Darkest Dungeon

[Kane Lives]

I've been playing quite a bit of it, and I think I'm seeing what @Irrational Bounty Hunter was getting at here. There's really some good shit here, but it requires a few things that aren't going to be remotely apparent to DD1 veterans, and will likely turn more than a few off. But if you're actually willing to stick it out, find what works for you, and hammer things together, holy shit does this game come together in a very interesting way.

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Also I found this dude. He answers to Mr. John Dungeon, let me know if anyone misplaced him.

Yeah while I think DD2 is still somewhat inferior to the first game in some ways, I think it's "fine" as a game on its own. I may come back to it soon; been having a roguelite itch ala Slay the Spire.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

As someone who played DD2 first and didn't really like DD1 when I tried it, I have not found the changes in DD2 to fix the fundamental problems. I played a few games about a year ago and while it does seem like they're trying to do SOMETHING about the issues, it still FEELS shitty.

For my turned based RPG roguelite, I've switched to Aethermancer. (Possible DD2 substitute, not DD1.)

 

[Genderuszk 2.0]

It does feel like the system is made to snowball; bad relationships are more like punishments than something that's meant to regularly happen, akin to how afflictions were justifiably random in DD1 because if you let someone afflict, it's already gone to shit.

Perhaps this was the intent, but deciding whether to pull out an afflicted team vs praying that they'll hold it together for one more room hits entirely differently from doing one or two zones, loading the next zone of the same length, and finding out everyone woke up hating each other.

My relatively uninformed sense is that the devs wanted to have their cake and eat it, designing a game that works differently from Darkest Dungeon 1 (which is their right), but then also using the same name and then treating it as the same game themselves in all the wrong ways.

---

DD1 modding news of questionable newness:

Marvin seems not to have reactivated his Patreon even though he said he would do so in October 2025. However, he briefly appeared to congratulate the owners of the Marchioness class, which released at the very end of 2025. He doesn't seem to have been involved in the class development.


For archival purposes I'll point out that the Thrall headpat template was previously used for Okako's Miscreant, before Okako's troonshield failed and the community turned on him for drawing loli porn and harassing KiltedDungeoneer. Okako was cancelled around April/May and Marvin was still active up to August, so he (rightfully) thought nothing of it in public.


The Marchioness herself has some resemblance to the Miscreant, being a young noblewoman with a move/shuffle-centric skillset. However she has a backstory about being turned into a moth-based Bloodsucker and to my limited knowledge she is not a troon's girlsona.


Meanwhile the project to redraw the Miscreant and unperson Okako is spinning its wheels, as expected. The pic is a project to redraw Von Hauser's Marauder.


Next, there is now a Twilight Knight patch to update her to current modders' taste (for once this means gameplay and not turning her trans). I do think she should have a patch to give her DLC trinkets and fix her placeholder dialogue but Cerebral rubs me the wrong way here. This patch includes an eyeless form of the ByhLa Twilight Knight skin made in August 2025.





Finally for this post, there is now an """Approved""" backport of Black Reliquary's Kvarotz.


The previous Kvarotz backport was done by sir_manaplay, whom Iris has beef with because of Kaze, so Iris bitched to Seal to revoke permission.


Someone even asked about this in the comments and sir_manaplay replied. (Archive)


I haven't played with either backport, but I assume Wolkenritter's Kvarotz backport is more polished since it has integration with the Otekh backport. Iris drama is still dumb and sir_manaplay's backport is still on Skymods if anyone wants to compare.

 

[Genderuszk 2.0]

The irrepressible Omen Seeker has come to the Crossroads.



A ShuffleFM stream if you want to see her in action.

She's not the first DD2 mod hero per se, but to my limited knowledge she's the first one to have an all-new model. (The Slay the Spire Watcher reuses the Duelist but deserves a mention for being a Chinese fever dream which pre-dates official code support for mod heroes.)

As the mod description says, the mod is a work in progress. Expect her balance, features, and bugs to be at a public beta level of polish.

 

[AnOminous]

As the mod description says, the mod is a work in progress. Expect her balance, features, and bugs to be at a public beta level of polish.

I hope that weirdo who gave the tit reduction to the DD 1 version does it to this one too to see this dude sperg the fuck out again.

 

[Irrational Bounty Hunter]

The irrepressible Omen Seeker has come to the Crossroads.

I gave her a try out of curiosity and as an excuse to play more DD2. I've only completed one run, but she seems okay. Her kit is definitely a WIP and has a lot of odd points (which I'll list in a second) but she felt fun and distinct to use. I never tried her mod in DD1 because frankly the proportions she had there were just too gratuitous for me not to cringe, but something about DD2's art style drifting away from the chibis makes it way less obnoxious to me. After a little bit I just stopped noticing the woman who had tits larger than her own head.
She:
Has two skills that stun on demand, one of which stuns both mid-line enemies on command (on a cooldown, which doesn't matter)
Has a stress heal skill that only works if a target is above 4 stress, but can either give or take away 2 stress (4 on upgrade) so it doesn't ever make sense to play it
Has a skill with seemingly bugged syntax
Has a basic attack that when upgraded gives her riposte, dodge, does moderate damage, has a high crit rate, and deals vulnerable
Is generally a mid-line crit-centered debuffer who provides value to the party by taking control of a fight. She has low max HP and low overall damage output compared to other comparable options like Jester or Grave Robber. I don't know if I'll keep her installed or not, I'm usually pretty strict about keeping to vanilla.

 

[AnOminous]

Has a stress heal skill that only works if a target is above 4 stress, but can either give or take away 2 stress (4 on upgrade) so it doesn't ever make sense to play it

This literally makes no sense at all. Even from a strict expected value perspective, the value is zero, but considering this is a game about avoiding worst possible outcomes rather than maximizing EV, it also makes the worst possible outcome more likely.

 

[Jaimas]

I've been playing a lot more of DD2, and I'm.,.. Kinda digging it. To say it's on a slow burn is an understatement; you genuinely need to spend an inordinate amount of time building up your upgrades at the altar of hope, unlocking everyone, and figuring out parties that work, and when DD2 chooses to fuck you anyway, it will do so with far less lube than DD1 ever had the chance to do.



It's a bit of an oddity in that you can do everything right and the game will still find ways to give you a thorough penising because you happened to get a particularly shitty inn at the final checkpoint that somehow gave your main frontliner Coward and your rear ranker Breacher at the exact same time, and thus your run is now over, and you realistically cannot be surprised that you will have to abort as many runs as progress in DD2 compared to 1. And that's just regular encounters being assholes, that's saying nothing of the bosses, which are basically "you have the proper team comp or you're not beating this shit." Even then, they are encounters where you strain to beat them under ideal circumstances and will often walk away limping and beaten if the RNG goes against your or the boss just decides to go full dickhead on your ass.



I've beaten a few bosses now, though I hesitate to say they're experiences I enjoyed. They're fittingly brutal and most of them there's only so much you can do to wear the damn things down, meaning team comp is king for dealing with them. Dreaming General I can liken to fighting DD1's Drowned Crew (only way more obnoxious and like seven times the damage output), Librarian is.... A fucking thing, and Denial is a fucking rat bastard of a boss that I've only barely managed to beat with a few teams. I got about 2/3 of the way through a fight with Leviathan, which reminded me a bit of that one *fucking* statue boss from DD1 in the Crimson Court.

The fact that you can grab ya boi Radiant Flame for a noticeably easier time at the cost of candles does not reduce the sodomy the game will commit, just make it more bearable.
So... Why is it worth sticking out? Because once you get past the bullshit, flesh our your teams, work out what works for you, unlock shit, and so on - holy shit is there fun you can have here.

There's some really fun shit like the ways a party can play into one another, tricks you can do to make a run work, and this really visceral joy when you pull a come-from-behind win that borders on the sensation you get when you find some asshole monster that bullied you early in a game only to appoint yourself its executioner with your now-hideously-overpowered weaponry. The game also has tons for lore hounds and tons of fun blink-and-you-will-miss it stuff that shows legit progression from the first game, and so much that really makes the setting come to life in a fun way.

 

[God of Nothing]

there's just something missing from darkest dungeon's gameplay loop to make the suffering satisfying

 

[Catastrophically Retarded]

there's just something missing from darkest dungeon's gameplay loop to make the suffering satisfying

I hate how you can arrive at the final battle with a party as close to perfect as possible just to get struck down by the rng gods. This is a game for gambling degens and grind monkeys.

 

[God of Nothing]

I hate how you can arrive at the final battle with a party as close to perfect as possible just to get struck down by the rng gods. This is a game for gambling degens and grind monkeys.

The virtue/affliction coinflip, aside from the missing chances, make or break certain runs, especially if the enemy crits a lot or has those annoying ass priest-type enemies.

I don't know. In theory, I should love this game and other types of it but in practice it's the worst bits of classical CRPGs, only with the added randomization of your surroundings to fuck you over too

 

[Catastrophically Retarded]

The virtue/affliction coinflip, aside from the missing chances, make or break certain runs, especially if the enemy crits a lot or has those annoying ass priest-type enemies.

I don't know. In theory, I should love this game and other types of it but in practice it's the worst bits of classical CRPGs, only with the added randomization of your surroundings to fuck you over too

I really tried to get into the game. I even had the best positive traits and used the services to remove most negative traits. At the end of the day none of that matters, because you are subject to the dice roll. I will echo your sentiment that they took the worst of crpg's and made this monstrosity. It's just gambling.

 

[Kane Lives]

The fact that you can grab ya boi Radiant Flame for a noticeably easier time at the cost of candles does not reduce the sodomy the game will commit, just make it more bearable.
So... Why is it worth sticking out? Because once you get past the bullshit, flesh our your teams, work out what works for you, unlock shit, and so on - holy shit is there fun you can have here.

Have you tried their attempt at mimicking DD1? I think it was Kingdoms mode or something.

 

[Tablet County]

The virtue/affliction coinflip, aside from the missing chances, make or break certain runs, especially if the enemy crits a lot or has those annoying ass priest-type enemies.

I don't know. In theory, I should love this game and other types of it but in practice it's the worst bits of classical CRPGs, only with the added randomization of your surroundings to fuck you over too

I really tried to get into the game. I even had the best positive traits and used the services to remove most negative traits. At the end of the day none of that matters, because you are subject to the dice roll. I will echo your sentiment that they took the worst of crpg's and made this monstrosity. It's just gambling.

If you lads think this game's RNG is unforgiving then you haven't suffered like I have.

Mordheim doesn't have RNGesus, it has RNTzeentch.

The big problem with the RNTzeentch is that it's not quite random, it's determinstic. If you roll low, RNTzeentch is likely going to keep you rolling low becuase some intern forgot to program in a check so that RNTzeentch wouldn't consistently roll the same thing over and over again. The only real upside is that if you get a good roll you're more than likely to keep winning.

Keep in mind this is on top of quests you have to complete in a certain amount of time or else you fail, money that you have to pay weekly or else you fail, and the near-constant attrition that comes from having your ass handed to you whenever the computer feels like it. This turns what would be an incredibly fun, if still ball-breaking game into an exercise in masochism.

 

[Jaimas]

Have you tried their attempt at mimicking DD1? I think it was Kingdoms mode or something.

A bit! If I was to do a KF playthrough it'd probably be in Kingdoms.



Also these fuckers survived.

 

[AnOminous]

I hate how you can arrive at the final battle with a party as close to perfect as possible just to get struck down by the rng gods. This is a game for gambling degens and grind monkeys.

Are you seriously talking about DD4? It's so ridiculously unlosable it might as well be a cutscene.

 

[Genderuszk 2.0]

I never tried her mod in DD1 because frankly the proportions she had there were just too gratuitous for me not to cringe, but something about DD2's art style drifting away from the chibis makes it way less obnoxious to me. After a little bit I just stopped noticing the woman who had tits larger than her own head.

For DD1 I use this Omen Seeker skin, 90% because the boob wiggling was too much and 10% because S-Purple doesn't want anyone to. There's also a Belmont skin for her which is still on Steam. She does look less cringe with DD2 proportions, but if they start "improving" her physics that's null and void. (Unfortunately, the devs legitimately need to work on her animations, because she's much less... animated than the vanilla heroes, but that gives them room to slip it in.) Either way I still want a DignifAI-style model for the drama.

She:
Has two skills that stun on demand, one of which stuns both mid-line enemies on command (on a cooldown, which doesn't matter)
Has a stress heal skill that only works if a target is above 4 stress, but can either give or take away 2 stress (4 on upgrade) so it doesn't ever make sense to play it
Has a skill with seemingly bugged syntax
Has a basic attack that when upgraded gives her riposte, dodge, does moderate damage, has a high crit rate, and deals vulnerable
Is generally a mid-line crit-centered debuffer who provides value to the party by taking control of a fight. She has low max HP and low overall damage output compared to other comparable options like Jester or Grave Robber. I don't know if I'll keep her installed or not, I'm usually pretty strict about keeping to vanilla.

Directly porting a no-setup two-rank stun from DD1 to DD2 is rather clueless of the devs, but I guess that useless stress heal shows what happens when they actually try to adapt to what they think DD2 is.

It's a bit of an oddity in that you can do everything right and the game will still find ways to give you a thorough penising because you happened to get a particularly shitty inn at the final checkpoint that somehow gave your main frontliner Coward and your rear ranker Breacher at the exact same time, and thus your run is now over, and you realistically cannot be surprised that you will have to abort as many runs as progress in DD2 compared to 1. And that's just regular encounters being assholes, that's saying nothing of the bosses, which are basically "you have the proper team comp or you're not beating this shit." Even then, they are encounters where you strain to beat them under ideal circumstances and will often walk away limping and beaten if the RNG goes against your or the boss just decides to go full dickhead on your ass.

This is partly what I meant by Red Hook trying to have their cake and eat it. Handing out Impostor Syndromes and Black Plagues like candy at the end of a dungeon is annoying, but the dungeon is already over, so no one will die of those things and the heroes can be benched or dismissed, and the dungeon took 30-60 minutes. Inn bullshit is the same thing superficially, but it happens after 1 or 2 hours and with more to go.

Leviathan is less about that, but it could be a case study in boss design. Undertow is its gimmick. DD1 bosses can be equally or more gimmicky: the Prophet and Hag can't be pulled or shuffled because screw your Crusader. See also the Garden Guardian. But Leviathan ignores Immobilize, meaning you can think you've prepared for its gimmick only for the game to pull out its Undertow + 1 card.

Kingdoms would probably have clicked better for me mechanically, but all the LORE is in Confessions.

The virtue/affliction coinflip, aside from the missing chances, make or break certain runs, especially if the enemy crits a lot or has those annoying ass priest-type enemies.

I don't know. In theory, I should love this game and other types of it but in practice it's the worst bits of classical CRPGs, only with the added randomization of your surroundings to fuck you over too

The first few runs before upgrades are unlocked are the most volatile and can be a slog. Even so, its RNG can be felled, it can be beaten.

A team comp should always have a plan for hitting backliners. Missing shows accuracy is the most important stat. Accuracy scales with skill ranks, not weapon rank, so your highest priority when spending heirlooms and gold is to get heroes' skill ranks to match their levels, and trinkets which give accuracy are the highest priority rewards. Ideally everyone should have one accuracy trinket, and use the other trinket slot for other stuff. Speed and stun chance are also priority stats. High torch denies enemies the stress and crit bonus they get from low torch, so it's always worth it to buy more torches than the ratio recommended in the tutorial.

 

[Zenos Yae Viator]

DD2's combat is infinitely better than DD1, because DD1 was piss easy and you could break it over your knee with zero effort, and only got easier with better trinkets.

DD2, like mentioned recently, can absolutely hobble you unjustly though, but still, you have to actually PLAY the combat out, even regular encounters, instead of just curbstomping everything but the 2 Uber bosses in DD1.

 

[AnOminous]

For DD1 I use this Omen Seeker skin, 90% because the boob wiggling was too much and 10% because S-Purple doesn't want anyone to. There's also a Belmont skin for her which is still on Steam. She does look less cringe with DD2 proportions, but if they start "improving" her physics that's null and void. (Unfortunately, the devs legitimately need to work on her animations, because she's much less... animated than the vanilla heroes, but that gives them room to slip it in.) Either way I still want a DignifAI-style model for the drama.

I think it's absolutely ludicrous to throw coomer shit into DD and completely wrecks the vibe. The only cute smol girlboss uwu bean the game needs is Plague Doctor.

DD2's combat is infinitely better than DD1, because DD1 was piss easy and you could break it over your knee with zero effort, and only got easier with better trinkets.

Eventually you had to do shit like torchless and deliberately bringing shitty parties just to avoid it being a completely boring cakewalk. Boss fights are especially bad for this because most of them have some pretty obvious gimmick and after the first time, unless you're too dumb to figure it out, subsequent outings are also a cakewalk.

The only one that took me more than two times to figure out was the Colossal Cyst fight in DD3 and that was me being dense. The main gimmick was the stalk that teleports you somewhere random and this can be completely neutralized by of course Plague Doctor's massively OP stuns.

Ideally everyone should have one accuracy trinket, and use the other trinket slot for other stuff.

A locked-in ACC quirk is good enough for most already accurate heroes. Leper needs some serious help in that regard, but is so slow that it is barely even worth buffing SPD, an almost as important stat.

Locking in quirks (or getting rid of locked in negative quirks) is insanely expensive even with a maxed Sanitarium, so farm every Caregiver's Convention event you see. Getting to cure literally tens of thousands of gold worth of lockins and lockouts is the best value in the game for your time.

Also use curio interactions (especially Eerie Coral in the Cove) to remove negatives to avoid the extreme cost of removing locked-in negatives. Doing both of these frees up immense amounts of gold for better uses like upgrading buildings to the point it eventually even makes sense to pay the ridiculous prices for trinkets at the gyppo wagon.

(Advice not for you, you seem to know what you're doing already.)

 

[The Bigger Scooper]

@Genderuszk 2.0 apperently that Redraw of The Marauder is being done without even telling Von Hauser; as in he has no idea this is being done behind his back.