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Tuesday, October 26, 2021

Attempting to finish Darkest Dungeons

After a good, solid year off, I decided to reinstall Darkest Dungeons and finish it.

Where I left off, I needed some specific guys at level 6 to attempt the Dark Dungeon itself. But, they needed time off to recover from stress. Plus, one guy I specifically needed have been killed and I couldn't seem to find a replacement. The other missions mostly required me to assemble a sub-optimal team and basically kill time. I have no stomach for that.

A year later, though, I did.

I started back up, killed time with a mission or two, and then attempted the first dungeon mission proper.

That didn't go well.

Two tries later, I'd lost 7 characters and made no progress. I was able to get a few missions in and level up some other guys.

I won't lie . . . those two TPKs (a near one followed by a full one) almost caused me to quit again. But I decided to set it aside that day and come back to it.

I tried again. I won this time, but of course, the final enemy critter - a boss's underling - with 1 HP left, killed one of my guys dead outright. Sigh. I got revenge but what the heck.

I've been doing a few other missions, trying to assemble a good crew for the next dungeon mission.

I'll finish the whole thing out over the next week and be done with it. It's a fun game except when it feels like the game is just piling on - like when you've got 3 full HP low-stress guys and the bad guys just pile on the same wounded, high-stress PC over and over and over again no matter what you to do self-mark or what have you. Maybe it just seems that way? Worth what I paid for it but still I'd like to check off the game as complete.

6 comments:

  1. I assume you're talking about Darkest Dungeon?

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  2. "Two tries later, I'd lost 7 characters and made no progress. I was able to get a few missions in and level up some other guys."

    This is why I got it, played maybe a whole two hours and never picked it up again. I don't mind failure, but I need to feel that some level of progress is being made, either in clearing things or at least learning how to do better next time or I'm done with a game. I don;t play Dark Sols either, punishment grinding is not my kink.

    Of course Dwarf Fortress is in my top 10 list of all time great strategy/builder games games and it's curve is brutal, but it gives you time to learn before it piles on the pain.

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    1. In the non-Dark Dungeon missions, I feel like I'm making progress. In the Dark Dungeon ones, it feels more like one-and-done, win-or-lose. You don't gain anything with a failure, you definitely lose 1 character and make lose more, and you don't accomplish anything unless you accomplish everything. It's a little frustrating, especially because the pace of the game demands you keep using guys to do missions so there is a lot of play between attempts. It's not ideal.

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  3. The trips to the darkest dungeon in Darkest Dungeon are quite tricky, and I don't know how easy they are to solve/figure out without help from the internet (it's so long ago that I first sent folks in, and then when I resumed playing after a year or two off, in looking for hints I got spoilers instead, which was annoying). It's still lots of fun...looking forward to Darkest Dungeon II. Currently almost done with Divinity: Original Sin (Enhanced Edition).

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    1. I'll get Darkest Dungeon II only when, like DD, it is like $7 or so. I've got other games to play in the meantime.

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