We've killed our first few people, now let's talk STATS!Oh hey, someone’s actually reading this! That’s good! Means I’m not just typing out to some people who’ll never read because it’s too edgy! Now to scare you folks away with a long-winded gameplay explanation, featuring... Uh, a long long list of things that mainly have to do with characters!
So. We’ve managed to make it past the tutorial level without anyone dying. Well done, Dismas and Reynauld! You get to actually get to play a part in clearing the manor and its surrounding areas! (Note: So far I haven’t had Dismas or Reynauld die on the tutorial, but apparently it’s happened to some players.) Don’t cross your fingers yet, though! Someone has to be the first death, after all!
But before I can write about Reimu and Eirin suffering alongside these two, It might be best for me to explain the game’s systems and how they work.
As you may have noticed, this game’s battle structure is not too unlike other turn-based RPG games like Final Fantasy in that there are multiple combatants, each one taking (usually) one action per turn that they get. Attacks can hit normally, miss, crit, or be dodged. There are status effects, including debuffs, stun, and Damage Over Time (AKA DoT). Of course, this game is different than others of its kind, and to understand it better, we should take a look at the screens of our highwayman, Dismas!
You can view this character info screen by mousing over a character’s portrait and right-clicking, both during quests and at the Hamlet. Firstly: The quirks!
You see, each soldier against corruption that you recruit is their own little special snowflake, and is guaranteed to start with one to two of both positive and negative quirks. These can include things like a flat boost to speed or accuracy, an increase in stress damage taken from certain enemy types, being forced/compelled to interact with certain curios (objects that can be found in rooms, like that tent and chest from the tutorial), and probably a few other things, too.
These quirks, both positive and negative, can be acquired when a quest is ended, whether it’s abandoned or completed. The chance of getting a positive quirk is a flat 45 percent when a quest is successfully completed, with the chance of getting a negative quirk being a base 25 percent and being increased by one percent for every four points of stress up to a maximum of 25 more points. That means that at 100 stress, not only is your hero likely to be afflicted (we’ll get to that when it comes up), they’re also much more likely to gain a negative quirk. Thankfully, the odds of getting a positive quirk remain the same.
Abandoning the quest (returning to the Hamlet before the quest can be completed) is generally a good deal worse - the stress multiplier for gaining negative quirks is a bit bigger (at least, according to the wiki), the base chance of getting a negative quirk is higher, and the base chance of getting a positive quirk is smaller and is now reduced by stress.
The big takeaway from all this is: Completing quests is good. Abandoning quests is bad. Ending quests when you’re stressed is also bad. The effects permanently change how your heroes behave in a number of ways. It’s possible to change these yourself in a number of ways, too.
Now for Dismas’s stats. I’ll try not to get too wordy here.
Max HP - The amount of damage a hero can take until they’re on Death’s Door - where they are at risk of permanently dying. We’ll get into that when we get to Death Blow resistance over in the Resistances section. Dismas’s max HP is 22 right now, reduced 5% by his “Soft” quirk that he picked up after the quest.
Dodge - The chance that a hero will dodge any attack directed at them. Every single attack that isn't at 95 accuracy or above will have a chance of missing. Dodge will be added to this number - each point of Dodge is a 1% chance of dodging the enemy's attack. Dodge will be affected by hero class and armor level, as well as certain quirks, buffs, debuffs, and trinkets. Dismas currently has ten points of dodge, so an enemy attack with a base100% chance of hitting actually has a 10% chance to miss. Not that it’ll happen frequently enough to notice.
Prot - Short for protection. The percentage of PROT a hero has will reduce the amount of damage an attack inflicts, capping at 80%. The Hard Skinned quirk, as well as certain buffs and trinkets, will increase a hero’s PROT. Dismas currently has 0% PROT, so every attack will inflict full damage to him.
SPD - Short for Speed. This affects turn order. At the start of each turn, every unit rolls a number from one to eight, and the units with higher numbers go first. This means more speed is more better, as it lets you attack first and possibly stun or kill enemies, rather than the reverse. There is one specific situation where more speed can actually be worse - it’s when a unit winds up being faster than a dedicated healer when they’re suffering from a DoT effect. A DoT effect will hurt units at the start of their turn, you see, and if the unit is on death’s door, there’s a risk that they will die before the healer can do anything to help them.
Oh dammit, now I have to do a takeaway for this stat alone. Well done, me.
The big takeaway from all this is: More speed lets you hurt enemies first, but it might also let your units get hurt first if they’re bleeding. But it’s generally better to have more of this than less.ACC MOD - Short for Accuracy Modifier. Modifies accuracy, which is your chance to hit. This is affected by a whole slew of things, including which combat skill is used, what level it is, quirks, buffs, debuffs, trinkets, and probably a few other things, too. However, a hit is only guaranteed when accuracy is at 95 or greater, as said before - this is due to a hidden +5 accuracy modifier shared by both heroes and monsters. Darkness causes monsters to become more accurate, but we’ll get into that Some Other Time (TM), I promise.
The big takeaway from all this is: Accuracy has a point where you're guaranteed to hit your enemy. This helps cut down on that XCOM 2 65% chance meme, but remember that you have to either reduce enemy dodge or increase your own accuracy before you can really ensure a hit. Never leave the killing of an enemy to just one person or you might just wind up being the ones who are killed.CRIT - Short for Critical Hit, or, in this case, Critical Hit Chance. More of this gives you a chance of critically hitting, which inflicts more than the maximum damage of an attack, causes status effects to last longer when inflicted, causes stress heal, and generally results in all sorts of good shit. At least, when you perform them. When the enemy performs them everything goes to hell a little bit faster (ok, maybe a lot more faster), since you’re the one taking more damage. Crits also inflict a good deal of stress damage, which is super yaaaay (no it isn’t, but we’ll get to stress Some Other Time (TM)). In addition to the usual methods of boosting stats like using certain skills, trinkets, quirks, and certain buffs, darkness can also cause critical hits to be inflicted more often - by both you and the enemy.
The big takeaway from all this is: Crits that you perform are good. Crits the enemy performs are bad. You can increase crit chance by making things darker, but this boosts the enemy’s crit chance too.Nearly forgot to mention, by the way, that critical hits (of both kinds) are usually accompanied by the sexy voice of Wayne June, which makes them all the better/worse when they do land. You haven’t played Darkest Dungeon until you’ve heard lines like “A singular strike!” or “How quickly the tide turns!”
If you don’t have the game, all the Narrator’s lines can be found
here, though not all of them have the voice files.
Finally, there’s DMG - Short for Damage. This is affected by trinkets and weapons, and the amount of damage actually inflicted by skills will vary from skill to skill, as well as the enemy’s PROT.
Now, let’s get into combat skills. Each unit has a different set of skills, which may result in combinations that are really good, really terrible, or somewhere in between. Every hero type is guaranteed to have one skill that they will always start off being skilled in so that you don’t get completely screwed over by random skill assignment. For instance, see the icon of the pistol barrel that’s got the muzzle flash? That’s Pistol Shot, the skill that all Highwaymen are guaranteed to have. It can be used in all rows except the front row, and hits all enemies except the one in the front row. It deals a bit less damage than normal but inflicts extra damage against marked targets and has a 10% boost to crit chance.
The circles showed at the top of the bar, right below “Preferred Position” and “Preferred Target” indicate where the hero can use their skills and where the hero can hit. Here, Dismas can use all four of his skills from the second and third rows, while he can hit the second row with all his skills, the third row with most of his skills, and the first and fourth rows with only one or two skills.
We’ll have to keep this in mind so that we can construct a team that is can be its most effective. The back rows are generally where more fragile and dangerous enemies are, while the front enemies just hurt the first two rows. Some skills, of course, heal or buff your own teammates, and this can be seen by a glow effect around the outside of the circles in the “Preferred Position” diagram.
The big takeaway from all this is: Some attacks can only be performed at certain spots and can only hit enemies in other certain spots. Keep this in mind.
Next thing to get into is resistances. I’ll try to make this quick, but each number represents a chance to resist that effect if it gets applied. Here’s each of the effects:
Stun: Stops you from acting during that turn. Bleed and Blight will still decrease your health, and you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it. Lovely, right? Thankfully, when the stun status is removed you get a boost of 40% resistance to stun, which is there to prevent stunlocking on both sides.
Blight: Causes damage over time that ignores PROT. Antidotes and certain abilities can cure this status, and healing can outpace the damage.
Disease: These are separate from negative quirks in that they only cause big stat penalities. You’ll want to remove them as soon as possible through the use of the Sanitarium or certain camping skills. Certain enemies and curios can inflict disease.
Death Blow: When a hero hits zero HP, they fall onto Death’s Door, suffering a stress penalty and, more importantly, having a chance of dying any further time they take damage. Death Blow resist is the chance of not dying when you take damage, and this checks every single time you take damage.
Move: Some attacks can cause units to move about, messing up the formation by making some skills unusable in the position they move to. This forces them to either use less effective skills or waste a turn moving back into position.
Bleed: Similar to Blight, but comes from different sources and is cured using bandages and certain abilities (the same ones that cure blight).
Debuff: Causes stats to decrease. If too many debuffs stack up, you could find your units a lot less helpful than they might normally be.
Trap: This is actually the chance of disarming traps that can be seen in the dungeon. Note that this is completely useless if you don’t spot the trap in the first place, which requires Scouting (we’ll also get into that later.) If you trigger a trap, you can only hope you can dodge it.
Camping Skills and Diseases will both be skipped over since I explained the latter and we’ll wait until camping becomes relevant until we get to the former.
Equipment is simple - you have armor and weapon, which upgrade linearly, and two trinket slots. Think of the trinkets as perks you can equip - usually boosting one stat at the cost of another. Again, we’ll get into those when they become relevant.
Finally, we have resolve level, which determines what dungeons a character can enter as well as the maximum level weapons, armor, and skills can be upgraded to. Increasing resolve level also boosts resistances by some amount with each level.
Aaand that’s all I have for info on character stats.
The big takeaway from all this is: Each character has base stats determined by class and quirks. They can be further changed with trinkets, armor and weapon upgrades, new quirks, or increasing resolve level.I already have the footage for the first trip into the Ruins recorded, by the way, so I might be able to have the post for that up as soon as next Sunday. Assuming I didn’t miss anything critical and/or don’t suddenly get struck by more ennui and/or sloth.
As for the suggested names for the first Two hellions and Man-At-Arms, I’ll accommodate all those requests, the old guy. As long as you’re not trying to name two characters the same name, it should be fine.
