I remember when I first enter The Darkest Dungeon with my max characters, only for them to get absolutely stomped. Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer...

I feel like you severely under rate experienced recruits by saying don't get it. From my experience it can save lots and lots of money by bringing in heroes that already have their skills, weapons and armor upgraded. Over the coarse of a Bloodmoon playthrough, you won't be leveling up every single hero you want all at the same time, so being able to "get lucky" and save upwards of 10k gold and a few weeks sounds game changing to me. Reliable? definitely not but certainly can be worth the deeds.

A little late, but a good way to prep for Bloodmoon if you feel you're weak on time management is to play a run of Darkest with a self imposed 100 week limit. Once you can do that, it makes tackling Blood Moon a lot less (pardon the pun) stressful. Same principal applies to a 16 death challenge run.

Tip: Just get all the torches; buy them all each time you go out. Snuffing brings in a significant gain in loot, and in Bloodmoon, you need all the money you can grab; it also helps with heirlooms. Be mindful to keep track of them though, as you can easily run through them fast. Only do it in rooms with some sort of treasure curio, or unless there's a long string of curio with no hallway battles; scouting helps with this, and the light level only matters for scouting when you ***enter*** the room. Keep it snuffed as long as you can to maximize loot and also make sure you keep your torches well up.

After watching your video, I went to try Bloodmoon again. I was doing an Apprentice dungeon in the ruins after roughly 1 hour of play, my heroes were level 0 and 1. Collector appeared before the final room, my inventory had 4 empty slots. Great times.

Just finished my stygian run last week first try. Just wanted to show some support since I definitely would not have been able to beat stygian without the guidance of multiple tips from your videos! Thanks a bunch!

Thank you for touching on the insignificance on not purging every quirk. I know i really fully understand a character when I can get just as excited about a negative quirk as a positive quirk when you know how little the negative quirk will effect their play.

Inspired to finally try stygian now, on week 5 i got junia and dismas' heads LOL. Can't wait to see how I'll be punished down the road

Funny you should say that, I have literally *never* had anyone go missing when I send them to the tavern. Like, literally never, in my main save file, even. On the other hand, whenever I send someone to the Abbey, it feels like there's a 50% chance for them to just go gallivanting off in a zealous stupor, or refuse to come out of the penance hall (one time my favorite Leper refused to leave for *three straight weeks*), and then just a block down the street there's the Tavern, which is perfectly nice and quiet and a wonderful place to spend time. Looking at it again it's kind of hilarious, but I just felt the need to point out my odd case.

I prefer the damage upgrade on the front line guys like leper and helion. The reason being is throwing 1 or 2 damage trinkets on them after upgrading their damage lets you reduce the number of turns you are in a fight.

I will say, experienced heroes does save you a lot of money in the long run if you are rotating a lot of heroes in and out of your roster. The experienced heroes come with leveled equipment.

Nice video as always. I only have a counter argument for the experienced recruits. Sure, you don’t plan on losing lvl5 hero, but you can easily lose lvl3 one, which might cost you few additional weeks, plus the money experienced recruits save you for the blacksmith and guild. Sure, time isn’t bigger problem than heirlooms, but money is

Aaahhh I was missing this kind of content

Torchless is absolutely miseraable. It's doable, but even successful missions feel like abject failures when every hero comes back afflicted. What an unfun garbage self-imposed challenge.

I really love your content and I know that it's a comitment to put part x/y so don't worry and don't rush it, know it will be awesome content see you in the darkest of dungeons.

eyyy good to have you back

This is really cool. I know its part 1 of 3 and you probably have a lot of work on that already but what do you think about doing a video about torchless runs in general? im interested in starting hard torchless runs and would love my fav dungeontuber to talk about it :)

23:05 There is no real debate here: Dodge and HP are both vital to survival. HP is a buffer against DoTs more than anything, and Dodge is to help mitigate enemy Crits. The latter bears elaboration because Enemy Crits are the true enemy of the player in Darkest Dungeon, because they always cause Stress in addition to whatever effect they had in the first place. An enemy crit adds around to 50 stress to the party, and a stress nuke crit around 80-100. By comparison, allied Crits heal stress to the tune of 3-15 per crit. (with some caveats) While the effect is quite useful and a strong argument to build at least one Crit seeker into your team (and a big part of why Focus Ring is so godlike) it doesn't come anywhere near the output of stress due to enemy Crits. So that added Dodge on armor is very significant and why I prioritize armor over weapons early on. You eventually hit an event horizon on HP where your healing per turn becomes more important than your total health due to Stress. But Dodge doesn't suffer from diminishing returns until you have over 50 bulk dodge (the total amount you have vs any attack since enemy skills also have a base accuracy and it can be above or below 100). Since enemy accuracy generally improves as you go up in mission difficulty, static Dodge scores never lose value in practice. It's only when you're doing absurd stacking (like Houndmaster + Antiquarian) when it becomes an issue and you really have to go out of your way to do that.

The one thing I truly accomplished in this game was making a gank strat for the Brigand and Prophet, my teams absolutely pounded those fat cretins. I even wrote them on the wiki page. Other than that, I'm absolutely mediocre... My gank strat that I had never seen anywhere else was essentially double riposte and heavy reliance on MAA's PROT for both fights.

i remember the frist time i entered the darkest dungeon in bloodmoon i forgot to bring torches and had to stall to spam light moves using my vestal and crusader

From my experience, the Experienced Recruits upgrade gets much better once you start clearing up Darkest Dungeon missions. Sure, you don't want to be losing heroes in the middle of the game when you are just trying to level everyone up, but once you get free slots thanks to never again heroes, why not fill those with some level 2s or even 3s? If you know how to play with every class, then generally you don't care that much about a specific class as long as they can fulfill a specific role like a healer, support or damage dealer. With quirks, you actually have higher chance of getting 1 or maybe 2 fantastic positive quirks since experienced recruits come with like 3 or 4. You don't even need a large network for this, you usually hit one level 3 anyway. They come with 3 or so negative quirks, which they would have had anyway if you would train a hero from level 0. Not to mention, they are not locked yet, so you can clear them in sanitarium for much cheaper price. In my recent Stygian run, experienced recruits helped me filling up slots with some good heroes once I finished first Darkest Dungeon mission on week 55. Out of like 7 heroes I picked I managed to train 2 of these to champion. This was all done within 86 weeks but the point I'm trying to make is that I had a large selection of heroes that I could train in case I needed a replacement for one of the most important missions. The heirlooms weren't that much problem to me, I generally ignored upgrading the stress facilities which allowed me to upgrade what I needed.

Other thing to consider as far as why upgrading armor might be better than upgrading weapons- you can output damage reliably, without touching your damage stat, by way of Bleed and Blight potency in proportion to your investment in the Guild (which you would need for a lot of other reasons anyways.) Though not applicable to a strictly "normal" run, in the case of many modded characters (ex. Zenith, Arsonist, Count) this would also include Actor DoTs, which tend to also scale in actual damage with the Guild investment rather than the weapon investment.

I was just thinking about picking DD back up after two failed attempts at stygian

Regarding the loss conditions, I would say I'm more guilty of the time limit. I've only beaten the game once, and that was on radiant, and it took me 145 weeks in total, plus about 10 to finish up the crimson court. My mistake was that I was too afraid to go into the darkest dungeon. When I actually got in, I ended up finishing the game 20 weeks later, and only party wiped once. So my plan is play on darkest to ease into the default mechanics, and once I'm good with that, go into bloodmoon.

that hellion getting around 3 crits in a row tho

Hey shuffle. Great start to the guide. Curious if you backed the darkest dungeon boardgame kickstarter?

I am replaying DD on darkest I tried Bloodmon like 10 times. I may need some practice on lower level. Getting wiped early or having to retreat fucks you up. Badly. This is hella fun game.

My first bloodmoon bugged out,every building was unlocked from the start at lvl1 and the crimson court was at medium infection from the start, with the thing from the stars already patrolling the map which were all unlocked as well,i finished 2 missions and never did bloodmoon again since it was way too difficult

I think completely ignoring the nomad wagon is a realllyyyyy poor piece of advice to give. I've had so many successful saves and great Bloodmoon attempts where I picked up some trinkets early on. Nomad wagon reduces variance by allowing you to pick up trinkets that aid your consistency in fighting, scouting, so on. You obviously just need to be aware and have a good head for managing materials and gold.

Just got back into the game lately. I'm a lot more greedy than you are in my playthrough. 1- Stagecoach: I split my deeds between Blacksmith and Stage Coach. I mostly chose hero depending on their quirks, I try to select hero with only 1 negative quirks so the quirks gets under control a lot faster. I usually unlock the 4 hero per week upgrade so getting hero with only 1 negative quirk is manageable, and I try to upgrade max hero capacity whenever I hit my max cap until I get a party of 29. Going to 29 hero early allows me to stay low level longer enabling me to upgrade more cost reduction upgrade on other facility. 2- Sanitarium: all my bust go into the Sanitarium first (except the first 12 bust), unlocking all 3 slots to cure negative quirk is a priority, I usually get my negative quirk under control very fast, by week 30 everything has been cured on my 29 characters. At the begining of the game upgrading skills and weapon/armor is cheap so I don't run out of money anyway, so I don't mind paying a bit more to cure some quirk early on as I will recoup the cost over time. I think curing as many and as fast as I can cost me less money than if I let those quicks locked. Also as you level up curing those quirk cost more so the faster you get that under control actually saves you a lot of money. I cure locked quirk with curio or when it's free (quest) or when I have the bank and the interest on money gets out of control. And I usually focus on curing negative quirks that makes your character touch on curio uncontrollably like Compulsive and Keptomaniac as I don't want to get any other bad negative quirk from curio or losing the chance to spend my items on curio as this is very important to get max reward from mission. When I have the bank and money is no problem anymore that's when I lock good positive quirk. 3- Guild: All my portrait go into the Guild first. I usually get Rank 2 upgrade (level 1 upgrade from the guild), then I fully max the cost reduction before getting any other rank upgrade. This is possible because I max the party size with Stagecoach, so whenever I get a level 3 character I stop playing with him for a while and focus on my lower level dude which don't need anymore upgrade in the early stage. Since I don't care at all with the Tavern the guild gets upgraded very fast. I usually try to unlock the bank before I get the last rank upgrade as I get enough portrait before getting any level 5 dude. 4- Blacksmith: I split my deeds between Blacksmith and Stage Coach. Very early I get rank 2 armor then I reduce the upgrading cost significantly (like -30%). Then I get weapon upgrade and before getting any other weapon/armor rank upgrade I fully upgrade the cost reduction. Again I'm able to be greedy because maxing the party size with Stagecoach is a priority. 5- Abbey/Tavern: I usually spend 12 bust into the Abbey early on. I like upgrading the middle one with "Increase stress recovery" (level 1), and "Reduces treatment cost by 15%. This gives me a reliable stress recovery that doesn't cost too much early on but I don't spend any other bust in there early on as I think it is best invested in the Sanitarium. Sometimes I get out of a mission with a lot of stress on multiple party members. When this happens I just pay the full price but with my playstyle where I focus on avoiding as much as possible stress damage it is manageable. Also on my side the Puppet Theater is usually the first district building I'm able to build so at this point the Abbey/Tavern gets almost irrelevant. 6- When going on a mission I try as much as possible to use lower level dude because my Guild/Blacksmith upgrade are low early on because I highly focus on cost reduction first so I don't want to get killed on a level 3 mission... I try to always use character with blight skills in Ruin and Cove and character with bleed ability in the other 2 dungeon. I try to always go in medium mission as short mission your losing opportunity to capture more reward and as for long mission there's just not enough room in inventory to get everything. I touch curio only when it's safe to avoid any negative quirk. I usually bring about 6-8 torch into any medium dungeon unless I bring ability that gives light. It cost money investing in torches but you actually saves a lot afterward when dealing with your stress and its a lot safer and this enable me to almost never retreat a mission before having explored every room which gets me more reward in the end.

I'm confused about prioritizing armor isnt weapon upgrade would be better since it gives you speed which could make you act before and stun or kill the enemy to prevent damage entirely?

Very nice guide! To me the bank is not worth it as I like to invest my money each week. The cartographer's camp basically adds money in the end. It also works with torchless by the way!

Whoops guess I should jump out. Trying to research and remain spoiler-free is a dangerous line to tread on. I'm looking forward to if you do make a beginner's/hamlet guide in the future, though

dramticzoomin

I've had the begining Crusader steal 4 chests in a row on week 3. I just reset after that

i don't know how many people would be into that but u could make a blood moon playthrough not modded to hype a little more for DD2

Experienced recruits limits how much you have to run Anti early game. These days, I don’t run Anti that often, maybe once every 5 weeks I’ll go and get 30-40k with her. Experienced recruits saves me 10-15k per hero I have to replace. Replace from death, or I can replace due to negatives that would cost a fortune to fix. TLDR; experienced recruits saves you a ridiculous amount of money that you can spend on artefacts instead.

Great video

How come you don't recommend long missions don't in stygian. Aren't it a good way of leveling resolve and gettgetting some money and heirlooms?

Trying to run the numbers on dodge and converting it into HP doesn't make sense, and that's the basis a lot of people use to declare dodge as bad. When you dodge something, you have no idea what you're going to actually end up dodging, it could be a pidly straight-damage single digit hit, or it could be a 34 damage crit that would potentially roll high stress on the whole party, or it could be a deaths door hit that inflicts a DoT, or it could be crit stress on someone who wouldn't have otherwise afflicted. It doesn't really matter all that much that monsters get 100+ acc on champion, because any chance to dodge is better than the guarantee you won't.

Hi I’m 50 weeks in and i can get the Bank district. Should I consider it?

Watched

Experienced recruits are very useful. They take less stress, and they will make you save money because all their skills are unlocked. I really don t understand why you don't recommend it, especially on bloodmoon.