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Darkest Dungeonthe "hard game" gimmick and its terrible consequences(14 posts)(14 posts)
(14 posts)
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This is my favourite topic
Posted February 12, 2017
as title says...

BY THE ANCIENT ONES... i really, i really love this game.
i do.

it bought me out instantly as soon as I saw the trailer, i think more than a couple of years ago.
the narrative approach, the victorian english, the graphic language and style, those strong greys, blacks, REDS and all other palette so intentionally grim and unsaturated.

i really love it. love the approach, the mix of managerial and rpg.

but MOTHERF**K... and please excuse my language: these f**kers i take ONLY to the short apprentice missions keep on - WHEN NOT DYING BECAUSE I AM TAKING CARE - all kinds of mental illnesses.
these miserable souls (16-20 up until now) go to hell one week after the other in groups of 4 to get something like 4k gold...

...WHEN MAUTRAVERS' (my first plague doctor, somewhat alive to this day) "RESOLUTION" quirk costs me 4k to take out?
are you serious?
just for an illness that prevents me from DRINKING to alleviate stress?
come on.
it's stupid.

i dont have enough resources to take care of my people that will get mad and then miserably die.
what the hell?
people dying from heart attacks (2 for now). COME ON.
everytime their resolution is tested, or at least 4 times out of 5, these guys give out and get a permanent mental disease. it's hell.
i've tried to come back after month and monthe more than once, and i was plying in these weeks and trying to cheat the game editing its json files (to no avail, actually, because my savegame doesn't give a damn about my editing), this because it's a wonderfully crafted FRUSTRATING game.
i come back just now from a "kill the swine prince" mission where i could hardly visit half of the rooms in the dungeon (and usually i like to see them all in this kind of games) and rapidly killed the game process as soon as i saw he butchered 3 out of 4 party members right before depleting his HP.

this game is great but i know anyone and even me forsook games after far less attempt at enyoing them. this is broken and if these updates don't really improve the gameplay i will forsake this game for good.
and this WILL pain me, because i love it. i love getting sunken in this atmosphere, but i hate it when this starts to become as terrible and unforgiving as life itself. that - i fear - is the death of "fun" after a videogame.

and, believe me, it's NOT FAIR.
it kicks me out from a good experience. i hate this.

this stupid elitist idiotic (basement dweller) gimmick "a game is good when it's difficult beyond measure and prevents 90% of people form going beyond level 2-3" is just bullsh*t.
a good game has also a well balanced difficulty curve and a well balanced weight between challange and reward.

this is lacking reward.

being challanged just to see yourself fail is... dunno, mental cruelty? self-bullying? masochism?
tell me what you think about it, i read others that have this kinds of feeling, i am just feeling uneasy because i am loving a game that is hating me.
Posted February 12, 2017
This game is not very hard. (at least as far as I have played it, didn't finished it yet)

Short dungeons can be hard though because you can't rest there and if one fight goes wrong you might be in trouble. I always try to do the medium-sized ones.

Quirks can become "chronic" after a while and then it is very expensive to get rid of them. For a low-level character it is not worth it, wait for the next Plague Doctor to show up and then swap them. Resolution is not worth the money to cure it or to pay too much attention to it, you have five other slots for stress management if you need to.

You shouldn't need to pay for their stress relief to often, though. Take enough torches with you, keep light at a high level, kill (or disable) opponents that do stress attacks first. Once you know how to handle stress without running to the bar after each fight and once you realize that you don't need to cure all those bad quirks (at least most of them and not now) you won't have financial problems anymore as well.

The swine prince... well, all those bosses have their own gimmick. You probably have killed Wilbur first which you shouldn't have done.
Posted February 13, 2017
Okay, so here's what you do. Get a team combination going you like, a 4-person wrecking crew. Send them out on missions cautiously and get them levelled up a little. Then start recruiting cannon fodder!
It's really the best way to play. You have your 'A' team you save up for boss battles, and the rest of the time you build up money with disposable grunts who you send into lower-level missions to get money and upgrade the settlement. And when your 'B' team gets messed up or are suffering from mental disorders? Ruthlessly drop them and hire new people. Use them up and cast them away! Meanwhile, all of the profit goes to keeping your 'A' team in tip-top shape, pampering them with stress-removal activities and negative quirk removal. You built up your stagecoach a little and you can just keep drafting new squads and throwing them into the meat grinder over and over, while ensuring the best possible chance for your main heroes. Sometimes you might get a 'B' teamer who deserves a shot at the big time, but most of the time they're going to be expendable resource gatherers, nothing more.
Also: here's a good combo that scales well. Antiquarian with the vapors ability that increases dodge teamed with the Arbalest's surpressing fire. Once they start scaling you just use these two abilities over and over, greatly reducing the enemy team's chances of hitting you. If it has been levelled once the Antiquarian ability alone will give you +15 or +20 dodge for your whole team. I've had battles that used to be a real headache become a breeze with this combo.
Post edited February 13, 2017 by AegerHant
Posted February 13, 2017
thank you for your insight...

i am really, really close on abandoning it.

i will try a combination of your two advices.

about the swine prince yea i didn't listen to my guys warning me not to attack the little hog, problem is i wanted to dps the big one with blight (+ bleeding) and my doctor hit both of them.

the problem with the cycling of cannon fodder is that i tend to get attached to my guys. seeing Reynaud still alive and doing jester's guitar solos hten finale makes me happy
i remember the death of my first jester as something dreadful and sometimes i go nack to the cemetery to see him xD sometimes i just cycle through buildings in Hamlet hearing the awesome music before going to a raid because i know it will be perilous and even when i do lv1 runs with a lv2 team i feel like i get robbed because i harvest too little gold...

anyway, thanks. i'll try again.

P.S.
never saw an antiquarian in town, up until now. ope ill get him
Post edited February 13, 2017 by Mau_Stormbringer
Posted February 14, 2017
Some other suggestions. I'm fairly new to the game, and haven't even been able to run a single medium level dungeon as yet. However, I have figured some stuff out and things are going easier for me.

1) Consider restarting via the Radiant mode. The description of it as "accellerated" is much more accurate than "easy". Your heroes will level up faster, and you'll be able to bring higher level heroes into lower level dungeons which will make getting a team levelled a LOT faster and less boring. It's still very possible to screw up and lose people, even so, but it makes levelling a new hero less painful.

2) Learn the curios, and which items are needed to get their best effects, and bring at least one of everything. Some things you may want to bring more of. You'll start pulling in a whole lot more money and heirlooms. Shovels and holy water, for example, can help prevent and remove a lot of stress damage used on the right objects.

3) Buyout all the food. The heals may be small, but it can make a huge difference. Bring tons of torches and use them all the time. You can always dump them later if they're taking up too much space. Don't get cocky and think you can run pitch black until you can beat it normally.

4) Don't ignore stress healing abilities. Crusader and Jester have stress heals that can make a huge difference in dead turns. Leper and Houndmaster have self-stress heals.

5) Don't be afraid of long and medium dungeons. THEY REALLY ARE EASIER. Camping is crazy helpful for stress management. Watch some youtube videos or twitch streams and see how people on the hard difficulty (or pitch black runs) use camping to melt stress away. It will save you tons of money and time you don't have to spend on heroes going crazy. There are also other good camping abilities, but stress managment is the A1 reason to camp.

6) Be spendy. Level up gear. Level up the good abilities you're going to be using. In the early game, unless you have a great trinket, sell 'em all to fund levelling and blacksmith gear.
Post edited February 14, 2017 by analogline
Posted February 17, 2017
I've been in your shoes, believe me. I've been on the brink of rage quitting this game so many times it has practically lost all meaning. I have aborted far more runs than I've completed due to lousy RNG, often in the late game. And so far the new monsters in the Radiant Update aren't doing me any favors either. But despite all that, I LOVE this game and take a great amount of pride in learning and overcoming the various challenges the game throws at you. There have been times I have cursed the names of everyone at Red Hook for my own bad luck, but at the end of the day, that's really all it is. The RNG can make or break you regardless of your skill level, and it is equally adept at both.

I tend to draw an analogy between Darkest Dungeon and a typical season of baseball. You might go through 162 weeks (or more) before you finish, but you're not going to win every time, and chances are high that you're going to lose some heroes along the way. At the end, you just hope that you've done enough to reach the playoffs (i.e. the Darkest Dungeon itself.) If you keep things in perspective and take the time to learn the mechanics of the game, it will get easier. Good luck!
Posted February 17, 2017
If you find you're really struggling, it might help to check out some gameplay videos. You'll find plenty of Darkest Dungeon streamers on Twitch, but I would recommend Billy1Kirby. He does an outstanding job of explaining the ins-and-outs of the game to newcomers. ScottOnesieWilson is also very good.
Posted February 19, 2017
So far I've only just unlocked the highest level dungeons (regular, not the final DD area), and so far I've been able to keep a full roster with enough people of all levels to be able to tackle almost any dungeon level. Somewhat perversely I'm starting to run out of lower-level people, but I'm sure that will change once a few more deaths hit me.

During all this time, I think I spent a very small sum to get rid of negative quirks. Apart from the one time I got a free session of quirk removal/adjusting (which I took full advantage of, of course), I think I only removed one negative quirk so far - that being kleptomania.

I agree that negative quirks are too expensive to remove - but on the other hand, it hasn't really bothered me. I find that for the most part, it's both cheaper and more interesting to have high-level characters with good equipment that are mentally burnt out on missions.

Since most quirks are area/monster/situation specific, it's easy enough to build teams to work around them. I rarely re-use the exact same team for more than one dungeon in a row, and am happy to tackle dungeons with almost any combination of characters - provided I have at least one tank, one heavy-hitting melee character, and possibly also one healer and one DOT character, then I'm set.

I think that was the primary focus of Darkest Dungeon from the very beginning - the mental toll this kind of "work" has on the characters, along with the afflictions (the heart attack mechanic wasn't added until later).
Post edited February 19, 2017 by squid830
Posted February 19, 2017
I agree with that to some extent. I don't go too crazy about removing negative quirks, but I do try to keep them to a minimum - no more than two per hero. I'm also very selective about which ones I remove, and in the interest of saving money, I never lock in any positive quirks unless a Town Event makes the Sanitarium free. Naturally, this makes Medicine quests in the Weald an integral part of my gameplay strategy.
Posted February 20, 2017
avatar
JDPingree: I agree with that to some extent. I don't go too crazy about removing negative quirks, but I do try to keep them to a minimum - no more than two per hero. I'm also very selective about which ones I remove, and in the interest of saving money, I never lock in any positive quirks unless a Town Event makes the Sanitarium free. Naturally, this makes Medicine quests in the Weald an integral part of my gameplay strategy.
It's definitely a good thing that some of those item quests (such as the medicines quest) actually have a purpose now (well since a few updates ago anyway).
Posted February 23, 2017
thank you for all your advices and contributions.
after chatting here i tried to play again, but still felt stressed about it so it's about 2 weeks since i played, still passing time glancing in the corner of my eye the game icon on desktop (and still i would be happier if my JSON editing efforts towards cheating worked...)

i think that all the chat is really helping me out, it's just thanks to you i actually discovered you can put items inside objects you find during runs (i used just to put keys in closed chests and shovels in rubble), overlooking that mechanic surely did its part in underdeveloping my guys (and the lack of true infos in the game is a thing, too...)

that makes me even more attached to my desperate adventurers, i thought about starting off and even now i am, the point is i feel like i'd missed the point of all the prior sacrifices... even so, the new radiant mode is nice to see.

another question: i think i did a series of "dirty" updates just installing the new versions as they came out onto my same directory, a part from applying patches when they were available.
if that turns out ot be wrong: should i uninstall the game, keep the saves and then reinstall it, would my saved game be updated too? i mean: if i install a newer version, loading a save from a previous version, makes the game run on old settings or new ones?

thank you as usual, and keep the chat going
Posted March 23, 2017
avatar
Mau_Stormbringer: i think that all the chat is really helping me out, it's just thanks to you i actually discovered you can put items inside objects you find during runs (i used just to put keys in closed chests and shovels in rubble), overlooking that mechanic surely did its part in underdeveloping my guys (and the lack of true infos in the game is a thing, too...)
Yeah I just munched through this game, playing it for 3 weeks virtually non-stop and in retrospective I have to say a lot of it's initial difficulty comes from not explaining game mechanics to the player all that well. Up until the darkest dungeon itself it really isn't that hard, if you're know what you're doing. Fortunately there is a very good wiki to be found online.

On your technical questions: i'm not sure about this game but installing multiple versions of a program in the same directory may cause unexpected issus in some cases. Better do a clean re-install.
Posted January 11, 2019
avatar
Mau_Stormbringer: as title says...

BY THE ANCIENT ONES... i really, i really love this game.
i do.

it bought me out instantly as soon as I saw the trailer, i think more than a couple of years ago.
the narrative approach, the victorian english, the graphic language and style, those strong greys, blacks, REDS and all other palette so intentionally grim and unsaturated.

i really love it. love the approach, the mix of managerial and rpg.

but MOTHERF**K... and please excuse my language: these f**kers i take ONLY to the short apprentice missions keep on - WHEN NOT DYING BECAUSE I AM TAKING CARE - all kinds of mental illnesses.
these miserable souls (16-20 up until now) go to hell one week after the other in groups of 4 to get something like 4k gold...

...WHEN MAUTRAVERS' (my first plague doctor, somewhat alive to this day) "RESOLUTION" quirk costs me 4k to take out?
are you serious?
just for an illness that prevents me from DRINKING to alleviate stress?
come on.
it's stupid.

i dont have enough resources to take care of my people that will get mad and then miserably die.
what the hell?
people dying from heart attacks (2 for now). COME ON.
everytime their resolution is tested, or at least 4 times out of 5, these guys give out and get a permanent mental disease. it's hell.
i've tried to come back after month and monthe more than once, and i was plying in these weeks and trying to cheat the game editing its json files (to no avail, actually, because my savegame doesn't give a damn about my editing), this because it's a wonderfully crafted FRUSTRATING game.
i come back just now from a "kill the swine prince" mission where i could hardly visit half of the rooms in the dungeon (and usually i like to see them all in this kind of games) and rapidly killed the game process as soon as i saw he butchered 3 out of 4 party members right before depleting his HP.

this game is great but i know anyone and even me forsook games after far less attempt at enyoing them. this is broken and if these updates don't really improve the gameplay i will forsake this game for good.
and this WILL pain me, because i love it. i love getting sunken in this atmosphere, but i hate it when this starts to become as terrible and unforgiving as life itself. that - i fear - is the death of "fun" after a videogame.

and, believe me, it's NOT FAIR.
it kicks me out from a good experience. i hate this.

this stupid elitist idiotic (basement dweller) gimmick "a game is good when it's difficult beyond measure and prevents 90% of people form going beyond level 2-3" is just bullsh*t.
a good game has also a well balanced difficulty curve and a well balanced weight between challange and reward.

this is lacking reward.

being challanged just to see yourself fail is... dunno, mental cruelty? self-bullying? masochism?
tell me what you think about it, i read others that have this kinds of feeling, i am just feeling uneasy because i am loving a game that is hating me.
I felt it was terribly designed, but I guess I was playing it wrongly. I take back everything bad I've previously said about this game. It can be random at times, and it can be a bit of a pain at times, but it's official: I love it. It's addictive.
Post edited February 10, 2019 by Porlek
Posted April 23, 2019
avatar
Mau_Stormbringer: as title says...

BY THE ANCIENT ONES... i really, i really love this game.
i do.

it bought me out instantly as soon as I saw the trailer, i think more than a couple of years ago.
the narrative approach, the victorian english, the graphic language and style, those strong greys, blacks, REDS and all other palette so intentionally grim and unsaturated.

i really love it. love the approach, the mix of managerial and rpg.

but MOTHERF**K... and please excuse my language: these f**kers i take ONLY to the short apprentice missions keep on - WHEN NOT DYING BECAUSE I AM TAKING CARE - all kinds of mental illnesses.
these miserable souls (16-20 up until now) go to hell one week after the other in groups of 4 to get something like 4k gold...

...WHEN MAUTRAVERS' (my first plague doctor, somewhat alive to this day) "RESOLUTION" quirk costs me 4k to take out?
are you serious?
just for an illness that prevents me from DRINKING to alleviate stress?
come on.
it's stupid.

i dont have enough resources to take care of my people that will get mad and then miserably die.
what the hell?
people dying from heart attacks (2 for now). COME ON.
everytime their resolution is tested, or at least 4 times out of 5, these guys give out and get a permanent mental disease. it's hell.
i've tried to come back after month and monthe more than once, and i was plying in these weeks and trying to cheat the game editing its json files (to no avail, actually, because my savegame doesn't give a damn about my editing), this because it's a wonderfully crafted FRUSTRATING game.
i come back just now from a "kill the swine prince" mission where i could hardly visit half of the rooms in the dungeon (and usually i like to see them all in this kind of games) and rapidly killed the game process as soon as i saw he butchered 3 out of 4 party members right before depleting his HP.

this game is great but i know anyone and even me forsook games after far less attempt at enyoing them. this is broken and if these updates don't really improve the gameplay i will forsake this game for good.
and this WILL pain me, because i love it. i love getting sunken in this atmosphere, but i hate it when this starts to become as terrible and unforgiving as life itself. that - i fear - is the death of "fun" after a videogame.

and, believe me, it's NOT FAIR.
it kicks me out from a good experience. i hate this.

this stupid elitist idiotic (basement dweller) gimmick "a game is good when it's difficult beyond measure and prevents 90% of people form going beyond level 2-3" is just bullsh*t.
a good game has also a well balanced difficulty curve and a well balanced weight between challange and reward.

this is lacking reward.

being challanged just to see yourself fail is... dunno, mental cruelty? self-bullying? masochism?
tell me what you think about it, i read others that have this kinds of feeling, i am just feeling uneasy because i am loving a game that is hating me.
avatar
Porlek: I felt it was terribly designed, but I guess I was playing it wrongly. I take back everything bad I've previously said about this game. It can be random at times, and it can be a bit of a pain at times, but it's official: I love it. It's addictive.
I used to feel the same way about the Wizardry series, which is probably even more unforgiving until I stopped playing it to beat it. Once I changed my mindset from my typical 'im going to beat this game' to 'Im going to see if I can survive this game' I completely fell in love with it. It sounds kind of simple when you say it out loud, but it made quite a difference.
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Darkest Dungeonthe "hard game" gimmick and its terrible consequences(14 posts)(14 posts)
(14 posts)