Body of Work

"Gaze now upon your great achievement - the sumtotal of your failings. Your Body of Work."

- -The Academic

The Body of Work is the act 5 Boss and the Final encounter at the end of your Confession in Darkest Dungeon II.

It is composed of 3 phases and the player must beat all of them to defeat the boss and finish the game. The phases are Gut of The Coward, Infernal Gaze and The Hateful God.

Gut of the Coward
"The carious gut of the coward, rife with toxic pusillanimity!"

- -The Academic

The Gut of the Coward is the first phase of The Body of Work boss fight.

You Cowardice made form, with 4 faces representing the 4 sacrifices. It causes huge Blight damage to heroes and at the same time has a huge amount of Blight RES, making it impossible to cause to the boss without the use of trinkets. It has an attack a potentially dangerous attack since it causes more damage the more Blight the hero has, something that the boss causes in large amounts.

Gastric Juice


 * Turn End: 3

Strategy Due to its high resistance to Blight it is recommended that heroes like Plague Doctor or Flagellant use other support skills, however being only the first phase of the boss and the one that has less HP if the player has enough Raw DMG or other  DOTS this boss is manageable. Due to the high amount of blight that this boss causes, it is highly recommended use skills or combat items that reduce this DOT as it can get out of control quickly with Catabolize. It should be noted that Catabolize can be modified with Block and Weak, thus greatly mitigating the potential damage that could be caused by this ability.

Infernal Gaze
"Its infernal gaze pierces the veil of reality..."

- -The Academic

The Infernal Gaze is the second phase of The Body of Work boss fight.

Unable to escape his gaze, mark a hero to attack him with an unavoidable attack while combining the mechanics of the act 3 and act 4 boss such as Stealing tokens, Dealing massive single target damage, etc.

Windup
 * Preparing to deliver a powerful, unavoidable blow.
 * The boss will target one hero with Token torso target.pngmpt to be the target of this unavoidable blow.

Contempt
 * You are next.

Strategy If the hero is marked with Contempt the hit will connect no matter what. This move can be mitigated with Block and Weak, while the blow can be redirected with Guard so it hits a more favorable target (Tanks). Spamming moves that gives huge amounts of tokens (Take Aim, Repartee, Retribution) can put you in a disadvantge since the boss will steal ALL the tokens, is key to be cautious and prepare for Haymaker.

Hateful God
"Behold the hateful God upon His throne - your failures made flesh."

- -The Academic

The Hateful God is the third and final phase of The Body of Work boss fight.

The Hateful God has high resistances to DOTS but they are not impossible to overcome using penetration. Having some DOT penetration from hero paths, items, or combo skills that use the Mark condition can help in overcoming this and keeping    active. Since the boss has so much health, leveraging DOTS or extreme amounts of raw damage is crucial to success.

Shackles of the Past can mess with your team positioning, so having heroes who can adjust positioning on the fly is helpful in dealing with this debuff. Samsara will routinely summon two Proclaimers in the first and fourth ranks that can attack front line heroes and buff themselves and the boss. Be wary of stacking too many positive tokens, as Strange Axis will turn them all into the opposite effect, Defense becoming Vulnurable, Attack becoming Weak, etc. Abilities that can remove these debuff tokens such as Plague Doctor's Indiscriminate Science are very helpful.

The 999 HP might seem incredibly daunting at first, but there is a mechanic in place that allows you to deal high damage to the boss and keep going during the extended fight. When the boss uses 'Face Your Failure' and the Hero you chose defeats their Ghost, they will be able to use a powerful attack that deals 200 damage, heals some HP, and heals all stress. All four heroes doing this is 800 damage and each Hero can only be select once, leaving 199 left to be dealt via attacks or DOTS. Notes

Trivia
"Your confession is complete. The Cosmic axes are aligned once more. Forgive yourself. Humanity is a weak hypothesis, after all. An unbalanced equation... an imperfect angle. We sow the seeds of our ruin, and seek to deny its reckoning. We make mountains of our mistakes, monsters of our misdeeds. We slip and stumble, we fail and we falter. And yet, in each of us, a hopeful light. Holding fast against the hellish shadows that gather between our good intentions. And in each of us the limitless emptiness ... of a Darkest Dungeon."
 * When many players and streamers came up against 'Face your Failures' they thought it was like the special ability of the first games final boss, 'Come Unto Your Maker' which required players to choose a hero to instantly kill.
 * The Body of Work's name is derived from the phrase "body of work", which is the the total output of a writer, artist, musician, or academic. It is also a pun on Body, since the boss is themed after a body.
 * The boss shares many similarities with the Heart of Darkness in the first game.
 * Both bosses are preluded by images of each game's narrator, both of which explain exactly what is going on.
 * Both bosses are organ-based, and connected to the pasts of the protagonists.
 * Both bosses are the result of a fusion between a human being and an eldritch being,
 * Both bosses are connected to a power which seemingly both encompasses and controls the entire world.
 * Both bosses share a boss theme.
 * The Body of Work appears to be an amalgamation of the previous confession bosses.
 * The boss is wreathed in the Shackles of Denial, a pair of wing-like constructs on the Body's shoulders resemble the wings of the Seething Sigh, the Focused Fault can be seen embedded in the Body's chest, there are hand motifs throughout the Body derived from the Ravenous Reach, and the Gut of the Coward forms the Body's, well, gut. A Complete Confession