Darkest Dungeon: Difference between revisions
In radiance, may we find victory...
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(In radiance, may we find victory...) |
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* [[Go Mad from the Revelation]]: Several enemies (Madmen and the Prophet {{spoiler|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. {{spoiler|In the ending, the Ancestor implies that the Heir is next.}}
* [[Idiosyncratic Difficulty Levels]]: Dungeons are labeled as Apprentice (balanced for heroes of resolve level 0-2), Veteran (2-4), Champion (4-6), and [[Harder Than Hard|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 {{spoiler|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.
* [[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.
* [[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. {{spoiler|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.
* [[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 Screw]]ing 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. {{spoiler|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..." {{spoiler|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...?" {{spoiler|+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."
* [[Shout-Out]]: The default name of the Occultist is "Alhazred", named for the author of the Necronomicon in the [[Cthulhu Mythos]].
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