While I’m still hoping to reach my next Patreon Goal to add a possible second live Let’s Play stream per week, I’ll be peppering my live Let’s Plays with some offline gameplay. To help remember what happened, and to regale you of any drama, I’ll be writing these Field Reports between Episodes.
Darkest Dungeon Episode 03 will air Monday, Oct. 15.
Week 7
I’d gained access to The Swine Prince boss of the Warrens last time, but wanted to save it for Monday’s live stream. Instead I decided I needed to try an actual Medium mission for the first time, so I knew how Camping worked.
Week Seven brought extra Antiquarians, a class I’m wholly unimpressed with. Plus I still have my full roster of 12 heroes, and can’t yet afford to expand it.
My Grave Robber, Fitzherbert, gained the Tippler trait from drinking. So far the traits that restrict or limit heroes to certain stress-relieving functions don’t seem too difficult to manage, but I could see it being a pain while I still have only the one slot in each area each week.
Vane, my Arbalest, was sent to the bar for stress-relief, and Lynom my remaining Leper to the Transept. I’m not sure why they cost different amounts of gold. Are some better stress-relievers than others?
My first Medium quest is in the Weald, with the standard Explore 90% of rooms objective. I don’t think I’ve ever actually been to the Weald yet, so starting with a Medium-length mission was perhaps not the best idea.
Squad:
- Reynauld, lvl 2 Crusader
- Engerrand, lvl 1 Bounty Hunter
- Fitzherbert, lvl 1 Grave Robber
- Corbon, lvl 2 Plague Doctor
I was not prepared for how big the Weald was. Rooms were stretched apart by long stretches of dark hallways, putting a real strain on my torch and food supply. I brought a few extras knowing it was a longer mission, but I had no idea that the Weald’s whole thing was that it was very long.
There weren’t even that many fights – I went five rooms before I saw a battle, and the foes weren’t particularly strong, but I was intensely worried about my torch and food levels. At one point I was forced to let my team go hungry in order to have enough food for the camp.
Camping was thankfully intuitive. The more food I had the more I could heal, and I had a certain amount of time I could use to apply everyone’s campaign skills. Some skills cost more time than others, forcing me to carefully pick and choose. The Crusader had a very nifty stress-reliever for the whole party, while Corbon could help heal.
Camping also gave us full torchlight, but I was still staring down the second half of the dungeon. It didn’t help that it had three branching paths, two of which had over five rooms, forcing me to double back early on and waste a lot of torchlight.
As much as I like my veteran Crusader, I’ve decided that the Kleptomaniac trait is the FUCKING WORST. No less than three massive loot piles he took for himself! I was not happy about it. Towards the latter stages of the dungeon, I was using him as my only healer, with his pitiful 3HP heal keeping my backline from falling.
By the time I reached the end I was out of food, out of torches, most of my party was hovering around 50% health (darkness makes enemies a lot tougher), and I still had one room left. It was the most nervous I’d been playing the game. Thankfully the room didn’t contain a fight, and I was greeted with the quest complete pop-up. Huzzah!
As difficult as that dungeon was, I actually didn’t suffer much stress at all. I had taken a ton of damage but in Darkest Dungeon that doesn’t seem to matter as long as you survive (only stress lingers after a dungeon, as well as traits and diseases).
In other words, it was my most successful outing yet, and I was able to use my new resources to finally get the level 1 weaponsmithing upgrade at the Blacksmith.
Look for more Field Reports throughout the week. Watch my Let’s Play live streams every Monday.
