Arcen Games

Other => Off Topic => : TheVampire100 January 19, 2016, 11:03:34 PM

: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 19, 2016, 11:03:34 PM
Darkest Dungeon, one of the few true rogue-likes out there, has been released this day.
The has been long in development and early access but showed already there a promising gameplay experience.
The story, so far it goes, is about your ancestor, who lived in his manor above a hamlet that he owned, was bored with his luxury life, so he started to research about dark cults and come across the fact that directly under his house is the portal to another dimension that promises unimaginable powers. Interested in this, he starts an expidition, spending all of his fortune only to find out that the portal leads to a nightmarish world with cruel monsters that start to invade the manor and surroundings.
He flees, writes a letter to seek your help and kills himself afterwards (the coward he is). Your goal is now to fix what your ancestor has ruined. Breach into the ruins of the manor, find the so called "Darkest Dungeon" where the portal resides and close it.

Because you are the same coward as your ancestor, you don't do this yourself, you hire some mercenary heroes and tell them that treasures await them in the dungeon. But seeing the madness that awaits them, only the most desperate characters follow your call, barely heroes themselves. But you use what you can get.
Always with a party of four heroes you travel in the ruins or the surroundings of the manor and search for treasures, ints and monsters in order to defeat the abnormal threats. Unlike most rogue-likes, it features a sideview and a rather straightforward exploratiom. You always know the entire map of the dungeon, you select adjacent rooms that you want to travel to, your party moves across a corridor and will eventually encounter monsters, traps or different interactive items, called "curio". everything can have a positive or negative impact on your heroes. Ypur heroes themself are stressed about the dreadful environment and might become insane, which sresses the other heroes even more, creating a chain reaction. Insane heroes start also to act unreliable on their own, beating themself or other heroes, speaking words of madness or just refuse to act at all. To counter this you can light torches, so they can see better what awaits them, however this is not a 100% protection against stress.
Heroes recover from stress at the hamlet, they can gamble, drink or pray in order to forget what they have recently encountered. only to face it again in the next run.
Your ultimate goal is it to defeat defeat the 8 bosses of the game in order to get access to the darkest dungeon and each boss has to be defeated three times, getting stronger in each fight.
The game features turn-based combat and your party can use 4 different skills that they might switch out at any time outside of battle with other skills they have. Position in battle is important, there are four rows on each side (yours and enemies) and some attacks work only in spefic rows and against specific rows. A melee fighter has to stand in front of the other heroes and can target only monsters that are in their front row. The interaction of skills from different heroes is important as well as the balance of stress and health. But even if your heroes reach 0 life points, they won't die, instead they reach "deaths door", a status that makes them vulnerable for every incoming attack (meaning NOW they can die from it) and also gives them some nasty debuffs. A hero that stands on deaths door should leave the dungeon as soon as possible. Heroes that die, stay dead. No resurection, no "phoenix downs", not even the ability to reload a save file. The game remembers every action at the moment it happens, meaning everything is ultimate. The full true rogue-like experience. All you can do is hire a new hero that replaces the old hero. Maybe. Probably not. He was something special. They always are.

If you liek rogue-likes with dark artmosphere, check it out.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Cyborg January 19, 2016, 11:17:03 PM
I couldn't handle the grind. Maybe they fixed it?
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 19, 2016, 11:54:20 PM
I don't understand what you mean with grind. If you mean hero leveling, this is not that much of a big deal in a game where your heroes are dying constantly (obviously).

If you mean money/gold, I have the feelign I get more gold as I got some patches before. Mostly because you sell unused items (torches, bandeges, antivenom) after a completed dungeon back to the merchant (to a lower price but still), so you loose less money when you've invested in more items than you needed. I also have the feeling that they scaled the loot upwards, so you get more per fight/curio. I have already above 10k gold after the first two runs. After I spent all my money on stuff.You can also sell trinkets that you get with every succesful run and most trinkets give a good amount of money.

If you mean heirloom items: Yes, that part is a little grindy, if you want to level up your buildings really fast. You will get enough in the first few runs to upgrade the most basic buildings but the longer the game goes, the more you will struggle to get enough heirlooms, requiring multiple runs for one building (also limited by the fact that your inventory has a limited amount of space). Since heroes come and go but buildings stay forever and can be used forever, also because they are importantfor the long survivability of your more precious heroes, this is understandable (also, the game is meant to be hard and the key is to manag your scarce resources where you need them, not where you can use them).

I wish however the inventory was bigger. With bandages, holy water, torches, food, antivenom and medical herbs you run out rather fast out of slots and said slots will be filled quickly with gems and heirlooms. An upgradable inevntory 8bigger backpakcs or something like that) would be nice but they never thought of anything like that. When i find a trinket I always put it on a hero even if it does not benefit him just to make up another slot in the inventory.

besides that I don't find the game very grindy. For newcomers you will strugle with gold on your first playthrough and eventually decide to quit and start a new one but after some time you will know how to manage your resources.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Cyborg January 20, 2016, 01:03:41 AM
I can't really read what you write because it hurts my eyes. But what I mean is to level characters, the various gold sinks with the mental afflictions that also shorten dungeon runs, it's not fun. I spend more time playing psychiatrist than I do having fun.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 20, 2016, 02:40:08 AM
Maybe you should consult a doctor then.

Leveling is not really important in the game like I said above. I find that characters even level too fast because high level characters refuse to do low level dungeons. If you have problems with stress, get a jester that has Inspiring Tune. He gives you a 10% stress resist debuff with each cast. the effect stacks and lasts 3 rounds (so up to 30% resist). The skill also reduces stress by 10. if you still have problems with managing stress then this game is clearly not for you.

Darkest Dungeon is mostly a resource management game. Heroes count as resource.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 20, 2016, 05:22:30 AM
Btw, I suggest this guide for Darkes Dungeon: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?l=german&id=386706480
When you know how to cleanse a curio, you get more rewards in a run. More rewards=faster progress=less grind.
I hope this helped you.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mick January 20, 2016, 01:36:15 PM
Somewhere along the line they added a slight free stress reduction for every hero that stays in town, works nice if you cycle through your heroes and only use the stress buildings for the ones that really need it.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 20, 2016, 04:44:51 PM
Yes, I totally forgot this. I really lie this new feature because you can save money this way.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: crazyroosterman January 20, 2016, 05:16:15 PM
I like this game but I really have to be in the mood for this game by the way how much is the stress reduction exactly? If they it to high it might make the bar and chapel not really worth using any more?.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 20, 2016, 06:14:17 PM
I find it ironic that the developers have spent so much time and emphasis on the stress levels of the party, while ignoring the stress levels of the player :D

Bad joke, Inb4 Keith post :P
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 20, 2016, 06:18:06 PM
I like this game but I really have to be in the mood for this game by the way how much is the stress reduction exactly? If they it to high it might make the bar and chapel not really worth using any more?.
Not much, never over 10 percent as far as I can say. Tavern and chapel are still the best stress reductions when you are over 50%
But it's good enough when you have only one bar of stress.

The game was meant to be hard and stressing for the player himself. However, soem reviewers think they went a little over the top with some of the stuff.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: marvindeshong January 22, 2016, 11:08:15 AM
I haven't yet got this game but am quite excited for it. The reviews seem to suggest that it is going a bit over the top. Will be finding it out soon.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Xeonix January 22, 2016, 03:13:35 PM
I've enjoyed beta before they made corpses.I I do feel like they are not needed cause they are making  fights way too longer.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 22, 2016, 07:42:38 PM
Theres an option where you can disable corpses.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: zespri January 29, 2016, 09:42:51 PM
This game is not just hard, it's punishing and unfair. It has really nice atmosphere and graphics, so if you are planning to get 5 hours of enjoyment out of it you cannot go wrong.
However as you progress in game you are going to be hindered by artificially added grind.
Saying that grind does not matter because your heroes are meant to die, is simply wrong. To get to the higher-end content of the game you need higher level heroes. At the same time, higher level heroes refuses to do lower level dungeons to get that much more of so needed xp. In many cases you do not know what waits you in a dungeon, and you get most of your painstakingly leveled party wiped by a stray bad RNG. And when this happened you basically need to start from scratch. One might say, but surely you have *another* party, don't you. Well, it can be wiped as easily, and obviously, successfully leveling several parties multiplies the time required.

Everywhere, everywhere in the game the time sinks feels tacked on and artificial.

I have not been there for early access, but from what people post it looks like it used to be a better game in the beginning, and then it was changed under pressure by vocal minority to the subpar game it has become. The worst thing, that you do not actually notice the worst, until you played long enough and learned different game mechanics. And then you realize how much time you wasted. It stops being fun in a few hours.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 29, 2016, 09:54:04 PM
So far I've beaten two bosses and have lost only two heroes. i still have on of the heroes that you get from the start. Yes the game is punishing. Yes, RNG MAY ruin your run. However, you can flee at any poin of a run, saving your party from death (which may be wise sometimes).
Maybe I'm just stratigically so much better than the average player that I don't notice the high difficulty problems that other players have.
So far I have NONE problems with the difficulty of the game, eevrythign is fine and th egame is meant to hard and punishing. It's the same with Dwarf Fortress. the game jsut throws everything that is nasty and ugly and unfun at you but for some reason does this in a way that all this stuff still is fun to play.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: zespri January 29, 2016, 10:05:17 PM
So far I've beaten two bosses and have lost only two heroes. i still have on of the heroes that you get from the start. Yes the game is punishing. Yes, RNG MAY ruin your run. However, you can flee at any poin of a run, saving your party from death (which may be wise sometimes).
Maybe I'm just stratigically so much better than the average player that I don't notice the high difficulty problems that other players have.
So far I have NONE problems with the difficulty of the game, eevrythign is fine and th egame is meant to hard and punishing. It's the same with Dwarf Fortress. the game jsut throws everything that is nasty and ugly and unfun at you but for some reason does this in a way that all this stuff still is fun to play.
Is there a win condition in the game? Have you reached it? How long did it take?
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 30, 2016, 06:09:57 AM
No, I haven't reached the win condition so far (it was added only recently anyway and I started from new when the game got released, so I can see all the new changes) and funny enough, in theory you could win the game right after the first dungeon run.
The victory condition is to win 4 runs in the Darkest Dungeon and close the portal. You can do this as early as possible (right after you've finished your first real dungeon run) but are encouraged to prepare first. The Darkest dungeon has a difficulty of 6.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: zespri January 31, 2016, 07:00:00 AM
right after you've finished your first real dungeon run
I probably have not got that far. What is the difference between a real dungeon run and otherwise?
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 31, 2016, 08:43:30 PM
The first real dungeon run is the first run after the tutorial. When you have completed the one in the ruins, you should unlock the Darkest Dungeon. Either it was this run or the next run after this one (I'm not sure anymore, was too long ago).
Of course the Darkest Dungeon was added AFTER leaving Early Access, so if you haven't the game fter release, you couldn't have seen it. i'm also not sure what happens if you play on an older save, maybe you need to start a new one (I did anyway).
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: zespri January 31, 2016, 10:26:52 PM
if you play on an older save, maybe you need to start a new one (I did anyway).
Right, more grinding then. Why, why do I even bother????  :)
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 31, 2016, 10:53:26 PM
Well, since it was Early Acces you somehow except this to happen. In my opinion they waited too long with the last dungeon anyway, they could've put it in earlier, so people can test it before it goes live.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier March 04, 2016, 09:06:38 PM
A friend got me this game while it was still in Early Access, about 6 months ago, but as usual, I like to wait until it's fully released to play.

Suffice it to say that I was quickly hooked. In a span of probably 2 weeks, I have clocked 104 hours of play time, according to Steam.

I've got a lot to say about it, so I'll cut my review/thoughts into 3 parts -

Grinding:

A lot of people have complained about the "grinding" aspect of the game.

The thing you need to remember about "grinding", is that it only exists in the player's mind. If a player is having fun, then what they are doing isn't grinding. In other words, the person who decides what is grinding and what is not, is ultimately the player.

Let's be quite clear, if the term "grinding" had any objective merit, MMOs as a genre could not exist, and neither could most ARPGs. However, given that there's a signficant percentage of the human population which enjoy these extremely time-consuming and repetitive games, clearly what is grinding to me is not grinding to someone else, and vice versa.

The term 'grinding' is generally used when the activity the player is engaged in no longer seems enjoyable or meaningful. But you're playing a f*cking video game, it was never meaningful for all practical purposes in the first place.

So having said that, Darkest Dungeon didn't feel like grinding to me. I thoroughly enjoyed the 100 hour trek to get where I am. Some others may disagree, and they would be welcome to that. For me what made it all bearable was the brutally difficult learning curve of the game, and the fact that death was permanent. Compare this to any given MMO, for example, where death has almost no penalty at all, and you just respawn a few minutes away to try again.

In spite of that, I still think the amount of time the game requires is a bit too long (I'll probably have to play another 20-30 hours to actually beat it), because I don't believe that 100+ hours required game play time is a reasonable requirement to put onto the player. Because of this, the vast majority of people who attempt Darkest Dungeon will probably never even make it half way before giving up or moving on to other games.

Difficulty:

The second thing people generally complain about is the game's difficulty. Since the game has no difficulty settings, prepare to lose at first, a lot, until you get some of the basics of the game down. There is quite a bit of room for experimentation, and the game expects you to fail miserably again and again, which is why recruiting heroes is free, and why there is no ultimate way to lose the campaign (though it doesn't tell you that, that's something you kind of figure out on your own).

Having said that, the game's difficulty is very linear, and the pacing is very well done. The "Easy" missions (level 1) are difficult at first, but once you get the hang of them, they aren't so bad. Then the "Medium" difficulty missions are a brutal step up, but you'll soon figure those out too. Finally, "Hard" is predictably even more of a jump than from Easy to Medium, but by that point you should be experienced enough with the game to prepare for that.

One really nice aspect is that once you've mastered a new difficulty, all the previous difficulties become cake in comparison, allowing you to run your lower characters through them, even at night, with high rates of success.

Night runs and the torch mechanics in general are absolutely BRILLIANT, and really allow the player to artificially increase or decrease their difficulty at will, for greater risks and rewards. This is one of the reasons the game doesn't feel that grindy, because even an "Easy" night run can still be challenging for an experienced players.

The game is split into 4 areas, The Ruins (Easiest/Noob Friendly), The Weald (Harder), The Cove and the Warrens (Very Hard). Each area has its own monsters, with their own strengths and weaknesses, and thus requires its own strategies on the part of the player. Something that works well in the Cove could get you DESTROYED in the Weald, and vice versa. As a player you have to become intimately familiar with all the tactics you have available to defeat a particular area. To make matters even more complex, each difficulty changes the required strategies heavily. On easy, a good team composition (Say Plague Doctor, Occultist, Highwayman, Crusader) could probably defeat any area, but once you get to medium that will no longer work. Strategies which used to absolutely CRUSH medium become largely ineffectual on hard. So not only do you have to familiarize yourself with each area for building a party, you essentially have to re-learn them for each difficulty.

Personally, I loved this. My over-analytic and strategic mind went into overdrive discovering new and innovative ways to tackle the unexpected and brutal challenges I faced. I watched in horror as old team compositions fell victim to the slaughter on higher difficulty runs, and was forced to rethink my strategy after losing several 'key members' of my team.

This is one area which the game does very, very right. We'll call it the "Ways to skin a cat effect". For any given situation or problem, there are so many ways to solve it as the player that the possibilities seem nearly limitless, perhaps even overwhelming. So few games give the player the strategic license to be so creative and innovative, in fact forcing them to do so, while giving them so many options to succeed in this regard, and letting them figure out on their own what works best.

In other words, were someone else in this forum to play 100 hours of this game, and achieve the same successes I have, I expect we would have very different strategies and team compositions to get to where we are, and I just find that to be fantastic.

So is the game difficult? Yes. Will it kick your ass repeatedly? Without a doubt. But once you figure out the key components to each area/difficulty, and have that "AHA moment", it goes from being brutal to extremely sensical and fairly easy like that.

I will say that you need to have the Curio guide (http://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Curio) open at all times until you've memorized them, or you've set yourself up for some undue stress (both literally and figuratively).

Which brings me to the final mechanic.

Stress:

One of the biggest complaints and fears I hear about this game is the stress mechanic. Personally, I think it's an amazing mechanic, and the brilliant equal to something like AI Progress in AI War in terms of how it must be maintained and managed.

I highly recommend this article, on Rock-Paper-Scissors (https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/02/17/darkest-dungeon-difficulty/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rockpapershotgun%2Fsteam+%28Rock%2C+Paper%2C+Shotgun%3A+Steam+RSS%29), about how the game's stress mechanic produced such a visceral effect that it caused the writer himself to essentially have a mental breakdown, and to quit playing the game. Now that's what I call damn good design.

Having said all that, and after having read the article, you would think that the stress mechanic is extremely brutal and unfair, but actually I've found it to be one of the simplest parts of the game.

There's essentially two ways to handle stress on a mission:
1. Party camping abilities, of which there are many, many skills that both reduce the stress of the entire party and prevent them from stressing further in the future (the best ones are on the Houndmaster, Crusader, and Jester). These are easily the best answer, and make handling stress a non-issue (at least for me).

2. High crit chance. Whenever a friendly character crits an enemy, it reduces their stress and often the stress of the entire party. This is often what makes night runs so great. Sure, you take a lot more damage from enemies, but given that you crit chances have risen to such a degree, stress itself often becomes a non-factor, allowing you to focus only on health and party survivability. There are also several classes which raise the crit chance for the entire party, either in battle, or with Party Camping abilities, and many items which facilitate this as well.

In other words, stress, though problematic, should not be the most difficult part of the game. It certainly should not, as it did for this reviewer, drive you to the point of insanity yourself. It can be managed in a myriad of different ways, and ultimately adds to the game's complexity and strategy quite significantly in the end.

-----------

Final thoughts, this is one of the most enjoyable roguelikes I've ever played. Though the game does have some problems (specifically length), and is not for everybody, great moments of insight, clarity, and accomplishment will be rewarded to those willing to brave the unspeakable horrors of... The Darkest Dungeon.

: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery March 04, 2016, 10:53:44 PM
My own thoughts on some of the game's supposed "problems":

1.  The grinding.  I never saw this as grinding.  You're not just going into an open area and fighting really easy enemies over and over and over and over and over and over and over again for EXP.  That's what "grinding" is to me, and it usually happens in a JRPG.

In this, it's just repetition... there's a huge difference.  It's the same as in basically every roguelike ever.  No matter which game it is, for the most part, you're going to repeat the same floors and fight the same enemies... albeit with procedural hilarity added... over and over again.  A million billion times.  But these games usually keep it interesting every time, that's what they're known for.  But if someone cant deal with that, this entire genre isnt for them.

Heck, plenty of genres do this, really.  I get this in shmups alot, where there are only like 5 stages, the game is 35 minutes long, but you're going to play those levels 10 squillion times, perhaps for 1000 hours or more, before you beat it.  But it never feels grindy to me.  It's just practice and challenge.

"Grinding" to me is always that repetition of a really EASY task every time.  Like, braindead easy, no chance of losing at all, never anything different either.


2, the difficulty and stress mechanic:   It's a bloody roguelike!  What the hell does anyone expect?  People should know, going into it, that they're going to lose, 5 billionty times before beating it... IF they beat it.  This isnt some big AAA game that's all story and cutscenes and holds your hand so you definitely get a victory and thus buy the sequel.  Roguelikes beat you over the head with your own face.  That's what they do.

The Stress mechanic, to me, is actually a variant of a certain type of mechanic that shows up super-often in roguelikes, which I usually refer to as "anti-grinding".  A mechanic that causes/forces you to at least somewhat rush through a dungeon; you cannot just stick around forever, or you WILL lose.  You have to keep moving and keep up a pace, you're not able to just sit around and constantly clobber enemies to power up. Keeps you from ever being overlevelled. In the case of THIS game, it limits your exploration a bit, so that you have to make actual decisions about that.  Keeps the challenge consistent, rather than constantly falling because you keep taking a million years to power up.  There's alot of variations of this idea in the genre.  Not all of them have it... for some of them, it just wouldnt make sense.  But most traditional ones do.  I've never seen a problem with the stress mechanic here... so long as it's balanced out right.  When I played the game in it's earlier state, it was just a bit of a mess.  Characters would flip the hell out if a small mouse looked at them funny.   From what I've seen in videos of the game recently, this is no longer the case.



: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier March 04, 2016, 11:31:06 PM
From what I've seen in videos of the game recently, this is no longer the case.
Like I said, I never played the game in Alpha, so I don't know what the mechanics were like then. I did hear it was a bit screwy for awhile, but this is why I don't play games in Early Access (pretty much ever).

Nowadays, managing stress is very easy. I just got done with a hard/long run in which I finished the mission with all of my party members having stress 0. The Houndmaster and the Crusader each have a whole party camping skill individually, which combined reduces stress by 25 total for each member, and then reduces further stress by 25% for 4 combats.

Combine that with the relatively high crit chances you get with the lategame items and upgrades, and there's just no reason it should ever be a problem. Don't get me wrong, you can build a party without these stress relief mechanics while camping, and that certainly makes it harder, but usually the characters which don't have guaranteed stress relief can somehow buff the party's crit chance (or their own), indirectly managing stress instead.

The biggest part of avoiding stress is having good scouting chance. For daytime runs, but even more importantly for night runs, leaving no chance for your party to get surprised is hugely important to long-term mission success. Generally speaking, one of the most stressful scenarios is when your entire party is out of order, and you have to spend the entire fight trying to get them back to the correct position as the enemy just pelts you over and over with either crits or stress-inducing abilities. Obviously, when your party composition is in order, you can take out the weaker, stress-creating units first, sometimes before they can even take their first action.

What I love so much about the stress mechanic is that it's a bit of a slow-killer. It does no actual damage to your party, and in some ways it's hugely preferable to actually taking HP damage. So in 1, 2, or even 3 battles, stress doesn't even really come into play. But as the mission carries on, it begins to grow to dangerous levels, until it has become a real problem that needs to be addressed (or else).

I just love that. It's like each group of enemies you encounter knows they can't defeat you individually, but they may be able to win the war by essentially slowly incapacitating your party until they become overwhelmed half way through the mission. It's like the inevitable slog towards insanity. One member becomes afflicted, essentially losing his or her mind with stress, and then slowly projects their insanity to the other party members, until they slowly succumb to the madness.

Of course, the exact opposite can happen as well. Sometimes, when the situation seems hopelessly dire, a party member's resolve is tested, and they overcome their fear to reach a godlike status. These situations, however rare, are absolutely f*cking epic.

The first time I ever attempted a hard run, I knew I was going to get destroyed. That's just the way the game is when you jump up difficulties, and I had no prior experience with it. In my party I had a Grave Robber, Jester, Hellion, and Houndmaster. It was a terrible setup for hard difficulty (despite my many successes with in on medium), but of course there was no way for me to know that.

From the very beginning, everything was going wrong. My party was missing their attacks (actually not that common), I kept getting critted, and I honestly had no idea what I was doing. To make matters worse, they were targeting my Grave Robber (which I colloquially refer to as just "The Assassin"), who was the main DPS of the party, with endless amounts of stress attacks.

By the third battle, she had reached her breaking point, and her resolve was tested.

You can not imagine the feeling of relief and raw adrenaline that came over me when her result was "POWERFUL". It was if my life had flashed before my eyes, only to realize that there was still hope.

(http://i.imgur.com/u67mUjN.jpg)

After she overcame her fear, that Assassin carried that freaking team on her shoulders. Every fight she was buffing the entire team, positively encouraging them, and leading by example. And my god, was she an example.

(http://i.imgur.com/X24yVh8.jpg)

By the final battle of the quest, the entire party was low health, and my Assassin got crit by an opponent, then began to bleed out. She died one round before I finished the mission. I lost her forever, but she died so the other members of that party could live. It was one of the most epic series of events I've ever experienced in the history of my life as a gamer.


: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery March 04, 2016, 11:53:52 PM
Aye, I find that the most awesome moments in gaming really do tend to come from games like that, and roguelikes in general.   Where all of a sudden something absurd and just amazing and epic will happen, just out of the blue, and you dont see it coming at all, and it just changes everything. 

Dwarf Fortress always seems the best at this, to me anyway.  With the game's ridiculous depth it can create situations like that.

I remember one time I had one of those nasty super beast things rampaging around, sent the military to fight them, and very quickly, a couple of them got killed.  One of the remaining ones just went totally bonkers, dove in front of the thing and started systematically KNOCKING ALL IT'S TEETH OUT.  I had no idea WHY, but he just kept doing that.  And it's swatting at him, and accomplishing nothing, and finally goes down when one of the others finishes it off with a massive crushing blow while it's distracted by unexpected dentistry.  UNEXPECTED DENTISTRY.  How many unstoppable monsters go down to something like that?  It's kinda like the whole Boatmurdered thing, where the fortress was eventually overwhelmed because the front door got stuck open due to a butterfly somehow jamming itself into the mechanism of it, and it was just the final straw that toppled what little was still sane in there.

And it's like, just... yeah.   That kind of thing doesnt happen in other genres at all really.  Far as I'm concerned, awesome stuff like that is one of the biggest reasons to play these.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 16, 2017, 08:05:59 AM
Here's my review after roughly 30 hours.

Graphics and sound
The graphics style may not be to everyones liking, but I find it perfect for this game. It fits the atmosphere and the minimalistic animations really make this style pop. I love it, it's one of the more beautiful dungeon crawls I've seen released in a long time.

Sound design seems to mimic this as well with sounds being suitably meaty and punchy and instilling fear and doubt with a horror undertone. Definitely top notch work on this!

Enemy variety and difficulty
Having not gotten much further than Veteran quests, I'd say the enemy variety is decent, if not fantastic. You tend to run in to the same type of enemies a lot, even during a single run. However, even though this has happened a lot I don't feel like it hurts the game in any way, instead giving you an option to learn how to deal with the enemy types before encountering new ones. Each region also have their own unique set of enemies which helps spice things up.

Enemy difficulty varies wildly with some being absolute pushovers and posing no threat at all, while others can be potentially party-wipers on their own.

Tutorial/help
I find that the game has a competent tutorial system, but there is a lot that is not explained well at all. I've had multiple instances, even after 20+ hours of gameplay where I'm left scratching my head and thinking "what just happened?". There are a lot of these things that could be better explained, especially the speed stat, as I've had it happen more than once that the enemy party gets to act twice before I have a chance to react. Which leads us to the next point:

Unfairness
This is where people's opinions likely will diverge. Some find it perfectly fine that the game is stacked against you and completely unfair. I am however not one of those. I don't mind difficult games. Heck, I play roguelikes almost daily, I find Dark Souls to be one of the best action RPGs of today, and I'm an avid Dwarf Fortress fan.

What I don't like however is how utterly stacked this game is. I've had multiple parties wiped out without me even getting a chance to act. Enter combat, and even without "SURPRISED!", the enemy party acts first, stunning two members, and starts stacking stress. I've had instances where a party has started with near (>10) no stress and ended up at 150+ after a single battle. This in spite of me doing everything to stop the casters. Some enemy parties simply have too many casters, or too much protection for the casters, to be beatable with a lvl 2-3 party.

Then begins the downward spiral where the party, on its own, begins stacking stress, skipping turns, refusing healing all while the enemy party picks you apart one by one. Eventually you reach the point where you are so fed up with the fight that you say, "FINE, I'll retreat and call this a loss." But nope. You can't retreat, because it's the enemies turn right now, and you see they get to act three times before you do anything, in spite of having a SPD debuff on them and you having a SPD buff. So two of your party members go from 50% HP to dead in those three turns where you were not allowed to act, a third one dies to heart attack and at that point you just ragequit because you were never given a chance to properly act.

Yeah, there are likely people who will say "You didn't prepare", "You should've run earlier" or "git gud nub". But you know what? I play games for fun and while DD definitely has a lot of fun in it, these moments where control is completely taken out of your hands, everything is stacked against you, the RNG gives you the finger and you wipe yet another party in a single battle even though you had good health and stress levels beforehand...those moments just make the game incredibly frustrating and unfair. That's also why I decided to not even bother anymore.

Conclusion
If you find stacked odds and a lot of frustrating failiure to be fun, by all means, give DD a try because there's a lot to like here. The graphics and sound are great. The battle mechanics are, for the most part, really nice albeit a bit limited. It's just the endless frustration of knowing that the next battle could be the one that completely screws you over out of the blue. There is too much RNG in this game for my taste, and that puts it well beyond my control whether I win or lose.

Yes, it's a roguelike and it's supposed to be hard, but this game is literally stacked against you and can wipe an entire party without you really having any kind of input on it. That is ridiculously frustrating and really unfair. That's what really murders the enjoyment in this game.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 16, 2017, 01:15:04 PM
You probably had the wrong party composition, a lot of players make this mistake.
I agree however on the point that DD has a problem with "1 turn hug ups" where monsters suddenly pull up some nasty trick up that either leaves everyone mad or will kill your most important heroes. I'm also not a fan of loosing your high leveled heroes for good because the RNG was simply worse (a pretty terrible crit, surprise attack, affliction that screws you over).

About stats: Everyone attacks in each round once. No exceptions. The turn order in which one attacks is however randomly decided at the START of the round. This is affected somewhat by speed. Hogher speed means you are more likely to act first on your round. Highwayman are perfect to punish the more nasty enemies because they have high speed and really good attacks up their sleeve. If you have one already, Graverobber. She is a BEAST with the speed stats and she has also high evasion, makign it hard to hit her in any way. She can even boost this more. If you want to be safe, put Spd items on stunners. If you can stun important enemies in the first round before they can act, you have a chance to react with your damage dealers and kill some.

Healing: A lot of people think that you have to heal your party always full. This is terribly untrue in this game. I don't know how or even if you use healign but have at least one healer in every party, even if he can only heal 1 point (liek the Pest Doctor). This is because heroes NEVER die if they hit 0 hp. Only after they have 0 hp and get hit again they have a CHANCE to die (that is even really small and does decrease the higher you rank your heroes). So simply healign always them to 1 Hp means they are SAFE as long as you can divide the damage across multiple heroes. Do the math yourself, this simply means you have to decrease the enemies to a specidfic amount or use other heroes as distraction. Heroes then can mark themself (whicha re then more liekly to be attacked) are useful for tanking. Use healers only for heals if your heroes have 0 HP, otherwise attack with them as well or apply buffs/debuffs.
Stress healers should also be in a Party if you do longer runs. There is no safe way to say how much stress will rise, there are multiple factors and with some enemies even applying stress, you should have a hero that can heal stress. On longer runs you can camp anyway and most heroes have something to reduce stress as camping skill. On Boss runs you hould always have a jester. Best stress reducer int he party plus good buffer.
Also, feats/perks are extremely important on heroes. Soemthign that increases stress on ruins ina  ruin run is of course a dumb mistake. In my first runs I said that wouldn't affect me so much but it did. In the long run you will notice a big decrease in gold income because you spend more to heal stress. On good runs you don't even need to heal stress because they will heal it over time.
Aslso, if you run out of gold, consider dark runs (runs without light sources at all), this increases the amount of treasures but also the risk of dying. Use only heroes that are preapred for this. Dark runs are extremely helpful to gain gold which means you can spend more on hero upgrades and so on.

Also, I love the soundtrack of Darkest Dungeon. I just have to say it, the game uses the perfect music to underlay the stressful atmosphere of the game, the panic that rises, the dread of the grotesque enemies. The best one os the battle music in the warrens.

Don't give up because DD is unfair. And it IS unfair. In many ways. The challange and fun int he game is to reduce the amount of unfairness so you get a good run. Daerkest Dungeon is meant to be played that way, the developers stressed in every update that the game is not about having a safe run. At all. It's always a stressful, unfair and hopeless situation on your end and the only way to win is to make the best out of the worst. This has nothign to do with "git gud", it just means how much stess can you endure on yourself, how much fun can you get out of thi. People that find this too frustrating simply shouldn't play this game. There is a reason why DD has such highly praised reviews, people simply like this concept. Not everyone, so... just play another game. That's how it works anyway with the gaming community, if a gameplay style does not fit for you, play something else.

It's the same pretty much for me with ARK. I don't liek the concept at all, so probably the game is not meant for me.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: jenya January 16, 2017, 02:18:09 PM
Yes, it's a roguelike and it's supposed to be hard, but this game is literally stacked against you and can wipe an entire party without you really having any kind of input on it. That is ridiculously frustrating and really unfair. That's what really murders the enjoyment in this game.
You are not alone, there is similar review on Youtube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Buwei6ZWqU
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery January 16, 2017, 07:24:21 PM
On the note of unfairness, I tend to agree with Mana on this one.  I dont like it in games like this either.  This game had seemed pretty good to me for awhile, but... after enough time with it, it's sorta "meh" to me at this point.  I rather lost interest.

It's yet another example of "fake difficulty", as the game is STUFFED with it.  It ends up being like the devs didn't REALLY know how to create proper challenge within the framework they'd created.  I mean, there are alot of games that are MUCH harder than this... yet where skill can always triumph even when the RNG is being an absolute snot.  This game with it's "you dont get to take a turn" deaths just gets old.  It makes me think of roguelikes with bad identification mechanics, where you *must* take a chance with new items eventually, and they *can* kill you pretty much instantly, and no amount of strategy and planning can make it so that you have a reliable and workable way of approaching it.  To me, it's bloody awful design.

At this point, I"m honestly kinda surprised that this game got as popular as it has, really.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 17, 2017, 01:23:24 AM
TheVampire, I appreciate the input, but I did actually do my research on this one before sitting down and making my final review on the game. There are absolutely lots of things you can do to reduce the likelyhood of getting your face absolutely punched in (the aforementioned SPD and Dodge-stacking, having high SPD stunners or healers) but even with these "perfectly stacked" parties you are still at the mercy of the RNG, and that is where the game completely lost its whole allure to me.

I love for games to punish me for making mistakes. I don't love games saying "You don't get to play today, because I'm cranky" and kill me out of spite. That's just poor design.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 17, 2017, 05:09:21 PM
I disagree with the sentiment being shared here that the game can just screw you over with bad luck or kill you before you have a chance to act etc.

I have 120 hours with the game, I've beaten all difficulties of mission many times with many different party combinations. In fact, near the end, most of my runs were "dark runs" done without torches in order to increase the amount of loot acquired.

However, what I will say was that discovering the right party and item compositions took a lot of time and experimentation, and a lot of good characters were lost along the way.

I simply think most people either do not have to skill or the patience to invest the amount of time necessary to learn the intricacies of the game, and to play it to its full potential.

I blame this on the developers for the most part.

However, they *are* making a short mode pretty soon, which they've been working on for awhile. I imagine that this mode will essentially become the "default" mode of the game, and will appeal to a more casual audience.

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2016/12/21/darkest-dungeon-radiant-short-mode/
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 18, 2017, 04:28:21 AM
I don't see the length of the game as a problem, tbh. It's its mechanics that just don't appeal to me in the slightest. The fact that a party can be crippled completely without any chance to do anything about it is horribly bad design in my mind. I guess this becomes less of an issue several hours into the game as your characters become potent and strong enough to deal with even horribad RNG, but early on it's just no end of frustration where you keep losing without any say in it.

That's just poor design to me. "But it gets better later!" Yeah, I'm going to argue the same thing I did with Diablo 3. Everyone says Normal is boring. It gets better on harder difficulties. Yeah, if 30-60% of your game sucks and I have to go through that to get to the good stuff, I'm sorry but your game plain sucks.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery January 18, 2017, 07:35:54 PM
Not to mention the extreme "trial and error" aspect of the game, which is a major no-no for me in a game like this.

Finding the correct party composition isnt about strategizing and such during preparation:  It's about smashing characters together and seeing if they work out.  That's A: tedious, and B: frustrating, while not even remotely resembling skill.   And EVERY time one doesnt work, you have to redo that progress.   And this aspect of the challenge can be utterly removed by simply looking at a guide, which kinda makes it pointless (and to avoid the extreme tedium, that's exactly what I personally would do).  Basically, composition is about knowing IN ADVANCE how to do it.  That's VERY bad design.   GOOD design, when it comes to difficulty, means that a player can, feasibly, find the solution the FIRST time without having had to memorize anything beforehand, by thinking and applying logic to the situation.  This applies to every single genre there is.   But in this?  No.  You cannot do that as a new player, not without a guide.  It's utterly unviable.   In a well-designed game, when it comes to difficulty, the devs make absolutely bloody sure that this is NOT the case.

Looking at a popular example, think of Dark Souls.  That game avoids this issue.  By being careful, and observing enemies, you can learn their patterns the FIRST time, and deal with them properly:  You DONT have to know things in advance to technically have a chance at victory.  Even when you dont quite know what their attacks are, they always have visual tells, and those tells often hint at what kind of attack is coming.  Say you run into a big skeleton with a giant sword for the first time, right?  You've never seen it, you dont know what kinds of attacks this guy has.  So you approach cautiously, and suddenly you see him raise his sword arm up high:  This signals that there's a very good chance he's about to use a downward smashing strike directly in front of him.   It's the same with basically everything in that series.  That's GOOD design when it comes to difficulty.  Even things like "hidden" foes, right?  There are sections in the game where an enemy may suddenly leap at you seemingly out of nowhere.  But, if you really pay attention, it's easy to spot potential hiding places for bad guys, and there's a variety of ways to then approach that spot, cautious and prepared for a sudden attack. And chances are, the enemy involved in that spot has already been introduced to the player, so they have an idea as to what A: might fit in that spot, and B: what kinds of attacks may come at them.  And yes, that's an action game, but these concepts absolutely can be applied to turn-based games as well.  However, this game doesnt do that at all.  And then on top of that, it absolutely will smash the player with extremely arbitrary negative events.  And this can all force the player to totally redo the progress of their characters due to permadeath.  It's just not good design, when it comes to difficulty.  It's pretty much the embodiment of "fake difficulty".
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 19, 2017, 01:26:29 AM
I don't see the length of the game as a problem, tbh. It's its mechanics that just don't appeal to me in the slightest. The fact that a party can be crippled completely without any chance to do anything about it is horribly bad design in my mind. I guess this becomes less of an issue several hours into the game as your characters become potent and strong enough to deal with even horribad RNG, but early on it's just no end of frustration where you keep losing without no say in it.
Once again, I feel like we're talking about different games.

One of the great strengths of Darkest Dungeon in fact is that the difficulty is so progressive. In that way it's like AI War. To a new player, difficulty 6 may be near impossible, but compared to 8, it's absolutely child's play.

To a person who has learned how to beat 8, difficulty 6 becomes no contest. Even though just a few weeks prior, difficulty 6 was near impossible. And difficulty 10 is that much harder than difficulty 8, etc. etc.

And this is a fair comparison because I've been around these forums for a very long time, and I've heard many new players who have invested 30+ hours into the game making these complaints, even about the lower difficulties. They complain about how unfair the game is, and how BS it is that the AI gets all these advantages, and how AIP is broken, on and on ad infinitum. Perhaps the game wasn't made for these players, or perhaps they just lack the ability to understand the essential mechanics which would forge their path to victory.

In any case, that's how I feel when I see you say things like this. By the time you are on the hardest Darkest Dungeon missions, the "easy" missions are so freaking easy you could do them with any party combination, no items, in your sleep. That's why I'm struggling to understand or comprehend your points.

Not to mention the extreme "trial and error" aspect of the game, which is a major no-no for me in a game like this.
I think the trial and error portion is part of what's supposed to make the game so fun. If the game built your parties for you, and equipped them with all the right skills/items, there wouldn't be much point in playing it would there?

I had most of my fun coming up with the most overpowered party combinations and sharing them with friends, and granted this led to a lot of trial and error, but that was fun too. If you don't like the style of trying out new parties and seeing what works and what doesn't, then this game just isn't for you.

Sometimes games are like that. I hate sandbox games BECAUSE of the exploring part. I just want to have an objective and complete it. But games like Skyrim, Fallout 4, etc., half of the fun is just randomly exploring shit and seeing what happens. I *hate* that, but just because I don't like it, I don't think that makes them bad games. That's just not my thing.

4X games I can't stand because all the diplomacy and ship design just freaking bores the hell out of me. I just want to build armies and get into the combat. But to a lot of players, the empire management and ship building is what makes the game fun.

So once again, I think this is just a subjective thing. The trial and error is what makes Darkest Dungeon enjoyable. But you have to be a certain personality type. I personally love getting my ass kicked, because it appeals to something deep down inside of me to be better, to overcome all odds, to be the best I can be. So games like this that really challenge me in an intellectual way are my forte. I had some of the most epic and memorable moments of my entire gaming life playing this game, and I'll never forget them.

But yes, I will agree with you, one of the stupid aspects of the game is what TotalBiscuit calls "Wikiculty". That is, an artificial difficulty that can be solved simply be looking at a wiki. And indeed, this is the kind of game where you must do that in certain circumstances. I learned all the chests and props in the 4 dungeons, and how best to interact with them (and when to avoid them) as fast as possible, and learning this was vital to my success. Figuring these things out on your own would be horrible.

Likewise, before fighting any boss, looking at a wiki for help about which party composition to bring is extremely important. It's not that you can't beat the bosses by trial and error, only that doing so would take quite a bit of time, and I said before, the game already takes forever even with these shortcuts.

So yes, I think of Darkest Dungeon as a heavily flawed game, but many of its flaws are also what make it so damn impressive. It's just like people. Perfect people are boring, interesting people are usually kind of twisted or strange in some sort of way. Blizzard games are usually *the standard* when it comes to gaming perfection, they have refined the formula down to its essence, and these games bore the living hell out of me.

I don't blame people for hating Darkest Dungeon for the same reason that I don't blame people for hating DotA. It has all these stupid and unintuitive mechanics that shouldn't be there and that just make life on the player unnecessarily frustrating and/or hard. That's also why I love them.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery January 19, 2017, 04:59:57 AM
If the game built your parties for you, and equipped them with all the right skills/items, there wouldn't be much point in playing it would there?

Eh?  Nobody said it would need to do that.  What I mean is that the game doesnt give the PLAYER the tools they need to do it themselves, either. It's just "here, pick at random, and if you get it wrong you lose and have to level up again, sorry no hints!"

Games being hideously difficult and punishing isnt exactly a new thing to me, as I'm used to games much harder than this one, but this really just gets it all wrong.  And the sad part is, with some fixes, it could be a fantastic yet equally difficult game.   Makes me think of Gungeon:  TONS of potential, but some seriously bizarre missteps (of the "what were they thinking?" sort) damage it so heavily that it doesnt even come close to being what it could be.

Heck, the fact that the so-called difficulty can be totally avoided with a wiki is a major sign that balance/mechanics are a total mess. 

In any case, that's how I feel when I see you say things like this. By the time you are on the hardest Darkest Dungeon missions, the "easy" missions are so freaking easy you could do them with any party combination, no items, in your sleep. That's why I'm struggling to understand or comprehend your points.

I think part of what Mana is getting at is that the game never gives the player the feeling of "Well, I died. But that could have been avoided, and I have an idea as to how...so next time, I'll do better!".   Instead, it gives this feeling:  "What, exactly, was I supposed to do about that?" and THAT is a problem.  Any time a game creates that feeling says that it isnt giving the player enough info, and that there's some major flaw present.  In most cases, this is the type of flaw that's major enough to push players away from the game entirely.  Which is part of why I mention the potenial not being reached.

I mean, you go into the game, you try out your party combination, and then you get into the situation of the sort that he brought up:  Where a fight starts, but the enemy gets all the turns, and it's just over. You NEVER EVEN GET TO MAKE A MOVE.  When something like this happens, the player is almost never given anything remotely resembling an idea as to what, if anything, they could have conceivably done about it.  In a well-designed game, they'd think over the situation, pondering the details of what happened, strategizing for next time.  But here?  There's no strategizing, because there's nothing to strategize WITH.  You simply went SPLAT without even being able to respond, and you have not the foggiest clue as to what you could have done.  Referencing the Dark Souls example, it's as if you approached the skeleton I mentioned, but the instant he raises his arm, your character suddenly glows blue, is locked in place, and all of your armor breaks, and the obvious conclusion happens.  What were you supposed to do about it?  What even brought it about?  You know nothing in a situation like that, because you werent given anything to work with.  All of this, in a game that's supposed to make you think, too.   It's the exact sort of reason I dropped the game myself.  I'm no stranger to difficulty, but this one became a big NOPE for me really quickly.  It's arbitrary death, and a bad idea in any sort of game that isnt trying to be I Wanna Be The Guy.

I personally love getting my ass kicked, because it appeals to something deep down inside of me to be better, to overcome all odds, to be the best I can be.

And that's sorta the problem with it for me.  Because at no point did I find it doing this.  Overcoming odds by increasing skill is usually a big drive for me (bullet hell and roguelikes, thusly), but not here.  Because there was no room to do that.  Trial and error, to me, is not skill:  It's pulling the arm of a slot machine.  Or choosing the red or blue wire and hoping the bomb doesnt go off in your face.  You'll get there eventually, but you didn't actually reason your way there:  You just pulled the lever until the proper combos were found.  Each time the game got harder, you then pulled it some more until more power was given to you.  That's all I ever saw in this game.  And of course there's the occasional "MUST check the wiki" bit just to worsen it.  As there was no improvement of skill aspect to this, I dropped it fast.

I'm all for the idea of coming up with things like party compositions or new character builds and whatnot.... but that's when I can do it by actually reasoning it out.  I min-max the hell out of everything.  Wether it be something like a roguelike (other than the core games) or something like AI War.  Those games though give me the tools that I need to figure things out as I go by actually thinking on the situation.  DD did not.  Min-maxing and becoming OP or whatever via trial-and-error just doesnt make sense to me when I could be doing it through logic and skill instead.  In short, the game ended up just feeling mindless to me.

Blizzard games are usually *the standard* when it comes to gaming perfection

Aye, this does seem to be the case.  I can never figure out WHY.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 19, 2017, 05:52:41 AM
I mean, you go into the game, you try out your party combination, and then you get into the situation of the sort that he brought up:  Where a fight starts, but the enemy gets all the turns, and it's just over. You NEVER EVEN GET TO MAKE A MOVE.  When something like this happens, the player is almost never given anything remotely resembling an idea as to what, if anything, they could have conceivably done about it.  In a well-designed game, they'd think over the situation, pondering the details of what happened, strategizing for next time.  But here?  There's no strategizing, because there's nothing to strategize WITH.  You simply went SPLAT without even being able to respond, and you have not the foggiest clue as to what you could have done.
See, this is what you are both saying that I quite simply can't understand.

I've played the game on every difficulty level, with hundreds of different party compositions, and this has NEVER happened to me. Even if all the monsters get to take a turn before you do (which isn't random by the way, it's based on a character's speed stat), there's no way they're going to kill your party from full health. Even if they crit several times in a row, which I concede is possible, but unlikely, it does not spell the end for your party, at worst they'll probably be at half health or higher, having taken significant stress damage.

Hell, Darkest Dungeon isn't even the kind of game (excluding boss fights obviously) where one bad encounter destroys your entire run. Because in each run you typically have dozens of fights, and its a sort of slow, whittling down after each battle, even if the battles are going pretty well, the stress begins to build and your characters start going a little mad. Then if you run out of food you can't heal them anymore and things become incredibly dire.

But the kind of thing where you lose your entire party in a single battle? That's an incredibly rare event unless you entered the battle with them all on death's door. Hell, I've had characters survive on death's door for 10+ hits and come out of the battle alive and well to be healed and used in the future.

So once again, I can't quite understand this criticism. The game just doesn't operate like this. The only way I can see anything like this remotely possible is in a boss fight or if your party was badly equipped for a higher difficulty than they were ready to handle. But on the easiest difficulty I've never experienced anything remotely like this single-battle instagib. At worst it happens over the course of many battles, and gets to the point where I can no longer sustain my party's well-being and must abandon the run. Worst case scenario I lost a character in the process, which isn't that hard to replace (you get them for free).

I absolutely learn from my mistakes in these cases and prepare better for the next run.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 19, 2017, 12:31:07 PM
See, this is what you are both saying that I quite simply can't understand.

I've played the game on every difficulty level, with hundreds of different party compositions, and this has NEVER happened to me. Even if all the monsters get to take a turn before you do (which isn't random by the way, it's based on a character's speed stat), there's no way they're going to kill your party from full health. Even if they crit several times in a row, which I concede is possible, but unlikely, it does not spell the end for your party, at worst they'll probably be at half health or higher, having taken significant stress damage.
And no one is saying that you get 100-0'd and dead in a single turn. I've been constantly using the words "lose" or "crippled". By those I mean that your party is inevitably crippled in either a single, or a pair of turns, in such a way that a comeback for you is impossible. MOST of the times you can retreat from such a battle, unless you fail and get slaughtered. There are however times (and I've, as I said, experienced three of these in my ~10 hours of gameplay) where the sequence of events lead to you losing turns due to stress mechanics, stuns or other CC and you become completely unable to respond and you end up with barely anyone alive after a single battle.

Sure, I could just chalk it up to "Oh well" and keep on going, but the point is that as Misery stated, the game does in no way allow me to A) prepare for this or B) understand why it happened. It's just down to trial and error (and a lot of SLOW such, because the game is incredibly slow), frustration and on top of that you have a bad RNG that only rears its head sometimes. So you can have a piss-poor party comp (but you don't know this yet) and sail through 5-6 quests and suddenly BAM! Complete and utter destruction. Out of nowhere.

The difficulty curve is not a curve as much as a jagged rock. It varies wildly depending on RNG. Couple this with previous mentioned lack of information or mechanics for the player to adapt and it's just a lesson in frustration.

I've pretty much written the game off as poor design, but I will keep playing it when I'm not completely and utterly fed up with it because I want to give constructive feedback as to how it could be made less stupid and more enjoyable. Also, reading the reviews section, this sentiment is echoed in almost every negative review that is longer than three lines. People don't complain about the length, nor the difficulty. They're complaining about boring design.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 19, 2017, 12:34:01 PM
But the kind of thing where you lose your entire party in a single battle? That's an incredibly rare event unless you entered the battle with them all on death's door. Hell, I've had characters survive on death's door for 10+ hits and come out of the battle alive and well to be healed and used in the future.
I have as well, and even though I found that particular instance to be hilarious, it's again just poor design. There is no input for me here, at all. It's down to RNG and "luck". Sure, I can heal him up a single point and he's no longer at death's door, but as 90% of the enemies in this game apply either blight or bleed, he's likely to die regardless.

Things that I've encountered that are good about the game are actually boss fights. They are very mechanically fun, even though some of them are far too harsch on the punishment if you do wrong. This leads to an extremely high failiure rate if you do not do the right thing immediately. You should be allowed some time to figure out what to do and not just outright die.

See previously mentioned Dark Souls mechanics.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 20, 2017, 11:10:17 AM
Beginner classes (easy to use, versatile):

Crusader, Highwaymaster, Plague Doctor, Occultist

Advanced classes (harder to use, more specific role):

Man-at-Arms, Hound Master, Vestal, Hellion

Expert classes (extremely specific role, know what you're doing):

Arbalest, Bounty Hunter, Grave Robber, Jester, Leper

Master classes (leave these alone until 40+ hours):

Abomination, Antiquarian

------------

Basically, if you make a class with any combination of the beginner classes, in the right order (Crusader in front, Highwayman second, Plague Doctor/Occultist 3rd and 4th), it's basically impossible to lose a run on Easy. This is especially true on the Ruins, which is like the beginner dungeon. You could farm this dungeon for weeks with no problem as long as you didn't have a terrible class combo.

And no one is saying that you get 100-0'd and dead in a single turn. I've been constantly using the words "lose" or "crippled". By those I mean that your party is inevitably crippled in either a single, or a pair of turns, in such a way that a comeback for you is impossible. MOST of the times you can retreat from such a battle, unless you fail and get slaughtered. There are however times (and I've, as I said, experienced three of these in my ~10 hours of gameplay) where the sequence of events lead to you losing turns due to stress mechanics, stuns or other CC and you become completely unable to respond and you end up with barely anyone alive after a single battle.

Sure, I could just chalk it up to "Oh well" and keep on going, but the point is that as Misery stated, the game does in no way allow me to A) prepare for this or B) understand why it happened.
Look, I'm not doubting that his has happened to you. It's just hard for me to believe because in my excessive amount of time playing, this has never happened to me, on any difficulty. And to be clear, the game doesn't have difficulty settings, the dungeons do. Once you reach a certain point you start getting into the higher difficulty dungeons, and when I say it's a leap, it's probably the biggest understatement I could make.

Think of the difference between AI War on difficulty 6 vs. 8. I am by no means saying that difficulty 6 is easy, and most RTS gamers who hadn't conquered it before would be in for a hell of a challenge. Many (perhaps most) would probably quit before they ever beat a campaign this tough. But compared to difficulty 8? 6 essentially plays itself.

And the hardest dungeons are somewhere in the range of difficulty 9 or 9.5, with the Darkest Dungeon (the levels the game was named after) approaching 10.

And what I'm telling you is that, except in boss fights, I have never encountered what you're speaking of that I can remember.

Oh, I've had bad runs. Many, many of those. More than I can count. But generally if I'm entering a battle where things become that dire, my party was already mostly dead or insane before it started, which means there was a giant sequence of events leading up to that point, it had little to do with the final battle that finished me off.

But I can't understand this claim that you and Misery keep making that you don't learn anything after each run.

I learned a boatload after each mission, ESPECIALLY failed missions.

Each dungeon (there are 4, with the Ruins being the easiest, as I mentioned before) has its own set of creatures with specific strengths and weaknesses. For example in the Ruins they are very weak to poison, and you can exploit this to the maximum, killing off most enemies with impunity.

So what went wrong in the run?

Did the enemy keep getting to attack before my team? Bring more torches so I'm less likely to get surprised, or bring characters with a high scouting stat so that I *can't* get surprised, or bring characters with a high speed stat so that they always get to attack first.

Was the enemy backline destroying me? Well then I need characters that can focus the enemy backline first. The aforementioned Occultist and Plague Bearer are perfect for this. The Occultist with Abyssal Artillery absolutely MURDERS anything in the backline, and if you have 2 Occultists casting this spell it's devastation.

The Plague Bearer, with Plague Grenade (even more effective with a Plague Bearer duo) has a similar effect. An absolutely devastating backline attack that is certain to kill them in 1 or 2 turns.

Did I need more CC? The Crusader has great CC options, as well as the Plague Doctors, the Man-at-Arms and the Houndmaster with their high chance to stun targets at the front line.

In any case, I'm struggling to understand why you wouldn't learn from your mistakes after a failed run. Just ask what went wrong in the run that wasn't due to RNG (which is out of your control), and then build a better party for the next run.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 20, 2017, 03:33:04 PM
Plague Bearer is very useful, I agree. While I used the Vestal very much in the beginning, healing is actually less useful than straight up CC. The PB ability to stun the back rank is enourmously useful.

Occultist I must admit I haven't found a good use for, aside from pulling an occasional backranker to the front. I just don't really see much use for him. The debuff doesn't seem that useful either, as both the Man-at-Arms and Crusader have better buffs/debuffs.

And yeah, I've had multiple battles where after a single encounter, my party has gone from low stress to 150+ and be at less than 25% HP me being able to do all too much about it, due to strong back rank casters protected by frontlines (and I mean blocking even ranged attacks), heavy CC or similar things. The amount of times I've ragequit out of sheer frustration is pretty silly at this point.

And I must stress that I do indeed not feel that I'm learning anything. I still don't know how to deal with medium quests as my party is crippled almost halfway through, unable to press on. If I keep going, it's a sure loss of the entire party. There's simply too much CC and persistent effects that I can't deal with it properly.

This screenshot doesn't say much, but this is one of those events where I had a fully healthy team, about 80%-ish HP on the Crusader, Hellion was at full health, Highwayman and Vestal also. Only the Vestal had high stress (about 60) and this happened. Death's Door was completely irrelevant due to bleed and blight (you get hit to 0 HP, turn after bleed/blight kills you). This made it impossible to save any characters at death's door. Since stress rapidly mounted, I got turns skipped and actions refused due to 100+ stress symptoms.

This actual battle was the one that finally nailed it and made me quit this game entirely. I just cannot be arsed to play a game that does not give me the tools to learn how to play it without spending hours on a wiki.

(http://i.imgur.com/jvGXUyC.jpg)
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 20, 2017, 05:26:02 PM
Gave it a whiff again. Here's what happened.

I was desperately trying to get a bleed on the wizened hag, but no, she got to act two times before my Hellion's turn
And then the hellion got to act, but no, then the character who was in the pot got spat out, and was placed first, so my hellion was shoved back to third and couldn't use bleed
Then she hit the entire party, getting the Plague Doctor really low
I struck her with my Leper
Then she put the Plague Doctor in the pot
I had to move the Hellion up in order to get a bleed on the hag, or just act at all
Hag hits the entire team again
I shoot the pot with my highway man
Plague Doctor is at death's door, gets spat out in first spot
Hellion is back in third
Hag hits the whole team
Plague Doctor dies
Leper goes mad
Hellion is still stuck in third
Leper is in first
Highwayman is third at death's door.
Leper refuses to act
Hag eats Highwayman
Hellion gets to hit the hag, bleed is resisted (20%...ok)
Hag hits entire team
Highwayman is spat out in first spot
Leper heals self of damage and boosts resistances
Hag hits entire team
Highwayman dies.
*ragequit*

I'm so sick of being UNABLE to act. It's the main frustration all the time. In the battles that I call "ridiculus RNG", I'm constantly caught only having to desperately deal with whatever the enemy is doing, while being unable to get any progress done on my own. Sure, in some of the fights I actually get to act, but I'm forced to make a move that doesn't progress the fight at all. All it does is reset the fight back to where it was last time, minus health and stress. This leads to an inevitable downwards spiral that's just not fun to deal with.

Sure, I could play it safe and retreat the second I see a fight go this way instead of hoping I turn it around. But that means this team is now crippled and can't go on another quest, so I have to take another team and risk having THEM crippled, and even if they're not crippled, they're not likely to go on another quest directly after this one even if they win. It's just a mindboggingly boring shuffle of characters, dealing with stress and an inordinate grind to get anywhere.

I just don't see how people can find this even remotely fun. I WANT to love the game, but by god it makes it hard to not hate the everliving guts out of it.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 20, 2017, 07:01:14 PM
The hag was only the first time hard to deal with because I didn't know what to do.
I could give tips how to defeat her easily but I think this is kind of wasted here because you don't want to play the game anymore anyway.

Bosses are technically harder to deal with than normal enemies because they require specific strategies. And yes, I think if you leave the right path only the slightest way, you may end up with a lot harder time. The boss fights are designed like puzzle battles, the problem is, there is no way of telling before the boss what to do and since the bosses wait in long dungeons (but you might tumble over them right at the start), it's tiring to go the entire way again because you had the wrong setup for your team.

Liek in your example, no Hound Master and I think you NEED Hound Master for this battle. In general I thinkt he hag is the most bullshit of the bosses because of the way the fight is setup. But that's just my opinion.
ut other than that, I think every boss fight has no "You cannot react" moments if you have prepared properly. And this is the entire point of the game: prepare properly so you won't run into bullshit situations liek these. They happen, yes, but if they do it's most lekely YOUR mistake. Boss fights are more punishable in that regard because... they behave entirely different to normal bosses and they have an even smaller variety of choices you can use in the fight and if you don't follow them, you will loose.
While I like the puzzle-like set up of the fights, it is terrible designed that you have to know the setup of your group before you even enter the dungeon. Normally you can follow general utility groups, like having a healer, a tank, a buffer/debuffer and so on, depending on what dungeon you enter, but boss fights punish you terribly, even if you have a normally viable party.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 20, 2017, 07:05:11 PM
...While I like the puzzle-like set up of the fights, it is terrible designed that you have to know the setup of your group before you even enter the dungeon. Normally you can follow general utility groups, like having a healer, a tank, a buffer/debuffer and so on, depending on what dungeon you enter, but boss fights punish you terribly, even if you have a normally viable party.
And there's my key complaint about Darkest Dungeon in a nutshell. If all of these bullshit moments can be avoided by proper preparation, then the game should allow you to find these out somehow beforehand. Perhaps by picking up tomes in the dungeons and learning small advices and tidbits about particular enemies and bosses. That way, you would know at least SOME of what awaits you. Now it's basically just "throw different party compositions at the boss until you figure it out by method of exhaustion" which I find contrary to both strategy and fun.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 20, 2017, 07:10:37 PM
...While I like the puzzle-like set up of the fights, it is terrible designed that you have to know the setup of your group before you even enter the dungeon. Normally you can follow general utility groups, like having a healer, a tank, a buffer/debuffer and so on, depending on what dungeon you enter, but boss fights punish you terribly, even if you have a normally viable party.
And there's my key complaint about Darkest Dungeon in a nutshell. If all of these bullshit moments can be avoided by proper preparation, then the game should allow you to find these out somehow beforehand. Perhaps by picking up tomes in the dungeons and learning small advices and tidbits about particular enemies and bosses. That way, you would know at least SOME of what awaits you. Now it's basically just "throw different party compositions at the boss until you figure it out by method of exhaustion" which I find contrary to both strategy and fun.
Actually you need only two attempts, the second being the win run. the first is to "test" the boss. since you can see all the stats/resistances and the boss pattern, you have a pretty good grasp of what you need. Especially the stat thing is worth to note because it tells you what the boss is strong/weak to and that basically tells you what you have to do in order to win.
The first run is, that*'s true, an entirely blind run. You don't know what awaits you and all you can do is keeping your party alive long enough, so you see the entire boss pattern. the second run should then be the real attempt to kill it.

You can plan your party accordingly for the first run, creating a "sacrifice" party for testing purposes. Or you can simply retreat if you need to. However, in soem boss fights you might still leave a valuable hero behind because a lot of bosses can "trap" your hero.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 20, 2017, 08:57:16 PM
I admitted from the very beginning that the dumbest thing about this game is the "wikiculty". That is, the things like boss runs that you really have to look up beforehand to prepare for, otherwise you're essentially guaranteed to lose a party or two figuring it out.

I admit that's complete bullshit and bad game design (though to be fair most roguelikes are designed like this, it just happens to be a terrible mechanic for this game in particular). However it takes precisely 2 minutes to look the boss up on the wiki and get a general idea of what party composition to bring to maximize your chances of success.

If you had looked it up beforehand Managarmr (which I told you to do), that boss would have given you little trouble.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Draco18s January 20, 2017, 08:58:16 PM
Jumping in...

You can plan your party accordingly for the first run, creating a "sacrifice" party for testing purposes. Or you can simply retreat if you need to. However, in soem boss fights you might still leave a valuable hero behind because a lot of bosses can "trap" your hero.

This is stupid game design.

...jumping out again.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 20, 2017, 09:13:17 PM
This is debatable, especially if the entire game is centered around the mentallity of what you are willing to sacrifice in order to reach your goal.
I mean, this is in every little edge of the game, if you want to press on despite your party being low on health or sanity. Do you spend more money on supplies or less and risk that they run out in the mid of the dungeon.

I think I read somehwere in a review that your party members are nothing more than disposals.

I know that people like to get attached to their characters in game sometimes, but in some games they are just... another kind of resource.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 20, 2017, 10:41:46 PM
As I've said before,the trial and error aspect of the game is a fundamental mechanic of roguelikes.
Take Binding of Isaac for instance. You would probably lose to a boss you'd never fought before ten billion times before you figure it out. At least you're expected to lose several times before you begin to understand its strengths and weaknesses.

Darkest Dungeon, being a roguelike is no different. The problem is that you can't just start a fresh run if you lose to a boss in this game. It's much more grindy and frustrating when you have a party wipe. So if you don't want that to happen,you can lower your chances by researching it first.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Draco18s January 21, 2017, 12:03:04 AM
Darkest Dungeon, being a roguelike is no different. The problem is that you can't just start a fresh run if you lose to a boss in this game. It's much more grindy and frustrating when you have a party wipe. So if you don't want that to happen,you can lower your chances by researching it first.

This is why it's bad game design.  For every boss you have to play [as much as you've already played] again.  It's not just "fight the boss and learn stuff."  Because you need to create a second party, level them up to a competent level, and then throw them into a literal meat grinder just so you don't accidentally your current party.  Or vice versa.

Roguelikes are at least interesting when you bollocks up and have to start over.

Hell, Rogue Legacy at least made you stronger every time you died.  Every time you found something new and got a hit off on you you could retreat to the previous room and say "ok, I'm not going to encounter those for a while" and GTFO every time you see one.  Hell, I avoided whole regions when I first encountered them until I felt comfortable taking a shot at some of those new enemies.  And I'd take a few hits, realize I was in over my head, and retreat back to the "safe" part of the castle and try and build up gold, so I could die, have the money needed to rank up, and try again.

Sure every boss took a few tries, but you always knew they were coming, avoid them until you were ready, and then dump all your gold into maintaining the castle's layout for practice because you found the entrance on a run, now all you have to do is teleport there.  Quick, easy, painless.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 21, 2017, 12:59:30 AM
I don't know if you've ever played Darkest Dungeon but you can avoid the boss battles there too, for as long as you like.

Any research at all makes the boss battles much easier. You just need a general idea of what you're up against.

In any case I agree that though this trial and error mechanic against bosses is typically core for roguelikes, it's silly for this game. I see why they did it that way though, it's just the style of roguelikes.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery January 21, 2017, 01:21:45 AM
As I've said before,the trial and error aspect of the game is a fundamental mechanic of roguelikes.
Take Binding of Isaac for instance. You would probably lose to a boss you'd never fought before ten billion times before you figure it out. At least you're expected to lose several times before you begin to understand its strengths and weaknesses.

Darkest Dungeon, being a roguelike is no different. The problem is that you can't just start a fresh run if you lose to a boss in this game. It's much more grindy and frustrating when you have a party wipe. So if you don't want that to happen,you can lower your chances by researching it first.

There's a HUGE difference though between this game, and somethign like Isaac, or any other.

Let's look at Starward for example, and because I'm lazy and it's the easiest for me to explain.   Yes, you're likely to lose to a new boss; they're made to kill you after all.  BUT.  You WONT lose JUST because you dont have the tools to beat them.  Even against a boss you have never fought, you DO have the tools (I make absolutely freaking certain of it), and knowledge, to beat them.  Bosses in that game attack with patterns that are typically made of slow-moving bullets; you have time to analyze what's happening on screen, and figure out a way to dodge it, or otherwise deal with it.  The patterns are also layered, as a rule, each pattern being made up of multiple layers given specific colors to make them easy to pick out, so that you can see, that much easier, exactly what's happening.  Through it's visuals, the game is giving you all the info you need; if you are good enough, you can win the FIRST time. 

But if Starward worked similarly to DD (aka, NOT giving you enough info), it'd work like this:  Bosses using hyper-fast attacks requiring you to have memorized, IN ADVANCE, where to stand and what's going to happen in order to not get hit. You're just not given visual info in that case.  You DO NOT have the tools to win the first time.  It becomes, in essence, trial and error, even if you're very skilled at the genre.  Some traditional shmups do this, and I tell ya, they aint much fun.


Isaac is similar to Starward in this way.  Enemies dont use hyper-fast "need to be memorized" moves against you.  Bosses tend to have very visible tells, bullets tend to be slow-ish, and even when they do something new, it's usually shown in a way that's pretty obvious as to what's likely to happen.  For instance if you see a boss (like Monstro for instance) suddenly launch into the stratosphere, the pretty-darn-obvious conclusion is that some sort of big downward stomp attack is coming, because what goes up must come down.   With ten kersquillion bosses the game does make a few mistakes here (such as Conquest's hyper-RNG light beam attack, or the Heart's spinning brimstone attack) but for the most part the bosses, and the enemies, always follow these rules.  You have the info, visually, to take them down the FIRST time, even with a bad build, if you're good enough. 

It's all alot like that Dark Souls example I'd given before.

And giving the player that info... regardless of the type of info... is important.   Even most turn-based roguelikes (the GOOD ones, anyway) do this.  Usually you can check new enemies/bosses to see info on them and what they can do, so that you can start planning on how to deal with them with your current build/inventory.  Yeah, some roguelikes get this horribly wrong of course, but again, the truly good ones generally get it right.

It really is an important concept in game design as a whole.  When it's missing, the whole game suffers, regardless of which game it is.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 21, 2017, 09:03:27 AM
And, to be completely open about this:

Aside from it's trial and error nature, I really like Darkest Dungeon. Everything outside of it's actual stingyness with info, is pretty darn good. Heck, even some of the combat mechanics are rather interesting. It's just that I don't quite like spending hours leveling up characters only to have them ground into dust on a boss until I've figured out the magical combo.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 21, 2017, 10:42:28 AM
@Misery - I have agreed many times at this point that the way Darkest Dungeon handled boss fights was bad design. You're just preaching to the choir.

However, having to spend 2 minutes looking at the wiki before the occasional boss fight is really not the end of the world. I just consider it information that is meant to save me a lot of time and frustration that I would have encountered otherwise.

However, some people enjoy figuring these things out on their own, like Vampire. Obviously the developers are also those kinds of people, or they wouldn't have made it that way. It's extremely subjective and in the end somewhat irrelevant because if you don't want to walk into a boss battle completely blind, you don't have to. I certainly never did, and I rarely ever lost a boss fight as a result.

Once you know the composition you need to bring, and the mechanics of the boss, it's pretty easy. You can either discover this yourself as some people enjoy doing or you can spend a couple minutes looking it up and "spoil the fun".

Either way I don't see this as a game breaking problem unless you make it into one. Do I think this mechanic is stupid? Yes in my subjective opinion it's stupid. But that's why the wiki is there, so I can avoid unnecessary heartache.

@Man

It's really not about finding the perfect party composition, I'm sure against every boss many different compositions would work. It's about finding a party composition that does a specific thing really well. Certain classes tend to do better than others for that, but in the end there are many ways to skin a cat.

It's just the going in blind part that can be so frustrating. As I mentioned before, I do not recommend this course of action.

I would be curious how your next boss fight goes if you spend just a couple minutes researching it first.

Here's the page for the Wizened Hag http://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Hag
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 21, 2017, 12:11:43 PM
I know my way around wikis, thank you. ^^

But for games like these I generally find it to be a detractor to look things up ahead of time. I would *never* for instance look up a Dark Souls boss before encountering it. It just takes away the fun of learning. However, if I am to stay sane (hah) playing Darkest Dungeon, I may just have to resort to wikiscrubbing, because it's far too frustrating to try and figure it out from the very few scraps of info the game gives you.

And at that point, the game just becomes one giant, boring walk to the end. There is no skill, no learning, no adaptation. Just "do what others have done before you".
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 21, 2017, 06:12:11 PM
Once again, I'm going to make comparisons to AI War.

If a player was stuck on a lower difficulty (or even higher difficulty), I would point them to the wiki.

I would even suggest they watch Let's Plays of legendary players to see what they do and emulate their style.

There's no shame in this, I don't think it makes the game much easier, for some people it just makes it bearable by saving a lot of time and frustration.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 21, 2017, 06:57:37 PM
Once again, I'm going to make comparisons to AI War.

If a player was stuck on a lower difficulty (or even higher difficulty), I would point them to the wiki.

I would even suggest they watch Let's Plays of legendary players to see what they do and emulate their style.

There's no shame in this, I don't think it makes the game much easier, for some people it just makes it bearable by saving a lot of time and frustration.
It's not that I want it easier, per say. I want it less frustrating, and if that means reading up on the game on a wiki beforehand, I'd rather not play. Because reading up means knowing what awaits and it becomes completely without surprise or awe. I'd rather not play like that for the first time. That's what I do when I've beaten a game once. Then I look at wikis, try new builds, look up all the things I missed etc. But never the first time.

If that is what is required to enjoy DD, I simply won't play. That's just how I am, I guess. We can't like every game we come across. It just saddens me a bit because I really did think I would like DD, and I do want to like it. But it seems me and the devs simply have different ideas of fun. No hard feelings.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier January 21, 2017, 09:00:35 PM
I respect that. As I said, I think it's a really stupid mechanic and they should have handled it differently.

I wouldn't blame someone if it were a deal breaker. For what it's worth there are still plenty of surprises even with that.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery January 22, 2017, 01:48:09 AM
Once again, I'm going to make comparisons to AI War.

If a player was stuck on a lower difficulty (or even higher difficulty), I would point them to the wiki.

I would even suggest they watch Let's Plays of legendary players to see what they do and emulate their style.

There's no shame in this, I don't think it makes the game much easier, for some people it just makes it bearable by saving a lot of time and frustration.
It's not that I want it easier, per say. I want it less frustrating, and if that means reading up on the game on a wiki beforehand, I'd rather not play. Because reading up means knowing what awaits and it becomes completely without surprise or awe. I'd rather not play like that for the first time. That's what I do when I've beaten a game once. Then I look at wikis, try new builds, look up all the things I missed etc. But never the first time.

If that is what is required to enjoy DD, I simply won't play. That's just how I am, I guess. We can't like every game we come across. It just saddens me a bit because I really did think I would like DD, and I do want to like it. But it seems me and the devs simply have different ideas of fun. No hard feelings.


Yeah, same here when it comes to wikis.

I'll use them for something like, say, Isaac, where I just want to find out what the freaking item does (or for other games, want to just see more detail on it).  But if it's something like, say, Path of Exile for example, which has a huge focus on the build you create for your character, if I do it by just looking up a guide and copying it I just feel like I cheated.  The satisfaction comes from doing it myself.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 22, 2017, 05:53:51 AM
...if I do it by just looking up a guide and copying it I just feel like I cheated.  The satisfaction comes from doing it myself.
This. Very much this for me too.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Cyborg January 22, 2017, 10:39:21 AM
The thing is, the way in which you go about information gathering has to be part of the fun. In this game, the way in which you go about gathering information is repeatedly dying and grinding your way to get a party back that can try again. Not everybody's idea of a good time. Certainly not mine.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Draco18s January 22, 2017, 11:18:41 AM
...if I do it by just looking up a guide and copying it I just feel like I cheated.  The satisfaction comes from doing it myself.
This. Very much this for me too.

And this is precisely why I started hating the Sonny games.  The third one (I think it was the third one) was like "new area, new boss, go respec your entire skill sheet.  What, you liked self-healing? Too bad, you need fire resistance XIV now."

The worst part was that my desired build worked against 90% of every zone. It was only against bosses that I'd have trouble. So it felt like I wasn't high enough level.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 23, 2017, 12:19:02 AM
If you mean the iOS game, that's Sonny 3 (or simply called Sonny). But you cannot respec in resistances at all, so I guess you either mean another game (maybe Sonny 2?) or you mean buying new items. Which you would do anyway if you enter a new zone, so.... I think you mean Sonny 2.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Draco18s January 23, 2017, 12:36:42 AM
*Le Google*
Yeah, it was Sonny 2.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 23, 2017, 01:17:42 AM
I wasn't that fond of Sonny 2 anyway compared to the first one. But the Sonny games (even the newest one or even more so) always had a trouble of "You need this type of skill for this boss".

A good example of this is the last boss I fought at Sonny iOS. It was the frost boss who was tanky as hell (50.000 hp compared to your meager 3000-4000 hp) and had two crystals that healed him regulary. He used annyoing debuff attacks like blind, slow and supress (decreases healing received). He also had an ultimate ability (a lot of enemies have somethign liek this) with a long build up time that almost oneshots your entire team. It took me a long time until I realized it does percent damage (probably around 80-90% of your max HP), so no matter how tanky youa re, you always wille nd on the brink of death. Destroying the crystals however will restore your team to full health again, so the key is to use the crystals when he used his ultimate and then kill him as fast as possible.

You can do this trick however only twice (because there are only two crystals and they don't come back). So you either you kill him before that or you pack a LOT of healing which won't help that much anyway because the ultimate also supresses your team, making normal healing ridiculous. I beat him eventually with a combination of slow on him and hastes on my team, so he couldn't do much  with his abilities. But he was troublesome. And a lot of bosses work like that in that game. I like this because it's a challenge for me and it keeps my brain thinking what I can do to improve my performance. However, for a lot of other people this is a turn off. This would include you I assume.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Draco18s January 23, 2017, 10:34:36 AM
And a lot of bosses work like that in that game. I like this because it's a challenge for me and it keeps my brain thinking what I can do to improve my performance. However, for a lot of other people this is a turn off. This would include you I assume.

No, see, that's tactics. That's all tactics.  I mean that in Sonny 2, you'd go into an area and there'd be a lot of guys that did fire damage, and it's like yeah I can put a few points in fire resistance or I can just power through with healing (note: powering through with healing works against ALL types of damage, so why the hell wouldn't I?) only to get to the boss.

Who one-shot-kills characters unless they have 90% resistance to fire.  Which is like, 10 things down the skill tree. Reaching it requires respecing every skill point you have into Fire Resist, with about 3 to 6 left over for your other abilities.

After this fight you go into an area with poison guys, with a poison boss that one-shot-kills unless you have 90% resistance to poison.

Then acid.

Then whatever.

Every area was like that, and when I commented questioning this design (because, mind I wasn't respeccing at all, because I was quite happy with my build) I was told that the game expects you redistribute your skill points every zone, that every zone's boss is unkillable unless you specialize into something at the bottom of the skill tree.  No amount of tactics and strategy will actually swing a fight, it's all about your skill distribution.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 23, 2017, 01:02:54 PM
In Sonny iOS you still need Resistances because areas are sorted after the different elements. However, element resistances are only sold on items and once you reach a new area you want to buy new items anyway, because they have better stats. So I think this isn't that much of a problem there.

I didn't respec at att so far but certain skills are still needed for some of the boss foghts. However, there is no "classic" skill tree like before, most skills are directly open from the start and only a few strong ones are chained to anther skill. You start with Regenerate anyway which you need in any boss fight (because it dispels status effects) and even if you don't get a skill you need, the character that you get at that zone will mostly provide you what you need.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 23, 2017, 02:54:45 PM
Here's an example of prime Darkest Dungeon bullshit in action:

Hag (https://youtu.be/p7tf4hSvaqs)

She gets two actions per turn.

I act. She acts. New Turn, she acts. I act, she acts AGAIN. New turn, she acts yet once more. I act, she acts. New turn. She acts again. Then of course the wonderfully inane mechanic "I'm just gonna do whatever the heck I want, because I went insane". By the way, please don't comment on the fact that I'm just healing. I did that precisely to demonstrate just how stupid this fight is and how utterly bonkers it is to have something as strong as a boss act TWICE every turn. Oh, and did I mention she also CCs one of your party members? Yeah.

This game is infuriatingly badly designed. Two actions per turn should NEVER happen in a turn based game. I might add that this is my third time being destroyed by bullshit mechanics at the Hag. She also seems to have unusually high dodge and bleed resist, as no less than SIX of my bleed attacks where resisted in a row, and she dodged the other five.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery January 23, 2017, 06:02:43 PM
Then of course the wonderfully inane mechanic "I'm just gonna do whatever the heck I want, because I went insane".

Aye, this is a huge part of why I lost interest in it to be honest.  Particularly since characters get stressed from walking down a hallway, even.   EVERYTHING stresses them out.  Arent these guys supposed to be professionals or something?   I've seen other games do this very mechanic, and I hated it in those as well.  There's other ways you could have this work other than "goes crazy, does whatever".  The whole mechanic seemed more like it was placed as a thematic thing rather than because it actually worked well as a gameplay element.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Toranth January 23, 2017, 06:58:30 PM
This game is infuriatingly badly designed. Two actions per turn should NEVER happen in a turn based game. I might add that this is my third time being destroyed by bullshit mechanics at the Hag.
You must LOVE the XCOM 2 expansion's Alien Rulers - they get a turn for every ACTION you side takes (two actions per unit, remember).
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 January 23, 2017, 07:23:06 PM
Then of course the wonderfully inane mechanic "I'm just gonna do whatever the heck I want, because I went insane".

Aye, this is a huge part of why I lost interest in it to be honest.  Particularly since characters get stressed from walking down a hallway, even.   EVERYTHING stresses them out.  Arent these guys supposed to be professionals or something?   I've seen other games do this very mechanic, and I hated it in those as well.  There's other ways you could have this work other than "goes crazy, does whatever".  The whole mechanic seemed more like it was placed as a thematic thing rather than because it actually worked well as a gameplay element.

No, they aren't professionals. Not even close. Basically you hire the scum that no one wants. And even if some of the characters might seem as "mercenaries", they never had to deal with something like undead, pig mutants, living mushrooms and other hideous stuff. I would shit my pants as well if I had to walk down a dark corridor, not knowing what grotesque monster might jump out from the darkness.
However, it makes no sense it all for some characters. The Occultist basically EMBRACED the dark powers that have risen from the portal and still covers from fear. Shouldn't he be aware of everything he encounters? He uses the stuff himself for gods sake! The abnomination is another good example. It's a monster itself, even if that's not what it wanted, it is now one of them, so how can you be still a coward?If anything at all, THEY shoudl fear you because you turn their strentgh against them.
But besides these examples? Yep, everyone is basically just a coward that was lured in by you with the promise of fortune. You lied of course but now it's too late.

About bosses having two actions per turn: That a thing in some RPGs. Best RPG I know is Final fantasy X but the thing is, EVERYONE can have two turns in a row (or even more) because it has a free turn rotating system. Instead of rounds, the whole fight order is decided by your speed stat, so people with mor speed will appear more often in the turn order than those without. I wish Darkest Dungeon had this as well, but whatever.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 24, 2017, 03:25:31 AM
To be fair, in every other game I've played the speed stat only determines who gets to act *first* in the turn. Not the fact that someone can act first in the turn, then act again at the end of the turn, only to then get first act on the next turn. That's just broken and throws everything about turn balance out the door.

And after yet a few more hours of this game I'm pretty confident that I won't be continuing. The game is designed in such a way that I find it incredibly hard to enjoy myself. There's a really good foundation, superb setting and great presentation. But at it's core the mechanics are just designed by someone who has vastly different goals and ideas of fun than me. I end up being frustrated, angry and annoyed because the game behaves contrary to every good turn-based norm known to man since the late 80's. Perhaps some people feel that "But that's good!" but no, those mechanics from the 80's became prevalent because they worked. Change for the sake of change isn't good and I very much find DDs mechanics to be contrary to fun. To me, that is. There's obviously others who disagree, but as of today I'm personally uninstalling. I gave it a very fair shot and tried very hard to like it, but it just wasn't for me.

Do I regret my purchase? No, I don't. I still think the devs did an admirable job at creating a difficult, Cthulhu-style dungeoncrawl that appealed to a lot of people and their effort should be rewarded.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery January 24, 2017, 04:20:44 AM
Then of course the wonderfully inane mechanic "I'm just gonna do whatever the heck I want, because I went insane".

Aye, this is a huge part of why I lost interest in it to be honest.  Particularly since characters get stressed from walking down a hallway, even.   EVERYTHING stresses them out.  Arent these guys supposed to be professionals or something?   I've seen other games do this very mechanic, and I hated it in those as well.  There's other ways you could have this work other than "goes crazy, does whatever".  The whole mechanic seemed more like it was placed as a thematic thing rather than because it actually worked well as a gameplay element.

No, they aren't professionals. Not even close. Basically you hire the scum that no one wants. And even if some of the characters might seem as "mercenaries", they never had to deal with something like undead, pig mutants, living mushrooms and other hideous stuff. I would shit my pants as well if I had to walk down a dark corridor, not knowing what grotesque monster might jump out from the darkness.
However, it makes no sense it all for some characters. The Occultist basically EMBRACED the dark powers that have risen from the portal and still covers from fear. Shouldn't he be aware of everything he encounters? He uses the stuff himself for gods sake! The abnomination is another good example. It's a monster itself, even if that's not what it wanted, it is now one of them, so how can you be still a coward?If anything at all, THEY shoudl fear you because you turn their strentgh against them.
But besides these examples? Yep, everyone is basically just a coward that was lured in by you with the promise of fortune. You lied of course but now it's too late.

About bosses having two actions per turn: That a thing in some RPGs. Best RPG I know is Final fantasy X but the thing is, EVERYONE can have two turns in a row (or even more) because it has a free turn rotating system. Instead of rounds, the whole fight order is decided by your speed stat, so people with mor speed will appear more often in the turn order than those without. I wish Darkest Dungeon had this as well, but whatever.

Even that though doesnt make sense.

I mean, in a situation like that, someone's response is going to be panicky, yes, but it isnt going to be "scream about donkeys and stab myself in the face", which kinda sums up what happens in this game when someone loses it. 

As an example that'd make a hell of alot more sense, take a gun using character, right?  They're perfectly normal most of the time, but when you get them stressed out, instead of trying to glue their gun onto their head as a hat, their accuracy takes a massive blow (they're panicking too hard to aim properly) and they cant hit enemies past a certain distance whatsoever.  You have a character who is still very messed up, in a state that is to be avoided, but A: it makes more sense, and B: it's less frustrating than simply turning him into a walking ball of RNG in a game that's already stuffed with it.  You still have SOME functions you can fall back on with him but it's still a big blow that you need to avoid.

That, and getting rid of the whole "absolutely EVERYTHING causes stress" bit would also help.  These guys get stressed out if they look at a flower too hard.  It doesnt even result from bad player choices:  It results from pure RNG.  Most of the "choices" you make are binary yes/no sorts with no strategy to them, and when they go bad, OMG BAD EFFECT which usually amounts to a big pile of stress.  If it happened as a result of a bad strategic decision, that'd be a whole different matter.

Still doesnt make much sense from a thematic point of view, either.  What business do these idiots have in a foul dungeon if the mere thought of a small poodle sends them running for the hills?  How did they ever develop those skills they have when they're THAT bloody paranoid?
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr January 24, 2017, 06:36:35 AM
That, and getting rid of the whole "absolutely EVERYTHING causes stress" bit would also help.  These guys get stressed out if they look at a flower too hard.  It doesnt even result from bad player choices:  It results from pure RNG.  Most of the "choices" you make are binary yes/no sorts with no strategy to them, and when they go bad, OMG BAD EFFECT which usually amounts to a big pile of stress.  If it happened as a result of a bad strategic decision, that'd be a whole different matter.
You've got a point here. I do remember thinking that things I encounter on the way were almost *always* without fail too much of a risk to bother with. Sure I get a couple of extra thousand gold, but at the cost of a costly disease, bad trait or losing 15 HP to bleed/blight? Heck no.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier February 10, 2017, 11:34:26 AM
Here's an example of prime Darkest Dungeon bullshit in action:

Hag (https://youtu.be/p7tf4hSvaqs)

She gets two actions per turn.

I act. She acts. New Turn, she acts. I act, she acts AGAIN. New turn, she acts yet once more. I act, she acts. New turn. She acts again. Then of course the wonderfully inane mechanic "I'm just gonna do whatever the heck I want, because I went insane". By the way, please don't comment on the fact that I'm just healing. I did that precisely to demonstrate just how stupid this fight is and how utterly bonkers it is to have something as strong as a boss act TWICE every turn. Oh, and did I mention she also CCs one of your party members? Yeah.

This game is infuriatingly badly designed. Two actions per turn should NEVER happen in a turn based game. I might add that this is my third time being destroyed by bullshit mechanics at the Hag. She also seems to have unusually high dodge and bleed resist, as no less than SIX of my bleed attacks where resisted in a row, and she dodged the other five.
You're looking at it the wrong way. Hag gets to attack twice because she's literally taking up two spaces. You might as well consider her two enemies, so obviously two individual enemies will get their own attacks. In several other boss fights you'll have 4 actual opponents and they'll all get their own turn. If you wouldn't complain about that then I don't know why you would complain about an enemy who is double the size of a regular monster attacking twice.

If you had consulted the wiki first you'd know that it's a very bad idea to bring a Leper to this boss fight. Since you need to attack the rear two spaces, you need to use party members which specialize against attacking the back line. I think Leper doesn't even have an attack which does not hit one of the front two spaces.

In any case if you just ignore the pot completely and keep hammering the Witch with your backline attacks you'll win very quickly without much trouble. The "trap" that players fall into is attacking the pot, which is essentially invincible and a waste of turns to focus. You simply have to accept the fact that you'll be fighting a party member down.

In terms of the stress mechanic, again this is only a problem until you understand how to deal with it. You may not believe it but once you understand this mechanic it becomes almost a non-factor on all but the hardest, longest dungeons. In many cases I began to finish runs in which my characters had less stress than what they started with.

I realize that the learning curve for this game is brutal, and maybe I'm just a masochist, but once you begin to understand what you're doing I can honestly say it's one of the most hardcore and rewarding gaming experiences you can have.

Anyway, the reason I made this post after so long is because DD just released its Radiant mode, which makes the game significantly shorter, and from what I've read, more accessible to players.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr February 10, 2017, 01:40:00 PM
You're looking at it the wrong way. Hag gets to attack twice because she's literally taking up two spaces. You might as well consider her two enemies, so obviously two individual enemies will get their own attacks. In several other boss fights you'll have 4 actual opponents and they'll all get their own turn. If you wouldn't complain about that then I don't know why you would complain about an enemy who is double the size of a regular monster attacking twice.

Fair enough. Why is this not explained anywhere?

If you had consulted the wiki first you'd know that it's a very bad idea to bring a Leper to this boss fight. Since you need to attack the rear two spaces, you need to use party members which specialize against attacking the back line. I think Leper doesn't even have an attack which does not hit one of the front two spaces.
I'm pretty sure I mentioned this before: Having to consult a wiki beforehand and not being able to learn anything during the fight is bad design *and* ruins the fun of conquering a challenge. See aforementioned Dark Souls comparison.

In any case if you just ignore the pot completely and keep hammering the Witch with your backline attacks you'll win very quickly without much trouble. The "trap" that players fall into is attacking the pot, which is essentially invincible and a waste of turns to focus. You simply have to accept the fact that you'll be fighting a party member down.
I never attacked the pot (because it has lots of protections and 100 HP) until someone was in it, as its protections were removed and it fell to 20? hitpoints.

In terms of the stress mechanic, again this is only a problem until you understand how to deal with it. You may not believe it but once you understand this mechanic it becomes almost a non-factor on all but the hardest, longest dungeons. In many cases I began to finish runs in which my characters had less stress than what they started with.
If it's irrelevant, why is it in the game?

I realize that the learning curve for this game is brutal, and maybe I'm just a masochist, but once you begin to understand what you're doing I can honestly say it's one of the most hardcore and rewarding gaming experiences you can have.
I don't know. You've continually stated that "once you've learned, it's easy". It sounds very much like a Rubik's Cube. It's a challenge (a frustrating such) that can only be solved by brute force until you learn the algoritm of solving one. At that point you can do it blind folded. It's not "a challenge", it's work.

Anyway, the reason I made this post after so long is because DD just released its Radiant mode, which makes the game significantly shorter, and from what I've read, more accessible to players.
Length was never my problem. Design was. But I think we've already established this.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 February 10, 2017, 02:07:48 PM
Fair enough. Why is this not explained anywhere?
It's obvious.

I'm pretty sure I mentioned this before: Having to consult a wiki beforehand and not being able to learn anything during the fight is bad design *and* ruins the fun of conquering a challenge. See aforementioned Dark Souls comparison.
I figured the fight out on my own. It was obvious but I guess for some people it isn't. I lost the first time. At my second attempt I realized my mistake. That's EXACTLY the Dark Souls approach.
I never attacked the pot (because it has lots of protections and 100 HP) until someone was in it, as its protections were removed and it fell to 20? hitpoints.
That's your mistake right there. You have to ignore the pot the entire time. The person in the pot never dies. Never. It simply reduces the HP to 1, that's all. You just waste your time saving someione that isn't even in danger! Just focus on the Hag, she is pretty much the easiest boss of all. She is not tanky, she does not deal much damage, if she wouldn't have the pot or two attacks, she wouldn't even be considered a boss at all.
If it's irrelevant, why is it in the game?
I think Wingflier downplays this here a little too much. Stress is still significant and it's the task of the player to find out how he can clear dungeons without suffering too much from it. If you know what to do, you can do it better, quirks and trinkets help a lot in this regard because they decrease the stress you receive. It's basically just the ordinary strvation system that most older Rogue-likes had. Instead of food you have here stress. Instead of health you loose control over your chaacter (which results in health lose). In classic rogue-likes you had to carefully manage your food, int his you have to manage stress. It's more unforgiving on this but the whole game is centered aroudn the term "unforgiving". If you hug up, you fucked up for good. Don't hug up. That's the mentality of the game. It's written all over the store page, the website, the forum, hell, even in the game itself. Even the narrator comments the whole time "Don't get overconfident, don't get overconfident, don't get overconfident". The game was never meant to be a light experience. It was meant to be frustating, hard and unforgiving. It stresses the player as much as the heroes in the game. And as axe-crazy as this may sound, this is EXACTLY what the people wanted from this game. People that cannot live with this pace should not play Darkest Dungeon. Ever. I could now say "crawl back to Dark Souls, casual" just to make fun of them (because that's the joke that Dark Souls players made the entire time) but simply spoken, some games do not appeal to some people. But other people love them. I do, Wingflier does, you obviously don't.

I don't know. You've continually stated that "once you've learned, it's easy". It sounds very much like a Rubik's Cube. It's a challenge (a frustrating such) that can only be solved by brute force until you learn the algoritm of solving one. At that point you can do it blind folded. It's not "a challenge", it's work.
I don't know how you use Rubik's Cube but "brute force" is pretty much the worst attempt to solve it. That's somethign that children do when they first get their hands on it. But... it's not a childs toy, let's be honest. If you want to solve it, you have to think. Hell, they even come with a big manual that even states how the solving mechanic works and how you can clear more than one site.
Length was never my problem. Design was. But I think we've already established this.
See my comment above on "different people have different tastes in gaming mechanics".

And to end the bloody thing with the hag already: It is obvious how to beat her and I cannot believe how you fail so many times at the easiest boss at the game. It took me two attempts at max, the first one was to test her abilities and pattern, the second was the strike.
Liek Wingflier saaid, just keep people in the team that can attack the back row because the pot is just a distraction to make you panic. It cannot harm you, it cannot kill you. As soon as the person has 1 hp left it will drop out of the pot. Now the hag might kill the person with her two action wombo-combo (which is the reason why she even has two attacks, otherwise she couldn't kill anyone) but if you have ignored the pot, you can probably kill her before the person drops out of the cauldron. I said the houdnmaster is the best hero here to use for a reason. The hag is AWEFULLY vulnerable to bleed (a quick check to the stats reveals this) and you can blee dher out very quickly. Just stack these bleed attacks as much as possible and she will die very quickly. Just make sure that you have some fast healer on your team just in case you need it for the poor guy who comes out of the pot (if you weren't fast enough).
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr February 10, 2017, 02:16:07 PM
I figured the fight out on my own. It was obvious but I guess for some people it isn't. I lost the first time. At my second attempt I realized my mistake. That's EXACTLY the Dark Souls approach.
No, the Dark Souls approach allows you to win the first time. Unless you have the correct party and are already very well versed with Darkest Dungeon, you cannot beat the Hag on your first attempt. If you have a weak backrank, you are screwed. Dark Souls does not do this.

But it's obvious we disagree, so I'll now leave this thread, as we're starting to retread old arguments on both sides and it's noticable we're not getting anywhere.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 February 10, 2017, 03:56:59 PM
I figured the fight out on my own. It was obvious but I guess for some people it isn't. I lost the first time. At my second attempt I realized my mistake. That's EXACTLY the Dark Souls approach.
No, the Dark Souls approach allows you to win the first time. Unless you have the correct party and are already very well versed with Darkest Dungeon, you cannot beat the Hag on your first attempt. If you have a weak backrank, you are screwed. Dark Souls does not do this.

But it's obvious we disagree, so I'll now leave this thread, as we're starting to retread old arguments on both sides and it's noticable we're not getting anywhere.

That would be new to me but heck, let's just pretend that's how Dark Souls does it.
The game is not Dark Souls anyway nor does it try to be Dark Souls. I just compared it because you did. And liek I said before, the game tries to appeal to a certain customership and it does this well. But on the other hand it appears to the rest of the gaming world as the most unbalanced piece of shit. The games goes into two extremes and this is undeniable.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery February 10, 2017, 06:36:53 PM
It was meant to be frustating, hard and unforgiving. It stresses the player as much as the heroes in the game. And as axe-crazy as this may sound, this is EXACTLY what the people wanted from this game.

I think the problem he has with it isn't that it's too hard, unforgiving, or even frustrating.  Hell, Arcen's games can do that.  AI War crushes the player after an 8-hour campaign, for instance.  Or Starward, that game does it too (you're welcome).  But neither game withholds info from the player.

I mean, DD has a lot of very interesting ideas.  But it just ISNT TELLING THE PLAYER STUFF.  If they could somehow get around that, they could have one heck of a game on their hands.  It is not and never has been about how high or low the difficulty is, and as so many other games have proven, giving the player the info instead of hiding it DOESNT actually need to decrease the difficulty.  That's a misconception that plenty of players... and plenty of developers... have.   All of the absolute hardest, cruelest games I'm aware of... every one of them... gives the player all of the info they need.  When the player loses in one of those, it's never because "well I didn't read the wiki, I should have".  Instead it's "my skill just isn't high enough", which is the right way to do it. 


I don't know. You've continually stated that "once you've learned, it's easy". It sounds very much like a Rubik's Cube. It's a challenge (a frustrating such) that can only be solved by brute force until you learn the algoritm of solving one. At that point you can do it blind folded. It's not "a challenge", it's work.

Technically it can be solved by noting and understanding how the pieces function as can most puzzles of that type (I've got like 150 of them).  But yes, the initial steps of learning one could be made a bit smoother.  You don't HAVE to use memorization with those things (I don't know how in the world anyone can memorize all that, so I don't) but they rather make it seem like you do.  Which is kinda like this, as where's the "puzzle" if you just need to look up a "how to" to solve it? 



I think the devs seem to have been going for the "joy of discovery" aspect with this game, is what I see with it.   The sort of thing where they look at games like roguelikes and go "Well those do it, and those are really hard, so we should do it".  Not spotting that some of those games do it absolutely freaking wrong and have for years (Nethack).  The whole discovery aspect can be good, but not if you hide the wrong things, which is what has been done in this case.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Wingflier February 10, 2017, 09:59:55 PM
Again, I agree with you Misery. I think they did hide the wrong things, but that's really subjective I guess. There's two categories of players that it doesn't bother:

1. The kind of player that enjoys discovering these kinds of mechanics (seems like Vampire is one)

2. The kind of player that doesn't mind looking at a Wiki occasionally (that's me)

Now don't get me wrong, there's definitely a fine line in terms of how much I'm willing to look at a Wiki for any given game before I just throw my hands up and say, "To hell with it, this is stupid". I honestly have no idea where that line is, and to be honest it's probably pretty arbitrary.

But again, I think the Rubik's Cube comparison is pretty good. A person could probably beat their heads against one of those for hundreds of hours before they called it stupid and gave up. Most people probably wouldn't even make it that far.

Some people are naturally good at it and just breeze through it with no help at all. The kind of person it was made for gets it through trial and error (and creating logical solutions). Another type of person it will appeal to is someone who doesn't mind looking for help online.

Everyone else probably hates the damn things.

The stress mechanic is supposed to be fun. "Fun" you say? Yes fun. That mechanic is the most aggravating and ridiculous piece of sh*t, but it has led to some of the most epic freaking moments I've ever experienced.

Seriously though, whether you love or hate Darkest Dungeon. Can you argue with its ability to make the player feel hopeless or to make the situation seem impossibly dire? No other game I've played even comes close to doing it as well.

 I mean, whatever you think of the game, it's obvious that they accomplished their mission, and stress is a huge part of that.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Misery February 11, 2017, 12:56:04 AM
Can you argue with its ability to make the player feel hopeless or to make the situation seem impossibly dire? No other game I've played even comes close to doing it as well.

Nah, I cant disagree with that.  Though I do think a variety of other games do it either just as well or better... but then I almost entirely focus on that type of game (looks impossible, feels impossible, almost is impossible, but there's always a way out... technically), so of course I've seen that be done.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 February 16, 2017, 02:12:16 PM
Because of talking about the game so much, I had to play the game again (and collect the achievments I'm missing so far). I thought of giving Radiant Mode a go but then I decided to go for the normal one. Maybe I will make an LP about Radiant, you can have 3 save slots after all.

Anyway, back to the topic.
I mean, DD has a lot of very interesting ideas.  But it just ISNT TELLING THE PLAYER STUFF.  If they could somehow get around that, they could have one heck of a game on their hands.  It is not and never has been about how high or low the difficulty is, and as so many other games have proven, giving the player the info instead of hiding it DOESNT actually need to decrease the difficulty.  That's a misconception that plenty of players... and plenty of developers... have.   All of the absolute hardest, cruelest games I'm aware of... every one of them... gives the player all of the info they need.  When the player loses in one of those, it's never because "well I didn't read the wiki, I should have".  Instead it's "my skill just isn't high enough", which is the right way to do it. 

Yeah, this is true. I mean, there is an in-game encyclopedia of all the terms and mechanics and there is the tutorial that pops up when you see soemthing for the first time in the game but I guess that does not count.

When it comes to rogue-likes, I divide the mechanics in two sections. First section would be the general game mechanics. These are basically the rules of the game, how it works. You need to know these to know how to play. Player will learn this with a tutorial or some sort of manual to understand, what they have to do and how stuff works. DD does this with the first mission where you travel the old road to reach the Hamlet.
Then there are the deeper mechanics, these are mostly mathimatically aspects of the game the player needs to understand to play well. This stuff is not explained becuase the player has to discover out for himself. For example "this weapon does this much damage" or this spell is good against this monster. Experimentation is the key. Player fails first time? This is wanted because player shall play the game as many times as possible and try again if he did something wrong. Roguelikes are built around this system, you have to learn new stuff and so you know what to do in the next run. Darkest Dungeon just cranks this up to 11.
For example stuff like how the stress mechanic works. The game tells you "stress builds up over time and is bad, dont let it reach 100". It does even tell you that your heroes become afflicted (but it does not tell you, what affliction exactly does, it just says its bad), so you will of course avoid getting stress but you dont know what happens until it finally hits 100 on one of your heroes for the first time. After you've witnessed this, you will of course be even more careful because the whole game goes down the hill if you let it happen.
The game does also not give you a clue what exactly causes stress. The stress numbers above your heroes when they run down a hall? That*s because your heroes are not fit for the mission. Heroes of level 0 get more stress than anyone else because the beginner dungeons are already on level 1. Heroes get more stress on dungeons that have a higher level. They get less stress if their own level is above the dungeon elvel.
This is btw the main reason, why experienced heroes don't do easier dungeons: You wouldn't build up stress at all, would be too easy.

To leanr these mechanics you have two options: Find this out on your own by experimentation. That process will result in fails. A lot of them. Because you try out things, you will most likely do wrong things before finding out the right solution. Like the hag and that you have to ignore the pot.
Or, if this is too frustrating for you, you can look this up int he wiki and get your "aha" moments. Another good example f stuff that isn't explained, is the antiquarian. When she first game out, I was eager to test her and was happy when she arrived for the first time on the hamlet. That is until I found out that all her skills are terrible. And I though "oh wow, the big update about her and all she can do is shit?". Until I realized that she stacks money. And finds new objects that are worth more money than most jewels. Basically she is a gold sniffer, she finds and stacks the gold for you and you can use her on cash runs. That's pretty much all she does (except some simple buffing and debuffing, she works like a weaker pest doctor) but she does this so good, that you can use her to milk money out of the dungeons.
I can only guess she was introduced to make farming for money easier because a lot of people complained that the limited inventory and the rather low rewards ogf the dungeon don't give enough to even make up for the supplies and stuff you spend for each expedition. She fixes that problem rather well.


As additional note, on my current run I lost only one hero (I don't even remmeber how, might have been a stupid mistake from me but sometimes you really cannot do much to same one) and beat three of the 6 beginner bosses. The swine Prince, the old hag and the apprentice necromancer. None of these was hard at all (the swine prince couldn't even do significant damage to my group because I was debuffing him all the time). If you know how the bosses work, they are fairly easy even if the RNG screws you over. At best you will loose one hero. And yes, the game is designed that you can loose heroes by chance but the chance of such is reduced by your skill, if you  play well, it happens less frequently or like in my case, almost never at all.
The only boss I dread is the prophet because I never fought him before. During Early access he wasn't a thing I think or maybe I simply didn't care that much about him and ignored the boss fight. Anyway, this is probably the one were I will fail hardly and loose some party members.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr February 27, 2017, 09:33:31 AM
Okay, so I've swallowed my frustrations and sunk another 20-ish hours into Darkest Dungeon and while my good runs have overall become better, there's still the element where the game just decides "Nah, it's been too good for you lately, time for you to die" and just utterly screws you over in a single encounter. I've found no way around this at all. It happens more frequently in the Cove. More on that later.

I still absolutely despise the boss designs in this game. They're so incredibly binary. Have the right comp? Enjoy winning without breaking a sweat. Have the wrong comp? Die no matter what. I wouldn't mind *that* much if it wasn't for the fact that there are no way to find this out beforehand. Not even a hint! This game drowns you in lore and journal pages, but they're just fluff. There's no useful information in them, such as how to beat certain bosses. You simply have to either brute force them (just throw a party at them and see what happens) or read a wiki. Excessively bad design. As an example I can mention the cannon. Pretty easy to understand concept. Kill the guy who lights the cannon. Except he's in the third slot, so unless you have someone who can stun or deal excess damage to the third slot, you're dead. (alternatively relocate him). If you do have that, and that ability happens to miss or get dodged, he lits the cannon and the cannon puts EVERYONE at death's door. Followed by a Blanket Fire from the Fusilier. Suddenly 50% or more of your party is dead, because you missed a single ability. Whoever thinks this is good design must be lobotomized. I'm sorry but I simply cannot see how that is considered "good design". Sure, have it be punishing if you screw up, but don't make it an instant loss by a coin toss. That's just utterly dumb.

The balance is all over the place. In the Ruins there's barely anything that can hurt you or threaten you beyond the common enemies. (And by common I mean the ones that can show up anywhere). The Ruins-specific enemies are an absolute cakewalk to almost any party comp, except perhaps a heavily bleed-reliant one. The most dangerous thing you'll encounter there are Brigands and Cultists, none of which are exclusive to the Ruins. On the contrary, you have the Cove. The Cove is just bonkers. Every enemy hits like a freight train dual wielding school-busses AND have status effects AND most of them have movement abilities to throw your party out of whack. The stress-casters are insanely strong (20+ stress in a single cast) and on top of that you have protector types with high protection that, in addition to perhaps blocking access to other damage dealers/stress casters, also deal insane amounts of damage. I had a Pelagic Guardian hit my buffed Crusader with Octocestus for 14 damage AND causing bleed. And it wasn't even a crit. A tank-type should never deal that much damage even on a squishy target and this was on my 54% protection Crusader! WTF?

Outside of what is mentioned above, I'm still having fun with the game when it doesn't decide to ram a giant, spiked pole up my pooper and then laugh at me. There are some design decisions in this game that if changed would make it several times better.

Now, as for what has been mentioned before:
Yes, stress becomes less of an issue with high level characters, and oddly enough, it's less of an issue in medium to long quests as you can simply rest it away. Short quests are much harder when it comes to stress. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

I've also started to reach a point in the game where it's become a bit of a grind to get heirlooms to upgrade the Hamlet. I have more than enough money and heroes, but I have to run several runs just to get Heirlooms and it's starting to get a bit annoying.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 February 27, 2017, 03:24:47 PM
I recently lost a high leveled party (1 level 6, 3 level 5 heroes) at a dungeon run. The first one was maybe not avoidable. I say maybe because I don't quite remember. I think he had bleeding, I had bandage, I decided I don't need it. Oh, it was also a Hellion, so I could simply use her ability to purge her. despite that I didn't do it, so she died. I think to some point it was of course the RNG screwing me over but of course tghis was also, because I LET it screw me over.
I decided to press on the quest with m remaining 3 heroes which was a very bad idea because all I had left was a vestal, a jester and a crusader. Not really a powerful group but I thought "you can avoid most battles because you have good scouting abilities". Went all good but I couldn't beat the quest from just that, so I walked in the first boss room. It went just as excepted, I was murdered awefully. If I wouldn't have pressed on, I had ony lost one member and at least got the gold and heirlooms from that point. But I was too stubborn to get that quest and lost. The game works pretty much that way. If you press on despite all being lost, the game kicks you in the ass. If you wait too long to retreat, the game kicks you in the ass.
About boss fights: Just tell it terrible design choice then. The only boss fight I lost heroes so far, is the Siren. Oh, I beat them all btw. And I didn't use the wiki to check what they do, not even the Prophet (that was remarable easy as I later found out). I Do check out the wiki occasionally but that is because I cannot remember all or because I want to see how much damage an enemy does on a specific difficuilty. Also, for some curios because I cannot find out how they work or because I forgot how it worked. The game is 80% memoraziation and 20% planning. Simply that. Sounds terrible maybe it IS terrible, but I like it that way.

So back to boss fights and regions. The brigand pounder is... well, the first time I met it and I let the shot happen I was shocked. Didn't kill me though, but I don't remember the details. The thing can also miss fire, so yeah, even if you screw up and cannot kill the matchman, the RNG might screw over the punder and it does 0 damage. Also, about group setup. I don't even know why you don't have something for the back row or why only one person. pPretty much any party should have heroes that can target anything because if you have a single turn they cannot hit something, they waste their potential, worse, they get stress because they simply had to pass the turn. Of course you cannot hit with a crusader the back row but at least you can heal or buff other heroes with him. Bulwark of Hope is awesome in boss fights because it increases his durability and draws the attention towards him for one turn. Doesn't work of course against the pounder because ti hits everythign but it could let him survive the blast (for an example), giving you tiem to retreat and come wit another group again. I said it before, I say it again, the first time you meet a boss, you notice you have the wrong party, retreat. I don't see the problem here. Is it a problem of the mentality? Have you a fixed mindeset that let's you believe you have to press on, no matter what, otherwise that expedition is failed? Look at my failed expedition at top. I did exactly that and lost more than I should. Sometimes you simply cannot rescue a single hero. Sometimes it's really the RNg that screws you over. But that's ONE hero right there. A good hero, yes, but that's not a terrible loss, I can always level another one as replacement. Now I have to replace 4 excellent heroes which is a bigger problem. It throws me back because I cannot do expert dungeons anymore until I have more level 5 heroes again. Boss fights work the same, if you are too stubborn and keep fighting despite noticing how ineffective it is, you will loose everything. ONE hero is not a terrible loss. I call this "expectant loss". It's soemthign I have to except to hapopen at very hard runs, e.g. boss runs.
I had to retreat many boss fights, especially at the start of my Darkest Dungeon runs when I was still new to the game, because I took the wrong party member with me. Now, when I plan a party, I always consider "Okay, this boss fight does this and this and is weak to this and this, so I take at least this and this hero with me.".
About the cove, I think I agree on this. However, you are exaggerate a little here. Phelaic guardian does no way that much damage to a single unti unless buffed. I just checked to be sure because I know he does rather low damage compared to the rest of the creatures there. His expert variation does at max 11 damage. At that point you have around 50 hp with most heroes, 60 with tanks (for heroes that take the beating from him).
So I think you either misunderstood something or you are lying. Or simply exaggerating to make your point. But you probably just didn't see or didn't tell that he was buffed by the shaman, because that's the only reason why he would do so much damage.
Okay, so after I put your technical mistake aside, I accept that the cove is pretty much fucked up. Remember that I said I almost never loose team mebers to any boss? Well, I also said that the Siren is the only one that kills team mebers. But to be more specific, she does this onb EVERY run. I don't know if I do something wrong with her (didn't check the wiki) but I think she is the most fucked up boss here. She has a full party AoE bleeding skill, full party stress skill (but then again, whcih boss doesn't have that?), a summoning skill (and since the monsters at cove are already strong on their own, the boss fights gets quickly out of control) AND can take one of yor heroes on her side. The only good way to deal with her is to have party members with high debuff resist, so she never gets you party members. Oh,a lso she has two actions per round because other stuff wouldn't be fucked up already. I have no problem with the witch having two actions because she is pathetic but the siren can turn your team mebers over and screw you with this AND inflict serious damage (either stress or status effects) on your team AND can summon reinforcments. I may say that every other boss is simple to be fight with normal means (mostly) but this fights is ridiculous. Is however the only one though. And yes, I agree that the cove is arguably harder than the rest. I first thought this about the warrens until I noticed, besides a lot of diseases they don't do that much of a threat.
The cove has strong attackers, the pelagic grouper does over 10 damage and they always coem in big groups (as the name implies). The jellyfishes have a lot of strong debuffs to screw you over. The guardian is pretty much the tankiest enemy in the entire game, more so if he protects another enemy. Also, fr some reason the increased protection statys even after he dropped to guard his team member. Even with DoT effects it takes long to wear him down and killign the other members first won't do much either because he simply protects them.
The shaman can stress two heroes at once and while the stress is not over 20 (unless your heroes have increased stress intake which... was your fault then), it still is over 10 which means he only has to do this ten times to screw you. However, the cove is an excellent spot to purge negatives quirks from your heroes. The cove has (wuite frequently) a coral that, if you use medical herbs, purges to 100% a negative quirk. And unlike the pergament scroll of the warrens, the coral appears almost in every dungeon. Twice. The thing is so freaking awesome, I always take enough herbs with me to use it. 1 negatove quirk less for just 200 gold is too awesome to pass. I don't say this is the reason or this should be the reason that the cove is harder. But I say, at least you get or can get awesome stuff if you travel through it. I think the cove has also the best ratio of benefical curios to damaging curios of any dungeon but I would have to check the wiki to make sure but in my experience, the cove has only a few curios that are always harmful. Hell, I can only remember one at this point and that is this big stoney altar thing or whatever it is.

About stress: I think you are right, long quests should be more stressful but aren't because of resting. It's an odd design choice, not one I  would mind because otherwise on long quests your stress would skyrocket.

Heirlooms, yes, same problem at my current run right now. Actually, the only buildings that have that ridiculous requirements are the guild and the blacksmith and both are very much needed to progress. I think that heirlooms should stack more with antiquarians, just like jewels and gold does but oddly enough it doesn't. That's really terrible. I now switch beteween gold runs and heirloom runs frequently, so I either ignore all heirlooms or all gold on my way, so I have more space for the other. Since the introduction of the antiquarian, gold is no problem anyway since she can find on every curio a 500 piece that stakcs absurdely high. I have yet to find the stack limit of that one actually. She even finds this stuff on curios ith a fixed loot, for example the torch stand.
I plan my heirloom runs accordingly and look, what heirlooms I need. The long run where I wiped my party was btw because I wanted 18 manuscripts that awaited me for the win. I got greedy and wnted it so bad, that I risked (and lost) my entire party. I still could get out with at least soemthing, now I have nothing. I even lost very rare trinkets that I worked so hard for. I probably won*t make the same mistake twice at least not so soon. I'm sure I will screw up eventually, but I can laugh at my own misfortune. In the end, it was my own fault, so I cannot blame the game for that.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: Mánagarmr February 27, 2017, 04:16:13 PM
I maybe be misremembering the guardian hit and it was in fact a crit, but my memory tells me otherwise. However, I felt it was way too high for such a tanky type character AND he has a status effect (bleed). That was just a touch much for a single unit, in my mind.

The Shaman can also cast on a single target, and does twice the stress damage on that single target. That's when I've gotten 20+ stress on me. If he targets too, it's not *too bad* to have two 10+ as it can be dealt with, but when two shamans decide to pile on a single target, that really sucks.

As for backrank damage/CC, I always have at least two characters that can reliably hit the back ranks. In the Cove I pretty much always bring an Occultist because Abyssal Artillery is awesome and his extra damage against Eldricht is really useful there. For other dungeons I rotate between Arbalest, Highwayman, Vestal and similar characters. Heck, even the Hellion can hit rank 4 with one of her abilities. Although for the cannon that won't work as the matchstick man is in rank 3. Her bleed ability can hit 3 though, and I usually bring either a melee Highwayman or Bounty Hunter for pure DPS and both of them can hit rank 3 pretty hard. Especially if you have a high speed vestal to stun rank 3 first. Then the bounty hunter will hit like a mack truck.

I did manage to kill about 4 of those matchstick men before RNG didn't go my way anymore and he resisted my stun and then my bounty hunter missed his strike and the cannon was lit. Everyone was brought down to death's door, and then they all (bad luck here, I admit) were killed by blanket fire. 4 heroes dead in a single turn.

I've come to understand that this game is more about handling setbacks and loss more so than actually beating any kind of challenge, and I think that's what doesn't gel with me. Because the game more or less forces these setbacks upon me. It's not like when I lose a run in Doom: The Roguelike or even Starward Rogue. There I can often understand that "yep, I should've dodged" or "I should've just left that room and moved on". But for DD it's such a heavy blow to abandon a quest. Your heroes get no XP, are much more likely to get negative traits, and unless you're carrying a lot of loot, you may even lose gold on the run. (Which, granted, isn't much of a problem anymore).

I think it wouldn't have felt so bad to abandon a quest if you had in-dungeon XP gains instead of a pool at the end. Or you get half the pool for fleeing. I mean they *are* fighting and exploring. They should learn something even though that arbitrary quest goal wasn't fulfilled.

And I think we both agree that that Cove is just a bit overtuned in comparison to the other dungeons. Also, is there any particular strategy to beat the Swine Prince? He felt like a DPS race. I simply killed him before he killed me. I guess you could bring a Crusader and an Arbalest (one to tank and the other to clear marks on others)?
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 February 27, 2017, 06:33:35 PM
I maybe be misremembering the guardian hit and it was in fact a crit, but my memory tells me otherwise. However, I felt it was way too high for such a tanky type character AND he has a status effect (bleed). That was just a touch much for a single unit, in my mind.
A crit would indeed make that damage possible. i think the crit damage is twice as much? That would pretty much range at the standarsized 7 damage of the guardian. But yeah, the guardian is the most annoying enemy in the cove and I really hate it when the Siren someones one. More so, because they are so damn hard to remove. The biggest trouble with them really is, that they take so fricking long to remove from the board. About bleed: It's les of my problems, I almost always have either bandages or a pest doctor (or any other hero that can heal bleed on himself or others). And for everything else exist bleed resistance trinkets. But seriously, why does he need so much protection AND hp? He has the same protection (with guard) as the snails but five times the HP.

The Shaman can also cast on a single target, and does twice the stress damage on that single target. That's when I've gotten 20+ stress on me. If he targets too, it's not *too bad* to have two 10+ as it can be dealt with, but when two shamans decide to pile on a single target, that really sucks.
I haven't noticed this, maybe because I'm very careful when it comes to stress. I almost never let heroes became afflicted and in the rare cases it happens, it's either calculated (last round of a boss fight) or the whole run is lost anyway. You may actually be right on this, I check this later. I also target stress dealers first just because of this. HP can be healed all the time, in fights, between fights, but stress not so much, so I take these out first, unless I have a jester which is the best stress relieve in the whole game. Seriously, he is so good, I sometimes take stressed heroes on missions with him, so he removes stress, that saves money on the tavern AND I got money from the dungeon run.

As for backrank damage/CC, I always have at least two characters that can reliably hit the back ranks. In the Cove I pretty much always bring an Occultist because Abyssal Artillery is awesome and his extra damage against Eldricht is really useful there. For other dungeons I rotate between Arbalest, Highwayman, Vestal and similar characters. Heck, even the Hellion can hit rank 4 with one of her abilities. Although for the cannon that won't work as the matchstick man is in rank 3. Her bleed ability can hit 3 though, and I usually bring either a melee Highwayman or Bounty Hunter for pure DPS and both of them can hit rank 3 pretty hard. Especially if you have a high speed vestal to stun rank 3 first. Then the bounty hunter will hit like a mack truck.

For the cannon I used, uh... actually I don't know anymore but any combination of Highwayman (which is one of the best DPS heroes anyway), Man at Arms (whcih is a super tank, a great buffer and can as melee hero hit up to rank 3 with his standard attack), Vestal (always must have on boss fights) and either pest doctor or occultist. Having good stunners is the key to this while your main dps focuses on the cannon. Since the vestal is both stunner and healer, she is pretty much a prerequisite. Just heal if you have to and stun if you have to. Plague docotr is pretty much the same, remove debuffs and heal if you need, stun every other turn you have to. As DPS, Man at Arms and Highway Man. At teh stunned turns, hit the cannon, at the non-stunned turns, hit the match man (when he suffers from the stun recovery bonus). Since the matchman will always be the last actor on any turn, you don't have to fear that he will act before you can do anything. Just concentrate on the cannon with your damage dealers, pretty much ignore the other bandits unless you have to. You can ignore the one that blanket fires (he will be stunned from the pest doctor as well anyway) but you should kill the one that afflicts bleed because you don't want to waste many turns on healing bleed with your pest doctor. Having large bleed resist trinkets however might make this unnecessary, your choice. If you just make sure, that the cannon is hit at least every other turn (or with the grape shot all the time fromt he highwayman, which is what I did), you should win eventually. It is, as most boss fights are, a fight for attrition. Pretty much it is the fight for attrition. You simply wear the cannon down and have to sustain yourself just enough to withstand the onsloaught of the bandits.

I did manage to kill about 4 of those matchstick men before RNG didn't go my way anymore and he resisted my stun and then my bounty hunter missed his strike and the cannon was lit. Everyone was brought down to death's door, and then they all (bad luck here, I admit) were killed by blanket fire. 4 heroes dead in a single turn.
This just happens sometimes. There aren't many ways to prevent this. See my line up at the top. Man at arms can increase accuracy of all heroes, which at least prevent your heroes from missing hits. There is of course no 100% chance you may stun the matchstick bandit unless you have good stun chance trinkets. I don't recall it, but there is one very good for the Plague Doctor which also increases blight chance but she suffers from more stress.

I've come to understand that this game is more about handling setbacks and loss more so than actually beating any kind of challenge, and I think that's what doesn't gel with me. Because the game more or less forces these setbacks upon me. It's not like when I lose a run in Doom: The Roguelike or even Starward Rogue. There I can often understand that "yep, I should've dodged" or "I should've just left that room and moved on". But for DD it's such a heavy blow to abandon a quest. Your heroes get no XP, are much more likely to get negative traits, and unless you're carrying a lot of loot, you may even lose gold on the run. (Which, granted, isn't much of a problem anymore).
Uhm, this may be so, if so, I haven't noticed. I'm maybe not the best example actually for this game because I'm so damn good in it. besides my recent party wipe I lost 3 heroes so far, two fromt he Siren that is just fucked up and I loose everytime something to her, one right at the beginning when you literally have nothing to work with. I never run into problems, I never have any moments where everything runs down the well. Actually, that's not true. I have those moments but I'm just very careful that I can outsmart my way from them. whenever soemthign bad happens, I immediatly have a solution. Maybe i played this game too much. I had a lot harder time at the first stages of it and I remember that I had big problems with it, when they introduced corpses. Now I just think "corpses? What corpses?". So, maybe I'm not the bes person to rate this game in terms in difficulty and maybe I'm just not seeing that it is unfair.

I think it wouldn't have felt so bad to abandon a quest if you had in-dungeon XP gains instead of a pool at the end. Or you get half the pool for fleeing. I mean they *are* fighting and exploring. They should learn something even though that arbitrary quest goal wasn't fulfilled.
Yep, pretty much this. Like I said above, I'm very careful with my dungeon runs and I rather retreat early instead of risking too much. Except that one time that screwed me immediatly over. don't do this, don't be like me.
Here is a run down on how much xp you get on every dungeon length and difficulty and how much you need per level: http://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Resolve_Level
It helps a little to play your builds and runs accordingly (just x runs more for level y). Also, there is an end game mechanic to increase resolve
but I don't want to spoiler you. That does however not remove the requirement to win a dungeon run. So, yeah, I would like as well you get at least partly of the xp. Maybe 5% per room solved. hell, even 2% would help already per room.

And I think we both agree that that Cove is just a bit overtuned in comparison to the other dungeons. Also, is there any particular strategy to beat the Swine Prince? He felt like a DPS race. I simply killed him before he killed me. I guess you could bring a Crusader and an Arbalest (one to tank and the other to clear marks on others)?
Arbalest, yes. He is easy, just use signal flare constantly with your arbalest. This removes marks on heroes which means he cannot use his super attack on them. I don't know how this attack is called in English but he uses a weaker version of his standard attack and tehe damage from that is managebal. just use Arbalest and Vestal in the back row and two DPS heroes on the front row. Arbalest to remove your marks, vestal to heal damaged heroes, DPS to wear him out. Problem solved. But don't use Crusader to tank. ( can only guess you want to mark him but the thing is, marks make his attacks stronger than they should be, so if you mark your heroes yourself, they willt ake more damage (however, crusdaers protection might even this out), just clear the marks and heal the little damage you take. It's still a lot of damage but it's manageable with a good ranked vestal. You might even take two Arbalests with yoth you, one to heal, one to clear marks. Since she also increases healing, she will make it even easier to manage the damage. As DPS you can select soemthing of your choice. Doesn't really matter at that point.
: Re: Darkest Dungeon has been released today
: TheVampire100 February 28, 2017, 03:20:53 PM
Ont he note of the Brigand Pounder, I made yesterday a big mistake. should've gone to sleep instead of playing another round of DD. Because I was tired, my mind was a little numb and I didn't plan good. I wanted to do the boss fight in the weald and put two Hellions and two Houndmasters in the party. A perfect team for the hag. Problem was, it wasn't the witch. It was the Brogand Pounder. I totally forgot that I killed her already (to be fair, the battle was over so fast, it was barely noticeable). So I got now the wrong group for this boss. A really terrible setup for the boss to be honest. Did I give up? I shoudl have and I would have, problem is, I wasted too much resources on supplies because I thought this would be a piece of cake and I can farm the dungeon for resources. It wasn't, so I was forced to do it as quickly as possible with as little encounters as possible to be in top form for the boss fight. Battle every single room to the boss. Every single room! Really bad luck. I still went through. Since I had good heroes to target all ranks, I had no problem to kill the matchstick bandit at all. But he wasn't the problem,t he problem was the rest of his team. the witch does literally no damage but the brigands can do some decent damage, especially the knife guy.
It was pretty much a drag battle, I could do little damage to the cannon (I excepted the witch, so I had a bleed setup which is useless if the enemy cannot bleed) and the bandits couldn't kill me fast enough, also every hero had somethign to heal himself, so I could keep them up all the time. I won but it was a long and tiresome battle and pretty much taught me not to play when I should go to bed. Ugh, this game is too fun for me.