My Darkest Dungeon 2 tips will help you survive grim, shadowy mazes filled with cultists, creatures and criminals looking to reduce your team to thinly-spread viscera. If you're going to help save this bleak world you need to to hit your enemies first and use some good tactics. That's why I've put together this guide on Darkest Dungeon 2, full of tips, tricks and strategy information for you to keep in mind.
1. Watch the Flame and stoke it regularly
It's important to watch the Flame on the back of your stagecoach. It gives you benefits when it's burning brightly and penalties when it starts to die down. None of the penalties are too punishing but when the Flame dies completely you'll get immediately attacked by frenzied Cultists. It's a tough battle that also comes with a whole range of handicaps. Assuming you survive you get nothing but 40 Flame restored, and probably be far worse off, with new stress, tensions and injuries to hold you back in later fights.
So always take the opportunity to relight it at certain times, usually through the Assistance Encounters on the road, or through certain rare items that can be found and equipped on your best Darkest Dungeon 2 characters. You can even give it a slight boost it by discarding items from your inventory. So, if the Darkest Dungeon 2 Flame ever dips below 40 dealing with it should be a priority. Speaking of which...
2. Plan your route several steps ahead
How much of the route before you is revealed depends on your scouting roll and Stagecoach upgrades, but you should should always plan ahead with the information you have. Hitting multiple versions of the same encounter can leave you wearied or underprepared, or you might end up at a junction with no good options ahead of you.
You really want to alternate between different encounter types, give yourself as many options as possible, and try to avoid the blue roads when you're struggling, as they'll have more enemy ambushes. So if you've just found a cache of equipment or stoked the Flame at an Assistance Encounter, it's time to pivot and try a Resistance Encounter to fight some enemies and lower the region's Loathing score.
3. Stress is nearly as important as health
Stress is a major mechanic in Darkest Dungeon 2. Characters have a "stress meter" that can be increased and decreased by certain events, and when it maxes out they suffer a "Meltdown."
A Meltdown mean a character is reduced to low health, takes major relationship damage to everyone else in the party, and can suffer from negative quirks. The stress meter resets at that point, so a character can suffer multiple Meltdowns in the same area, or even the same battle. You can take precautions to ensure this doesn't happen with items such as Laudanum or putting a Jester in the team.
4. Maintain good relationships with Inn items and teamwork
The relationships between individual characters replaces the insanity mechanic of the previous game. Actions taken in and out of combat can have positive or negative Affinity between two characters, making them like each other more or less. You can check on these relationships in the character screens, but when characters reach a certain level they either gain a random positive relationship - Inseparable, Respectful, or even Amorous - or a negative one, such as being Hateful or Suspicious.
These relationships can help or hinder you by provoking random buffs, penalties or behaviours during combat. Two close characters might heal each other for free or add damage to their attacks, while characters with a negative relationships will trip each other up, cause stress damage with insults, or even stop them from healing each other if they don't trust them. Obviously a team of best friends is a powerful force, while a group of spiteful characters is likely to fail.
Relationships aren't set in stone - good relationships can collapse while bad ones can improve. It's a lot easier for bad relationships to grow organically, especially once characters start having Meltdowns. Healing and buffing each other can provide positive Affinity, but it's pretty random when you're out in the field and your control is limited. It's while recuperating at an Inn that you can affect relationships the most, using special Inn items like Whiskey or Card Decks to promote team spirit. Build bonds as much as you can here to mitigate the damage that'll be done once you're adventuring again.
5. Check the Deathblow Resistance stat on enemies
Hold over an enemy to check their Deathblow Resistance stat, the little red skull down at the bottom. If it's anything other than a dash, the enemy has the same "Death's Door" ability as your characters and won't necessarily die when reduced to 0 hit points. The higher the number, the more likely they are to survive. Most enemies don't have a Deathblow score and will fall immediately when suffering damage, but bigger, larger enemies with more HP tend to be more durable in all respects. Always worth checking before you find out the wrong way.
6. Battle timers are a mixed blessing
When crossing paths marked as ragged and blue, you can get ambushed by enemies who set up blockades, forcing you into a confrontation. These battles are unique in a specific way however as they end automatically in five rounds. This is good or bad depending on circumstances, as you don't get any rewards if the battle finishes this way. So if you're winning and there's only one enemy left when the timer elapses, the whole thing is a wash and you come away with nothing but the stress and injuries you sustain.
However, it can work the other way too. If you're really struggling and think your team might get wiped out, you can play purely defensively with healing and buffs, effectively just holding out for the five rounds until you can make your escape.
7. Always seek out Hero Shrines
Hero Shrines are special locations marked on the map with a bell that provide backstory and lore on a hero within the party. Sometimes they'll be a little puzzle or battle from their history that you play through (don't worry, it doesn't affect them once you leave the area), but when you come out, they'll have unlocked a whole new kind of attack, not just for the run but for the rest of the game! It's a permanent power-up, and though characters can only have a certain amount of attacks prepared at any time, you can switch between them when out of combat. Some of the best attacks in the game are obtained through Hero Shrines. The Darkest Dungeon 2 Jester Music of the Night puzzle is a good example, giving you a Harvest attack that hits enemies in the middle rank and bleeds them.
8. Equip your Stagecoach with Storage Trunks and inventory-boosting upgrades
You can upgrade and modify your Stagecoach at the Wainwright, a special NPC store whenever you reach an Inn. Upgrades are brought from stores or found when travelling, and do numerous things depending on the upgrade itself: boost scouting chances, create items while you travel, or even stop your heroes from arguing.
However, the most important upgrade is to increase your inventory size. This is usually done with Storage Trunks, which each boost inventory by 4, but there's also items which increase the stacking of Relics, Food or other items for greater efficiency of storage. Without these upgrades you'll end up throwing away a lot of what you find, making many of the encounters barely worth the effort.
9. Blight, bleed and burn the biggest brute enemies
Certain enemies in Darkest Dungeon 2 are absolute tanks - behemoths that take up multiple spaces and have dozens of hit points, not to mention robust Deathblow Resistance scores that make killing them incredibly hard. By stacking a bunch of DOT (Damage Over Time) conditions like blight, bleed and burn on them early, their health will drain away across the fight, and every different condition has a chance to be a Deathblow when they are eventually reduced to no health. Get these sort of effects in early and it's basically free damage on top of everything else you're doing.
10. Bad situations tend to get worse quickly
Managing disaster is the whole point of Darkest Dungeon 2 - anything that goes slightly wrong is liable to get worse, as bad effects all tend to tie into each other. Losing health causes stress. Stress leads to Meltdowns. Meltdowns lead to damaged relationships, which lead to all kinds of penalties that make it all the more likely you'll lose more health, until one of your characters dies and everything seems to collapse. It's a real domino effect, so keep in mind that a minor penalty is likely to become a big one in combat. If you're feeling at a disadvantage, avoid combat where possible and try to make it to the Inn in one piece, where you can go about the business of recovery.
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