Editing Darkest Dungeon (section)

==/tg/ Tips==
* Without going in full detail(as you will read below), Murphy Laws are in full effect. Any possibility that will disrupt your party plan can and *will* happen, from that tiny 2% failure possibility to the last moment of the last enemy inflicting the ''exact'' disease/debuff that will destroy your game plan. Always have multiple overlapping contingency plans in effect. Speaking of plans...
*Have heroes with skills AND adjusted speed ratings that complement/harmonize with each other. A skill that is powerful but throws your hero 1 slot back should have a complementing skill that corrects the change, such as a second hero *also* does likewise, et cetera. Or a Plague Doctor's plague grenade should be followed by a graverobber's 2 slot forward lunge(which does extra on blighted), THEN corrected with said graverobber's "Fade to shadows"... With a contingency plan of "Duelist's advance" which will hurtle any Highwayman forward and should the graverobber be stunned or slowed not to perform in time, or "Throw dagger" if you don't feel like tossing the Graverobber forward. If your four heroes are fighting like a ballet and not spending a turn to walk forward or back, you have virtually won the game.
* The Color Of Madness update, which is applied to the game regardless of whether you buy the DLC, changed the base game substantially. Among the biggest changes are: The Abomination can now group with religious heroes, the addition of the Musketeer (Arbalest reskin), various changes to Crits/Procs/buffs/class abilities/stats among MANY other things (processing the various changes has taken quite a bit of time and debate among the community, suffice it to say that it can all by summed up as "what everyone was doing is nerfed, what nobody did is buffed"), monster AI and hitpoints have been altered to make things less invincible but more damaging, District buildings cost more making them far more endgame, Crimson Court no longer replaces quests allowing you to ignore it for longer once activated. 
** The biggest change in the game is heavy nerfing of Stuns and monsters being more lethal means that stalling tactics while you regenerate health/sanity via combat abilities are far less effective. The game now adds reinforcements to the enemy fight when there's only two opponents left alive as opposed to when there was only one, unless one of them is big enough to take up two spaces (since these are generally at least miniboss tier and not worth the stalling risk beyond a turn or two), and certain abilities of heroes being pegged as "stalling moves" in the game code meaning even if you keep three weak enemies alive, the game may still send something big and nasty your way in the 4th slot to punish you. This makes the game '''FAR''' more difficult than it was at launch since there are no longer cheap tricks to rely on for all your trash fights. On the plus side, running stronger heroes through weaker missions became MUCH easier. 
* 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. If you are an achievement hunter, you may need to simply accept your first playthrough will not result in that achievement; if you cannot keep them both alive, consider restarting once you feel confident you can get a better start by knowing the game better. 
* The first big tactical lesson of the game is realizing characters shuffling back and forth in the ranks through abilities, and their ability to hit and/or be hit by certain enemies in certain ranks, is a large chunk of your strategy and how you basically rules-lawyer the mechanics of the game. Characters who swap ranks a lot like the Jester and Bounty Hunter can hinder rigid team comps so many newbies avoid them. Use the abilities of characters like the Crusader, Grave Robber, Highwayman, or Hellion who can launch themselves back to the front to keep your ranged specialists in position. 
* 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 noble brotherhood, you are a True Neutral nobleman recruiting insane and criminal mercenaries to become even more insane as throwaway pawns in your battle against unending evil. 
* Don't neglect the provisions! At the least, bring all of the food you can get, plenty of torches, shovels to clear blockages, antivenom and bandages to cure bleed or blight (they usually may not seem like they do much damage, but they add up and can easily be cleared with one of these items without using the hero's own action. ''Cure'' them). You can mess around with skimping on provisions as you get more experience with your party's and expected enemies' capabilities.
* 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. 
* 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, your player character (the noble), or creators, whoever you prefer to imagine it being), and do not affect gameplay. 
* To get additional gold, use a combo of the Antiquarian and the Highwayman, preferably without any light if you can take the risk. 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. [[15,000,000 Gold a Day|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.
** 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. As of the Color patch the Antiquarian even brings along her own Skeleton Key, saving you money on a treasure run! A 4-Antiquarian combo with no lights can yield as much as 100000+ gold pieces on the shortest run.
** That said, aside from the aforementioned money-boosting powers and one specific ability where she boosts the whole party's dodge, she's the single shittiest option for every role she can be used for, so she's pretty much useless once you reach the point where you've bought all the districts and have more gold than you'll be able to get rid of (aside from party comps that exploit the aforementioned dodge-boosting ability, which is actually very good). Your choice if you want to keep them around or show your Antiquarians the door after that.
* 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, although it was nerfed in CoM. 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 a large chunk 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. Thankfully CoM gave him improved Stress healing via his own Crits, so as long as he's bashing he's also chilling. 
* 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.
* Fucking '''''KILL''''' those enemy assholes in the rear ranks first, or otherwise stun/move them forward. They're there because they can still hit your probably-most-vulnerable guys in your rear ranks while over there, and the most stress-inflicting enemies in the game tend to make their home there - remember, stress carries over from the end of the dungeon, ''unlike'' health. '''''MURDER THEIR SHIT ASAP!'''''
* Put a stun skill in your party! They tend to have higher accuracy than most other attacks, and even if they don't cause much if any damage and won't work consistently one after another due to combatants gaining a resistance bonus after being stunned, they still prevent enemies from attacking or building stress, making them a safe bet to do at least once in a fight.
* 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. 
* Prefer to use skills that your heroes have trinkets boosting their effectiveness at. It's not an issue for the Apprentice difficulty expeditions, but Veteran and Champion ones will be more difficult from the enemies being tougher and more resilient to effects - stuns, debuffs, bleeds, etc. can no longer be applied consistently without a trinket increasing the odds of it happening.
* Take note of a dungeon's general occurences - their best resistances will tend to be almost insurmountable at later difficulties. It's pointless to try to bleed most of the unholy enemies in the Ruins, the Weald's enemies are most diverse and usually hard to blight (and the giant enemy's going to make having a damage-reduction debuff invaluable against them) while blockages are highly likely, the Warrens is also very blight-resistant, causes a lot of diseases, has a decent amount of prot but also has plenty of potential food curios (if you can purity them with medicinal herbs or bandages), and the Cove's eldritch fishies are very bleed-resistant, has some enemies with a lot of prot, and has curios that can be safely obtained with shovels or medicinal herbs.
* 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. You also don't want to forget that your best gear is on someone so insane you send them on a suicide run. In general, unequip everything from everyone who you aren't immediately sending out. The only danger when you are holding onto the items is a fairly weak boss stealing them, and that happens very rarely after the first time. 
* You can also change skills during a dungeon (but not during an actual battle). Feel free to swap out the Crusader's Inspiring Cry ability for the larger heal ability Battle Heal for the next battle if a hero got unexpectedly beat up.
* Speed is a very useful stat in general for most characters (...until they're on Death's Door with bleed or blight on them and act before a healer. Try to avoid this scenario from happening).
* 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 were previously one of the worst characters in the game in general, although in the same ongoing theme of Color Of Madness the weak were buffed and now the Leper is decent to take (which shouldn't be surprising since in a patch FULL of nerfs he only got buffs). Even before the patch they were useful for things such as the Vvulf boss, but were by no means mandatory in any situation. They are particularly useful in the early game for having high damage and hitting both ranks with one of their primary attack, but even after the patch their use against bosses is minimal given that most bosses hide behind obstacles in the first two ranks. 
* In the reverse of the Leper, the Occultist who was formerly one of the best classes in the game and usually auto-include when you weren't taking a Vestal has been nerfed as a healer substantially. 
* CoM taking an axe to stalling was harshest for the Crusader, who’s main role was stalling. His Speed is low, his damage is middling, and unless you are using Antiquarians his durability doesn’t matter much in the new high damage/lower durability monster meta. Currently he is like the Leper where he is amazing in the early game, but is not as useful outside of the Ruins (many monsters are Unholy, high Stress) and Cove (same). His Stress Camping heal is very useful, but outside of the Darkest Dungeon itself you won’t likely need him much anymore for anything but Ruins runs. The exception is teams of four Crusaders, since those non-stalling abilities got buffed and they can shuffle/buff. Like the Leper their inability to hit rank 3 and 4 is their main weakness, keeping them out of most boss fights as a viable pick. They can charge with a "Holy Lance" skill from the back ranks, but it shuffles them so don't count on it. 
* Your party doesn't need to be in a logical melee-front, ranged-behind formation if they can just use shuffle skills. Combine characters with shuffle skills in the same party while considering the speed to determine their generally-expected turn order to let them do these skills repeatedly - these skills tend to be well compensated in effect for having to deal with this caveat (not much will last long against two Highwaymen up front repeatedly using Point Blank Shot). Be careful about lining up the Speed stats of the characters you plan on starting a combo, from highest to lowest.
* 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. 
* Speaking of the Flagellant, there is a very good reason that the game forbids you from taking more than one of them in your party at a time: While at first glance they are an inconsistent class oriented around heavy risk-and-reward tradeoffs, a second glance at their abilities reveals that the debuffs a flagellant receives from performing his strongest abilities do not actually penalize his functionality, as being a bleed-based fighter he cares little about weapon damage debuffs, and being a character who can only perform said abilities at 50% health or below means that the Defense debuff is more of a benefit. And then there's the fact that he can heal stress, remove bleeds and blight AND can heal for large chunks of maximum health while being a durable frontliner with a soft-taunt, freeing up your backline slots to have more damage or another healer to ensure that your party will never, ever die. Add that to the fact that his offensive attacks have reasonable bleed damage AND inflicts bleed debuffs, making even the bleed-resistant fishmen vulnerable, and you've got a rock hard wheel of cheese in the form of a diseased beggar that can make many, many of the game's most frustrating encounters trivial. He took a nerf in CoM that makes his healing more debilitating to himself, but is still very good. 
* 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. 
* Speaking of Curios, it is not cheating to look up what they do and what to use on them. Its sometimes counter-intuitive, and given you'll be running through these areas a LOT there's no surprise to ruin when you learn that using bandages to check something that might be poisonous somehow will help when an antidote to poison will not, or that adding that antidote to rotten meat will make it edible, or using a simple object on a strange statue you encounter early in the game will immediately send your party against a boss in another dimension that endgame parties would usually be butchered by. 
* Remember that Curio tip about the boss that will kill your party? Well, spoilers, 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 trinket that can't be obtained any other way, though.
* The Color Of Madness added an Endless Mode at the Farmstead. This differs in that rather than trying to survive to complete the mission, the mission is obviously endless until you are wiped out or simply quit. You should either focus on killing encounters as fast as possible, focusing on anything you know deals high damage and/or Stress first, or surviving anything thrown at you and relying on the fact you can heal but they cannot. Stress will be the bigger concern, so Jesters/Houndmasters are recommended as are Vestals since most encounters will have attacks that hit most or all of your party at once. Corpses turn into crystals, which grow until they explode which forces you to deal with them, although since destroying a crystal heals the hero they give you an easy way to keep injured heroes going. Shovels and Skeleton Keys are useless, Bandages and Herbs are VERY useful as is food. 
* The Thing From The Stars is the Color Of Madness wandering boss that can be found anywhere. The Shieldbreaker is the most effective against it for breaking the Protection buff it has, the Grave Robber is also recommended for ignoring Protection, as is any Bleed or Blight you can stack. It causes massive Blight and Stress, so any character who can remove Stress or cleanse Blight is also useful.
*Speaking of the Shieldbreaker, remember that she's a glass cannon designed to end fights quickly by taking out high-threat foes. While her second ability can buy her some immunity to damage (but not debuffs, Stress, and importantly Bleed or Blight) and the Aegis Scale items can further bolster this, she's a bad choice against most bosses or enemies with AOEs or ample Blight/Bleed unless her DODGE is amped by others or trinkets. 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 speedrun them faster. Avoid using if the Fanatic is a concern. Use two of them with backseat Vestal and 3rd position morale healing Jester in Farmstead, spamming double Impales one after another for hundreds of kills before you get tons of crystals.
* The modding community is...[[Anime|colorful]]. Usually its best to stick with the official game, although there are many decent mods available and some to the same degree of quality that they are indistinguishable from official content. Just be prepared to sift for them. In particular the Marvin Seo mod classes are top notch and Muscarine's class mods are also excellent and tastefully lewd. There is also the massive and decent [[The End Times: Vermintide|Vermintide mod]], which adds the Warpstone mines as an addional dungeon to the list of area you can go to. As is to be expected, it's filled to the brim with [[Skaven]]. 
* Practically every attack in the Courtyard (and a not insignificant number of curios) carries a chance of transmitting the Crimson Curse, so your party is pretty much guaranteed to contract it during any expedition there. The best way to prevent the curse from saturating your roster is actually to simply only send in heroes who already have it, or barring that characters with high disease resistance. 
* Keep an eye on the Infestation meter - the Courtyard's enemies will inevitably start leaking into all of the regular regions (barring the Hamlet and the Darkest Dungeon) once the first Crimson Court mission is completed, so you ''will'' end up having to send a mission into the Courtyard sooner or later. Eventually you'll have to deal with vampire enemies on a regular basis, which means you'll almost invariably end up with a roster consisting almost entirely of vampires, so it's recommended that you get the Sanguine Vinters district (which brews two bottles of The Blood every week) up before you first venture into the courtyard.
* Always keep track of how many of your heroes are vampires, how many are Wasting in a given week, and how much of The Blood you have in stock. A Wasting hero ''will'' die without consuming a vial of The Blood (automatically, if there's one in stock in town), so plan ahead and try to stock up on Blood in the time after killing a Courtyard boss (which automatically cures all curses heroes and resets the Infestation meter). Sending multiple Cursed heroes into the same dungeon vastly increases the risk of '''The Fanatic''' (a powerful, randomly encountered boss who works like a mix of the Hag and Shambler) ambushing you to try and deliver a [[TPK]], but he also drops two vials of of The Cure (which will instantly cure a cursed hero). It's recommended to also have the Color of Madness DLC installed, since it includes a town event that allows you cure one disease form everyone in the hamlet, including vampirism. While on it's own this is a very rare event, it still occurs much more frequently than either of the other two methods of curing.
* Remind yourself that overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.