Darkest Dungeon EP7: Knocking on Heaven’s Door

Team Blognation (aka Team Invincible – yes, I am trying to jinx us here!) is on quite the roll and I begin to start focusing on the main Quest Goals. Kill the bosses of which, I have already killed the Apprentice Necromancer.  I am doing less of the funny crazy montage speeches (as by now I am sure you get the picture) but they still add a lot of fun. Hopefully I find some new ones to share.

Tesh made it back from his religious mission but WelshTroll is still on his bender. I am starting to worry about him. The good news is that he is that consistent you can always count on him to disappear for a few days. Yes, the confidence that that is the guy healing the whole crew!

Things are going awesome. I am LOVING the Hellion! Great balance on the class. They have a wicked attack that hits three enemies at once (that seems to crit often), but you take a -20% damage debuff after you use it. You do have a +20% Damage buff (but that is your action for the round). It’s a high risk, high reward class. Sounds just like J3w3l!

With my eyes on the Swine Prince we send a real solid team into the Warrens – Aywren, GrumpyElf, Dr. Raph, and Leo

The first boss had pretty simple mechanics – he would create a skeleton ally every time he attacked. The Swine Prince has tons of HP and his sidekick (named Wilbur) doesn’t do much damage but kept ‘marking’ party members. Marked members take more damage from the big guy. I found that annoying and killed the little guy first – which put the Swine Prince into a permanent ‘enraged’ state and he hit a lot harder and faster. I managed to get the group to safety but had to restart the entire instance. Now that I understand the mechanics, I’ll take another stab at it.

Disaster strikes and GrumpyElf joins our other blogger friends in blogger game heaven. (In blogger heaven you get 1,000,000 page views a day and EVERYONE leaves a critical and thought provoking comment on all of your posts. Just a FYI).

The others finish off the Swine Prince (and then Wilbur) and the quest is complete. They take a camp and clear out the rest of the dungeon (remember, expeditions are expensive!) and Leo reads a nice passage.

With Welshtroll returning and trying something new in his life (sobriety) we turn our gaze to the Wizened Hag. We are on an unstoppable roll. The Hag shall fall!

Is it just me or does she resemble Beyonce a bit? Crazy in Love? Regardless she is cooking up a storm, and we are NOT invited for dinner. We are going to crash this party.

Ok it looks as though we weren’t invited to dinner because we ARE dinner. The Mechanic for this fight is equally frustrating and interesting. One of her attacks is “into the pot” which performs it’s namesake. It can hit any party member in any of the slots, and seems completely random. The person-stew takes damage more frequently than turns happen and you have to hit the pot and do 15 damage to get them out. If you don’t do it in time, it will sometimes spit them out at zero health and they are in a ‘Deaths Door’ resist check scenario. This can happen to the same character twice in a row. Thankfully, only one character can be in at a time.

Part of the extra challenge here is that the Cauldron can’t be destroyed (I tried, it regens) and it takes up enemy slots 1 and 2. The Hag takes up Enemy slots 3 and 4. My tank (Syncaine) can’t even hit the hag because he doesn’t have a skill equipped that hits slots 3 and 4. So I spend a lot of time trying to not die here and sort this out. It normally takes at least two hits to get them out, and if one of your damage dealers is in its even harder. All the while, the Hag is still doing additional damage with her attacks.

Sadly, it’s too tough. J3w3l AND Syncaine die. I have no choice but to retreat again.

The graveyard is starting to fill up fast. Still I feel pretty confident – the other two boss battles weren’t too hard and now that I have a handle on what goes on during the fight I really feel like I can be successful.

I realized that I killed Syncaine because he was in the cauldron when I retreated. I hoped it would pull him out (it didn’t) so that is a big mistake on my part. I really like Leper tanks but they haven’t been readily available to me at the Stagecoach, and I just went and killed off the only one I have (had). I load up with a solid team with AOE that hits slots 2-3 so I can hit both the Cauldron and the Hag at the same time. I also ensure everyone has a skill loaded up that hit the back lines in case we get the chance to unload on the Hag (you can only swap skills in town). I feel confident that with the reach I have we’ll be victorious! I do appreciate how the Graveyard reminds us how our heroes met their fates.

The results show otherwise. The healer gets in the Cauldron twice and the Hag picks on the heal-less team members. Dr. Raph dies and everyone else is really low. I am forced to retreat again. This is the first roadblock I have faced in the game. I realize now that the proper plan is to grind out some levels, invest in the Blacksmith (better weapons and armor) and the Guild (higher level skills) and make sure everyone in the group is level two. I also decide that I should probably bring two healers to help offset the major damage done in the Cauldron mechanic. I exit the Weald defeated – but have a good plan of attack for when I can go back. This game is no longer fun and faceroll, and I have a new level of determination to kill the Beyonce lookalike.

With the losses to our team I recruit Roger Edwards (Plague Doctor) and Bhagpuss (Grave Robber).

Morale is low. Losses are high. Bank balance is bleeding. Can we regroup? Stay tuned!