I have about 50 hours in this game, but at least 12 of them were not very helpful in terms of building a working strategy. I have a bunch of young kids, a job that takes my nights and weekends, and I'm part of an outreach community, so my time is limited. However, I've fallen in love with this game. So I keep playing.

Once my 12 hours was in, I kinda had an idea how big and long the game was and how much I needed a good stable of characters and many party combinations were possible. At this point I started experimenting with strategies.

1) - No torches. Let the light burn down all the way. You get a ton of extra treasure. Which has so far been my answer to leveling up the Hamlet so slowly. However, I haven't gotten any characters up past level 4 yet, so what do I know?

2) - I put off the first Crimson Court mission as long as I can. Until I have some parties of level 3.

3) - Roster size 12. And don't level up the Stage Coach beyond 3 recruits at a time. I figure 12 characters is enough to have 3 fully formed parties rotating in and out, with some mix and matching going on. Plus, they can all level up somewhat evenly.

I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I now have a roster of 11/12. 4 level 3s, the rest are level 2s. Stress is under control. Leveling up equipment and skills. And using no torches. It's great. I remain sold on this strategy.

I am wishing for a Grave Robber, though. Haven't seen one in quite a while. I keep getting Houndmasters. And I don't like them. My roster is Paladin, Vestals, HIghwaymen, Arbalist, Leper, Man-At-Arms and Bounty Hunter. A Grave Robber would really round things out for me.

You have no level 5s nor 6s heroes so I believe you have not seen champion dungeons yet. Champion dungeons are much harder than veteran ones. I hope you are also able to finish your runs with zero stress - at higher levels I have no time to use any stress recovery building as bad quirks are priority for me.

One general strategy to beat the game fast, is to hire a new party of heroes each week, send them on a dungeon run to bring in as much money/heirlooms as possible and then fire them. As you don't invest any gold in stress recovery, quirk removal, disease treatment etc. every coin you gain is pure profit. And if you fail a run, which will ocassinally happen, you don't lose anything. While you're gaining money this way you'll inevitably get some heroes with usefull positive quirks, that you want to keep and invest in, building up an "A-Team" for boss fights and Darkest Dungeon later on. For this strategy to work, you'll need to max out the stage coach ASAP.

I personally don't like this strategy as I love my cute little heroes to much and instead focus on minimizing losses. If you're not playing on stygian difficulty there is no turn limit and no one is stopping you from prolonging your campaign to 100+ weeks (my first playtrough was 133). If follow this way you'll still need to upgrade you roster size quickly to collect all that interesting classes and to be able to rotate your party. It's not as important to max out the number of recruits per week though, as you'll soon reach a point where you hardly make any changes to your roster. Instead you should upgrade your guild, your blacksmith and your sanitarium (focus on upgrades that make treatments cheaper).

Either way you should hire an antiquarian early to kickstart your economy. I also suggest to bring a good scout (someone who can increase scouting chance at campfire) to all medium and long runs. Finding the secret room is a huge boon (don't forget to bring along a key to open the chest). If you want to do dark runs is up to you. It's more risky but if your heroes are already a little overequipped for the particular type of dungeon, they should be able to handle it.

Delaying your first visit to the courtyard is a wise choice, because once you went there you will encounter bloodsuckers in every dungeon and have to deal with the crimson curse which doesn't make running your hamlet any easier... Make sure to build the sanguine vintners building immediately after.

I have been leaning more and more toward ignoring bad quirks - for the most part. Kleptomania is particularly bad. But, I have been not spending on quirk treatment.

I'm removing all -manias, -dmg and +stress quirks plus locking some useful ones for specific heroes.
Also some diseases are very bad ones.

I think you are ignoring these bad quirks probably because you've never been in Champion dungeon where difficulty really steps up and even such small things can really mess your run. I remember when I was happy killing enemies in Apprentice and Veteran dungeons and then I went to Champion one for the first time - it was like a cold shower for me. :D

Are you playing on Radiant or on Darkest? What kind of quest do you mostly run - short, medium or long? And which locations?

This discussion is helpful.

I am playing on Darkest. I am learning now how much better Medium runs are. I can take new recruits and run them on a short just to get to level 1. Then medium runs.

I remain sold on the no torches strategy. It does not seem to affect stress very much - in fact only upon entering the dungeon. However, I see the wiki states that on Champion runs, when the light meter reaches zero there is a 12% of a hallway battle with the Shambler. That might be the deathblow to my low light strategy.

I have been branching out with different character types and party setups in response to some of the things I read here.

But I am no fan of the Houndmaster. I find the Jester and the Grave Robber difficult to use well consistently. The Occultist is growing on me. Arbalist is OK. I don't like the Abomination. Man-At-Arms is a weird mix of damage-dealing and support, not using him much. And I tried out the Antiquarian - I'm not sure the extra money is worth it. Maybe keep one Antiquarian in the roster just to occassionally make a money run if I need some extra cash.

Let me know when you start Champion dungeons. :D Shambler on Apprentice and Veteran level is rather easy for me. Lately I even do a few Shambler specific hunt runs runs to get the trinkets. Party with Abomination really shines there. Houndmaster is a very good class as he can fill any role and he does it quite well. He really shines in Warrens and Weald. Jester is good in party with Abominations. He is also the best stress healer when somebody really needs it (for example when taking fresh recruits to high level runs to level them up much quicker). Grave Robber is good in party when "dancing around" is needed. I found her best to use with Crusader but she can be good versus Shambler if there are problems with shufflings. Occultist is fine till he heals you for +0 HP (and possibly add Bleeding) three times in row. :D Arbalest is ok for bosses and when support healer is needed. Abomination requires some strategy. I probably know why players don't like him, but I use this class quite a lot. Man-at-Arms is my class to go when I expect hard mission. Antiquarian was ok to earn money at the start. Now I use her mostly when leveling other heroes.

Thanks for the offer!

Very new in my first run but a few qns:

* I have yet to see a single stick of firewood, which of course means no camping, which of course means combat skills only. As a consequence all my heroes are already quite high in Stress. Am I right that the only non-Expedition ways to reduce Stress is the standard 1-week "I'm not on this Expedition" rest, and spending money to send them to the Abbey/Tavern? ie you can't use skills in the Hamlet or "pass time" to heal without going on an Expedition?

* Because of the above, my initial sense of the game is that it's not really about levelling Heroes & building a party, because accumulated Stress will far outstrip your ability to heal it. Keep them as healthy as you can, but pretty much every Hero has an "adventure limit": use them until the Stress catches up with them, then they die

* I seem to have been pretty unlucky with negative quirks right from the start: 2 Kleptos (1 already permanent), 1 Fear of Beasts (already permanent) - this is the tank, 1 Photomaniac. These were all default quirks the Heroes started with. Am I right that the only way to get rid of these is in the Sanitarium (which is not yet unlocked), and the permanent ones will be even more expensive?

Thanks!

You will gain access to quests allowing camping in a couple weeks.

Yes.

No, you need to spend a big chunk of your gold keeping them sane by having them drink or pray at the beginning, but as quests go you will learn to better handle stress. After a couple game sessions you should be able to end quests with low stress levels.

That’s right, but you shouldn’t worry about negative quirks yet. In the beginning, you have a lot of better ways to spend your money.

You can use firewood only in medium and long missions.

Every idle hero is also healed 5 stress per week for free. It's not so effective but good enough to remove small chunks of stress.

Try to use Jester in your party - his ballad will help you to keep stress level low. He is a good character for a start, later you can also use Crusader and Houndmaster.

No, there are also some curios like for example Eldritch Altar or Pile of Scrolls.

My own strategy was to remove bad quirks as soon as they appeared, but at your stage you should more concentrate on upgrade the Stage Coach instead to be able to recruit more heroes.

Tip for later play: do not forget that you can lock good quirk and remove bad one from one hero at the same time.

One more thing: If you are going to upgrade stress removal building, concentrate more on Abbey than on Tavern. Why? Using any such building could have some negative effects for you or for the hero - and, for me, Abbey has "better" negative effects. Examples:
- using Tavern your hero can lose some money or even some valuable trinket
- using Abbey your hero can be not available for another week

Also please be careful when upgrading number of available rooms to use in such building. As you may already have noticed, one of these spots is occupied by the Caretaker. When you upgrade enough of the Abbey or Tavern to have 6 extra rooms (for a total of 12), the Crier also will come to occupy rooms. So the "sweet starter spot" is to have one less room below the Crier's appearing "requirements".