Darkest Dungeon Gets Deep With Latest Watery Update

[PatrickJS]

Darkest Dungeon Gets Deep With Latest Watery Update

Early Access game Darkest Dungeon adds its long-awaited fourth module, The Cove, in its latest update.

It's no secret that The Escapist loves Darkest Dungeon [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/14373-Darkest-Dungeon-Early-Access-Preview-Impressions#&gid=gallery_4459&pid=1]; it shouldn't come as a surprise, then, that we are very excited about the game's latest update, Those From Below, which is set to go live on the 29th of September.

Why, that's just a few hours from now [https://twitter.com/DarkestDungeon/status/648581158632951808]! C'mon, Steam, don't quit on me now...

The update activates the game's fourth dungeon, The Cove. The watery graveyard joins The Weald, The Ruins, and The Warrens that Early Access users have been enjoying (or despising, depending on how their Virtue checks go). Along with the fresh locale players will be facing new monsters, new bosses, new curios and no doubt a good amount of surprises.

For the uninitiated, Darkest Dungeon is a rogue-like RPG. It is grim and grimy down to its core, and the game's mechanics - unforgiving difficulty, sudden death, madness [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/previews/12926-Darkest-Dungeon-Preview-Red-Hook-Studios#&gid=gallery_3765&pid=1] - play into its theme quite well. If you've wanted to see what a randomly generated anti-hero looks like, this is the game for you. I think I have accidentally made a few Hamlets (no pun intended), then watched them die at the hands or hooves of mutated pig-men.

Just like Shakespeare would have wanted.

Source: Darkest Dungeon [http://www.darkestdungeon.com/]

Permalink

 

[Erttheking]

*Cracks knuckles* now for the million dollar question. Should I keep going with my current file or start a fresh one?

Ah the fuck with it, a fresh one...WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY KNUCKLES ARE BROKEN NOW!?

 

[The Wykydtron]

I hope they make the game better with this update. Hopefully with enemies where the strategy comes down to more than stack Bleed and/or stack Blight DoTs so each enemy takes like a billion damage the moment their turn starts. Also praying for crits gets old after awhile. I'm officially a lucky dickhead (my friends words not mine) because we all played our own DD campaigns for two weeks straight in a LAN party and I got the good side of the Virtue system every single time. For two whole weeks. Esports.

Still one of the best Early Access games Steam has though, it's kinda getting worse in my eyes though. Corpses were a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb, bad, terrible and dumb idea. The mechanic feels like a classic case of adding difficulty for difficulty's sake. The old mistake of asking "what can we do to make the game harder?" instead of "what can we do to make the game more interesting?" AKA Dark Souls 2 Syndrome.

 

[Erttheking]

I hope they make the game better with this update. Hopefully with enemies where the strategy comes down to more than stack Bleed and/or stack Blight DoTs so each enemy takes like a billion damage the moment their turn starts. Also praying for crits gets old after awhile. I'm officially a lucky dickhead (my friends words not mine) because we all played our own DD campaigns for two weeks straight in a LAN party and I got the good side of the Virtue system every single time. For two whole weeks. Esports.

Still one of the best Early Access games Steam has though, it's kinda getting worse in my eyes though. Corpses were a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb, bad, terrible and dumb idea. The mechanic feels like a classic case of adding difficulty for difficulty's sake. The old mistake of asking "what can we do to make the game harder?" instead of "what can we do to make the game more interesting?" AKA Dark Souls 2 Syndrome.

Well on the plus side, they added an option that lets you take the corpses out, so at the very least it shows that they're listening to fan feedback on that front.

 

[D3s_ToD3s]

What gives me a headache, is their idea of balancing.

It is either OP or they Overcompensate.

Hellion for example still gets a 20% damage debuff and -15 Dodge for 3 or 4 turns, for the audacity to use her 3 target AoE attack once. On the other hand we have the Dog handler, wich has a 4 target AoE that stacks Bleeding on the enemy with no repercussion.

We have a Boss enemy, that can appear randomly if your torch is low enough, that has a spawn function that spawns up to 2 enemies in the front positions, moving itself to the rear, whos' spawns buff themselves by attacking, who has as much health as a boss... and so on...

The Curssader Heal Skill takes several turns to repair the damage of one hit while beeing useless in the frontline. Dont get me started on the "Inspiring Cry" skill. They take more stress if an enemy farts than this skill repairs.

The "Heart Attack"... why instant death? Not Deaths Door? If RNGesus decides to screw you, you can loose your party out of the blue that way. (from 150 to 200 on multiple characters within a single turn isn't exactly something you would expect)

Am i wrong for thinking "Balancing" should mean "Tweaking Stats till complaints trickle"? Why didn't they change the "Damage Base" stat of said Hellion over the last half year till the people shut up about her?

 

[Ryallen]

I hope they make the game better with this update. Hopefully with enemies where the strategy comes down to more than stack Bleed and/or stack Blight DoTs so each enemy takes like a billion damage the moment their turn starts. Also praying for crits gets old after awhile. I'm officially a lucky dickhead (my friends words not mine) because we all played our own DD campaigns for two weeks straight in a LAN party and I got the good side of the Virtue system every single time. For two whole weeks. Esports.

Still one of the best Early Access games Steam has though, it's kinda getting worse in my eyes though. Corpses were a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb, bad, terrible and dumb idea. The mechanic feels like a classic case of adding difficulty for difficulty's sake. The old mistake of asking "what can we do to make the game harder?" instead of "what can we do to make the game more interesting?" AKA Dark Souls 2 Syndrome.

Well on the plus side, they added an option that lets you take the corpses out, so at the very least it shows that they're listening to fan feedback on that front.

Normally, I would agree with you, but the devs have said that they consider the game with the corpses on to be the "true" game, so basically they just added a box in which you put your metaphorical balls into while they give you a condescending/pitying look.

 

[thewatergamer]

Did they unbreak the balance by fixing corpses and heart attacks? Because if not I don't care

 

[Erttheking]

I hope they make the game better with this update. Hopefully with enemies where the strategy comes down to more than stack Bleed and/or stack Blight DoTs so each enemy takes like a billion damage the moment their turn starts. Also praying for crits gets old after awhile. I'm officially a lucky dickhead (my friends words not mine) because we all played our own DD campaigns for two weeks straight in a LAN party and I got the good side of the Virtue system every single time. For two whole weeks. Esports.

Still one of the best Early Access games Steam has though, it's kinda getting worse in my eyes though. Corpses were a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb, bad, terrible and dumb idea. The mechanic feels like a classic case of adding difficulty for difficulty's sake. The old mistake of asking "what can we do to make the game harder?" instead of "what can we do to make the game more interesting?" AKA Dark Souls 2 Syndrome.

Well on the plus side, they added an option that lets you take the corpses out, so at the very least it shows that they're listening to fan feedback on that front.

Normally, I would agree with you, but the devs have said that they consider the game with the corpses on to be the "true" game, so basically they just added a box in which you put your metaphorical balls into while they give you a condescending/pitying look.

Don't you think you're overreacting a bit? I mean clearly they don't consider corpses to be done yet so they're still working on them. I think what they meant was that they want corpses to be part of the final product, but they're not perfected yet.

 

[Ryallen]

I hope they make the game better with this update. Hopefully with enemies where the strategy comes down to more than stack Bleed and/or stack Blight DoTs so each enemy takes like a billion damage the moment their turn starts. Also praying for crits gets old after awhile. I'm officially a lucky dickhead (my friends words not mine) because we all played our own DD campaigns for two weeks straight in a LAN party and I got the good side of the Virtue system every single time. For two whole weeks. Esports.

Still one of the best Early Access games Steam has though, it's kinda getting worse in my eyes though. Corpses were a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb, bad, terrible and dumb idea. The mechanic feels like a classic case of adding difficulty for difficulty's sake. The old mistake of asking "what can we do to make the game harder?" instead of "what can we do to make the game more interesting?" AKA Dark Souls 2 Syndrome.

Well on the plus side, they added an option that lets you take the corpses out, so at the very least it shows that they're listening to fan feedback on that front.

Normally, I would agree with you, but the devs have said that they consider the game with the corpses on to be the "true" game, so basically they just added a box in which you put your metaphorical balls into while they give you a condescending/pitying look.

Don't you think you're overreacting a bit? I mean clearly they don't consider corpses to be done yet so they're still working on them. I think what they meant was that they want corpses to be part of the final product, but they're not perfected yet.

I'll wait and see, but as far as I can tell, they caved to the people who didn't think that the game was hard enough and adding the option to remove corpses and making that statement seemed like it was condescending towards people who aren't a fan of unfair difficulty.

 

[Erttheking]

I hope they make the game better with this update. Hopefully with enemies where the strategy comes down to more than stack Bleed and/or stack Blight DoTs so each enemy takes like a billion damage the moment their turn starts. Also praying for crits gets old after awhile. I'm officially a lucky dickhead (my friends words not mine) because we all played our own DD campaigns for two weeks straight in a LAN party and I got the good side of the Virtue system every single time. For two whole weeks. Esports.

Still one of the best Early Access games Steam has though, it's kinda getting worse in my eyes though. Corpses were a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb, bad, terrible and dumb idea. The mechanic feels like a classic case of adding difficulty for difficulty's sake. The old mistake of asking "what can we do to make the game harder?" instead of "what can we do to make the game more interesting?" AKA Dark Souls 2 Syndrome.

Well on the plus side, they added an option that lets you take the corpses out, so at the very least it shows that they're listening to fan feedback on that front.

Normally, I would agree with you, but the devs have said that they consider the game with the corpses on to be the "true" game, so basically they just added a box in which you put your metaphorical balls into while they give you a condescending/pitying look.

Don't you think you're overreacting a bit? I mean clearly they don't consider corpses to be done yet so they're still working on them. I think what they meant was that they want corpses to be part of the final product, but they're not perfected yet.

I'll wait and see, but as far as I can tell, they caved to the people who didn't think that the game was hard enough and adding the option to remove corpses and making that statement seemed like it was condescending towards people who aren't a fan of unfair difficulty.

Seemed is the key word here. Frankly, you're overthinking it.

And people who liked corpses are complaining that RedHook caved when they made corpses optional because "the whiners won" so frankly it doesn't really seem like those are the people that RedHook are mindlessly pandering to.

 

[Ryallen]

I hope they make the game better with this update. Hopefully with enemies where the strategy comes down to more than stack Bleed and/or stack Blight DoTs so each enemy takes like a billion damage the moment their turn starts. Also praying for crits gets old after awhile. I'm officially a lucky dickhead (my friends words not mine) because we all played our own DD campaigns for two weeks straight in a LAN party and I got the good side of the Virtue system every single time. For two whole weeks. Esports.

Still one of the best Early Access games Steam has though, it's kinda getting worse in my eyes though. Corpses were a dumb, dumb, stupid, dumb, bad, terrible and dumb idea. The mechanic feels like a classic case of adding difficulty for difficulty's sake. The old mistake of asking "what can we do to make the game harder?" instead of "what can we do to make the game more interesting?" AKA Dark Souls 2 Syndrome.

Well on the plus side, they added an option that lets you take the corpses out, so at the very least it shows that they're listening to fan feedback on that front.

Normally, I would agree with you, but the devs have said that they consider the game with the corpses on to be the "true" game, so basically they just added a box in which you put your metaphorical balls into while they give you a condescending/pitying look.

Don't you think you're overreacting a bit? I mean clearly they don't consider corpses to be done yet so they're still working on them. I think what they meant was that they want corpses to be part of the final product, but they're not perfected yet.

I'll wait and see, but as far as I can tell, they caved to the people who didn't think that the game was hard enough and adding the option to remove corpses and making that statement seemed like it was condescending towards people who aren't a fan of unfair difficulty.

Seemed is the key word here. Frankly, you're overthinking it.

And people who liked corpses are complaining that RedHook caved when they made corpses optional because "the whiners won" so frankly it doesn't really seem like those are the people that RedHook are mindlessly pandering to.

Again, I would like to say that, but the fact remains that they outright said that the version with the corpses included is the real version of the game and they added the removal to appease those who didn't like them, like if Dark Souls added an easy mode and Miyazaki said that the normal mode was the real version. I really can't out it any simpler that they said that the corpses mode is the real mode.

 

[Dragonlayer]

*Cracks knuckles* now for the million dollar question. Should I keep going with my current file or start a fresh one?

Ah the fuck with it, a fresh one...WHAT DO YOU MEAN MY KNUCKLES ARE BROKEN NOW!?

I'd recommend against exploring the twisted and sprawling abyss that lies beneath your damned estate with a fresh save, the fish folk motherfuckers introduced in the Cove are absolutely fucking murderous to a brand new party, reliably carving up every single party member into bloody chunks with each attack. I only *just* managed to finish one short scouting quest with my level six, uber veteran party simply because they could heal each other and themselves much more effectively then the greenhorns!

OT

Hooray! I've just spent a night investigating the brand new environment and getting my Lovecraftian arse handed to me with depressing regularity by the new enemies; I can foresee a bit of balancing work needed in the near future. Still, damn cool new artwork and a rather snazzy combat soundtrack that sounds suspiciously similar to the Skellige combat pieces from Witcher 3 more than compensate.