Light, vow of safety!
The ancestor
As we wrote earlier, Red Hook is working on Crimson Yard, the first DLC for Darkest Dungeon. However, the developers are also preparing a number of free updates, the most interesting of which is the new game mode.
SaveShining mode
The main drawback of Darkest Dungeon, for which the game is most often criticized, is its considerable length. On average, Darkest Dungeon takes 80 hours to complete, which has caused some players to abandon the game without finishing (mainly after some particularly unpleasant loss of an entire squad with valuable equipment). The passage time is also increased by the elements of the "grind", which are incorporated into the concept of the game.
Part of this challenge of resilience is the Darkest Dungeon as it was intended, but we would also like more players to see the story through. Therefore, we will add an alternative Radiant game mode to the game, which will allow you to complete the game in 40 hours. Rest assured that the alternate ruleset will not change key elements of the game that define Darkest Dungeon, such as auto-save or irreversible death. However, we will tweak something here and there - we will rebuild the game in this mode so that a reasonable investment of time and effort will allow us to follow the path of the Ancestor down to its very depths. Some in-game achievements, and possibly even dungeon trophies, will still require you to complete normal gameplay - we still want to reward the hard work of players.
New horrors in Champion Dungeons!
One of the most exciting moments in the game is the jump from the Apprentice dungeons to the Veteran dungeons. As soon as you begin to feel a surge of self-confidence at the Apprentice level, as you face new powerful monsters in Veteran Dungeons. In the same spirit, we are adding a new monster to each region for the Champion dungeons.
These new monsters have insidious, never-before-seen abilities that will add variety and new interactions between opponents in Champion Dungeons. It is also reported that several of Wolfe's raiders escaped and mingled with the common bandits in the championship areas.
Today we want to tell you about the Bone Bearer - one of four new champion monsters:
Clutching tightly to the mugs of ale so that no one could see their shaking hands, several experienced adventurers whispered among themselves about the new horrors awaiting in the deepest dungeons beneath the ruins. It is said that hideous crowds of evil skeletons rallied around the standard-bearers of transcendental decay. In dead hands they hold blasphemous witchcraft standards, the presence of which in battle gives tremendous power and other untold support to their accursed family. As they say, these bone-knocking fiends even wield ancient forgotten powers that can revive corpses that have long been crumbled into dust! A never-before-seen threat whose gnashing teeth and shuffling footsteps echo endlessly in the shadowed arcades of ruined fortifications ...
Shining exit
We want to finish work on the Shining Mode in early February, that is, in just a couple of weeks. We know that many are eager to learn more about our major game expansion, The Crimson Yard. We decided to go all-in and add in-game content as part of the Radiant update, which inevitably led to the postponement of the Crimson Dvor release date. However, we believe that it will benefit the game. Most of the work on The Crimson Court has been completed and we expect to release the expansion in April.
The last month has been incredible. We were just blown away by the huge stream of support for the Darkest Dungeon game. On behalf of the team, I want to thank you for making the game a success. We watched Twitch, Youtube, read forums (ours and Steam's) constantly since the launch of the game, shared your feedback, participated in discussions, accepted criticism and enjoyed good reviews.
We set out to make a game that could compete with many other RPG projects, and we hoped that players would love it ... and it did! We are deeply grateful for your support and will work tirelessly to offer you an exceptional gaming experience. Bugs will be fixed, balance will be fixed, and new content will be added.
Where are we now?
Providing the game, supporting it since launch, being present at GDC and SXSW (game conferences) have been our mission since the launch of Darkest Dungeon on February 3rd. We were even able to rest there for a couple of days (especially on Saturday and Sunday) after the grueling December and January. We were serious about fixing and tracking various problems, carrying out those. services and providing feedback to the gaming community, but most importantly, we tried to be as informative and responsible as possible.
Now that the first wave of difficulties has subsided, we will focus on adding new content and functionality, right up to patch 1.0. This is very exciting!
What does Early Access look like?
Note: This is not an official schedule or work schedule! Everything that is written here can change! We are actively working on the plan and will try to show it to you as early as possible.
General philosophy:
Early Access has two aspects:
On the one hand, this is balance, customization, bug fixes and other improvements aimed at improving the lives of players, which will be gradually added with future patches.
On the other hand, patches with new content will also come out quite often. We want to introduce them as some remarkable events, for the sake of anticipation.
Balance Care:
Expect a lot to change. Heroes, monsters, progress and economics will receive significant adjustments, modifications, nerfs, and in general, all this will change throughout early access. However, we will experiment as carefully as possible and encourage you to share your constructive thoughts, observations, and discussions. Your feedback will be invaluable in improving the quality of Darkest Dungeon!
Forums:
There are many more of you than us! We hope you understand that we may not be consistently active on every thread on the official site forum and in the Steam community. However, we read almost everything! The constructive debate around balance, stress, promotion and more is exactly what we gave the game early access for. We assure you that even if we have not responded to your feedback, we are keeping a close eye on new topics and discussions, with the help of which we can draw up our work plan, if necessary.
Content:
So what's in store for us? A lot of everything. Some of the most significant are:
"Miscellaneous"
Various color options for heroes; -Gordian incidents; - Sponsored artifacts, monsters and more
"Game classes"
Soldier; -Arbalest; -Harger; -Merchant; -Lord Tier (Sposor class)
"New bosses"
Wasteland Boss: Rogue Barricade; -Boss of the Ruins: The Conspirated Prophet; -Boss of the Sanctuary: Formless Flesh
"Bay"
A completely new pack of themed monsters; -New interactive object; -Boss of coves 1 and 2
The Darkest Dungeon ...?
The final dungeon (The Darkest Dungeon) will be released with the full release version of the game, with patch 1.0. You will need to complete several quests in the Darkest Dungeon in order to progress through the story in the game. Missions in this dungeon will test the hardened and relentless veterans! Either you succeed and survive, or die trying to pass these tests - all this awaits you in the final test! There is no need to demand more information from us - that's all we can tell you :)
Once again, on behalf of the entire Darkest Dungeon team - Tyler, Keir, Brooks, Pierre, Powerup Audio (Jeff and Kevin) and myself (Chris) - I want to thank you for your support and enthusiasm for the game. Until next time, inhale the lighted torch and grab a spare shovel - see you in the dark depths ...
Dark Dungeon
Most recently, there was a massive update "FIENDS & FRENZY" for Darkest Dungeon, which brought a lot of innovations to the game.
New content
New Buildings - Ancestor Statue: Click on the statue to get the Ancestral Memoir - a collection of all the cutscenes and boss stories;
buy ambien without prescriptionHeart Attack - Don't let the heroes get too worried. If the stress indicator again exceeds the allowable value of the ailment, then everything will be over;
Sell all the junk! In the inventory with accessories, hold down shift to see the selling value, and press shift + LMB to directly sell these items;
Healing can now be critical;
Added a huge number of group names, embodied with the help of kickstarter and project sponsors.
Improving the interface
City
Added Z-depth to the city, improved interaction with buildings and modified the mechanism for changing the time of day;
Cemetery - added background and changed the caretaker's pose; tombstones now reflect the determination of heroes at the time of their death, as well as added a scroll bar and small changes regarding the interface;
Event log - the interface has been slightly changed so that you can immediately easily analyze recent events, and scroll bars have been added;
Inventory of accessories now supports sorting by rarity and restrictions + added a scroll bar;
Added button "Remove all accessories";
Updated drawing for accessories without a kit;
The names of the groups from the list of players have been approved;
Updated the colors of the button for sorting heroes from the list for recruiting them;
Sorting heroes by class, now sorts more by hero positions.
Dungeon
Added a hotkey (s) to show / hide the heroes panel;
Added manual extinguishing of the torch to fine tune the light level (hover over the torch in-game for more detailed instructions);
Improved animation of the health bar during healing;
Additional map control options (- / = or - / + on the numpad for zooming in / out);
The map now follows the group and remembers settings after scouting.
Additionally
Presentation of the "PROT" system (protection) in some places. This armor will depend on% HP multiplied by the maximum health of the monster or hero. This armor will weaken the passing damage on the target. For example, 20% PROT x 30 hp = 6 points of armor. Those. each damage will absorb 6 damage. Work on this feature will continue in the future;
In some tooltips, marked targets are now labeled as "marked" rather than "tagged";
Improved various icons and menus;
New art for some accessories.
Improvements to balance and gameplay
Darkness is now even more dangerous: reduced the bonus of critical damage, slightly increased the chance that the player will be caught by surprise, accelerated the accumulation of stress and reduced the cash bonus in low light, and also slightly increased the damage of monsters when the lighting was zero;
Slightly changed the dungeons associated with the introduction of new bosses;
The maximum number of heroes available for recruitment has been increased, but this may be temporary;
Adjusted the rarity of items, and also redesigned many of them;
Added a limit on food consumption;
Plague Doctor's disease resistance has been increased;
Bounty Hunter: Reworked Hook and Slice. It is now a targeted bleeding attack, available from position 3 and 4. There was also a slight nerf to the attack bonuses from the finishing ability when the Stun Killer effect was applied;
Leper - Revenge will no longer have accuracy penalties, but its critical strike bonuses have been reduced. Intimidate has been reworked. Now it is a powerful debuff that deals a certain amount of damage applied from the 1st and 2nd position of the player;
Slightly reduced the percentage of critical healing;
The set of stress of companions who have a hero on the brink of death (Death's Door) has been reduced;
Slightly reduced the average critical damage of monsters;
All monsters of level 3 and 5 have a slightly increased hp, which contributes to an increase in the duration of battles in time and an increase in the value of debuffs and buffs;
Some large monsters now have more health (Carrion Eater, Swinetaur, Unclean Giant)
Boss Old Woman (Crone): now it's harder to hit her, and the "Crone's Curse" debuff is increased + added the ability to infect another character;
- "Swinetaur" can now make attacks on the run from the second position, and not from the third;
AI of monsters has been improved so that they can be more deadly as their level increases;
Original bosses (Necromancer, Hag, Swine Prince) now have more vicious behavior depending on their level;
“Heal Received” buff can be on some skills and accessories;
Also added some secret stuff ...
Major bug fixes
Fixed a bug with disabling the event log;
The event log is updated when heroes are renamed;
The torch is now disabled when ambushes with tips;
Fixed a bug with showing the life scale only on the second quest;
Fixed a bug with the wrong position of the profile in the main menu;
Fixes of the user interface in the menu with the results of the raid;
A bug with an "unmarked" room has been fixed;
Fixed AOE positioning;
Changed the pose of the Plague Doctor at rest;
Fixed a bug with the loading screen;
Fixed a bug with priority attacks for the Swine Prince boss;
Fixed a camera that could get stuck in one position after a fight;
Fixed a bug with the background on the screen with provisions;
Blood spatter will no longer appear on miss or dodge;
Fixed a bug when the game crashed when an illness and death occurred simultaneously due to a trap;
Fixes of the narrator's line of remarks;
Traps no longer appear in a hallway that the player has already visited;
Now there will be no "surprises" in the rooms that have already been visited.
The Crimson Court expansion has been temporarily delayed.
Recently, employees of Red Hook Studios announced the imminent introduction of a new mode that will halve the time it takes to play the game, which some users think is overly drawn out.
With the release of the Radiant Update, when launching a new campaign, you will be able to choose from three options: Normal, Radiant and Stygian. In the mode Stygian formerly simply called New Game +, you can now start playing without going through the original campaign if its hardcore is not enough for you. Radiant will not be an analogue of the easy level of difficulty, but will be designed to speed up the gathering of the team to storm the Darkest Dungeon and weaken the role of the grind in the game, which ultimately will reduce the average passage time from 80 hours to 40.
The developers also report that the update will bring several new queers and small settings for heroes to the Darkest Dungeon based on community requests. The game will feature new monsters and bosses for the Veteran and Champion level dungeons. These opponents will have unusual, never-before-seen abilities that bring new variety to the gameplay.
The Radiant Mode Dev Update will be ready for release on PC, Linux and Macintosh in early February. PlayStation 4 and PlayStation Vita users will receive this update at a later date as consoles take longer. Traditionally, before its release, there will be a small open beta test, preceding all significant updates. In this regard, the release of the major expansion "The Crimson Court" is delayed for another couple of months; the exact date is not named, but the developers expect it to be released in April.
It's no secret that roguelikes have been moving away from their classic form for many years, keeping the main thing - high randomness, increased (sometimes impossible) difficulty and replayability. I will cautiously express my opinion that this is good, because there are games such as, which conquered many with graphic performance and damage mechanics with an emphasis on the psychological state.
The news of some of the key changes to this anticipated game has passed very quietly for many. The developers have dubbed the update "Those From Below", and it introduces us to the fourth "dungeon" - Cove (Cove), which many were missing. It is argued that there is no need to start a new campaign and the old saves should work.
For the first time, the "Bukhta" was announced on the developer's website, where they invited visitors to PAX Prime, which took place on August 28-31 at the Washington State Convention Center, to stop near their booth, chat with them and get acquainted with the innovations Cove... The team, Chris Bourassa, claims this is the penultimate such global update before the game leaves Early Access.
"The Bay" is permeated with the style and motives of Lovecraft's works, and new 7 types of monsters and 2 bosses emphasize this connection. Some of them introduce new game mechanics. For example, Fishmen Defender ( Fish Man) is able to cover his allies, heal them and significantly reduce the received damage, sometimes as much as 80%. Previously, only our heroes could defend each other. Also beloved by many for other games Bloated Zombie ( Swollen Zombie), which explodes after two turns, dealing damage. All new opponents are very fast, inflict damage with an increased chance of bleeding, and they themselves are almost not subject to such an effect. Chris explained his vision of strengthening opponents: now the main threat will not be a simple increase in their number, health and impact power, but also the complication of the game AI - monsters will now show better tactics, forcing the player to do the same.
Among other things, there are also more pleasant innovations for the player:
Soldiers who have not left for a new campaign in the dungeons, but have not been assigned for treatment, will still slightly heal. It will be useful in a crowded hospital;
Finally, all sorts of supplies that we did not fully use during the trip are sold at the end (with a lower price, of course);
The maximum number of heroes has been expanded: now those who will not start a new game have high rank fighters, but who want to go to new low-level quests in the Bay, will be able to hire several newcomers.
Also, updated art and music appeared, which you can find out on the official website of the game
In addition to all of the above, we can also watch a video interview with Chris Bourass and Tyler Sigman, where they also announce new auxiliary fighter, available for hire, and I wish all of us a pleasant game in anticipation of the addition of that fifth location called Durkest Dungeon!
