Thanks guys, although all that time isn’t a single campaign. I played it during Early Access, then at release, then started this run a few months ago. Still, as everyone and their mom has stated: too much grind!
Anyway, another thing I’d like to point out is that Darkest Dungeon is one of very few games that are actually well-written. I’m always amazed that so many gamers play for “story” but there seems to be very little interest in the actual quality of the prose. Plus, it’s also one of the few Lovecraft-inspired games that feels anything like Lovecraft and not hipster-Lovecraft (OMG, tentacles, lol!).
It sounds like the sequel is going to do things differently, but some changes they could make in particular come to mind:
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I think characters should have access to all their skills, or at least one or two more. Considering most characters have 2-3 “must have” skills, it leaves very little actual room for customization and it competely defeats the purpose, because you’ll never end up using that one skill that’s unique to that class but is only useful 3% of the time.
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Please make the sequel a little less dependent on Vestals. A party without one is crippled. Occultists and Arbalests are mediocre healers at best. You can never have too many virgins, and they pretty useful in Darkest Dungeon too, but you know…
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I’d remove the death penalty for one of your characters for escaping from the final dungeons. It seems like a somewhat small decision, but it’s a huge deal. For one, two of the final levels I’d call “trick” dungeons: if you don’t have the right party, you’re toast. And they don’t tell you that in advance. Losing a single hero by running away is a big deal, it takes hours of xp and gold to get one to level 6. Plus, getting a single hero back to level 6 is barely less effort than getting four of them considering you’ll need to go up the difficulty ladder all over again. So you’ll probably press on even after it’s clearly too late and get a complete party wipe instead. So now you lost four heroes!
(Pro tip: take those free leveled-up heroes when you can. They have all upgrades for their rank, so they’re worth tens of thousands of gold.)
The Talisman of the Flame is a perfect example of the (deadly) guesswork in Darkest Dungeon. You get three of those after your first run in the titular dungeon. It says on the tin that it protects against the skill “Revelation”. What is it? Who knows, you’ve never seen it before. If you brought the talismans for the second dungeon, good guess! Because the bosses use that attack constantly and it’s a devastating move.
But why only three? Maybe it doesn’t hit the back row? (It does). So if you guessed you need a Man at Arms too for his protect skill, even better!
But maybe you should wait? Maybe the game will show you when you need those talismans? Not bringing them is also a logical guess. Since you’re already at max xp level, on a “darkest”-level dungeon, trinkets are what makes the difference between a mediocre party and a dream team. Those slots are precious.
So if you guess wrong you’ll probably get some of the party wipes I mentioned above. Have fun grinding.
Anyway, did you bring the talismans in the third dungeon? Haha, they’re useless there, and anywhere else. Gotcha!