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Darkest Dungeon |OT| A festering mecca of antediluvian evil

Corpekata

Banned
For anyone with MSI gear (laptop or motherboard), this game doesn't like the Audio program thingy it comes, Nihilac or something . Need to disable it or it'll crash on start.
 

gunstarhero

Member
Waiting on the PS4 version -

Is this game's combat similar to Steamworld Heist? I vaguely remember the Quick Look that Giant Bomb put up a while back, but the description sounds similar.
 

Anno

Member
Waiting on the PS4 version -

Is this game's combat similar to Steamworld Heist? I vaguely remember the Quick Look that Giant Bomb put up a while back, but the description sounds similar.

It's the same perspective. I don't much about SWH but don't you have to aims shots Worms style? Here you're just choosing skills to use and targets or shuffling around your position in the row.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
So, the last I touched this game was when they'd first brought in corpses. I kept restarting progress every major early access patch because I wanted to 'experience the game with the new features', and it got too time consuming and I had to uninstall and tell myself to only come back in on release, since it really was to the detriment of other games for something that wasn't in a final state.

Played through till I'm up to a boss. About 5-6 runs in.

Corpses. Gee. They're in a really good spot now. Between blights, crits, and literally corpse-wiping abilities like the Occultist and Leper have (which are a bonus, as formation-breaking abilities are generally very, very useful for mitigation anyway) corpses are a complete non-issue. I don't really understand how people are still complaining about them, but whatever, the option to turn them off exists anyway.

I mean, if you want to play the game outside of intended balance, might as well mod out permadeath and not being able to tackle lower dungeons with higher characters while we're at it.

I dunno, maybe I'm just a grouch who approaches gaming (especially roguelikes) in a really oddball way. No offense intended.
 
So, the last I touched this game was when they'd first brought in corpses. I kept restarting progress every major early access patch because I wanted to 'experience the game with the new features', and it got too time consuming and I had to uninstall and tell myself to only come back in on release, since it really was to the detriment of other games for something that wasn't in a final state.

Played through till I'm up to a boss. About 5-6 runs in.

Corpses. Gee. They're in a really good spot now. Between blights, crits, and literally corpse-wiping abilities like the Occultist and Leper have (which are a bonus, as formation-breaking abilities are generally very, very useful for mitigation anyway) corpses are a complete non-issue. I don't really understand how people are still complaining about them, but whatever, the option to turn them off exists anyway.

I mean, if you want to play the game outside of intended balance, might as well mod out permadeath and not being able to tackle lower dungeons with higher characters while we're at it.

I dunno, maybe I'm just a grouch who approaches gaming (especially roguelikes) in a really oddball way. No offense intended.

Yeah I never played the game prior to corpses introduced, so I don't get the complaints either. Not invalidating the criticism but I think the corpse mechanic is fairly well designed.
 

-MD-

Member
Corpses. Gee. They're in a really good spot now. Between blights, crits, and literally corpse-wiping abilities like the Occultist and Leper have (which are a bonus, as formation-breaking abilities are generally very, very useful for mitigation anyway) corpses are a complete non-issue. I don't really understand how people are still complaining about them, but whatever, the option to turn them off exists anyway.

It's amazing isn't it? Imagine how trivial most encounters would be without corpses.

Absolutely a total non issue, you said it.
 

Mr Cola

Brothas With Attitude / The Wrong Brotha to Fuck Wit / Die Brotha Die / Brothas in Paris
not heard of this before, is it a rogue like like rogue legacy?
 

Anno

Member
not heard of this before, is it a rogue like like rogue legacy?

Not really in the moment to moment gameplay, but in the sense of slowly building up your base by throwing lives at random dungeons it could probably be compared. Earning gold in dungeons lets you build your town which ultimately makes it possible to formulate a group of adventurers strong enough to get through the game.
 
I guess there aren't any new heroes on release? I could've sworn reading somewhere that the release would introduce 4 new heroes + the final dungeon.
 

kionedrik

Member
There seems to be an issue that makes the game stutter a lot and I'm one of the unlucky ones that's getting it... Devs seem to be working on fixing it.
 
I've probably played more of this in early access than a few recent AAA games combined. Game is freaking addictive, can't wait to get back and learn about the new features.
 

Begaria

Member
From the sounds of the post-corpse patch players, it sounds like corpses are ok. I played way back pre-corpse when Darkest Dungeon hit EA, so the idea of killing something I already killed sounded kind of dumb, but you know what? I'll give them a shot. If I really don't like it, I can always turn it off.
 

_Legacy_

Member
I'm really enjoying this game so far, didn't take up the early access but really digging the artwork and gameplay. This will be a keeper for sure, I hope they keep bringing new content.
 
From the sounds of the post-corpse patch players, it sounds like corpses are ok. I played way back pre-corpse when Darkest Dungeon hit EA, so the idea of killing something I already killed sounded kind of dumb, but you know what? I'll give them a shot. If I really don't like it, I can always turn it off.

Most of the time it's just make sure you have a hero in your party that can hit the 4th position. Not only that but there are heroes that allow you to clear corpse with one spell or there are heroes that allow you to shuffle the enemy positions (pull forward/push back). I can't remember the last time I've ever just straight up had to kill a corpse just to get to someone. It also makes me think how ridiculously simple the game must've been prior to the corpse mechanic.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
From the sounds of the post-corpse patch players, it sounds like corpses are ok. I played way back pre-corpse when Darkest Dungeon hit EA, so the idea of killing something I already killed sounded kind of dumb, but you know what? I'll give them a shot. If I really don't like it, I can always turn it off.

Just since I posted about it on this page to begin with, like to clarify that I was a very early Early Access adopter (not kickstarter tho), so I played it plenty prior to corpses too. On the corpse patch, it pretty much broke my playstyle and got me to reevaluate all class abilities. It was a little finicky then, but something I could work around.

How it is on release is a lot more lenient with a multitude better ways to clear corpses, and (I may be wrong on this! Been some time) the corpses themselves seem to have a little less HP.

I'd more readily understand how one may have wanted to turn them off back when they were introduced. On release, not so much. It's in a good spot.

Most of the time it's just make sure you have a hero in your party that can hit the 4th position. Not only that but there are heroes that allow you to clear corpse with one spell or there are heroes that allow you to shuffle the enemy positions (pull forward/push back). I can't remember the last time I've ever just straight up had to kill a corpse just to get to someone. It also makes me think how ridiculously simple the game must've been prior to the corpse mechanic.

Aaaactually, it devalued long-range skills a little, since you wouldn't be using hard-hitting long range skills after a few mobs died. This led to less build diversity, although on some bosses (e.g. Prophet, and Witch depending on your strat) you'd pretty much have to stack the 4th position skills anyway, at the detriment to clearing the rest of the dungeon prior.

It might have been slightly easier, but not simple. Definitely a lot less diverse with some very obvious cookie cutter builds. For example, Jester/Highwayman/Barb/Barb that AOE'd the first 3 spots, with mobs automatically moving up into the killzone.
 

AEREC

Member
I've got the game via EA but haven't more than a few hours into it. Was really waiting on the vita version.
 

GDJustin

stuck my tongue deep inside Atlus' cookies
Played enough of this last year to know it was 100% up my alley - decided to wait until final release. So excited to finally jump back in tonight!
 

QFNS

Unconfirmed Member
This is now out so I can finally start playing it. Got it during the Steam sale but purposefully avoided playing or reading much about it until release. I knew it was up my alley, so I'm ready to dive in tonight.
 

Neoweee

Member
Just since I posted about it on this page to begin with, like to clarify that I was a very early Early Access adopter (not kickstarter tho), so I played it plenty prior to corpses too. On the corpse patch, it pretty much broke my playstyle and got me to reevaluate all class abilities. It was a little finicky then, but something I could work around.

How it is on release is a lot more lenient with a multitude better ways to clear corpses, and (I may be wrong on this! Been some time) the corpses themselves seem to have a little less HP.

I'd more readily understand how one may have wanted to turn them off back when they were introduced. On release, not so much. It's in a good spot.



Aaaactually, it devalued long-range skills a little, since you wouldn't be using hard-hitting long range skills after a few mobs died. This led to less build diversity, although on some bosses (e.g. Prophet, and Witch depending on your strat) you'd pretty much have to stack the 4th position skills anyway, at the detriment to clearing the rest of the dungeon prior.

It might have been slightly easier, but not simple. Definitely a lot less diverse with some very obvious cookie cutter builds. For example, Jester/Highwayman/Barb/Barb that AOE'd the first 3 spots, with mobs automatically moving up into the killzone.

While I can't comment on specific strategies being broken now, all of this exemplifies the game's problem.

It tries to be hard and punishing.

It is so punishing for some things that you'd normally want to do that that it encourages the player to try a few cheesy tactics.

The few "cheesy" tactics got nerfed.

Then the player is left in a position that what should come naturally doesn't work, the obvious solutions don't work, and you're instead left juggling a hodge-podge of mechanics that seem at ends with each-other, or punitive & arbitrary.

There's so much stuff that feels overly harsh and punitive. There's a lot of good mechanics in the game, but it can get drowned out by the developer's attempts at making it "hard".

I still very much enjoyed most of my time with the Early Access, but there's a lot of inherent problems between the game's mechanics and balancing them with difficulty.
 
I regret buying this game. The lack of variety in the content and the dearth of interesting customization makes the game turn stale very quickly. This game is style over substance, which doesn't work very well in this genre.

I can take the "lack of variety" critick, but for the rest, would you care to elaborate? Especialy the "...in this genre" part. Not trying to critisyse your oppinion, just trying to undersand what game you could comapre DD to that you had a better experience with.
 
Is there any way to speed up the enemy turns in this? I really want to enjoy the game but I feel like the bulk of my time is spent staring at the enemy acting. It's just making the game feel so slow.

Edit: Not just the enemy acting, but the constant stress animations and affliction(?) checks.
 

Lumination

'enry 'ollins
Is there a manual anywhere? I have a few afflictions(?) (the negative traits) that are on the verge of becoming permanent. (Or does the skull mean they are already permanent?) How do I heal them? I read the short pop-up about them, but I've forgotten since then.

I tried resting them via the tavern before the skull icons appeared and it seems to have not done anything.
 
I played a ton of DD earlier in 2015 and absolutely loved it. Decided to save as much as I could for release at the time.

Came back about a month ago. Corpses are awful, make no mechanical sense, and force certain party composition. Punishing diseases with almost no good quirks is laughable. Stress is even worse and instead of a tough as nails rogue-like I'm playing an RNG crawler designed just for those who've put in hundreds of hours already.

You had gold in your hands Red Hook.

Squandered.
 

Klyka

Banned
Huh, they made the game a lot easier at the start than before.

Glad to see you can still easily grab all the shit you need and upgrade your buildings a ton before starting to actually create parties.
 
I played a ton of DD earlier in 2015 and absolutely loved it. Decided to save as much as I could for release at the time.

Came back about a month ago. Corpses are awful, make no mechanical sense, and force certain party composition. Punishing diseases with almost no good quirks is laughable. Stress is even worse and instead of a tough as nails rogue-like I'm playing an RNG crawler designed just for those who've put in hundreds of hours already.

You had gold in your hands Red Hook.

Squandered.

You're going to have to elaborate on this. Never felt unreasonably restricted..
 
ive been playing the game a bit over the past few weeks. its pretty good. i turned corpses off and adjusted a few of the other settings because i just didnt like it. game is still tough regardless but not AS tough
 
What builds are people using that make corpses so hard to deal with? Do they all just have characters that only attack the first two positions or something? Corpse almost made things easier for me since many of the abilities I use most are ranged, largely because the back position guys are the most dangerous... This might actually explain a lot about peoples complaints about how hard it is. Their characters get tons of stress because they are killing the back row guys doing all the stress damage, creating the stress affliction spiral that can fuck you over more often.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
While I can't comment on specific strategies being broken now, all of this exemplifies the game's problem.

It tries to be hard and punishing.

It is so punishing for some things that you'd normally want to do that that it encourages the player to try a few cheesy tactics.

The few "cheesy" tactics got nerfed.

Then the player is left in a position that what should come naturally doesn't work, the obvious solutions don't work, and you're instead left juggling a hodge-podge of mechanics that seem at ends with each-other, or punitive & arbitrary.

There's so much stuff that feels overly harsh and punitive. There's a lot of good mechanics in the game, but it can get drowned out by the developer's attempts at making it "hard".

Do you enjoy any roguelikes?

Honest question. I'm not trying to be snarky here. Just trying to get a measuring stick of what you feel is adequate difficulty tuning vs your view on DD's game systems.

I enjoy Darkest Dungeon (mind you, I haven't gotten to the final area yet and I'm learning the ins and outs of The Cove right now) and enjoy stuff like FTL on hard, Tharsis on hard, ironman XCOM Long War, etc.

When I played in Early Access pre-corpse, I think the game exhibited some problems with a difficulty curve where lv1-2 was actually harder than 3-4 and onwards, but that seems to have been addressed. With higher character skill levels, those dark-run-crit-build where you could endlessly have close to zero stress from all the crits and certain camping skills were outright broken. They absolutely needed to be nerfed. It's not so much that it was a cheese tactic (bearing in mind that it was a cheese tactic. I'm not denying that) as it was bringing some build diversity back into the game because the way people were running it, you might as well have had 3 classes with 4 skills and 6 types of camping skill.

Huh, they made the game a lot easier at the start than before.

Glad to see you can still easily grab all the shit you need and upgrade your buildings a ton before starting to actually create parties.

Yeah, this is what I feel playing from start again. Mind you, I restarted a grand total of 3 times up till the patch that introduced corpse, so I also simply got mechanically better at the game too, but I'm looking at numbers now vs numbers then and it's objectively easier to 1) complete low level dungeons, especially short ones and 2) come out of a complete standstill where you have zero gold to buy any provisions and all your core heroes are stressed out, assuming you're smart and invested in the wagon to begin with.

What builds are people using that make corpses so hard to deal with? Do they all just have characters that only attack the first two positions or something? Corpse almost made things easier for me since many of the abilities I use most are ranged, largely because the back position guys are the most dangerous... This might actually explain a lot about peoples complaints about how hard it is. Their characters get tons of stress because they are killing the back row guys doing all the stress damage, creating the stress affliction spiral that can fuck you over more often.

Honestly if anything, corpses should be making people go read every single class ability to see how to deal with them. When a handful of characters have skills that literally wipe the room clean of corpses on top of disrupting enemy formations, it should lead rather naturally in practical use to learning that disrupting enemy formations is good, since long-range guys like the crossbow brigands and short range guys like the wolverine cultists do shit damage when trying to get back in position.
 

RMI

Banned
What builds are people using that make corpses so hard to deal with? Do they all just have characters that only attack the first two positions or something? Corpse almost made things easier for me since many of the abilities I use most are ranged, largely because the back position guys are the most dangerous... This might actually explain a lot about peoples complaints about how hard it is. Their characters get tons of stress because they are killing the back row guys doing all the stress damage, creating the stress affliction spiral that can fuck you over more often.

no idea, all i know is that I need corpses up front to keep ranks 3 and 4 available to get bombed and stunned by my plague doctor. homeboy is doing WORK.

I think I've said all I have to say about this game in terms of criticism, so I'll end by saying I actually like the game. It's not perfect but I find myself enjoying the moment to moment gameplay a fair amount . That said, what is everyone's favorite classes? mine are:

Plague Doctor - stuns, blight, bleed, status effect removal, this guy does it all. Probably my favorite class in the whole game. Whenever I don't have access to him I get a little sad.

Vestal - Awesome heals along with a damage dealing self-heal and a stun that gives incremental torch? what's not to like? Healing isn't as good as doing damage in this game, but it's still pretty damn good.

Crusader - This guy isn't good at anything really, but he kind of does it all. He has a decent heal, stress management, a stun attack, and decent AOE or single target attacks.

those guys are my main thing, but then in the rotating slot I like to have either a Leper, Helion or Man at Arms. Leper is a bit more survivable, Helion has the best damage output, and the Man at Arms is a good utility guy to keep around.

classes that I don't particularly care for are the Arbalest (like what the hell does this thing even do?) and the Highwayman who starts off really nice but scales pretty poorly I believe.
 
my favorite is the guy who can turn into the werewolf, even though he can't be mixed with the priestess lady. he's just a cool dude! he turns into a werewolf or uses the ghostrider chain whip
 

Neoweee

Member
Do you enjoy any roguelikes?

Honest question. I'm not trying to be snarky here. Just trying to get a measuring stick of what you feel is adequate difficulty tuning vs your view on DD's game systems.

I enjoy Darkest Dungeon (mind you, I haven't gotten to the final area yet and I'm learning the ins and outs of The Cove right now) and enjoy stuff like FTL on hard, Tharsis on hard, ironman XCOM Long War, etc.

When I played in Early Access pre-corpse, I think the game exhibited some problems with a difficulty curve where lv1-2 was actually harder than 3-4 and onwards, but that seems to have been addressed. With higher character skill levels, those dark-run-crit-build where you could endlessly have close to zero stress from all the crits and certain camping skills were outright broken. They absolutely needed to be nerfed. It's not so much that it was a cheese tactic (bearing in mind that it was a cheese tactic. I'm not denying that) as it was bringing some build diversity back into the game because the way people were running it, you might as well have had 3 classes with 4 skills and 6 types of camping skill.



Yeah, this is what I feel playing from start again. Mind you, I restarted a grand total of 3 times up till the patch that introduced corpse, so I also simply got mechanically better at the game too, but I'm looking at numbers now vs numbers then and it's objectively easier to 1) complete low level dungeons, especially short ones and 2) come out of a complete standstill where you have zero gold to buy any provisions and all your core heroes are stressed out, assuming you're smart and invested in the wagon to begin with.



Honestly if anything, corpses should be making people go read every single class ability to see how to deal with them. When a handful of characters have skills that literally wipe the room clean of corpses on top of disrupting enemy formations, it should lead rather naturally in practical use to learning that disrupting enemy formations is good, since long-range guys like the crossbow brigands and short range guys like the wolverine cultists do shit damage when trying to get back in position.

Rogue-likes are among my favorite genres. I still enjoyed what I played of the Early Access, before burning out. I'm just noting that this game has a huge uphill battle with regards to balancing fun and challenge, for a lot of a reasons. Yeah, the reverse difficulty curve, and the "holes" you can get stuck in are so weird and counter-intuitive.
 
I'm frustrated with this game, because while it's good, it had the potential to be so much better. In addition to the criticisms already mentioned in this thread, I have to add the following:

1) Class skills aren't generally designed in a way that allows for diverse kits. Several classes suffer from having a single optimal build, such that they are relegated to one role within a party rather than being able to adapt for different compositions and enemies. In addition, only two trinket slots doesn't offer enough to really put together an interesting loadout.

2) Most monster engagements don't require dynamic tactics. While the Cove does offer some variety in how monster parties should be approached, for the most part, stun/DPS is the go-to approach, which leads to battles becoming grindy and repetitive.

3) The game doesn't respect the player's time when it comes to replacing dead high-level characters. If you lose a max-level character, the only way to get a new one is to grind a rookie up through all the dungeons all over again. Combine that with the requirement of having at least 16 max-level characters to get through the Darkest Dungeon and you have a lot of potential grinding.

To their credit, the devs did include a NG+ feature that does require the player to beat the game within a certain number of weeks in order to combat the no-fail-state ennui that the regular mode can induce. But the above still make for a game with notable problems from a design perspective. Ultimately though, these problems can all be potentially fixed via modding. If we can get a DD equivalent to XCOM's Long War mod, the game could be similarly elevated in longevity and depth.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
Rogue-likes are among my favorite genres. I still enjoyed what I played of the Early Access, before burning out. I'm just noting that this game has a huge uphill battle with regards to balancing fun and challenge, for a lot of a reasons. Yeah, the reverse difficulty curve, and the "holes" you can get stuck in are so weird and counter-intuitive.

That doesn't answer the question though! What roguelikes are you into? Like I said, genuinely curious.
 

Neoweee

Member
That doesn't answer the question though! What roguelikes are you into? Like I said, genuinely curious.

I like FTL, but I don't really like the last boss, as it is too mechanically restrictive.

For Diablo/PoE, I only play on Hardcore/Adventure Mode.

I loved Crypt of the Necrodancer.

I really enjoyed Binding of Isaac Rebirth, BUT the game is too divergent. If I don't get +DMG early, the game is far too slow and irritating.

I like a bunch of the rogue-lites, like Rogue Legacy.

I'm a fan of ChunSoft's Mystery Dungeon series.

I overall did enjoy Darkest Dungeon, and will dig into the new version. It had a lot of problems, though, and some of the changes seem completely baffling. And goddamn does it look nicer now, and the interface makes things a lot more explicit.
 
I'm frustrated with this game, because while it's good, it had the potential to be so much better. In addition to the criticisms already mentioned in this thread, I have to add the following:

1) Class skills aren't generally designed in a way that allows for diverse kits. Several classes suffer from having a single optimal build, such that they are relegated to one role within a party rather than being able to adapt for different compositions and enemies. In addition, only two trinket slots doesn't offer enough to really put together an interesting loadout.

2) Most monster engagements don't require dynamic tactics. While the Cove does offer some variety in how monster parties should be approached, for the most part, stun/DPS is the go-to approach, which leads to battles becoming grindy and repetitive.

3) The game doesn't respect the player's time when it comes to replacing dead high-level characters.

I didn't realize this until just today but you may not be aware that you can change skill loadouts mid dungeon. This suddenly made like almost every skill useful and alleviated alot of the build fatigue I had as well. All those self heals and debuffs become alot more viable when you can swap them in and out depending on your own health and situation. The optimal build, I've found, changes alot based on how well the run is going.

#2 is a problem with all dungeon crawl type games, though I agree that this game is in desperate need of more enemy encounter variety. I wish stun was a tad more unreliable unless you used all your trinket slots.

For number 3 I agree that the endgame is a real meat grinder, but I think that's the point. It doesn't want you to blaze through the final dungeon back to back with all your max level early access characters. The game would really benefit from a late game hierloom sink that raised Exp gained or let you directly hire leveled heroes at a cost of money/hierlooms. The difference between rookies and veterans IMO are too large, they should've done weapon upgrades by class Valkyria Chronicles style or something to speed up the grind.
 

Falk

that puzzling face
I STILL need to play Crypt of the Necrodancer and Rogue Legacy myself.

Didn't like Binding of Isaac, which makes people tell me I'm insane rather often.

Thanks for indulging!

I didn't realize this until just today but you may not be aware that you can change skill loadouts mid dungeon

I...

...feel really stupid.
 

RMI

Banned
Hmm strange. The game stutters a bit for me now. During the early access the game ran fluidly with no problems. Wonder why this is.

I noticed this as well, and also had the game crash to desktop on me for the first time. Probably they need to iron out a few bugs that popped up with the final release.
 
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