Darkest Dungeon II

[Sarathiour]

teetotal quirk

resolution.
You can also get randomly from drinking, which is going to fuck up your planning especially before you unlock other stuff than basic alcohol and cardgame. Btw, the "wine" you get from the ancestor cash does not count as alcohol, and could be used by character with this quirk without problem.
Relationship randomly get bonus or malus on the road, with quirk and current stress meter also affecting it, ie a hero at 7 or 8 will probably throw a bunch of insult at another party members. Yes, it also means that you should drag on encounter as long as possible to make sure no one is at more than 5 stress on the road, otherwise you are starting a negative feedback loop.

 

[9ted6]

"Let's take the good things of DD1, which weren't many to begin with, remove them all, add in an obnoxious and nonsensical relationship system, and sell it!"

 

[Dickie]

The jester actually started with the teetotal quirk (Forgot the actual name of it) so he was fucking things up a little but I made sure to hit a hospital

Doc, please help me. I don't want to drink six bottles of whiskey in one night like my friends. What is wrong with me?

 

[His Dudeness]

Default party continues to be the strongest for me, even when quirks are shit.

This game is very frustrating but I keep coming back to it. I think I like it better than DDI.

 

[Ryzer]

I wonder why they kept the name Darkest Dungeon since there is no dark dungeon to venture in this game.

 

[Sarathiour]

It's not even about dungeon crawling anymore, they could have called it darkest road or some shit like that instead of desperately trying to keep some game mechanism from the 1 into something an entirely different system.
Finally beat act 3 three, and despite the adequate preparation, it was again purely due to rng. Apparently they already reworked it after the release, and are going to do again soon enough. Just another casual case of having no idea of what's they are doing I guess.

 

[Ryzer]

It's not even about dungeon crawling anymore, they could have called it darkest road or some shit like that instead of desperately trying to keep some game mechanism from the 1 into something an entirely different system.
Finally beat act 3 three, and despite the adequate preparation, it was again purely due to rng. Apparently they already reworked it after the release, and are going to do again soon enough. Just another casual case of having no idea of what's they are doing I guess.

Even the developers actions are based on rng!

 

[Sunri]

This is the real Darkest dungeon 2 https://venusnoiregames.itch.io/jessikas-curse

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

NOT EVEN CLOSE BAY-BEE

Spoiler

HERE TAKE THIS RED HOT POKER TO THE DICK. Thank you, Jesus.

Actually wasn't close this time around. Came with man at arms, highwayman, vestal, and runaway and ruthlessly bullied myself. If I felt like spending the time I probably could've killed the body without doing the spirits (Which incidentally was a cool gimmick, but the only one (Same as last time) that spawned in slot 4 was the runaway's for some reason. Vestal would've been tough but I buffed her with the runaway's fire-giving-skill so her smites were stacking burn which made it not too bad. Gotten much better with highwayman too, gave him the +50% damage cultist trinket and was regularly hitting 60+ damage. Team was just nuts.

34 hours to "Beat" it blind which seems way fucking faster than DD1, and I'll probably keep playing and fuck around with this on some easier confessions so I can mess with characters. By and large really enjoyed it and possibly might agree with it being better than DD1. Even after all this time I'm still left with a weird feeling due to how similar it is to DD1 and how different it is. The "Long run" thing grew on me in the sense that I get a party and go adventuring and get a whole little low to high level adventure over a few hours which is nice, I thought I wouldn't like that pacing compared to DD1's smaller bite sized dungeon runs but in the end I think I like it more. The skill mastery system is far better than leveling up skills at the hamlet. There are admittedly still some skills that seem bad with an upgrade but by and large I was not only thinking about what skills I wanted to upgrade but WHEN I wanted to upgrade them, and your heroes do feel hilariously more powerful at the end of a run with mastered skills and trinkets even with the ordained enemies and those "Elites" or whatever the fuck that seem to show up in the final confession.

ALSO, let it be known that the runaway grew on me a lot too. Firebomb and smoke bomb are both excellent and she starts with them but she turns into a really nice DoT and support character with unlocks and even a slight healer. Particularly since bleed is super common. Actually sort of a shame that the roster's mainly DD1 characters since I would've liked new adventurers in this.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

And here's a commemorative image to celebrate beating the final boss and to prepare for Diablo 4 in a couple weeks.

Spoiler

Remind yourself that high cholesterol is a slow and insidious killer.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

So... how did this game ended up doing? It's like it vanished after the Steam launch.

 

[Grunker]

I'm enjoying this much more than I thought I would so far, but I find the difficulty in this learning stage very weird. I'm smashing every encounter without taking damage until I meet one of those undead Bone Saw guys, which inevitably slams my party completely and kills at least one of my dudes. Seems bizarre that most enemies are pushovers except that guy specifically. On the one hand, I figure I must be doing some shit wrong, on the other he has more HP, resistances and healing than any other enemy I've met?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

It's currently discounted. But the reviews are mixed and they all mention that the caravan system and the relationship mechanic detracts more than adds to the game.

 

[Grunker]

After playing this a bunch, I'm weirded out by all the complaints about the relationship system. I get like 1 or maybe 2 negative relationships over a run and a ton of positives, because the game gives you so many tools to manage it. It's a rather uninteresting system considering how much work it's clearly been, so I don't like it, but all the complaints over run ruining RNG with this system are completely baffling to me.

There are much worse transgressors when it comes to that stuff.

 

[Sarathiour]

the game gives you so many tools

No
The game give you nothing, you have to pay with gacha currency to unlock those, and then you will indeed generally get some at the inn.
Pro-tip : you can save-scum the shit out of any item given in the inn, because the game won't save before you spend the night here.
Also there is only three flavor of boon (the fact that homosexuality is one of the three certainly does not help selling it here), and it show up on a useless skill, whereas negative relationship will either be on a key skill or lock a shitty one.
In me experience, a single negative relationship does not ruin the run if it happened at 8/20 or something like that, but they tend to pop when everyone is under 5/20 on the gauge, generally because of massive stress.
Those run generally go nowhere and having to deal with a bunch of unsalvageable malus on top of that certainly won't push to endure it trough the end.

 

[9ted6]

Nothing about DD2 was necessary.

 

[Reever]

It's a rather uninteresting system considering how much work it's clearly been

I think that's most people's problem with it. That and it being another mechanic that just steamrolls a bad run into an unsalvagable one like it was already mentioned.

 

[Grunker]

The game give you nothing, you have to pay with gacha currency to unlock those, and then you will indeed generally get some at the inn.

It takes exactly one, maybe two, runs, then you'll have enough relationship inn items unlocked. I've had a maximum of two negative relationships fire per run since I unlocked those (and as relationships only last until the next inn, such a low amount of negative relationships can't ruin runs).

But thanks for proving my point that most people react to these systems without having the most basic shit unlocked.

It's a rather uninteresting system considering how much work it's clearly been

I think that's most people's problem with it.

It decidedly is not, as you can plainly see from the posts in this thread. In fact, the reason the system is so shit is that it requires a huge amount of interaction for something that feels so unengaging. Positive relationsships are never (or at least extremely rarely) important enough that you change your turn based on them, and while negative relationsships can be, in actual gameplay you seldom ever see them (again, because you should prioritize never having them which is fairly easy to do).

I think what's going on is that people are reacting before having unlocked essential shit. Darkest Dungeon 2's unlock-system is terrible in my opinion. In most other roguelikes you feel like you grow into more shit, in DD2 it feels like you are patching your game to be playable. It is essentially a shit game until you've unlocked most basic things, which can take two runs if you're good and lucky or 30 if you're not.

After unlocking that stuff, I think the combat of this game is much, much better than in the previous edition, where I found it to be terrible. In general, I enjoy this game more than the first because it feels less like a crappy mobile game. However its presentation is slightly worse and its "base-building"/upgrade mechanics are way worse. In essence, I enjoyed some of the management of DD1 but couldn't stand the meat of the game, whereas here I enjoy the meat of the game but dislike most things surrounding it.

 

[Sarathiour]

But thanks for proving my point that most people react to these systems without having the most basic shit unlocked.

I've unlocked a grand total of five items out of the 400 before finishing the games. The point is that none of this shit is necessary, and everything took an eternity to unlock.

Darkest Dungeon 2's unlock-system is terrible in my opinion. In most other roguelikes you feel like you grow into more shit, in DD2 it feels like you are patching your game to be playable.

I couldn't agree more.

undead Bone Saw guys

I have no idea which enemy you're talking about.

 

[Grunker]

undead Bone Saw guys

It's a new boss enemy apparantly called the Chirugeorn's Table. When I was new I didn't understand I was opting into a specific boss, it looked to me like just another type of resistance encounter/creature den.

After playing the game a good while, I feel like that boss is overtuned. It is significantly harder than even many region bosses and hell, I beat both The Pale Horse, the cosmic horror thing *and* the Collector during my first encounters with them without knowing their mechanics, but the bone saw dude still kills one or two of my guys.

 

[Sarathiour]

boss is overtuned

Imagine my shock.

 

[Grunker]

boss is overtuned

Imagine my shock.

I feel like the other bosses are fine. The general is fucking annoying more than he is hard

 

[Grunker]

In shambler fight claws are actually more dangerous than shambles lol

 

[Sarathiour]

Shambler fight is exactly the same as it was in DD1, except it now have deathblow resist. The claws also were the dangerous things, shambler itself don't do that much besides shuffling the party, which can already be a death warrant for non-flexible or mobile comp.

Regarding the other boss, the eyes things was pure garbage, but I'm pretty sure you played after the 4th rework of it, so maybe it's fine now. Other confession boss are fine, and tend even to be on the easy side, probably because shitty team were probably already filtered. Lair boss are ok, there is just not enough of them, and for most of them only got a single obvious optimal strat. I haven't done the special boss tied to the character, because fuck farming the shrine of reflection, having to do around 60 of those unlock the full skillset is pure madness, especially given that the average is 2 to 3 for a complete run.

 

[Infinitron]