Was fun but I've gotta go see to my patients.

Hunt: Showdown has a tutorial in the beginning. You don’t learn everything, but you get: “hey, do this to kill a zombie.” “Pick up a few guns and try them out.” And then there’s a “noob” lobby for x amount of levels/games. Something like that would probably help the onboarding process for new players.

As one of the people who originally didn't want them to "waste time " on the solo experience. I remember when they spent a lot of time working on GC and I just wanted new classes between PT etc. Now here we are hoping they improve the new player experience directly through the Solo experience. The whole I hope they aren't wasting time on arena rings the same for me. I am hopeful its much different than all these other ideas. It could be amazing or something huge for the game going forward.

I fucking love Spud, everytime this dude talks, he's just funny as fuck

Also, on Ap thing.. .it would interesting to see how quickly these guys think Demi-God should be achievable. The fact that people have already achieved it within 10 days is crazy. Sure, they had to funnel but I don't know how they stretch out this grind to make it something you can do over a wipe and it not be only the 10h a day giga-squad.

I love to hear the clashing of different ideas in these round table discussions. The game state right now is the best it’s felt since the playtests and the high player counts feel great. I thought it would fall off a week after patch but it’s holding strong and I think the slow rollout of quests and gear give a lot to be thankful for.

There is way too much range damage in this game. 80% is just range battle and only a little bit of melee.

The squire is by far the best thing theyve done for new players ever. Ive got some friends that bought the game and almost immediately quit because of gear fear/difficulty. I convinced them to try it again with the squire and they absolutely love it now.

slayer fighter in normals is strong because of the weapon damage perks scale extremely well vs everyone else with no damage

Ice cavern is all I play as solo HR and I love it.

For the throwing meta, they should have a separate inventory slot specifically for your chosen thrown weapon that you bring in or find. It has x charges per run and you can "find" ammo (or pick it back up like arrows) to refill these charges, but you cannot bring in extra thrown weapons in your inventory for more charges. This would require its own keybind to pull out the thrown weapon, but i feel like thats the best solution atm.

When are we gonna get a video with Skinny Pete? He said he's not gonna stop wiping lobbys until he get on. Also Yami would be cool to see on a episode

The NoobRoom is a great idea. I'd also want that to be where the target dummy is so you can test out how certain stats change how you hit and do damage. You don't get anything from it but it's a place where you can see how mechanics work.

ONEPEG AND SPUD, BEST EPISODE TO DATE.

This is a great group of guests!

Love tuning into the weekly edition of The Darkest Hour!

you should invite Red onto one of these, it would be interesting to hear him and Jay talk about wizard

goblin caves, but it has a crypts-like format. blue portals to leave, reds to advance to a harder version of the caves, aka perfect insert for different model maps with harder/ different mob spawns. IF THEY EVER DO, a live server type format, the timer for each person can be like the frozen map where if the bar reaches the end you just die,... from "darkness" while someone can just barely join that server.

Arena will do well to round out the game's incentives and progression (if implemented correctly). Make Arena self-found or self-crafted only, by adding a tag of "found by X," or "crafted by X" to each piece of gear, or even just looted only. If you didn't find it or craft it, you can't place it into your arena stash. - This way doing high-end PvE challenges becomes a direct way to improve your arena set, and adds near endless grindability. (Go find a glass-cannon set, then an armor-focused set, MR-focused set, speed set, etc. to adjust to what you're facing) Also, make it so you can buy/craft PvE gear with arena rewards, and be able to craft/find BiS PvP gear in the main game mode. - This would give incentives to do both to improve the other.

Changing gear to be PvE-focused would unfortunately destroy any reason to grind gear or PvE. - You kind of remove the incentive to even get gear in the first place - one key reason is to be able to overpower enemies and take their loot and treasure. - When the only reward to farming the hard PvE is to... well, be able to farm the hard PvE easier... then the game's endgame content becomes highly redundant. I personally like where the loot is right now, I just think they need to add more complimentary systems that make it so gear isn't the only way to win. - More skills, perks, multiclassing, interactions, environment tools, etc.

Get Skinny Pete on one of these ASAP

My guess for shilelagh is a skill and turns quarter staff into a one handed magic staff you can cast and attack with. Bonk builds forevah!

A 1v1 tutorial 2x2 tutorial map with much larger room's would be a nice addition and yes ranged meta needs a big nerf something drastic like -50% dmg reduction on all ranged (bows, utility)

I agree with spudhunter that if dad focused more on upgrading for pve gear rather than pvp gear the fights would be more fun and there wouldn't be so much difference in gear but more in skills. And that would solve the difference between players with equipment, because as far as pvp is concerned, everyone would be more or less equal. That's why normal is better than HR because in most cases, the one with the strongest equipment wins. And lobbys wouldn't be empty and we wouldn't need matchmaking because everyone is equally equipped as far as pvp is concerned

This game is like a mmorpg in the form of a battle royal. Norms is basically just battle royal. Hr is a battle royal that you have extra steps.

ayy youtube finally recognising Dark an darker in the tracker instead of DS3

I think gear diff is the biggest in trios. 1v1 skill comes into play at least a little bit. I’ve for sure snowballed in solos, but trios it’s a lot less likely as it can become a 2v3 in 2 hits if you’re in base kit and they’re in blues/purps

donny complaining about getting 3 free potions is the epitome of his noobness

The gearing system already has a natural diminishing return built in, for instance, assuming all potential rolls are equal: - White (0 enchantments) - Greens (1 enchantment - Roughly ~200%+ better than whites stats-wise. - hard to quantify exactly.) - Blues (2 enchantments - ~100% better than greens.) - Purple (3 enchantments - ~50% better than blues.) - Legendary (4 enchantments - ~33% better than purple.) - Uniques (5 enchantments - ~25% better than legendary) However, actually making use of the additional attribute rolls becomes exponentially more difficult the higher rarity you go: - Greens - 1 in 100 (1 in 26 to get the roll you want on a cape, with a 33% chance of a high roll - 1/26 x 1/3 = ~1% chance. Or 1 in 100.) - Blues - 1 in 6,100 (1 in 26 to the power of 2 for two BiS rolls. ~ 0.15% or ~1 in 667 will be rolled correctly. - if you want max rolls for both = 0.15% x (0.33 x 0.33) = 1 in 6,100 to get a BiS blue.) - Purples - 1 in 500,000 - Legendaries - 1 in 30 million - Uniques - 1 in 3 billion To get a fully BiS legendary, you'd need to open about ~200-300 million GOLDEN chests in HR Inferno with 300 luck. (if you're only looking for 4 stats in particular) BEST CASE SCENARIO: If you only want 1 must-have attribute, and 3 other "useful" attribute rolls (~14 useful attributes available out of 26), then you'd need 61,816 Golden chests to find it. The point here being that it becomes exponentially more difficult to find higher rarity gear that outperforms commonly found blue gear. - Since higher rarity gear drops less and is much harder to roll all useful stats. - Essentially, marketplace can allow players to buy INCREDIBLY rare gear that statistically shouldn't even exist in a self-found environment.

normals, give people the option to insure their items and gear, that way anyone can bring anything into normals. NO RANK is being played for so the people willing to risk bis kits and spend money to insure it to stomp on normies. chances are they can die eventually or curb stomp everyone HERES THE KICKER! normals are only solo self found, or group efforts like bringing something in raid for a friend. HIGH roller will be the no insurance, the ap gaining, the bis kits (marketplace), the high intensity, serious queue and gaming setting for those wanting to prove themselves yada yada yada.

The way to do gear affects pvp and keep it relatively balanced is to do horizontal power instead of vertical, as in you don't get stronger, you just get good at a new thing, more flexible, new option. It is* technically an advantage to be more flexible, but the person who is good at one or two things can* still beat you by doing their thing almost always. The gear is still fun to find because it keeps things fresh by allowing new playstyles. This idea also kind of rides on having more items that do interesting things like the unique items do.

The wizard slowing people was probably Katie 🤣😑

Something that wasn’t really brought up, arena is planned to have you bring your own equipment. Equipment you won’t lose. Build variety is going to be insane with the release of the arena. Everytime a new video gets released showcasing a new build, a wave of that build floods goblin caves. And people will be able to build gear sets for each of those builds. It’s kinda perfect for the long term progression systems of the game.

One of your best shows congrats. Loved the ideas and back and forth from people who are very familiar with the game. Let’s try out random queuing for Duos And trios

to solve the map rotation and quest system slightly, couldnt we make all the maps have access to the demon world? it would make it so people can queue whatever map and still have a chance to do quests without being relegated to queueing a queue u dont want to ie 1v2 1v3. and considering we wait for the hell world to actually "start" they can have other map players "show up" in your server or everyone move to a designated hell server. essentially making the hell map a separate map completely. but only queued thru red portals. edit : the idea of hell being a literal hell, is facing teams that are broken(1 alive out of 2-3 people) or fully alive and well duos and trios in this hell zone. as well as the intention of venturing into the unknown, u queue solo but if u wanna go hell, just know u can and may find a duo or trio.

Spud been gaslighting us this whole time, he really is a gynecologist.

i am pretty friendly but recently there have been so many rats that pretend to be friendly then stab in back (warlocks,barbs,clerics and bards looking at you) that i feel like i gotta kill on sight, it feels bad when i kill or see a timmy die cause before i wouldve went to them and said hello and helped but now i just gotta keep my distance cause murder hobos everywhere.

One idea that could be made that could solve a lot of problems on Dark and Darker: A map that you could select where all the quadrant of the map are from each map, so from one quadrant you could be in crypts that has wraith and then in the next one you could have the spider room from goblin cave, so it would be easier to do quest, learn the mob patterns for new players, also could implement some Ruins and Hell quadrants for the ruins lover and the new players wanting to learn the hell sub bosses, and make it so that you could play it solo, duo or trio, and each time you load in a game the map has different quadrant, so that its always rotating and you never game the same game each time. Thoughts on that?

been waitin for the next episode

arena should be on a map small like factory from tarkov. and chests crates and barrels should be scattered everywhere, luck pots and base gear to start, round starts, everyone scrambles to loot (only for upgrades), and killing anyone who wants to upgrade. the only way you can upgrade is by looting or killing someone who looted. btw whatever class whatever item they open, the loot is automatically tailored to them. With the luck pot, theres a chance for white-orange gear range for upgrade. accessories are small like grenades so they can be floor/static spawns on the map. and rolls are tailored the person that picked it up FIRST. ranked system differentiated between the colored gear ranks. green rank? arena game fights with green gear to start and can only find that and above in that match. so on and so on edit: this idea for arena is to still keep the identity of DnD just to minimize the f out of the looting. while keeping a crap ton of pvp. different set ups for different classes would be fun. slayer fighter or plate fighter or mixed. etc etc etc

I agree with spud hunter with the gear issue in pvp. getting stat checked sucks. going into lobbies where people are crazy geared makes you feel hopeless. I think the pvp should be more skill based in this game.

Allow gear found in normals to be used for 1-2 rounds before they get locked to hr play

I like the way huntshowdown does there server selection. You choose a primary and secondary server and it swaps based off of ping could be use in dad

I feel like one of the biggest issues currently is norms. This is going to sound weird but green gear should be allowed in norms. Green gear seems to have no place in the game currently, and casual players are being taught to be afraid of gear instead of being taught to build gear. This is why there is so much of a playerbase falloff currently. Casuals start off going to HR because the gear is so much better. They get constantly rolled, and then they swap to norms for good, if they ever go back to HR, even geared, they get rolled again by people that have been doing it nonstop. They get bored of never being able to play the game, always wearing starter kits and they get these greens from norms and they either go in the stash forever, or to the vendor, then throw their starter kits back on. Rinse and repeat. I feel like even if people do build good enough green kits in norms to roll people, it's only greens, the casuals can easily recover and try different builds to find what type of builds they like, and keep them playing the game. Might need to get rid of the +2 all greens that are going around. You could argue that the casuals would get rolled in norms and would not be able to play the game. But, I think it would have the opposite effect, it would invigorate them to try harder, and all in all, retain them. This game turns stale without the middleclass of players, and this change would retain a large portion of them. I'd say at least test it out. Everything seems to be getting tested, but not this, all gear has been so useless to casual players or valued but stored in a stash forever, and such an easy fix. All greens allowed in norms would fix the game for casuals. The reason people won't get rolled is bc greens don't make you invincible, and the loot in norms is garbo. A true sweat would prefer better loot and gear and would therefor play HR. The only people trying to roll casuals in norms with greens would be the wimps that can't compete with true sweats, or casuals trying to learn how to build gear so they could eventually run a HR with a little more confidence.

Honestly an idea to implement an "arena" type mode would be a gulag type event like call of duty war zone has where instead of reviving you fight for the last extract or something. Trios could nominate a player to fight for their team. That could get interesting

Slayer fighter definitely needs a bit of a nerf. +7 wep damage and 25% action speednon base kit is a bit absurd

So to go off your take Soma, Gear still scales the same up to blue-purple and in the new model purple and up rarity gear instead of getting PVP stat rolls there releagted to purely PVE stat rolls like undead damage or Mob poison resist, lower aggro range, or the like

Get rid of HR and keep Normals. Replace HR with Arena, so that you get all your high-level gear in the dungeon (normals) and then build a gear-set for guild matches in the Arena. This would cut down on lobby ques, make the dungeons more balanced for noobs and give a place for the super sweats to kill each other while showing off there Bis.

"Named" whites would be so fucking cool, like how the sterling weapons have the undead bonus damage. Like common magic weapons with cool effects, that would be amazing.

As a solo ranger, hr ice caves is the one and only map I play. Goblin caves is actual cancer. Soloing trios is equally awful. A rotational solo que would be fire.

I think if they added a little more complexity to the combat it would add some skill impact, like simple feints.

I feel like with the way they implement the ranked system it’ll help new players not get destroyed by experienced people. Also def nerf warlock otherwise it’s going to constantly be multiclass warlock

20:00 actually a fair point, restricting squire to the 30 min marketplace rotation once you've passed level 15 seems balanced. 52:00 Nah sweats will be in HR farming artifacts for the arena sweats lol

skill expression fix - to add to spud's idea. every weapon should be near in terms of dmg (survival bow 18 white 19 green so on; recurve 24 white [1 dmg stronger than orange survival], longbow will emulate the same) obviously its not gonna be those numbers exact but with all the additive stat rolls and stuff stacking, is there really a need for FOUR DIFFERENT GREEN BOWS WITH FOUR DIFFERENT BASE DMG yet having different stats causing it to drastically do dmg that couldnt be calculated by a new player. or get rid of the flat dmg number from the gear and make it so that each tier item gains a stat for each tier it has. base-nothing, grey-crap stat, white-okay stat, green blue purple orange as normal. extra tiers can be extra pve dmg or whatever to speed the pve process to achieve pvp if they choose to, but they wont have a dramatic advantage while pvp-ing.

Nice quests. Maybe an idea for future guests: NotLikeThis joe or/and FireBox. I think they both have interessting things to say and we can talk abit more about cleric ^^

Ngl i really miss the map rotation, especially now that we're stuck on the specific maps again, Ice Caves starting to get hella boring for me, and now theyve also made the solos worse with the 3x3 version of the map, right now the game feels good though, outside of the map thing

solo map should be an enchanted forest with basic fantasy tropes. SLIMES and stufff.

Spudhunter you're a certified yapper ahaha much love bro

Get thelorr on here!

So i got some friends that played with the 10 day pass. And they loved it. Gameplay loop 👌 they are classic dnd people so it was all new for them. So i feel like new players will like it when it comes to epic. Or steam. Game is difficult for everyone, but people get good eventually. Once the game has more platforms and goes on sale the numbers will come back and hopefully stay. Im glad these friends didnt play during the early days when it launched cause i can say honestly that the game play now is infinitely better and already a little bit beginner friendly with normal lobbys.

@1:36:00 Ceremonial Staff is already in the market (presume that will be a druid weapon)

I think arena should be a place to use your loot if you only play normals

Range spam is cancer

I think uncommon gear (green) the rolls should be nerfed and green and below should be in norms green is a dead tier of loot

if multiclass has no barrier or limits on what each class can equip the game is doomd

I hope for a hardcore arena mode bring your gear in fast risk reward. I think it would take a lot of the sweats and meta comp's out of hr crypts.

Wdonnie

Shout out to Onepeg for talking about Brandon Herrera!

1:28:28 top left is playing guittare with the cat

Is Dony fr saying fighter is OP in normals when he plays Warlock??? BOC 15 Magic damage + 75% Anti Heal (Completely counters second wind), Blood stained blade 7 Magic damage, Shadow Touch 3 True magic damage + Healing to counter blood stain health lost. Then after all that fighter has 2 more Strength base wow crazy advantage. 21:40 "fighter gets a protection pot, a bandage, and a health pot what are you gonna do as another class" (all things every other class gets) I like Dony but genuinely how does someone even think of that then say it.

Ice caves is a cool map with lots of cool aspects, but so many parts of it are just broken...agro through walls and floors random walls that dont block npc arrows all sorts of bugs its not good. Love the vibe and its layout tho

and people dont fucking now it but learning tarkov and getting bodied and getting better is the most fun u will ever have playing the game learning new games is so fun and tarky has a lot to learn

Controller support!

Why can’t weapons collide? It would make melee fun

The PvE stats only is an interesting idea, but it wouldn't work in today's current state of the game. Imagine grinding for BiS end game PvE gear and some no kit base lizard spawn rushes you on a 50/50 and wins. Or in the event PvE stats are so potent that the meta becomes to conga line mobs around the dungeon and swarm people with them. The idea is fun in terms of pvp balance but fails in how it plays out. The current existing issue with the game is that in a PvP environment it's mandatory to have PvP stats in order to protect your investment of gear. You can't just run a full luck set because it someone has a full PvP set, you just lose. Power disparity in a PvP game becomes mandatory to participate and no power disparity creates meaningless zerg fest fights to take everyone elses investment without any on your part. I don't think either way truly works in a fullfilling way.

I really think they're going to go old school arena with it picture picture of Colosseum and going in to the coliseum as a player and there's literally people in the crowds that are actual people watching your event and being able to boo and cheer on their favorite content creators going up against random people think about think about being able to tune in to your favorite streamer and watch him in arena maybe there can be a little bit of gambling in it you can there could be bets placed with gold

10:25 Giffy laughs after the host says this because he landed a slow then missed and icebolt in a prior stream. I can link it if you need proof.

the guy who said fck new players sucks, we all had it easy back then compared to now, dirty little sweats everywhere atm.

2:05:35 katies take on gear based match making makes no sense in my opinion. Staying in your grey geared fights means you just have less capabilities especially on wizard/warlock if I'm not mistaken. maybe ive got something wrong here but wouldn't the fights just be more competitive? feels like everyone in this podcast has agreed that 1. Gear gap = boring+cringe 2. Skill gap = fantastic but shouldn't define the game. 3. Game needs to be better for timmy's even soma saying "my friends will tell me in discord man repoze is just playing a different game then me" and boy do i agree with him jay does play a vastly different experience then ive ever been able to achieve. So why is the idea that players of your skill level should also be around you gear level to keep the "skill" of the fights at a higher level? This just makes sense to me because if your bored of your demigod fully kitted fights sweating to hard you have like 7 other character slots you can just chill and fight or solo on.

Also if you were a barbarian getting slowed and ice bolted on goblin caves normals there is a non zero chance that was me… my bad.

the problem with this game currently is that they keep adding unfun shit into it, things that the game never needed in the first place. they've been bogged down with endless balance changes, trying to have their cake and eat it too by catering to both solo and group play, trying to add "MMR" or "ranks" into a game genre that is fundamentally not designed for playing fair, friggen leaderboards nobody cares about, etc. at some point it feels like they stopped thinking about what is fun, and more about how best to retain players... as if they have no faith that the game they made in the first place was a fun game.

SPUD CAN FUCKING YAPPPPPP

warlock is defs the meta on oce servers

Guy in the middle bottom screen doesnt stfu

classic onepeg with the braindead takes

Love getting 1 tapped by a warlock with a Kris

Vincennt just got demi in solos so idk

What if normal is the self found mode?

I think if you want to play with ranged capabilities, you should play ranger. Ranger has clear disadvantages for having ranged. Fighter with a crossbow? Not so much.

Idk man the concept of filing lobbies I don’t really like, it’s gonna make the game so much harder, HR trios is already so sweaty and hard to get out with adding a fill system when you go deeper just Makes the times you do manage to get down less rewarding I like the concept of surviving ruins to just be able to have crypts almost to yourself and then inferno to yourself

hot take normals should go to green gear so newer players can experience a watered down version of gearing up

Love it

maybe we will talk about the game with spud on!

Thelorr when?

Demon Form? I've full ape'd Warlocks going Demon and won every encounter in Solo's as Fighter base. It's just not enough. base kit to base kit, Fighter is just too strong. Always has been . But people are noticing it now for some reason

Greens should be able to be used by default in Normals. Or at least found Greens should be useable in the next match, something like that

I have one friend that refused to buy it until it was out on steam. might get it for epic well see.. lol

ONLY rangers should have long range get rid of throwing knives and throwing axes

I think spud needs to play some more something besides ranged lol. I skill express on plenty of people with spacing and swing manipulation consistently, leaving longsword parry aside. The reason people run ranged is because it literally does everything melee does, damage and often better utility, in every single scenario in the game. There is literally zero chance this game pops off in this current iteration. 95% of people that buy this on steam in this moment, would it be there, would refund in the 2 hrs lol. Other than this take, love Spud he adds so much value with his insights and opinions. Ranged damage, both magical and physical, cannot carry both the same damage and utility as melee damage. Hitscan spells are an issue. Hit slow on physical ranged attacks is an issue. 100% spell scaling is an issue. Aoe spells that fully control zoning like chain and hydra are an issue. There is exponentially more value to running the magic classes in this game or the ranged damage options in this game than melee right now. Ironmace could literally remove all melee, add franc axes as a primary weapon that has a reload function for barbs and that's pretty much all we have in the current iteration of the game anyways. 1 melee fight for every 15 ranged fights in every queue. It's a massive issue and the game feels like shit lol

Had to take 2 days off his easy ass streaming career, that’s funny