Steam Community :: Guide :: Cheap Fixes for Common Problems

Store Page

Darkest Dungeon®

All Discussions Screenshots Artwork Broadcasts Videos Workshop News Guides Reviews

Darkest Dungeon® > Guides > That Wun Wabbit's Guides

94 ratings

Cheap Fixes for Common Problems

By That Wun Wabbit

How to be frugal AND successful in Darkest Dungeon. In this guide, I will go over various tips and tricks to make your dungeon-running more efficient and cost-effective.

Award

Created by

That Wun Wabbit
Offline

Category: Gameplay Basics, Loot, Secrets

Languages: English

Posted

Updated

29 Feb, 2016 @ 10:10pm

19 May, 2016 @ 11:33am

7,005	Unique Visitors
88	Current Favorites

Guide Index

Overview

Introduction

Making Money

Saving Money

Other

Mission Statement

Comments

Introduction

Here are some of many tips I've learned from playing this game. Feel free to share yours in the comments section!

Making Money

Bring the Antiquarian. She not only has a great camping skill to help make money, but she can apparently improve loot collection from curios. She also increases the gold stack-size while taking her on a mission. Check the game's wikipedia for more information.
Send a Lv. 0 team with no quest supplies (ABSOLUTELY NONE) to collect loot. Abandon the quest when your party members start having heart attacks, or are almost down to 0 health. Usually, you can recover from the first heart attack during a mission, but be mindful of your stress meter. It's easy to take enough stress for a 2nd heart attack during the same mission. If all your heroes die, the loot cannot be brought back to the Hamlet. This includes any trinkets held by your party! If you are concerned about your heroes' condition and Negative Quirks after the mission, you can always dismiss them. (It says right on the title screen - the game is about making the best of a bad situation. Sometimes, it's the only way to make a profit in the game. Don't rely on it all the time, though.)
Do no-torch & no food runs, or snuff out the torchlight you are automatically given on entering an area. This is also a great time to send Lv. 0 fodder teams out to collect loot, as they will be in even more danger of dying. Notice the buffs given to Loot near the torch meter. When you have the option, bring character classes who are not affected much by Shuffle (or Surprise) effects. Some characters that work well in any position are the Jester, Grave Robber, and Hound Master. When these characters are shuffled, you can usually still access a skill in your current position.
Take 2-3 keys with you on any Long or Boss mission. You can often find locked boxes, sarcophagi, curios, and so on. A shovel will help you break into these interactables aswell, but you will earn less loot. Always opt for the key, when possible. Medium, Long, and Boss missions will often have a secret room in them. For this reason aswell, be sure to save a key. You can usually find the room entrance with your party members' Scouting abilities.
Equippable trinkets are usually worth more than loot. If you run out of space in your inventory while out of town, simply opt for the trinkets. Gems you should keep are the ones around $1000. Always be mindful of how much/many are in the stack. A large stack of money or gems could be worth more than an item that takes up one inventory slot.
Wait until you get back to the Hamlet to try and sell your stuff. Using Shift+Click on an item during a quest will discard that stack. Using Shift+Click in the Hamlet will sell an item. This distinction was learned the hard way...

Saving Money

Have a skillset in mind when paying to upgrade your heroes combat skills. Some heroes benefit from levelling up all their skills, while others aren't as flexible in terms of party positioning. Choose carefully to save money for other things, like upgrading armor and weapons - which are far more critical.
Spend money to remove very detrimental Negative Quirks before they become locked. You can always recruit more heroes and send them on a menial mission to pass a week (of your regular heroes being stuck in treatment), but it costs far more to remove a locked Negative Quirk than an unlocked one.
You can remove a random Negative Quirk for the price of a Medicinal Herb supply item. Use it to cleanse odd coral in the Cove area. Make sure to highlight the hero whose quirks you are interested in removing before applying the Medicinal Herb to the Coral.
Leave the Negative Quirks that involve the Hamlet and let them become locked. Other quirks, like Lazy Eye (-5% ranged accuracy) and the ones involving fascination with Dark Arts (the need to interact with Effigies and stacks of books) are also somewhat more desirable to be locked than say, Nervous (-10% stress resist) if given no chance to remove them before they're locked. Remove Negative Quirks that are damage, speed, or stress modifiers before they are locked (unless you already have 3 locked - no more can lock). Unlocked Negative Quirks can be replaced by acquiring another Negative Quirk. Interact with certain curios to pick up Negative Quirks.
Pay to lock Positive Quirks that are generic. Damage buffs are very handy, but even more so when they apply anywhere - not just the Warrens, for example.
Recruit multiple copies of heroes you like to use. Backup is always handy when your buddies need downtime in treatment facilities. Also, when your high level heroes die (despite our best efforts, yes this still happens), it's easier to send in your backup than recruit Lv. 0 heroes and train them up from there.
Take only the supplies you need, and maybe less. I tend to take 8 food, 8 torches for most missions and only up to about 12 of each for longer ones. You don't need much more in longer missions because you will often find supplies when delving through dungeons.
You can also let your torch run out, then camp to restore it to full instead of trying to maintain it through passages without any combat. Keep in mind, your torch runs out quicker in new passages, and slower in passages you've been through already in the same mission.

Other

This game was gifted to me from a videogame reviewer during Darkest Dungeon's Early Access phase.

Mission Statement

Thank you for reading this guide. Feedback is important - please rate and comment!
If you want more, go to my guides section and “follow”!
I have written dozens of --> guides on Steam games. <--
I enjoy helping people play games, but I can’t do it alone!
Encourage your friends to write guides…for games!
-Catherine

35 Comments

< >

That Wun Wabbit [author] 21 Oct, 2016 @ 9:09pm

interesting! Thanks for sharing @dcalbin

dcalbin 21 Oct, 2016 @ 9:39am

I would also add that you don't need to have a torch burning when retracing your steps. The stress penalty for walking backwards is not increased significantly by the the darkness.

That Wun Wabbit [author] 23 May, 2016 @ 1:46pm

ah, okay. good to know

Epicje 23 May, 2016 @ 1:01pm

No problem, always happy to help out when a game is great :)

There are treasure chests in DD1 and DD2 as well (iirc, in DD1 it's if you go south and in DD2 it's in the square-shaped area in the 'north-east'.

That Wun Wabbit [author] 23 May, 2016 @ 10:55am

Ah, thank you for mentioning that. I could cover the Darkest Dungeon missions.
No gold is gained from completing a mission, aside from the third mission having a treasure chest in it.
The first and second ones need alot of bandages due to Ascended Brawler and Cultist Priest. The third one (which I'm stuck on) requires lots of antivenom and food. I was looking at a guide's map and goofed / went to the treasure chest instead of the beacon. Oops.

And you're correct, no shovels are ever needed. Cures are handy if you're running Hellion, with her self-debuffing abilities. Btw, thank you for responding politely. Darkest Dungeon and Torchlight 2 are the communities that are very polarized when it comes to feedback on my guides. I was afraid to open this comment notification today x_x

Epicje 22 May, 2016 @ 11:13pm

Aside from the unnessicary cheesing - which makes this game as it should be, I thank you for this guide.

That said, what about the darkest dungeon areas? For example, keys and shovels aren't needed. Bandages and cures are.

That Wun Wabbit [author] 19 May, 2016 @ 11:31am

I rewrote the section on Negative Quirks to clarify why some should be left in place
Also added some info on the Antiquarian since she became playable sometime after publishing this guide.

That Wun Wabbit [author] 19 May, 2016 @ 11:04am

@aardvarkpepper:

Classic darkest dungeon: send a level zero team in without supplies and dismiss them when they come back. You don't have to deal with the diseases they picked up or their negative quirks. This is not some hairbrained scheme of mine, it's a well-known tip around the community.

And btw - you and your friend are not at all polite - as you say. I quote you, "My god, a guide that *recommends* locking Compulsive as a negative quirk." ...which you also RUDELY underlined.

There are certainly worse things than having the Compulsive quirk locked, but I'm happy to change that example. It was merely something that came to the top of my head - I would have put a different example at the time if I'd remembered the name of a different quirk.

You are no longer welcome to make comments on this guide though - due to the fact you ranted for an entire comment page. This goes for all compliments and criticism - be concise.

aardvarkpepper 19 May, 2016 @ 5:13am

As long as I'm commenting on the negative quirks section of the guide -

"Leave the Negative Quirks that involve the Hamlet and let them become locked. Other quirks, like Compulsive (the need to interact with stuff) and the ones involving fascination with Dark Arts (the need to interact with Effigies and stacks of books) are also somewhat more desirable to be locked."

My god, a guide that *recommends* locking Compulsive as a negative quirk. Look, I'll go post on the forums this very moment and ask if players would want Compulsive as a locked negative quirk. I won't say anything in the OP about doing things one way or another.

Look, let's say that you're trying to be helpful and it isn't all about egoism. But then your guide really needs to *be* helpful, right? and you might not want to take the piss on commenters like Sojiro that post accurate, polite, contextually correct comments. Even if you don't see that someone could be right about something, they *could* be.

aardvarkpepper 19 May, 2016 @ 5:07am

"and btw, Sojiro - it pays to actually read the guide. Above, it already reads "Leave the Negative Quirks that involve the Hamlet and let them become locked."

Aka harmless negative quirks."

Might have wanted to actually read Sojiro's comment, which I reproduce below.

" Having harmless negative quirks locked means less room for annoying ones. Who cares if you have Ruins Phobe and Satanophobia? Just don't send the hero in the ruins."

Those aren't Hamlet-specific negative quirks. They are negative quirks that can be worked around, though.

< >