KickStarter Darkest Dungeon Pre-Release Thread

[agris]

I'm actually worried that the game is appropriately challenging enough that there will be excessive whining to make it easier.

Anyone poked around their forums?

 

[Renegen]

If anything I predict people will complain OP tactic such and such needs to be nerfed IMMEDIATELY because they can't help themselves but use it 100% of the time and it just RUINS the game.

 

[Angthoron]

Do all the provisions you bring with you into a dungeon get destroyed after the run is finished? I had to completely restock even though I had ended the previous mission with a surplus.

Yup. Maybe they'll make a "surplus storage" later on - while it'd take a bit away from the "planning" phase, it's still a player choice between dragging extra supplies back, or risking it and starting to throw them out to make room for gold etc.

Oh, and yeah - this is very smooth for an EA game - everything seems to works, no crashes, no (noticeable) bugs, and they apparently already pushed out a patch to smooth out the interface a bit. Nice job.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

If anyone has questions, I'll do my best to answer them.

Talk about stress and quirks a bit, hm? I'm mostly wondering if stress levels are easy to manage to the point where I'll never see most of the quirks. Do your guys go crazy a lot? How about positive traits?

Won't be able to get back to you on that straight away, Zombra, but I will, in more depth.

Quirks are interesting, and come in positive and negative. There are different 'categories' of quirks. Some are quite bad, some aren't, and there are plenty that you can just work around (I'll elaborate on that when I have time) I've had as many as 6 quirks on one character. Quirks are usually gained on level up right after a mission is completed, along with positive traits. Definitely seems to be tied to stress maxing out.

Guys absolutely do go crazy a lot - they've designed the game so that stress can't be avoided. When one character maxes out stress, they may become, for example, abusive, and they start saying things that increases other party member's stress. It's a chain reaction. I've had bad fights where one character loses it, then all the others quickly followed. There are also enemies with abilities that specifically increase stress by around 15 points (max is 100) as well as doing a few points of damage. A critical hit from an enemy may induce a decent amount of stress in 2-4 of the party members - amount varies a bit. A critical hit by a party member will reduce stress a little, again, of 2-4 characters. A kill will reduce a small amount of stress to the character who lands the killing blow. It may seem quite unbalanced (pun intended), but this is a stress management game. And it's damn addictive.

There is an asylum in town where you can pay to have negative traits removed. You get to keep the positive ones. Positive traits so far are the opposites of negative ones.

Example of one characters traits:

A Leper (melee character with poor accuracy but big damage and health)
Affliction: Masochistic (chars become afflicted when their stress maxes out. It flavours their text, and in this case, the Leper also damages himself in combat for 3 points each round or so and this stresses the other chars)
Positive quirks:
Early Riser - Light above 75: +2 speed (acts sooner in combat)
Negative quirks:
Thin Blooded - -10% blight resistance (started with this)
Necromania - Fascinated with corpses (started with this, details not specified, not sure how this affects him, may add to text flavour)
Claustrophobia - Severe fear of enclosed spaces (details not specified, not sure how this affects him)
Unquiet Mind - May not meditate in town (to reduce stress, must instead do one of 5 other things)

I've been afflicted by this game: Addicted - can't stop playing despite rage, it's driving me nuts.

There are a lot of quirks, I'll share more when I have time, and go into a few other things.

 

[Gozma]

Maaan this looks great but I know I will get butthurt playing through early access patches instead of waiting for the final product

 

[Lhynn]

Really early in the year to be calling it, but im pretty sure it will be on the top 3 of 2015, hopefully along with underrail and shadowrun.

 

[AbounI]

I'm reading up a little bit on these guys and it's their first game? That's unbelievable if true. Admittedly, I haven't tried this yet, but it seems to be a great effort for a first game.

Really & truly it is.But it needs some minor arrangement for the UI when a character sheet hides a textual dialogue, adding a function to save party formation to easily recall characters who goes well together with their skills/synergies/complementarities and things like that

Really early in the year to be calling it, but im pretty sure it will be on the top 3 of 2015, hopefully along with underrail and The Age of Decadence.

fixed

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Maaan this looks great but I know I will get butthurt playing through early access patches instead of waiting for the final product

It's fairly polished. I recommend diving right in.

See this? -

 

[Ulminati]

Had a go at this earlier. Lesson learned: Buy a god damn shovel every time.

 

[Siveon]

I actually can't wait to get this for my Vita.

 

[Zombra]

Oh, one other thing, speaking of UI and this being their first game - did they listen to me when I said they should consider hotkeys so it's not an annoying clickfest? How much of this game can be played with the keyboard?

 

[Zombra]

I'm still disappointed with the Jester. Would have been great to see one moderately cheerful looking PC. Instead they just made another darkity serial killer guy.

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Steam forums are whining about stress and provisions.

If Devs are reading this: DON'T CHANGE THESE ELEMENTS!

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Oh, one other thing, speaking of UI and this being their first game - did they listen to me when I said they should consider hotkeys so it's not an annoying clickfest? How much of this game can be played with the keyboard?

I think the town screen is all mouse operated. There are some keys used in the dungeon. A and D move left and right respectively, W is interact. Q and E shift left and right which character does the interacting. Haven't explored anything else with keys really. I'll have a look.

Steam forums are whining about stress and provisions.

If Devs are reading this: DON'T CHANGE THESE ELEMENTS!

FFS! It's seems perfectly balanced as is! These fucking retards!

 

[MasterSmithFandango]

Oh, one other thing, speaking of UI and this being their first game - did they listen to me when I said they should consider hotkeys so it's not an annoying clickfest? How much of this game can be played with the keyboard?

I think the town screen is all mouse operated. There are some keys used in the dungeon. A and D move left and right respectively, W is interact. Q and E shift left and right which character does the interacting. Haven't explored anything else with keys really. I'll have a look.

Steam forums are whining about stress and provisions.

If Devs are reading this: DON'T CHANGE THESE ELEMENTS!

FFS! It's seems perfectly balanced as is! These fucking retards!

I think the devs are okay with these elements - they kind of passively rejected the stress complaints with "We value all suggestions! We won't compromise our vision but we appreciate the feedback" type thing.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

Holy shit. Total party wipe from the Necromancer's apprentice. Shoulda known better than to bring level 1s.

I've restarted about 5 times.

Favorite party members:

- Hellion. Great front liner that can hit multiple rows and back row. More versatile than Leper.
- Bounty Hunter. Stun attacks and pulling from the back row make dealing with ranged enemies easy.
- Vestal. Back rower with stun attacks and heals.
- Highwayman. Middle row guy with ranged attacks on multiple rows. More versatile than Grave Robber.

Least favorite:

- Plague doctor. His abilities are very sensitive to being in back row and don't seem to work well on front row enemies.
- Jester. Buffs are handy but it feels like a wasted slot.

Agree on everything with one exception. I had a Jester who came with an ability that reduced enemy accuracy. I had him right at the front, and he was OP. Whenever he got bashed back a few ranks, he would using his lunging attack, get back to the front and made the enemy bleed. He was awesome. I will certainly be using Jester frequently.

 

[Transfiguring Roar]

I think the devs are okay with these elements - they kind of passively rejected the stress complaints with "We value all suggestions! We won't compromise our vision but we appreciate the feedback" type thing.

YES!! Thanks for sharing.

 

[Zombra]

How much of this game can be played with the keyboard?

I think the town screen is all mouse operated. There are some keys used in the dungeon. A and D move left and right respectively, W is interact. Q and E shift left and right which character does the interacting. Haven't explored anything else with keys really. I'll have a look.

But thank you for the report.

 

[Tommers]

Been playing this the past couple of evenings.

I love it, it's harsh and everybody goes mad. The progression needs sorting though - surviving an entire dungeon without going mad, paying the guild to be able to update your skills and then paying for the upgrade itself and... +1% crit chance. Some don't even improve at all. I guess that'll be sorted out though.

Has anybody figured out how to cure an affliction (I.e. the big problems - abusive, selfish, masochistic). I know you can use the sanitarium for the other ones. My favourite hellion is suffering.

 

[Trash]

I had one disappear from a character who lost most (if not all) of his stress through R&R in the city.

 

[Tommers]

I had one disappear from a character who lost most (if not all) of his stress through R&R in the city.

OK cool. I'm going to try that, I left one guy sat there and I'll see if it goes.

 

[GlutenBurger]

Steam forums are whining about stress and provisions.

That's insane. Stress has been stated as a core gameplay element from the very first video. Maybe those guys should forget about playing for themselves and wait for that popular screamy YouTube guy to release a Let's Play.

 

[Angthoron]

Least favorite:

- Plague doctor. His abilities are very sensitive to being in back row and don't seem to work well on front row enemies.
- Jester. Buffs are handy but it feels like a wasted slot.

Agree on everything with one exception. I had a Jester who came with an ability that reduced enemy accuracy. I had him right at the front, and he was OP. Whenever he got bashed back a few ranks, he would using his lunging attack, get back to the front and made the enemy bleed. He was awesome. I will certainly be using Jester frequently.

I gave a try to a leper - jester - highwayman - grave robber party before sleepytimes, with some rather mixed results. They absolutely wiped out every large party that they came across, but then boss fights were kinda annoying and a very, very close call. But yeah, imagine going through about 80% of the average dungeon with stress not going higher than 10 at any point, and HP not ever dropping below 75%. Okay, I brought enough torches, but still - the way Jester and Grave Robber wipe the mid-rows with AoE, together with Highwayman's 3-target attacks, and Leper's 2-target Hew, that's a lot of AoE if RNGeesus is on your side.

Leper feels really underwhelming though - his attacks aren't massive enough, or varied enough to justify the SHIT accuracy. He only becomes decent after a rest, if someone buffs him with Accuracy (well, he can do it himself too). And Jesper's kinda bad in that his attacks are causing Bleed, and that's one dungeon out right away.

 

[Angthoron]

I'm still underwhelmed by Grave Robber. She can hit the two middle rows at once, which is cool, but for a middle row party member I'd rather have Highwayman or Bounty Hunter, who are more versatile.

Bounty Hunter is definitely the better option for mid row, but a Grave Robber in the back row is actually quite interesting and certainly does work. I discovered that when I needed to drop her into my last party and she was completely wrecking the composition until that.

Vestal is so crucial I have 2 on my roster. I don't know how people are making it through any medium or long missions without one.

You can also have that role filled by the Occultist (assuming you're talking heals). They can heal for up to 10HP, I think - the catch is that they can cause Bleed on the heal recipient if a resist fails. I like Occultist for the back row offensive AoE, the hentai tentacles to the face. Considering you'll be meeting trash groups with that Tempting Goblet (man I hate those) attacks and various other ranged assholery, it's pretty useful to bomb them quick.

 

[bozia2012]

Hellion has like 100% trap disarm.

Reynauld has left in a search for a holy vision.

(Apparently a level 3 char can just leave - he did that after I sent him to pray after a successful quest. Possibly because of his untreated hagiomania.)