Been floating around my head for a while, figured I'd go ahead and do this here for lack of anywhere else. Welcome to apoc plays Darkest Dungeon, where the victories are meaningless, sanity is optional, and the life expectancy of characters is pretty much limited to how how long it takes before I decide to put them up against a boss.

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In case you are unaware with what this game is, Darkest Dungeon is a dark, gothic style, dungeon crawling roguelike made by indie game studio Red Hook. It is narrated by the excellent Wayne June and just oozes atmosphere and mood out of its every festering pore. It's currently in Steam Early Access but still has heaps upon heaps of content. I don't have that much experience with it but I have a few failed playthroughs so I know what I'm doing a certain extent.

In Darkest Dungeon, you play as a group of wayward adventurers seeking treasure and glory in the tombs, warrens, and barrows surrounding a run down, half-abandoned hamlet at the foot of a hill. Upon the hill lies a massive, derelict manor from which issue forth the endless unnatural hordes of monster and fiend. Though your adventurers may have come seeking gold and fame, all they will find amidst these lands is an endless cacophony of madness and death as their torch slowly burns lower and the shadows around them grow deeper. Throughout their descent into madness, their progress will be tracked and commented on by the voice of the apparently deceased previous owner of the manor, a distant relative of the player who, in a fit of greed and lust for power, excavated the ruins upon which the manor was built and set loose the cyclopean eldritch horrors interred there. As the last descendant of the family, you receive his final letter and return home to fight off the legions of the damned and try to reclaim your once rich lands and legacy.

If you want to get a feel for the awesome art style or the dark tone or the deep, terrifying voice of Wayne June I suggest the Terror and Madness trailer.

The way the game works is like this. Generally you start at the Hamlet screen, from which you can hire new cannon fodder meatshields disposable assets adventurers and spend your different forms of currency. You can hire as many easily manipulated pawns hopeless souls doomed crusaders characters as you can fit in your Barracks from the Caravan and they come in 15 different varieties, which I will introduce as I come across them. You can upgrade and equip characters through various extremely expensive means here using gold, busts, portraits, deeds, and crests which you will find on dungeon crawls. These include the Blacksmith (upgrades equipment), the Guild (can be used to level up characters), the Survivalist (upgrades camping skills), the Sanitarium (used to remove status effects) and the Nomad Wagon (used to buy items). You can also pay gold to remove Stress from characters in the Tavern and the Abbey. And finally you can gaze upon the names of the legions of the fallen at the Graveyard.

Got all that? It doesn't really matter if you do to be honest. What's important is that in the Hamlet you manage your characters. From there, you set out on dungeon crawls which are the meatgrinder and bones of the game. I'll cover more on this next update but basically you set a party of four characters and then you delve deep into the monster-ridden corridors of madness in pursuit of treasure and such things.

The order in which your party fights is incredibly important since characters can only perform certain moves depending on where they are placed. You can move them around in between and during fights and some enemies have moves that shift them around, which can really wreck your party if done at an inopportune moment. You can do the same to them with certain classes, and it is a great strategy to pull enemy casters and ranged opponents out of their safe backlines and into the front where your damage dealers can clean them up and they can't use their most damaging moves (I'll give examples of this when I use it).

This is what the combat screen looks like for reference, I'll explain further as I play through it myself.

Without any further ado, I'll get started with the introduction. If you have any questions, comments, etc. feel free to leave them.

A Cry For Help

You remember our venerable house, opulent and imperial, gazing proudly from its stoic perch above the moor. I lived all my years in that, ancient, rumor-shrouded manor, fattened by decadence and luxury.

And yet, I began to tire of... conventional extravagance. Singular unsettling tales suggested the mansion itself was a gateway to some fabulous and unnameable power. With relic and ritual, I bent every effort towards the excavation and recovery of those long-buried secrets, exhausting what remained of our family fortune on swarthy workmen and sturdy shovels.

At last, in the salt-soaked crags beneath the lowest foundation we unearthed that damnable portal of antediluvian evil.

Our every step unsettled the ancient earth! But we were in a realm of death and madness! In the end I alone fled laughing and wailing through those blackened arcades of antiquity, until consciousness failed me.

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...

[click]

from the ravenous, clutching shadows...

[BANG!]

of the Darkest Dungeon.

---------- Post automerged at 10:28 PM ---------- Previous post was at 09:34 PM ----------

You Can't Go Home Again

You will arrive along The Old Road. It winds with a troubling, serpent-like suggestion through the corrupted countryside, leading only, I fear, to ever more tenuous places. There is a sickness in the ancient pitted cobbles of the Old Road and on its writhing path you will face viciousness, violence, and perhaps, other, damnably transcendent terrors.

So steel yourself and remember there can be no bravery... without madness.

The Old Road will take you to Hell. But in that gaping abyss... we will find our redemption.

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We first arrive along The Old Road, the bandit-infested and overgrown route that is the only way into the lands of my ancestors that I left so long ago. The carriage that we hire takes us most of the way, but it falls victim to the sinuous, winding path and breakneck turns as we attempt to speed our way through these dangerous lands and we must continue the rest of the way on foot.

With me are my companions, Reynauld, a righteous Crusader, and Dismas, a roguish Highwayman. Reynauld believes my cause to be just, for to him the very existence of the abominations that overrun these lands is an offense to the Divine. Dismas is far more practical. It is the promise and lure of riches and fame that draws him to my cause.

Classes

Spoiler

The Crusader - The mighty sword arm anchored by holy purpose – a zealous warrior.

The Crusader is one of the front-line classes, a character with high HP and high damage, but little in the way of effects or damage-over-time (Bleed and Blight) though he does possess a few utility options, mainly healing. He is best in the thick of things, and thus will almost always take the very first spot in the party.

Every character has four moves out of a total of seven per class. Reynauld starts with the following:

Smite - A righteous blow, a high damage one-target attack that deal +15% damage to Unholy monsters, mostly undead. It can only be used from the front-two positions on one of the front-two enemies.

Zealous Accusation - The litany of The Crusader scorches the ears and twisted minds of the fiends he fights! A lowered damage attack that hits both front two opponents at the same time. Can only be used from the front-two.

Stunning Blow - A bludgeoning strike that sends the enemy sprawling, a 1/3 damage attack on one opponent that has a 100% chance to stun for one turn. Must be in the front-two, can only be used on enemy front-two.

Bulwark of Faith - The Crusader recalls his Divine teachings and strengthens the will of another! Adds +5 to Torch and gives and ally in the front-two 20% damage reduction.

Spoiler

The Highwayman - Illusive. Evasive. Persistent. Righteous traits for a rogue.

The Highwayman is a high-damage, low health class that excels in the middle of the pack with a combination of close and ranged attacks. Armed with blade and pistol, his versatility is his strength (aside from his copious amounts of damage). He lacks any real effects aside from Bleed (no buffs, stuns, or Blights, just lots of damage) but is still one badass killing machine if left untargeted.

Dismas starts with:

Open Vein - The Highwayman lunges forward and inflicts and bloody, leaking wound. Medium damage attack that inflicts 2 points of Bleed damage per round for 3 rounds. Must be used from the first-three positions on the front-two of the enemy.

Pistol Shot - Ranged attack, single target. Medium damage, +10% crit chance. Must be used from the back-three spots on one of the enemy back-three.

Grapeshot Blast - The most invaluable skill in the Highwayman's arsenal, a withering hail of lead and iron. Half damage, lowered crit but hits ALL THREE of the front-three of the enemy. In a game without much AoE, this is crazy amounts of damage. Must be used from one of the middle-two spots.

Take Aim - Self-buff, adds +4 ACC (which is a ton) and +5% Crit chance (which isn't).

Avoiding the main road, which is no doubt plagued by robbers and thieves, we make our way down a side path. We can see the lights of the Hamlet through the trees, the dimly lit tower of the Sanitarium still sending a chill down my spine.

Brigands have run of these lanes. Keep to the side path, the Hamlet is just ahead.

(This is the voice of the narrator, I will include it when it is plot appropriate, or when he says something awesome. Which will be a lot. Like I said, he's about 90% of the appeal of the game and the amount of flavor it adds is amazing.)

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Reynauld and Dismas run into their first opponent here, a Brigand.

Dispatch this thug in brutal fashion, that all may hear of your arrival!

Dismas stabs him with Open Vein, but the Brigand counterattacks with Slice And Dice, which targets my two frontmost positions. I only have two, so he strikes both of them.

...Or he would, if he didn't miss. Dismas and Reynauld deftly dodge the Brigand's reckless charge and Reynauld Smites him cleanly to finish off the criminal scum.

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We search the Brigand's camp and find a great sum of coin! We continue onwards, our path growing nearer and nearer to the Hamlet we seek. We are almost home...

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An ambush! Send these vermin a message: the rightful owner has returned and their kind is no longer welcome.

A pair of bandits still block our way. One is a veritable giant with a leather whip in hand and the other wields an arbalest, cowering behind him.

We Surprise them, so my companions strike first. Dismas takes a Pistol Shot at the Bandit Rifleman and his bullet finds the fiend's skull easily! The fool topples!

(A crit! Very lucky to get one this early, it speaks well of our playthrough. Considering I have actually had a character hit Death's Door before on this prologue, this is a really good stroke of luck. )

Reynauld strikes the Bandit Brute with a Stunning Blow and the enemy reels, though he takes little damage. Dismas Opens Vein with a practiced swing of his knife and Reynald Smites the massive man, but still he stands. He recovers and lashes out with his whip, dealing stinging, bleeding blows to both of them (1 Bleed per turn). Dismas counters with another Open Vein before Reynald hefts his claymore and crushes the Bandit Brute's head with another Smite. We are victorious.

There is a chest here, but upon examining it we find it trapped and move on, unwilling to bear whatever devious machination awaits the fool who leaps before he looks.

(The chest is literally named Bandit's Trapped Chest. And yes, on my first play through, I did try to open it.)

Leaving the trapped chest and the bloodied bodies behind us, we continue on into the Hamlet, home again after so long away.

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Welcome home, such that it is. This haunted hamlet, these corrupted lands... they are yours now, and you are bound to them.

We have reached the Hamlet, but our work is just beginning. Though my companions may be healthy and eager still, they will not be enough, nor is it likely they will remain so for long. Before I venture forth into the Ruins and begin my slow reclamation, I will need more...

(Short update for the prologue, surprisingly better this time thanks to that crit on the Rifleman)

 

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The Hamlet is a bleak and miserable ruin of the town it once was. Even in my youth it was a wretched, squalid place, filled with squatting shacks and dirt-farming peasants, but even that seems a paradise to what it has become. The rickety cottages are crumbling and abandoned, and the few places that are still occupied show no life other than thin, terrified faces that gaze through their grimy windows in fear. The once bustling Inn is derelict, the Sanitarium deteriorating, and even the Abbey is boarded up and quiet.

The only place not empty and silent is the Graveyard, where sallow, starving people gather each day with splintering shovels to bury more of those lucky enough to depart this wretched world.

If ever there was such a thing as hope or happiness in this place, they fled screaming into the night long ago.

But regardless, our work starts now. While the people's will may be broken, that of my companions are still whole, despite their growing unease. Our actions on The Old Road have opened a path to the wider world, and slowly the brave and suicidal have begun to trickle in to aid us through the Stage Coach.

(Reynauld and Dismas have very low Stress thanks to only being hit by one attack due to a miss and that crit kill. I will explain and handle Stress when it becomes relevant)

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Women and men. Soldiers and outlaws. Fools and corpses. All will find their way to us now that the Road is clear.

Two more stalwart death seekers companions have joined myself, Reynauld, and Dismas in our quest: a masked and hooded Plague Doctor named Voisin and a woman of the Divine, a Vestal by the name of Musart.

Spoiler

Plague Doctor - What better laboratory than a blood-soaked battlefield?

An artist in the use of foul fumes and strange elixirs, the Plague Doctor is a support and debuff character best used from the back lines. He has a few damage and buffing skills, but his true specialty is Blight and debuffing skills like Blinding Gas.

Voisin doesn't have the best set up among Plague Doctors, a character can only know four of the seven possible class skills and unfortunately for him the remaining three are among the best, but he will do for now.

Noxious Gas - The Plague Doctor hurls a flask of putrid vapours at an opponent, sickening and poisoning their air. Low damage single-target attack, but deals 3 Blight damage for three turns, which is pretty good. Especially against high Speed enemies this will be useful (you take Blight and Bleed damage at the beginning of your turn, so stacking them against enemies who move a lot is the quickest way to kill them). Must be used on the front-two opponents from the back-three.

Battlefield Medicine - The Plague Doctor puts his vast and eclectic medical knowledge to work, healing an ally for 1 point and having a 70% chance of curing all Blight and Bleed. Must be used from the back-two.

Emboldening Vapours - He offers another champion a whiff of potent smelling salts and other, less savoury things, granting them unnatural strength. +15% damage to ally. Can be used anywhere.

Disorienting Blast - The Plague Doctor hurls a devilish grenade of sputtering gas, causing an enemy to stumble about. No damage, single target, can be used from anywhere against the back-three enemies. Instead of dealing damage this Shuffles that enemy, changing their position in the enemy party, which can drastically reduce their effectiveness.

Spoiler

Vestal - A sister of battle… pious and unrelenting.

Ah, the Vestal. I have... complicated feelings about this class. It's a healer, one of the only ones in the game, and healing isn't exactly the same in Darkest Dungeon as it is in other games. The Vestal has spell that heal in the area of 3-5-ish damage or heal 1-2 across the entire party. When enemies generally deal just as much damage as you do (7-9 damage) on hit, this is a bit... small. Healing isn't meant to keep you healed, its meant to keep you alive on Death's Door. Basically, as long as the Vestal keeps healing the party by one every turn, none of them will die, instead they will just stack massive amounts of Stress. But they will survive.

Musart has party heal, but not the individual heal, and a small array of buffs and debuffs rather than the Vestal's more damage based abilities.

Mace Bash - The Vestal bludgeons the enemy with her holy fervor. This skill is useless, if you need the pitiful amounts of damage the Vestal can put out in melee, you've already lost. Low damage, single target, front-two to front-two.

Divine Comfort - Party heal 1-2 HP. Not impressive in any way, but can still keep your party alive and murderin'. Can't be used from the very front.

Illumination - The Vestal calls upon Divine light to scorch and blind an enemy. Adds to the Torch +5, small crit chance, Medium damage, lowers enemy accuracy significantly. Good debuff skill. Must be used from the front-three, can be used on anyone.

Hand of Light - The Vestal deals a small amount of damage, lowers the accuracy of, and lowers the damage of a single opponent. +15% damage to Unholy, a good anti-dmg debuff. Must be used from the front-two on the enemy front-two.

(Two pretty standard support classes, what passes for a healer in Darkest Dungeon and the Blight and debuff focused Plague Doctor. Neither of these characters have the best move set for their class, only Dismas does really, but I will see about getting them the best set up. Usually, the best strategy is to constantly recycle characters without sympathy until you get a good set with good traits, but that's a bit unrealistic so I am going to try to keep my characters alive as long as possible, even if it isn't the most efficient way to go about this.)

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The Caretaker still remains in the Hamlet and hasn't changed a single bit from the days of my youth, still the same filthy, ancient husk that he was the first I saw him, still smiling the same crooked, yellowed smile. He is the closest thing to a leader the town still has, for all the good he does them. He beckons us into his home, barely more than a hovel but still the grandest abode this wretched place has, and tells us of the monsters and abominations that lurk within the Ruins. Reynauld and Musart are incensed and filled with righteous fury at his tales. It is decided that we shall plumb the Ruins' depths and purge these fiends. The Caretaker offers us torches, provisions, and equipment for an outrageous sum, but we pay him nonetheless. No price is too dear for the comfort of torchlight and full bellies.

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Wasting no time, we set to our crusade, and leave the unsettling, near-empty Hamlet behind us to venture for the first time into the Ruins a ways up the hill, where they say my relative first began his furious and destructive excavation. The few townsfolk we have spoken to have relayed frightened, terrified tales of insane cults to mad gods that have residence within those crumbling walls. They say the walking dead and damned issue forth from the opened tombs each night, their bodies nothing more than hollow bone and rotting flesh. We will see the truth of these claims before tomorrow's dawn. With steel in hand and steel in heart we descend into the shadowy depth, guided by the flickering light of our torch.

(So the way dungeon crawling works is as thus. There are three regions is which you can take quests, the Ruins, the Weald, and the Warrens, and you will face different opponents and receive different rewards within each. In the Ruins you fight Unholy opponents like undead alongside mad cultists. In the Weald you will fight Brigands and Fungus monstrosities. In the Warrens you will fight Bestial opponents with the heads of swine and the bodies of men, clad in filth and disease. Some opponents, like diseased hounds and giants spiders, are common across them all. You start off with only the Ruins unlocked before the others open as well. The Cove and the titular Darkest Dungeon are visible on the map, but still unreleased.

There are usually several quests available at a time, each of which takes you to an individual dungeon in one of those areas where you must explore and such. Example quests include exploring all the rooms within a dungeon, clearing all battle rooms, beating a boss, etc. You can give up a quest at any time if you feel it is too dangerous or might result in a wipe, but this creates Stress and loses you all the money spent on Torches, Provisions, etc.

Within dungeons you have your Torch, which is a measure of how low your light is. At its highest this will give you a good chance to get a free surprise round upon entering combat (which is insane) and possibly give you sneak peeks at other rooms before you enter. As it gets lower it will result in more and more Stress and the potential for your own party to be surprised. However, if it goes low enough if also begins to stack up crit chance and crit damage bonuses, leading to the amusing 'No torch' run in which you can sometimes blitz through levels one-shotting everything you see with the right builds.

You also have your HP (which is obvious) and your Stress. Stress is kind of like a sanity meter and you gain Stress the longer you spend in a dungeon and from certain enemy effects (some attacks will add Stress, party members will gain some if enemies crit, etc, etc). When Stress hits maximum there are... interesting effects, which I'll explain later on but it usually ends up resetting the Stress level, adding Stress to everyone else in the party (which can lead to annoying party-wide Stress overloads) and adding a negative trait to the character, which can be horrendous. To avoid this, you can pay to have a character de-stress in the Hamlet through various means.

That's pretty much the basics, I'll add some more context when I get to it.)

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The taint must be driven back, and what better place to be in than the seat of our noble line?

The Ruins are dark and decadent, even after centuries without use. Rich cloths and silks are everywhere, covered by a thick layer of dust except where it is obvious that the unholy left tracks.

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We file down a side corridor and find some petty loot. We take it as a sign of things to come and continue to the room at the end of the hall.

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As we enter we are set upon by foul undead and caught unaware!

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The fight is brief but bloody, the skeletal crossbowmen inflicting grievous wounds upon Voisin. He topples and nearly falls unconscious, but the prayers of Musart keep him on his feet while Dismas and Reynauld finish off these abominations. Still, Voisin is greatly wounded and pale, trembling and whispering for us to turn back. We tell him to steel himself and move on despite his protests.

(Good example of how unforgiving the game can get right here. Voisin eats two attacks here from the crossbowmen, one of them a crit, and is instantly at Death's Door. If not kept above it, attacks will have a chance of killing him and highly increase his Stress. He goes to this on the first battle of this crawl. It's looking like we may have to abandon this quest sooner than anticipated...)

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We find another group of foes, Brigands this time. The fools must be mad, to make their homes down here so comfortably alongside the walking dead. I dare not think about the implications of their seeming alliance. Mad cults are one thing, but even lawless scum should shy away from consorting with such fiends. Voisin continues to babble about the hopelessness of our work, begging us to return to the surface, but we ignore him and continue on, though Reynault rebukes him snappishly from time to time. It is Musart, however, who fares the worst, taking horrid wounds from the crude arbalests the Brigands wield. With our Divine healer bloodied so, even I begin to have doubts. Still, we light more of our torches and press on.

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We stumble upon a pair of cultists leading more undead, but we catch them by surprise and make quick work of them! Our hearts grow bold and more confident. We press on, reassured.

(Surprise rounds are awesome, wiped this group without a single point of damage)

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We loot the chest they were guarding, finding my family crest upon it. It is stuffed with marble busts and similar, valuable loot.

(Just crests and busts in it, not really sure how to justify that in a narrative sense. Crests, Busts, Portaits, and Deeds are used to upgrade buildings in town and are rewards for quests as well as dungeon loot.)

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We make our way down a side corridor, finding a few pitiful handfuls of coin and loot, but no enemies thankfully. The room at the end of it is a grisly sight, but blessedly empty. We make our way back to the main passage and continue further. Our delving is almost at an end.

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We near the end of this section of the Ruins, our righteous purge almost complete. We stumble upon a family of enormous venomous spiders, thankfully catching them by surprise...

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And Dismas and Reynauld make quick work of them. We press onwards, eager to be done with this damnable crypt.

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Disaster strikes! We discover another group of unholy fiends, including a pair of long dead nobility, perhaps even ancient members of mine own family. Wielding goblets overflowing with blood and clad in forgotten finery, they strike at Musart, flinging the sickening liquid upon her! She shrieks, pawing at her clothes in a panic before looking up with wide eyes and...

(So what happens here is that Musart drops to 0 HP putting her on Death's Door. As long as she stays at 0 HP, every hit will have a chance of killing her, she will gain tons of stress, and all of her stats will be dropped. The point of healers is to keep people on Death's Door instead of them actually dying. Thus they will just stack Stress instead of going six feet under. What happens here though is that the two skeletal nobles take her to Death's Door with Tempting Goblet, a move which itself raises Stress quite a bit. Combined, this put her Stress over the edge and her Resolve Is Tested, which will usually result in a major negative status trait and add Stress to the rest of the party)

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(The key word there being usually)

Musart rises to her feet, fury in her eyes and a prayer on her lips! Our companions take heart from her example and drive forward to finish their foes. Dismas lets loose a withering hail of lead and iron and Musart herself calls down a righteous hammer of light to crush the remaining enemies. At last we are victorious.

(There is also a small chance of getting a Heroic reaction from a Stress overload, reducing Stress of all party members and granting a buff to the Heroic character. Which happens here.)

This section of the Ruins purged with light and steel, we make our way proudly out of the shadowy dark and back to town, bearing reclaimed riches in plenty.

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However, no man or woman can descend into the dark and vile places of the world without being changed... for better or for worse.

(After every crawl, you get the opportunity to check for a new trait for each character, which can be good or bad. Generally low-Stress characters will get good traits or mixed, high Stress one will get negatives. Poor crawls will also result in bad results, especially if you lost members or failed a quest, which usually result in high Stress anyway)

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But this journey was a triumph, not a trial, and all of my companions are better off for it!

(All good traits, one bad one of Voisin the Plague Doctor, likely because he didn't get low Stress like the rest. Musart would be looking at one too if she didn't get that lucky Powerful buff. Overall its a very successful run, to be expected this early on though.)

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We return victorious and our presence is felt. The squalid villagers peer at us in awe and shock as we emerge, carrying gold and riches in abundance. While most seem cautious and jaded, it looks like a few have begun to let some hope leak into themselves, however foolish they might realize that to be.

No matter the case, some of the villagers are clearly emboldened enough to try and make some coin off of us. The next day the Tavern is cleared out and the prayers are heard from the crumbling Abbey.

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Though this place is still a sinkhole of depression and hopelessness, it is at least a little brighter with a bellyful of foul ale and a stark place wherein one can beg the Divine for mercy.

(Using these new buildings we can remove Stress from characters to prevent them from having their Resolve Tested immediately upon entering the next dungeon. As said before, its actually more efficient to disregard this and just fire them if they don't have excellent traits, but I'm not playing that way. Next time we'll send Voisin to the Tavern to whore away his Stress and pick up some new fodder for our next dungeon crawl.)

 

This is good stuff - I've played Darkest Dungeon a little but mostly ran into a wall of dying and terrible traits around the third or fourth time I went spelunking. V_V

 

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The second week comes creeping slowly and malevolently to the Hamlet, like some terrifying shadow, but we find ourselves a bit more heartened this time around. While my companions and I may not be as brave and sure as we were upon arrival, we are confident and steady now that we have faced the shadows of the Ruins and emerged victorious.

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New blood trickles into town, one at a time. Another sister of the cloth seeks to join my cause, but I turn her away. Musart proved her worth beyond doubt in our expedition and there are precious few beds in the dilapidated barracks we have taken for our own. We do welcome a strange pair though, a Celt barbarian Hellion and a dark-skinned, turbaned Occultist with an exotic accent. The warrioress seeks only hard-won battle and bloodshed, which I fear she'll find in greater quantities than she wishes, but the scholar possesses far more... suspicious motives. Though his usefulness is undeniable against the eldritch creatures we fight, I fear his lust for knowledge heralds a perilous fate.

Classes

Spoiler

The Hellion - Barbaric rage and unrelenting savagery make for a powerful ally.

You know how I said the Crusader is a good frontline damage dealer? The Hellion is frontline combat personified. She's the Highwayman's damage output on crack with a fat HP bar, high speed, Bleed and Blight resist, and enough death resistance to tank up to a dozen attacks in a row with 0 hp. And yes I've seen that happen before. While the Hellion may not be quite as tough as the Crusader, she'll dance around one-shotting everything in sight.

To put this in perspective, I've seen a uniquely kitted crit-based Hellion kill a boss in a single attack that did ONE HUNDRED SIXTY DAMAGE.

In case you haven't realized this, I love love love love love the Hellion to death.

Perroy's got mostly good starting moves, I might switch out one or two later for maximum death-dealing but she's got a fine set right now. All of her abilities are essentially slightly different forms of murdering opponents. Which is of course, the most effective kind of stunning.

Wicked Hack - High damage glaive swing, single target, +5% crit chance. Front-two to front-two.

Iron Swan - An interesting ability, its identical to Wicked Hack except it is used from the very front position to hit the very back enemy. Allows the Hellion to easily butcher squishy damage dealers that sit in the back.

If It Bleeds - Wicked Hack, but with Bleed instead of Crit chance and instead targeting any of the mid-two opponents. Unless running a high-crit build, usually better than Wicked Hack.

Bleed Out - A high damage attack with both crit chance and Bleed that lowers the Hellion's damage for the rest of the fight. Usually good to finish off opponents. Front position to front position only.

Spoiler

The Occultist - To fight the abyss… one must to know it.

Ah, the Occultist. A weird, hodgepodge sort of mage class, the Occulist is a big variety backline character. He's got damage, debuffs, movement shifters and even a heal. He will rarely be a stand out but with the right composition his peculiar skillset can be a major asset.

Somneri has a good mix of skills, no two are similar.

Abyssal Artillery - Calls down summoned tentacles to ravage and scourge the enemy backline. Medium damage to both of the enemy's backline but causes Eldritch enemies to deal +15% damage to the Occultist. He's like this, almost all of his stuff has some minor drawback. Makes him pretty quirky.

Weakening Curse - Low damage debuff that lowers enemy damage and accuracy. Can be cast from anywhere on anyone.

Wyrd Reconstruction - Heals ally for 0-10 damage, inflicts 3 total points of Bleed one round at a time. A fucking weird ability, this can be helpful or negative since the range is so wide (0-10) and the Bleed can be resisted by a lot of classes. Still, it can actually hurt your characters too.

Daemon's Pull - Pretty much a copy of an enemy cultist ability, summons a eldritch tentacle to pull one of the enemy back-two forward and deals a small amount of damage. Also causes the Occultist to take 15% more damage from Eldritch enemies. Must be cast from the back-three on the back-two.

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The Hamlet has livened up slightly since we returned bearing coin and treasure in bulk. The swarthy Barkeep has reopened his Tavern and, though the settlement remains despondent, the place is filled each night with clinking mugs of ale and games of chance. He has even managed to rope in a few passable whores, whether desperate villagers driven to earn a few coins or more out of towners seeking to provide comfort for my companions. Since Voisin remains fidgety and paranoid from his grievous wounds in the Ruins, I give him a sackful of hard-earned loot and send him to them to get him a warm bed to share for a few nights.

The Abbot likewise returns to the crumbling Abbey from whatever hole he had scurried away into, professing his eternal faith in our ventures. I can barely stand the cowardly fool, but he will be useful for keeping my men and women of the Divine in good spirits.

(I send Voisin off to the Tavern to burn some Stress. This costs a pretty penny and makes him unavailable for the week but we're rolling in gold at this point and he's not too vital so it's no problem at all.)

As much as I would like to join my comrade, the rest of us have a duty to attend to. The Ruins are by no means cleared, not even slightly. I meet with my companions and we agree to map out another section of the shadowy crypts as best we can.

I gather Reynauld and Musart, who've delved into the Ruins before, and bring our new arrivals Perroy and Somneri as well. We make an eclectic group and draw many a stare as we buy our provisions and set out for our potential death yet again.

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"Here lies the halls of your lineage, once familiar... now... foreign."

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We are set upon by ravenous undead. We take injuries, but are victorious and we trudge on through the dust-filled halls, wary and alert. Eventually we happen upon a more insidious foe: a band of human cultists. The minds of these lunatics who submit to these abominations are strange and alien things that I dare not imagine the works of. Clad in bronze and cloth the color of blood, they dive upon us with wicked blades, chanting unintelligible syllables of power.

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They soon learn, however, that despite the wounds they deal to us their bodies are just as frail and fragile as ours.

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And that we ourselves are not without eldritch might.

When all is said and done, they fall like fronds before the storm that is Perroy.

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(Hellions, man. Fuckin' Hellions.)

We face a few packs of spiders and strange grubs, but dispatch them without much trouble. Eventually though, Reynauld can take no more and succumbs to his Stress and madness.

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He descends into a paranoid, muttering fit, but we are almost out the Ruins. We continue onwards until we are satisfied, trying our best to ignore his mad ramblings as we make our way further. Eventually we feel we have scouted the tombs enough and return to the Hamlet, eager to be rid of Reynauld and his gibbering.

(Reynauld hits max stress here, gets a negative attribute. Not even in a serious battle either.)

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We come away with a fair profit, though we will no doubt have to find a way to deal with Reynauld's madness somehow. In the mean time, fresh allies have found their way to us.

(Traits don't pan out too well this time, its what happens when you have a high stress run like this.)

Next time, we venture into the Weald, Reynauld donates all of my money to the Abbey, Dismas vanishes while gambling, and the Graveyard gets some new additions.