Feb 8, 2017
Darkest Dungeon Radiant Public Beta Build #17385
Darkest Dungeon® - redhookjohn
First wave of fixes

We also pushed a LINUX build to "coming_in_hot"

  • Added New Variations to Dungeon Map Generation.
  • Fixed Missing sounds for Gargoyle and Vvulf Brigand Hunter/Raider
  • Fixed Crash that occurred on when loading into various Champion dungeons.
  • Fixed Crash when loading into Shrieker’s Perch
  • Resolved a bunch of missing strings
  • Fixed issue where Characters weren’t correctly being made unavailable while staying in treatment an extra week
  • Entry Level Achievement: If you have already completed the game on a harder difficulty, this achievement will retroactive award when you start a Radiant Campaign
  • Fix to In Such Great Haste being erroneously awarded when starting a new
  • Radiant Campaign when you have completed the game on a harder difficulty. (For those of you that got it, enjoy!)
  • Reduced Trap spawn rates when backtracking
  • Veteran and Champion Skeletal Defenders now have the tools to live up to their namesake.
  • Bone Bearer has summoned the courage to fight when he is the last one standing.
  • Tweaks to the Shrieker
Feb 8, 2017
Darkest Dungeon Radiant Public Beta Build #17385
Darkest Dungeon® - redhookjohn
First wave of fixes

We also pushed a LINUX build to "coming_in_hot"

  • Added New Variations to Dungeon Map Generation.
  • Fixed Missing sounds for Gargoyle and Vvulf Brigand Hunter/Raider
  • Fixed Crash that occurred on when loading into various Champion dungeons.
  • Fixed Crash when loading into Shrieker’s Perch
  • Resolved a bunch of missing strings
  • Fixed issue where Characters weren’t correctly being made unavailable while staying in treatment an extra week
  • Entry Level Achievement: If you have already completed the game on a harder difficulty, this achievement will retroactive award when you start a Radiant Campaign
  • Fix to In Such Great Haste being erroneously awarded when starting a new
  • Radiant Campaign when you have completed the game on a harder difficulty. (For those of you that got it, enjoy!)
  • Reduced Trap spawn rates when backtracking
  • Veteran and Champion Skeletal Defenders now have the tools to live up to their namesake.
  • Bone Bearer has summoned the courage to fight when he is the last one standing.
  • Tweaks to the Shrieker
Feb 7, 2017
Darkest Dungeon Radiant Public Beta
Darkest Dungeon® - RedHookChris


Build #17314 - RADIANT UPDATE

Overview:
This update was built around two major pillars:
  • Radiant Mode: Radiant Mode is a version of the game that is intended to take less time overall to complete than normal (“Darkest”) mode. The mode is still challenging--monsters have the same stats and nothing about permadeath has changed. But some gameplay rules have been flexed or altered in ways that reduce some of the more time consuming mid and late game elements.
  • Improvements and Additions (to all modes): we’ve reviewed tons of feedback over the last few months and have added a bunch new features, content, revisions, and fixes.
We will be monitoring how the rollout of Radiant goes, and you can expect some more tweaks here and there as we see how the patch settles.

To access the beta, open up the BETAs tab on the Darkest Dungeon Properties menu on STEAM. Select the drop down box and choose "coming_in_hot." As always we encourage you to backup your saves when participating in the BETA!

Thanks to your support, as we move forward toward the launch of our first major expansion, The Crimson Court, we’ll continue to update and improve the core game. Currently, we’re looking at a balance pass on trinkets and hero skills, so you can expect some changes in those areas in the coming weeks. As always, we appreciate your feedback, suggestions, and enthusiasm!

-The Darkest Dungeon Team

RADIANT MODE:
  • Never Again changed: heroes are now allowed to return to the Darkest Dungeon. However, they will undergo significant stress upon doing so, and are more likely to become afflicted instead of virtuous when in the Darkest Dungeon.
  • More Power Leveling flexibility: Heroes of up to Level 4 may enter Novice dungeons. Any hero may enter a Veteran or Champion dungeon.
  • Stage Coach can now be upgraded to allow the appearance of new recruits starting at up to Level 4. Increased chance of upgraded recruits appearing.
  • Reduced cost of Upgraded Recruits upgrades.
  • Accelerated hero XP progression
  • Hero upgrade and treatment cost scaling by level reduced
  • Random Hunger Checks do not occur in Radiant Mode
    • Food Provision cost increased and stack sized decreased to compensate
  • Returned provisions now give slightly more money back
  • Tweaks to Stagecoach:
    • Added another upgrade tier to Experienced Recruits (Lvl 4 Characters will now appear)
    • Changed Experienced Recruit requirements. (Lvl 1 now only requires Lvl 1 Blacksmith and Guild)
    • New Stage Coach population option to use a Deck based system. (This can be used on all modes). New Stagecoach generation method that gives a more even long-term distribution and also favors healers more, since they are the backbone of most parties. This can be toggled off in the Options menu if you wish to still ride the bittersweet wave of total RNG.
  • Higher Light conditions confer slightly more to party DEF bonuses.
  • Accelerated Region Progression
  • Town Events trigger more frequently to compensate for shorter playtime

STYGIAN MODE:
  • Renamed NG+ to Stygian
  • Stygian can now be selected when starting a new campaign, instead of requiring completion of Darkest mode first.
  • More stress, higher darkness penalties, more light loss per step, higher trap diff, enemy HP bump from 15% (prev) to 20%, slightly higher monster crits...overall slightly more deadly[/b]
  • Time limit reduced to 86 weeks and hero death limit dropped to 12
  • You can now continue playing after the time limit on your Stygian mode game after successfully completing the game

ALL MODES:
  • Added 4 new monsters (Bone Bearer, Hateful Virago, Swine Skiver, and Squiffy Ghast) that appear in Champion level Dungeons - BLAME DANA
  • Caw! Caw! Added New Trinket Recovery Quest
    • When a party wipe occurs, trinkets are no longer lost! There is a way to recover them. Exactly what that way is, we leave for you to discover...
    • Trinkets are no longer recoverable from fallen characters after retreating.
  • Two new Town Events
  • Fix for users reporting increased cpu usage
  • ECONOMY Adjustments to Radiant and Darkest modes:
    • Economy was too gold starved across the board, including mid and late game.
    • Slightly reduced cost of Hero Treatment.
    • Reduced hero weapon and armour upgrade costs.
    • Reduced cost of upgrading hero skills final two levels
    • Increased gold drops and gold stacking from 1,500 to 1,750
    • (ALL MODES) Rebalanced gem drops and changed gem values. Net result is much higher values of gems dropping as difficulty of missions progress.
    • Gems now all stack to 5 instead of 4
    • Adjusted Antiquarian values to be in line with Economy changes to ensure she's still profitable.
  • Tavern and Abbey complete side-effects rebalance and some new side effects added. Goal is to make neither Tavern or Abbey preferable over another, and also add more interest.
  • Fixed Provision Discount Town Event description so all languages should show up correctly.
  • Quests that will trigger a Town Event: links are now clearly shown
  • The Cove Gather mission now triggers “Lost and Found” Town Event instead of “Supply Run” Town Event upon successful completion.
  • Hold SHIFT when purchasing Provisions to purchase a full stack.
  • Adjustments to chances of getting quirks at quest end. Slightly increased chances in both cases for interest.
  • New quirk: “skilled gambler”. Bad Gambler and Skilled Gambler functionality improved.
  • Stagecoach Upgraded Recruits: adjusted number of pos and neg quirks they start with to ensure they are still valuable. Reduced cost of the Upgraded Recruits upgrades.
  • Secret Rooms are no longer guaranteed in every dungeon.
  • Quest Trinket rewards: better logic for supplying trinket rewards in cases where the designated trinkets aren’t available.
  • Heirloom Chest now more profitable after using key
  • Added new treasure: "Jute Tapestry" (functions as a very rare gem worth 5,000 gold)
  • Added “Party” selection type to camp skills to help make the skills more clear.
  • Tweaked Roster sort so that Characters in Party are arranged in their party formation.
  • Added Skill Equip warning when trying to embark without all skills equipped
  • Added Food Embark warning when trying to embark without much food
  • Skills will now auto-equip when purchased and have room. (This will be most noticed with purchasing your 4th camping skill.)
  • After several angry phone calls from Vvulf, he is now properly tagged as a boss.
  • (Radiant and Darkest modes) Vvulf quest and Vvulf himself not quite as tough, and also won’t appear before week 40 minimum.
  • Tweaked Trinket Embark Warning to be % based. You are now warned on L3 and L5 dungeons when you have less than half equipped.
  • Adjusted cooldowns on town events up a bit, to reduce repetition
  • DARKEST and STYGIAN modes: Final battle tuned up some to give a bit more challenge. May require more.
  • Adjusted Nomad Wagon stock rarity (Rare trinkets are now more rare)
  • Added Town Event Description in the reward section for related Quests.
  • Fix for handling multiple monitors
  • Added 4k window resolutions to options.
  • Added Subtitle Location Option: Top or Bottom
  • Added border FX for Ancestral Trinkets and Boss Trophies
  • Added FX to Dungeon Region experience bars on increase
  • Added in new art for all missing Curio states. WELCOME ABOARD, TRUDI!
  • Added Date/Time to save slots
  • Added more save slots
  • Various UI tweaks
  • Exposed significantly more settings for future modding.
  • ...and more!
Feb 7, 2017
Darkest Dungeon Radiant Public Beta
Darkest Dungeon® - redhookjohn


Build #17314 - RADIANT UPDATE

Overview:
This update was built around two major pillars:
  • Radiant Mode: Radiant Mode is a version of the game that is intended to take less time overall to complete than normal (“Darkest”) mode. The mode is still challenging--monsters have the same stats and nothing about permadeath has changed. But some gameplay rules have been flexed or altered in ways that reduce some of the more time consuming mid and late game elements.
  • Improvements and Additions (to all modes): we’ve reviewed tons of feedback over the last few months and have added a bunch new features, content, revisions, and fixes.
We will be monitoring how the rollout of Radiant goes, and you can expect some more tweaks here and there as we see how the patch settles.

To access the beta, open up the BETAs tab on the Darkest Dungeon Properties menu on STEAM. Select the drop down box and choose "coming_in_hot." As always we encourage you to backup your saves when participating in the BETA!

Thanks to your support, as we move forward toward the launch of our first major expansion, The Crimson Court, we’ll continue to update and improve the core game. Currently, we’re looking at a balance pass on trinkets and hero skills, so you can expect some changes in those areas in the coming weeks. As always, we appreciate your feedback, suggestions, and enthusiasm!

-The Darkest Dungeon Team

RADIANT MODE:
  • Never Again changed: heroes are now allowed to return to the Darkest Dungeon. However, they will undergo significant stress upon doing so, and are more likely to become afflicted instead of virtuous when in the Darkest Dungeon.
  • More Power Leveling flexibility: Heroes of up to Level 4 may enter Novice dungeons. Any hero may enter a Veteran or Champion dungeon.
  • Stage Coach can now be upgraded to allow the appearance of new recruits starting at up to Level 4. Increased chance of upgraded recruits appearing.
  • Reduced cost of Upgraded Recruits upgrades.
  • Accelerated hero XP progression
  • Hero upgrade and treatment cost scaling by level reduced
  • Random Hunger Checks do not occur in Radiant Mode
    • Food Provision cost increased and stack sized decreased to compensate
  • Returned provisions now give slightly more money back
  • Tweaks to Stagecoach:
    • Added another upgrade tier to Experienced Recruits (Lvl 4 Characters will now appear)
    • Changed Experienced Recruit requirements. (Lvl 1 now only requires Lvl 1 Blacksmith and Guild)
    • New Stage Coach population option to use a Deck based system. (This can be used on all modes). New Stagecoach generation method that gives a more even long-term distribution and also favors healers more, since they are the backbone of most parties. This can be toggled off in the Options menu if you wish to still ride the bittersweet wave of total RNG.
  • Higher Light conditions confer slightly more to party DEF bonuses.
  • Accelerated Region Progression
  • Town Events trigger more frequently to compensate for shorter playtime

STYGIAN MODE:
  • Renamed NG+ to Stygian
  • Stygian can now be selected when starting a new campaign, instead of requiring completion of Darkest mode first.
  • More stress, higher darkness penalties, more light loss per step, higher trap diff, enemy HP bump from 15% (prev) to 20%, slightly higher monster crits...overall slightly more deadly[/b]
  • Time limit reduced to 86 weeks and hero death limit dropped to 12
  • You can now continue playing after the time limit on your Stygian mode game after successfully completing the game

ALL MODES:
  • Added 4 new monsters (Bone Bearer, Hateful Virago, Swine Skiver, and Squiffy Ghast) that appear in Champion level Dungeons - BLAME DANA
  • Caw! Caw! Added New Trinket Recovery Quest
    • When a party wipe occurs, trinkets are no longer lost! There is a way to recover them. Exactly what that way is, we leave for you to discover...
    • Trinkets are no longer recoverable from fallen characters after retreating.
  • Two new Town Events
  • Fix for users reporting increased cpu usage
  • ECONOMY Adjustments to Radiant and Darkest modes:
    • Economy was too gold starved across the board, including mid and late game.
    • Slightly reduced cost of Hero Treatment.
    • Reduced hero weapon and armour upgrade costs.
    • Reduced cost of upgrading hero skills final two levels
    • Increased gold drops and gold stacking from 1,500 to 1,750
    • (ALL MODES) Rebalanced gem drops and changed gem values. Net result is much higher values of gems dropping as difficulty of missions progress.
    • Gems now all stack to 5 instead of 4
    • Adjusted Antiquarian values to be in line with Economy changes to ensure she's still profitable.
  • Tavern and Abbey complete side-effects rebalance and some new side effects added. Goal is to make neither Tavern or Abbey preferable over another, and also add more interest.
  • Fixed Provision Discount Town Event description so all languages should show up correctly.
  • Quests that will trigger a Town Event: links are now clearly shown
  • The Cove Gather mission now triggers “Lost and Found” Town Event instead of “Supply Run” Town Event upon successful completion.
  • Hold SHIFT when purchasing Provisions to purchase a full stack.
  • Adjustments to chances of getting quirks at quest end. Slightly increased chances in both cases for interest.
  • New quirk: “skilled gambler”. Bad Gambler and Skilled Gambler functionality improved.
  • Stagecoach Upgraded Recruits: adjusted number of pos and neg quirks they start with to ensure they are still valuable. Reduced cost of the Upgraded Recruits upgrades.
  • Secret Rooms are no longer guaranteed in every dungeon.
  • Quest Trinket rewards: better logic for supplying trinket rewards in cases where the designated trinkets aren’t available.
  • Heirloom Chest now more profitable after using key
  • Added new treasure: "Jute Tapestry" (functions as a very rare gem worth 5,000 gold)
  • Added “Party” selection type to camp skills to help make the skills more clear.
  • Tweaked Roster sort so that Characters in Party are arranged in their party formation.
  • Added Skill Equip warning when trying to embark without all skills equipped
  • Added Food Embark warning when trying to embark without much food
  • Skills will now auto-equip when purchased and have room. (This will be most noticed with purchasing your 4th camping skill.)
  • After several angry phone calls from Vvulf, he is now properly tagged as a boss.
  • (Radiant and Darkest modes) Vvulf quest and Vvulf himself not quite as tough, and also won’t appear before week 40 minimum.
  • Tweaked Trinket Embark Warning to be % based. You are now warned on L3 and L5 dungeons when you have less than half equipped.
  • Adjusted cooldowns on town events up a bit, to reduce repetition
  • DARKEST and STYGIAN modes: Final battle tuned up some to give a bit more challenge. May require more.
  • Adjusted Nomad Wagon stock rarity (Rare trinkets are now more rare)
  • Added Town Event Description in the reward section for related Quests.
  • Fix for handling multiple monitors
  • Added 4k window resolutions to options.
  • Added Subtitle Location Option: Top or Bottom
  • Added border FX for Ancestral Trinkets and Boss Trophies
  • Added FX to Dungeon Region experience bars on increase
  • Added in new art for all missing Curio states. WELCOME ABOARD, TRUDI!
  • Added Date/Time to save slots
  • Added more save slots
  • Various UI tweaks
  • Exposed significantly more settings for future modding.
  • ...and more!
Jan 27, 2017
How Darkest Dungeon found new horror through its turn-based combat
Darkest Dungeon® - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alex Wiltshire)

This is The Mechanic, where Alex Wiltshire invites developers to discuss the inner workings of their games. This time, Darkest Dungeon [official site].

Darkest Dungeon is an RPG in which four flawed heroes face damnably transcendent terrors as they explore the ancient narrow passages beneath a cursed mansion. Notch by notch, their grasp on sanity slips and their vitality trickles thinner as their torch dims and new horror befalls them.

This is a game in which pressure mounts, misfortune crushes, and mistakes are punished. You can t expect your party to always survive, whether driven to death or madness, and its turn-based combat plays out with the constant understanding that every decision can turn on a knife-edge: a missed hit, an ill-considered target, the wrong ability. And a lot of that tension is founded on something that on its face sounds prosaic, even old-fashioned:

THE MECHANIC: 2D combat … [visit site to read more]

Jan 16, 2017
Darkest Dungeon update adding enemies, but expansion delayed
Darkest Dungeon® - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

New enemies are coming to Darkest Dungeon [official site] as part of the upcoming free update adding a shorter (but not easier) ‘Radiant’ mode. That’s the word from developers Red Hook Studios, who say they’re planning to launch the update by early February with other a number of “quality of life” tweaks too. The bad news is that all this extra work will push the dungeon crawler’s expansion, the vampiric Crimson Court, back into April. I’ll happily wait for that, especially if other fanciness is coming first. Like that new cheerleading Bone Bearer. … [visit site to read more]

Jan 10, 2017
Darkest Dungeon Build #16708
Darkest Dungeon® - redhookjohn
  • Small UI fix for the options menu
  • New Analytics hooks

This small update is to help gather another data point in which we had some questions about. This is to help inform some of the design changes/decisions going into Radiant Mode.

We are aware of the heavy CPU/GPU load issues that is affecting some of the players. We are working on it, but to get a full solution and ensure it's solid it will take us a few weeks to resolve.

If you have been adversely affected by the latest build, and have seen your machine run the game worse, we recommend you roll back to the pre_controller_support BETA that we have made public.

You can access it by right clicking on Darkest Dungeon, selecting Properties, then checking the BETAs tab.
Jan 10, 2017
Darkest Dungeon Build #16708
Darkest Dungeon® - redhookjohn
  • Small UI fix for the options menu
  • New Analytics hooks

This small update is to help gather another data point in which we had some questions about. This is to help inform some of the design changes/decisions going into Radiant Mode.

We are aware of the heavy CPU/GPU load issues that is affecting some of the players. We are working on it, but to get a full solution and ensure it's solid it will take us a few weeks to resolve.

If you have been adversely affected by the latest build, and have seen your machine run the game worse, we recommend you roll back to the pre_controller_support BETA that we have made public.

You can access it by right clicking on Darkest Dungeon, selecting Properties, then checking the BETAs tab.
Dec 21, 2016
Just regular dark: Darkest Dungeon getting shorter mode
Darkest Dungeon® - contact@rockpapershotgun.com (Alice O'Connor)

Darkest Dungeon [official site] is the year’s best dungeon crawler, sez we, but I must confess I find it a bit of a grind at times. So, good news: developers Red Hook Studios have announced plans for a mode which won’t necessarily be easier but will cut the game’s length down from 80-ish hours to around 40. They’ve also revealed a smidgen more of its upcoming vampiric DLC, The Crimson Court, by showing off the grizzled vampire hunter who may well come after your party. Lovely! All this plus details on yesterday’s patch (controller support!) below. … [visit site to read more]

Dec 19, 2016
Darkest Dungeon "coming_in_hot" Build #16675
Darkest Dungeon® - redhookjohn
  • Added option to disable party first sort in roster list.
  • Fix for crashes related to Razer headset drivers. (This _should_ also help those affected by nahimic crashes).
  • Fix closing hot key sub menus help/glossary.
  • Updated journal fonts.
  • Fix to riposte tooltip.
  • Fix to inventory tooltips that overlap.
  • Fix to map hitboxes.
  • Fix to the background image in DD Quest 3.
  • Various visual tweaks
...