I’m not certain on this, just my own observations and I hadn’t played in quite a while before radiant so I could be remembering incorrectly. I haven’t played since before the antiquarian was introduced so some of this may have already changed.
I believe you can get more of each “treasure item” in a stack; i.e. I believe you can get 1750 gold in a stack now and I think it used to be 1500. I also seem to be bringing home far more heirlooms, so I think that those might be stacking a little faster as well but I’m less sure of that than the gold.
It also seems like the light fades slower in corridors you’ve already cleared so that walking around the long way (and avoiding unnecessary scouted corridor fights) and the incremental stress gains just from walking seem to be lower.
Also, trinket costs might be cheaper, though I only looked at the nomad camp for a brief second. I think it was 15000 for the very rare with no upgrades back when I played and I believe I saw 10000 this time.
My takeaway from the patch notes is that they are targeting the final dungeon grind rather than earlier grinds. I am seeing that characters can return to the final dungeon, can start at higher levels from stagecoach, and can grind lower dungeons all as design changes targeting the grind and re-grind up to max level just to try to make progress in the final dungeon. So I am guessing that the early game will have about the same pace, but the mid to late one will accelerate.
While I think it is potentially good, earlier elements were a bit grindy too. I guess we will see how it settles overall.
Yeah, after reviewing the patch notes more carefully I think you’re right.
Don’t get me wrong, the changes with Radiant mode make it my go-to mode now. But I was hoping the upgrade costs would be how they made things feel less grindy, rather than doing almost everything through the stage coach.
I initially did, like in week 2 or 3, and then I regretted it immediately (and you will as well, sounds like) as Crests are as common as mud while busts are proving the thing I need more of. I wish I hadn’t traded 8 or so away early on. I am only going to use this feature very sparingly going forward.
‘Radiant’ mode has arrived in Darkest Dungeon [official site], offering a shorter — but not necessarily easier — crawl through the deadly depths. The new difficulty mode removes a lot of grind by boosting XP and cutting gold costs, but your troops will still certainly be at risk of losing their minds when they get spooked by a skellington or booed by a ghoost. Or, if you’re a bad enough dude, the ultra-hard mode is now even harder. And for everyone, four new monsters have been added and a lot’s been tweaked and rebalanced. This is a cracking update! … [visit site to read more]
The biggest change in Radiant mode is that they allow a slightly higher level hero to go into a lower dungeon.
It seems possible to send a level 2 hero into a level 1 dungeon. That change alone is tremendous. I’ll verify this later and probably write an beginners guide to get people to handle the grind aspects of this amazing game.
Just took on my first boss after getting back in to try Radiant mode. When I saw that triple-digit HP I totally expected my party to get wiped, but I ended up mopping the floor with the necromancer. Debuffs stacked until he was taking 20+ damage in blight and bleed while being stunned from my Vestal’s Judgment. Awesome.
Antiquarian exists purely to make grinding easier. She sucks at everything, but having her on a loot run makes it more profitable. Which… is a pretty great idea really.
A level 2 Antiqurian with level 2 heroes on Medium or Long Apprentice runs easily racks up 30K++ profit.
And being over-leveled, the encounters ends very fast.
I just need to rest to zero my stress and intentionally fail the mission. Makes life much easier.
I actually managed to send a team of Level 3 heroes on an Apprentice Level Quest.
I am unsure if it’s an old mod or if it’s the Radiant mode. (I did uninstall everything some time ago before installing the when Radiant mode was released).
I messed up the screenshots. Will post it as soon as I can.