Darkest Dungeon has been released today

[Mánagarmr]

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.

[TheVampire100]

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).

[Mánagarmr]

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.

[TheVampire100]

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.

[Misery]

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.

[Wingflier]

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.

[Misery]

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.

[TheVampire100]

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.

[Mánagarmr]

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.

[TheVampire100]

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.

[Mánagarmr]

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)?

[TheVampire100]

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.

[TheVampire100]

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.