Instead of doing NaNoWriMo this month, I’m doing my regular reading, writing, and other shit, but also playing Darkest Dungeon every day. I originally wanted to play until I died, but for a game so brutally difficult yet fun as hell, I decided I’m going to push through and play every day of November. Each week I’ll post my progress, notable occurrences, and how I’m feeling about the game overall. I honestly wish their were more games like this and I’m hoping a Darkest Dungeon 2 is in the works!

Here are my journeys, some more detailed than others:

 

November 2nd, 2016

The Warrens are a place filled with plague, bacteria, and all sorts of other nasty poo to make you sick. Pig people vomit on you, slice you with rusty hooks, and chop you with butcher knives. Not a nice place to visit. It’s like a slaughterhouse gone horribly wrong.

My Group:

• Death-Bringer the Hellion: Think awesome barbarian woman with a huge ass axe.
• Pig Vomit (appropriately named) the Abomination: Hard to describe, but basically a cursed individual who can change into a gut-ripping beast.
• Devereux the Jester: Good at supporting the group with his jaunty tunes, but also slices people with his sickle.
• Sickle the Plague Doctor: Speaking of sickles, the Plague Doctor rains all sorts of horribleness on her victims with poison, powders, and other concoctions.

Bullet Points:

• Sickle blighted folks left and right. She gives no shits.
• Death-Bringer contracted Scurvy and became Fragile. What a wonderful combination.
• Devereux clung to life by a thread for most of the journey.
• Pig Vomit healed himself a bunch and became a Warrens Scrounger! That makes him way better at finding good junk.

Overall, I’d say a minor success!

The Weald is slightly less disgusting than the Warrens, but has tons of graves, creepy ass trees, and mushroom bastards that are like those insane zombies from The Last of Us. A place you don’t want to be late at night.

My Group:

• Pig Vomit returns for another round of being abominable.
• Cruel the Highwayman: Like a bandit that loves cutting and shooting. His pistol skills are no joke.
• Sardine the Bounty Hunter: Probably my best named character, Bounty Hunters have a well-rounded mix of skills including chopping with a hatchet and throwing a chain on a hook. Who doesn’t love a chain on a hook?
• Sickle (I think) rounded out the group.

Bullet Points:

• Pig Vomit got Rabies, trapped and Slowdraw
• Cruel got Slowdraw, too. Damn sappy mushroom folks!
• Sardine got Death’s Door from a mushroom man and became Vigorous. Hot damn!

Got a Town Fair that makes all Stress Relief activities free! Yahoo! I needed that after all the stress I’ve had.

 

The Weald is full of bandits and mushroom people that love to beat the shit out of you with their meaty arms. Good times!

Bullet Points:

• The Collector showed up. Shit. This doesn’t look good.
• Bretteville got hammered bleeding and Death’s Door became Fearful
• Tournebut the Antiquarian died
• Abandoned quest and fled The Collector

Back to the Weald.

Bullet Points:

• Death-Bringer hung on at the end
• Cobb brought the pain salad
• Pig Vomit killed folks

 

The Ruins are like a crypt no one should ever go into full of eldritch horrors and devilish undead. Not a place to travel to late at night.

November 3rd, 2016

• Party Wipe from the Sonorous Prophet. That Rubble of Ruin skill is brutal. He rained death on us and we all died. Poo.

RIP folks. Pig Vomit, Sardine, et al.

 

November 4th

I decided to keep on going even after a devastating loss, and back into the Ruins I go. Albeit, a bit simpler this time. Got some successful upgrades! Not much else to report from this one, fairly straightforward.

Killed the Swine Prince! Kiss my ass you pork…ass.

The Cove is a stinking pit of salty death full of fish people with rusty hooks and other horrors of the deep.

Font the Crusader became Paranoid and bloated corpse exploded and almost killed everyone. Those are the main highlights.

Not much to say about this one. Easy as shit!

OK, it’s the weekend here so I can get more detailed with the journeys. I also got creative with the names…sort of.

November 5th

My Group:

• Regamey aka Hot Dog the Abomination
• Carbuncle the Man-at-Arms
• Martel the Antiquarian
• Giscard the Occultist

Bullet Points:

• Martel got Death’s Door after being sliced by a pig man and now she is teetering on the edge of death every few minutes.
• Regamey got a good quirk and a bad quirk! Shit.
• Breezed through the rest. Pretty simple scouting mission. Now onto something a bit more difficult…

My Group:

• Bloody Jobe the Leper
• Carbuncle the Man-at-Arms
• Courteney the Gravedigger
• McMurphy the Vestal

Bullet Points:

• Damn, that first swarm of fish people royally kicked my ass. This is not a good start.
• Both Courtney and McMurphy are at Death’s Door early on. This sucks for me.
• Got overwhelmed by some bandits and decided to flee and get the hell out of there. My characters were all low on health, two at Death’s Door and it looked likely that they wouldn’t make it. Hate to run, but screw it. Plus, they all got diseases afterwards. A nice plague cherry on top.

My Group:

• Death-Bringer
• Hot Dog
• Sardine (back from the dead!)
• Giscard

Bullet Points:

• Killed a bunch of pig people.
• Good combination of heroes with Death-Bringer hitting hard, Sardine pulling off some Mortal Kombat Scorpion moves (get over here!) and Regamey and Giscard disabling everyone.
• Easy expedition, got off with a few scratches (and diseases).

 

My Group (The Laughing Dogs of War):

• Font
• Cobb
• Bretteville
• Giscard

Bullet Points

• Font is getting barraged with disease, bleeding, and blight. He probably looks like uncooked hamburger meat.
• Managed to survive despite mushrooms hitting me from all sides. And with some loot!

Lucky 13!

My Group-Puke Green(with wonderful nicknames and matching green outfits):

• Carbuncle
• Hot Dog
• Sardine
• Sickle

Bullet Points:

• Everyone was stressed AF and it didn’t look good since Sardine became Masochistic (wanting to be hurt) and Carbuncle was Paranoid (thinking everyone is out to kill him). Team Puke Green was having some trust issues.
• In the end, the rabid dogs were kicking my green ass, but I managed to pull the team through to the end, diseased and near the edge of mental breakdown. Ah, good times.

My Group (The Laughing Dogs of War are back!)

• Font
• Cobb
• Bretteville
• Giscard

Bullet Points:

• Got stressed as hell again.
• Managed to keep things under control with Bretteville’s stress reducing lute.
• Killed loads of fish people.

 

A long expedition, Veterans only, so let’s see how this turns out.

My Group:

• Bloody Jobe
• Death-Bringer
• Sardine
• McMurphy

Bullet Points:

• Well, that sucked.
• McMurphy’s dead. RIP.
• Everyone got their Resolve tested and went mad. Then I got ambushed by some spiders while I was camping.
• OK, so that went badly. I had to run again. These Veteran expeditions are no joke.

Well, that concludes Week 1. If you read all of that, you have more endurance than me (thanks!). I’ll continue the journeys with Week 2 so keep an eye out for more journal-riffic descents into the Darkest Dungeon!

And if you want to check out The Grim Tidings Podcast interview with some of the awesome guys from Red Hook Studios discussing Darkest Dungeon you can find it here!

As always, I’m into some of the bloodier, splattery fantasy as some might know and you can always check out my sort of dark, sort of silly, over-the-top GDAF Splatter Elf stories by clicking the pic below!

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