Ravenous Reach

"Ambition's reach forever exceeds its terrible grasp!"

- The Academic

The Ravenous Reach is the final boss of the Ambition confession of Darkest Dungeon 2.

 1 = 2 = 3 =

Strategy
This is a boss who relies on buffing itself with positive tokens, bleed, sending your first front fighter to the back on the first phase and applying horror to your team on the last phase. You have to bring versatile heroes who can bypass positive tokens: raw strength won't do!

The Highwayman can remove positive tokens with Highway Robbery (or steal them with the improved version), the Man-At-Arms can remove Riposte with Bellow. Both can Riposte, which also removes positive tokens from the target without wasting turns. The Occultist's Vulnerability Hex removes Dodge, and he can heal from any position, which will be very useful on the first phase. DOT dealers like the Plague Doctor will be useful on phases 1 and 3 since DOTs bypass Block and Riposte, but bring something to debuff the boss's resists on phase 2 (75% on each). The boss will also lose all DOTs between phases, so use Cause of Death as soon as you can. Regular debuffs will be useful on phase 2 and 3, but the boss will be very resistant to them on phase 1 (75%).

Another strategy is to make use of trinkets like Sodden Sweater or Fate's Foreteller (with Bleed poultices) to be able to completely block the boss' attacks and actually heal from them, along with the stagecouch item "The General's Dream" to avoid having any of your heroes displaced. This way, the entire battle dynamic changes: In phase 1, instead of having heroes being knocked around, ONLY the frontmost hero will be taking damage, so the other heroes can focus on damaging the boss, healing them and occasionally granting or  (be sure the character covering the hero has, because this will hurt). Also note that while the attack ignores, the boss still is vulnerable to. In phase two, you should make use of your combat items to withstand the boss' attacks. Having skills to prevent/remove will also help, and given the boss' low HP, applying  will make the fight shorter as these tokens are only used when getting past his. Then, in phase 3, ONLY attack with the hero that is using Sodden Sweater or Fate's Foreteller. Since Rumination applies, the attacking hero will recover HP on each attack, while the rest of the party takes (relatively) low damage with no DOTs.