The Darker than the Darkest Dark Estate

[hollmt]

So, it has been awhile since I have written any dynasty and I have finally come across a game which interests me enough to write about. The last one I did was years and years ago for FBCB.

This game is "The Darkest Dungeon." This dynasty here will be all new characters and a new story. I have played a few hours on different saves just to get the general idea of what different buildings/classes do and ideas about what to do, but this save and story will be fresh. Once I hit around week 5 in game time (each dungeon dive is a week), everything from that
point on will be new to me and will likely have loads of mistakes.

Darkest Dungeon is a Roguelike (maybe Roguelite) where you have hero's/recruits you need to build up and dungeon dive with them in order to eventually beat the final boss and clean up the mess your father made by opening the dungeon portal. That is the gist of it from what I have gathered. The game is still in early access on steam for $20 and is still being developed and from what I gather, will be available for full release sometime in October. Either way, the developers continue to work on the game adding new content and opening other dungeons and classes etc. etc. I just got the game 2 weeks ago maybe. If a character dies, they are gone for good. There is also only one save file per game. It is a game of risk and reward. I can quit a dungeon if I feel it is too dangerous. I can fire hero's. So on and so on. The main idea though is to manage your stress and quirks. Hero's will have positive quirks and negative ones. They can also pick up diseases which will need cured and possibly cause other quirks to appear. Even rewards such as trinkets have a positive and negative. For what looks like a rather simple game, there is quite a bit of management. Managing stress and hp in a dungeon. Supplies while in the dungeon. Do you take to many wasting gold or take to few causing other problems? Risk and rewards etc. etc. Outside of the dungeon, you continue to manage stress, armor, weapons, new recruits, hiring, firing, diseases and money management. There is more to it than that and I will explain more along the way as best I can. I can also answer any questions.

Also, for fun, if anyone wants to partake, I can rename the characters. If you want to partake and want a character named after you, I will do it. So far we have a Crusader and a Highwayman and I will describe them below. As I gain new recruits (you can have multiple of each class but a roster limit is imposed until I can purchase more room) I will describe them as well. If you are familiar with the game and classes and want to have one named after you, tell me what class you want and I will add you when that class arrives. Or you can just want to be anyone and I will add you. Whatever.

So here...we....go....


I am given the task to return to my old family home. Apparently I left dodge years ago and my father decided he was bored and opened some portal to a dungeon letting lose all sorts of havoc and hell. He has asked me to come back home to restore the family name and house. Thanks Dad.

I pick up two hero's to escort me along the Old Road to the Hamlet.
Reynauld, a Crusader with 33 HP. Reynauld is a God Fearing, Warrior of Light. He will only pray in town for stress relief and as long as the torch is lit 75% or higher, he will dish out extra damage. Reynauld however, is a bit of a thief. I guess his Godly ways only go so far. He is armed with a 2 handed sword. His abilities as of now (hero's can have 7 skills but can only 'equip' 4 of them at a time. They can be swapped midfight as/if needed) are Smite, a strong damage dealing melee ability especially against the unholy enemy in any one of the 2 front lines. Zealous Accusation, a ranged attack against both of the front 2 line enemies. Stunning blow, a CC against any one of the front 2 line enemies and Bulwark of Faith, which will provide Reynauld extra protection, mark him so enemies are prone to attack him instead of an ally and also lights the way improving the torch light.

Dismass is a Highwayman with 22 hp. He is armed with a dagger in the right hand and a pistol in his left. He has a hard noggin making him extra stun resistant and also has 2 extra speed, which will benefit him on each turn with initiative granting him the ability to perhaps go first on each round. He is though, a known cheat and will not be allowed to gamble if and when we
reach town. He is armed with Open Vein, a strong damage dealer with a chance to inflict bleed to any of the first 2 enemies. Tracking Shot, a ranged attack to any in the back 3 lines, which will buff his damage, accuracy and crit chance for a few turns. Grapeshot Blast, another ranged attack hitting all 3 enemies in the backlines. Finally, Pistol Shot, a ranged attack hitting just one of the enemies he chooses in the back 3 lines.

Dismass stats and resistances: (all percentages stun through trap)
Stun: 45
Blight: 30
Disease: 30
Death Blow: 67 (when a character hits 0 hp they are on death's door. If they are attacked while on death door, this resistance roll triggers)
Move Back: 30 (characters are placed in positions 1 through 4. They can only perform certain attacks from certain positions. Some enemies have the ability to move/shuffle you around causing all sorts of havoc because if you get shuffled, you cannot perform certain moves and have to waste a move or 2 or 3 getting back in place)
Bleed: 30
Debuff: 30
Trap: 40 (this is actually trap removal)
Dodge: 10
Prot: 0 (higher the better to negate melee and ranged attacks. more susceptible to bleeds, blights)
Spd: 7 (the higher the speed doesn't guarantee who will go first per round but when each round triggers it does help.)
Acc: 0
Crit: 5
Dmg: 5-11

Reynauld stats and resistances:
Stun: 40
Blight: 30
Disease: 30
Death Blow: 67
Move Back: 40
Bleed: 30
Debuff: 30
Trap: 20
Dodge: 5
Prot: 0
Spd: 1
Crit: 5
Dmg: 7-13

To get to the Hamlet we have to take the Old Road. Reynauld and Dismass will escort me there in one piece hopefully.

We begin travelling east on the side path towards the Hamlet. Before we set out, we are warned of Brigands that travel along the road as well. Dismass immediately starts to stress out because of this news. We come across our first enemy, a Cutthroat with 12 HP all by himself. Dismass gains the initiative and attacks first and dispatches the Cutthroat for a 12 HP crit,
reducing his stress and looting a nice 500 gold. We move further east down the road and come across the Brigands camp and loot it for another 150 gold. Further east we come across a Brigand Bloodletter with 35 hp. He is so fat he takes up 2 spaces and protects the backline defender in the 3rd spot, a 12 HP Brigand Fusilier armed with a blunderbuss. We don't have any real
problems dispatching these 2 as Dismass focuses his Open Vein on fatty 2 times, stacking his bleed attack. Reynauld gets a good stun on him as well and he eventually bleeds out. Dismass also gets the killing blow on the fusilier.

We head to town to regain HP. Reynauld and Dismass each gain 2 resolve XP. Dismass becomes a Weald Explorer, granting him 20% stress resist in the Weald, when it opens for us. Reynauld gains Ruins Explorer, +20% scouting in the Ruins. He will likely become a specialist in that dungeon with that perk. Dismass lost a total of 5 hp but actually lost 1 stress. He started
with 10 and is down to 9. That is helpful. He landed some critical attacks. Critical attacks for us help the stress of the attacker. Critical attacks against us hurt usually the entire team. Reynauld got a bit more stressed out as he started with 10 but ended up at 19. He lost 5 HP as well, but both Reynauld and Dismass will heal up in town.

We arrive in town and realize most buildings are closed to us except for the graveyard, which thankfully is empty and the stagecoach. We immediately grab our 2 new recruits from the Stagecoach, who apparently followed close behind us on the Old Road. We have 6K gold in our coffers, along with 10 busts, 10 portraits, 10 deeds and 20 crests which are used to purchase
upgrades in our buildings. We immediately upgrade our stagecoach network 2 ranks in order to bring in 4 new recruits a week costing us 10 deeds and 10 crests.

Next, we take our new group into our first dungeon...

[hollmt]

Week 1 begins and we take a look at our 2 new recruits who so bravely followed us as we cleared the Old Road on the way to the Hamlet.

Baudry is a Plague Doctor (one of my favorite classes so far) with 21 hp. Baudry is equipped with a dagger in the right hand and a vile of bile or something in the left. She has positive quirks of Weald Explorer as well as Weald Scrounger, granting her a super 30% scouting chance overall in the Weald. That will come in handy if she sticks around and once the Weald opens up for us. She has a negative quirk as well, being Bloodthirsty, meaning she is fascinated with blood, wounds and torture. She also has Night Blindness, which gives her -10% damage output if the torch is below 25%. That likely will not happen for awhile as we will not be doing dark runs for a bit.

Her active skills are Noxious Blast, a blight attack to any enemy in the first 2 ranks. Plague Grenade, another blight attack to both parties in the 3rd and 4th ranks. Emboldening Vapours, a single party buff granting 25% increased damage as well as 3 speed. Lastly, Disorienting Blast to anyone in the back lines. This attack clears all corpses that are in the way as well as a chance to shuffle enemies around if it hits.

**Corpses are a new thing in the latest update Corpse and Hound. When an enemy dies from melee or ranged, their corpse remains and it has less hp than the original enemy had. You have to clear this corpse. This allows the enemy to usually stay in their original spot granting them access to their most powerful attacks. If an enemy dies due to bleeds or blights, a corpse
will NOT remain thus the enemy then moves up a rank or 2 or whatever you clear out. So Baudry's attack to be able to clear out corpses altogether is rather powerful and can be helpful. The drawback to corpse removal would be that my hero's might not be able to attack certain enemies if they move up in rank. Again, risk and reward. There is some strategy about corpse removal as well. Such as letting a bleed or blight take care of the enemy as it ticks BEFORE they move, so it can actually kill them before their turn triggers. If you let the DOT trigger on its own and not melee or range kill the enemy you can clear out corpses that way and not waste attacks on corpses**

Baudry Stats/Resistances:
Stun: 20
Blight: 70
Disease: 50
Death Blow: 67
Move: 20 (previously I stated Move Back. This is incorrect and should be move in general, forward or back.)
Bleed: 20
Debuff: 50
Trap: 20
Dodge: 5
Prot: 0
Spd: 7
Acc: 0
Crit 2.5
Dmg: 4-7

Briqueville is a Vestal with 24 hp. She is our healer for now. She has a Natural Swing, granting her +5 accuracy and also has a Fear of Beasts granting her -15% stress resist and -10 accuracy against beasts. She will flip her lid against beasts. Great.

Her active skills are a single target and a group heal. She also has Dazzling Light to any enemy in the back 3 ranks which raises the torch level by 6 as well as a CC stun and damage dealer. Good attack. She also has a melee attack which won't be used much as she will be in the back lines mostly and that melee attack requires her to be in the first 2 ranks on offense. That will be swapped out asap. It can only come in handy if she gets pulled into the first 2 ranks and chooses to attack instead of move back to safety.

Briqueville Stats/Resistances:
Stun: 30
Blight: 30
Disease: 30
Death Blow: 67
Move: 30
Bleed: 30
Debuff: 30
Trap: 10
Dodge: 0
Prot: 0
Spd: 4
Acc: 5
Crit: 2.5
Dmg 4-9

We will finally set out for our first true mission/dungeon as a full 4 party group. We will have Reynauld lead the pack and hopefully make use of his scouting as we are going into the Ruins. Dismass will follow Reynauld in position 2, followed by Baudry and Briq. We have some dots, in bleed and blight, 2 stuns and corpse clear as well as a single party buff if we choose
to use it if/when the time is right. Briq will not be able to use her melee attack in the back rank and I don't care to use it anyway. We will teach her new skills as soon as possible to make better use of her abilities. She is mostly our healer and CC giver as needed. Our initial plan will be to DOT up with bleeds and blights, stun as often as we can and clear this dungeon.

The Usual Suspects set out to do our first dungeon, a short skirmish with unholy abominations where we must complete 100% of room battles.

**This is important to note. 100% of room battles does not mean we have to clear the entire dungeon. We only have to clear rooms that actually have battles in it. For example if there are 10 rooms, there could be as few as 1 or as many as 10 rooms with battles in it. We have to find those rooms and clear them. Other mission objectives I will explain as I come across them**

The quest reward, should we succeed, is 3k gold, 2 busts, 2 crests and a trinket called the Dazzling Charm, granting -10% stun chance but also has a -1% crit chance.

We provision out with 12 food, 2 shovels, 3 bandages, 2 medicinal herbs, 2 keys, 2 holy waters and 6 torches. We have to be mindful of overspending on resources that we might not even use. I am hesitant to bring so much food on a short dungeon where Briq can heal through stuff, but I want to see how this group does. We need shovels to clear the way of debris and not cause us additional stress using our hands. It also hurts our hp, but raises our stress even more. Bandages cure any bleeds. Medicinal Herbs and Holy water grant buffs and resistances as well as being used on curious that we will find in the dungeon. Torches will light the way so we can see and gain Reynaud's buff and not gain Baudry's negative quirk. And the keys will open locked chests. We spend 3400 gold, leaving us with 2600. We need to turn a profit on this run.

We set out knowing there are 7 rooms in the dungeon. We are at the Southwest corner and then a U shape of 6 rooms is above us with 4 on the bottom of the U. Again, we only have to find the room battles, but this could be every room.

We head north in the hallway/corridor to the first room and come across some debris and use our shovel to clear the way. We then see some books, but choose to leave those alone for now. Baudry already starts to feel stress. By the way, Briq and Baudry already entered our camp with 20 stress not having done a damn thing yet. Reynauld had 19 and Dismass 9 to enter the dungeon.

We enter that first room and are immediately granted our first fight against enemies who are all bleed resistant. Dismass can still attack them with Open Vein, but the bleed will not trigger against enemies that are 200% bleed resistant. Luckily, this fight turns into a relatively easy fight HP wise, as we rely on Baudry's Blight attacks and some good gunshots by Dismass and Smites and Zealous Attacks from Reynauld. Briq even gets 2 stuns off. However, Briq still leaves the fight heavily stressed out jumping to 59 stress. Baudry is at 23 stress, while Dismass falls to 6 and Reynauld gets a bit panicked at 45 stress. Slight HP loss all around.

We decide to head East and come across our 2nd fight in the next room. Dismass and Briq flipped (Dismass in 4th position and Briq now in 2nd position) causing all sorts of shit to hit the fan! This causes immediate stress, especially for Briq and hampers our ability to properly attack but we need to make due and chose to not retreat. The enemy gets to fully attack first and this is just an awful first round as Briq gets loaded up on and loses her shit immediately and stresses out and becomes Selfish. (When a hero stresses out they gain a Vice or Virtue. Vices are awful. Virtues are, well, not awful. Sometimes when a hero stresses out they gain a Virtue and actually lose stress and gain a nice bonus until next camp or dungeon exit. On the 2nd level of stress at 200, the hero dies. Good times.) Reynauld also gets a little stressed . Somehow, Dismass keeps his cool in the back row and picks his shots. I decide because of the immediate issues with movement, that we need to attack at full power and not waste time on moving hero's back in place. This allows Briq to actually use her melee attack and Dismass will
have to shoot his gun more. Briq hits 0 hp in the fight and is on Death's Door almost immediately. She is attacked while on Death's Door but resists it and keeps fighting. We manage to pull out of the fight with everyone alive, but stress is a problem. Briq sits at a whopping 152 stress and much more and she will have a damn heart attack and die. She also has no hp and
has to eat 4 food just to get off of Death's Door and gain 4 hp back. Baudry is at 34 stress and only 22 hp. Reynauld has also nearly lost his shit and has 89 stress and 18 hp. Dismass, is the only one keeping his act together really and has 18 hp and 23 stress. We could have attempted to retreat and reorganize, but I believe stress is incurred that way as well. We were
already stressed and we had to clear the room, so I chose to stay and fight. We shuffle our group around after the fight and Reynauld gets a scouting event. He spots some curios in the next hallway but also a needless fight there before the next room eastbound. We decide to backtrack and head back west to the room we had our first fight in. We then head North from that room. Along the way, good boy Reynauld steals 2 food and 200 gold from a pack of loot. Godly. We also encounter some hunger and pop 4 more food (1 for each hero) leaving us now with only 4 food for the entire dungeon.

We clear another debris pile with our shovel before entering the NW room where a fight awaits. We have a well lit torch. We battle well here even though Briq is a selfish nag and starts to make moves and decisions on her own thus affecting our group. Luckily Briq is left alone by the enemy and instead they focus their fire on the other 3 hero's. We defeat the enemy here and then...get lucky as shit as the dungeon is cleared of all room fights!

Thank Goodness.

Briq ends the dungeon at 4 hp and 148 stress. Baudry who got focused a bit in that last fight has 5 hp and 47 stress. Reynauld at 12 hp and 94 stress. He nearly stressed out and had an affliction. Dismass the levelheaded was left with 13 hp and just 23 stress. We were lucky in that last fight even with Briq doing her own thing as she did get off a nice group heal critting on one hero. Had that room not been the last room, we were going to have difficult decisions to make about the first dungeon. Obviously we decide to end the run as it is mission success. We could fight on, but that would only cause more undue stress and pointless fights that we know of 1 exists for sure. Not worth it.

We gain 3k gold for the quest as well as loot another 3150, 4 busts and 8 crests. Baudry gains Zoophobia, a -20% stress resist vs. beast. Breq just lost it altogether and becomes a Mankind Hater, granting her 15% dmg bonus and stress resist vs humans but also gains the Red Plague, which gives her -75 bleed resist, -10% max hp and -5% crit chance.

We head back to town to regroup.

[Brian Swartz]

Sounds very interesting!

[hollmt]

Thanks Brian. I am still working on how much detail I want to provide. I am not much on narration type stuff but might offer some as it comes. I don't want to describe each and every fight and move, I know that. But I also want to give enough detail to provide an idea of what is going on. The game is pretty fun and well worth the $20 tag.

And now for Week 1 in camp:

We arrive in town and are immediately forced with our first decision. What to do with Briqueville? She lost her shit in the Estate Map skirmish dungeon, stressing herself out and becoming selfish. She could have easily caused other undue stress to the rest of the party. She actually did cause some undue stress to Reynauld, but he was able to not reach his breaking point. The saving grace is that she did manage to lose some stress on her own on arriving to town and fell to the 100 checkpoint. (I did not know this occurred and is new to me. I thought she would still hold onto the 148 stress she had after the completion of the dungeon). This news does not really change my mind though. We have no real way of knowing what sort of stress relief Briq desires. It could be in the tavern, where she could gamble, losing us money (she could also win some for us), she could drink her worries away or she could entertain herself in the brothel. She could also be sent to the Abbey to Pray, Meditate or Flagellate herself. Either of these options cost me between 1k and 1.5k gold. There is also no promise that the place I put her in will even help her (as I have no clues to what she likes) or that it will help her enough. Also, since she has the Red Plague, she would need to spend an additional week in the Sanitarium, which isn't even open yet to attempt to cure that nastiness. So at a minimum, she is looking at 2 weeks off, possibly 3 all while costing me a minimum of 2k gold and upwards of 5k gold depending on the cost of removal for the Red Plague. All that money and time wasted for her possibly to lose her shit again in the next dungeon. I decide to risk firing her and letting her go on her merry way. Peace out Briqueville.

Reynauld however, is at 94 stress. He is also halfway to level 2 and I feel a bit better about knowing where to send him to relieve stress as he is God Fearing and will only pray in town for stress relief. He is not ready to go in a dungeon this week and needs a break as he got us to the Hamlet as well as getting us through the first dungeon. First though, I decide to spend some resources to upgrade the Transept in the Abbey in order to increase stress recovery there as well as reduce the treatment cost by 16%. I spend 4 busts and shields to improve stress relief and another 6 crests and shields to reduce the cost. I need to get the best possible stress relief and save gold for this treatment on Reynauld. I place him in the Transept to Pray it out for a week at a cost of 1050 gold. This would have cost me 1250 gold had I not upgraded. So Reynauld is out for a week. and I am left with 7700 gold.

Dismas is cool as a cucumber at 23 stress and is ready to go again on another mission but I haven't yet decided on that. He does not need any stress relief and I don't need to spend any gold on him this week.

Baudry sits at 47 stress, but for now, I think I will hold off on sending him anywhere for the sake of sending him. I need to hold off on spending resources right now. He will possibly sit in town and just chill.

No other buildings opened up for me besides the Tavern and Abbey. So my only other thing to do is take a look at the stagecoach and see what new hero's came calling. Coming to the Hamlet is a Hellion named Marillae 2 more Crusaders named Pastforeire and Gueron and last but not least, an Arbalest named Bossard. We recruit them all because we can. Our roster size is now sitting at 7 of 9 and Reynauld is in the Abbey, praying. We did not get a healer to our camp this week and this could be troubling, but we should be able to make it work when we are ready for our next run.

Introducing Pastforeire, Crusader(Past for short, for now)
Past is armed with the same exact attacks as Reynauld. He is however Unerring, granting him +10% ranged skill damage and he is a Warrens Scrounger, granting him +10 scouting in the Warrens. He also has Lygophobia, a -20% stress resist if the torchlight dips below 25. No worries there on that front since we are not doing dark runs yet.

Gueron is the 2nd Crusader joining us. Gueron is Hard Skinned, granting him 10% prot. A nice ability here. He also has a Natural Eye granting +5 Accuracy on ranged skills. His negative isn't that bad as he has a Love Interest, meaning he will only seek stress relief at the Brothel. Sexy time. He is armed with Smite, Zealous Accusation and the Bulwark just like our other 2 Crusaders, but he also comes with a new skill of his own called Holy lance, requiring him to be in the 2-4 ranks and being able to hit the back 2 ranks. So a good backline attack. The issue here is he will move forward when using it, meaning that he will have to use that as his first attack and then be in the 1st rank and use his other 3 unless I want to move him back. I can reshuffle him after each fight. Holy Lance has a 10% crit though and 15% dmg vs Unholy. I will be using him on our next run in the Ruins for sure to test this out.

Our Hellion, Marillac comes armed with a 2-handed pike and war paint on her face. She is a Lurker, granting her a +10% bonus to damage when the torchlight is below 25. She is also Unerring like Past, our Crusader above. Her negative quirks are Lazy Eye, -5 Accuracy to ranged skills and Phengophobia, a -20 stress resist if torch is above 75. This kind of sucks for me right now. I will not be doing dark runs which greatly benefits her. I cannot bring her along with my other hero's because she will stress out in the light. So she will sit in my roster for now but could possibly be dismissed to make room if I see fit. She is armed with Wicked Hack, a melee attack to any in the first 2 ranks. Iron Swan, an attack with extra crit to the 4th rank enemy. Breakthrough, another melee attack hitting all 3 front liners and finally Adrenaline Rush, a self buff granting her +20 damage, +5 accuracy and curing blight and bleed effects as well as healing her for 1hp. A really nice buff.

Lastly, we have Bossard our Arbalest. Bossard is a Clutch Hitter, granting +3% crit if his hp drops below 50%. Ok, great. He is Bloodthirsty as well as having Fear of Unholy, giving him -15% stress resist vs unholy and -10 accuracy against them. Looks like he won't be going into the Ruins either. He has Sniper Shot, a ranged attack against any in the back 3. This attack also does extra damage and crit if the target is marked. Bola attack, another ranged attack against both frontline enemies. This attack can knockback enemies. Blindfire, an attack that also buffs the Arbalest with 5 speed. Lastly Battlefield Bandage, which heals the target in the back 2 ranks for 2-3. Could be beneficial.

The only dungeon we have open though is the Ruins. Bossard isn't going in there as he will shit his pants. Marillac also will not be going in the Ruins only because she wants to fight stuff in the dark, and that does not benefit me at all I don't think. I am not ready for that risk yet. There is a huge risk/reward for fighting in the dark I can go in further on the next dungeon.

So, that leaves 4. Dismas, Baudry, Past and Gueron who will likely venture forth into the next dungeon. I will probably do another skirmish into the Ruins with those 4. Gueron will lead the line so he can use all of his attacks and not move, followed by Past, Dismass and trailing behind will be Baudry. If the party gets shuffled, it will not hurt too badly.

Next time, we will enter our 2nd dungeon with 2 new recruits.

[hollmt]

Our hero's finally set off for their 2nd dungeon dive. I decide to once again have them do a 100% room battle clear skirmish dungeon in The Ruins as it the safest bet for them. They are running with no healer type at all and no heal abilities for themselves. I feel our hero's just need a small quick dungeon to test their skills out some more. I equip Past with the Swordman's Crest, a trinket granting him +15% damage but also -30% heal. The negative heal will not hurt since we....have....no.....heals. Also, the trinket grants him -2 dodge. It is worth the risk for our strategy here in this run. I also equip Gueron with the other trinket we earned from the previous run, the Dazzling Charm, granting him +10% stun and -1% crit. Not sure why I am doing that because again of our strategy I plan to use.

The strategy I plan to use is all out damage, no stuns as both Past and Gueron have one. Destroy the backlines as soon as possible with blights and Gueron backline attack and hope to God that we find the rooms and get a good map and get out of here alive and with minimal stress.

We provision out with 24 food, because again, we have no heals and will need to eat in between fights to make up for any lost hp. 2 shovels, 3 bandages, 1 herbs, 1 holy water, 1 key and 7 torches. We are down to 3875 gold of our 7700.

We set out with Past in the front who has 33hp and 0 stress. Followed by Gueron also with 33hp and 0 stress. Behind the iron clad crusaders is Dismas and his 22hp and 23 stress and Baudry sitting at 22hp and 47 stress.

The map we get is horrible. 7 rooms and we are in one at the south end to start. Above us is a room and then to the west and east are 2 more. South of the east room lies another and then 2 more rooms north of the far east room. No connectivity between some of them which means lots of backtracking possible.

We head north as it is the only way to go and are met by 2 skeletons in the hallway. We get the first move and as planned we obliterate them with full on damage. Gueron gets 2 killing blows with Zealous Accusation. The skeletons get no attack at all and we look 125 gold. We continue on and come across a bag of loot and take it for another 100 gold. A crate further down we ignore as we are not taking risks opening things that can cause damage to us. Good way to start overall.

We enter the north room from our starting position and come into contact with a Fatty Bloodletter (taking up 2 spaces), a Cutthroat and a Fusilier. Thankfully we surprise them granting us a full 1st round attack with no rebuttal. We load up on attacks in the first round and start of the 2nd and Gueron gets another killing blow on the Fatty. Past is bleeding so he bandages that up well and we work on clearing the skeleton to help us get to the backline attackers. Baudry has issues landing anything and misses 2 of his 3 blight attacks on the backlines. Awful. We clear the way though and Dismas gets a killing blow on the Fusilier and eventually the Cutthroat bleeds and blights out. We loot 8 crests here as well as 150 gold and another bandage. Baudry goes down to 15hp/47stress. Dismass is at 19hp/20 stress. Gueron at 32hp/17stress and Past sits at 23 hp/20 stress. We divide up 7 food amongst all but Gueron and move on.

We can go west or east. When in doubt I go right so we head east. The group doesn't see the trap and Baudry lands on it for a 6 hp loss, basically negating the food he just ate, as well as gaining another 15 stress. We find a torch, enter the room and head south to the next room. We come across our 3rd fight in the hallway again and luckily surprise the 2 Cutthroats and Fusilier here. We unluckily miss 3 attacks across our hero's but turn the fight around as Gueron again lands 2 killing blows and Dismas nets another killing blow. Our hero's spend some time at the end waiting on the Fusilier to bleed out self buffing themselves. We loot 525 gold and everyone is in decent shape. We continue to the south room and come across a holy statue which Past loots and gains another 25% damage buff for the remainder of the dungeon. (Actually it is until camp, which I haven't covered yet, but will once needed).

We enter the south room and come across our 4th damn fight. Gueron gets pushed back to the 3rd rank on an attack but on his first turn is able to make use of his backline ranged attack and critically strikes the Arbalest in the back line thus killing it. A Brawler, Skeleton and Acolyte remain. Dismas' bleed kills the Brawler, clearing that corpse and the Skeleton and Acolyte fall to our hero's soon after. We loot 1k gold, some jade, citrine and onyx for that fight and then....

Get the mission accomplished notice! We got lucky and chose the right path. Now, obviously there was no other fights in the rooms we did not explore, however, there could have been fights in the hallways had we chose the wrong path to explore empty rooms. We had 2 hallway fights this map and 2 room fights. We loot the chest in the room as well with the key we brought and get a whopping 25gold and a deed. We discard the bandage in there as we didn't need it.

Baudry ends up at 4hp/63stress. Close call for him. Dismas the steady sits at 16hp/22stress. Gueron at 26hp/41 stress and Past at 20/hp/20stress. Total loot for the run is 2925 gold (the gems turn into gold), 2 deeds and 8 crests. Quest rewards are 3k gold, 2 busts, 2 crests and the Hellion specific trinket. Net of 5925 gold, adding the 3875 we had left gives us 9800, minus the 7700 we started with for a 2100 gold profit. We overspent on supplies badly, but I had to be safe. We didn't use the shovels at all, and only used 1 bandage and not many torches, since we found 3 and only went into 3 rooms of the 6 we had to possibly explore.

Good news was all our hero's gained another 2 resolve xp. Dismas and Baudry come closer to level 2. Bad news is we gained some bad perks.

Past gains Eagle Eye a +3% crit on ranged attacks, but also gets Hysterical Blindness, -20 Accuracy if stress is above 70.
Gueron gains Automatonphobia, a -20 stress vs humans as well as The Worries, -30% stress resist. Just. Plain. Awful.
Dismas gets hosed and gets the fucking Red Plague. -75% bleed resist, -10% max hp and -5% crit
Baudry becomes Stout, +15% heal skill for camping.

Dismas is my main concern here as he has been our main steady hero thus far. Now I have to cure the Red Plague on him in the Sanitarium that we haven't unlocked yet. Good times. Gueron is a problem and I will need to figure out what to do with him.

Next, we evaluate our team, find out what our new buildings are and check on new recruits as well as Reynauld and how his praying worked out for him.

[hollmt]

We finally arrive back to the Hamlet and have unlocked our Guild(allowing us to purchase new skills for our hero's. Initially we are given 4 and can purchase the other 3 and then adjust those skills as needed) and our Blacksmith (which upgrades are weapons and armor). The Nomad Wagon (sells trinkets) , Sanitarium (cures what ails our hero's and attempts to get rid of negative perks) and Survivalist Camp (camping stuff, which I have yet to discuss) still remain locked.

To start, we take a look at Reynauld, who has recovered 69 stress from his week of praying (he sits at 25 stress now) and is ready to embark on another mission if needed. We take him to the Guild and purchase Inspiring Cry for him. This talent is a small heal of 1 but most importantly a stress heal of 6 to anyone in the party. It also acts as a torch, lighting our way. It might come in handy. While in the Guild we spend some relics upgrading it,lowering the cost of purchasing new skills by 20%. Helpful, as we need to save gold.

We have 7 hero's in our camp and need to make a decision on a few of them as well as look at the hero’s that have arrived by stagecoach.

Dismas will have to sit out this week and the week after. We do not yet have the Sanitarium unlocked and he is too sick to run another dungeon. The Red Plague is a very risky disease to toy with and I am not sure if diseases spread in dungeons.

With 7 of 9 roster spots full, and only 2 open spots, I decide to dismiss Bossard the Arbalest. I have no real need for him right now and find his negative stress resist and accuracy against the unholy something I don’t need to deal with. Gueron, one of our Crusaders is also dismissed as his negative stress resist against humans is awful and I don’t want to deal with him either. He is also a bit stressed out and I am not spending gold on stress recovery for him. I make these decisions in order to make room for new recruits.

I immediately grab Greslet, a new Vestal hero. I need someone to heal my team and provide us some extra damage as/if needed. I take Greslet to the Guild. I spend 800 gold teaching Greslet the Party Heal.


She has a positive perk of Back Tracker, allowing her to back up and not gain stress. She also has Hylomania, and is obsessed with material things. Not sure what that means yet. She has Judgment, a fantastic attack that also heals her. She can attack anyone on the enemy side with this. Her group heal and party heal of course as well as Illumination, damaging any enemy again as well as debuffing them with -20 dodge and granting us some light. She is well rounded and I hope performs well as she will be thrust into a dungeon immediately.

I send Baudry to the Abbey to meditate and hope this is the right thing for her to relieve stress as she sits at 63 stress and I would like her back next week. This sets me back another 1000 gold. I do not spend any relics upgrading the Cloister (Meditation room) at this time. I considered it but changed my mind.

Past, our 2nd Crusader is in good shape and will be sent on another mission this week with Reynauld and Greslet. Marrilac, the Hellion, I am keeping in my roster until I build a team of night crawlers that thrive in dark dungeons. For now though, there is nothing to do with her.

I head back to the Stagecoach.

I grab a Bounty Hunter named Blouet. His positive quirk of Second Wind grants him +10% damage if below 50% hp as well as a negative of Thanatopphobia, a -20% stress resist is below 50% hp. Fair enough. He also is a Man Slayer, +10 accuracy and +3% crit against humans and is Calm, -15% on the first round. That can be countered as he can use his first round move to stun or even bleed instead of pure raw damage. I spend 1600 gold on him in the guild on 2 skills by mistake. I should have only spent 800 on one skill. Too late now though.


He is armed with Collect Bounty, granting extra crit and damage against humans and those that are marked in the front 2 ranks. His next talent is marked for death against any enemy. Flashbang, in the 3rd spot hits any enemy and stuns a target as well as shuffles them around and finally Hook and Slice against any back 2 enemies bleeding them out.

Because of this, I also send Greslet to the Guild again in order to buy Dazzling Light for her. Dazzling light is a damage and stun ability that she can use in the 4th rank.

I also grab the remaining 2 heroes in the Stagecoach just because I can. Corbire, a Jester and Poussin, another Crusader. I do nothing with them as I am not sure I will even be keeping them.

I have spent 5000 gold, 7 portraits and 14 crests on heroes and upgrades already. As of right now the plan is to take Reynauld, Past, Blouet and Greslet on a dungeon dive this week. We might hit a new dungeon as the Warrens and Weald have opened up for us. I would like to get some Deeds on this next run in order to open up another rank of my Stagecoach, bringing in more heroes.

After all of this is done, I realize I probably should not have spent gold on new skills for the Bounty Hunter and Vestal. The reason being is, I might dismiss them sooner than later and wasting gold on skills for them just to release them is sort of dumb. But as I mentioned in the first post, mistakes are bound to happen. I cannot go back and adjust and have to deal with my piss poor management decision here and hope it turns out ok. I am fine with spending on Reynauld because I feel he will be with me for awhile.

[hollmt]

Week 3:
Backtracking, stress and the death of a hero.

I decide to do another Ruins run, but this time do a scouting mission and do a 90% room clear as opposed to 100% room battles. So this will mean the obvious, that we just have to investigate 90% of the rooms in the dungeon. If we go the right way and get good scouts, we can bypass things in order to just get to the room and the room only in order for mission success.

We choose to take Reynauld and Past, our 2 Crusaders, followed by Blouet the Bounty Hunter and Greslet our new Vestal. This will be Reynauld and Past's 2nd dungeon run and Blouet and Vestal will be on their first run. You of course remember that Reynauld also got us to the Hamlet. This quest will reward us with 3k gold, 2 Busts, 2 Crests and a Crusader specific trinket called the Knight's Crest, granting the Crusader who wears it +10% max hp and +20% heal skills, but also grant them -15% stress resist.

We venture forth into the dungeon as Greslet and Blouet each gain 20 stress just for entering. Past also has 20 stress followed by Reynauld who still has 25 stress. There are 9 rooms in this dungeon, and we are in 1, so we should have to explore just 7 more, assuming the game rounds down and not up. We are located in the South West corner and decide to immediately head East. Greslet immediately hits a trap hurting her for 6 of her 24 hp and causing an additional 16 stress to her. We enter the East room and find nothing. Good. We continue East to another room. Greslet and Blouet each gain 3 more stress just for walking and I decide to light a torch as it is my fault for letting it drop probably causing the undue stress. We come across some books and we take a chance to open them up and take a peak. Reynauld gets lucky and finds some good scripture here and gains Natural Swing, +5 accuracy. A nice new positive quirk. We light another torch and enter the room to nothing again. Good. We get a scouting event and head due North to the next room. We bypass the crate here in the hallway but get a hunger event and our hero's each eat a food to subside their hunger. Past gains 2 more stress though because he is worried.

We get another scouting event and see that there is a hallway battle in the hallway to the connecting room northbound. We decide to bypass that battle and not even explore that room in hopes that we save us some fights. We also though, see that there is another hallway battle going to the West room so this is where we decide to do some massive backtracking in order to bypass that hallway fight and enter the room, hopefully to a room full of nothing again. So, we head back South from which we came, and Greslet gains 3 more stress. We continue to backtrack heading West and come across another hunger event, feeding our hero's 4 more food. Reynauld gains 3 stress this time and we light 2 more torches as we are low on light causing undue stress. We now only have 4 food and 1 torch. Not good really. We head North and gain 3 more stress for Blouet and we enter the room and find...nothing. GREAT!!! All is going according to plan. We continue our backtracking ways and head South and of course gain 3 more stress for Blouet and 2 for Reynauld. Another food event triggers and we feed our hero's the last of our food. Past gains 2 more stress and we backtrack to the original starting room where Reynauld gains another 2 stress.

Without having a single fight Greslet has 21hp/45stress, Blouet has 25hp/32stress, Past has 33hp/24stress and Reynauld has 33hp/31stress.

2 more stress is given to Reynauld and Past as we come across some debris and dig our way through it with our shovel. We get another scouting event and note that the north room has treasure, which means a fight and the room to the west of that also has a battle. No hallway fights. So it looks like in order to clear the dungeon, we will have at least 2 fights on our hands this time. Could have been worse. We head North and come across more debris of which we shovel our way through with our remaining shovel. We also, find a torch and light it. This doesn't grant us much additional light, but it helps a little. A little is better than none. We enter the room and come across a Brawler, Soldier, Acolyte and a Courtier all of which we surprise, granting an uncontested 1st round attack.

We load up on damage and some stuns here and Reynauld gets 2 killing blows. Past gets knocked back to the 4th rank, spending the rest of his turns getting back in place and not attacking at all except for the first round. Greslet also gets 2 killing blows and we get out of this fight with Greslet at 24/42, Blouet at 22/52, Past at 32/30 and Reynauld at 25/51. Reynauld even spent some time on stress healing but still racked it up a bit. This is a bit concerning actually.

We head west to the final room and Blouet comes across a trap and attempts to disarm it and fails. He was our best trap disarmer but failed miserably here. He loses 6hp and gains 20 more stress. We come across a confessional booth and Reynauld feels he wants to confess some crimes as he tried to steal some loot earlier in the dungeon and the pack was already looted (served him right). Reynauld places some holy water in the booth and relieves 30 stress. He then moves westward to the next room and promptly gains 2 more stress back.

We enter the final room and come across 4 spiders (2 webbers and 2 spitters). Our hero's attempt to stun some here and damage as well, but miss half of what we attempt. Greslet gets immediately focused on and is stunned and blighted 2 times in the process. Reynauld gets 3 killing blows as well as Past getting the other , but in the end, Greslet falls.

Our first hero has fallen.

But we do gain Mission Success. Depending on how you look at success.

We did skip at a minimum, 2 battles in hallways and possibly one other room battle. So, we got good scouts there. We get our 3k gold from quest, plus an additional 2.3 gold from the dungeon for a net of 5.3 gold. We had 2,225 gold left giving us 7525 gold overall now. Subtract the 4800 gold that we had before we embarked and we profited 2725 gold. Not too bad. We also gained 2 deeds, which we needed badly, as well as 1 portrait and 4 crests. All 3 of our living hero's gain 2 resolve xp.

Reynauld however gains Guilty Conscience, so now he bears the crushing guilt of deeds real and imagined. I guess he took Greslet's death hard. Past is now an Unholy Hater, granting him 15% damage to the Unholy as well as 15% stress resist against them. He also has Spotted Fever, -50% blight resist.

Blouet becomes compulsive, and he now suffers intense need to do specific actions. I have no idea what those actions might be, but it makes me nervous. He is also an Armor Tinkerer, meaning it will cost me +20% more for armor upgrades.

We open up the remaining buildings. The Nomad Wagon is open, as well as the Sanitarium and Survival Camp.

My fear of spending gold on skills for the Greslet and Blouet ended up coming to fruition. We spend 1600 gold on Greslet for skills and she dies on her first mission. Blouet, who we also spend 1600 gold on, might end up being dismissed. That is to be determined. I am afraid to do that after spending gold on him, but if I need to make room for others, and it benefits me to do so, then he will be fired.

Reynauld is proving to be a killing machine, but he is stressing out too much. He got lucky and found the confession booth so thankfully I can hold off on having him pray this week as he is at 37 stress. Past has ran his 2nd dungeon and is only at a total of 33 stress. That is proving beneficial. He might bump Reynauld as the #1 Crusader. Blouet has 79 stress and is likely on the chopping block as I have to spend gold on Dismas to cure his disease, and he is more important to me than Blouet is right now.