Darkest Dungeon

[Gustaran]

I read several enthusiastic reviews of this game during the last few days and suddenly realized it is already #1 on the Steam charts, even though it is still in early access.
So I would like to know if anybody here has played this yet? It seems to be all the rage, but 20 Euros for early access is not a steal either.

If you haven't heard about it:

Genre: Hybrid roguelike/dungeon crawler/turn based RPG

Steam page & trailer:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/262060/

Let's play by Northernlion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhVA17lgb0M

[pindicator]

I picked this one up and think it has a lot of potential. I love the atmosphere and think the combat system has enough depth to make you think. I haven't got that far yet but I'm worried that it may be too easy -- or maybe I've just been lucky on my playthrough.

[NobleHelium]

There are a couple flaws, one bigger than the other.

1) Lack of time pressure. You basically can't lose the campaign as long as you try hard enough because you can always do the easy levels if you get a setback. Unless you really really suck.
2) You want to extend battles when you've basically won so that you can milk stress reduction abilities.

[Gustaran]

I haven't got that far yet but I'm worried that it may be too easy

Yeah, well my party just wiped on the first mission.

The mobs crit my tank for 17 damage and my group heal restores 1 health. But surely I can heal between battles, right? Nope. I brought lots of food to heal...oh, 2 health restored. Yay!



Anyway, the atmosphere is great and obviously I am doing something wrong. Time to check a basic noob guide and then return to the DARKEST DUNGEON.

1) Lack of time pressure. You basically can't lose the campaign as long as you try hard enough because you can always do the easy levels if you get a setback.

Hey, for me that's actually a plus. It's depressing enough to see my heroes die.
I could imagine playing variants with a limited number of total heroes though. Maybe there will be several difficulty settings in the final version?

[pindicator]

I think part of it was me being lucky on attack rolls; I've had very few bad runs of missing continually or having the same character get crit over and over. I started up a mission last night and had a bad run with crits and ended up losing a party member. Thankfully not one of my better characters.

The one thing I've learned is that stuns are better than heals for preventing damage (because heals are so weak). Stuns combined with heals is a great way to keep everybody topped off, but I don't think it's worth dragging on battles to heal people because then you can run into issues with stress. I kind of wish the torch light faded each round of a battle to put some additional pressure on you not to milk battles, but right now it seems you can just milk away.

[Gustaran]

I just restarted the campaign and played the first mission again. Quite supringly, the difficulty went from "almost impossible" to "cakewalk". The reason is, that there is a huge RNG variety when it comes to mob types.

The first time I fought mainly groups consisting of 4 undeads with up to 25 hitpoints each. The second time, I encountered mainly groups of 2 spiders with ~7hp. It is no wonder, that my group cruised through the dungeon the second time and returned in pretty good shape.

I am not opposed to RNG in a game like this, but I assume there could be some tweaking before the game hits final release status.

[Gustaran]

There are a couple flaws, one bigger than the other.

2) You want to extend battles when you've basically won so that you can milk stress reduction abilities.

I kind of wish the torch light faded each round of a battle to put some additional pressure on you not to milk battles, but right now it seems you can just milk away.

Well, looks like the devs agree with you.

From today's patch notes:

•Heroes don't like it when you prolong combat unnecessarily

•Added 'Clear Head' moderate Stun Resistance buff to heroes and monsters after clearing an existing stun. Stacks for consecutive stuns.

Complete patchnotes

[NobleHelium]

Well, that explains why I was having so much trouble when I took the Hellion out when the Crusader needed a break.

[NobleHelium]

Yeah, the randomness in this game is ridiculous. In the first tutorial combat you can get 50 gold...or 1000 gold.

[Gustaran]

Well, that explains why I was having so much trouble when I took the Hellion out when the Crusader needed a break. lol

I had hired two extra Hellions just before the patch hit. Well, I hadn't lost any heroes up to that point, so it was clearly too easy and the change did not come unexpected.

Yeah, the randomness in this game is ridiculous. In the first tutorial combat you can get 50 gold...or 1000 gold.

There will probably be further adjustments until release and maybe the devs will take a look at the RNG range.
I checked the official website and the Steam forums and the amount of feedback is amazing, people find all sorts of ways to break the game... So I am very optimistic the final release version will be a well rounded experience.

Actually, this game seems to be one of the rare cases where "early access" is used in a meaningful way, using player feedback to check game mechanics for problems, adjust balance and fix bugs.
There are just way too many early access games out there which are in an early prototype stage, bug ridden and the development might even stop for good if the devs run out of money. Darkest Dungeon on the other hand is already in a better shape than many finished games. I haven't encountered a single bug or crash so far.