Nice vid, struggled quite a bit with second quest myself. As for strategy - back when I played d2 hc there was a saying "if you die you deal no damage", which is fitting here as well :)
I can see what you are doing is Stun lock crowd control + DoT + Stress heal. I employ similiar strategy in 2nd DD quest to keep Templars under control, definitely works However, I personally prefer Houndmaster and Bounty Hunter in your tanks' role because they have higher speed and provides more DoT options. Besides, I would prefer a shorter fight than a longer one...
Interesting/awesome strategy man, my one question, how does this work in champion dungeons when you have to take people out in 6 rounds or else you get stressed, and by round 8 they bring in reinforcements. Does this strat still work then or do you use a different party?
+MarknessPlays Actually, the stall timer exists in darkest dungeon too - there's nothing different about that in the darkest dungeon than in champion dungeons, I just play around it very carefully. I've used the same team for long champion dungeons and those dungeons are even easier than this dungeon was for me (on occasion I've even thrown away food to make more space for loot and let my characters starve because I could handle it easily enough). I was doing long champion runs even with 4/4 upgrades and it turned out fine without ever reaching death's door. This is my standard go to team for dungeons, though it's not good for some boss fights (it's a great team for the formless flesh I'd like to add though which some people struggle with). As far as the stall timer goes, afaik this is how it works: If there is only 1 enemy left at the start of a turn, a timer starts (I'll make a note here that bosses, minibosses, 2 size enemies and the octopus things in the cove either don't have stall timers or I've never noticed a stall timer with at any rate). 2 turns later you'll get stress at the start of the turn, unless the enemy has enough DoTs that he will die on that turn (the stall timer doesn't apply whatsoever if they have enough DoTs that they die in 1 turn). 1-2 turns later reinforcements will appear if you still haven't killed the enemy. Of course, if more enemies spawn the stall timer stops and resets, and if there are 2 or more enemies the stall timer will never trigger - this means that if you want to stall you can stall freely as long as there are 2 or more enemies (or one of the enemies that stall timer doesn't apply to), hence why I can derp around doing whatever when there are 2 of the cultists that do nothing but guard and heal. You'll note that I sometimes stun an enemy instead of killing them when there are 2 enemies left, and this is why - if I stun them and wait a turn to kill them I can buy an extra turn before the stall timer kicks in. Finishing an enemy with higher speed than you with DoTs will also buy you an extra turn of healing, and if the last enemy is slower than you finishing them off with a DoT can buy you an extra turn.
+Darkest Dungeon New Game+ Thanks for all of the insight man, and the well thought out response! I appreciate it and it all makes a lot of sense, never knew you needed 2 in order to prevent the stall timer. So thanks for clearing that up! My other question is, is that do you have any other go to parties? What if you have to go to the warrens/weald where people have high blight resistances, are you still able to pull this off?
+MarknessPlays For the most part I used this team for conventional dungeons - that said, I do have some other teams that I do use fairly frequently too. This team definitely works in all areas - the basic idea of the team is to just stun the enemies and outheal them, so even if my blights are a bit less effective it's not such a huge deal because if they can't kill me faster than I heal it doesn't really matter how much damage I do as long as it's not 0. The other team that I wanted to have was arbalest + vestal + houndmaster + bounty hunter - this team was mostly used to down a lot of the bosses that this team might have struggled with (probably especially the hag and the drowned crew would be bad for this team but I've never actually tried it, and the prophet but I didn't use either of these teams for the prophet). When I was thinking I'd go for the caretaker goal I also was using an occultist + jester + abomination + man at arms team - other than the man at arms I don't really care for the classes in that team very much though (occultist feels too RNG heavy with the heals for my tastes, jester is pretty mediocre aside from his stress heal and is squishy, and the abomination can't be used with vestals which I bring almost everywhere, plus I dislike the stress gain from transform since I generally feel like I can beat most fights without taking much stress damage and don't need it). That said, that team of 4 is pretty reliable still - the man at arms can mitigate the RNG of the occultist heal (ie. if the heal rolls for 0 at least the man at arms can defend someone, so at least nobody dies solely because of a bad roll on a heal), I just don't like it as much. My graverobber generally went into any team whenever one of them was overleveled/stressed/whatever and I was missing 1 person, as the graverobber can fit into pretty much any team reasonably well without dragging them down. The highwayman/leper.. were pretty much always the characters I didn't want to bring anywhere. I did mix and match somewhat for boss fights - for instance against the prophet I'd bring both an occultist and a vestal, and put + debuff chance on the occultist for the weakening curse while the vestal easily outheals the debuffed damage the prophet does. Most bosses could be dealt with with either the generic mark team or my heal/stun team though.
+Darkest Dungeon New Game+ Holy crap.. are you me? Haha. We use very similar parties, and I think if you want to take out a very stellar party you should try out the vestal/jester/houndmaster/helion. Vestal for heals, jester for buffs/de-stress, houndmaster for 3rd row stun/prot removal on the big champs, and helion for stunning first 2 or nailing the 4th row guy. Perfect party, I swear! Give it a try if you get the chance. I run long champion dungeons and I come out stress-free and with 30-40k gold per run. It kills a little bit faster than the party that you always use too. I use the one you've been using and it works amazingly, but I recommend trying out the one I told you about. And as for the occultist, I've been spending time on the darkest dungeon steam forums talking about how shitty he is (you wouldn't believe how many people swear by him). I pretty much agree 100 percent that he is way too RNG reliant for champion. He sucks in champion dungeons because of it, unless you use abominations, but that is because they can get out and heal themselves if needed. He'd be decent if his heals were from 5-15 or something, that sort of range, but 0-20 is awful. Ever since I've stopped using the occultist I've never had a stressed out party. And yeah, highwayman sucks and so does the leper. Graveroober ain't too bad, but I'd put her in the middle of the pack. Everything she can do I think others can do better. I can't find a good party really for her to use on a regular basis. If she is in the second position then I'm always worried I'll get an IRL heart-attack if she doesn't dodge enough. She works super well though with highwayman, with her going first/stunning and moving back and highwayman point-blank shotting the front guy. Vestal on heals/PD taking care of the back.. but anyways, I think I've used up enough of your youtube comment section writing an essay here.. haha, thanks for sharing your parties though man, really helpful.
I see this video and begin to suspect that my strategy, along the line of "kill it before he kills you", may have not been the best one. *sigh* I'm not good at micromanagement, but i want to try!
It's actually a great one on level 1 quests it works well in the level 3 ones, if your team is adjusted for maxxing damage some of the bosses are entirely about damage racing in the higher levels now, going for regular lvl 5 or 6 quests only with raw damage and no control/healing/protecting.... oooo it will be hard...and even if you win, you'll spend all your earnings in stress control and desease treatment
+Meiyou Fordragon My plague doctor has +70% stun rate from trinkets, giving her a 209% stun rate. That means everything with less than 110% stun resist is guaranteed to be stunned if it hits (and she has 135 accuracy on blinding gas so it's really likely to hit). These enemies have around 70% stun resist base, so my plague doctor is almost guaranteed to stun them 2 turns in a row, and has a ~60% chance of being able to stun them a 3rd time. My hellion has a bit lower stun rate, but still a 194% stun rate iirc, and my crusader has a pretty high stun rate too, and almost all stun abilities have higher accuracy than regular attacks too so misses are less common while using them (and you'll note that all 3 of my stunners have +accuracy from an item too). It's not really luck, it's just using the right abilities and items.
+Darkest Dungeon New Game+ Well i have some bad luck with my trinkets, so far only got stun trinket for grave robber, which is a class i don"t use for that. Otherwise got a lot for bleeding purpose (it was really nice for flesh and hag). Well i guess i'm good to farm some missions to get this. Btw, do you know a good team to farm / kill the shambler? I tried Occultist - Hound Master - Abomination - Bounty Hunter and, even if none of them died, i ended being heavily stressed (both irl and ig).
Why on Earth were you stalling so much in that first fight? Why didn't you use Noxious Blast when your Plague Doctor's turn came up or Smite when your Crusader's turn came up?!
+Furious Sherman Why end a fight with 10 stress when you can end a fight with 0 stress? There was no risk of the stall timer kicking in because there were 2 enemies and there was no risk of anything bad happening because those enemies don't really do anything.
I'll go ahead and call this bullshit, if you can do such a thing in a game it means it is not a good game. I enjoied RNGest Dungeon untill the level 3 quests, level 5 and Darkest Dungeon quests are just RNG shit with zero tactics.
So it's a good game while you can still just go full attack and outdamage the entire quest, and win without thinking... But when things get get interesting, it's 'zero tactics'... ...git gud,scrub
Nice vid, struggled quite a bit with second quest myself. As for strategy - back when I played d2 hc there was a saying "if you die you deal no damage", which is fitting here as well :)
Those flesh walls look like they're having the time of their lives
Are corpses being disabled or is this a version from before thier implementation?
I can see what you are doing is Stun lock crowd control + DoT + Stress heal.
I employ similiar strategy in 2nd DD quest to keep Templars under control, definitely works
However, I personally prefer Houndmaster and Bounty Hunter in your tanks' role because they have higher speed and provides more DoT options. Besides, I would prefer a shorter fight than a longer one...
Interesting/awesome strategy man, my one question, how does this work in champion dungeons when you have to take people out in 6 rounds or else you get stressed, and by round 8 they bring in reinforcements. Does this strat still work then or do you use a different party?
+MarknessPlays
Actually, the stall timer exists in darkest dungeon too - there's nothing different about that in the darkest dungeon than in champion dungeons, I just play around it very carefully. I've used the same team for long champion dungeons and those dungeons are even easier than this dungeon was for me (on occasion I've even thrown away food to make more space for loot and let my characters starve because I could handle it easily enough). I was doing long champion runs even with 4/4 upgrades and it turned out fine without ever reaching death's door. This is my standard go to team for dungeons, though it's not good for some boss fights (it's a great team for the formless flesh I'd like to add though which some people struggle with).
As far as the stall timer goes, afaik this is how it works:
If there is only 1 enemy left at the start of a turn, a timer starts (I'll make a note here that bosses, minibosses, 2 size enemies and the octopus things in the cove either don't have stall timers or I've never noticed a stall timer with at any rate). 2 turns later you'll get stress at the start of the turn, unless the enemy has enough DoTs that he will die on that turn (the stall timer doesn't apply whatsoever if they have enough DoTs that they die in 1 turn). 1-2 turns later reinforcements will appear if you still haven't killed the enemy.
Of course, if more enemies spawn the stall timer stops and resets, and if there are 2 or more enemies the stall timer will never trigger - this means that if you want to stall you can stall freely as long as there are 2 or more enemies (or one of the enemies that stall timer doesn't apply to), hence why I can derp around doing whatever when there are 2 of the cultists that do nothing but guard and heal. You'll note that I sometimes stun an enemy instead of killing them when there are 2 enemies left, and this is why - if I stun them and wait a turn to kill them I can buy an extra turn before the stall timer kicks in. Finishing an enemy with higher speed than you with DoTs will also buy you an extra turn of healing, and if the last enemy is slower than you finishing them off with a DoT can buy you an extra turn.
+Darkest Dungeon New Game+ Thanks for all of the insight man, and the well thought out response! I appreciate it and it all makes a lot of sense, never knew you needed 2 in order to prevent the stall timer. So thanks for clearing that up! My other question is, is that do you have any other go to parties? What if you have to go to the warrens/weald where people have high blight resistances, are you still able to pull this off?
+MarknessPlays
For the most part I used this team for conventional dungeons - that said, I do have some other teams that I do use fairly frequently too. This team definitely works in all areas - the basic idea of the team is to just stun the enemies and outheal them, so even if my blights are a bit less effective it's not such a huge deal because if they can't kill me faster than I heal it doesn't really matter how much damage I do as long as it's not 0.
The other team that I wanted to have was arbalest + vestal + houndmaster + bounty hunter - this team was mostly used to down a lot of the bosses that this team might have struggled with (probably especially the hag and the drowned crew would be bad for this team but I've never actually tried it, and the prophet but I didn't use either of these teams for the prophet).
When I was thinking I'd go for the caretaker goal I also was using an occultist + jester + abomination + man at arms team - other than the man at arms I don't really care for the classes in that team very much though (occultist feels too RNG heavy with the heals for my tastes, jester is pretty mediocre aside from his stress heal and is squishy, and the abomination can't be used with vestals which I bring almost everywhere, plus I dislike the stress gain from transform since I generally feel like I can beat most fights without taking much stress damage and don't need it). That said, that team of 4 is pretty reliable still - the man at arms can mitigate the RNG of the occultist heal (ie. if the heal rolls for 0 at least the man at arms can defend someone, so at least nobody dies solely because of a bad roll on a heal), I just don't like it as much.
My graverobber generally went into any team whenever one of them was overleveled/stressed/whatever and I was missing 1 person, as the graverobber can fit into pretty much any team reasonably well without dragging them down. The highwayman/leper.. were pretty much always the characters I didn't want to bring anywhere.
I did mix and match somewhat for boss fights - for instance against the prophet I'd bring both an occultist and a vestal, and put + debuff chance on the occultist for the weakening curse while the vestal easily outheals the debuffed damage the prophet does. Most bosses could be dealt with with either the generic mark team or my heal/stun team though.
+Darkest Dungeon New Game+ Holy crap.. are you me? Haha. We use very similar parties, and I think if you want to take out a very stellar party you should try out the vestal/jester/houndmaster/helion. Vestal for heals, jester for buffs/de-stress, houndmaster for 3rd row stun/prot removal on the big champs, and helion for stunning first 2 or nailing the 4th row guy. Perfect party, I swear! Give it a try if you get the chance. I run long champion dungeons and I come out stress-free and with 30-40k gold per run. It kills a little bit faster than the party that you always use too. I use the one you've been using and it works amazingly, but I recommend trying out the one I told you about.
And as for the occultist, I've been spending time on the darkest dungeon steam forums talking about how shitty he is (you wouldn't believe how many people swear by him). I pretty much agree 100 percent that he is way too RNG reliant for champion. He sucks in champion dungeons because of it, unless you use abominations, but that is because they can get out and heal themselves if needed. He'd be decent if his heals were from 5-15 or something, that sort of range, but 0-20 is awful. Ever since I've stopped using the occultist I've never had a stressed out party.
And yeah, highwayman sucks and so does the leper. Graveroober ain't too bad, but I'd put her in the middle of the pack. Everything she can do I think others can do better. I can't find a good party really for her to use on a regular basis. If she is in the second position then I'm always worried I'll get an IRL heart-attack if she doesn't dodge enough. She works super well though with highwayman, with her going first/stunning and moving back and highwayman point-blank shotting the front guy. Vestal on heals/PD taking care of the back.. but anyways, I think I've used up enough of your youtube comment section writing an essay here.. haha, thanks for sharing your parties though man, really helpful.
So you just have three sets of your usual team just ready to go? And in a short amount of time too, goddamn...
I see this video and begin to suspect that my strategy, along the line of "kill it before he kills you", may have not been the best one.
*sigh*
I'm not good at micromanagement, but i want to try!
It's actually a great one on level 1 quests
it works well in the level 3 ones, if your team is adjusted for maxxing damage
some of the bosses are entirely about damage racing in the higher levels
now, going for regular lvl 5 or 6 quests only with raw damage and no control/healing/protecting.... oooo it will be hard...and even if you win, you'll spend all your earnings in stress control and desease treatment
Your luck with stuns is just out of this world. If i try the same thing i'll end up missing or getting resist :/
+Meiyou Fordragon
My plague doctor has +70% stun rate from trinkets, giving her a 209% stun rate. That means everything with less than 110% stun resist is guaranteed to be stunned if it hits (and she has 135 accuracy on blinding gas so it's really likely to hit). These enemies have around 70% stun resist base, so my plague doctor is almost guaranteed to stun them 2 turns in a row, and has a ~60% chance of being able to stun them a 3rd time.
My hellion has a bit lower stun rate, but still a 194% stun rate iirc, and my crusader has a pretty high stun rate too, and almost all stun abilities have higher accuracy than regular attacks too so misses are less common while using them (and you'll note that all 3 of my stunners have +accuracy from an item too). It's not really luck, it's just using the right abilities and items.
+Darkest Dungeon New Game+ Well i have some bad luck with my trinkets, so far only got stun trinket for grave robber, which is a class i don"t use for that. Otherwise got a lot for bleeding purpose (it was really nice for flesh and hag).
Well i guess i'm good to farm some missions to get this.
Btw, do you know a good team to farm / kill the shambler? I tried Occultist - Hound Master - Abomination - Bounty Hunter and, even if none of them died, i ended being heavily stressed (both irl and ig).
Why on Earth were you stalling so much in that first fight? Why didn't you use Noxious Blast when your Plague Doctor's turn came up or Smite when your Crusader's turn came up?!
+Furious Sherman
Why end a fight with 10 stress when you can end a fight with 0 stress? There was no risk of the stall timer kicking in because there were 2 enemies and there was no risk of anything bad happening because those enemies don't really do anything.
I'll go ahead and call this bullshit, if you can do such a thing in a game it means it is not a good game.
I enjoied RNGest Dungeon untill the level 3 quests, level 5 and Darkest Dungeon quests are just RNG shit with zero tactics.
So it's a good game while you can still just go full attack and outdamage the entire quest, and win without thinking... But when things get get interesting, it's 'zero tactics'...
...git gud,scrub