The gameplay in Darkest Dungeon 2 has changed considerably from its predecessor. To help you catch up with its challenging difficulty, here are some tips that could be useful for beginner and not-so-beginner players.
20 tips for new players in Darkest Dungeon 2
The beauty of the game resides in its complex yet balanced combat design. In order, from beginner to intermediate level, here is a list of the 20 most important tips for the game.
20- Complete the Hero Goals
At the start of the journey, each hero gets dealt a random Goal (something like "Deal a finishing blow to 4 enemies"). If you complete these, you will earn extra candles which you can later use at the Altar of Hope to unlock more heroes, new class paths, and more.
19- Read the token manual
If you press CTRL, you will be able to read the glossary of every token and learn what each one means. This will be useful to understand your heroes' skills and other combat rules.
18- Read enemy details
You can inspect any enemy by hovering the cursor over them and pressing ALT. You can also see their resistances on the bottom right of your screen just by hovering your cursor. Learning their attacks, their preferred position and their weaknesses is key to stepping up your game.
17- Pay attention to the initiative tracker
If you are not sure which enemy you should be targeting, hover your mouse on the initiative tracker in the top right corner of the screen to see which ones have already taken their action and which ones are still on deck. I target those who still haven't taken their turn to possibly stun them or kill them.
16- Use the Radiant Flame to lower the difficulty
If the game is too difficult, or you just want a chill run, you can equip the Radiant Flame on your stagecoach. This item not only provides good buffs for your characters, but also grows in power every time you lose. The downside is that you earn less candles when you use it.
15- Keep Loathing low
Loathing will increase every time you cross a blue flame, and every time it does, it makes the enemies and the final boss stronger. To reduce it, look out for Resistance Encounters on the map. I try to plan my journeys by looking at the possible branching in the map and using Watch Towers to reveal all the nodes.
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14- Use DOT on high HP enemies
Damage Over Time effects (DOTs) can stack and they can also crit. A typical DOT effect such as Blight, Burn or Bleed lasts for three turns, but if you land a crit when you apply it, it will last for five instead. This is particularly useful on high HP enemies and bosses, even more so when they protect themselves from direct attacks using Dodge, Block, Stealth and other tokens.
13- Remove bad quirks and lock good ones
Heroes start with two random quirks, a positive one and a negative one. Sometimes the negative trait has a strong impact or reduction on the power of that class. Make sure to visit a Hospital and remove those as soon as possible. You can also pay to lock the positive ones for the entire run.
12- Use Inn items to improve relationships
Some items like Whiskey and Playing Cards can be used at inns to increase affinity between heroes. Also, try to keep stress low since that improves the chances of Positive Relationships. The opposite happens when all your heroes are stressed. Having Positive Relationships between the right heroes can make the run much easier until the next inn.
11- Combo compositions
Combo is a token status which stays passive until another character or another attack makes use of it. Create your party combinations with that in mind. For example, I always use the Grave Robber and the Jester together because he can apply a lot of combo tokens and she gets increased crit damage against "comboed" targets.
10- Unlock Hero Paths
Spend candles at the Altar of Hope to unlock Hero Paths. These are subclasses that can change how a character plays entirely, sometimes making them stronger or changing the way their skills work.
9- Wheels and Shields give bonus to heroes
Hover your cursor over the wheels and shields of your stagecoach. When they are at maximum, you will see they give your party some buffs, usually in the shape of buff tokens at the start of the fight. If you lose some, try to repair them all when you get to the next inn.
8- Discard useless items
You can make space in your stagecoach by discarding items you won't use. Press Shift + Left click to delete them. This is useful because every time you hit the rubble, there's a chance of picking up a random item. However, if your inventory is full, you will be missing on a lot of loot.
7- Check the loadout before every major battle
When you have a few runs on your belt, you start to know what type of encounter is ahead of you. After every fight, stop the stagecoach and look at your character's loadout: their skills, their items. Make sure you are equipped for the enemies to come. For example, if the next boss uses stealth, change to skills that can deal with it.
6- Avoid losing heroes with memories
When you finish a successful run, the surviving heroes can unlock Memories. These buffs stay with them as long as they don't die. So, if you aren't sure about making it to the end and you have heroes with Memories in your party, think again. Sometimes is best to pack things up and go home early, rather than lose a hard-won Memory.
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5- Use Combat Items to remove tokens
Combat items do not take a turn, they are a free action. You can apply them on your character to remove a debuff token or use one on an enemy to remove a buff token.
4- Improve the relationship in combat
Attacking the same enemy one after the other has a chance of them triggering an affinity increase between characters.
3- Use skills to destroy tokens
Skills that ignore a certain buff can also break the buff token when they hit.
2- Stun your enemies
Dazing an enemy twice will turn the token into a Stun. Also, Daze cancels Speed, but Speed cancels Daze.
1- Hire the Bounty Hunter
The Bounty Hunter can be recruited at an inn, only once per run. First, you will have to unlock his class at the Altar of Hope; then, when his banner shows up on the back wall of the inn, you have the option of hiring him until the next inn.
Use him to remplace a character who has a Negative Relationship with another. Since Relationships reset at the next inn, the subbed-out character can come back to the party with a fresh mindset.
For more information on Darkest Dungeon II, check Darkest Dungeon 2 DLC marks the return of The Crusader on Pro Game Guides.
Ian Neiman began his gaming journey with Age of Empires 2, back when computer mice still had rolling balls underneath. Since then, he has developed a passion for anything medieval and found a special love for fantasy books and tabletop RPGs. Nowadays, he dedicates his time to gaming, watching F1, brewing coffee, and crafting storylines for his Dungeons & Dragons campaigns.