How's it going guys, my name's Graeme and
welcome to the 'Ultimate Darkest Dungeon Tips and Tricks Guide'. Something that I hope
will help new players and veterans alike. If you're struggling at all with some early
strategies or resource management, or maybe you just want to feel more prepared on a given run,
I think this video can help you a great deal. I’ll have the timestamps ready for you
so you can seek out specifically what you feel you need a hand with. There are much
more in-depth tutorials on starting out explaining every minute little mechanic within
this game. I can't add anything more to those very exhaustive, very well made videos.
So instead, I will assume that you have at least done a tutorial and have some
basic understanding of Darkest Dungeon. These tips are going to vary from very simplistic
to very complex. I’ll do my best to build them up in complexity while also kind of keeping
them thematic. We'll do the best we can. These tips mostly come from key Reddit users
and players of the Darkest Dungeon fanbase. I got permission from each of these authors to
include these in this video and I will be sure to attribute each tip to the relevant author as it
comes up. When going on your various adventures, the different dungeons have their own enemies
mechanics and considerations to be made. GrabThaar had the best breakdown, in my
opinion, of how to prepare yourself for each dungeon variation. Always bring
someone who can reliably hit backline targets no matter where you
go. A minimum of one is necessary, but often, you'll want to bring two as that's
typically where priority targets tend to be. Enemies of different dungeons are often thematic.
As such, putting team buff trinket emphasis on your team should include disease resist for
the Warren and bleed resist for the Cove. That alone will go a very long way to mitigating
the amount of damage over time you incur. Similarly, you might want
to flip that on your enemies and know which are most vulnerable in
each dungeon. In the Ruins and the Cove, they are weak against Blight and in the Warrens
and the Weald, they are weak against Bleed. Consider something near these loadouts when
embarking on each Dungeon. There's obviously room to play around with it. It's also good to include
a few things to interact with specific curios. And the Ruins: holy water, a couple of keys,
VERY few shovels and one or two antidotes max. In the Weald: more shovels, bandages
and medicinal herbs for food salvage. In the Cove: bandages, also a few extra torches
and a few shovels - but mostly bandages. And the Warrens: disease cure
camping skills, blight resistance and a couple of shovels, throw in
some bandages for good measure. Consider screen shotting and saving this image
somewhere handy if you think it's something you'd like to reference semi-regularly. This
is like the number one thing I like to have on hand when playing. It's like knowing what is super
effective and weak against each other in Pokémon. It just makes it that small amount easier when
you know a little bit of what's coming. Rather than telling you specifically how to build a party
or who to take with you, the fun of the game is experimenting with that. So, those tips should
help you choose a party that feels right for you and supplies within your own preferences that'll
best match the unique challenges of each dungeon. Claire de Lune used to have a tier list
for heroes, but after years of balancing with more to come, ANY hero can have a
valuable role. If you want a few hero or party building tips, there are a few that
come courtesy of Reddit's CutestGirlHere. First and foremost, they agree there are no bad
heroes only bad teams and poor player decisions. Every hero can get you through most of the
game easily enough from Radiant to Stygian, and there’s more than one viable way to build your
teams for every encounter. While there might be an optimal way to go through certain bosses and
the like, you don’t have to perfectly optimize to beat this game. Any decent team can get the
job done, just play however you'll have fun. A team is typically built around Healers, Damage
Dealers, and Stunners, with the odd additional role thrown in on occasion like Buffers or
Markers. Stress Healers are also of use, especially when you’re still learning the
ropes, but teams with reliable damage and stuns won’t typically need a Stress Healer. Try
fitting in a Stress Healer into your team as you're learning, but eventually try to
experiment around getting by without one. If you want that as a safety, the Jester, the
Crusader, Houndmaster, and Flagellant from the Crimson Court DLC can all stress heal your party,
while Leper and Abomination can self stress heal. Preferably you should try to avoid being stressed
in the first place, but bringing a Stress Healer in your party gives a good option for recovery.
Additionally, should a hero become Afflicted, stress healing them back down to 0 Stress
will cure them of their Affliction. The best way to deal with stress is avoid.
Learn which enemies deal stress-damage (usually the backliners) and target
them with stuns and damage to prevent it from building up at all. If only it was
that easy to mitigate real life stress. While we’re at it, we can look at some typical
health-healer options. The Vestal, Occultist, Arbalest, Flagellant, Crusader, Antiquarian and
Plague Doctor. The Vestals are good enough at healing to maintain a party alone for any
non-Vestal party, you’d preferably want two healers, or rely on self healers like the
Leper, Houndmaster, Abomination, and Hellion. Early level vestals can’t really
keep pace with enemy damage, and they are better used as stunners. Although
a quick heal can always save you in a pinch, try not to hve them carry all
the healing duties early on. A lesser team-building consideration could be
Ambush Prevention. Any time you camp, your team risks a 33% chance of being ambushed. If you don’t
think your team would be able to handle an ambush, try to fit The Crusader, Highwayman, Houndmaster,
Occultist, or Vestal into your team with their Ambush Prevention camping skill equipped. Not a
major role for a hero, but a nice bit of Utility offered when camping to let your heroes rest
without fear of ambush. But generally if you're risking getting wiped by an ambush, you probably
have other concerns that need to be addressed. The Antiquarian looks like a straight up bad
hero. Generally, just bad stats and useless seeming skills. But she has two unique passive
effects. Firstly, she increases the max amount gold can stack in your inventory. Secondly,
whenever she directly interacts with a loot giving curio (like a Bag or Chest), she
finds special relics worth a ton of gold. Take her out on a couple of runs every now and
again, and you’ll never have money issues again. Now let’s focus on some nice broad tips that
will really sharpen those dungeoneering skills! I’ll start a little more basic and ramp up to
advanced considerations for dungeon exploring. At the most basic level, you are going to lose
heroes. Potentially a lot of them. Some do to your mistakes, some from spending too long
exploring when you think things are safe. Or maybe a combination of bad choices and
bad luck. Move on, no matter how attached you were. It happens to all of us. Maybe take
a break and reflect rage quitting this game is real! If you're getting deeply invested,
you might be rattled by that for a couple days, but do not restart - deaths largely will not
matter unless you're on the max difficulty. Earning your way back to the top
will instead be all the sweeter. One of /u/CutestGirlHere’s biggest tips is
read and pay attention to EVERYTHING. The narrator can warn you of what happens when the
lights get low. Curio tell you not to stick this thing and that thing - you know, unless you
want to die. Your heroes will warn you what a boss fight is about to do to them and the
Guild or Blacksmith can give some helpful info on how to play a character. A good chunk
of players have had their teams wiped because they completely ignored their hero's warning
during a boss fight, while others decided to stick a certain something in a certain
somewhere despite being clearly told not to. So it's a good idea to just stop, read,
pay attention and consider everything. This is something you're bound to learn through
trial and error, but you'll quickly see the common sense and curio interactions - use holy
water on anything religious, keys on anything locked, herbs on anything edible or plant-related,
bandages on something that might give you a cut, anti-venom on anything poisonous and
shovels to smash or dig things up. There are a few exceptions, but
as with most things in this game, you learn best by doing. Stack up torches to keep
torchlight at 75 or higher. There is a sliding scale of risk/reward as you allow your torchlight
to decrease. If you drop your torchlight to zero, it gives a bonus to the loot you collect but
it makes everything significantly harder as a trade-off. When you're still new and getting
used to the game, stick to 75+ light instead. You'll earn a bit less, but you'll survive, level
up and live to take on bigger risks in the future. • Skip curios initially, clearing the dungeon of
all enemies as your main focus. Then snuff your torch, and loot the curios. The game does not
generate loot until the moment it’s interacted with, so you can cheese the snuffed torch
benefits. This is a super effective way to rake in money if you don’t want to give up a slot for
The Antiquarian Do be wary of backtrack fights; consider saving a few torches till you're almost
done backtracking in case a fight does pop up. You will suffer a fair deal of stress at
this point too. Hopefully staying well lit on your first pass, and avoiding fights
in the dark will mitigate this tradeoff. Consider camping early for scouting and
buffs. Scouting is utterly broken. It has been nerfed a little in various updates
but it's still very stackable and prevents some of the most common cases
of RNG blowing your game up. Following that up, 95% of complaints about RNG are
solved by scouting comboed with speed. Scouting prevents you from being surprised and allows you
to plan a route that avoids fights if you want, while speed allows you to go fast and
stun or kill enemies before they act. At the beginning of each Round, the game rolls
a 1d8 dice roll for each hero and monster, which is then added onto their Speed stat.
Turn order then goes from highest to lowest. So a Hero with 10 Speed could roll a 1 and be
outsped by a 7 Speed monster that rolled a 5. If you don’t want to run the risk of being outsped,
a Speed difference of +8 ensures your opponent can never outspeed you. However, it’s a bit
difficult to reliably reach that on most heroes. Hunger tiles are generated when the dungeon
is made, and rarely when you re-enter an explored hall. They stay in the same place and
don't disappear, so plan around them when you hit one. You're immune to Hunger tiles for 2
rooms after triggering one or after camping. You can change your combat and camping skills
mid-dungeon. A lot of people don't know this, but it's a pretty useful thing; for example, in Endless, you can take a battle-limited
skill off your bar until it refreshes, or you can swap skills before a boss
fight or camp based on what you need. Remember before when we mentioned The Crusader, Highwayman, Houndmaster, Occultist, and
Vestal have Ambush prevention skills? It’s very advantageous to be able to swap
these in and out depending on current need. Similarly, you can swap trinkets
around using your inventory. Luna likes to swap recovery charms around on
no-healer runs to boost healing from food, and move stress healing trinkets around
to maximize camp skill effectiveness. Proper inventory management there opens
up so many new party possibilities. Boss fights (outside of minibosses,
and certain bosses like CC/DD bosses) will always spawn at the farthest room from
the starting room, counting individual rooms instead of hallway tiles. If you're dealing
with a very large map and don't know where to go to reach the boss fight, just look
to see where the farthest room is located. Don’t worry too much about losing
trinkets. Once you’ve lost enough of them, a certain someone can appear and give you
the chance to earn those trinkets back. So now you should be a master of exploring the
dungeons. Inevitably, you're gonna get in a scrap or two, so let's look at a few effective battle
tips. It should help you understand how to get the most out of your team and turns. You may hear
players refer to "action economy". This is the idea of getting as much out of every hero's action
in a given situation. Don't waste turns on buffing in battles aside from Bosses or Endless. It's
certainly not worthwhile given the pace of fights. Exceptions are things like Ballad or
Command. Ballad from the Jester and Command from Man-at-Arms. Each apply to the
entire party and carries hefty bonuses. That's part of that action economy - you're getting
a lot out of an individual skill in each use. Stuns are pretty good but require some
commitment if you wanna spam them. That said, stun things when possible, it's good for your
action economy Stunners include the Occultist, Plague Doctor, Abomination, Houndmaster and
Bounty Hunter. You may stun-lock dangerous targets until your damage dealers kill them off,
or disable low priority targets while you focus down bigger threats . Whatever works best
for your party to quickly dispatch the biggest threats. In addition, it could
buy an extra round or two for healing. In general, it’s a good idea to target position 3
and 4 first, as they are usually Stress dealers, which is more difficult to heal than health. While
focussing damage there, stun the front 2 enemies, who are typically damage dealers. If you
cannot stun both, focus fire to kill one so you don’t have to fend off 2 damage
dealers. Be aware that the game gives a 40% stun resist buff to enemies coming out
of a stun to stop you from stunlocking. Understanding some of the math
behind the game could go a long way. Hit Chance = Accuracy - Dodge. So, 90 Accuracy
against 10 Dodge gives 80% Hit Chance. The game constantly adds a hidden extra 5% Hit
Chance bonus to all Hero and Enemy attacks, turning that 80% into an 85% instead.
This also means that reaching at least 95% Hit Chance guarantees all attacks will
land. That hidden 5% pushes it to 100%. So, make sure to stack Accuracy trinkets, quirks,
or buffs to try to reach that 95% threshold. Protection is more reliable than Dodge,
but Dodge can also make the game a joke if you can stack 100+ - potentially with the
Antiquarian, Houndmaster and Man-at-Arms. Damage is worse than crit point-for-point
but is much easier to stack since most trinkets and buffs give
significantly more damage than crit. Guarding is over powered. The
Protection nerfs did help with that but enemies now also target
‘Marks’ more than before, so Withstand or Bulwark and especially
Defender are amazing at drawing enemy fire. Healing in the early phases
of a fight is generally bad. When you're down to 1-2 enemies, that's when
you heal, ideally, before stall timers kick in. The stall timer is to combat dragging out a fight.
If there is only 1 enemy left, this timer begins, and in a few turns, you will accumulate
stress, and enemy reinforcements arrive. So either get it down to 1 heal and end things
or get the enemies down to two and take a little bit more time with those considerations. Some
recent changes to Vestal have made her healing ridiculously good, so you can now get away with it
mid fight, but try not to rely on this too hard, as it generally makes you take
more hits and stress over all. DON’T stand around waiting
for your heroes to get wiped, the retreat option is almost always
available. Even when badly injured, it’s always better to let your heroes live
to fight another day. There is a small chance for retreat to fail, but your chance of
retreating increases with every failed attempt. Keep in mind if playing Stygian difficulty, you
can get a game over by allowing 12 heroes to die. In Bloodmoon, it's raised to 16, since
they're more likely to die from their curse. It’s not worth contributing to that tally!
Think of dungeons as a marathon, and battles as a sprint. It is not sustainable to
suffer massive damage and stress in every battle. Minimize these factors rather than maximizing
damage by preventing as many enemy action as possible. Stun and kill enemies whenever you can.
Prioritize those that have a remaining action. We now know how to effectively explore
dungeons and a few considerations to weigh in battle. So how about a few
quick things outside of the dungeons? Upgrade the Stagecoach, Blacksmith,
and Guild first, as they’re the most important buildings available in the
Hamlet, providing you a constant supply of heroes along with the means to upgrade
them. Other buildings like the Sanitarium and Nomad Wagon aren’t worth upgrading until
the mid-to-late game, while the Abbey, Tavern, and Survivalist shouldn’t be or won’t be used
nearly often enough to be worth upgrading at all. Ideally, you're managing things well enough
that they're not particularly needed. If you are playing without districts, you need
to rely a little more on the usual upgrades. And if so, its better to upgrade
the Abbey for stress relief rather than the tavern because the tavern
shares heirloom costs with the guild. The Crimson Court DLC adds districts, which are
especially important for late-game planning. They are expensive, but can offer some major buffs!
Here’s a recommended prioritization : The best districts to get are Cartographer's Camp,
Sanguine Vintners, and Puppet Theatre. The Cartographer’s Camp makes the whole game easier. More loot and improved
scouting. That will go a long way! The Vintners means you don't have to gather blood.
That's crucially important for managing the curse. Puppet Theatre provides ideal stress relief in
town. That essentially means you never need to use stress heal activities again. Meaning
that if you have the Crimson Court DLC bought and installed, at a minimum you
should be activating these districts. The Bank is a trap, it is
going to eat up your heirlooms; if you have no money it won't help you, if
you have a lot of money you don't need it. All it does is mildly reduce the late-game
grind. And as we established earlier, there are far better ways to earn gold.
The Color of Madness adds a few districts of their own. They can be fun but
ultimately not that big of a deal. Focus elsewhere first and if you don't have
access to them, you're not missing out on much. I want to round out this video
with some BIG ADVANCED TIPS! It is my hope that even veteran players
will have gotten something out of this video at this point, but if not, these are the most
big brain considerations of the whole thing. Farm Apprentice Shamblers for trinkets
using level 2 heroes. Shamblers have 5 ancestral trinkets they can drop, including
the much sought after Map, Candle, and Scroll. These can be dropped from any Shambler difficulty,
so there’s no need to fight the big ones! Shamblers can replace any enemy
encounter when your torchlight is at 0. Bring Riposte (HWM/MAA) and some AOE - then
you can be less concerned with shufflers. For Endless mode - Battle Ballad is
basically a cheat code. Vestal + Jester is a solid backline if you find yourself stuck.
If you're gonna go on dark runs above Apprentice, I highly recommend both high scouting and
riposte - riposte in case you get shambled, scouting so you don't get
constantly surprised and shuffled. A lot of people use Jester as dedicated stress
healer. Jester is glass cannon/buffer every attack and move fueling his damage in finale. He
is 3rd or 4th slot character where he buffs and stress heals while buffing himself. And as
classic RPG rule goes.."Never focus a tank" he is the character that gets rid of the tank...
Once the enemy party is weak enough that only tank or boss remain, instead of slowly chipping down
his HP, your Jester (who has been buffing himself the whole encounter for just this one attack)
moves himself forward (by dagger attack or solo) and oneshots or at a minimum inflicts huge
damage to the tank or boss While trinkets are helpful throughout the game, having well equipped,
blinged out teams without any wasted slots will go a LONG way. It’s not a bad idea to target missions
solely on what will deliver you the best trinkets. Others may disagree with this, but choosing
trinkets that boost SPD first, DMG second, and ACC third is generally beneficial.
There are exceptions, but it’s hard to go wrong prioritizing those stats in that order. It’s a good idea to carry around medicinal herbs.
Not only are the good for many curio interactions, but they can also cure trap debuffs! While they
can’t do anything for monster inflicted debuffs, those accumulated from traps shouldn’t be
ignored. They can be incredibly crippling, and last 12 rounds. Trying to ride
out a penalty that big is a huge risk. Be mindful of disease management with the
Sanitarium. It will remove all diseases from a hero in a single stay. So if you
are carrying 1 or 2 weaker diseases, you might want to wait to make a trip after
acquiring something more harmful to save time and money. You want that hero to be out of
commission for as little time as possible. Maybe you just have to grit and bear
some minor debuffs in the meantime. The Sanitarium can also remove negative quirks -
but if you are feeling bold, you may instead farm long Cove runs. Using medicinal herbs on Eerie
coral curios will allow you to remove a negative quirk. If this is your goal on a long run, do
not waste the herbs on other curios along the way - as several of them may have negative
effects that will end things quickly. Most perks are relatively insignificant.
But definitely target the removal of forced-interaction quirks as quickly as possible!
They are usually named like <blank>mania. There are a few named differently, and
specifically Photomania, and Nymphomania are not forced-interaction quirks. But
these are specific quirks that force Curio interactions without the player’s input.
Heroes have a chance to trigger these, often resulting in diseases, damage, and
occasionally looting the found items. Your party will suffer greatly from these and you’ll miss
out on lots of gold and items in the long run. And with that, that is every tip I can possibly
give at this point. We obviously have the release of Darkest Dungeon 2 around the corner, so I
figured now is a good time for this video. There's probably some renewed interest, maybe people
checking out this series for the first time. I don't know how much of this is going to
apply to that sequel, but if you become a more well-rounded, more confident dungeon
diver, then hey, I’m sure it won't hurt. Please, let me know if you have any tips of your
own down in the comments. I'd love to know if you're a new player who's been debating playing
the game and now feels confident enough to get into it or maybe a long-term veteran who learns
something new. I would really love to hear that. Huge thank you to the patrons of
the channel. This style of video isn't something I really have ever
done, but I just love this game and wanted more people to feel that it was
accessible. So please, go check it out. Thank you all so much for watching. I
wish you guys the best of luck in your Dungeoneering and I hope to see you again soon.
