noteworthy stat is her Spd, which is the single highest in the game. Her HP is the same as the Shieldbreaker's (i.e. not good, and her high-level trinkets tend to lower it even further), but with slightly higher dodge.

Lv1: 20 HP | 10 DODGE | 8  SPD | 6%  CRIT | 4-8 DMG
Lv5: 36 HP | 30 DODGE | 10 SPD | 10% CRIT | 7-14 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    20 | Move   20 | Blight 50 | Bleed 30 |
Disease 30 | Debuff 30 | Death  67 | Trap  50 |

Movement: 0 forwards, 2 backwards

Great name, but the skill itself kinda stinks compared to the SB's pierce. Lower damage (especially considering that it comes from a lower base), lower crit, worse reach.

Her most damaging skill, with the downside that you need to reset your position before using it a second time. This works, because the Grave Digger has another skill to do it, but you would have to deploy two additional characters dedicated to shuffle her back again in order to spam it every turn.
Moving forward two positions also means that two other adventurers will be displaced if the GD wants to use this.

Fairly good for an AoE move, with a lower Dmg penalty (although it's coming from a worse base than other AoEs, too) and targeting other ranks than usual, which is nice if only to have some diversity. The debuff isn't too useful, since the GD prefers her teammates to apply Blight, not Bleed, to activate her damage bonuses.

Her second dancing move. "2 rounds" is a bit misleading since it ticks down to one immediately after using this - it'll only make her next attack stronger, although the Dodge bonus stays for a little longer.
Alternating Lunge/Shadow Fade, with some other damage move wedged in if a boosted Lunge is overkill, is the GD's most effective strategy. Its downside, other than the team having to humour her position hopping, is that Shadow Fade delays her damage output for a turn, which makes her less effective in shorter fights.

Grave Digger's "standard" move, which becomes so much better if the team accomodates for it. Her high Spd has a bit of a downside here, since she'll probably only deal the normal 90% damage on her first turn, but this is still a neat move if someone (or even just herself) is throwing Blights and/or Marks around.

Low-ish Blight damage, although the longer duration makes up for it in long fights (read: boss battles). It's not a terribly strong move, but it can hit any rank, can make another hero's Blight attempt more reliable, and maybe even just set her own moves up.

I really dislike the composition of those effects. DOT heal means that you want to save it until you need it, but the battle-long stat boosts mean that you want to use it right away. I'm not a big fan, as a result.

She searches where others will not go, and sees what others will not see.

See how the Antiquarian prevents the evil Cultist from doing a human sacrifice. How's that for technical truths?

Awful. Absoultely terrible. Trash. If the Shieldbreaker is like Est, then the Antiquarian is like, I dunno, Matthis or Vyland? Her HP is the worst in the game (at least her Dodge is good, I guess), her base Dmg is the worst in the game, she had no good DOT or high Crit to make up for it. She has a heal, but it's weak and its bonus effect mediocre. Her status resists are all bad. Seriously, every single one of them is bad. Her best abilities mostly prevent herself from dying, which is nice, I guess, but she's incredibly limited in what she can do to actually help.

So why will I probably end up with two or three of these absolute failures? Money, my friends. It's all about the money. Cui bono? My purse bonoes. [Angry Rome nerds incoming in 3... 2... 1...] The Antiquarian has two neat features when you take her with you:

• You can squeeze an additional 750 gold into a single inventory slot (1750 -> 2500), which is really nice on longer missions. Yes, you can stack this if you're feeling crazy.
• Every time you're rewarded with items, you get an additional Antique on top - a minor one (500g) or a rare one (1250, but they are... rarer). This bonus does not increase with additional Antiquarians, but it's a really good one, especially since you can fit a lot of antiques into a single inventory slot.

I should mention that the Antiquarian-specific trinkets are actually really, really good. Some of them would be utterly broken if another class could get their hands on them. But since the Antiquarian is so unbelievably bad, they merely elevate her from "complete arse" to "mostly arse". (I exeggarate a bit, but she really isn't very good even at her best)

Lv1: 17 HP | 20 DODGE | 5 SPD | 1% CRIT | 3-5 DMG
Lv5: 29 HP | 30 DODGE | 7 SPD | 5% CRIT | 5-9 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    20 | Move   20 | Blight 20 | Bleed 20 |
Disease 20 | Debuff 20 | Death  67 | Trap  10 |

Movement: 2 forwards, 2 backwards

A standard attack that can attack rank 1-3 is pretty good, if you ignore that her base damage is a bit lower than half of the Crusader's.

Weak Blight attack. I still prefer it over the Stab because it's more reliable, as long as the enemy isn't highly resistent to Blight, but it's not a very good ability.

As I mentioned, the Antiquarian can increase her chances of survival quite a bit, but at the cost of doing nothing to support the team.

I actually like this one, I have to say. It's not reliable, but keeping a big, strong enemy's accuracy down 20 points (this only stacks once with itself, but at least it goes up to 2x15 at the highest level) can reduce the damage you take by a fair bit.

It's a heal, so it is nice to have in a pinch. The increase DOT resist? Eh, I prefer the Plague Doc's DOT removal, to be honest.

This one is interesting, because a party-wide Dodge boost is actually a pretty rare feat. At lower levels, the buff is just too small to really bank on it, but it goes up to a respectable +10 at max level. Spamming this skill every turn means +30 Dodge on everyone, which really isn't half bad.

Also interesting - very similar to the Crusader's Bulwark of Faith ability (which has more Prot, but no Dodge), but the Antiquarian gives the bonus to someone else while also hiding behind them. I never tried it, but I wonder if stacking those two abilities is a good strat...

So, after ranting about how cool the Shieldbreaker is and how awful the Antiquarian, I natually do an Antiquarian run without the SB into the ruins right away. Ruins, because they're probably the least threatening dungeon to run into, but also for 25% of another reason.

The Antiquarian is the only new class we're bringing, but we haven't seen the Plague Doc's guild text, either. We also bring our second Occultist with us, the famously turbaned Hardin Wrys. Gawain makes another appearance as our frontline tank.

Quick peek at our provisions - standard kit for a short Ruins expedition.

Pace out the halls of your lineage, once familiar, now foreign.

One room can be left unscouted, with the two southernmost being the prime candidates to minimize the stress we accumulate in hallways. Since I don't get any scouts in the first two rooms, I ignore the SW one, just to reduce the risk of walking into a trap.

New Curio: The Confession Booth reduces one hero's stress quite significantly if you use a Holy Water on it. All my heroes have 20 stress (Silence from being idle / her quirk; Gawain from the last expedition; Pointel the Aquarian and Wrys from this being their first dungeon), so Silence getting dibs here is purely random.

Blood in the Iron Maiden, seems legit.
Something that is easy to forget: You have to have the Antiquarian selected when checking treasure and curios, otherwise you don't get the additional antique.

Pictured: Why Plague Doctors are awesome.

Since there's nothing new in terms of enemies, I'll go ahead and just show what is new, like the Antiquarian's Blight ability here.

Oh, and I should mention that Wrys didn't have a good time this run... He got hit by a fair share of stress attacks.

[Fortifying Vapours] Such healing, much wow.

More tentacles! Hands of the Abyss, the Occultist's Stun. Wrys is standing in 2nd rank which isn't great, but this at least makes use of it.

Here's the rare Antique and... oh, that story is about [redacted], as well. Lol what noobs, losing to the Shambler. *pats own shoulder even harder*

Festering fear consumes the mind!

New enemy: The Madman - the third dedicated stress inducer. Here, he's using Accusation, which causes the Horror status effect, the "Stress DOT". In this case, it deals 3 Stress for 4 turns. It's healable, but I have to admit I was too greedy and didn't bring any Laudanum.
The Madman's dodge is pretty high at 20 and he's _ really _ fast (9 Spd), so he's all too likely to get an action even if you target him first.

Thank you Wrys, very cool. At least you didn't Bleed yourself.

Roses are red, Violets are blue,
Omae Wa Mou Shindeiru.

One nice aspect about DOT-based teams: You often get some additional turns after the fight is practically over, since Bleed and Blight tick before an enemy's turn: Since this Arbalest is not going to get another attack in, I'm completely free to use heals and (if available) stress heals.

It's even better if you combine Stun with a DOT - this might give you TWO free turns to heal up.

Please, [Protect Me], Sir Gawain!

The game really wants me to do more money runs, huh? This quest's reward is already an Antiquarian's trinket (giving +10 Dodge), and that Carapace to the left? +25% Prot! As I said, her trinkets are pretty bonkers and balanced around her aweful intrinsic stats.

And that's it! Not a huge haul (about the same as the medium-length dungeon), but it would've been significantly worse without the Antiquarian, who found 5750g worth of antiques.

Two negative quirks is a bummer, although one turn of lower Spd on a Leper doesn't seem too punishing. But I'll be honest - the "correct" play here would be to send Wrys to the nice farm at our grandparent's place, where there's meadows and a whole bunch of other Occultists he can play with and he'll be happy there. You kids can play with Lucy instead, he's very nice and only bites if you provoke him. What to do, what to do........

--

I tried to keep this brief, so that we can get another run into this update.

But first: Hamlet. And new classes. Oh God. Maybe no second dungeon after all?

First up: The other DLC class, the Flagellant (technically there's a free DLC with a third one, but the Musketeer is with some very minor exceptions a reskin of the Arbalest). He's... something.

There is power in the Blood, for those with the fortitude to pay the price.

His comic actually describes what he does ingame fairly well.

So the Flagelalant likes to be abused. Heavily. He likes to be at low HP - his Dmg (+20%) and Crit (+7%) go up when his HP falls below 40%. Contrary to every other class, he gets substantial BUFFS when at Death's Door (+5 Acc, +20% Dmg, +2 Spd, +20% to his resists), heals the entire party for 10% of their respective HP when he gets knocked to 0 HP for the first time in a battle, and has a higher Death Blow resistance than other classes. ...I feel uncomfortable now.

Similarly, the Flagellant becomes stronger when he reaches 100 Stress: Instead of rolling a random affliction (and hoping for a lucky roll to get a virtue instead), he always becomes "rapturous", giving him +25% Dmg, +3 Spd, but -20 Dodge. Like every other affliction, this can still cause the Flagellant to use random actions, attack a party member, stress out the party, or refuse to be healed or buffed; making this a double-edged sword with a VERY sharp edge pointing your own way.

As you may expect, his main source of damage are Bleeds. Lots and lots of bleeds. Outside of danger mode, his base damage is honestly pitiful, especially considering that he's a frontline class, but he can dish out the most powerful Bleeds in the game.

Honestly, even though I never deliberately put the Flagellant in his danger mode, I found him to be pretty good, as long as you don't bring him into the Ruins (he's good, but making Skeletons bleed is still outside of his qualifications). I just treat the low-HP bonuses and, as you'll see, skills as comeback mechanics when things go wrong - the rest of the time, he's just a strong Bleed inducer with great reach.

Lv1: 22 HP | 0 DODGE  | 6 SPD | 2% CRIT | 3-6  DMG
Lv5: 38 HP | 20 DODGE | 9 SPD | 6% CRIT | 5-11 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    50 | Move   50 | Blight 30 | Bleed 65 |
Disease 40 | Debuff 30 | Death  73 | Trap   0 |

Movement: 3 forwards, 1 backwards

Despite the Flagellant's low base damage at high HP, this basic attack of his still deals a lot of damage as long as the enemy can be bled. Very accurately, too, and the debuff can help other characters get their Bleeds in more reliably.

Kinda similarly to the Plague Doc's Blight skills, this is a weaker AoE Bleed that hits the two back ranks, which the single target version cannot reach. It's always good to be able to reach every rank, so I pretty much always have those two skills locked in.

Comeback skill #1. The Bleed effect is even stronger than the one on Punish and the gap becomes even bigger on higher levels, but more importantly, the Flagellant can use this to heal a significant amount of his HP - 50% at max level! The exhaustion debuff can't be dispelled in any way, but it only lasts for three turns.

Not sure what to make of this one. You cast a Regen effect, but there's a high risk that you bleed yourself? The risk even goes _ up _ at higher levels, so I don't think it's feasible to reliably protect the Flagellant from it.

Comeback skill #2. The defensive one, healing both the Flagellant and one other hero for a significant amount of HP. I use Exsanguinate more often than this skill, which means that it usually falls prey to the limited number of move slots, but it's still a pretty good one.

If you like to live dangerously, this might be a good way to make the Flagellant go rapturous faster. If you don't, this is still a nice skill, especially since the numbers become more favourable at higher levels (-14 Stress / +6 Stress / +3 Spd at max level). It also has great synergy with a Jester, who can heal the Flagellant's stress and at the same time reduce the amount he inflicts on himself.

OK, I only now noticed the -20% Stress (up to -40% at max level). As long as you don't screw yourself over with the self-mark, this plus Endure could be a pretty interesting combo to set up.
The DOT transfer combined with the Death Blow resist is clearly meant to set up the Danger Mode, so because I don't really went for that playstyle, I never really looked at the skill.

We actually get a second Flagellant from the Stage Coach right away, so we can be a bit picky when it comes to quirks.
Eveque: Slugger (+10% melee dmg), Warrens Tactician (+15% dmg in Warrens, another standard dungeon) - enemies in the Warrens tend to be vulnerable to Bleed, and +25% is a lot even with the Flagellant's low base damage.
Hagiomania plus Hylomania means that he's going to lick a lot of curios: Both related to worship (40% chance) and treasure (40%), although at least he won't steal anything from them.
Caillot: +5% scouting in the Wealds isn't much, but the Weald is a good dungeon for Bleed-inducers. Anemic lowers Bleed resistance by 10% (which is annoying, but the Flagellant's base resist is very high); Perfectionist causes +5 Stress when he misses an attack (also annoying, but the Flagellant is pretty accurate).

Honestly, both seem decent enough, with Eveque being a bit more volatile, I guess.

The Stage Coach also brings us Marillac the Jester, who is set up to go into low-light dungeons: Lurker gives +10% Dmg if torchlight drops below 26, Nocturnal lowers his Spd by two if torchlight is above 75.

He will be laughing still... at the end.

See the Jester stabbing it to the man. Well, slash first, but I'm sure a lot of stabbing was involved, as well.

There's two ways to go about the Jester. For one, every action he takes will boost in most flashy move, Finale. Boosting that over several turns can result in a HUGE damage roll on that one skill, but you better hope that the fight is over after that hit. This playstyle is a bit like the Triangle attack in Fire Emblem: Really cool and flashy, but you can also ask the question, "OK, but what if I just, like, keep it simple and consistent?".

The other option is to play the Jester as a support class. He's the best stress healer in the game, and his Battle Ballad give all your units a rather nice boost to Acc, Crit, and Spd. Just spamming them every turn already justifies bringing the Jester to a dungeon. In addition to that, you can either go for some boring-but-effective Bleed skills, or you can still use the remaining two moveslots to still allow you to go for a big bang - both support skills do boost Finale's Dmg and crit.

Lv1: 19 HP | 15 DODGE | 7 SPD | 4% CRIT | 4-7 DMG
Lv5: 35 HP | 35 DODGE | 9 SPD | 8% CRIT | 7-13 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    20 | Move   20 | Blight 40 | Bleed 30 |
Disease 20 | Debuff 40 | Death  67 | Trap  30 |

Movement: 3 forwards, 3 backwards

The "forward" is honestly more annoying than anything on the Jester. You don't want his frail butt on the frontline. Otherwise, this would be a good standard attack - good reach and a situationally useful Guard bypass.

AoE Bleed on the two middle ranks. It's a decent option, despite the usual problem with AoE attacks.

Here it is. You better finish the battle when using this, since +100% Stress is not something you want to carry around with you. If you really want to, you can get the damage boost up to +250% in a long fight, so this is really satisfying when it comes together.

The "imma go for Finale next turn" move. The Spd boost is nice in theory, but the Jester is already pretty fast, so chances are that you'll still have to rely on the dodge bonus between using Solo and Finale.

Single target Bleed. Since it targets the same ranks as Harvest, equipping both of them is a bit of a waste, but which one you pick is a matter of preference.

Very spammable. Making things more reliable doesn't hurt, and neither does acting before the enemy, or getting a lucky crit. The numbers may seem a little underwhelming, but they go up with level and they stack with themselves.

Best stress heal in the game, no contest. And that's before taking the stress reduction for the next couple turns into account. This skill and Battle Balad alone make the Jester a nice pick for any dungeon.

The other recruits are class duplicate, but both of them are worth considering. (I'm sure there's a thing as "too many Vestals", but I haven't encountered it yet)

The "___ Hater" quirks increase Dmg and decrease Stress taken against ___ by 15% each, so work very well on a damage dealing class. Nervous Bleeder decreases Acc by -10% when bleeding - which isn't too uncommon, but it's still a penalty I can live with.

Daredevil increases Dodge by +15 when HP is below 25% - not something to rely on, but it might save her bacon in a pinch. "Tactitian" was the +15% Dmg quirk, which is less useful than the +Scout ones would've been. Warrens Phobe increases Stress by +20% in the Warrens, so guess where she's not going to go.

Before going into the next dungeon, I'm doing there name changes (so yell if I forgot one):
Guiffart --> Saria (Vestal)
Fecamp --> Cliffheart (the 2nd BH - his quirks are better than the 1st one, so he's more likely to stay on the team)
Pierrepont --> Pramanix (Shieldbreaker)
Miron --> Haze (Grave Robber)
Pointel --> Gitano (Antiquarian)

I also need to make place for the new recruits: Our 2nd Abomination (Parry), L'ile (3rd Occultist, because I'd feel bad about kicking out a named character so early), and Damours (the first BH) have to go.

It is done. Turn yourself now to the condition of those poor devils who remain.

This one has become vestigial. Useless.

The last "building" that hasn't been unlocked yet ist the Survivalist, who teaches camp skills to the heroes for a fairly hefty gold price.

You might have noticed the 75% progress towards clearing a path to the boss earlier? We now have the option to face the Necromancer Apprentice. We also have the option to ignore it, and just go through the Ruins until we reach a high enough level to explore the Darkest Dungeon.

But that would be boring, obviously, so we'll go after all the bosses, although not yet. The reason why I still explicitly wanted to unlock the fight: Boss fights always yield a very rare trinket as a reward, which will change every week. So as soon as I spot a good one, it will be time to put our big boy pants on. The Wounding Helmet is a bit so-so as far as high-end trinkets go, though - the Dmg imcrease is amazing (most of the BH's damage dealing is done with Melee skills), but the lowered Stun chance cuts into his utility quite a bit.

I still pick yet another Ruins expedition, though. The trinket isn't the biggest reason - it's alright, despite the -20% Bleed resist - but I really want to get some Deeds to upgrade the Guild, and this mission is the only one that guarantees that I'll get a couple.

It's also going to be another Antiquarian run, so I take some gold in my hand to lock in Sigurd's Warrior of Light quirk. Kroos also gets rid of her Rabies disease.

Besides our moneymaker Gitano, I also bring Gawain yet again; plus our rookies Vincent and Guiffart Saria. (dang, I guess I did forget to rename her. Next update!)

Not-Guiffart also picks up the Sanctuary camp skill, so that I have someone to prevent an ambush. The "if religious" is a bit of an artifact, I think: In earlier versions of the game, some quirks would make a character religious (although it'd be weird if there were non-religious Vestals back then). Nowadays, this is completely tied to class: Crusader, Leper, Vestal, and Flagellant are always religious, other classes never are.

I also kit out my characters a little with trinkets - everyone can wear up to two (and no duplicates). Gitano is the one with the most spectacular bonuses: +10 Dodge and 25% Prot. Vincent gets my best general trinket, the cloak that gives Dodge as long as the torchlight is high, in exchange for some Stun resist.

It's often not a bad idea to keep some trinket slot just so you can directly some that you find in the dungeon to save inventory space. In my case, it's an especially good idea because I only have exactly 8 trinkets right now and some of them are either class-specific or underwhelming (and I do sell two of them for 750g each).

The fiends must be driven back, and what better place to begin than the seat of our noble line?

The mission is to clear all room battles and the map being one long path is frankly a bit annoying. If there's fights at both ends, I can't avoid just walking the entire way, three hallways of it twice.

And indeed, there's a battle in the furthest room to the south...
(I'm going to skip over most of the battles again, since there's nothing new on the enemy's side. One hallway battle was fought and wan before this point)

We pick up another journal, of yet another story that we haven't seen anything of yet.

The Decorative Urn can be cleansed by Holy Water, yielding treasure. We find a trinket for our Grave Robber, with a bonus that stacks quite nicely on top of her skills.

I run into a LOT of these Bone Courtiers this run and they just LOVE to target Gitano. Look at her stress level in the lower left corner - that's before the effect of this hit...

The Stun abilities on Vincent and not-Guiffart help a lot in reducing their attacks, but they're so fast that it's impossible to fully prevent them from loading more stress on top of Gitana.

Yikes!

The extreme stress on Gitana forces me to set down to camp earlier than I would have liked - basically after returning to the entrance after the room battle in the south.

There are the skills used (they don't have their own animations) - all single-target ones benefitting Gitana, of course.

Not-Guiffart: "...Divine Light...Purest Grace...be with us now."

Not a new curio, but I always found it funny that the Antiquarian can pull a antique out of a torch holder.

Another two Courtiers. Yaaaaaaay...

This is around halfway through and inventory space is already running low... Gawain is equipping some useless trinket (+15% debuff chance, -1 Spd) I found during this run to save space.

A scout reveals our first "Secret Door" of the campaign, which can only be found if you roll a Scout in their range.

They're completely invisible otherwise (check the map - the visible door is just the one to the next regular room).

The chest you find there yields Puzzling Trapezohedrons, worth 3500g (!!!) each - in higher amount if you use a key (which I obviously did).

In hindsight, I definitely should've waited with this until the dungeon is cleared - now I have to drop some minor gemstones and my Holy Water to pick up the Trapezohedrons.

It's one bandit who is occupying a rank he absolutely hates, Gitano. I think you'll be fine.
(This is Gitano's quirk "Imposter Syndome", which has a 1/25 chance to make her skip her turn. I normally really hate this, but it's not like an Antiquarian's action is going to be terribly impactful)

Other new stuff: A properly locked sarcophagus, which I have to force open with a Shovel because I used all my keys already.

The Confession Booth triggered Gawain's Egomania...? It's not a terrible outcome (+15 Stress), though.

(the positions are a bit weird because I was poking into the hallway to get the curios and this triggered while I was going backwards to avoid a hallway fight)

More bones returned to rest. Devils remanded to their abyss.

And that should do it! 31300 gold is a rather amazing haul, so even though I didn't pick up any additional deeds, I'm very happy with the outcome.

...did Eclipse jinx this?

It's kinda funny that both our Vestals know how to gamble now. Eagle Eye increases Crit on ranged attacks by 5%, which both of Vincent's human-formed attacks fall under. Quite nice.

Oh, speaking of - I completely forgot to show off Beast's Bile! Don't follow his example, especially not in these times. I'm afraid I didn't make a screenshot of his Absolution skill, but that's going to be used again another time for sure.
Going into beast form wasn't really an option, what with Gitano's stress level. She ended up at 90, one tempting goblet away from an affliction.

A fresh irritance to some. A sanguine memory to me.

I return to the Hamlet and the game nudges me, going, "Hey. Hey. About that Crimson Court DLC, huh? Huh?" I think I'm going to take this on the chin for now, though. We'll see, next update!

 

[Benice]

2 hours ago, ping said:

Look at her stress level in the lower left corner - that's before the effect of this hit

My stress during math class be like:

2 hours ago, ping said:

 

Oh, speaking of - I completely forgot to show off Beast's Bile! Don't follow his example, especially not in these times. I'm afraid I didn't make a screenshot of his Absolution

Lovely!

2 hours ago, ping said:

)

We pick up another journal, of yet another story that we haven't seen anything of yet.

I AM BECOME VENGEANCE!-Quote of the year.

2 hours ago, ping said:

Hey. Hey. About that Crimson Court DLC, huh? Huh?"

Subtlety at its finest!

[Golb89]

17 hours ago, ping said:

@Golb89: That video does look like a Leper or Arbalest's worst nightmare.

3 hours ago, ping said:

Update 6: Money money money money

3 hours ago, ping said:

"Pray tell how I ended up out here with these half-wits?" (Stress does not always bring out the best in a person)

Dunno, that seems quite a legit way to get out of debts to me (and she looks MUCH hotter with her hair loose)

3 hours ago, ping said:

I really dislike the composition of those effects. DOT heal means that you want to save it until you need it, but the battle-long stat boosts mean that you want to use it right away. I'm not a big fan, as a result.

Just ignore the healing effect and spam it asap, especially if you want other characters to do stuff first in order to power up her attacks afterwards.

3 hours ago, ping said:

We also bring our second Occultist with us, the famously turbaned Hardin Wrys.

Oh, i completely forgot about him! (But i wasn't the only one)

3 hours ago, ping said:

Also interesting - very similar to the Crusader's Bulwark of Faith ability (which has more Prot, but no Dodge), but the Antiquarian gives the bonus to someone else while also hiding behind them. I never tried it, but I wonder if stacking those two abilities is a good strat...

3 hours ago, ping said:

Please, [Protect Me], Sir Gawain!

https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/dual-scarred

3 hours ago, ping said:

I should mention that the Antiquarian-specific trinkets are actually really, really good. Some of them would be utterly broken if another class could get their hands on them. But since the Antiquarian is so unbelievably bad, they merely elevate her from "complete arse" to "mostly arse". (I exeggarate a bit, but she really isn't very good even at her best)

3 hours ago, ping said:

The game really wants me to do more money runs, huh? This quest's reward is already an Antiquarian's trinket (giving +10 Dodge), and that Carapace to the left? +25% Prot! As I said, her trinkets are pretty bonkers and balanced around her aweful intrinsic stats.

Reminds me of how MP5 gets a good MOD and SPEQs but still menages to remain the "3rd best force-shielder in the game (out of a grand total of 3).

3 hours ago, ping said:

And that's it! Not a huge haul (about the same as the medium-length dungeon), but it would've been significantly worse without the Antiquarian, who found 5750g worth of antiques.

Should have named her Jessica instead...

(... next one, i guess)

3 hours ago, ping said:

We actually get a second Flagellant from the Stage Coach right away, so we can be a bit picky when it comes to quirks.

One of them is Warfarin (for the self-inflicted bleed skill): i should have probably saved it for when an actual vampire character will inevitably show up, but i guess name suggestions for them will abound anyway.

3 hours ago, ping said:

This playstyle is a bit like the Triangle attack in Fire Emblem: Really cool and flashy, but you can also ask the question, "OK, but what if I just, like, keep it simple and consistent?".

Or like "Big Bamboos" in GFL (though in this case he basically is both the Bamboo and the "Sprouts")

(Also, his name is Sora Sora now)

3 hours ago, ping said:

And that should do it! 31300 gold is a rather amazing haul, so even though I didn't pick up any additional deeds, I'm very happy with the outcome.

3 hours ago, ping said:

It's kinda funny that both our Vestals know how to gamble now.

Admittedly, it would have been much more fitting for Jessica Gitano to get it instead.

3 hours ago, ping said:

Oh, speaking of - I completely forgot to show off Beast's Bile!

https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/juicy

3 hours ago, ping said:

I return to the Hamlet and the game nudges me, going, "Hey. Hey. About that Crimson Court DLC, huh? Huh?"

Well, we ARE approaching summer after all...

 

59 minutes ago, Benice said:

I AM BECOME VENGEANCE!-Quote of the year.

Edited May 19, 2020 by Golb89

[eclipse]

I wonder if you can play something like the Macarena while the Jester and Shieldbreaker mess with your formation.  Constantly.

[ping]

13 hours ago, eclipse said:

I wonder if you can play something like the Macarena while the Jester and Shieldbreaker mess with your formation.  Constantly.

'fraid not, our heroes can't change the direction they're facing...  

18 hours ago, Benice said:

I AM BECOME VENGEANCE!-Quote of the year.

If the radiance of a thousand suns
were to burst at once into the sky
that would be like
the splendour of the Mighty One and I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds. - Robert Oppenheimer, quoting Hindu scriptures.

Not sure if it's an intentional reference, but that's what I automatically think of when I see "I am become X"

18 hours ago, Golb89 said:

https://www.awkwardzombie.com/comic/dual-scarred

To be fair, here it's more like Virion forcing Kellam in front of himself

18 hours ago, Golb89 said:

Dunno, that seems quite a legit way to get out of debts to me (and she looks MUCH hotter with her hair loose)

Oh, I meant the "dimwits" line, which is one of her barks when she get afflicted by reaching 100 stress. I wasn't making myself very clear there, I have to admit.

• Update 7: Broke again

Spoiler

Some may fall, but their knowledge lives on.

Now that our character roster has grown to a passable size, it is time to grow our heroes' strength, as well. First, a bigger discount on the Guild's gold price, since the heirloom cost for that is still fairly low. Since we're starting to get some Lv.2 heroes, I should keep the next level of Instructor Mastery in mind, too.

Since Crests and (especially) Deeds for upgrading the Blacksmith are still rather scarce, I trade a decent share of my Busts in. As you can see, Crests are considered less and Portraits more valuable apiece than the other heirlooms. It always stings a little to do trades because they're obviously (it's basic video game logic!) not in your favour, but sometimes it's just necessary.

Specter gets the next spot in the Treatment Ward to get rid of her Nervousness. This is where I would've liked to sink my Busts in - to unlock a second slot for this. But that requires more Crests, as well, and it is fairly expensive: Both of the Sanitarium's functions share an upgrade tree to unlock more slots, so you have to buy two (not too cheap) upgrades to do it.

Wrys and Gitano work on their stress issues. They probably need two sessions each, although they may be able to make do with the passive -5 Stress for idle adventurers if I just use others for a few weeks.

Speaking of passive stress reduction and somebody not getting it: Silence's Antsy quirk locked itself in, which does not bode well for her. Getting rid of it is both really expensive and necessary to keep her around...

...and there's also a new Doc in town. She'll also require a decent amount of money before we can make use of her, but in her case, it's to lock in an absolutely stellar quirk. Luminous gives +2 Spd, +5 Dodge without any downside or condition, which is basically two quirks rolled into one. Sorry, Silence, you've been replaced.

Suffer not the lame horse, nor the broken man.

And since I stand by my equation that More Vestals = More Better, I also kick one of our Flagellants. (the quote is still from the Plague Doc)

Our next expedition will take us to the Cove. Enemies there tend to have high Prot and Bleed resistance, so Blight is the way to go here and three of the four adventurers are able to inflict it. Pramanix (the Shieldbreaker) also has the Pierce skill to just ignore any Prot.

Here's the Guild blurbs about Shieldbreaker and Grave Robber...

...and all four Blacksmith ones for the current team.

You'll notice some * and + next to my adventurer's names - those indicate that this character has a negative Quirk that NEEDS to go, or a positive Quirk that I'll want to lock in, respectively.

Herbs a couple more Shovels than usual are the specific supplies to bring to cleanse Cove curios, the rest is my normal, safe-ish loadout. No Bandages is rather greedy because Bleed is particularly prevalent in the Cove, but I trust in my Vestal (at least as long as I'm not venturing into the advanced versions of the dungeons).

And go!
I should mention that our Vestal is the (finally renamed) Saria. Her Cove Tactitian quirk increses her damage output, which isn't too impactful on a Vestal, but still nice, and there's no reason NOT to bring her.

We get a critical Scout right away, which is great - two traps that we won't walk into, and we spot three curios in the hallway to our north.

And TWO of them are Eerie Corals, which is ridiculously lucky. This Curio can be cleansed with Herbs, and like the Eldritch Altar that we found in a previous run, it removes one random negative quirk. So, Pramanix goes from two fairly nasty quirks (big 1-turn penalty every fight; lower ranged Acc) to a completely healthy and well-rounded personality.

We also find another piece of one of the Shambler stories in a sack of loot - here's a link to the 2nd part. It's just a Shambler, what's the big deal? Jeez....

First fight! I could've backtracked to avoid this one, but I don't think it's worth the increased stress from going backwards when you're already halfway through the corridor. Plus, loot!

The Jellyfish thingy (the "Deep Stinger") has low HP, but a bit of Dodge and decent Spd. This Shocker attack only deals one damage, but it has a high chance to Stun and lower the target's Bleed resist (both get through here). Fifty internet points if you guess what its second attack does! It doesn't get another turn this fight, so you'll have time to think until I meet another one of these.

The Pelagic Grouper only has two purely damage-dealing attacks, but they hit fairly hard. The skills work so that a Grouper in 1st or 2nd rank can only target our 1st or 2nd rank, while he targets 3rd or 4th rank when he's standing in one of those himself. This Seaward Slash is his 1-2 rank move.

Continue the onslaugt! Destroy. Them. All.

Vincent threw up on the enemies a little, so Thrown Dagger gets its damage boost against Blight here.

[Adder's Kiss]
The team comp is a little awkward for Vincent, with two Dancers and the Abom as a more rank-sensitive class between them. In an ideal turnorder, the shuffles on Vincent cancle each other out, but sometimes it's just a bad idea to move Premanix back a rank with this move.

The Drowned Thrall is a ticking bomb. At first, it will only use Gargling Grab, which is fairly strong but inaccurate. On his third tu-

On his SECOND turn, he will teaches the LPer not to rely as much on his memory. Well, this is unpleasant.
The Revenge is a self-destruct move that can deal MASSIVE damage (5-13 is the damage range, so I'm dumb AND a bit unlucky here) and a little bit of stress on top of that.

Well, at least I can't show you what traps in the Cove do when sprung. Trap effect do vary between dungeons (the Ruins ones deal direct damage and stress), but the Grave Robber is always very reliable at disarming them.

So, uhhhh... When I said that the Shambler is totally easy to beat, I forgot to add "when you don't have two Lv. zero characters with you that take increased stress damage and half your team is at half HP or below".

The team comp would actually have been fairly good against the Shambler (Abom is awesome against it), but going into the fight while taking additional stress (and without a stress healer) really isn't a good idea.

Shambler's Altars can show up in any dungeon, so I'm sure we'll find a better opportunity.

Here's the room battle - the new enemy is the Pelagic Guardian. Guess what it does.

APART FROM TAKING MASSIVE DAMAGE FROM A LUNGE!

More regularly though, it uses Barnacle Barrier to Guard another monster while also increasing its Prot from 33 to 57% (even more when we get to its advanced versions). This is the kind of enemy that unfortunately make the Leper less reliable than a more flexible frontliner, like Crusaders or (once she gets rolling) the Shieldbreaker.

Shadow Fade! And a first look at how the Stealth status looks. Haze cannot be targeted by monsters as long as this is active, although she can still be hit by AoE attacks that also target a non-stealthed character.

Now, if you wanted the 50 internet points, time's up...... Now!

Salty Gouge deals moderate damage, but also carries a 2-point Bleed with it (and a less impactful -5 Dodge debuff).

This is already the second hunger event, which leaves us with no more food for the rest of the dungeon. A bit scary, and I won't go to the rightmost room if I don't have to. The mission is to clear all room battles, so I might be forced, though.

Another mariner, another misfortune.

With one exception in the Courtyard, obstacles always require a Shovel to be cleared, but the aesthetics are obviously different in every dungeon.
(The hallway fight before was nothing spectacular, two Thralls, one Stinger, and zero explosions. HP is even looking quite nice again)

Another scout tells me that yes, I do have to go through the entire dungeon to clear the mission. Fingers crossed for no more hungry adventurers!

No force of will can overcome a failing body.

...OK, who of you didn't cross their fingers?! Right in the one-tile hallway, too, so this might happen again...
The stress damage is fairly substantial, too - 16-17 points on everyone.

[Serpent's Sway, which blocks direct damage twice]
Next roombattle: Two of the Groupers, accompanied by two Cultists. You can see in the blurred background that the Acolyte got focussed down immediately, which means no lasting damage...

...just some sharp metal in the face. Nothing to worry about. [this is the Grouper's back rank attack, Spearfishing]

In the hallway, the standard Brigand group (Bloodletter, Cutthroat, Fuselier) waits for us. No problem either. Just to show it off, Vincent does his transformation.

[Rake]
It wouldn't really have been worth it in this situation, if it weren't for the sweet visuals. Your team recovers a little stress when he transforms back (always, either during battle or at the end), but it's still a net gain.

Cove-specific curio. It gives treasure (duh), but a hero opening it without a shovel might catch a Bleed. A key doesn't work, for some reason. Too many barnacles, I guess.

We find a low-tier HWM trinket. Nothing too fancy.

Last battle! I'm sure Saria will be juuuuust fiiiiiine!
(you recognize the curio already? I did. I smiled.)

The Sea Maggot has only 5 HP, but an incredible 75% Prot. Not a problem if you have Blight or the [Pierce] skill.

The Pelagic Shaman can both buff another monster (Call of the Deep: +5 Acc, +3 Crit, +25% Dmg) and cast Stress Wave. If I understand the wiki correctly, the latter only has a 25% chance of hitting two heroes, so that's a little unlucky.

The Curio is an Eldritch Altar, which I mentioned for having the same effect as the Eerie Coral. Which means that I got rid of THREE negative quirks in a single run, which is pretty crazy.
Saria uses it to purge her only bad quirk, Warrens Phobe.

At last, wholesome marine life can flourish - if indeed there is such a thing.

Even with the fairly high stress levels and two (not too severe) negative quirks, I consider this a pretty productive run. 10/10, would cove again.

"Hey, hey. About that Courtyard. Hey, you should check it out. It's cool. Mhm."

Hey, the first stress-healing side effect! ...the worst one in the list, too. Although it's really not too bad on the Occultist. Being Calm reduces direct damage on turn 1 by 15%, which would be catastrophic on a more offensive-minded class.

In the Stage Coach, we find the Switzerland of Quirk combinations: +10% Dmg, but also -10% Dmg when torchlight is above 75%. It could drive a man to neutrality. With one visit to the Sanitarium, Vauville would be really good. Unfortunately for him...

...Rainnecourt is even better, with Natural Swing increasing his Acc by 5, and Steady decreasing his Stress by 10%. For now, I reduce my Vestal count back to 2, because those are two amazing quirks to hopefully lock in.

This one has become vestigial. Useless.

The vestigial Vestal.

I get the additional treatment slots that I was talking about - it's time to waste money. But to waste slightly less money, I also get the first Treatment Library upgrade to reduce cost for quirk removal / locking in by 10%

Experimental techniques and tonics can overcome things a sharpened sword cannot.

For starters, Gitano (Antiquarian) gets rid of Kleptomania, while our new Plague Doctor overcomes her Scientific mind (-20% healing recieved from Vestal) and locks in Luminous. And just like that, we're down 10k gold.

Aand another 3000, maybe 4000. Haze insists to visit the Brothel because her Love Interest works there (which is apparently something that can be changed at the Sanitarium. Hm.), Saria is a talented gambler and Vincent goes drinking...

...because it's cheaper than to flagellate himself.

The plan is to check out the Farmstead now - the dungeon from the Color of Madness DLC with some unique mechanics. The little name given to the team comp seems fairly accurate - it's a hard-hitting group, but with real fancy combos. A little marking between BH and HWM, some Bleed skills on those two as well, three potential Stunners - but not leaning very heavily in any special kind of damage dealing.

Now, you might have noticed that rather small number in the bottom left corner. Well, Guild and Blacksmith don't work for free...

Here's the little Guild and Blacksmith texts about our good ol' initial duo.

The unusual part about the Farmstead? It's not really a dungeon, so you don't need to deck yourself in with torches or shovels. Just a couple healing items is what you need.

...stinking of sweat and manure. Seated comfortably in my observatory, surrounded by telescopes and other delicate apparatus, I recognized his misfortune as anopportunity, and I agreed to lend him my... expertise.

Reminder: The ancestor was NOT a particularly kind-hearted gentleman.

Yes... Very safe... You don't find anything here except this Celestial Cornerstone and you can't do anything except examine it.

This drops you right into a fight against four Farmhands, which have the new "Husk" enemy type in addition to the old "Human" one. Their stats are fairly average - 12 HP, 8 Dodge and a rather low 2 Spd.

Their first skill is Sow the Seeds, which carries a 2-point Blight and causes 10 points of Stress.

Ceaseless Labor just deals a fairly low amount of damage with no added effect on it.

YOU PEASANTS SHOULD KNOW YOUR PLACE! I'VE WRITTEN DOWN WHERE IT IS BUT I GUESS YOU'RE TOO DUMB TO READ!

...huh? What happened to those corpses?

After killing an enemy, if you don't remove the corpse at the end of the turn, they will be turned into these Crystalline Aberrations. And if you fail to remove these before the end of the turn, then...

 

 

...well, I didn't walk into this one, this time. They'd explode, either dealing heavy damage to a single target (with added Blight and Stress), or doing a more tame AoE attack that also causes Horror.

If you do target them down in time, the hero doing so will recover a small amount of HP. Which is nice, because fights in the Farmstead go on and on and on and on. In fact, this whole mission counts as one single fight!

Beaten enemies will be replaced quickly by another wave, so you can never get into the "healing mode" like you can in regular fights after killing the stress/damage dealers. Notice the meter in the top right - that shows how far you got into a "wave" of enemies. For this first venture, this one wave is the entire dungeon.

A bit later, a Plow Horse spawns, with 20 HP (which is rather low for an enemy that takes two ranks) and a little bit of Prot and Dodge on it.

It can Paw The Ground to stealth itself until its next turn (and also move to the 3rd and 4th rank)...

...which it will always follow up with a Trample. The damage itself isn't too severe...

...but it does unpleasant things to your party order.

[slowly resetting] - Crusader isn't exactly the most mobile class there is.

Rearing Strike is the Horses' standard attack, carrying a 1-point Bleed and a Stun.

And finally (those two horses used all their moves in quick succession, which is quite conveniant for this LP), Bestial Scream just deals a bit of Stress. No HP damage or any other secondary effect, so it's less dangerous than its other moves.

Around the halfway point of the wave, a Foreman appears. As a free action at the start of each turn, he will Stir The Rabble, boosting one Farmhand if an unboosted one is around. It improves the Farmhand Blight a bit, but also gives it "Riposte", which allows the Farmhand to retaliate with a fairly weak attack.

Unless they're one-shot, of course.

No Trespassers, if it hits, deals moderate damage, carries Bleed (2 dmg), Mark, and may increase Stress taken for three rounds.

Next up, the Scarecrow, who starts the fight stealthed for two turns.

It uses Flail The Crops for moderate Damage and some Blight...

...and Haunting Revelation to inflict Horror (3 Stress per turn for three turns).

Festering fear consumes the mind!

That's all the enemies we encounter in our first venture here. In later runs, you get a whole lot more enemy variation, so what you see here (enemies using only Blight and Stress, while being weak to Bleed themselves) isn't necessarily what you'll face later.

The Farmhand is using Pause from Labour here, healing itself for 4 HP.

One last thing: Normal torchlight effects are replaced by this Miasma - makes sense, since Scouting Chance isn't really a thing here. For trinkets and quirks, this counts as maximal brightness, so Sigurd's Warrior of Light was in full effect the entire time.

And done! The Kill count hints at what is to come in future visits to the Farmstead. I'll show what the Comet Shards are for in the Hamlet part of the next update.

The new quirks are a bit disappointing. Warrens Explorer is kinda nice when it's active, but Fear of Unholy (a.k.a. the enemy type Sigurd deals bonus damage again) and Weak Grip (-5 Crit on Melee skills) are both pretty impactful on the classes they landed on. Stout (stronger healing camp skills) is even weaker than usual on the HWM, who isn't exactly famous for his great healing skills anyways.

In town, it seems like Saria wasn't quite as skilled as she thought herself to be. The Enlightened quirk on Pramanix is one of the more likely side effects of Meditation - it means that she can now only meditate for stress relief. I believe all six activities have a chance of this (or the opposite, locking the hero out of that activity) happening. In this case, it's no problem; it's more annoying if a character is locked into more expensive stress reliefs.

Why yes, of course it's possible that a hero can only meditate for stress relief while simultaniously not being allowed to meditate for stress relief. Remember what game we're playing.
(OK, that's funny, maybe, but not fair. Darkest Dungeon has a bunch of anti-frustration features as well, it's just that "protecting your heroes" isn't one of them)
(notice the Town Event, btw. Stop poking me, game!)

And that's it for today. Thanks for reading!

 

[Golb89]

3 hours ago, ping said:

Update 7: Broke again

Spoiler

3 hours ago, ping said:

It always stings a little to do trades because they're obviously (it's basic video game logic!) not in your favour, but sometimes it's just necessary.

Just like class-promotion chips in Arknights...

3 hours ago, ping said:

Sorry, Silence, you've been replaced.

O RLY?

3 hours ago, ping said:

I should mention that our Vestal is the (finally renamed) Saria.

Good, now we can finally assist at this kind of scenes in dungeons and in the hamlet.

Oh right, you are getting rid of Silence...

3 hours ago, ping said:

No force of will can overcome a failing body.

...OK, who of you didn't cross their fingers?! Right in the one-tile hallway, too, so this might happen again...

Welcome to Corpse Dragging.

3 hours ago, ping said:

The Sea Maggot has only 5 HP, but an incredible 75% Prot. Not a problem if you have Blight or the [Pierce] skill.

(Btw, if we'll ever get a Piromaniac/Arsonist/Flamemaster character their name will be Ifrit)

3 hours ago, ping said:

Haze insists to visit the Brothel because her Love Interest works there

3 hours ago, ping said:

Reminder: The ancestor was NOT a particularly kind-hearted gentleman.

Spoiler

3 hours ago, ping said:

YOU PEASANTS SHOULD KNOW YOUR PLACE! I'VE WRITTEN DOWN WHERE IT IS BUT I GUESS YOU'RE TOO DUMB TO READ!

3 hours ago, ping said:

Next up, the Scarecrow

3 hours ago, ping said:

And done! The Kill count hints at what is to come in future visits to the Farmstead.

3 hours ago, ping said:

I'll show what the Comet Shards are for in the Hamlet part of the next update.

Gacha currency?

3 hours ago, ping said:

In town, it seems like Saria wasn't quite as skilled as she thought herself to be.

3 hours ago, ping said:

The Enlightened quirk on Pramanix is one of the more likely side effects of Meditation - it means that she can now only meditate for stress relief.

And here is how she reached enlightment:

Maybe.

(Note: from now on i'm gonna keep my update-related comments under "spoiler" to avoid cluttering the page and, well, spoiling the update)

Edited May 19, 2020 by Golb89

[Benice]

4 hours ago, ping said:

If the radiance of a thousand suns
were to burst at once into the sky
that would be like
the splendour of the Mighty One and I am become Death, the shatterer of worlds. - Robert Oppenheimer, quoting Hindu scriptures.

Golly.

4 hours ago, ping said:

Aand another 3000, maybe 4000. Haze insists to visit the Brothel because her Love Interest works there (which is apparently something that can be changed at the Sanitarium. Hm.), Saria is a talented gambler and Vincent goes drinking...

Fetch more pillows?!

And related to that: You'd better help Haze's love interest!

Can we call the next abomination Benice?

4 hours ago, ping said:

TEN BILLION BLISTERTING BLUE BARNACLES!

4 hours ago, ping said:

Fingers crossed for no more hungry adventurers!

Me every time I play a game with RNG dependent events.

4 hours ago, ping said:

And TWO of them are Eerie Corals, which is ridiculously lucky.

You could say that it's Eerie that you found multiple of them.

And fun fact, the words "These fiends spring forth from a madman's nightmare" were said three times on the farm.

[ping]

5 hours ago, Benice said:

Fetch more pillows?!

And related to that: You'd better help Haze's love interest!

Can we call the next abomination Benice?

We can send her to the Sanitarium once we're slightly rich again, no problem. I'm just not sure what exactly to read into that - convince Haze's SO to stop working at the brothel, or force Haze to see other people...

Sure! Name's noted.

6 hours ago, Golb89 said:

O RLY?

YA RLY-- Hm. Oh.
(it's too late though, characters don't reappear once you drop them)

 

[Benice]

11 minutes ago, ping said:

Sure! Name's noted

Should I be insulted by how fast you accepted that?

11 minutes ago, ping said:

(it's too late though, characters don't reappear once you drop them)

We sent them to the ranch. Or, in Sigurd's case if it happens to him, the BBQ party.

[ping]

 

On 5/20/2020 at 8:27 AM, Benice said:

Should I be insulted by how fast you accepted that?

Apologies. I meant to say, "Kid, while self-deprecating humour can be funny, make sure that it doesn't evolve into genuine self-loathing. Also keep in mind that making harsh jokes about yourself will signal to others that it's fine to make that kind of jokes about you as well. This can already be very taxing in your IRL social circles, when one of your friends (or friends' friends) fancies himself a comedian and doesn't know when to shut the fuck up. On the internet, you'll have to add that complete strangers may start mocking you in what they may consider playful banter.
Take this into consideration the other way around as well! Content creators that you know and admire won't automatically recognize your being "playful" or "ironic". They don't know you, they can't read your facial expression or body language - for all they know, you could just be That Guy From The YT Comments (or Twitter, or Twitch chat) who likes being an asshole."

• Update 8: Boss Time!

Spoiler

Back in the Hamlet, I'm faced with a conundrum. We have the option to recruit the goodest class, but there's not really anyone on my team that I really want to kick. But since the Houndmaster really is the goodest class, Evenque will have to go - no flogging action for now, I'm afraid. On the plus side, he still wasn't renamed (I'll do that only once a character is either Lv.1 or I've put some money on the table to adjust ther quirks, so that it's more unlikely that I'm going to want to kick them), so the "Warfarin" name suggestion hasn't been wasted on a zero-appearance character.

Boneth has one quirk we haven't seen before - he likes to get naked. While inappropriate, this gives him some rather nice bonuses if we walks into a dungeon with no trinkets equipped - right now, I'd say those bonuses are more than on par with what trinkets could give him. Later in the game, this'll probably become a worthless quirk though.

A lawman and his faithful beast - a bond forged by battle and bloodshed.

See things going from good to bad here.

The goodest class is, in fact, quite good and flexible. The Houndmaster focusses on Mark and Bleed play, sporting the best Mark ability in the game and a Bleed ability hitting every enemy at once, but also a pretty good Stun ability and a neat little stress heal.

Defensively, he's not too great - good dodge, but low HP - and if he can't Bleed his targets, his damage output is fairly weak, too, despite pretty good crit chances on his single-target attacks. He's very flexible in which ranks he can stand though. His Stun requires rank 1-2, but if you can live without it, he can just stand in the back ranks where he usually takes less HP damage.

When taking the Houndmaster into a dungeon, you'll start with two Dog Treats in your inventory, which significantly boost his Dmg (+50%) and Acc (+15) for three turns. Unfortunately, I don't think you can use these ahead of time when you know that a big (boss) battle is incoming. In regular expeditions, I honestly end up tossing them more often than I'd like.

Lv1: 21 HP | 10 DODGE | 5 SPD | 4% CRIT | 4-7 DMG
Lv5: 37 HP | 30 DODGE | 7 SPD | 8% CRIT | 7-13 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    40 | Move   40 | Blight 40 | Bleed 40 |
Disease 30 | Debuff 30 | Death  67 | Trap  40 |

Movement: 2 forwards, 2 backwards

Excellent basic attack, despite the Houndmaster's mediocre base damage. Perfect reach, decent crit chance, some Bleed to increase its damage, and a big Dmg bonus against Marked targets (that goes up to +100% at max level) if that's the team comp you're playing.

A bit of the Bleed version of the Shieldbreaker's Impale - an attack hitting every enemy at once while carrying a DOT effect. The direct damage is quite a bit lower (Impale is at -60% and, again, lower base damage on the HM), the Bleed a little stronger. However, this can be used from every rank, so the team comp doesn't need to accommodate for this attack being used at all.

Best Mark in the game, I think. Like the Bounty Hunter's version of this, the lowered Prot on the target is huge, since Mark teams struggle with high-Prot enemies specifically. However, Target Whistle has a larger debuff (by 10 points) AND the debuff is much more likely to get through.

Underwhelming right now - everyone with a 2/3 chance to heal only 2 Stress - but fairly good on higher levels. The numbers go up to 74% / -6 Stress, which is becoming really helpful to keep Stress low on a long mission.

Not a fan. Increased Dodge is great and all, but the Houndmaster's HP is so low that I'd rather not have him be targeted too often.

Not too great either. The amount of HP healed is decent, but there's no additional Stress heal like on the Abom and Leper's self heals.

This one's good though. Bit more reliable than most Stuns, good reach, still some damage on top of the Stun. The rank requirement is the biggest issue here, since it's safer to keep the Houndmaster in the back ranks. At least it only comes into conflict with one of his other moves (Cry Havoc can only be used in 3rd or 4th rank)

Now, what to do... There's a really nice trinket to get in the ruins - increased healing with no downside attached. However, visiting the Farmstead last week set free a roaming boss: The Thing From The Stars will always be roaming one location, and if you take any mission there, there's a 50% chance that it'll show up as a random hallway battle.

Beating it would give us more Crystal Shards, which can be traded in at the Nomad's Wagon for some trinkets. Most of them are class-specific, and many of them are really, really good.

So, I scramble together a team that should work fairly well both in the Ruins and (hopefully) against the Thing. Like all bosses, it has a different statline depending on the level of the dungeon (Apprentice, Veteran, or Champion - you can actually see the first Veteran dungeon unlocked on the Estate Map), so you don't have to worry that you'll run into a enemy with endgame-worthy stats on him.

The mission is a new type: We need to "activate" three relics, which are functionally curios that we have to find. They need specific items to be cleansed with, so these Essences will clog our inventory until we find the three Altars to use them on.

Can the defiled be consecrated? Can the fallen find rest?

We get an immediate scout, which is nice. The altars look the same as normal curios on the mini map, but the tooltip will say "Quest Location" instead. Right here, all three blue icons are regular curios. I go north first, ever fearful that the hallway fight might be the Thing...

Buuuut it's not. Easy money. (literally, they drop 650g)

Nothing else really happens - just some sacks of loot and another Scout that allows me to skip the last room - just poke into the hallway, get the curio (which was just an empty sack), and get back to the entrance.

Next, we go south, into the next hallway battle. Is it going to be the Thing?! Well, I titled this episod "Boss Time", so I'm sure everyone has already figured out what it is:

A different, random, completely unrelated roaming boss! Naturally! Meet THE COLLECTOR.

The Collector has a 4% chance to appear in any hallway fight, as long as you have at least 11 of your 16 inventory slots full. His main gimmick...

...will have to wait for a turn, because he got surprised (i.e. he moves last on turn 1) and Vincent manages to Stun him here.

Here we go! The Collector will always start the battle with his Collect Call ability...

...which will summon three minions, with the Collector moving to the 4th rank in the process. These minions are called (from right to left) Collected Highwayman, Vestal, and Man-at-Arms, which spoils one of the classes that we hadn't had a chance to recruit yet. There's a chance that the MaA or Vestal is replace with a second HWM.

The Man at Arms is a bulky, defensive support class and the Collected version reflects that: It uses Head Games to Guard another one of the summoned minions, or it uses Head Knocker for some moderate damage and a chance to stun; both reflecting abilities of the real MaA.

The HWM only uses Headhunt, which deals a fair bit of damage, can hit any rank, and has a 12% chance to crit.

The Vestal didn't get a turn, so I don't have any screenshot, but it can heal, buff another minion (+10 Acc, +10 Crit, +50% Dmg), or use a weak attack with some Stress added to it.

This fight's difficulty can fluctuate a lot depending on your team setup. Good reach is paramount - you want to prioritize the Collector itself, because otherwise, it'll just keep summoning new minions to replace the ones you've killed.

Stunning the minions is the better option to reduce the number of attacks you have to eat. Our team comp has quite a few options in that regard...

...but its reach leaves something to be desired. Sigurd goes for the kill here to get the Collector at least back to 3rd rank, where I have more options to strike. Except that the Collector immediately uses Collect Call again, summoning another HWM to replace the killed Vestal.

When he isn't summoning, the Collector likes to use Life Steal, which healed him for 10 HP (sic) here. He also has a stress-inducing move, but he didn't use it in this fight.

My big damage dealers against the Collector itself are Blight (which Vincent can inflict on 2nd+3rd rank) and Haze's Lunge (which can't target 4th rank, either).

And boom! Collector down.

Definitely one of the smoother Collector fights out there, but this boss isn't super dangerous - in a vacuum, anyways. We were in good shape when he jumped on us. When he appears at the tail end of a mission, when your team is battered and bruised, that's when you lose heroes to the Collector, and thanks to the filled inventory requirement for him to appear, that's not too unlikely to happen.

Alternatively, two of his Highwaymen, one of them boosted by the Collected Vestal, focussing one hero and getting one or two crits - that's another way that this fight could have gone south VERY fast.

Seize this momentum - push on to the task's end!

The collector drops one of those Trapezohedrons that we also found in the secret room in a previous dungeon. Sometimes, you'll get some unique (and slightly unsettling) trinkets, instead.

After that, I'm cruisin' through the dungeon. Always a little apprehensive that the Thing might appear, but it doesn't, and we've seen all enemies from the Apprentice-tier Ruins already, I think.

This ability is new though: Inspiring Cry, healing very little HP but also a bit of stress.

I screwed up a little with the altars and didn't get a clear shot of how they initially look. This is them after purification...

...and here's an untouched one in the background of the fight.

Oh, I told a lie: We haven't seen the red spider yet. It's called a Webber.

It webs.
(which sets a mark, debuffs Blight resistance and may Stun. Basically a set-up move for the Spitter, whose attack carries Blight and does double damage against mark. Four spiders can actually be surprisingly dangerous if you can't trim their numbers before they act)

Quickly going through the rest: The Holy Fountain heals Stress, HP, and status effects when you use Holy Water on it. Licking it may either give a weaker effect of the same, or you find a few treasures.

The Altar of Light boosts your damage by +30% until you set camp if you use Holy Water on it (or by +20% if you lick it). This is after I scouted that there won't be any more fights, otherwise the boost would've gone to Sigurd or maybe Haze.

Another Journal - I think this is the first part we've seen from this story. [fake-edit while copying this into the forums: This is technically correct - it is the first part, but we've seen it before]

And another secret room! We're rich again! Whoooo!
This time I even remember checking out the remaining curios first, so that I don't throw away the item I would need to cleanse them to make room for these treasures - Trapezohedrons do not stack at all.

Beacons in the darkness, stars in the emptiness of the void.

Huh, this amount of gold would actually have been a bit low if it wasn't for the Trapezohedrons adding 14k. Decent number of heirlooms, though.

No new negative traits, which is always nice.

And the game isn't poking me about the courtyard this time! These "activate" missions always give some kind of bonus for the next week - and since it gets applied via Town Event, it blocked the usual Bzzzzzzzzzzzz from the mosquitos. Nice!

Back in the Hamlet, there's actually no new class in the Stage Coach to talk about for once. So I'm going directly to the next mission select, which is NOT going to be the Necromancer. It yealds an Ethereal Crucifix, which is a pretty strong trinket in the Cove (all those fishies count as Eldritch), but I'm still hoping for a big jackpot for the trinket reward.

In fact, we're going to ignore the increased Dmg and XP in the Ruins and take a look at the Cove, because the Life Crystal is a stellar trinket, especially considering that it's only uncommon.
It may not be obvious from the screenshot, but I'm in fact preparing to fight another surprise encounter here - but the 50% chance unfortunately doesn't fire.

Meanwhile, Sigurd and Rainecourt work out their issues (Sigurd gets rid of his Fear of Undead). Dismas pursues tranquility in the Abbey - otherwise, I try to make use of the passive (-5 per week) stress healing.

The smell of rotten fish is almost unbearable, but we must find its source...
Unfortunately, there's nothing too interesting about the run without the encounter I was hoping for. No new enemies, no encounters going horribly wrong.

A new curio, though: The Fish Carcass can be cleansed with Medical Herbs, yielding some treasure and supplies (this one gave an Antitoxin among other things, for example).

The team comp can deal some nice damage against the enemy back rows, despite the Leper adding into that. The Shieldbreaker starts in 1st rank for the option to use Adder's Kiss - probably not the best option in hindsight, since the Grave Robber using Lunge would push the Leper into the useless 3rd rank if GR goes first or SB doesn't use the low-reach Adder's Kiss.

...well this is slightly annoying. Luckily, Pramanix and Haze got their attacks off before being stunned (and losing their turn 2 actions hurts a bit less). Unluckily, the Deep Stinger Jellyfish thingies also have a small chance of causing a random disease, and Pramanix caught a Creeping Cough (-20% Dmg, not great on a damage dealer as you might imagine).

A neat little trick: An AoE attack that hits both the Guard and the Guardee will circumvent the whole thing. An attack targeting 2nd and 3rd rank would've hit the Guardian and the unguarded Stinger.

I don't think we've seen the Guardian attack yet: Octocestus is a fairly inaccurate attack (77.5% Acc, and Pramanix carries a trinket that increases her Dodge) that can only target 1st and 2nd rank and carries a 2-point bleed. Not super scary.

I set up camp soon after that fight - not so much because I need the healing and stress recovery, and more to free the inventory from Firewood and one of the Food stacks.

Some classes have the ability to cure diseases during camp, which saves a little bit of money and, more importantly, means that you hopefully won't have to fight a boss while suffering from the Red Plague.


Speaking of bosses, at this point I know, for reasons unknown, that I won't find any.
(outside of a random Collector, which this team wouldn't have had too much trouble with if it had appeared)

Shortly after, we find one of those Eerie Corals and we roll the dice: Will Haze stop obsessing over that one sex worker?

Nah, but she's less obsessed with herself now. Which is a good thing, too.

Specter catches another rather horrible disease shortly before finishing the dungeon, probably Malaria (which was called Ague before people learned to speak Italian).

We find another short journal page - we've seen the conclusion of this one already.

Giant Oysters can be wedged open with a shovel to find some treasure - without it, there's a good chance that it'll slam shut, causing a bleed. For some reason, giving it a doggie treat will raise one hero's Dodge by 25, although this will probably never come up - the Bleed-focussed Houndmaster isn't too great in the Cove and you can't buy doggie treats in the Hamlet. Truly a hellhole.

But that's already just about everything interesting happening on this mission. Loot has been unusually gold-tilted - which is neither good nor bad per se, I guess.

Quirk-wise, we get another two heroes prone to licking certain curios, which is a little annoying. Clutch Hitter increases Crit by 5 points when below half HP - nice when it comes up, but way to inconsistent to make it worth locking in.

Back in the Hamlet, we get another non-poking, non-buzzing town event! Yay!

It unlocks another mechanic to upgrade our Estate: By building (or restoring, rather) Districts. Some of them come from the Colour of Madness DLC and require crystal shards to build (or another Farmstead-related resource, in the Mill's case)...

... while others require a Blueprint (additional ones dropped by bosses such as the Necromancer), some money, and a LOT of heirlooms. I'm partial to the Puppet Theater, myself - saves a lot of gold over time and also reduces the need to upgrade Abbey or Tavern. It's worth keeping that in mind, to prioritize quests that give crests as reward.

Finally, we get a peek at an awesome class - but a hero with rather awful quirks. Unyealding is great (+10% chance to survive a death blow), but both The Yips (-5% Acc all the time) and Curious (chance to lick ANY!!! curio) are awful. For now, I'll hold off on the Hellion, but let's get the class overview out of the way:

Barbaric rage and unrelenting savagery make for a powerful ally.

Poor little coward...

The Hellion is another frontline unit similar to the Crusader and the Leper. Not quite the same HP pool, but a decent Dodge, great base damage (same as the Crusader) and a skillset that ties her to the 1st or (less preferably) 2nd rank, and she doesn't particularly enjoy being shuffled away from those. One of her camp skills even gives her a large damage boost when in 1st rank - and an equally large penalty when standing anywhere else.

She has two great aspects going for her: great reach and one of the only two double Stuns in the game. Some of her skills come with exhaustion effects (similar to the Flagellant's low-HP skills) which makes them more situational, but it's worth noting that a strong first turn can often trivialize the rest of the fight even if one of your heroes has her damage output lowered.

Lv1: 26 HP | 10 DODGE | 4 SPD | 5% CRIT | 6-12 DMG
Lv5: 46 HP | 30 DODGE | 6 SPD | 9% CRIT | 10-19 DMG

Resist%:
Stun    40 | Move   40 | Blight 40 | Bleed 40 |
Disease 30 | Debuff 30 | Death  67 | Trap  20 |

Movement: 1 forwards, 0 backwards

Standard low-reach attack.

Practically identical to the Wicked Hack (+1 crit, whoop whoop), but it hits the 4th rank. Which is amazing, since no other class can deal so much damage to that rank consistently and with no (mark) setup needed.

The aforementioned double Stun. The penalty attached is pretty bad (and doesn't go down at higher levels), but this can still be an amazing way to start a battle. Bonus points if you have a Plague Doctor on your team that simultaniously stuns both back ranks.
A slight problem with this ability is that the Hellion isn't particularly fast (she's fast for a tank, but that doesn't say a lot), so this isn't 100% consistent in preventing the enemies' first turn. Still a great skill, though.

Still deals quite good damage despite the penalty, thanks the Bleed and the Hellion's high base damage. It's worth noting that this is her best way to damage the 3rd rank, so it's needed to get full reach on your Hellion.

Interesting move - 50% damage on three ranks is pretty good in theory, but with the self-debuff and her lack of other options in the back ranks, this is still more of a party order fix than anything you'd want to spam.

Needs a couple turns to ramp up enough damage to pay for the fact that she didn't attack on turn 1, making this more of a boss-specific ability. It's a bit better on higher levels (+10 Acc, +30 Dmg), but it's still a big investment in most normal fights not to deal damage on your first turn.

Very, very strong - but because of the awful reach, I hardly ever use this skill. It's worth noting that Bleed Out + If It Bleeds have the same combined reach as Wicked Hack + If It Bleeds, though, so maybe I should reconsider.

In other news, people go to the Sanitor. Treating Ague is a necessity, Photomania (reduced stress at hight torchlight) is great to lock in, and Pramanix gets rid of one quirk because favouritism.

We make another attempt at fighting the Thing From The Stars, this time in the Cove. It helps that the Warrior's Cap is neat little trinket, especially for Gawain, with absolutely no downside attached.

These salt-soaked caverns are teeming with pelagic nightmares - they must be flushed out.

Clear Room Battles is the name of the game, and there's the first right away. No new enemies...

...but the Sea Maggot gets an attempt, since it two turns for it to die from Vincent's Blight. This is its only move, Brine - low Acc, low Dmg, but an annoying 8% chance to force a roll against Disease.

The team is very stun-heavy with literally more potential Stun skills than characters, although Parthenai Myrrh (dang, forgot to rename again. Made a note with all remaining name changes, too, and still forgot) goes with double Blight skills, Heal, and only one Stun. Still, every character being able to Stun is pretty darn nice.

Now, I'm sure you already know what's gonna happen. This IS the "Boss Time" update, after all.

Correct, another Collector fight! Of course! What else?!

Things don't go quite as smoothly as the first time, with the Collector not being surprised and resisting Vincent's attempt to Stun it. Two Collected HWM also means more damage potential.

But the RNG makes up for it with a nice immediate dodge...
[Show Collection: only 1 HP damage, but 80% chance to cause 10 Stress - the Collector relies more on the Collected to threaten you]

...and a nice meaty Crit by Saria.

Saria: "Blacken our world no longer!"

This is the Collected Vestal's Headache ability (+10 Acc, +10 Crit, +50% Dmg)...

...and, next turn, the Head Rush (which also deals +10 Stress).

My main source of damage, is Vincent and soon-to-be Myrrh Blighting the Collector. Myrrh can always reach with her AoE blight, while Vincent needs one or two Collected going down in order to puke on the Collector.

This screenshot confused me for a bit since 4x5 HP seems too high for this stage of the game. Divine Comfort heals 2-3 HP on its current level and the +15% adds another point because the game rounds up in this case. What I missed initially was Saria getting a temporary +25% Healing power by scoring that crit - 3*1.4 = 4.2, rounded up (don't do that in Maths class, kids).

TL;DR: Vestal good.

Seize this momentum - push on to the tasks's end!

The downside of killing the Collector with Blight: We don't get a specific line by Ancestor, just a generic victory one.

We get a Collector-specific trinket this time - the Collected Vestal's head. Ew. Junia is the Vestal's "canon" name, although that doesn't really do anything in gameplay.
You could argue that this is a bit of a plothole, especially since the starting HWM is called Dismas and the Collector can drop Dismas' Head and you can equip Dismas' Head on Dismas. But that would make the bold assumption that time and space work entirely like they're supposted to around the Estate. This is lovecraftian horror, after all.

Anyway, the Thing From The Start did not spawn (this time for sure because I explored every hallway), so I'll just quickly go through the new and/or noteworthy stuff happening:

Ancient traps lie in wait, unsprung and thirsting for blood.

This is how traps look in the Cove - they deal a lot less direct damage than in the Ruins, but they debuff the hero (-5 Spd, -20 Dodge) for 12 turns. It's not quite as long as it sounds, since it ticks down while walking though the dungeon, but it's still very likely to affect a battle or three.

We're now halfway through Darius' journal - here's parts four and six.

The Pelagic Shaman's Sea Breeze, rolling max HP here.

In the very last room, we find another Eldrich Altar - now Myrrh doesn't believe in demons anymore that compel her to lick Unholy curios.

And that's it! Decent haul overall, considering it was only a short dungeon; I'm especially happy with the number of heirlooms.

Quirks are semi-bad - Night Blindness lowers Dmg at very low torchlight, which is relevant for one specific boss starting with "S" and ending in "HAMBLER" who locks the light level to zero. Stout (more camp healing) is irrelevant, Ashen (-10 Bleed and Blight resist) is bad.

And I think this is the first time we get a disease after the dungeon? Yeah, that happens. Catching the Black Plague isn't very nice, as you can imagine.

It's back! ...I think we may have to take a look, after all. Can't postpone it forever
And I think that should do it for this update. Thanks for reading!

 

[Benice]

17 minutes ago, ping said:

Apologies. I meant to say, "Kid, while self-deprecating humour can be funny, make sure that it doesn't evolve into genuine self-loathing. Also keep in mind that making harsh jokes about yourself will signal to others that it's fine to make that kind of jokes about you as well. This can already be very taxing in your IRL social circles, when one of your friends (or friends' friends) fancies himself a comedian and doesn't know when to shut the fuck up. On the internet, you'll have to add that complete strangers may start mocking you in what they may consider playful banter.
Take this into consideration the other way around as well! Content creators that you know and admire won't automatically recognize your being "playful" or "ironic". They don't know you, they can't read your facial expression or body language - for all they know, you could just be That Guy From The YT Comments (or Twitter, or Twitch chat) who likes being an asshole."

Life lessons with Ping. And dang, that was inspiring.

19 minutes ago, ping said:

Shortly after, we find one of those Eerie Corals and we roll the dice: Will Haze stop obsessing over that one sex worker?

She's working on it.

19 minutes ago, ping said:

You could argue that this is a bit of a plothole, especially since the starting HWM is called Dismas and the Collector can drop Dismas' Head and you can equip Dismas' Head on Dismas.

Seems legit.

21 minutes ago, ping said:

you can't buy doggie treats in the Hamlet

WHAT?! HORRENDOUS! I DEMAND THAT YOU FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY!

22 minutes ago, ping said:

It's back! ...I think we may have to take a look, after all. Can't postpone it forever

Very subtle.

[Golb89]

4 hours ago, ping said:

Update 8: Boss Time!

Spoiler

 

4 hours ago, ping said:

A lawman and his faithful beast - a bond forged by battle and bloodshed.

Honey Badger.

4 hours ago, ping said:

See things going from good to bad here.

More like "from bad to MUCH worse".

4 hours ago, ping said:

When taking the Houndmaster into a dungeon, you'll start with two Dog Treats in your inventory, which significantly boost his Dmg (+50%) and Acc (+15) for three turns. Unfortunately, I don't think you can use these ahead of time when you know that a big (boss) battle is incoming. In regular expeditions, I honestly end up tossing them more often than I'd like.

4 hours ago, ping said:

Specter catches another rather horrible disease shortly before finishing the dungeon, probably Malaria (which was called Ague before people learned to speak Italian).

4 hours ago, ping said:

Poor little coward...

Skyrim?

(Also, she's Frostleaf now)

4 hours ago, ping said:

Needs a couple turns to ramp up enough damage to pay for the fact that she didn't attack on turn 1, making this more of a boss-specific ability. It's a bit better on higher levels (+10 Acc, +30 Dmg), but it's still a big investment in most normal fights not to deal damage on your first turn.

It cures blight/bleed too though, and unlike Haze's skill this one doesn't seem to be limited to once per battle so...

4 hours ago, ping said:

(dang, forgot to rename again. Made a note with all remaining name changes, too, and still forgot)

At least you didn't forget to give Owen the Holy Orb for 4 maps straight (or finally did it but forgot to save after that)

4 hours ago, ping said:

...and a nice meaty Crit by Saria.

Saria: "Blacken our world no longer!"

4 hours ago, ping said:

What I missed initially was Saria getting a temporary +25% Healing power by scoring that crit - 3*1.4 = 4.2, rounded up (don't do that in Maths class, kids).

4 hours ago, ping said:

It's back! ...I think we may have to take a look, after all. Can't postpone it forever

Especially now that mosquitoes have started infesting my house again...

 

 

 

3 hours ago, Benice said:

4 hours ago, ping said:

you can't buy doggie treats in the Hamlet

WHAT?! HORRENDOUS! I DEMAND THAT YOU FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY!

Working on it:

Welp, guess that explains lot of things...

... maybe.

 

Edited May 21, 2020 by Golb89

[ping]

On 5/21/2020 at 8:06 PM, Benice said:

WHAT?! HORRENDOUS! I DEMAND THAT YOU FIX THIS IMMEDIATELY!

WE NEED MORE HOUNDMASTERS! QUAD HOUNDMASTER EVERY MISSION!

22 hours ago, Golb89 said:

Skyrim?

(Also, she's Frostleaf now)

No intential reference - never got into Elder Scrolls.
I didn't recruit that Hellion (team's full and I don't want to spend heirlooms on the State Coach right now), but the name is physically written down so that I can still completly forget once we have room for a Hellion.

22 hours ago, Golb89 said:

It cures blight/bleed too though, and unlike Haze's skill this one doesn't seem to be limited to once per battle so...

Right. I didn't realize that and kinda assumed that it was another "use once, bonus lasts all battle" skill. Regular buffs last three turns, so it's just not worth using purely for the damage boost, but it might be good if you're an a DOT-heavy dungeon or facing a Dodge-heavy enemy.

• Update 9: Greed is good (*)

Spoiler

After that last expedition, we now have the second boss unlocked: The Siren can now be found in the Cove. Having multiple bosses available is quite nice since they all roll for a new Very Rare trinket every week. Here we have the Dark Tambourine, which gives the Jester some nice bonuses at low torch levels.

Every creature has a weakness. The wise hero trains for what she will face.

Now, the game claims that some of our heroes have reached Lv.2, but it is lying. At best, they're at Level 1.25 now - their resists have increased, but their attacks, HP, base Dmg and all that good stuff have not. I'd prefer to get to actual Lv.2 or at least 1.75 before opening the floodgates that is the Crimson Court DLC, which means upgrading the Guild (done!) and at least one of the two Blacksmith levels.

(btw, this is a bit of an UI fail, in my opinion. Freshly recruited heroes start at Lv.0, but their skills and equipment do at Lv.1, which is needlessly confusing)

Since upgrading skills and equipment also becomes increasingly expensive in terms of gold, I'm doing another Antiquarian run into the Weald. I exchange the Vestal for our dear Lucy the Occultist before entering the dungeon, to have another Marker to set up for our Hound Master (who isn't called Honey Badger yet because I did the run right after posting the last update) and Bounty Hunter. Those two come along to have a not-too-tough expedition to reach Lv.1 in.

I still invest a couple thousand gold into the Sanitarium, to heal Saria from the Plague (which is both cheap and absolutely necessary), Marillac from his Spd penalty at high torchlight, and Kroos from being an ascetic drunkard (because of the Mark synergy she has with the Occultist).

Myrrh (properly renamed now) and Sigurd spend the week in the Abbey, staying the hell away from the Caretaker.

Corruption has soaked the soil, sapping all good life from these groves - let us burn out this evil.

The expedition is fairly standard shmandard, so I'll keep it brief.

Nature herself, a victim to the sperading corruption, malformed with misintent.

The Weald's obstacle, as usual cleared with a shovel, unless you enjoy HP damage and stress.

The whole "marking" business honestly didn't too much for me here. Most mobs I ran into were entirely low-HP monsters, so going for a mark+kill was hardly any different from just killing them in two, maybe three hits.

Good Girl! [Hound's Harry]

The Weald's traps don't deal any direct HP damage, but cause a 2-point Blight for three ticks. Probably the least dangerous version, but they still deal the same 15 Stress as every other one.

We didn't encounter any Ectoplasms in our first Weald run, I think. They're very weak individually - only 8 HP, no Prot, and this Slime attack isn't too dangerous, either.
However, they can also use the Cytokinesis attack (which has the exact same animation) to summon an additional Ectoplasm, which can draw out the fight and add more attrition if you aren't killing them quickly enough.

(I only now noticed that those are severed hands hanging from the tree in the background. Huh.)

(More importantly, the Houndmaster shields the doggo when attacked. Awwwwww....)

I feel a little pround of my constraint because I'm NOT digging up the grave right here because I only have the one shovel left and there's still some unscouted dungeon left. I'm even proven right by running into another obstacle shortly after this!

(I didn't even mention Gitano catching Rabies - that happens almost automatically when you're fighting a mob of bad doggos. You can see the disease symbol on her portrait.)

The last fight happens to be the only one where the Mark abilities actually DO something - those Fungal Scratchers are fairly bulky at 19 HP and - more importantly - 33% Prot, which Bounty Hunter and Hound Master can lower.

A singular strike...

[Hound's Rush]

[Blackjack, the HM's Stun ability]

Before all of that, the Madman used his AoE, Doomsay, which deals no HP damage, but every hero has an 80% chance of suffering some stress.

Which they all do, of course.

That group was guarding a Pristine Fountain, which heals 20 stress when licked; 30 if you use some Holy Water (which I didn't bring). Quite nice.

Driving out corruption is an endless battle, but one that must be fought.

[insert political joke]
Loot is alright, and so are the Quirks caught: Skilled Gambler on Rainecourt; Lucy became a Calm (less damage on T1, not a problem for an Occultist) Daredevil (+15 Dodge at low HP).

And, of course, the mosquitos keep coming. I wouldn't call it a fresh irritance at this point, Mr. June.

Now, let's have a look for the best available mission. The blacksmith needs deeds and crests to upgrade, so I should fi-- Is that a Blasphemous Vial, the item that makes the Plague Doctor so much more reliable? Increasing the Acc AND the likelyhood of the status effect to go through? For both her Stuns AND her Blights? Why, I think it is!

OK, the stuff unrelated to the dungeon real quick: Boneth gets his stress relief, not making any eye contact with the Caretaker...

...Saria (Ashen), Wrys, and Gitano (Rabies) get rid of some personal problems...

...and the Cleanup Crew makes its way towards the Siren.

To elaborate a little on the team comp: I try not to look up too much stuff BEFORE going into the dungeons, so I'm going after what I remember about the Siren - she's fairly susceptible to Blight (hence Myrrh), doesn't have much, if any, Prot (hence Haze, who can also use the Myrrh's Blight to make her Lunge even stronger), and doesn't really move away from the first two ranks (so Gawain should be able to hit her). She will also [redacted] and I can predict that she will target [redacted] first because [redacted] has [reacted] - that one I remember looking up during my first run.

Specter's position in this line-up is a bit awkward - I said my piece about Rank 2 Vestal and I'm not even speccing her to use her melee skills. Haze will push her to 3rd rank on the first turn, and when I really want to use the single-target heal on a certain turn, I can use Dagger Throw or Poison Darts instead of Shadow Fading back.

As Sun Tzu wrote: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.

...raise a glass in the tavern without concern for molestation. Faithful as the tide, one precocious village waif made it her hobby to shadow my every errand. It was charming then, troublesome later.

Subtle, Mr. Ancestor.

Critical scout right away, revealing a secret room, too. Nice!

As far as I know, bosses will always be in the room (or one of the rooms) the furthest away from the starting location, which in this case is the bottom left room with a distance of five hallways. It's possible that there's exceptions, but I've never seen any.
The plan: Beeline to the boss right away, kick her arse, set up camp to heal, then return to the right half of the map to collect as much of the treasure as I can without being too reckless.

On the way to the boss, Haze questions her life choices while smoking some medical herbs next to an Eerie Coral. She is doing God's work, driving back the corruption from this estate. Maybe, a hundred years, a thousand years from now, people will remember Saint Haze, the beautiful noblewoman who risked her life (although she better not lose it, sweet-thing) to deliver the family of man from this madness! And Saints don't consort with sinners, or prostitutes. Who ever heard of such a silly thing?
[Haze caught, and still has, the Hagiomania quirk, i.e. obsession with Sainthood]

Fights on the way to the boss don't pose too much of a problem - this one is annoying because of the snails' Prot and the jellyfishs' Stun attack, but their damage output is rather pitiful.

Myrrh catching the Rabies here is more impactful - lower Acc always sucks, and she doesn't even make use of the increased direct damage.

Iä! Iä! Cthulu fhtagn!

...what?

Using Holy Water on the Fish Statue increases Haze's damage by 18% until camp - very nice timing on that.

And here she is, the precocous waif? Meet our first "real" boss!

She always opens the fight with her Song of Desire, which has a 70% chance...

...to mindcontrol one of your heroes for two turns. I knew she would go for Specter because... well, we know how horny the Vestal is, and I guess word has reached the Cove at this point.

(That, and the first Song always targets your hero with the lowest Debuff resist, even though the 70% chance is fixed)

The controlled hero will gain 10 stress every turn and will randomly (I think) pick one of their abilities to use against you.

The initial RNG isn't too much on my side, unfortunately - the very first action (before the mind control - see Specter facing right in the background) was Myrrh mission her Noxious Blight, which means that Haze couldn't use a boosted Lunge, so she went for her own Blight instead.

[Devour]
Like many bosses (although not the Collector), the Siren has two actions per turn. Her own damage output isn't incredibly high despite that - the biggest danger comes from her yoinking one of your party members.

Bosses having multiple actions per turn has two further implications. One, DOTs are very effective. They tick twice per round, which means that they unleash their full damage faster (although the total damage is still the same).
Two, marks are a lot less effective since that status is timed as well and that timer ticks down with every boss action.

Things look... decent at the end of the second turn. The Siren's HP has dropped quite a bit already, even though Specter hits a Stun on Gawain right here.

At the start of turn 3, Specter regains her senses ("I had the most tranquil dream."), so it's 4vs1 again, until...

...well, this might hurt. A lot.

Gawain still has his boost to Stun resistance, too, so this attempt was somewhere between desperate and silly.

Ow! FUCK!

Did I mention that Devour carries Bleed? WELL IT DOES. Did I mention that a character at zero HP will have to roll against death every time they take damage? WELL THAT INCLUDES DOTS.

...OK, still alive. The chance to fail the death saving throw is 33%, so we MIGHT be lucky.

Still lucky... (and this was the last Bleed tick, too)

The Siren also has the ability to summon an additional monster - a Pelagic Grouper, Pelagic Guardian...

...or a Stinger.

Specter finally gets Myrrh away from Death's Door, although some penalties will remain...

...and Gawain undoes it anyways, putting her right back at 0 HP. Oof.

You better be!

(the Ancestor comments on Myrrh being back at Death's Door)

And here is something that I did not remember - characters coming to their senses don't return to their old position, they get pushed to 4th rank
This was already a problem before, because Specter being pushed behind Myrrh meant that Myrrh was suddenly standing in the 1st rank, where she can do literally nothing but back away. And now, it'll take Gawain two turns until he's able to start punching again...

...well, one turn, but that's not a good thing in this case.

(Wayne June is commenting on Specter getting Myrrh off Death's Door right before this)

Great! Now we have Myrrh at Death's Door, Bleeding, AND Stunned. And the only other healing spell is currently only restoring our enemy. This is fine. I'm okay with the events that are unfolding currently.

(Wayne June commenting on Specter healing herself while on the enemy's side. Smart girl.)

...still fine...

...OK, great...

FUCK.

Welp, there we go boys, first death. And OF COURSE it's a named character. Who also has the crazy good Luminous quirk locked in. And who remembers what trinket we were doing this boss fight for? Yeppp.

NOT HELPING SPECTER

I SAID NOT HELPING SPECTER

...
.....
That's better, Gawain.

I SWEAR TO GOD SPECTER CAN YOU KEEP IT IN YOUR PANTS FOR FIVE MINUTES

(for real tho, the Siren kept targeting Specter, with that one very painful, lépreux exception. Five times in total, with Specter resisting once... only to be mindcontrolled the turn immediatly after)

Oof. Oof.

...that was rougher than it had to be, honestly. I completely forgot to rearrange Gawain's skills before the fight - I leveled up Revenge (more Dmg and Acc, but also less Dodge and more Dmg taken) specifically for this fight, but I forgot...

...and Gawain did this. Twice. In a row. Look at the Siren's HP. And a certain Stunned Plague Doctor in the background.

As Sun Tzu wrote: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

I guess the second one fits the outcome, huh? I know I'm very good at missing crucial details.

...let's move on. The Siren drops TWO trinkets - Myrrh had the Vial in the left equipped. Little anti-frustration mechanic that you don't just lose those trinkets.

I set up camp because there's absolutely zero reason not to. Haze also heals our healer from her Tapeworm.

And then it's time to be greedy. There's a secret room on the map and only one Hallway fight and one room fight blocking our way to it.

This fight takes a little longer (especially with our main Blight user dead) but still isn't too dangerous...

...and this one isn't TOO horrible, either. Haze and Specter immediately focus down the Cutthroat, which reduces their damage output to reasonable levels.

But that's all I'm willing to risk. For now. Next week? We'll see.

...Name suggestions for our newest recruit?

You may have noticed that Gawain reached Lv.3 after this mission - or rather thinks he did. It'll take some time before Guild and Blacksmith agree with him. In any case, he will now refuse to do Apprentice missions because he considers them beneath them - main reason why I brought Gawain over Sigurd, by the way. I want him on our Courtyard mission, and SURELY the Siren won't be that bad, right?

Right...
It really adds insult to casualty that the game doesn't even mention the Siren, because it was technically the DOT that did the lethal hit.

Well, we'll see what suicidal missions we will do next time. For now, Haze and Gawain get rid of what they brought home from the dungeon, while Musart makes sure she doesn't get an Acc penalty against Blighted enemies - y'know, a penalty exactly against what she's all about.

Thanks for reading!

(*) Terms and conditions may apply

 

[Benice]

24 minutes ago, ping said:

WE NEED MORE HOUNDMASTERS! QUAD HOUNDMASTER EVERY MISSION!

INFALLIABLE STRATEGEE!

I vote that we name the new plague doctor Phil.

28 minutes ago, ping said:

.

FUCK.

Welp, there we go boys, first death. And OF COURSE it's a named character. Who also has the crazy good Luminous quirk locked in. And who remembers what trinket we were doing this boss fight for? Yeppp.

Oof. Feels bad. That's what the party gets for not keeping it in their pants.

31 minutes ago, ping said:

...and this one isn't TOO horrible, either. Haze and Specter immediately focus down the Cutthroat, which reduces their damage output to reasonable levels.

Well, you got the cash, at the very least.