~Beyond the Border~ > Akyu's Arcade
[SSLP] Darkest Dungeon: An admission of defeat.
AzyWng:
We've killed our first few people, now let's talk STATS!
Oh hey, someone’s actually reading this! That’s good! Means I’m not just typing out to some people who’ll never read because it’s too edgy! Now to scare you folks away with a long-winded gameplay explanation, featuring... Uh, a long long list of things that mainly have to do with characters!
So. We’ve managed to make it past the tutorial level without anyone dying. Well done, Dismas and Reynauld! You get to actually get to play a part in clearing the manor and its surrounding areas! (Note: So far I haven’t had Dismas or Reynauld die on the tutorial, but apparently it’s happened to some players.) Don’t cross your fingers yet, though! Someone has to be the first death, after all!
But before I can write about Reimu and Eirin suffering alongside these two, It might be best for me to explain the game’s systems and how they work.
As you may have noticed, this game’s battle structure is not too unlike other turn-based RPG games like Final Fantasy in that there are multiple combatants, each one taking (usually) one action per turn that they get. Attacks can hit normally, miss, crit, or be dodged. There are status effects, including debuffs, stun, and Damage Over Time (AKA DoT). Of course, this game is different than others of its kind, and to understand it better, we should take a look at the screens of our highwayman, Dismas!
You can view this character info screen by mousing over a character’s portrait and right-clicking, both during quests and at the Hamlet. Firstly: The quirks!
You see, each soldier against corruption that you recruit is their own little special snowflake, and is guaranteed to start with one to two of both positive and negative quirks. These can include things like a flat boost to speed or accuracy, an increase in stress damage taken from certain enemy types, being forced/compelled to interact with certain curios (objects that can be found in rooms, like that tent and chest from the tutorial), and probably a few other things, too.
These quirks, both positive and negative, can be acquired when a quest is ended, whether it’s abandoned or completed. The chance of getting a positive quirk is a flat 45 percent when a quest is successfully completed, with the chance of getting a negative quirk being a base 25 percent and being increased by one percent for every four points of stress up to a maximum of 25 more points. That means that at 100 stress, not only is your hero likely to be afflicted (we’ll get to that when it comes up), they’re also much more likely to gain a negative quirk. Thankfully, the odds of getting a positive quirk remain the same.
Abandoning the quest (returning to the Hamlet before the quest can be completed) is generally a good deal worse - the stress multiplier for gaining negative quirks is a bit bigger (at least, according to the wiki), the base chance of getting a negative quirk is higher, and the base chance of getting a positive quirk is smaller and is now reduced by stress.
The big takeaway from all this is: Completing quests is good. Abandoning quests is bad. Ending quests when you’re stressed is also bad. The effects permanently change how your heroes behave in a number of ways. It’s possible to change these yourself in a number of ways, too.
Now for Dismas’s stats. I’ll try not to get too wordy here.
Max HP - The amount of damage a hero can take until they’re on Death’s Door - where they are at risk of permanently dying. We’ll get into that when we get to Death Blow resistance over in the Resistances section. Dismas’s max HP is 22 right now, reduced 5% by his “Soft” quirk that he picked up after the quest.
Dodge - The chance that a hero will dodge any attack directed at them. Every single attack that isn't at 95 accuracy or above will have a chance of missing. Dodge will be added to this number - each point of Dodge is a 1% chance of dodging the enemy's attack. Dodge will be affected by hero class and armor level, as well as certain quirks, buffs, debuffs, and trinkets. Dismas currently has ten points of dodge, so an enemy attack with a base100% chance of hitting actually has a 10% chance to miss. Not that it’ll happen frequently enough to notice.
Prot - Short for protection. The percentage of PROT a hero has will reduce the amount of damage an attack inflicts, capping at 80%. The Hard Skinned quirk, as well as certain buffs and trinkets, will increase a hero’s PROT. Dismas currently has 0% PROT, so every attack will inflict full damage to him.
SPD - Short for Speed. This affects turn order. At the start of each turn, every unit rolls a number from one to eight, and the units with higher numbers go first. This means more speed is more better, as it lets you attack first and possibly stun or kill enemies, rather than the reverse. There is one specific situation where more speed can actually be worse - it’s when a unit winds up being faster than a dedicated healer when they’re suffering from a DoT effect. A DoT effect will hurt units at the start of their turn, you see, and if the unit is on death’s door, there’s a risk that they will die before the healer can do anything to help them.
Oh dammit, now I have to do a takeaway for this stat alone. Well done, me.
The big takeaway from all this is: More speed lets you hurt enemies first, but it might also let your units get hurt first if they’re bleeding. But it’s generally better to have more of this than less.
ACC MOD - Short for Accuracy Modifier. Modifies accuracy, which is your chance to hit. This is affected by a whole slew of things, including which combat skill is used, what level it is, quirks, buffs, debuffs, trinkets, and probably a few other things, too. However, a hit is only guaranteed when accuracy is at 95 or greater, as said before - this is due to a hidden +5 accuracy modifier shared by both heroes and monsters. Darkness causes monsters to become more accurate, but we’ll get into that Some Other Time (TM), I promise.
The big takeaway from all this is: Accuracy has a point where you're guaranteed to hit your enemy. This helps cut down on that XCOM 2 65% chance meme, but remember that you have to either reduce enemy dodge or increase your own accuracy before you can really ensure a hit. Never leave the killing of an enemy to just one person or you might just wind up being the ones who are killed.
CRIT - Short for Critical Hit, or, in this case, Critical Hit Chance. More of this gives you a chance of critically hitting, which inflicts more than the maximum damage of an attack, causes status effects to last longer when inflicted, causes stress heal, and generally results in all sorts of good shit. At least, when you perform them. When the enemy performs them everything goes to hell a little bit faster (ok, maybe a lot more faster), since you’re the one taking more damage. Crits also inflict a good deal of stress damage, which is super yaaaay (no it isn’t, but we’ll get to stress Some Other Time (TM)). In addition to the usual methods of boosting stats like using certain skills, trinkets, quirks, and certain buffs, darkness can also cause critical hits to be inflicted more often - by both you and the enemy.
The big takeaway from all this is: Crits that you perform are good. Crits the enemy performs are bad. You can increase crit chance by making things darker, but this boosts the enemy’s crit chance too.
Nearly forgot to mention, by the way, that critical hits (of both kinds) are usually accompanied by the sexy voice of Wayne June, which makes them all the better/worse when they do land. You haven’t played Darkest Dungeon until you’ve heard lines like “A singular strike!” or “How quickly the tide turns!”
If you don’t have the game, all the Narrator’s lines can be found here, though not all of them have the voice files.
Finally, there’s DMG - Short for Damage. This is affected by trinkets and weapons, and the amount of damage actually inflicted by skills will vary from skill to skill, as well as the enemy’s PROT.
Now, let’s get into combat skills. Each unit has a different set of skills, which may result in combinations that are really good, really terrible, or somewhere in between. Every hero type is guaranteed to have one skill that they will always start off being skilled in so that you don’t get completely screwed over by random skill assignment. For instance, see the icon of the pistol barrel that’s got the muzzle flash? That’s Pistol Shot, the skill that all Highwaymen are guaranteed to have. It can be used in all rows except the front row, and hits all enemies except the one in the front row. It deals a bit less damage than normal but inflicts extra damage against marked targets and has a 10% boost to crit chance.
The circles showed at the top of the bar, right below “Preferred Position” and “Preferred Target” indicate where the hero can use their skills and where the hero can hit. Here, Dismas can use all four of his skills from the second and third rows, while he can hit the second row with all his skills, the third row with most of his skills, and the first and fourth rows with only one or two skills.
We’ll have to keep this in mind so that we can construct a team that is can be its most effective. The back rows are generally where more fragile and dangerous enemies are, while the front enemies just hurt the first two rows. Some skills, of course, heal or buff your own teammates, and this can be seen by a glow effect around the outside of the circles in the “Preferred Position” diagram.
The big takeaway from all this is: Some attacks can only be performed at certain spots and can only hit enemies in other certain spots. Keep this in mind.
Next thing to get into is resistances. I’ll try to make this quick, but each number represents a chance to resist that effect if it gets applied. Here’s each of the effects:
Stun: Stops you from acting during that turn. Bleed and Blight will still decrease your health, and you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. Lovely, right? Thankfully, when the stun status is removed you get a boost of 40% resistance to stun, which is there to prevent stunlocking on both sides.
Blight: Causes damage over time that ignores PROT. Antidotes and certain abilities can cure this status, and healing can outpace the damage.
Disease: These are separate from negative quirks in that they only cause big stat penalities. You’ll want to remove them as soon as possible through the use of the Sanitarium or certain camping skills. Certain enemies and curios can inflict disease.
Death Blow: When a hero hits zero HP, they fall onto Death’s Door, suffering a stress penalty and, more importantly, having a chance of dying any further time they take damage. Death Blow resist is the chance of not dying when you take damage, and this checks every single time you take damage.
Move: Some attacks can cause units to move about, messing up the formation by making some skills unusable in the position they move to. This forces them to either use less effective skills or waste a turn moving back into position.
Bleed: Similar to Blight, but comes from different sources and is cured using bandages and certain abilities (the same ones that cure blight).
Debuff: Causes stats to decrease. If too many debuffs stack up, you could find your units a lot less helpful than they might normally be.
Trap: This is actually the chance of disarming traps that can be seen in the dungeon. Note that this is completely useless if you don’t spot the trap in the first place, which requires Scouting (we’ll also get into that later.) If you trigger a trap, you can only hope you can dodge it.
Camping Skills and Diseases will both be skipped over since I explained the latter and we’ll wait until camping becomes relevant until we get to the former.
Equipment is simple - you have armor and weapon, which upgrade linearly, and two trinket slots. Think of the trinkets as perks you can equip - usually boosting one stat at the cost of another. Again, we’ll get into those when they become relevant.
Finally, we have resolve level, which determines what dungeons a character can enter as well as the maximum level weapons, armor, and skills can be upgraded to. Increasing resolve level also boosts resistances by some amount with each level.
Aaand that’s all I have for info on character stats.
The big takeaway from all this is: Each character has base stats determined by class and quirks. They can be further changed with trinkets, armor and weapon upgrades, new quirks, or increasing resolve level.
I already have the footage for the first trip into the Ruins recorded, by the way, so I might be able to have the post for that up as soon as next Sunday. Assuming I didn’t miss anything critical and/or don’t suddenly get struck by more ennui and/or sloth.
As for the suggested names for the first Two hellions and Man-At-Arms, I’ll accommodate all those requests, the old guy. As long as you’re not trying to name two characters the same name, it should be fine.
AzyWng:
On June 6th, I'll be leaving for China to pursue a job opportunity my dad offered me. He thinks it's a good way to experience living in another country for a time, and short of me returning early for whatever reason, I should be back in about a month and a half or so.
The fact I now have a job and the fact I'm in China (well-known for its Great Firewall) both mean this SSLP will likely be on hiatus until I return.
AzyWng:
So, it seems that as long as I have cellular connection, I can access this website without worries about firewalls. I plan to continue this series when I return from China, and may even toss out an update here or there before then. Anyway, on to the actual message...
As you may know, Darkest Dungeon will be recieving a new DLC on June 19th (So, sometime today, I believe.) called The Color of Madness.
As I stated in my first post, I don't own any of the DLC, so our playthrough won't feature it. More relevant to my playthrough is a balance patch to the base game, which affects, well, it's a lot of things, really, but I'll try to list a few here.
* Critical hits will now cause status buffs on the hero who performed the crit. For instance, Plague Doctors will get a boost to Blight chance when they score a crit. Additionally, crit boosts, skills with a higher base crit chance, and crit trinkets were all boosted to make a crit strategy more effective, so that the "spikier" damage output could be as useful as the steadier damage of a straight damage build.
* There's a certain threshold that you need in order to "always hit". Yes, this is a mechanic, one I actually got wrong - but the gist of the mechanic is that heroes won't have a guaranteed chance of hitting their enemy unless their hit chance is 95.
* The stun resist buff units recieve when their stun ends is more powerful, and some stun skills were tweaked to make stunning less powerful. This helps prevent players from exploiting stuns to delay combat so that they can, for example, keep using Divine Grace to heal the entire party. On a similar note, there are now more criteria used to detect stalling tactics.
* Several overall changes have been made so that each hero's role is more specific. The patch notes explicitly state they wanted players to have moments where they'd think, "I really wish I had a <classname> for this situation."
* Virtues (which I'll get to when I talk about stress and afflictions) can expire if a hero hits 200 stress. This won't really be an issue unless you're playing the DLC's endless mode, but it will still be a factor on longer quests, and it means that the boost Virtues bring won't last forever.
* Enemies that bosses summon are now life linked to those bosses - when the boss dies, they die, too. Most of the enemies bosses summon, anyway. This prevents having to deal with unpleasant trash cleanup after a boss is slain.
As you might have noticed, I've made an error as far as how accuracy works - when you hit 95, you're guaranteed to hit the enemy. I'll update the stats page to reflect this.
Before I finish this post, I must ask: Are you folks actually interested in seeing this series continue? I don't feel like I'm getting too many replies or a whole lot of feedback...
SpearOfLies:
There are actually two touhouvania mod as far I know. You cannot find them unless you type Reimu or Sakuya. I don't know why the author didn't add a touhou tag.
AzyWng:
Thanks for all your love and support! I'll be sure to continue this series! Please, though, please just support my fragile, fragile ego!
--
Preparation before the first of many journeys.
At long last, we had arrived at the hamlet, still alive and well... But the same could not be said for the little town itself. After treating each other?s wounds, we gazed upon the boarded up buildings, looking for anyone besides ourselves and our two companions.
A glint of glass caught my eye, and as we turned, we once again beheld our driver, alive, unharmed, and still bearing that sickening grin from before. His incoherent babbling and laughter, which barely an hour ago made me fear for my life, now did little more than fill me with the desire to end his. I slowly began to walk towards him, fists clenched. His excuses and apologies became ever more frantic and rushed, and he seemed to shrink at my approach. By the time he was within reach, he had fallen to the ground, laughing and quivering.
I felt my frown change from anger to sadness. I turned to Dismas and Reynauld, who were standing close - presumably to keep me from beating him into the ground. Their eyes bore into me and I suddenly felt very ashamed.
Barely my first week and I could hardly keep myself from killing the inhabitants of the very lands I?d inhabited. This was why I was no longer part of the Yakumo family. Why I wasn?t part of it for so long. And now I was already damaging my shot at becoming part of it again.
That letter, when I?d read it, awakened something in me that had been slumbering within for a long while. I could not say what it was, only that I felt... as though something had been missing. And here I was, about to make it missing yet again...
Saying nothing, I instead approached the replacement wagon, leaving the broken man on the ground to recover from my shameful loss of self-control. As I peered into the wagon?s interior, I heard the scurrying footsteps of the madman as he rushed to join me.
?Again, I?m so so sorry as to what happened earlier! I merely saw the dangers ahead and did not wish to join with the worms just yet! Now that that road has been cleared out and its trespassers sent to the place they wished us to enter, I can assure you such a thing will never happen ever again! Besides, the three of you remain aboveground presently and as such no harm is done! None that matters, in any case! Oh, and I have not even introduced myself and these two yet! These two, Reimu and Eirin, are to join your three and become five, thus letting you so foolishly go belowground as one, I, the caretaker, remain up above to deliver more foolish corpses-to-be! Best of luck in delaying your journeys to the grave!? With a final giggle, the caretaker rushed off.
A pair of hooded figures sat within the wagon itself. One clutched a tome and mace in her hands - I recognized the tome as one common among the Church?s Vestals. It not only held the Holy Verses and descriptions of the Holy Rituals of the Light, but it also contained a hidden power only the Vestals could unlock - one that could smite foes or heal allies. This lady was Reimu. The exact details of her past were unknown to me, but the important thing was that she was here to help. I couldn?t turn down an offer like that. She may have been slower than others, and her religious devotion was no surprise, but a familiar twinkle in her eye as she examined the others in her new group suggested an almost uncanny intimacy with the bodies of others.
The second of the hooded figures was another woman, her face obscured with a plague doctor?s mask. Alongside the jagged knife she wielded there was also a number of hastily-patched cloth satchets of some sort, almost resembling bombs of some kind. This must be Eirin - a former Gandriel University student who had been expelled after stories of bizarre and immoral experiments performed on staff who had died from Blight. Her aversion to bright light and surprising devotion to religion meant that she might have difficulty recovering from stressful encounters, but something about her mannerisms made me think she would be more suited for the manor?s coves than most.
Upon seeing me, the two nodded in unison, climbing out of the wagon to join the rest of our group. Looking over our team, I nodded, and we wordlessly set off further into the town.
The voice of my ancestor rang out yet again as we approached the hastily-repaired gates to the rest of the estate.
A mecca of madness and morbidity. Your work begins...
Before we set out, I directed the team into a proper formation - Reynauld would take the front rank, where he could swing his sword freely into the enemy?s own frontlines, Dismas would be right behind him to provide assistance with his pistol and blade, Eirin?s skill with satchets and medicine alike placed her closer to the back of the group, and Reimu, our team?s healer, was kept at the very end, safe from where blade or bludgeon could do her harm - though arrows and other ranged attacks, I knew, would still be able to target her.
A classic setup, I knew. Put the tough in the front, where they could survive most of the blows that came their way and shield the more fragile of the group. In a way, the formation could be viewed as ?The Usual Suspects?.
More scurrying could be heard, this time almost familiar. The babbling shell who introduced himself as the caretaker rushed in front of our group, quickly gesturing for us to head into a small, dusty shop. Unlike the other buildings we had seen, this one?s windows were free of boards or barricades, and goods lined the shelves - glittering bottles and keys everywhere.
The cost of preparedness - measured now in gold, later in blood.
Situating himself behind the counter, the caretaker began his new introduction. ?I do please please please hope you?ll forgive me for failing you yet again my dear but I must let you know that we are here to provide your group with the supplies needed to extend your short and pitiful existences,? He began, the end of his sentence punctuated with a laugh. ?While they may not seem the most useful upon first glance I can assure you that each one serves its purpose without fail and may very well just prevent you from being put in the ground sooner than you would like! We have torches to let you gaze upon the horrors I have seen, keys to let you open that which should not be looked into, bottles of antidote and holy water to -- well, I?m sure you can find it all yourself, dear, you always were the observant one!? The caretaker cackled. And yet, I did still have a few nagging curiosities to settle before I could truly begin. After all, while bandits were intimidating for sure, they were hardly horrors that demanded the return of estranged family. Not when said bandits could merely be paid off or otherwise removed without violence.
The caretaker merely laughed at this first question. ?Well of course it?s more than bandits I know you could not have possibly seen what is below but did you really not know what your ancestor was up to? I mean we all saw him always peering into the markings of some delightfully perished pharoah or emperor who?d come before him long before this little town?s downfall began! I cannot forget what has happened to this place and yet at the same time I cannot bear to think upon what it was exactly isn?t that cruel? I?m afraid I cannot describe the things I have seen nor how the town could come to this, my poor poor town!? The caretaker punctuated this last sentence with a burst of laughter that quickly degraded into crying. This was brought to an end quickly enough when he realized I still had more to ask him. There was, of course, the question of why I, the owner, had to pay up front for these supplies that came from the hamlet I now owned by birthright.
?Well don?t start making demands like that or the townsfolk might begin to mistake you for one of the bandits!? This was so killingly funny to him that we had to wait yet again for the caretaker to recover and fully answer my inquiry. ?You see, our lands are poor, and we cannot survive on what we can bring in alone. By providing us with this gold from your coffers we can pay for the merchants to provide more supplies and thus help this sinking ruin stay afloat just a little bit longer!? No surprise there. Even when in that sad state the caretaker was still able to remember his duties to the town, however nihilistic he felt about them.
Compared with the fleeting desires of those I?d become so irritatingly aware of at the bar, this man resembled a hero, fighting against those dark desires and falling so, so many times into despair, only to emerge each time in that odd state of unyielding surrender to the madness. Nodding at his response, I merely exchanged my gold for the supplies I needed, and set out into the Ruins, that we might learn of what my Ancestor had unleashed.
--
Incidentially, you might notice Reimu's robe and hood are red. This is not actually something I did - she just happened to be wearing red when I recruited her. Characters by default only have four color palettes, so if you see a number of other red Vestals over the course of this LP, don't be too surprised.