Darkest Dungeon

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

Ruin has come to our family. [...] You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial. It is a festering abomination! I beg you, return home, claim your birthright and deliver our family from the ravenous clutching shadows of the Darkest Dungeon.

Darkest Dungeon is a 2016 Roguelike/Dungeon Crawling video game by Red Hook Games in which the player takes on the role of an heir to a once-proud but now-fallen noble house. The heir is summoned to the old estate by a letter from his ancestor, which explains that he heard rumors of great power dwelling beneath the manor, spent the family fortune excavating it, and unearthed terrible things. The player then recruits, equips and dispatches teams of heroes into various dungeons surrounding the manor to put down the monsters that have come to dwell there, and clean up the Ancestor's mess.

DLC includes The Crimson Court (introduced June 2017) which introduces a new Brutal Bonus Level that can be tackled alongside the main campaign; The Color of Madness (June 2018) that introduces an Endless side mode with bosses of its own, and The Butcher's Circus (May 2020) which adds Player Versus Player content independent from the main campaign.

A sequel has been announced for release late in 2021. Confirmed for this sequel is Wayne June reprising his role as the Ancestor, and Grave Robber, Hellion, Highwayman, Leper, Man-at-Arms, and Plague Doctor returning as playable heroes. Promotional material seems to suggest the heroes will be delving far beyond the Hamlet of the first game, that they will be embarking on a "grueling journey" in which they would see the "supernatural apocalypse twisting and distorting the world beyond the estate".

Not to be confused with Dark Dungeons.

Tropes used in Darkest Dungeon include:
  • Afraid of Needles: Seems a common fear among the heroes, if their dialogue upon being admitted to the Sanatorium is any indication.
  • All of the Other Reindeer: Initially, Abomination could not be in a party with any of the church-affiliated classes; Crusader, Flagellant, Leper, and Vestal had some taboo against cooperating with lycanthropes. This was kind of odd, seeing as they were okay with seedy heroes like Grave Robber and Highwayman, and this was eliminated with the "Colour of Madness" DLC.
  • Amazon Brigade: It's actually pretty easy to build a competent party out of the female characters; several official Party Combos have a combination of the Antiquarian, the Arbalest, the Grave Robber, the Hellion, the Plague Doctor, and the Vestal.
  • Apocalyptic Log: Some of the rare finds in dungeons are diaries of adventurers from the Ancestor's days.
  • Artistic License Medicine: The Leper is supposed to be, as his name implies, suffering from leprosy, a disease that causes, among other things, atrophy of muscles, meaning lepers tend to be weak. However, this guy is very strong. While he’s clumsy and doesn’t hit as often as you’d like, when he does hit, he hits hard.
  • Ascended Meme: Wayne June, the voice of the narrator/Ancestor, recorded a set of Darkest Dungeon-themed voice notifications for streamers. It includes some Shout-Outs to Undertale, Dark Souls and "Truly, this is the Dankest Dungeon."
  • Announcer Chatter: The Ancestor provides commentary on battles, encounters and town events, but he doesn't really "chatter": he makes ominous, portentous comments about victory and/or doom.
  • Anti-Grinding: Missions are designed to discourage loitering. A completed mission rewards the same amount of Resolve XP no matter how many monsters you slay. Your inventory is limited which puts a cap on the rewards you get from additional encounters. Extended trips in a dungeon drains away the light level which makes combat riskier and piles on the Stress.
  • Arc Symbol: The "Stress" symbol (which is, incidentally, an "arc symbol" with lines through it, resembling a thorny halo) begins to figure more and more prominently on enemy attire and the architecture as the heroes plumb greater depths of the dungeons.
  • Armor-Piercing Attack: The Shieldbreaker's "Pierce" skill and Grave Robber's "Pick to the Face" skill completely ignore the enemy PROT stat, making them highly effective against enemy tanks. The Shieldbreaker's "Snake Eyes" Camp buff also allows her allies to temporarily bypass up to 15% of enemy PROT.
  • Army of Thieves and Whores: The brigands which inhabit the Weald are such an army, and the player's roster of heroes may not be much better.
  • Awesome but Impractical/Boring but Practical: There is almost always a trade between effectiveness and reliability when it comes to heroes. The Vestal, for example, has two reliable healing abilities, but only heals for a few HP each turn. The Occultist, on the other hand, can heal a hero up to 100%, or heal for zero HP, or even inflict bleeding, depending on the whims of the Random Number God. Likewise, heavy-hitting heroes tend to be squishy, inaccurate, or costly or limited in some other way.
  • Badass Preacher : Vestal is the best healer in the game, but she’s no pushover in melee combat either. Of course, you’ll rarely need her for that, as she’s much better in the back, healing the much tougher fighters.
  • Body Horror: Many of the enemies (especially the swinefolk) are quite horrific. The Ancestor and Heart of Darkness can also inflict Body Horror on the heroes as an attack.

Ancestor: "The flesh is fluid, it could be changed, reshaped, remade!"

  • Bonus Boss:
    • Should you be curious, confident, or foolish enough to either sacrifice a torch to a Shambler's Altar or wander the dungeons at zero light, you will encounter the Shambler. Its unusual mechanics and introduction of increasingly deadly tentacles make it a very tough boss to fight, and serves as a deterrent to going full darkness. But should you best it, you are awarded with a unique Ancestral Trinket.
    • The Shrieker is a giant crow mutated by the corruption of the Weald. Defeating it is very difficult due to its high Dodge and PROT, on top of the fact that it escapes in four turns. However, your main objective is usually to destroy its nest to reap great treasures, alongside any Trinkets you would normally get by surviving four turns. Managing to defeat the Shrieker offers little reward other than increased chance of beneficial Shrieker Quirks.
  • Book Ends: "Ruin has come to our family." It's the first thing you hear when you start the game, and the last line of the post-final boss cutscene.
  • Combat Exclusive Healing: Your strongest sources of healing typically come from combat. Food doesn't restore much unless you're camping. You can deliberately stall a battle to buy extra in-combat turns to heal, but the game will trigger enemy reinforcements if you don't finish the battle soon.
  • Combat Sadomasochist: Flagellant is a sort of extremist monk who becomes stronger via self-mutilation. It's not pretty, but it works, the pain making him a Blood Knight bruiser who does not know when to quit.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: Creepy ancient manor? Check. Eccentric ancestor unleashed horrible eldritch things from beneath it? Check. The end of the world is inevitable, if not now, then some generations later? Check. Things become even more cosmic in The Color of Madness, where you fight incredibly alien monstrosities.
  • Critical Existence Failure: Downplayed. When a character falls to Death's Door, they are still able to fight and may even shake off would-be Deathblows if you're lucky. However, that character is still saddled with significant debuffs until you heal them to take them off Death's Door, on top of the risk of any other point of damage having a chance to finish them off. If you heal a character off Death's Door, you're not completely in the clear, since they will still have a Death's Door Recovery debuff that is less severe but persists for the rest of the mission.
  • Critical Hit: A significant game mechanic. Enemy critical hits not only inflict more damage, they'll spread Stress around the party on top of whatever they do normally. On the other hand, your critical hits not just deal extra damage, but also provide some Stress relief to the one dealing the crit and maybe the rest of your party. Your healing skills can crit as well, restoring double the usual amount and removing some stress from the recipient.
  • Critical Status Buff: If the Flagellant falls to low health, he'll enjoy a DMG and CRIT bonus while at that health threshold. If he falls to Death's Door, he gains even more buffs on top, and is exempt from the regular Death's Door debuffs. This encourages his deadly but risky play style.
  • Damage Over Time: The Blight and Bleed effects do this to the heroes, but they can inflict both on monsters too. Bleed doesn't work on skeletons, but it does work on the Mushroom Men in the Weald.
  • Dem Bones: Skeletons will likely be the first mooks you encounter in the Ruins, which will likely be the first dungeon you tackle. Bone Rabble are the weakest, followed by Bone Soldiers, Bone Courtiers, Bone Arbalists, Bone Defenders, Bone Captains, Bone Spearmen, and Bone Bearers. The Necromancer is the boss behind all Dem Bones.
  • Diabolus Ex Nihilo: The Ancestor's notes give detailed information on most of the bosses, but information on the Collector is sparse. Exactly what it is or where it came from is a mystery.
  • Downloadable Content: The Musketeer, The Crimson Court, The Shieldbreaker and The Color of Madness.
  • Driven to Suicide: The opening cutscene implies that the Ancestor committed suicide after writing the letter to his heir. The final boss battle implies that this may not have been exactly the case. He also suggests that the Heir may be Driven to Suicide himself.
  • Dysfunction Junction: As the backstory comics reveal, every hero who comes to the hamlet has their own grim backstory. Made more explicit with the achievement "Dysfunction", earned by defeating a boss while your whole party is Afflicted.
  • Easter Egg: The long winding corridor leading to the Final Boss has an unmarked secret room. Inside is a note from Red Hook thanking the player.
  • Evil Is Not Well Lit: Naturally, these dungeons are pretty dark. Exploring them without a light source will actually gain your party more treasure, but will also stress them faster.
  • Exact Words: Boss missions are completed if you defeat the associated boss. If it's a Flunky Boss whose minions don't disappear with it, it's also possible to get wiped out by that minion after your team has killed it. The mission will still be marked as a success, but the team wipe that happened can make that a Pyrrhic Victory.
  • Face Death with Dignity: If you are forced to sacrifice a hero to "Come Unto Your Maker", they will say their last words as you hover over them while thinking over your decision. Some beg to be spared, while others are ready to go out in a blaze of glory. Some, like the Leper and Man-at-Arms, calmly receive their death.
  • Fate Worse Than Death: Purposely sending your loyal minions to their deaths is bad enough, Dismissing them - an easy way to get rid of a hero who isn’t worth healing - might be even worse. The Ancestor describes dismissed heroes as “Slumped shoulders, wild eyes, and a stumbling gait — this one is no more good to us.”
  • Fish People: Most mobs in the Cove are this; that’s another Lovecraft reference, this one to The Shadow Over Innsmouth. A set of journal pages also detail the point of view of someone transforming into the fishfolk after being infected in battle with one of them.
  • Gameplay and Story Segregation:
    • Classes in this game are sort of like the characters in Team Fortress 2. Each of them is a unique individual with his or her own backstory, personality, and motivations. Now you will lose some (many a lot) of them over the course of the game, and unless you're using Easy Mode, they stay dead. But, the same class can be recruited multiple times, and you can even have multiple members of a class on the party at one time.
    • The Vestal's backstory makes her a Celibate Hero, but she can still use the brothel's services if the player tells her to. Lampshaded with one dialogue when she does, as she bribes them to "forget" she was there.
  • Game Mod: Mods are available for this game that let players design classes, monsters, skills, and even entire dungeons. You know, for players who think the game isn’t difficult enough. The developers encourage this, displaying the best mods on their official website.
  • Giant Space Flea From Nowhere: The Collector, sort of. While he does seem like something that would be well at home with the other eldritch horrors, most of the monsters you encounter have a detailed and complex backstory. The Collector has none, he's just... there, often showing up before you're ready for such a fight.
  • Grave Robbing:
    • Grave Robber, of course, although she's far better at fighting monsters than she is at stealing from tombs.
    • You can find graves in the Weald, and expend a shovel to get some treasures.

"Looks like grave robbing pays off sometimes!"

    • The Collector is an undead boss who collects the skulls or corpses of its victims, and possibly their souls as well.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: Several enemies (Madmen and the Prophet and perhaps the Ancestor) already have, and as stress mounts, the heroes run the risk of following them. Some enemy attacks explicitly revolve around revealing unsettling things to the heroes to increase their stress and provoke their fall into madness. In the ending, the Ancestor implies that the Heir is next.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power: The Antiquarian, full stop. She’s not a good fighter, she only has one skill that can benefit party members other than herself, but she doubles the amount of loot you get from both monsters and Curios. Thus, she greatly reduces the need to grind, one of the most reviled Scrappy Mechanics in video games.
  • Heroic Sacrifice:
    • If you have to retreat from a Darkest-level mission, you must sacrifice one hero in your current party to hold the line and ensure that everyone else escapes.
    • Flagellant is a hero that seems too eager to make a Heroic Sacrifice, and even seems made for this purpose. He’s not easy to kill and can recover from wounds and stress pretty easy (seeing as he benefits from both), but if he actually dies, the other heroes are buffed AND the monsters are stunned! Talk about a Dying Moment of Awesome.
  • Hearing Voices: Maybe, maybe not. It is left ambiguous whether the Ancestor's words are being read from a text or whether the Heir is hearing his voice due to an actual curse, Sanity Slippage or both.
  • Hollywood Heart Attack: If a hero receives so much stress that they max out the gauge at 200, they will receive a Heart Attack that immediately puts them to Death's Door, and sets their Stress back to 170. If that hero was already on Death's Door, they immediately die, bypassing Deathblow resistance. A Virtuous hero going to 200 Stress, however, will simply lose the Virtue and reset to 0 Stress.
  • Holy Burns Evil: Zigzagged. Holy Water is a common item in this game, but you don't use it on monsters. Rather, you use it to sanctify cursed altars (which you can then use to buff or heal your party) or on piles of bones (to gain loot from them) or to give them protection against conditions.
  • Human Shield: A common strategy in this game. You should always have the tanky bruisers in the front two slots and the healers and spellcasters in the back two. This is why attacks that shuffle your positions are such a pain. Monsters tend to use this strategy too, but the shuffling techniques can also work for the heroes.
  • Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels:
    • Dungeons are labeled as Apprentice (balanced for heroes of resolve level 0-2), Veteran (3-4), Champion (5-6) and Darkest (challenging even for 6's).
    • The game itself can be played in Radiant, Darkest and Stygian modes. Radiant isn't really "easy", per se, but some mechanics are changed to allow the game to be completed more rapidly (e.g. experience gain is increased, reducing the number of missions required to level up heroes). Darkest is the normal difficulty, and Stygian (the former New Game+ mode) makes the enemies tougher, locks the difficulty options to maximum, and places a timer and death limit before the Heart of Darkness wakes up and the player loses.
  • Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: Not only are they single-use, but each one costs money during provisioning. Sometimes the Random Number God will smile and bestow extras during a dungeon, but in general, it's up to the player to guess how many they will probably need for the coming mission and purchase accordingly.
  • Inventory Management Puzzle: You have limited inventory space to carry your party's supplies, including food, torches, shovels, and keys. Any treasure you find also takes up inventory space. Eventually you will be forced to a Sadistic Choice: Will you discard some supplies to make room for loot?

Ancestor: "Packs laden with loot are often low on supplies"

  • Inverse Law of Sharpness and Accuracy: The Leper is a class you'll have accuracy from the start, and while he is very strong and deals a lot of damage when he hits an enemy, his accuracy isn't so hot, and he tends to miss his target about a fourth of the time.
  • Kleptomaniac Hero: Your starting Crusader, Reynauld, is guaranteed to come with the "Kleptomania" negative quirk, and he may randomly steal the loot you'd normally acquire from a curio or treasure chest, denying you the spoils. The Sanitarium doesn't unlock until after you've gone on a few quests, giving the game enough opportunity for this quirk to trigger and demonstrate the importance of managing your heroes' quirks.
  • Last Chance Hit Point: If any hero goes to 0 HP, they don't immediately die, and instead fall to Death's Door and take several combat penalties. From there, any hit they take has a 33% chance (at base) to inflict a Deathblow which instantly kills them. Receiving any amount of healing will take them out of Death's Door but still saddle them with a Mortality debuff, which is a lesser version of the Death's Door debuff.
    • Averted with the signature move of the Final Boss, "Come Unto Your Maker". When it triggers, you must choose a hero to sacrifice. The chosen hero will die, and there's no preventing it.
  • Limited Move Arsenal: Each hero can learn up to seven skills (both combat and camping) but can only activate four of each. If you're outside combat, you can switch a hero's skills on the fly, but there's no telling what kind of non-boss enemy you'll be facing, and when.
  • Lovecraft Lite: If you're a fan of Cthulhu Mythos stories, it's easy to see the references in this game. To give one example, the questline at the Farmstead is a clear Homage to The Colour Out of Space.
  • Luck-Based Mission: Dungeon layouts are randomized, and while they have "Apprentice", "Veteran" and "Champion" designations, there is still a wide variation of difficulties within each, and party and trinket choices add even more variables to the pot.
  • The Man Behind the Monsters: Almost every monstrosity and abomination can in some way be traced back to the Ancestor's foul experiments and research.
  • Man of Kryptonite:
    • Crusader has a skill called Smite which is extra-effective against undead foes, making him very useful in the ruins, especially against the Necromancer.
    • Antiquarian isn’t a good fighter, but having her in the party increases the treasure you gain. So she’s an excellent choice when going up against the Siren, seeing as its no big deal if she is hypnotized and turned against the party, and Bosses tend to have a lot of treasure.
  • Martial Medic: Plague Doctor is this, full stop. She's a decent healer who can cure disease, bleeding, and blight, but also has AOE attacks that can stun enemies, blight them, or even shuffle their positions.
  • Marathon Level: The penultimate mission is so long that its length is labelled "Exhausting" (one step above "Long") and you get four sets of firewood for the occasion! It involves traversing a massive map that is guarded by mini-bosses that love to teleport you to another corner of the map, disorienting you on your journey to reach the goal.
  • Metal Slime: To be frank, the first time you fight the Collector isn't going to be the last, but at least its defeat yields a very valuable crystal. The Shambler is almost as bad, but at least you are guaranteed to gain an Ancestral Trinket if you defeat him.
  • Mysterious Backer: The Ancestor starts out this way. As your heroes explore, however, you find out more and more about him, and probably wish he had stayed "mysterious".
  • Obvious Rule Patch:
    • Stuns forced an enemy to skip its turn, and if you've stunned the entire enemy party you basically have a free turn for setup or to heal. This led to players stalling battles by chain-stunning stragglers so that they can top up the party with Combat Exclusive Healing. The strategy has since been nerfed by making combatants harder to stun in succession, and by adding a chance for enemy reinforcements to arrive if the player drags out a fight for too long.
    • The Brigand Pounder used to have 50% PROT. With the introduction of the Armor Piercing attribute in the update that came with the Shieldbreaker DLC, the Pounder was edited to have 25% PROT (that can be bypassed by Armor Piercing) and a unique -25% DMG received buff (which cannot be bypassed).
    • A battle with the Shrieker could be trivialized by deploying a single Grave Robber and spamming Shadow Fade to stay Stealthed until the Shrieker flies off. A patch in 2018 allowed all of the Shrieker's skills to bypass Stealth to counter this strategy.
  • Pig Man: The Swine King and his minions are incredibly ugly versions of this found in the Warrens. According to the Ancestor, these are the result of his attempts to summon beings from the "outer spheres" using common pigs as vessels. Clearly, it didn't go as he planned... This area is not based on a Lovecraft work, but on William Hope Hodgson's The House on the Borderland, a work that did inspire Lovecraft.
  • Police Are Useless: Downplayed. At first, the Ancestor was able to bribe the constabulary, but as his atrocities became more blatant and more horrendous, they turned against him. This led to him making deals with the Brigands to terrorize the townfolk into submission, who would quickly become corrupted by the horrors of the Dungeon.
  • Posthumous Narration: The Ancestor is implied to have committed suicide shortly after writing the letter that summoned the Heir, but that doesn't stop him from commenting on everything that his Heir does. Or maybe he's not so 'posthumous' after all.
  • Random Number God: Hitting, critting, dodging, blighting, bleeding, debuffing, stressing, hero deaths and in some cases healing are all based on rolls of the dice. The player can upgrade hero equipment and skills, and use trinkets or certain supplies to improve their odds, but rarely is any action truly certain to succeed.
  • Right Makes Might: Getting a powerful crit on an enemy might lower that hero's stress.
  • Sanity Meter: Each hero has a stress meter. Enemy critical strikes, certain attacks or unsettling curio encounters increase it, and player critical strikes and some player abilities reduce it (as does spending time at the Tavern or Abbey). There's no Interface Screwing as the stress mounts, since it's not really tracking sanity per se, but when it reaches 100, the hero is "tested" and will obtain a virtue (e.g. "Stalwart") or, more likely, an affliction (e.g. "Abusive") until their stress is reduced. If the hero becomes afflicted, their stress can mount higher still, until reaching 200, when the hero suffers a heart attack and risks dying (a Virtuous hero cannot increase above 100 stress, though the effect only lasts for the duration of the expedition).
  • Schmuck Bait:
    • Many curios are more troublesome than they are worth, such as books and corpses (unless the proper item is used... though even if the player knows this, heroes with certain quirks have a probability of touching them anyway), but a few are downright cheeky, such as the Shambler's Altar. "Place a torch if you crave the void!" Suuuuure. The torch gets dropped to zero, and the heroes get sent into the "outer spheres" and fight the Shambler.
    • Likewise, the "Bandit's Trapped Chest" in the tutorial: "Something is not quite right with this one..." Enjoy your blight if you have the hero touch it.
    • And in the Stygian (formerly New Game+) tutorial, the "Transcendent Terror": "Surely nothing good can come of a dialogue with the dead...?" +100 stress and an affliction for the rest of the dungeon... and the next dungeon as well, since no stress-relief activities are unlocked yet. Sometimes jokingly stated by fans as "Talk to the ghost in the tutorial to get your NG+ bonus!" for extra schmuck-baiting.
  • Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: The Ancestor has a pretty severe case of it, sometimes. "Monstrous size has no intrinsic merit, unless inordinate exsanguination be considered a virtue."
  • Sex for Solace: The brothel is expensive, but it can lower a party member's Sanity Meter back to safe levels quickly.
  • Shell-Shocked Veteran: Party members who succeed in a mission in the actual Darkest Dungeon, will gain a torch icon next to their name; unless you are playing at Radiant difficulty, these members will refuse to enter the Darkest Dungeon again. However, for all other dungeons, they become a bolster to morale granting 50% more XP party members without the icon. They also no longer take up a space in the Barracks.
  • Shoot the Medic First: Subverted with the Swine King. It always comes with its spotter Wilbur who marks your team to get it to strike your party, so most players would figure that it'll be helpless if Wilbur is taken care of first. However, the Swine King will retaliate whenever Wilbur is attacked, and if Wilbur dies before it does, it Turns Red and bashes your party over and over again with stronger attacks. If you do provoke a retaliation, your heroes will actively note that the Swine King is protecting its spotter and discourage you from going after Wilbur.
  • Shout-Out:
    • The default name of the Occultist is "Alhazred", named for the author of the Necronomicon in the Cthulhu Mythos.
    • The default Houndmaster's name is "Shag and Scoob".
    • Losing a hero to Wilbur earns the achievement "That'll do, pig..."
    • Defeating a Squiffy Ghast with a Jester earns the achievement "Mine Goes to 11".
  • Simple Yet Awesome:
    • Never underestimate the usefulness of a simple shovel, which can be bought in the Hamlet or found as treasure. Clearing debris blocking your path by hand can exhaust your party quickly, and shovels can do it much quicker.
    • Scouting bonuses don't contribute to battle, but it gives you the ability to see what's coming for the next passageway or two. This information helps you plan routes to optimize use of your supplies, and a random scouting trigger can rarely reveal a secret room that holds very valuable treasure.
  • Sistine Steal: The icon of the Occultist's "Unspeakable Commune" skill shows his finger reaching out towards a tentacle. Appropriate, given the allegation that humanity is born from the eldritch Thing that the Ancestor discovered.
  • Trauma Inn: Enforced. The tavern - be it the Bar, Brothel, or Gambling Hall - is the fastest but most expensive way to stabilize a hero's Sanity Meter.
  • Tome of Eldritch Lore: The Ancestor's journals, definitely.
    • Also, stacks of books you find in dungeons are best avoided. Your heroes might gain a positive Quirk or a Journal entry from them, but far more often you will get a negative Quirk, an increase in Stress, or a decrease in the Light Meter.
  • There Are No Tents:
    • Averted. While some early dungeons have no place to rest, larger ones have places to make campfires; depending on the size of the dungeon, they may have one, two, three, or in the case of the largest, four. However, it’s very possible to be ambushed by monsters unless a skill is used to prevent it.
    • You can find ruined tents in the Weald, and search them for leftover valuables and supplies. However, your heroes have a chance of discovering the grisly fate of its late occupants, and suffer from stress or develop a fear from the sight.
  • Town with a Dark Secret: Well, DUH. Kind of the whole plot.
  • Took a Level In Badass: Naturally, heroes who survive the quests gain XP and become stronger. However, this game is unique in that the dungeons level up too as each quest involving them is completed, with harder monsters, deadlier traps, and more treasure.
  • Unwinnable: Averted (outside of NG+): no matter how many heroes die, there will always be more, and while it costs money to upgrade them, they will join your roster for free. As the game says, "Heroes are a renewable resource."
  • The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Darkest Dungeon itself, with twisting passages, Alien Geometries and enemies that tax the heroes' (and the player's) sanity. Theoretically, it is accessible from the very beginning of the game, but it's not recommended to tackle it without leveling up some heroes to max in the other dungeons first...
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential:
    • A common tactic to rack up resources and break out of Early Game Hell is to make a team of fresh recruits from the stagecoach, run a mission without spending anything on supplies, and try to get as much loot as you can before you either complete the mission or are forced to retreat. Spend nothing on maintaining those recruits; if they're no longer of use to you, just dismiss them and repeat the cycle.
    • There is a Steam achievement, "Lambs to the Slaughter", obtained by sending a team of Level 0 recruits to the Darkest Dungeon.
    • If a hero has died and they were holding very valuable one-of-a-kind Trinkets, you can still recover them — equip a bunch of low-level recruits with cheap Trinkets and send them to their deaths. Once a total of 8 or more Trinkets (including the ones you want to retrieve) are lost through hero deaths, the Shrieker will pick them up and become available to fight, and then it's a matter of surviving the four turns to recover what you need.
    • If the "Wolves at the Door" mission is active but you don't have a team ready to handle it, you can always send a team of recruits to their death in this mission. Aborting or ignoring the quest otherwise would undo several of your building upgrades, while a party wipe will merely delay it.
  • Villain Protagonist: In many ways, the Ancestor is far more the central character of this story than the Heir is.
  • Villainous Glutton: The Pig Men of the Warrens will gladly consume their victims, but they also steal any other foodstuffs they can get their hands on, like grain. A possible Quest for the Warrens is to rob their grain pantries to starve them out and bolster the Hamlet’s supplies.
  • Wake Up Call Boss: The Collector is a miniboss that can show up at any location as any random encounter if your inventory is at least 85% full. If you have ways to target or pull out enemies at the back of the formation, he's manageable. If you don't, you'll be quickly reminded of its importance.
  • Warmup Boss: The Old Road could be considered a Warm Up Dungeon, but it's hard to call two "rooms" a "dungeon". Its an encounter with two characters - a Crusader and Highwayman - fighting a Brigand Cutthroat, with the fighting system explained during the fight.
  • Warp Whistle: Completing a quest lets your party immediately return to the Hamlet. You can stay and explore for more treasure, and return home as long as you're outside battle.
  • We Have Reserves: You will see your heroes die quite a bit, but there will always be more to fill their role, and the more you upgrade the Stagecoach, the more experienced new recruits will be.
  • A World Half Full: Despite the inevitable Cosmic Horror of the Heart of Darkness destroying the world when it wakes (and it will), the world is saved (for a while, anyway) not by paragons of virtue or mighty armies, but by a small band of flawed, imperfect humans.

Ancestor: These creatures can be felled, they can be beaten!

  • You Are Already Dead: You'll quickly learn exactly when it is safe to ignore a foe and focus on another; if a monster is low on health inflicted with Blight or Bleeding condition, said condition will do it in within a round or so, unless the group has a Mook Medic.
  • Xanatos Gambit: If you hadn't answered the Ancestor's summons, the Heart would have escaped in the future when the stars were right, and because you did answer, the resulting bloodshed and chaos have accelerated its awakening.
Tropes used in The Crimson Court DLC include:
  • Blood Magic: The Blood is a rare drop that can be found anywhere, though it is only useful for dealing with the cravings caused by the Crimson Curse.
  • Climax Boss: The Countess is the final boss of the Crimson Court, and her defeat unlocks the ability to treat the Crimson Curse as you would any normal disease. Prior to this point, anyone afflicted with the Crimson Curse is stuck with it until you beat one of the Crimson Court bosses.
  • Cursed with Awesome: The Crimson Curse adds another layer of management, as you must collect vials of The Blood to sate the cravings of your heroes when they inevitably get affected by it. Giving The Blood to anyone in the craving stage of the Curse temporarily puts them in Bloodlust, which bestows potent buffs but also causes them to act erratically as if they were Afflicted.
  • Deadly Decadent Court: The Ancestor relates stories of how, in his youth, he attended parties with Upper Class Twita like himself, which often lasted days or even weeks, and turned into orgies of lust or displays of physical violence. One guest was known to be such a glutton, he'd eat the leftovers at the buffets long after they'd spoiled. It was one of these parties where he confronted and brutally murdered the Countess - while she was no innocent, being a fiendish temptress, this is where his Start of Darkness began, as the Nasty Party entry below shows.
  • Knight Templar: The Fanatic is a zealous monk who's been excommunicated by the church and now operates alone in his crusade against the Crimson Curse. He can randomly show up if your party has two or more Cursed heroes, his presence hinted at by the level introduction screen bearing his shadowed face. Any Cursed hero he finds is immediately sentenced to the pyre.
  • Marathon Level: Levels in the Crimson Court can get long, and are labelled "Epic". You can even abort a Crimson Court mission midway and save your progress for a subsequent attempt. Some curios can also be smashed with Shovels to gain Firewood so that you can camp.
  • Money Sink: The Districts are a new feature introduced with this DLC, but they take a lot of building upgrade resources to develop and are often a luxury to the player. Above all is the Red Hook district, which is the most expensive district to develop, costing an enormous amount of gold and Crests for no benefit (except for an achievement).
  • Nasty Party: Emphasis on "nasty". After killing the Countess, the Ancestor drained her blood, bottled it into wine bottles, and at the next gathering, served it to the other nobles. Whether this was out of disgust towards them for their behavior or him viewing them as parasites living off his wealth is hard to say, nor is it known what he hoped to accomplish. Possibly he just assumed her corrupt blood would prove a poison that would give them a slow, agonizing death. But it didn't quite go the way he'd hoped. When his guests drank it, they turned into demonic abominations like the Countess, and all turned on each other. In his horror, he dropped his own glass (which of course, he never intended to drink from) and a single drop flew into his mouth. That one small taste opened his eyes, letting him see the horror that lurked below the Hamlet, a vision that gave him the urge to learn more...
  • Never Smile At a Crocodile: The Crocodilian is a Boss in Mook Clothing that stalks the Courtyard, possessing powerful attacks and a fairly tough hide while swimming about the vegetation to avoid attacks with strict positions. The first foray into the Courtyard guarantees an encounter with this creature to show how nasty the Courtyard can get; the Crocodilian can be found guarding valuable treasure in multiple parts of Epic Courtyard missions.
  • Non-Indicative Difficulty: The Bloodmoon difficulty is the result of using Stygian modifiers in conjunction with the Crimson Court. To account for added content and its difficulty, the Game Over conditions have been relaxed ― You're only issued it if 16 (instead of 12) heroes die or you reach week 100 (instead of 86). You still only need to defeat the final boss of the main campaign to lift these limits, and the only consequence of completely ignoring the Crimson Court is an event that slightly weakens stress relief facilities and overrides all random events. To some, this makes Bloodmoon more lenient than Stygian.
  • One-Curse Limit: If anyone is afflicted with the Crimson Curse, it overrides any other diseases they would have and prevents them from getting any other disease.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: For one thing, they're Not Using the V Word. Vampirism is referred to as the "Crimson Curse", and enemy vampires have the "Bloodsucker" type. The bloodsuckers themselves are themed after insects rather than bats. Some of the enemies are simply giant insects, while others initially appear human but then morph into insectile forms after drinking the heroes' blood.
  • Set Bonus: Each hero can acquire a pair of unique Trinkets that can only be found in Crimson Court missions. Using both Crimson Court Trinkets together bestows an additional boon to the hero.
  • Start of Darkness: The Crimson Court DLC reveals that the Ancestor was never a morally upstanding individual, but that his encounter with the Crimson Curse was what specifically set him on the path to discovering the Heart of Darkness and attempting to harness its power.
Tropes used in The Color of Madness DLC include:
  • Alien Invasion: The monsters in the Farmstead are thralls of an abomination from space, sleeping inside a gemstone-comet. This is a reference to Lovecraft’s The Colour Out of Space.
  • Sickly Green Glow: The general color scheme of this DLC, which makes everything involved feel more alien.
Tropes used in The Butcher's Circus DLC include:
  • Circus of Fear: While the setting of the Circus is portrayed like this, it's more in line with a gladiator arena, where teams of heroes are pitted against each other in fights to the death.
  • Comeback Mechanic: When either side is down to their last hero, that hero gains increased damage, accuracy and Deathblow resistance to help the losing player turn the battle around.
  • Divergent Character Evolution: In single player, the Arbalest and Musketeer have functionally identical skill sets. Here, while their main attacking skills are still the same, their support effects are different; for instance, the Arbalest's Illuminating Flare can clear Marks and debuffs, while the Musketeer's Skeet Shot clears Stealth and provides mild stress heal. However, because you can only use one copy of a hero in each team, fielding an Arbalest with a Musketeer means you can operate with two snipers.
  • No Saving Throw: In this mode, if a Jester's Finale brings anyone to below 0 HP, they die right away without even hitting Death's Door.
  • PVP-Balanced: Multiple changes are made to most heroes' skill sets to standardize them for PVP play.
    • Every hero of the same class is identical; there are no Quirks.
    • Players equip their heroes with Trinkets from a standardized pool. Though a new player will have a limited selection, they can eventually unlock the entire library of Trinkets after playing enough.
    • Rather than speed determining turn order, each player decides which of their heroes takes the next action.
    • Several moves that used to stun now inflict Daze, a less potent version that forces a hero to act after all other non-Dazed heroes on their side. Stun and Daze are still governed by the same resistance.
    • Several skills now inflict Stress on top of what they normally do. Every hero also has a base 0% Virtue chance to make inflicting Afflictions a viable end goal for Stress-based builds. If a hero is Virtuous but still hits 200 Stress, they will suffer from a Heart Attack normally like everyone else.
    • Bleed and Poison no longer cause Deathblows; the opponent must deal the killing blow by themselves. Repeated Deathblow attempts will deplete a hero's Deathblow resistance until they get taken off Death's Door, such that five consecutive attempts will kill a hero. Several skills also gain a bonus to inflicting Deathblows to make it easier to finish anyone off.
    • Dead heroes now leave corpses so that a Deathblow will not immediately throw a party's formation into disarray.
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