Git Gud Spoiler Guide

Darkest Dungeon frustrating you? Would you prefer it challenges you so little it's boring?

If not, don't read this guide. Darkest Dungeon is most fun if you're kind of bad at it. The bulk of the gameplay is in learning to play better. This guide spoils the most high-impact parts of that. These are the techniques that are so good they feel like exploits.

Darkest Dungeon looks like a risk management game, but is in fact a risk elimination game. It's entirely possible for non-obsessive players to never have to abandon a mission and never lose a hero. These four techniques will take you 90% of the way there.

I have written in the reverse pyramid style. Once you understand you can skip immediately to the next section.

Because champion dungeons are the most challenging, and because the relative stats of the heroes do not change much between levels, I will be talking about champion-level stats. E.g, "The plague doctor has 9 speed."

Stun everything. Stuns are amazingly overpowered.

Every party needs one stunbot. The ideal stunbot is fast, has good reach, and has two +stun trinkets. With two +stun class trinkets, it's reasonable to stun twice or stun resistant targets like double-wides, and possible to stun three times in a row.

The plague doctor is the Queen of All Stuns. She has nine base speed, can stun two targets, can stun all high priority targets, and she has two exceptionally good +stun class trinkets, which include +accuracy. She also has superb utility, and almost any party can be improved by swapping in a backline plague doctor.

The abomination also has nine speed and fantastic +stun class trinkets, including +accuracy. He cannot stun row 4 nor stun two at once, but in exchange he can stun the front row (useful for stalling; see section two), his stun is the second most damaging, he has a +speed camping buff, and his maximum stun chance is 10% higher than the plague doctor's.

Area stuns (plague doctor and hellion) remove two enemy moves with one player move. Non-area stuns have additional effects, normally a significant amount of damage. The two non-damaging single-target stuns have a shuffle and can stun row 4. There is no such thing as a bad stun skill.

A good party has two or three stunners. A party with both a plague doctor and abomination will prevent three quarters of the enemy's turns, will likely do so before most of the enemy party has attacked at all, and will shave enemy HP while they're at it. Because the abomination's stun is so damaging, it's worthwhile to take a shot at sub-30% effective stun odds.

When designing a party, if you have a chance to swap in another stunner, do so. When it's reasonable to trinket for more +stun, do so. It is possible to make parties that stun all four ranks, and they're some of the best.

Start every fight with full health and, if you have a stress healer, zero stress. If you have a good stunners and start with full health, there is no significantly threatening non-boss fight. To do this, stall at the end of every fight until you're within a few points of full health.

First, kill all but one enemy. Except against fast-stall enemies, you now have two turns on which you can use 3 or 4 non-damaging moves. (Exception: -90% damage is too low, so vulnerability hex is stall-flagged.) After the third stalling turn you will take stress damage, and after the fourth they will call reinforcements. Using a blight or bleed can squeeze out one further; if the last enemy will die to a tick on its next turn, the stall timer is paused.

To reset this counter, you're supposed to have to use four non-stall-flagged moves. There's a bug, so you only need to use two. If your last enemy has full HP, it is easy to attack twice with weak attacks every three turns and drag the fight out for a very long time. In most cases this is overkill, and you should instead stun the remaining combatant to stop them from offering you new critical hits, even though the stun damage will kill them faster than strictly necessary.

If you haven't fully healed, have a stress healer, and can't reset the timer without killing your poor chew toy, then simply allow the reinforcements to come and repeat the process until you're fully healed. This technique is especially important while playing in the dark or if you want to go infinite inside the crimson court.

If you stall against a fast-stall enemy your team will bark at you. If you stall again you get reinforcements immediately; skipping the stress turn is exploitably useful if you have no stress healer and have taken a lot of damage or your occultist is meming you real hard. Most fast-stall enemies are minor or weak enemies like club skeletons or maggots. The exception is the octotank, against whom you could otherwise stall almost forever due to its high HP and protection.

If the reset bug gets fixed, then using two attacks will merely delay the timer for that turn.

Normally you want to pick a weak enemy like a musketman to stall against, but in special cases it's possible to stall against double-wides, which disable the stall timer.

For example if you have a man-at-arms spamming guard, you can heal faster than an unclean giant can damage you. I once stalled for 37 turns against one so I could clear an affliction using only cry havoc. It would probably have been faster and less annoying to simply finish the dungeon, but it is nevertheless possible and afflictions are risky.

The priorities are stuns, accuracy, speed, and damage to the back row, in that order. You may note the leper has none of these things. If you're using a damage over time class, use the relevant +blight or +bleed trinket. For quirks, +stun is missing, the accuracy quirks are weak and the speed quirks are comically good.

For non-boss fights, it's important to have enough healing, but enough healing isn't very much. An arbalest with one of her huge +heal class trinkets is enough, as long as you have a good stunbot and know how to stall. I find the vestal works best with double +heal and the occultist normally needs to hit +20%. E.g. you can use the vestal's crimson court set for that delicious +stun, but she has to heal so often to top your heroes off that she hardly ever gets to stun. Don't attempt to use a flagellant as a solo healer unless the game is already easy enough to be boring.

You can get away with using inspiring tune or inspiring cry without +soothe, but the run will be much smoother if you spend a trinket slot improving them.

Unclean giants need to be planned around. Use guard if you can. Protection skills like bulwark can work if you have two. It's one of the few good times to use debuffs. It's also important to have a plan to deal with large corpse eaters.

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Hero abbreviations:

PD = Plague Doctor
JES = Jester
AB* = Abomination
OCC = Occultist
BH = Bounty Hunter
CRU = Crusader
LEP = Leper
VES = Vestal
FLG = Flagellant
HEL = Hellion
GR = Grave Robber
HM = Houndmaster
MAA = Man-at-arms
HWM = Highwayman
ATQ = Antiquarian
SBR = Shieldbreaker
ARB = Arbalest

If you're in the mood to walk the knife edge, try PD-JES-AB*-OCC. This is the extreme end of speed and stuns. Occultist is slowest at 8; everyone else is at 9. It has no health and no damage. Instead it stuns the entire enemy party before it can move and then bleeds it out (don't forget your extra torches). I like to run with five +stun trinkets, doubling up on the PD and AB*. Don't Try This At Home is a fantastic party if you don't make any mistakes. Much better than, for example, OCC-BH-CRU-LEP, which has lots of health and damage, but is short on stuns and speed and awkward with reach. The bounty hunter has no +stun class trinkets and the CRU's stun, while the most damaging in the game, is slow and short range. That said, because Don't Try This At Home has the squishiest hero in the front row and no health in general, small mistakes are almost instantly fatal; I mention it mainly for demonstration purposes.

Tippy toppest tier party.
VES-PD-JES-MAA
While you can build specialist parties that are better at their special thing, this party, constructed of the four most overpowered characters, can do anything competently and most things in style. It also has various re-arrangements with different focuses, such as setting up the solo dodge tank as PD-JES-VES-MAA. This is useful in bleed-resistant areas; in the ruins in particular, you want the MAA to rampart forward and push the JES into 2, so he can attract arbalest bolts, which then miss.
In the normal arrangement finale is amusing but unnecessary. It's often useful to simply walk the PD forward when you want to use inspiring tune.
VES lets you nearly ignore health damage. JES trivializes stress damage. PD is the queen of all stuns, preventing anything dangerous from being able to play the videogame. MAA single-handedly neutralizes several high-threat targets with defender, and can melee row 3, unlike other beefsticks.

Here are the top tier parties I know about.

VES-JES-FLG-HEL = maximum bleed, crush CC
GR-VES-HM-CRU = high utility party
HM-PD-CRU-FLG = frontline healer and absolute stress control, put +heal on the CRU
HM-OCC-AB*-MAA = MAA doesn't need +stun
HWM-VES-ATQ-MAA = get money with low hassle, riposte party
PD-OCC-HM-FLG = backline cleaver
GR-VES-JES-SBR = stabby stabby actually run finale, huge utility
PD-JES-AB*-OCC = Don't Try This At Home, No One's Left Unstunned Ever, high utility

Here are a few good parties.

PD-OCC-BH-HEL = you can stun all four enemies but shouldn't; open with iron swan
HM-HM-HM-HM = more workable than other meme parties like quad OCC or quad CRU
OCC-BH-CRU-LEP = put a pull on both OCC and BH but don't bother with +move trinkets
VES-MAA-CRU-LEP = The Wall. Throw up all your buffs on round 1, and rampart forward on 2.
PD-JES-FLG-SBR = blight bleed bleed blight, frontline healer
ARB-HM-BH-CRU = double double-offhealing mark party, surprisingly fun

This is a party to use if you can't yet figure out how to stay off death's door and you're tired of it. Everyone has a heal, meaning whoever comes up next can instantly deal with it. Also since everyone has a heal it's unlikely that you ever accumulate that much damage in the first place.

VES-OCC-CRU-FLG
(Or CRU-VES-OCC-FLG for lance/stun shenaningans.)

This one is an interesting quad-stun party but isn't quite 'good' exactly. Don't build parties worse than this unless your stagecoach is screwing you over or you want to make your life more difficult.

PD-AB*-CRU-SBR

This is the only party that can vaguely use battle ballad. It has the VES-JES reactor core, but otherwise just isn't that great; try it for comparison. Feels especially stiff against high prot enemies.

VES-JES-BH-LEP

Colour of Madness is an exceptional place where battle ballad and other buffs are good, since they will run for their full duration and frontloading damage is meaningless.
VES-JES-HWM-FLG is as far as I can tell the best CoM party. It's also good elsewhere.

Variants.

PD-JES-VES-OCC use double +stun on the OCC, and VES' CC set.
HM-PD-CRU-MAA or GR-HM-CRU-MAA for full-utility go-anywhere do-anything parties; relies on CRU for main healing though. As above, MAA wants candle and focus or signet ring.
Wall variant: PD-MAA-CRU-FLG
ATQ-HWM-CRU-MAA decent dodge/riposte party if you have plenty of +dodge trinkets and double +heal for the CRU.

You do not need ideal parties for apprentice or veteran bosses. Do hurry up with the apprentice bosses or you'll outlevel them. You can kill apprentice bosses with level 0s and losing 0s is a non-problem. Abuse the fact you can overlevel your skills and equipment. I use this to keep my parties' XP aligned until champion.

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Necromancer: don't need cheese, just kill him. All good parties have reach anyway.

Prophet: leper or MAA. Leper debuffs him down to 0 damage with intimidate. MAA guards so your healer can keep up with rubble damage. Hates ripostes. Ideally VES-HWM-HWM-LEP.

Hag: ignore the pot and rush her down with bleeds. Hellion's base average damage is 14.5. If it bleeds does 21.4 on the Hag. Slice off does over 21 too. Don't bring anyone who can't hit row 3. VES-JES-FLG-HEL is vicious on this fight. Maybe VES-JES-AB*-HEL for ideal damage.

Cannon: bring lots of high-accuracy row 4 damage and plan to take 20 rounds or more. You can also stun the matchman if necessary. Kill all the adds. A leper is actually good here. Shieldbreaker is kind of busted. Ideally PD-VES-GR-SBR or PD-VES-GR-LEP, but it's not hard, just long. I also like hellions.

Swine Princekinggod: Arbalest's flare clears his mark and roughly halves his damage. Using something like a CRU-LEP frontline is also good; use the protection self-buffs. If you hit the piglet he launches a devastating auto-counter (pay attention to barks). If you kill the piglet he launches a devastating auto-counter every round.

Flesh: AOE DoTs, especially hound's harry. Plague grenade, harvest, AB* puke, rain of sorrow. Multistuns are really nice for countering nasty spawns like double jaws of life. I like to use PD-OCC-BH-HEL or PD-JES-AB*-OCC. Quad-HM destroys this boss.

Siren: low damage stuns and shuffle tolerance. She nabs your little mans, you stun them, she is sad. Don't ever bring FLG. She herself is also reasonably stunnable and will clear the stun buff on her second turn, letting you spam it. Ideally something like OCC-AB*-BH-HEL.

Crew: row 1 stuns. After he summons his little add, stun it. Instead of having to kill it every turn you can kill it every other turn. If you get lucky you can stun it twice and make the crew even sadder. Ideal party something like VES-PD-AB*-HEL. Maybe VES-AB*-MAA-SBR.

Vvulf: Use MAA guard to counter the bomb. Ideally with ancestor's ring for that little extra protection. I don't find killing his adds very useful. VES-JES-X-MAA. His dungeon piles on the stress and you need soothing. FLG is a good X. So is HEL.

Shrieker: ARB-JES-HM-HEL. You only need to survive four turns, so don't forget your heals on everyone. Use ballad the first two rounds, then dirk stab, then finale. Pop holy water on everyone; bring bandages and herbs too. If you kill the shrieker you avoid a 50-stress AOE. If you kill the nest you get a pile of cash. It's possible to mark down the nest then bleed down the shrieker, but requires some good luck.

Shambler: hates riposte; VES-HWM-HWM-MAA. Actually hard, but optional. Gives the same loot on apprentice but is much easier than elsewhere. I've had luck with stunning the tentacles, and also with building a crusader with massive +damage and -speed so he kills the tentacles after they spawn but before they buff themselves. PD-JES-AB*-OCC can do it by rolling stuns and bleeding him; AB* can be sped up enough to go before the tentacles and rake them down. Alternatively, try the 45% stun on the shambler for a free turn. HM-OCC-AB*-MAA seems to do okay too. Don't worry too much about going crazy (or worry too much about throwing an inspiring tune) and do worry about killing him ASAP.

Unlike most bosses his adds won't despawn when he dies. Don't try to save yourself with a hail mary killing blow. I won my first few fights against him, but only because my two surviving heroes had self-heals and could repeatedly pull themselves off death's door.

DD1: HM-PD-CRU-FLG. Any shuffle-resistant party with good stress management will do fine.

DD2: Bring MAA guard. I like HM-OCC-AB*-MAA here. Stunning the templars is very profitable.

DD3: I like PD-OCC-BH-HEL. What you need is high row 4 damage and good sustain, but sustain can come in the form of camping. Zigzag down and right to find the exit. Some HM-ARB mark party works well too. ARB-HM-BH-CRU has good sustain and back row damage. Stunning the cysts is again profitable; once low they'll often be stunned, then heal, then do it again the next round, letting you whack them freely.

DD4: just kill it. I brought my antiquarian party and it still worked out. The boss unavoidably kills two, so plan for your final two-man phase. Though, do win: there is a ton of unskippable dialogue. Plan to alt-tab if you've heard it before. Reach and a jester do help.

CC1: stunning the croc is valuable. Having redeem is valuable. Either a stun party or VES-JES-FLG-HEL. I went for the VES stuns and it was great. Uppercut is also good; shuffling the croc makes him sad. This is one of the battle ballad exceptions, since he buffs his dodge.

CC2: Remember you can drop out just before the boss room and switch to VES-JES-FLG-HEL.
Open one egg at a time. Bleed the crap out of the baron. It's probably game over if he decides to whip someone three times in a row. I open the egg in rank 2; if the baron isn't in the front I open the front but leave it alive to give him something to do that isn't whipping me.

CC3: Kind of easy, just pile on damage. Leave his blood bags alive unless one of his abilities is threatening you; then kill the relevant bag and go back to murdering the heck out of him.

CC4: Be shuffle resistant, e.g. give your hellion breakthrough. The eggs only hatch when you use a damaging attack, so if you're going to eat a DD debuff from the egg damage, instead move, heal, or buff.

Fanatic: if he spawns, simply run. Killing him is for masochists. Try not to bring more than one infected to a regular dungeon so you just don't deal with him.

CoM 1: no boss, so let's talk about The Thing. You want either a fast DOT or GR or SBR for armour piercing. You want a strong healer to deal with vorpal crits, a very strong stunner if you can swing it, and someone who can do nine damage every turn to clear his add, e.g. noxious blast. Finally, plan to leave the fight with a ton of stress.

CoM 2: Bring a vestal with double +heal and good stress management. Hates riposte.

CoM 3: VES-JES-HWM-FLG. Double +heal. Double +stress heal. The FLG's shard trinket is good here. Build the HWM for melee. Alternatively bring whatever shard mercenaries you have so can grab a few shards and gold then immediately dismiss them. Going to endless doesn't advance the week, though the log is a little confusing about this. It will go up when you enter endless then not go up again until the quest after your next non-endless quest.

Just look up the curios. Supply items for curios other than keys and quirk-clearing are not worth bringing. http://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Curios In other words use chests, secret rooms, scrolls, coral, and the stuff you can use without spending another inventory slot.

You can swap abilities, including camping abilities, mid-mission.

Darkest Dungeon's pacing is excellent for the atmosphere, but the atmosphere doesn't last as long as a full play-through. When it wears off, look for "faster" in the workshop and select one of the many high-quality speedup mods.

Stuns synergize with damage over time. Stuns conflict with ripostes. You can build HWM-VES-ATQ-MAA to be a dodge party but it's still not actually good and it makes your missions take more real-world time.

Scouting prevents ambushes. Scouting also helps you find the secret room. It's well worth sneaking in a scouting trinket, especially if you have something top tier like the ancestor's map.

Many camping debuffs can be cleared with herbs, such as restring crossbow. Revel clears 80 stress and prevents even more, at the cost of 800 gold in herbs. The town cannot match this rate.

Gems are pretty but rarely worth keeping, as you are unlikely to stack up more than 1750 worth.

If possible, loot it with the antiquarian.

To-hit is actually 5% higher than displayed. It says it maxes at 95% but this is in fact 100%.

I aim for 115 accuracy, as 116 is the first soft cap; 116-21 = 95% displayed = 100 to-hit.

The torch hotkey is 't'. The real difficulty slider is the light level. Don't let it go down unless you're finding the game too easy.

If you hold w and d you will automatically loot/disarm/enter everything as soon as it gets in range.

The difficulty curve is on several kinds of drugs. The hardest part is the first dozen weeks or so. The next hard part is the transition to champion. Don't lose champion heroes; each one represents six or more hours of playtime. If one might die, run instead.

Taking long missions means taking fewer end-mission red quirks and diseases. Significantly more loot and double the XP as compared to doing short missions. Also, camping can be used as an emergency restore after an unlucky fight.

Weald heirloom loot is predominantly deeds, for the stagecoach and smith. Warrens is predominantly portraits, for the guild.

Ironically you shouldn't use battle ballad. Speed and accuracy? Looks excellent, and is in fact always worse than simply stabbing a dude in the face. If you can get a slice off hit to bleed twice it's at least twice as good as opening with ballad. Partly this is because speed is not re-rolled mid round.

Healing with an occultist works much better if you obey three rules: keep bleed chance zero (exception: lepers); heal early, heal often; and run either Junia's head or the ancestor's scroll. I don't level wyrd reconstruction unless the new level stays at 0% bleed for the party I'm building. Plan for your occultist to heal in the lower quarter of his range. That's 3-ish at level 1; if you're down by 3, start healing.