Darkest Dungeon

This is a /v/ related article, which we tolerate because it's relevant and/or popular on /tg/... or we just can't be bothered to delete it.

"In time, you will know the tragic extent of my failings..."
- Your Ancestor

Darkest Dungeon is a Grimdark sidescrolling Dark Fantasy turn-based videogame with Mythosian overtones that has become very popular on /tg/, thanks to its surprisingly accurate feel of Old School Roleplaying and its bleak setting. The game itself became popular due to its unique and moody artstyle, the constant and quality narration, and general difficulty.

The Story

You are the last scion of a fallen noble family, one brought to ruin by a hedonistic ancestor, who squandered the family fortune pursuing decadence and ultimately turned to dark pursuits in search of forbidden pleasures. This resulted in your family estate becoming the site of a huge, sprawling dungeon, filled with horrible monsters while the surrounding lands are similarly corrupted, filled with monsters lead by lords of the Ancestor's own creation. The only (mostly) safe place is the Hamlet, which acts as the hub area of the game. Using the last of your family's money, you have returned to the estate to begin hiring adventurers to try to and clear out the dark things lurking in the dungeon, gathering the riches that lie beneath to finance further and further expeditions beneath.

After all, not all of your explorers will return alive, or even sane...

The quote at the top of the page is something of an understatement in regards to the background of the game. His failings are as follows (so far):

• In his youth enjoyed the debauchery and general 12 Days Of Sodom (don't look it up if you don't know it already) behavior of the nobility in the courtyard of the estate. One day an attractive woman appeared and fluidly navigated the assembled nobles...so the Ancestor tried to kill her. She revealed herself as a vampire but he succeeded at killing her. He then promptly did what any sane, rational being would do and hung her upside-down to drain out all her cursed blood, mixed it with a prized vintage of wine, and threw a party. The attending nobles and servants all became vampiric and tore their own bodies to pieces while the Ancestor, who had only drunk one drop of blood, gained a vision of the Eldritch horrors that lay beneath his mansion and began his obsession with them. As the mosquitos were lured by the blood and wine...and bloody wine, the Ancestor sealed the Courtyard away where it has since sunk back into the swamp and contained the now mosquito/vampire hybrid court. They now break loose periodically requiring you to send heroes to eliminate one of the original members of the court to send the creatures back to the swamps for awhile. Ignoring them results in the vampirism spreading, called the Crimson Curse, which has very little effect on heroes other than making them constantly need blood to avoid stacking debuffs and irrational behavior plus eventually death if unsated. Well, that and a zealot called the Fanatic who your Ancestor was aware of and is obsessed with purging the Curse by attacking any party with at least one cursed individual.
• As a child a small homeless girl had a crush on the Ancestor while he played in the town, which was nice when he was a kid but as a young man he found her irritating. So when he needed money to fund his newfound Eldritch fascination he cut a deal with the fishmen who lived on the coast. He lured the girl to the pier and shackled her to an idol, both of which were the Ancestor's end of the deal in exchange for gems to fund his ambition. The girl was transformed into the likeness of the fishmen while destroying the human portion of her mind, and is their queen/mother. She occupies the Cove.
• Starting his journey into madness began with the purchase of rare books, which drew the attention of a young woman skilled in the arts of herbalism and magic (read: a witch). While he enjoyed her company early on, she was just as obsessed with the creatures beneath the manor as he was and her path of study was in experimentation with edibles. Her body was twisted by the concoctions and he no longer found her physically attractive, banishing her to the Weald to dwell with the beasts. She's now a cannibal by the way, and has been preying on your villagers.
• As he became more skilled in magic he obsessed over prolonging his life. After making a dead mouse's leg twitch, he invited experts in life and death from foreign nations to share knowledge with him, using his newly-acquired expertise of alchemy to make them trust him. After learning everything he could he killed each one in their beds and raised their corpses from the dead with their knowledge intact. Said undead Necromancers proceeded to raise more corpses, and so on creating a growing empire of the undead with no end, which now occupy the Ruins of the estate itself. The Ancestor considered this a massive success, then disregarded the fact that there's a growing army of the undead literally right outside his door.
• As his skill in magic improved, the Ancestor moved on from animating bones with a human mind to summoning creatures from beyond into flesh using blood rituals. He found that pigs were useful for rituals since their skin was similar to humans, and managed to summon a gigantic "Great Thing" into the form of a gigantic pig. The thing required a massive amount of food to survive and both the Great Thing and the lesser things, all in the form of pigs, now occupy the Warrens and prey on the Hamlet. They have joined sides with the fungus monsters that already occupied the area, which have now overcome the former human residents.
• Eventually an old man arrived in the town telling prophesies to the locals about what would happen and riling them up against your family. The Ancestor threw him in the stockades, attempted to drown him, and literally covered the prophet's back in daggers but each time the old man returned and warned the peasants about the end of the world. Having given up, the Ancestor simply showed the prophet the Great Thing and explained what he planned to do. This time the prophet's sanity broke, causing him to tear out his own eyes and flee to the Ruins, where a cult has gathered under his leadership and now works against your attempts to reverse your Ancestor's doings.
• The by-products of his experiments (which weren't pigmen and pig demi-gods) began to stack up, and when the excavation of the place beneath the estate broke through into the ancient tunnels and aquaducts he shoved all the various twitching semi-dead fleshy things down into them until the abominations all fused together in the Warrens. Now the giant chunk of random organs and flesh threatens not only lives of the Hamlet, but the very sanity of anyone who sees it.
• In order to enforce order on the town once the folk and local guards turned against him, the Ancestor employed bandits using a massive cannon. Calling them his militia they slaughtered many of the townsfolk and became the power through which he ruled. By the time you arrive, they've returned to being merely bandits attacking the town, and make their base in the Weald. They are the very first threat you encounter, trying to stop you from even reaching the Hamlet in the first place.
• When bandit raids and the delicate nature of his shipments became too unsafe for the main roads, the Ancestor employed pirates to bring him his evil goods via a small section of the coast inaccessible save by a stairway leading to the estate. Eventually they increased their prices knowing they obviously had the market cornered, and the Ancestor had again bankrupted himself so he used his magic to curse their anchor with his ambition and resentment, dragging them to the bottom of the sea...sort of, they came back to be a pain in your ass as ghosts still bound to the anchor.
• In the end your Ancestor broke through to an ancient underground site of Eldritch horror. He sent you a letter which would draw you to the Hamlet, and seemingly committed suicide. This is the hardest area in the game, literally the titular Darkest Dungeon which your Ancestor liked to end his sentences referencing.

By the end of the game, the player character himself is traumatized by the knowledge he has gained. The final boss requires you to kill a character, so at the very least you have sacrificed one person for your goals, but almost certainly more. You’ve left a trail of broken individuals scrambling away from the Hamlet, and the horrors your Ancestor unleashed continue to spread, or are at best contained temporarily, despite you having dealt with the origin of each problem. You begin to hallucinate, seeing the landscape twist into tentacles from darkness below into red light from above. Your Ancestor himself may not have been dead, as your mercenaries encountered an abomination in his form (although it could also have been a madness-wrought delusion or a creature in his form), and according to the Ancestor-thing’s words the result of his actions are an ongoing curse on your lineage. The player is left wondering if their future is to repeat the Ancestor’s mistakes (as you’re now essentially in the same state he was after sealing the Courtyard, albeit far less sadistic) or to spend your days keeping the evil at bay using an unending supply of the poor unfortunates who come to the town (in other words, keep playing and buy future DLC). At any rate, the PC is at least currently better than the Ancestor, having rebuilt the town and put down the tortured souls he made into boss fights. Not to mention there’s nothing keeping you from amassing enough gold to cure all the mental harm and physical diseases of your best champions via Antiquarian runs and dismissing them, if you really need some kind of happy ending closure.

The Heroes

The coach will deliver a fresh batch of would-be heroes to the hamlet every week (which is the length of time that a trip into one of the dungeins takes), allowing you to assemble many different possible teams to send into the dungeon. Each has a canon comic giving a view of their backstory, and beyond that many give clues with their dialogue about their backstories and goals.

The Abomination is a man possessed by an inhuman fiend (basically a demon/werewolf), which grants him unholy strength and the ability to vomit caustic slime at his foes causing Blight. If he needs greater offensive power, he can let the Beast out, transforming into a monstrous form - but this can be as crippling for sanity - his and the rest of the party's - as the other monsters he's battling. He can stun by using a chain as a whip, and his ability to prostrate himself before the enemy heals his health AND sanity. His backstory is as a tortured victim kept in a dungeon until the pain of his head being branded allowed his beast self to take over and for him to escape. He learned compassion and healing from his time in captivity.

The Antiquarian is a female archaeologist well-versed in the arts of exploring ancient tombs. This allows her to assist the other members of the party by healing their wounds, hurling flash-bombs and curing them of whatever noxious blights they may encounter. She can also use poisonous mixtures to bedevil her enemies, but she's awful at protecting herself and in general is very weak, but she brings additional gold back in parties she is in. In her backstory she brought a magical censer to her master who was going to sacrifice a girl to empower it. Instead she killed him as the sacrifice.

The Arbalest is an immensely strong and brawny woman who carries a huge crossbow. A back-row fighter, she can cut down foes with barrages of massive bolts, but she has some support skills as well. She was given her crossbow by her father, who forced her to flee as an angry mob killed him for unknown reasons.

The Bounty Hunter wields an axe and a hook on a chain, specializing in singling out specific targets and dealing massive punishment to them. He hunts for money and vengeance, though there are hints that he only hunts things or people that really need killing and care quite a lot for his team-mates.

The Crusader is a hardened, well-armored veteran of many holy wars, who combines brutal melee offense with defensive and bolstering magic, courtesy of his prayers. He left his family to go on the Crusade, and when he returned he was too traumatized and haunted by what he had seen and done to live their life and instead came to the Hamlet. His panicked raving dialogue suggests he may have been abused or molested by his father and/or a priest as a child.

The Grave Robber is the last daughter of a noble family fallen into poverty, who was forced to turn to graverobbing to pay her debts. Quick and agile, she is the classic rogue of the party, specializing in dodging attacks and dealing bleeding or poisoned wounds with her daggers and pickaxe. She actually enjoys her new profession and is quite greedy.

The Hellion is a glaive-wielding, howling, barbarian woman who lives for the thrill of combat, specializing in brutal, bloody attacks with far reach. She abandoned her dark gods.

The Highwayman wields dirk and pistol to become a highly tactical fighter, capable of attacking from any position in the party, unlike some. In his backstory he robbed a carriage, but found out that he accidentally killed the woman and child inside during the fight which haunts him with guilt. Some have noticed that the woman and child resemble the Crusader's family, and the fact you begin the game with a Highwayman and Crusader further suggests the connection. His Crimson Court item set reveals he carries a locket with their images, as well as his blood-soaked mask, still.

The Houndmaster is a tough, uncompromising lawman who, with his faithful hound, whose diverse skillset makes him a truly welcome addition to the party. He was once a hero who set out in search of a missing girl only to find that the authorities of the town had in fact sacrificed her. Adorably his healing abilities are displayed as him hugging the dog, and upon taking damage he shields the dog with his own body to take the blow.

The Jester is a manic, morbid figure who can unsettle the enemy as much as he does his own party, leaping back and forth with dagger and sickle to hew a bloody path through his enemies. He once escaped from a tyrannical king in who's court he performed according to his Crimson Court item set flavor text.

The Leper is a plague-riddled king whose body is slowly betraying him. Immensely tough and resigned to death, he carries a huge (broken) sword and excels at dishing out punishment as well as taking it.

The Man-At-Arms is a skilled, battle-hardened veteran whose toughness and tactical abilities allow him to brutally break up the enemy's ranks. He is a valerous hero who saved his unit although his army lost their last battle.

The Occultist is a student of dark magics, a terrifying figure whose rituals can demoralize, blight and destroy those who oppose him. He investigated the forces of darkness, finding the bodies of those who had taken up a pact before making it himself; it is revealed the same forces beneath the estate are the ones he is sworn to in his dialogue during the final boss fight.

The Plague Doctor is a masked student of anatomy, whose alchemical interests allow her to whittle down her foes with barrages of noxious fumes and plague grenades as well as patching up her allies. She seeks to cure the diseases originating from the Hamlet, and is so focused that once her former teachers died of one of those diseases she dissected him without emotion.

The Vestal is a holy warrior-nun, who combines divine light and strength of arms to lay waste to her foes.

The Flagellant is a masochistic warrior who yearns to accomplish something great through his sacrifice. The closer he comes to death, the harder he fights. This adventurer was added as part of the Curse of the Crimson Court DLC. He was once a beggar who found that the beatings from those better off than himself gave him purpose.

The Shieldbreaker, added in the DLC of the same name, was a harem slave that killed her master and lost her hand in the ensuing carriage crash, swearing herself to snake spirits for a new one and the bonus magic that goes with it. She moves around a lot with her attacks like the Highwayman and Jester, dealing a fair amount of damage along with Blight effects. She has two major abilities, the first being the ability to break enemy Protect while pulling the target closer, allowing you to quickly finish off high threat foes. The second mitigates her glass cannon nature, an ability she can use twice per fight that gives her two stacks each time of immunity to damage (but not debuffs, Stress, and importantly Bleed or Blight). Anytime you camp with her in the group there is a chance to be attacked by snake monsters, even if using an ability that prevents ambushes; these snakes can drop her trinkets or items any hero can use which grant her damage immunity for one attack, so snake ambush isn’t bad if you plan for it. She herself is designed to end fights quickly, and she is very bad to use against most bosses or enemies with AOEs or ample Blight/Bleed. She becomes more effective with the Man-at-arms to guard her, and/or a Flagellant to remove her Bleed/Blight. Unless farming for immunity items, take her on short dungeons to speedthrough them faster. Avoid using if the Fanatic is a concern.

Regions

The Ancestral Estate is a sprawling affair, with many different segments that must be cleansed.

The Ruins are the first place you will begin exploring, in the form of the dusty halls of the ancestral manor and its attendant buildings. This region crawls with both the undead, servitors of a necromancer-lich who has taken up residence there, and mad cultists serving an insane Prophet.

The Weald is the local forest, which has become overwhelmed by grotesque fungus and slime monsters ever since a deformed, cannibalistic hag took up residence there.

The Warrens are your first delve into the underground proper, an ancient labyrinth of aqueducts and tunnels that your ancestor unearthed in his expeditions. He used them as a dumping ground for his experiments in summoning demons, filling them with a grotesque civilization of man-pigs and writhing abominations of animated flesh.

The Cove was where your ancestor consorted both with pirates, who have since returned as water-logged undead after he betrayed and murdered them, and malevolent fish-people from the depths.

The Courtyard was where your ancestor held his debauched revels, until it became the epicenter of a truly horrific outbreak. Now the twisted, bug-like vampires who were once some of society's elite still hold their gory revels in the gardens that have merged with the swamp, creating a damp, miasmic maze where blood and rot compete in the air. This region only becomes available in the Curse of the Crimson Court DLC.

The Darkest Dungeon is your ultimate goal, the place where your ancestor's experiments in summoning gave rise to the ultimate evil that now threatens the world. Only the strongest will make it here, and few of them will return.

/tg/ Tips

• Keep your very first Highwayman (Dismas) and Crusader (Reynauld) alive. You get an achievement at the end if you can manage to make them reach the final level. If they do die, keep your graveyard as empty as possible so the resurrection event has a chance to bring one back.
• You are NOT meant to continue to work on heroes other than the above. ALL of them are disposable, and should be dismissed via the bottom of the top left buttons once they become too insane or diseased to be of use. You are not a member of a brotherhood, you are a nobleman recruiting insane and criminal mercenaries to become even more insane as throwaway pawns.
• Invest all of your early energy into the Guild (to get better abilities), the Blacksmith (to get better base stats), and Wagon (to get more adventurers, higher levels reliant on the preceding two). That way you can recruit straight off the wagon and send them straight into battle.
• Once you max out the above buildings, feel free to invest into the remaining buildings so that you can eventually guide a team that is decent (as you cannot recruit max level heroes straight off the cart). Remember that if your hero levels up but you don't upgrade their abilities and gear, they are still basically the same level.
• You can only use abilities during their phase. As frustrating as it is, the Vestal can spam heals during combat but will let her party bleed to death while poisoned, including herself, as soon as a fight ends.
• Religious classes (Crusader, Vestal, Leper, Flagellant) will never let an Abomination into their party. On the plus side, Abominations work as well in the first and second rank, and the minor heals of an Antiquarian or a Plague Doctor, or the risky heal of an Occultist, can keep the party alive even if not as easily. Such parties will take a lot of Stress, so consider a Jester (or two).
• Certain classes in certain positions cause a title of the type of party to appear, for example a party full of classes prone to causing Bleed will show the title Blood For The Blood God. These are all comedic or thematic commentary (from the Ancestor or creators, whichever you prefer), and do not affect gameplay.
• Usually the most dangerous enemies are in the back two ranks in trash fights. When there is only one enemy left, an invisible timer will begin to count down until the remaining momster receives reinforcements. By keeping the front two enemy ranks alive (but somewhere near death) you can mooch extra turns to heal your party health or Stress. Note that a random lucky crit can reverse your positive gains (rumor that as the fight drags on the chance of such crits increases is neither confirmed nor debunked), but in general you can often use a few extra rounds to fix up your party as they play cat and mouse with your nearly-defeated foes.
• To get additional gold, use a combo of the Antiquarian and the Highwayman. Highwaymen have an attack called Riposte that they can use to move forward one space and attack back at any enemy that attacks him, while Point Blank Shot sends him once space back and deals high damage. The Antiquarian allows you to stack gold higher per space in your inventory and also finds more money-making goods while having an ability called Cover Me which allows another character in your party to take attacks for her; as a result the Highwayman will essentially solo most fights while the Antiquarian makes you money. Technically speaking once you get the items which buff the Antiquarian's healing you can make a party entirely made of four Antiquarians, causing MASSIVE gold gains.
• Similar to the above Antiquarian/Highwayman combo is using the Man-at-arms riposte ability on top of his guard ability and the Protect Me of an Antiquarian. Each time he guards another member of the party he gains a Prot bonus, topping out at an impressive 80%. So 3/4 of the party being attacked will result in him dealing a moderate amount of damage back to an enemy, he will take all the damage for those 3/4 characters so long as it isn’t an AOE attack and will negate most of it, and can end up with decent damage output. Sadly his guard will cancel a Highwayman riposte and the Flagellant won’t likely take enough damage to use his heal, but this combo goes with anyone else in various capacities. His Stress may become an issue without some Stress relief plan.
• Ensure that in any party which goes on a non-Short mission has at least one Camp Ability that prevents nighttime ambush. Plague Doctors can have an ability which will cure the disease of another hero, for free, making Sanitarium treatment unnecessary.
• Buffs, debuffs, and damage over time attacks stack. This means you or your opponents can cripple their enemies, boost their allies into superheroes, and kill even the strongest bosses entirely though indirect damage. That last point is very important; generally speaking every round each character will have a turn in order of their speed, but bosses will go multiple times per round, so as a result they will take damage from any DoT each time they get their turn but by the same token any debuffs will fade quickly and Stun effects are only a minor annoyance to them. Creating a party specifically through one of the two damage over times, Bleed or Blight, will deal massive damage although make sure to prepare for enemies unable to be affected by a certain effect. Generally speaking Blight affects more enemies in the game, but Bleed has more heroes who can apply it meaning you will be able to stack it higher on a target. Keep additional Herbal Remedy to use to instantly remove a debuff, and extra Holy Water to provide a buff that will reduce the chance of certain debuffs and DoTs affecting your heroes. These can be used during a fight and do not take up the hero's turn, although the hero can only use it on themselves.
• Damage heals at the end of the dungeon, Stress does not. Crusaders, Flagellants, Jesters, and Houndmasters are the best characters to remove Stress while in the dungeon, and most classes have good campfire abilities for removing or reducing Stress gain as well. Abominations have an ability to remove their own Stress.
• There is a button to unequip items. Use it. Characters you throw into someplace to get better such as the Bar can result in them losing their equipped items. Don't trust those fuckers.
• Lepers are high damage, low accuracy, and can only hit the first two ranks while having minimal abilities to help the rest of their party. They are thought by many to be the least useful characters in the game in general (they are very useful for some specific things, such as the Vvulf boss, but are by no means mandatory in any situation). As a result the amount of Lepers in your stable of heroes should generally be kept low, although they are useful in the early game for having high damage and hitting both ranks with one of their primary attack.
• A character doesn't die when they drop down to zero health, they enter the Death's Door state. Every time they take damage there's a chance they will then die, and upon being healed they are no longer on Death's Door although the debuff lasts for the rest of the mission. The Vestal AOE heal as a result is very useful. A character with a damage over time effect on them however could die at the start of their next turn.
• The Crimson Curse DLC begins as soon as you finish the first mission. Avoid it in the beginning, it is a newbie trap which will result in almost all of your heroes being afflicted by the titular Crimson Curse and causing the very difficult boss The Fanatic to randomly spawn in dungeons where he will most likely wipe your party.
• Your Flagellant and Crusader can act as free Stress relief similar to how the Plague Doctor can cure Disease for free. The Flagellant has an ability that allows him to absorb a large amount of Stress from an ally but takes a medium amount himself. The Crusader has an ability which heals both the Stress and health of a party member while also increasing Torch level. In easier fights, the two can be used together to mellow put a party. Combine with the Houndmaster and/or Jester Stress heals for a therapeutic stroll through the estate. Note that if a hero gains a mental issue during the dungeon from recieving too much Stress, healing their Stress back to 0 removes it. This will not remove Quirks unfortunately. Such a Stress-relief party has only the Flagellant as a major healer, and abandoning the quest results in Stress gain, but this should be negligible if you manage to remove most of their Stress and still bring back some loot.
• The most debilitating Quirks are those which cause a character to irrationally act in the dungeons. When they investigate a Curio they do not use the correct tool, so they usually suffer the negative effect be it poison, minor Stress, summoning a fight, or massive Stress gain. Even worse, you lose out on potential resources. When scouting new recruits be on the lookout for these, and on your favorite level 6 heroes or your two achievement starters its fair to consider giving them mental treatment.
• If frustrated, remember that the character which represents you does not accompany the heroes. You are more or less paying to stock them up for battle and sending them with a plan, what you the player control during the dungeon is them attempting to execute your orders. Thus remember that if the party wipes, its THEIR fault, not yours.
• Do NOT put a torch in the Shambler's Altar, unless you're extremely well-prepared for a very hard fight. The reward is an ancestral item, though.
• The modding community is...colorful. Usually its best to stick with the official game.
• Belay that nonsense above. The Marvin Seo mod classes are top notch and Muscarine's class mods are also excellent and tastefully lewd.

/tg/ Relevance

• Considered a spiritual successor by many to Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay.

• The rules are actually basically already a tabletop game, and could easily be converted into one.

• The final boss is a reference to Nssu-Ghahnb/The Heart of Ages from the Call of Cthulhu Role-Playing Game. This is supported by Nssu-Ghahnb being trapped within an alternate dimension and being responsible for spawning all the monsters in the known universe, just like the final boss.

• It is inspired by Torchbearer, a tabletop game