Darkest Dungeon has been one of my guilty pleasures for the past few months. It’s punishing, it’s freaking stressful but oh so rewarding. Yet, there were several quirks I have with the game, some of which frustrated me to the point of not playing it as much. Mainly higher level characters did not want to go into lower dungeons, which made power leveling new characters a pain. Which is a thing, since perma-deaths really force you to do that.
Well, that and much more is about to change as the latest update for the game has been released. The Radiant Update, was created to address several issues including the one I mentioned previously. You’ll still get the same challenge as before, but now power leveling characters will be easier, XP will come easier, upgrades cheaper and much more. This is the Darkest Dungeon team attempting to get more players into the game, while addresses some concerns that players have been very vocal about.
The beta was pushed out no to recently, but now they’ve released the full build to all players. No word when the updated will be available for PlayStation 4.
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.
The build has been pushed to our live branch for all players. That being said we have a build getting prepped for deployment that will contain the first batch of localization for all the new strings. So keep an eye out for an update in a hour or so.
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!
Full release notes can be found below. If you don’t hear from me anytime soon, send help. I’ll be trapped inside the Darkest Dungeon!
- 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
- 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
- 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
- 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
- Added New Variations to Dungeon Map Generation!
- 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.
- Veteran and Champion Skeletal Defenders now have the tools to live up to their namesake.
- 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!
