Darkest Dungeon 2 – Test, Tactics & Strategy

Purer Stress

All of my characters hate each other. It actually started quite harmlessly, every now and then there were a few little taunts. But within a very short time there was a hail of debuffs, abilities were blocked, and I could no longer take any action without noticing the hateful heckling of my characters. This is the Early Access version of Darkest Dungeon 2 in short.

Many systems are approached differently here than in the predecessor. The biggest change is that you no longer have a kind of base with “Hamlet” from which you send your troops to the various dungeons. Instead, you move in Darkest Dungeon 2 with the carriage over a map apparently inspired by Slay the Spire and make small stops in restaurants. Before starting this journey, you choose a team composition of four heroes to accompany you for the entire time.

Traveling in a carriage

This new system works, but so far it’s not very appealing. You usually have the choice between two to three paths, whereby the characters in the team naturally also have an opinion here. If you do not respect them, stress hails. You can either steer the carriage yourself or let it drive automatically to the next point. The latter is pleasant, but not particularly advisable. Things that the heroes can heal, grant items, etc. are scattered along the way, but most of these things are simply not collected when driving automatically. In addition, there is still the possibility of getting into a street fight during the trip. Depending on the area, these vary between ‘fairly easy’ and ‘absolutely cruel’.

A run can end in the first street fight because you are confronted with opponents that are too strong. The fights are limited to a limit of five rounds. If the opponents are still alive, you will not receive any rewards. This can be frustrating, as most opponents of this can now be on the verge of death. If you fail to give them the fatal blow before the five rounds are over, the fight is counted as a failure. So far, the carriage system has been conceptually interesting, but not particularly exciting in terms of implementation. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement in the future development stages.

Where is the love?

Another major change in Darkest Dungeon 2 is the stress mechanics: Stress levels now go from zero to ten. If you reach the end of this scale, the character will collapse, lose a lot of life and relationships with the other characters will suffer. After all: Immediate death from heart attack no longer takes place. In principle, this new system is not bad and it is networked quite well with the relationship system. When characters exceed stress factor 3, negative interactions will occur more frequently. For example, characters complain when the fatal blow on an enemy has been “stolen” from them – this gives them negative relationship points and at some point it can no longer be avoided that the characters hate each other.