Tips, Tricks, and Strategy - Darkest Dungeon Guide

This page contains user submitted Tips, Tricks, and Strategy for mastering Darkest Dungeon.

Provisioning

Short Dungeons bring 8-12 food, maybe 1 key and 1 shovel.
Medium Dungeons bring16-24 food, 2 keys, 2-3 shovels, and maybe 1 of each other item to get more loot, a buff, or stress relief (example, using a torch, or holy water on an eldritch altar).
Long Dungeons bring 24 food, 3-4 keys, 3-4 shovels, 2 of each other item for same reasons as above.
Boss Fights, err on the side of caution and bring more items.

Out of Gold? In a pinch, if you overspend your gold or have committed too many valuable characters to stress relief or sanitarium, you can get infinite level 0 characters (over time), so don’t be afraid to send in ringers to pick up loot and then retreat out. You can get the loot, boot the nerds from your team afterwards, or keep them, and the only penalty is that this group of characters gets stress. Since the game has no appropriate penalty for failure, you can easily accrue gold this way and pass time as well.

Optimal Group Compositions

In Darkest Dungeon, you'll come across many different classes with many pros and cons - and you'll find that some party members work better together than others. The setups below are just a few of the optimal compositions you can try out.

Know of any other great party combinations? Add them here using the edit button or share them in the comments section!

Setup 1

	Hellion_portrait_roster.png	Bounty_hunter_portrait_roster.png	Occultist_portrait_roster.png	Vestal_portrait_roster.png
	Hellion	Bounty Hunter	Occultist	Vestal
Reccomended Skills	Wicked Hack, Barbaric YAWP, If It Bleeds, Adrenaline Rush	Collect Bounty, Mark For Death OR Come Hither, Flashbang, Finish Him	Wyrd Reconstruction, Weakening Curse, Vulnerability Hex, Daemon's Pull OR Hands From the Abyss	Judgement, Dazzling Light, Divine Grace, Divine Comfort
Rec. Campfire Skills	Pep Talk, Battle Trance, Reject the Gods, Sharpen Spear	This is How We Do It, Tracking, Planned Takedown, Scout Ahead	Unspeakable Commune, Dark Ritual, Abandon Hope, Dark Strength	Bless, Pep Talk, Encourage, Wound Care

Setup 2

	Hellion_portrait_roster.png	Highwayman_portrait_roster.png	Plague_doctor_portrait_roster.png	Vestal_portrait_roster.png
	Hellion	Highwayman	Plague Doctor	Vestal
Rec. Skills	Wicked Hack, Barbaric YAWP, If It Bleeds, Adrenaline Rush	Pistol Shot, Point Blank Shot, Grapeshot Blast, Duelist's Advance	Blinding Gas, Noxious Blast, Battlefield Medicine, Emboldening Capours	Judgement, Dazzling Light, Divine Grace, Divine Comfort
Rec. Campfire Skills	Pep Talk, Battle Trance, Reject the Gods, Sharpen Spear	Camping Gallow's Humor, Uncatchable, Clean Guns, Bandit's Sense	This Is How We Do It, Tracking, Planned Takedown, Scout Ahead	Bless, Pep Talk, Encourage, Wound Care

Battle Tactics

Hellion

Your Hellion should always use Barbaric Yawp as first priority, unless an enemy is stunned in first two rows already. At this point, target back line characters with If It Bleeds, or Self-buff with Adrenaline Rush. I speak in generalities, because there are times when your BH will have already stunned the first two characters, or your Hellion needs bleed removal (Adrenaline Rush buffs you AND removes this), or you simply need one enemy to die, and don’t value leaving the other enemies unstunned more than you do killing this enemy (Drummers are a prime example).

Bounty Hunter

BH should flashbang anyone who hasn’t attacked that round, or who would be most threatening, or who needs a positioning change. In this setup, your BH will almost always get Bonus Damage against stunned enemies, and or Bonus Damage against Marked Targets (marked by your BH or marked by your Occultist).

Highwayman

Your Highway Man should use Duelist’s Advance and target an annoying enemy. On his next turn, use point blank shot to destroy someone. Repeat infinitely, UNLESS you have multiple weakened enemies and want simultaneous damage with Grapeshot Blast, or really need to kill one ranged enemy, in which case you can use Pistol Shot. HWM get self-buffs to ranged damage, so, don’t use melee unless necessary to change positioning.

Occultist

Your Occultist should single-target heal with Wyrd Reconstruction (even better if you use an item that reduces your chance to cause bleeding), or focus pesky enemies with Vulnerability Hex to mark enemies (to allow BH to get increased damage), or use Weakening Curse to nerf enemy damage/accuracy on targets that are immediate threats, or who have tons of HP and will live several rounds.

Plague Doctor

Your Plague Doctor can and should cheese stuns on the back row all day and night. Use your noxious blasts to damage and stack blight on more resilient enemies. Often if may be best to simply buff your other damage dealers or to cure blight/bleeding (and gifting a minor heal) because your PD should be used as a controller, buffer, damage preventer.

Vestal

Your Vestal should group heal with Divine Comfort so long as the total value exceeds the value you would obtain with Divine Grace (assuming no character is within a danger zone to be killed, at which point you should switch to using Divine Grace to bring that character back if needed). When no healing is needed except for self-healing, or even if self-healing is not needed, use Divine Judgment to nuke enemy threats. As a last resort, use Dazzling Light to stun an enemy (last resort because you do not want to raise your light level +5 if at all avoidable, and you have other characters who can easily stun your foes), unless possibly in a boss fight, at which point use what you have to, to win.

Gearing for Battle

Hellion

Dungeon Strategy

Well-Stocked Provisioning:

Make camping your first decision upon entering a dungeon (use 2 food). Buff your Hellion in either composition as your primary and your Bounty Hunter (or Highway Man) as your secondary choice.

Low/No Provisioning:

If it comes down to it, you absolutely can go into a dungeon with only food, or with 0 items. It may seem scary, but you can outheal the damage from the starvation. The only way to really fail is to fail to minimize your stress before players start getting terrible afflictions (like paranoid). But even then you can survive long enough to get enough gold to quit, then buy food for a later run, OR you could luck into food, or you could luck into positive stress relief.

Light Level / Darkness

Darkness should be 0.

Why?

Darkeness gives you more crits (reducing stress overall, and giving you needed burst damage), AND more loot/gold, which makes leveling your characters and estate easier.
More damage from enemies doesn’t matter, and more stress is preventable (from crits, disarming traps, camping, using items on dungeon features).
Light is worse than useless. It costs you excessive gold to maintain (buying torches) or using abilities that you wouldn't want to to increase your torch level, while not giving you as much gold or items, and does not make enemies easier to fight against.
Some of the best equippable items (rare and above) give you bonuses at 25 and below light level, and penalties above 75 light level.

How to Stop Classes From Interacting Badly

Ever have a class with a negative quirk that forces interactions with curios? It can get quite annoying, especially when you have the items necessary for free treasure when they simply go and ruin it for you. However, with this handy tip, you won't ever have to worry about that as you can completely bypass classes experiencing these negative quirks.

The way to do this is simple: Whenever they try to interact with a curio, simply press Esc and select Exit to Main Menu before they actually take the items. The game won't register them as actually taking it, and you'll be able to load back right before they try and interact with the curio on their own. Simply put, this resets the chance for them to trigger their negative quirk, meaning that you can use this tip to completely bypass them!

Tips, Tricks, and Strategy - Darkest Dungeon Guide - IGN (2024)