[Kickstarter] Darkest Dungeon

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 11:10 am

RMC wrote:I'm listening.

Ditto.

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 12:47 pm

RMC wrote:I have put this one on hold until it gets a little more polished is all. I like everything about it, but I hate all teh stuff you are talking about as well.

I'm getting close to putting it on hold as well. It's still missing two Dungeon areas and I don't want to burn myself out too badly before it's done... but I am enjoying it. I love the art and style, but wish I didn't feel so much like the RNG was just having it's way with me constantly.

It'd probably be controversial, but a few things I'd like to see are...

Re-balance trinkets to remove and/or diminish negatives. I seriously won't touch 90% of them because they're just not worth using. +4 Accuracy is not worth -3 Dodge. %20 Resist is not worth -16% Health. +3% Crit is barely worth -2 Speed (only because Speed seems irrelevant and it seems the hostiles always seem to have more anyway).
Penalize Crit chances on Stress damaging attacks, and massively so on AoE Stress attacks. It's bad enough that you're about to lose 10-20 Stress points, but it's downright horrendous that you could lose 30 + 10 more on every other adventurer. A single Crit from a Troll doing a total of 110 Stress damage across the entire party seems criminal.
Carry over unused Food, Torches, Bandages, etc... My people carry everything else out of the dungeon, but throw these away? If you don't want to add an inventory for them, at least refund the cost in the treasure screen.

Baroquen · Post by **Baroquen** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 9:30 pm

I'm in the same place. Waiting for them to put the other dungeon areas into the game. And I'm not getting too jacked out over current game mechanics/balance, as I expect to see more tweaking before all is said and done. I don't particularly like the various difficulties like stress and the +/- nature of trinkets, etc. but it's the devs game vision. I'll see what shakes out in later/final versions, but doubt it will impact my enjoyment of the game too much.

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Wed Apr 01, 2015 10:17 pm

Moved on to other shiny things. I'm sure I'll return when the game is fully fleshed out.

IceBear · Post by **IceBear** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 9:08 am

And that's why I never bother to install most games I kickstart or get in early access. No point in getting tired of it before it's officially released, which would happen with me for sure

Paingod · Post by **Paingod** » Thu Apr 02, 2015 12:10 pm

IceBear wrote:And that's why I never bother to install most games I kickstart or get in early access. No point in getting tired of it before it's officially released, which would happen with me for sure

I left the "Anonymously Collect Data" toggle on, so hopefully my endeavors are helping development along.

I'm trying not to get too worked up or take it too seriously. I believe, though, that the game is likely at a stage where balancing isn't going to be on a massive scale but more a tweaking - and the mechanics are probably very close to where they'll finish.

I had a great party last night - finally - one designed to run completely Dark. It's relies entirely on the fact that you get ++Critical Hits when you're in the dark, and uses classes that have naturally high Critical Hit scores to begin with.

Jester has 4 skills that can be used in the 1st position. His primary attack is a Lunge that can shift him from 3rd or 2nd back to 1st. His next best is a "Finishing Move" that debuffs him, but with a large bonus to critical hit. Another great opener if you have 4 foes and Surprise to waste a round is a -10 Accuracy debuff that can hit every enemy. His weakest is a Bleed attack that hits the middle of the enemy group. Slotted with a couple +Evade items and he's suddenly difficult to hit as well.
Graverobber works well in the 2nd position and can tackle most traps safely. She gets a lot of range hits that can strike one or two foes and excels at taking down the back-row enemies.
Occultist with a Pull, a Dagger, a Heal, and a Curse makes a nice 3rd slot. He's also got a high base Crit. His healing can be iffy, but powerful if it triggers right... and not so cool if he rolls a "0" but succeeds in causing Bleed.
Vestel because I've decided every party should have one. Stun, Ranged, Party Heal, and Heal. The Party Heal is an unbeatable savior if you have more than one character on Death's Door.

This group ran through two dungeons without Torches and came out with only 5-10 Sanity damage per character at the end of each. During each combat round it seemed like I was guaranteed at least one Critical Hit as every attack was 20-25% chance to Crit.

What this group couldn't tackle was the Apprentice Necromancer in the dark. I should never ever fight a boss in the dark again. They don't need a damage buff to make them harder. I lost my awesome party after killing the Necro but being unable to kill his last two skeletons before they took out my last character - a Healer who could only heal herself each turn.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Tue May 19, 2015 7:02 pm

Steam keys have been released to those who backed the KS at the lowest level. I've played around a little and reeeeeeally love the mood. But I think I'll wait for the full release before I dive in hard.

RMC · Post by **RMC** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 11:26 am

Anyone playing this since they released the expansion or whatever it was?

I just remembered about this game today, and might take it for a spin tonight when I get home. But I was wondering if anyone was still playing it, and how it was with all the changes since a few months ago.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 11:50 am

The last update was pretty big and the main thing it added was corpses that remain after enemies die in an effort to make ranged skills a little more balanced (since previously all it took was killing an enemy or two to make skills targeting the back row useless). There's been a huge outcry from some folks who hate the change... personally I don't think it's that bad, but it still needs a bit of tweaking to be a little more fun, so I've been holding off playing more until they refine that a bit. Plus the next patch is supposed to add the cove dungeon.

Otherwise the game is in great shape and a ton of fun to play still.

dbemont · Post by **dbemont** » Wed Jul 29, 2015 1:02 pm

Really enjoying the hound master addition. Give the doggie a biscuit and he goes berserk!

weashell · Post by **weashell** » Tue Aug 18, 2015 7:37 am

One of my favorite indie game so far. I like art and the mood. I hope they can make it. People were crying a lot because of ingame balancing but im sure developers know what to do. Pretty talented fellas.

alikara · Post by **alikara** » Thu Aug 20, 2015 7:03 am

I think they re-balanced the game on the last patch release.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Thu Aug 20, 2015 10:40 am

I just started up a game last night and didn't notice any change in the balance.

Dramatist · Post by **Dramatist** » Thu Aug 20, 2015 8:26 pm

Took the plunge on this today because it was on sale, first time buying anything early access for me.

I really like the mood but have barely played and haven't been very successful yet.

Dramatist · Post by **Dramatist** » Sat Aug 22, 2015 10:11 am

I've been playing some more and have a few observations.

Wow this game is difficult. I have restarted three times and finally on the third try have I completed a quest.

Money is scarce, I can't imagine it's worth the money to buy any of the provisions that could potentially help you on a quest but then not, like holy water and what-not.

Traps suck. My first game I have a graverobber that could disarm traps. I haven't seen one on the stagecoach in game 2 or 3. How many different heroes are there anyway?

Everything seems hard, dealing with stress, upgrading the town, so many negative traits...

Overall I like this, the mood is fantastic, but I hope I learn some better strategy because it's tough.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Sat Aug 22, 2015 2:04 pm

Dramatist wrote:Traps suck. My first game I have a graverobber that could disarm traps. I haven't seen one on the stagecoach in game 2 or 3. How many different heroes are there anyway?

There's supposedly 13 different classes included right now, with two more coming by release.

MonkeyFinger · Post by **MonkeyFinger** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 10:59 am

Went back to this after some time away, first time with the addition of corpses... certainly does change the game. Good to see it can be disabled, but I still have it on for now.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 12:21 pm

I haven't played the most recent build long enough to decide how I feel about corpse littering. The new heart attack mechanic is interesting, even though it makes the game a lot tougher.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 3:59 pm

I haven't played with the corpses mechanic yet, but I just don't understand it from a non-mechanics perspective. What's the rationale behind having to hack your way past a corpse to kill an enemy standing behind it? It makes no sense to me. One of the strongest appeals of Darkest Dungeon is how it feels like a more grounded, darker version of fantasy, but this doesn't feel grounded at all. It just feels gamey.

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 6:06 pm

Turns out they're adding an option to turn corpses and heart attacks off.

MonkeyFinger · Post by **MonkeyFinger** » Sun Aug 23, 2015 11:12 pm

They've already added the option.

Butterknife · Post by **Butterknife** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:20 am

I saw this is on sale for $12 and I'm interested. Would you guys recommend it? I love how the game looks and it is at the top of my wishlist, but the only thing holding me back is that I've heard the game is really hard and I've never really cared for tough games (in spite of finishing XCOM on Classic difficulty).

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 12:56 am

Butterknife wrote:I saw this is on sale for $12 and I'm interested. Would you guys recommend it? I love how the game looks and it is at the top of my wishlist, but the only thing holding me back is that I've heard the game is really hard and I've never really cared for tough games (in spite of finishing XCOM on Classic difficulty).

Highly recommended. Even though it's not quite done, it's one of my favorite games to come out in the last year.

It can be tough, but it's not XCom classic difficulty tough IMO. You may lose people if you get some bad rolls. I've played it twice (not a full playthrough either time, but enough that Steam says I've got 36 hours in). The first time I played right after the initial early access release 31 weeks (which basically means 31 missions) and I lost 7 people. The second run through, which I started last weekend I've played 27 weeks I lost 3 total, all in the same mission gone bad.

So it's not like you're necessarily going to be losing people all the time, and often when you lose people, it will be because you pushed things a bit too hard, and you knew you were pushing a bit to far, and kept on going even though you knew your team was wounded and tired.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 2:43 am

If you don't like tough games, Darkest Dungeon really isn't for you. It would probably just end up frustrating you, as extreme risks and impossible odds is core to the game's design. It's the type of game where the journey is way, way more important than the end. Playing a heroic party that beats all opposition with only moderate opposition would make Darkest Dungeon a pretty boring game.

For all my love of this game, I'd still recommend that you play something else if difficulty isn't your thing.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:21 am

ydejin wrote:It can be tough, but it's not XCom classic difficulty tough IMO.

If anything, a lot of the complaints I've seen lately is that it's become too easy.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 8:28 am

ColdSteel wrote:
ydejin wrote:It can be tough, but it's not XCom classic difficulty tough IMO.
If anything, a lot of the complaints I've seen lately is that it's become too easy.

Don't listen to those complaints at this point in time. Jim Sterling made an excellent point about this very thing in one of his videos, warning that the complainers right now are the people who play the game religiously. It's not out yet, and it's not new any more. Only the biggest fans are still playing, in general. Those are the people who are most likely to be min-maxing everything and exploiting every single mechanic. If anything, the game has become harder and more punishing since its first release from what I can tell, and mostly just as a result of these people. Early Access can be a great thing for a developer, but they need to be very careful about which advice they listen to and which they don't. The Darkest Dungeon developers haven't been very good at filtering that input.

Carpet_pissr · Post by **Carpet_pissr** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:11 am

ColdSteel wrote:
ydejin wrote:It can be tough, but it's not XCom classic difficulty tough IMO.
If anything, a lot of the complaints I've seen lately is that it's become too easy.

That's interesting.

I can think of two beloved games that were EXTREMELY difficult, which garnered a huge swath of fans (probably because of their difficulty IMO), and both caved to I guess pressure to make the games easier. In both cases, IMO, the games were much worse as a result, and you can imagine the complaints from the initial fans who were drawn to them because of the difficulty.

I bet it's hard for devs to make a truly difficult, nay punishing game like this and "get away with it".

Back in MY day, games killed your character for looking at somethin' funny...AND WE LIKED IT!

Butterknife · Post by **Butterknife** » Fri Oct 09, 2015 9:47 pm

So one vote for me buying it, and one vote against. I suppose I'll have to just buy it for myself and see if it is too hard or not! Thanks guys!

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 12:47 pm

Butterknife wrote:So one vote for me buying it, and one vote against. I suppose I'll have to just buy it for myself and see if it is too hard or not! Thanks guys!

If you get it, let us know what you think of it!

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 2:22 pm

Butterknife wrote:So one vote for me buying it, and one vote against. I suppose I'll have to just buy it for myself and see if it is too hard or not! Thanks guys!

Yeah sorry Butterknife. It's a rogue-like with it's own unique take on things, so being challenging is part and parcel of being a rogue-like. I didn't find it *too* challenging, but there are definitely times when things will go bad and you'll lose some characters or even wipe the party. You are able to build a large stable of characters though, and healing (both physically and mentally) characters that return from the dungeon is part of the game. Bad things WILL happen, and it's important that they do otherwise you're really only playing half the game.

I liked it when I picked it up, and played it for (let me check) 45 hours, which is pretty good. I haven't returned to it though, and I'll probably wait for it to leave early release status, not because it's not playable (it was VERY playable and has only gotten more so since then) but because I'm happy enough to wait to see how they finalize it.

My vote is to buy it.

ColdSteel · Post by **ColdSteel** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 7:13 pm

I went ahead and got it too. I was going to wait for it to come out of EA but this is the best sale I've seen on it so figured I might as well buy now then wait some more for the end game to go in before messing around with it. I did fire it up to see the intro. Damn, I love that narrator so much and the art is fantastic.

Holman · Post by **Holman** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:18 pm

It's great fun, but the permadeath makes me feel that I'll probably never win it.

The art and the incidental comments are worth the price of admission. Such terrifically grim cartoony darkness!

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sat Oct 10, 2015 8:51 pm

Yep, style in spades. Worth it just for the artistry.

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 2:55 pm

Just got an email that they're pushing release off until January 19th, 2016. A new class, the abomination, as well as a couple of new monsters will be added between now and then, but no word on when The Darkest Dungeon will be added.

TiLT · Post by **TiLT** » Wed Oct 14, 2015 3:35 pm

I think the plan has always been for the Darkest Dungeon to be released alongside the main game, to keep parts of the game fresh.

Butterknife · Post by **Butterknife** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 6:15 pm

ydejin wrote:
Butterknife wrote:So one vote for me buying it, and one vote against. I suppose I'll have to just buy it for myself and see if it is too hard or not! Thanks guys!
If you get it, let us know what you think of it!

I've been playing for 5 hours according to Steam. I love it! The game oozes atmosphere and charm. It is most definitely not too hard -- I suppose that if you never retreat from battle all of your characters will end up dead, but I am retreating liberally whenever things get too tough and that seems to be working for me so far. If that is a bad long-term strategy, let me know! I've only lost one character, which was sort of my own fault and I'll admit I knew he was going to die but pushed ahead anyway.

The game looks fantastic. There are way too many funny things that can happen. So far my favorite is my over-excited cleric that wants to open up EVERY SINGLE CHEST that the party stumbles across. It cracks me up every time.

Oh yeah, the game also has that one-more-turn thing going on, I keep thinking "just one more dungeon, it won't take but 20 minutes or so ..." and I'm having a hard time tearing myself away. Thanks for convincing me to get the game!

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 6:32 pm

When the game was first available, retreating broke everyone's minds. If you are retreating a lot without going insane then they've toned it down a lot. When I played retreating wasn't much of an option since once your guys broke they had little chance of making it through their next encounter, let alone out of the dungeon.

edit: I'm glad they fixed it. And glad you're having fun.

ydejin · Post by **ydejin** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 6:35 pm

Butterknife wrote:
ydejin wrote:
Butterknife wrote:So one vote for me buying it, and one vote against. I suppose I'll have to just buy it for myself and see if it is too hard or not! Thanks guys!
If you get it, let us know what you think of it!
I've been playing for 5 hours according to Steam. I love it! The game oozes atmosphere and charm. It is most definitely not too hard -- I suppose that if you never retreat from battle all of your characters will end up dead, but I am retreating liberally whenever things get too tough and that seems to be working for me so far. If that is a bad long-term strategy, let me know! I've only lost one character, which was sort of my own fault and I'll admit I knew he was going to die but pushed ahead anyway.

The game looks fantastic. There are way too many funny things that can happen. So far my favorite is my over-excited cleric that wants to open up EVERY SINGLE CHEST that the party stumbles across. It cracks me up every time.

Oh yeah, the game also has that one-more-turn thing going on, I keep thinking "just one more dungeon, it won't take but 20 minutes or so ..." and I'm having a hard time tearing myself away. Thanks for convincing me to get the game!

Yay

tgb · Post by **tgb** » Fri Oct 16, 2015 7:56 pm

I've been waiting for the official release before returning to it, but it absolutely oozes polish (if that isn't too gross an image). I guess it will have to be my 2016 RPG of the year

Sepiche · Post by **Sepiche** » Mon Jan 18, 2016 3:51 pm

Official release is tomorrow! Can't wait!