Getting Started

"Make no mistake, we will face ever greater threats, our soldiers must be ready."

- The Narrator after entering Guild for the first time

As the game tells you before you even start playing, Darkest Dungeon is about making the best out of a bad situation. There are many ways for your expeditions to go awry, and sometimes even with the best preparations available you can still be forced into a precarious position. How far, then, will you be able to persevere as you attempt to stop the creeping evil that your late Ancestor has unearthed?

Base Stats
Base stats are statistics that measure a character's ability and how well they perform certain tasks. There are seven main stats in the game;


 * MAX HP - Maximum Hit Points. This is the character's endurance and how much damage they can take before reaching Death's Door. Determined by Armor.
 * ACC MOD - Accuracy Modifier. Accuracy (ACC) determines how likely a character will hit a target. ACC is determined by skill, while the ACC MOD is how much a character adds to ACC.
 * DODGE - Dodge. This is the character's likeliness of evading an attack. DODGE subtracts from the opponents ACC to make it more likely to miss. Determined by Armor.
 * CRIT - Critical Chance. How likely it is a character will get a critical hit, thus dealing much higher damage than usual. Determined by Weapon.
 * PROT - Protection Points. This allows a character to reduce the damage they take.
 * DMG - Damage. This is the strength of your character and how quickly they can kill enemies. Determined by Weapon.
 * SPD - Speed. This shows when characters move in combat. The higher the speed, the higher the chance the character will go first. Determined by Weapon.

Death's Door
Rather than immediately dying when a hero has 0 HP, they instead reach Death's Door. In this state they are significantly weakened and any attack has a chance to kill them. The base chance of a deathblow is 33% - a 1-in-3 chance - but there are ways to mitigate it. If you can heal them they'll be safe again, however they will be weakened for the rest of the quest for being so close to death.

The Heroes
Heroes, or Adventurers, are characters used by the player when assembling parties and expeditions to explore dungeons. They are divided into several classes, specializations that define their appearance and abilities. Each character has different skills and can fill different roles in combat. To recruit new heroes, players must go to the Stage Coach within the Hamlet.

Players will always start the game with the identical two Heroes, Reynauld (a Crusader) and Dismas (a Highwayman), as they begin the starting The Old Road quest (and see that article for more information on them). Upon finishing that quest and entering the Hamlet for the very first time, they will find a random Plague Doctor and Vestal waiting to join their party. After this, all heroes arriving on the Stage Coach will be completely random.

Character Classes
Fortunately every hero you will encounter is strong and very useful. The challenge here is to figure out how to use them effectively. This short overview will help you familiarize yourself with all the heroes in the game. It starts with the first 4 hero classes you will meet, and then lists the rest alphabetically.

DLC heroes
For more details on heroes, check here.

Quirks and Diseases
One of the most notable features of Darkest Dungeon is the Quirk/Disease system. Quirks are passive effects that heroes will acquire as they travel through the dungeons. Most Quirks are passive effects that increase or decrease a hero's stats, however there are others that will cause heroes to fear certain enemies and have them make impulsive decisions.

Quirks are randomly acquired when a hero completes a quest, or interacts with a curio. Diseases are randomly acquired upon contact with some creatures or curios, and are almost universally bad.

A hero can have up to 5 positive quirks, 5 negative quirks, and 3 diseases. When a hero acquires a quirk or a disease after they have reached the limit, the new quirk/disease will replace an old one.

Negative Quirks and diseases can be cured at the Sanitarium for a hefty price. Additionally, if you let a negative quirk stay untreated after too many expeditions, it will become terminal, and cost even more gold to cure. On the other hand you can also lock in positive quirks to make them permanent on a hero. Another way to remove quirks is through curios, however the ones that do this are rare or require cleansing, so it's not wise to rely solely on this.

When you're starting out it's best to not remove quirks unless they force interaction with curios or loot stealing (see curios section for more details.) Also you should familiarize yourself with curios and what they do to minimize that amount of negative quirks your heroes are receiving.

Stress, Virtues and Afflictions
Due to enduring the hardships of battle and the sights of abominable things, heroes gain stress. Stress is represented by a bar on the bottom, that, when full, will induce an Affliction which can be the most dire thing a party can encounter, apart from a hero dying.

When an affliction takes effect, the hero may slip out of the player's control sometimes, and do many terrible things. These include randomly increasing the stress of allies, moving themselves in the formation, refusing the aid of their allies, passing their turn, or even attacking others or even themselves. It is not unusual for an afflicted hero to directly or indirectly cause the rest of the party to become afflicted too, creating a disastrous chain reaction.

Stress can only be reduced by committing heroes to the abbey or tavern, using stress-relieving skills, landing a critical hit, disarming traps, or occasionally by killing an enemy. As stress-relieving skills take up precious time and reduces comparatively little stress, it is usually better to mitigate stress in the first place by killing stress-dealers as quickly as you can, and removing your heroes' stress at the end of their mission via the abbey or tavern.

However, sometimes when a hero reaches his stress limit instead of getting an affliction, he will receive a Virtue instead, immediately dropping to 45 Stress and randomly producing positive effects on themselves and the party, such as buffing, healing health and stress of themselves and allies. The base chance to get a virtue is 25%, but it can be increased or decreased with certain quirks and trinkets. Additionally, Virtuous heroes can go back over 100 Stress without any penalty.

If a hero with an affliction takes enough stress damage to fill their stress bar again with a brighter white, they will suffer a heart attack at 200 Stress. This immediately puts them to Death's Door, or unavoidably kills them if already at Death's Door. Virtuous heroes hitting 200 Stress will merely lose their Virtue status and revert to 0 Stress.

Equipping Heroes
Unlike other games, the heroes of Darkest Dungeon do not equip different weapons and armor. Instead the Blacksmith will upgrade a hero's individual weapons and armor linearly. The hero's weapon will affect their damage, critical hit ratio and speed, while their armor will increase their dodge chance and HP. Accuracy is determined by individual skills rather than equipment. Skills will be discussed in more detail below.

However, heroes can equip 2 different Trinkets that will bestow upon them many different effects, including increasing stats, resistances and/or the chance that a status effect will affect an enemy. Many of these trinkets also have negative effects on other attributes, so you must be careful when choosing what trinkets to use. A hero may equip up to 2 trinkets, but they cannot equip duplicates. Some trinkets are also have class restrictions.

The Hamlet


The Hamlet is the main hub of the game, accessed when not in a dungeon. The hamlet contains various buildings that allow the player to form, manage, and improve a roster of adventurers to send into the various expeditions needed to reach and purge the Darkest Dungeon of the evil that has encroached upon it.

The Hamlet contains a variety of facilities with disparate purposes, most of which revolve around the management of heroes.

Most buildings can be upgraded through the use of heirlooms in order to unlock further benefits, make the facilities more efficient, and reduce the prices of their services. Each building consistently requires the same kinds of heirlooms, though the amount needed for each upgrade increases exponentially.

The most important building to start upgrading is the Stage Coach as it will let you recruit heroes, which is free. Through upgrading it, you can expand your hero roster, the number of recruits available, and even the base levels of recruits fresh off the stagecoach. The Blacksmith and Guild take a close second, as better stats and skills for your heroes are vital for successful expeditions.

Here is a list of the upgradable buildings in town, along with what they do and which heirlooms are needed to upgrade them. Also note that every building needs Crests.



The Abbey, The Tavern and what to be aware of
The Abbey and the Tavern are the main way to reduce stress of a hero in between expeditions. When in town you can put heroes inside the rooms, pay a fee, and after you complete your next quest they will have recovered most of their stress, if not all of it. The rooms at the top relieve less stress but also cost less, and the rooms on the bottom are more costly and relieve much more stress.

While the Tavern and the Abbey seem to be the same on the surface, sometimes when you return from a quest you will learn of events that transpire while you were away. At minimum, your heroes may become engrossed with their activities that they will remain unavailable for the next week or so, but more severe side effects can happen. What if while praying your hero sees unsightly things, hidden among the pews and pedestals? Are you willing to bet your own money and items on a game of chance you have no sway in?

To make matters worse some quirks will not only have your characters refuse using certain rooms, but other quirks will cause your hero to only accept certain rooms! What happens when your Man-at-Arms has a lover and will only go to the brothel and refuse everything else? While unlikely, it is also possible for contradictory behavioral quirks to exist; for instance, a Highwayman who will only gamble to relieve stress can be caught in a precarious predicament if he was caught cheating and banned from the premises.

For the most part it is not recommended to go to the tavern's bar or gambling hall, since they will most likely cause you to lose gold and Trinkets.

One more obstacle in healing the stress of your heroes is the caretaker. He has long served your ancestor, and as a result his mind is under constant strain from what he has witnessed. Every week he will occupy a random room, preventing you from using it, which can be a nuisance with the aforementioned quirks that make characters only use certain rooms. There is no way to remove the caretaker. The only way around him is to increase the number of rooms you have. When you've upgraded enough of the Abbey or Tavern to have 6 extra rooms (for a total of 12), the Crier also will come to occupy rooms.

Choosing an Expedition
An expedition is a mission that heroes can undertake by visiting one of the various locations near the Hamlet. Each of the locations outside the Hamlet will have a number of different types of missions to accomplish, with various dungeon sizes, objectives and difficulty levels. Greater mission length and difficulty make expeditions harder, but also increase the rewards for completion. Each mission's objective, difficulty and size are generated randomly, with size and especially difficulty being weighted depending on the heroes of the current roster. Regardless of the composition of the roster, there will always be at least one apprentice level mission possible, in case the player wants to recruit new heroes from the Stage Coach.



Provisions
Before entering a dungeon you are given the option to buy provisions for the dungeon. These supplies are used for purposes such as to remove obstacles, open chests, and heal Status Effects. After finishing an expedition your remaining provisions will be sold back at a tenth of their bought price. It is essential to learn what provisions to take to each region and how many so that they will last but not waste your resources.

The most important provisions to take are food. Sometimes while exploring the dungeon your party will get hungry and you can feed them or let them starve. If you choose to feed them they'll use up 1 food for each party member and heal a small amount of health, but if you choose to starve them (or you don't have enough food) the entire party will take damage and increase their stress.

Additionally, choosing certain classes for your party will have you start with a free provision in your inventory.

For a full list of provisions, you can check the provisions page.

Exploring
When in a room, you must click on an adjacent room connected by a hallway to move there.

These icons appear in hallways.

These icons appear in rooms.

Light Meter
When traveling through the labyrinths surrounding the hamlet, even light is a precious resource. At the top of your screen is a meter that shows how much light you have. Every expedition you will have 100 light and the higher the light is the less dangerous the monsters are. The lower the light is, the more dangerous the fiends become. However you will also find more treasures when the torch is dim.

The Light level diminishes by 6 points for every unexplored tile you cross - simply traversing a 5-tile corridor will drop the torch level to 70 from the get-go. Backtracking through already-explored tiles will offer lower light reduction, and the torch diminishes by 1 point per explored tile. Carefully manage the light levels with your limited supply of torches - sometimes you might have to make do with fighting in less-than-radiant illumination to ensure your supplies last.

WARNING Traveling with zero light is highly inadvisable. There is a chance that you will run into a very powerful enemy that can only be found in pitch-black darkness, and it can break your heroes' bodies and minds easily...

Curios [[File:marker_curio.png]]


During expeditions there is a chance of encountering various objects that can be activated for various effects, both positive and negative. These interactive objects are called Curios.

Once the party enters the room or segment that contains the curio, it can be clicked to activate a prompt. Through the prompt, the curio can be activated directly or with the use of a provision item: curios will react differently to certain items. Normally, the use of the correct provision item will trigger a positive effect, removing the chance of negative effects occurring, but there are exceptions.

When activated, Curios have many effects such as stress infliction or heal, damage, the application of buffs and debuffs, or the gain or removal of a Quirk that affects individual heroes. The affected hero is always the one currently selected at the moment of activation. It is advisable, upon activating risky curios, to select a hero with good resistances or one that could potentially be affected by the negative effects without endangering the expedition.

One important thing to keep in mind is that sometimes Heroes will automatically interact with a certain Curio due to a Quirk they have. For example, a Hero with the Dipsomania Quirk will relentlessly investigate anything that is likely to contain alcoholic beverages, like a Moonshine Barrel. These automatic interactions cannot be interrupted, meaning that These Quirk-forced interactions will not occur on Curios found in rooms or Quest-related Curios.
 * 1) You can not choose another Hero for the interaction and
 * 2) You cannot use a supply item to modify the outcome.

Obstacles [[File:marker_obstacle.png]]


Sometimes during your expeditions you will your path blocked by rubble, wreckage, or even nature herself. To get past it you will either have to use a shovel or have your heroes dig through it without tools. If you choose to remove the obstacle by hand, your heroes will take damage, gain Stress, and the sheer time taken to remove that obstacle will wear down the light levels. To avoid such a penalty, it's always recommended to take a fair number of Shovels into your expeditions.

Combat
Combat is turn-based. In battle you click on a character's skill and then click on a highlighted target to use that skill. Some skills attack enemies and some help allies. When a specific skill is selected, only the possible individuals, ally or enemy, will display a highlighted target (in various colors, depending on the action) under them; you will always know who can or cannot be targeted by a skill.

One of the most important things to be aware of when using skills is each hero's position during combat. You start out with 4 heroes on a team, and enemies can have up to 4 monsters on their team, as well. The combatants in the middle are at the front of combat facing each other, and the combatants on the left (your side) and on the right (enemy's side) are in the back.



Combat Skills
The way characters act in battle is with Combat Skills. Each character class has seven abilities, but only 4 can be equipped at one time. The only exception to this is the Abomination who can have all his equipped at once, but the skills he can use are dependent on what form he's in.

Every turn a hero can use any one skill; skills do not take any energy to use, but some, like the Plague Doctor’s Emboldening Vapors, may only be used a limited number of times per combat. However skills are dependent on the position the hero using it is in. For example if a character is in position one or two, he will be able to use melee attacks just fine, but probably won't be able to use any ranged attacks. We'll look at a few skills now for examples.

This is the Crusader's skill SMITE. The yellow dots show where he needs to be in order to use the skill, and the red dots show whom he can hit. The grey dots show where he cannot attack from and whom he cannot attack with this skill. From this we can see that the Crusader needs to be in position 1 or 2 to use this skill, and he can only attack an enemy in position 1 or 2. Smite is classified as a melee attack, and some trinkets and quirks will uniquely affect certain types of skills.

The ACC MOD shows you what the skill's accuracy is, which is how likely it is to hit. This skill has an ACC MOD of 80, so it normally has an 80% chance to hit. It also has an ability modifier that allows the Crusader to deal extra damage to Unholy enemies.

Zealous Accusation is another of the Crusader's skills. Notice that the two red dots are connected, which means when using this attack it will hit every enemy within those positions. There are other skills that can hit 3 enemies at once, and even all four at once. However, they do less damage because of this, and this one is no exception.

This is the Highwayman's skill PISTOL SHOT, and as you might expect, it is a ranged attack. Unlike the Crusader's Smite, this skill cannot be used in the first position, however it can be used in every other position. Likewise, PISTOL SHOT can hit any enemy except for the one in the very front. It has three ability modifiers. The first decreases the amount of damage it does to enemies. The second increases the chance to land a critical hit. The final one increases the damage it does against an enemy with a mark on it. Heroes that are able to put a mark on enemies are the Arbalest, the Bounty Hunter, Houndmaster and the Occultist.

As heroes take damage in fights, it is necessary to heal them. There are a few characters that have healing skills, but the two best healers are the Vestal and the Occultist. Here's a quick summary on both:

The Vestal is a good consistent healer. At first she can heal 3-5 HP and is the only character that has a skill that heals the entire party, albeit only healing 1 HP at first. However, her strong healing skills force her into the back of many a party composition, restricting her to her ranged attack skills that don't hit as hard. The Occultist is a powerful inconsistent healer. His Wyrd Reconstruction is the most powerful healing skill in the game, being useable from any point in the party formation and first healing anywhere between 0-12 HP at once. However in addition to having a chance to heal nothing, it can also cause bleed and further damage your party. For every story of Wyrd Reconstruction having no heal on a dying hero and causing them to bleed out, there exists an account of the same skill rolling a tremendous Critical Heal that fully restores a dying Leper. This is a very powerful skill, but you should be aware of the risks before using it.

 Ancestor's Advice:  As mentioned before combat skills do not use up energy. However, they can only be used within combat. This includes healing skills. By topping off your heroes' hit points and learning how to utilize healing effectively, you can minimize your heroes' chances of dying.

Unlike other games, using an item will not take a turn. So if your hero is bleeding you can use a bandage to cure his wound and still attack an enemy.

Some skills, like buffs or powerful stuns, come with a usage limit. This restricts how many times per battle the skill can be used; in exchange, the skill is exceptionally useful, like a buff that lasts for the entire battle.

Choosing a Target
Generally monsters in the front deal damage to your frontlines, and the ones in the back will attack your entire party, debuff or DPT your heroes or cause stress. It is very important to take out the back row as quickly as possible. There are also small, quick monsters that aren't very durable but they cause many status effects. These are also priority targets, but are hard to hit.

Like heroes, enemies also have skill and many of them can only be used in certain positions. If you know how their skills work, you can move them out of position to waste their turns. For example if you see a monster firing from the back ranks, he may not be able to use that skill in close combat. Alternatively if a monster's melee attacks are causing you trouble you can try and push it back to lower the damage you take.

Status Effects
Various monsters and allies have attacks that will affect a character outside of physically harming them. Effects usually last for three rounds, with some exceptions.

* Repeated applications of bleed, blight, debuff, or horror will cause their effects to stack.

** Buff is removed when the user is attacked, instead of expiring over time.

Corpses
When most monsters die, they will leave a corpse that acts as a wall that prevents the enemies from moving up a rank. Corpses last for 4 turns.

There are a few ways to get rid of corpses. First you can attack corpses to destroy them, but often a better approach is to use ranged skills, push/pull skills, and even corpse-clearing special skills that some heroes possess. If an enemy dies from a critical hit, bleed, or blight, they will not leave a corpse.

Also some smaller monsters (usually animals, such as Webbers and Sea Maggots) and quest bosses do not leave corpses.

Retreating
If you feel the need to run from battle, there is a small square button with an X in the top left corner of the screen that will give you a chance to flee from combat. However, retreating from combat will inflict heavy stress on your heroes. Furthermore sometimes you can fail a retreat or an afflicted hero will stop you from retreating. In order to gain guarantee successful retreats, the player has to turn off a setting responsible for a retreat fail in the Pause Menu, but this will result in an achievement "Strict Mode" being unobtainable.

Outside of combat, the same X button can be used to abandon an incomplete quest and return to the Hamlet. You lose out on completion rewards and your heroes will suffer the stress of defeat. However, a stressed hero is better than a dead hero; do not be afraid to retreat when things begin to go awry.

Camping


Camping is an activity done within dungeons meant to give your characters rest on longer missions to restore health, stress and prepare for the upcoming struggles. You can only camp in rooms and cannot camp on dungeons with a short length.

Camping is started by activating firewood in your inventory. Your heroes are then shown around a fire to show camping has begun. There are two phases to camping:

The first phase is the Meal Phase. This is where you decide how much provisions you will give your heroes to eat. Your options are;
 * 0 Provisions: You starve your heroes and they take 20% damage and gain 15 stress.
 * 2 Provisions: You give your heroes half a meal. They will receive no benefit or penalty.
 * 4 Provisions: You give your heroes a full meal. They heal for 10% of their MAX HP.
 * 8 Provisions: You give your heroes a feast! They heal for 25% of their MAX HP and heal 10 stress.

While it may be tempting to give your heroes a feast every time, you should be mindful of what your heroes actually need and how much food you will need for the rest of the quest.

The second phase is the Skill Phase. You are given 12 Respite points every skill phase, and these points are used to tell your heroes what to do during camp. Depending on the hero they may be able to prepare their weaponry, pray, plan, joke, sing or any other activity that will help them face the horrors ahead.

These skills will cause additional healing on HP and Stress, remove mortality debuffs, or cause buffs that will benefit the party for a few combats. We'll look at a few camping skills now to give you an idea of how they work.

This is the camping skill Encourage. It costs 2 respite and reduces a party member's Stress by 15. Any hero except the Flagellant can learn this camping skill, however the target is "One Companion." So the hero with this skill can heal any party member's stress but their own.

Also be aware that each character can only use their camping skills once, unless stated otherwise. So if you have two heroes with Encourage you can use it once with each hero. Both uses of Encourage can be on the same target, providing an enormous Stress relief.

This is the camping skill Zealous Speech. It is only learned by the Crusader. Like a multi-target version of Encourage, Zealous Speech relieves the stress of everyone in the party, including the Crusader himself. However, its Stress resistance buff will only affect all companions, and the Crusader will not be able to receive this buff. It also costs a hefty 5 respite to use.

WARNING While camping is an essential tool for survival in longer quests, there are 2 dangers to camping you must be aware of. The first is that heroes with afflictions may refuse to eat or do what you tell them to. The second is the nighttime ambush! After you choose to rest enemies may try to attack you, and when this happens your party will always be surprised, it will be in 0 light and you will not be able to run away. Fortunately there are camping skills to prevent this, but if you don't have them be prepared for whatever creatures lurk in the dark.

Ending a Quest
After successfully completing your objective, you will be greeted with a screen prompting you to return to the Hamlet or continue adventuring. Choosing to continue adventuring will allow you to still wander the dungeon if you wish to scavenge for any leftover Curios you may have missed; from there, you can return to the Hamlet from any point in the dungeon by clicking on the seal in the top-left corner of the screen.

Returning to the Hamlet will allow you to bring back the spoils of adventuring, receive your quest rewards, and award your Heroes with Resolve experience. Their resolve level may increase and be randomly assigned a new positive or negative Quirk or Disease. It is usually wise to immediately return to the Hamlet to properly recuperate and address stress in your party members, but the chance of more treasures can be a risk that the player is willing to take.

Always remember: Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer.