Body of Work

"Gaze now upon your great achievement—the sum total 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.

Your 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 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're 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 give huge amounts of tokens (Take Aim, Repartee, Retribution) can put you at a disadvantage 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 piercing. Having some DOT piercing from hero paths, items, or skills that use the token to improve resistance penetration 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, Block becoming Vulnerable, Strength 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. Each hero can only be selected once, so it is possible to deal 800 damage this way, leaving 199 left to be dealt via attacks or DOTs.

Victory
"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."



Trivia

 * An unused ability for the Body of Work's third stage called "Frailty" can be found in the "enemy ability names" localization file.
 * The final boss's name refers to the term body of work, denoting a person's total artistic or academic output. Fittingly, the Body of Work appears to be an amalgamation of the previous confession bosses, each of which also has an anatomical theme:
 * The boss is wreathed in the Shackles of Denial.
 * A pair of wing-like constructs on the Body's shoulders resemble the Seething Sigh
 * The Focused Fault is embedded in the Body's chest.
 * There are hand motifs throughout the Body derived from the Ravenous Reach.
 * The Gut of the Coward forms the Body's gut.