Month: October 2018

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 04 will air tonight, Monday Oct. 22.

Week 10

The stress-relieving Abbey was free this week, but I actually passed The Swine Prince boss fight with such flying colors that everyone was stress-free, though my awesome Grave Robber Fitzherbert needed to be treated for disease. Stupid Warrens.

Mission: Warrens, Medium, Explore 90% rooms

Squad:

• Reynauld, lvl 2 Crusader
• Paris, lvl 1 Abomination
• Bonneth, lvl 1 Vestel
• Vane, lvl 1 Arbalest

This was my first time using an Abomination (who received a free level up in one of the weekly events). It’s an interesting class with the ability to transform into a monstrous werewolf-like form, which grants powerful melee abilities at the cost of stressing everyone out a bit. His human form has a really solid stun ability that came in very handy as well.

Thanks to some luck with scouting I found my first secret room, and it was fairly close and easy to reach. A good reason to always carry a key, as it provided a gigantic haul of treasure.

With the secret room plundered I received my biggest payout yet, about 12k, nearly doubling my money!

Unfortunately while I was never in danger of dying (Bonneth is a stellar healer) I did get saddled with lots of stress. I was able to reduce quite a bit from some camping skills but both Vane and Reynauld ended up with stress in the 50s by the end. Worse, Vane got two diseases and Paris one, ugh. Stupid Warrens! Poor Vane will be out for awhile.

Week 11

Another big recruiting week with 6 bonus heroes. I was able to afford the bigger roster upgrade, so now I can hold up to 16 different heroes at a time!

Unfortunately the only new class available was a Man-at-Arms named Briqueville. I recruited him then stuck him in treatment to get rid of his kleptomania.

It’s interesting that recruiting heroes is completely free. Since some of my heroes will be out for multiple weeks, it’s going to help having a big roster that I can rotate between, provided I keep them all decently leveled.

Mission: Weald, Short, Explore 90% of rooms

Squad:

• Lynom, lvl 2 leper
• Engerrand, lvl 3 Bounty Hunter
• Bonneth, lvl 2 Vestel
• Fitzherbert, lvl 2 Grave Robber

This is one of my best teams, and with a short mission I expected very little resistance. The Weald’s defining feature is its very long rooms, resulting in lots of needed torch light. Bonneth comes in handy with her attacks that restore torchlight during combat.

For some reason the damn enemy forces seemed to know how useful that was, and targeted her in nearly every fight! Despite using Lynom’s Protection to Mark himself.

Poor Bonneth ended up with nearly 100 stress! I sent her to the Abbey for meditation. I also remembered I could purchase different camping skills, including having a fourth available for each hero. That should come in handy during longer missions.

The next week brings a +15% Virtue Chance, so I think it’s time to take on my next boss, either the first of the Ruins or the Weald (have yet to even enter the Cove).

Darkest Dungeon Episode 04 will air tonight, Monday Oct. 22.

Look for more Field Reports throughout the week. Watch my Let’s Play live streams every Monday.

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.