Darkest Dungeon EP10: One More Adventure

[edit: made the pictures clickable to expand into a new window – forgot on the first draft, sorry!]

First off, this game is a lot of fun. It completely has that “just one more adventure” feel to it since play sessions can be done in 15-30 minutes. It can be addicting. I too have one more adventure to share before announcing the future of this series.

We have done 27 dungeon runs (Both successful and failed). They count those as ‘weeks’ in game. I have kept going in the game beyond this last episode and I am now somewhere in week 40. I haven’t touched my initial playthrough since I started this series and there really isn’t any reason to run more than one Campaign, from what I can see. Still, I suppose it makes sense for shared computers or if you have family and friends that want to play.

A couple of runs with low level team members unlocks the ‘Necromancer’ boss from the ruins (we killed the ‘Apprentice’ Necromancer last time!). This is how the dungeons work, they level up as you complete missions in them unlocking new, harder missions (and new, harder bosses). They have introduced a lot of varying quests but they are limited by what you can imagine – kill X of these, collect Y of those, destroy Z of these. That part isn’t that important because its not the tasks that your team is doing that is the attraction to the game it is how they are doing it – and how they are reacting to it.

I assemble our dream team – Aywren, Isey, WelshTroll and the new level 3 Jeromai for added deeps. Right off the bat I am happy to see a couple new mob types again. It’s the little things that you end up looking forward to. This is my AOE team – both Isey and Jermoai have attacks that hit the first three enemy slots. This combination is perfect for the Necromancer boss since he constantly summons skeletons to protect him.

Here we are at the next boss fight. The first was pretty challenging, so expecting this to be more of the same with buffed up damage boxes. I am curious if they have any plans to change the boss mobs a bit to reflect they are a bit different (even coloring) – it would be a nice quality of life change, but not completely necessary. Since it is a startup project its interesting how often and easy I am with letting things like this slide. This could also be because of how much I have been loving the game.

Major crit from Jeromai and I love the battle cry! I wish they had a translated version or anodated so I knew if he was yelling “DEATH FOR GLORY” or “I LIKE MEATBALLS“. I bet its the Meatballs one – it is Jeromai after all. You can see Isey and Welshtroll having their stress lowered as a result of the critical hit that lead to death.

Aywren had the chance for the killing blow… but missed! Figured I’d throw in her fumble because well, if you can’t laugh at Aywren, who can you laugh at – right? =) If I would have told you that the first character we made in this game would still be going at this time it would have been a real stretch. The stars have aligned for Aywren (go by a lottery ticket!) Missed chance for glory here, but she will just be happy to be alive no doubt.

The necromancer ended up bleeding out from a Jeromai applied bleed a couple turns ago. Not nearly as dramatic as a beheading, but I’ll take the win.

Strike off another boss from the hit list. That is what there is to do currently – kill 9 bosses (3 different levels of each) and also under Caretaker Goals there is one to level each class to level 6. That will take time and be a tall order – especially since Lepers just fall apart when on my team. (badum ching? *groan*?)

The Cove and the Darkest Dungeon are still locked up. Hovering over them says “to be added later”. While I was able to unlock the Warrens and Weald pretty early the other two may be out of reach until release time. I am not sure at this point. To be honest this game doesn’t even feel like it is in early development – there has been no crashes and no glaringly obvious bugs. I am sure there are many going on under the hood, but they don’t pop up in any sort of visibility from a playing experience.

Here is an update of our current roster of who is currently living. You will noticed I made Thalen twice by accident – I have since deleted Berzerker Thalen because I had used Occultist Thalen already.

Here is our current graveyard (I have had to do some beginner photoshopping to get them all on one page. Typically it is a scrollable list). One for me, one for my Blogging crew {splashes a sip of uh, coffee on the ground}

This post is going to “end” the playthrough series in the current format. I am definitely going to keep playing and I will pop in an update here and there, but a 10 episode run on the blog is a good chunk – I’d love some feedback (I haven’t done one before, may consider doing another one in the future after a break) and while I didn’t get through my entire blogroll I did get through a fair number. The game just isn’t introducing anything that new right now – it is simply grind through dungeons, improve, fight bosses, rinse / repeat. The interactions here are still fun and the game play is still great but I just don’t think there is enough to report on 4-5 posts a week. By now I am sure you all get the fun, feel, and flavor this game has to offer.

I may still update once every week or so  – I am still playing this a lot and have over 30 hours into right now (more than I do in Dragon Age: INQ,  the other title I am currently playing). I can sneak peek you and say that I have two teams of bloggers up to level 5 already tackling the tier three bosses. I have been tracking deaths and adds and major new things and I think I can consolidate that into a weekly post for an update  just for fun. I don’t want to leave you all hanging and I really appreciate the following this series has!

So I am going to ‘end’ this series the way we went into it – two adventurers, Aywren and Isey. This time, instead of heading into danger and death, we are enjoying a well earned, semi-lukewarm beer. Because that is the only thing on tap that is positive near the Darkest Dungeon.