It's never easy though, I just sailed through a dungeon, camped right before the boss to get all my health and stress back, only to end up getting ambushed. Then the boss decided to target my Houndmaster with lots of attacks, and my Occultist couldn't be bothered to get a heal above 5 off for the whole fight (in fact getting two 0s) despite doing a 20 and a critical 24 earlier.

I also haven't had a plague Doctor delivered to me for about 10 weeks.

The trick in fights is generally to focus the back 2 rows that have Stress Dealers on them. Damage you can heal easily, stress you can't. Make sure you're covered through every rank. You can easily see this by looking at the characters screen:

This shows she's best in the front row, and has full coverage of the enemy (hence why no red lights are bigger than the others) plus she has Iron Swan, which lets her hit the back row, where stress spewing cunts like to hide.

Other than that, use your Plague Doctors and Houndmasters to inflict stress and bleed. Plague Doctors especially are amazing in the Cove and Ruins as they can shit out Blight on the back two rows with impunity, as well as stun any of the four rows. 

Also don't spread your damage, focus enemies down.

When prepping for missions, it takes a while to learn what you need, but rule of thumb on Short Missions is 12 food, 10 Torches, 2 Shovels, 1 Key, 1 Holy Water.

If it's Ruins, take 3 bandages, Weald, 2 bandages, 2 antivenoms, Warrens, 2 bandages, 3 antivenoms, Cove, not sure, they don't come up but I imagine more bandages on higher difficulties cos of the bastard Crabs.

Use a wiki to understand how to interact with the intractable objects, because they're too punishing to fuck a round with guess work: https://darkestdungeon.gamepedia.com/Curio

I am pretty sure it basically tells you that you're fucked if you pick Stygian. It's definitely a game you have to read about. I don't really think using wikis and reading reddit threads etc is poor form for this game, the odds are already stacked and there is no "perfect" play state you can get into. All you can do is mitigate the inevitable. Some guy might have aced a Dungeon with a party that's "just so" but man, the chances of replicating that are low.

I cannot stress enough how you can't take this game lightly. It makes XCOM look like a paragon of fairness.

I'd upgrade position one stress removal and maybe medical ward before guild and blacksmith. You only really need the blacksmith for medium/boss runs.

Shame there aren't any in game stats for this. I've no idea how many missions I've done (I think I've done 30 + alot more short than medium dungeons). I've toppled 6 bosses and lost a total of 14 heroes (not including the three I released due to their curse). 4 of those 14 was down to me epically fucking up by pulling a monster out of a void. I'm playing on normal difficulty.

Just started doing veteran level dungeon missions, so the losses could go up significantly, potentially.

Abandoned my boss run on veteran. Ran out of food and my healer suffered a heart attack. Not worth pushing on. Lost a level 3 healer. Damn.

Crap she was my last vestel on my roster. Level 3 runs on hold. Need to train up some vestels

Cheers for the tip. Did my first long run on green difficulty (easiest). That takes awhile.

Spoiler for crimson curse

That sounds harsh. I take it the minions were in the boss room and you didn't carry on exploring after killing the boss?

Your alot further along then I am. Looks like I have plenty of frustration to look forward to. Sigh.

Wtf?!? One room away from the necromancer boss, camping. Use a skill so can't be ambushed at night and rest. During rest my team get pulled into a dreamstate with 3 snakes who absolutely decimate my team. Took 2 down before the dream state?!? ended and I'm back in the room I camped in but my team's health is a mess.

I'll get back to you on bosses Tempy, as soon as I get back to town so I can check.

Nice work! So you've seen almost all the estates bosses, that's cool. I don't have the Sheildbreaker but it tempts me on the main screen every time a I load up. The cage guy is The Collector he has a chance of appearing if your inventory is past a certain point, because there's no comfort in DD.

I was looking at the physical Switch release, didn't know it was already out on the store.

Might see more action on the Switch. I'm assuming it looks as lovely as the Steam version?

Subbax wrote:

Am I missing out if I don't get and use Crimson Court straight away?

No.

I bought the game with all the dlc, crimson court definitely makes it harder but it also adds tension when you come across creatures that can inflict the curse on your party.

Decided to go do an "epic" dungeon (my first epic), the baron has invited me to the courtyard. Taking party with 3 members who are inflicted. This may not end well......

I've never seen an Epic Dungeon, looks like it's a Crimson Court feature for that one dungeon. Sounds rough.