My original plan was to just do Darkest Dungeon II discussions in my UPDATES (aka my side bar blog) but during my most recent run when I collected the last two achievements to get 112 out of 112, I was also able to pull off the most overpowered run ever so here we are breaking it down.
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| This was much easier than the previous one. Trust me. |
It all started with the team I picked, my first run in Kingdoms 'Secrets of the Coven' I quickly realized that the new Coven/ Witch enemies love going into stealth so I decided to focus on a team that could take care of that. The Coven enemies also loved to buff themselves so a no brainer was too bring in Vestal specifically her Confessor class because it deals with buffs and debuffs. Third spot went to Plague Doctor; whom has ways of dealing with buffs and debuffs too, AOE attacks for stealth and unlike the previous Beastmen (stars of the previous Kingdoms) they are actually vulnerable to Blight. I knew my second place the minute I realized stealth was a thing and recruited Highwayman. He of course has anti-stealth tech but also importantly he puts combo on them as well which makes him the perfect partner for my first place; Leper. Leper also surprisingly has a good way of dealing with stealth, gets rid of corpses and hits like a truck if enemies have combo on them even if he is blind. With the team in place I knew I would no longer be dealing with non-stop stealth shenanigans and non-stop they were. One of the new achievements which I got during this run was 'I've Been Here the Whole Time' where you need to clear 30 (!!) stealth tokens during a run and I actually did that unknowingly because of how frequently enemies go into stealth.
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| I UNDERSTAND now |
However it was not just the correct team that made this run so great, it was also thanks to my Wagon set-up. Normally my Wainwright doesn't have any fancy bells and whistles, I just basically want health or stress reduction. I have watched many videos tho that has mentioned that the most OP pet when used correctly is the Reanimated Rabbit. This pet benefit was +1 speed for Food gear equipped and +1 health for each 4 pieces of food collected. Also super helpful was I got the rabbit super early so I could build my wagon around it and build I did. I made sure I got the following wagon items, Harvest Child's The Harvest's Bounty trophy (which increased my inventory storage by 25 slots), Icebox (food item = +1 speed, food stacking for better disease resist and double the quantity of food), Food Barrels (food item = +1 speed, increase food stacking even more and increase case of resolute status instead of a meltdown) and the final slot was inter-changeable with whatever needs I had. Need better food and more speed? Invigorating Stew, Need better relationships? Tea Service and take it off after we get the buffs, Need Milk-soaked Linen to cure Leper's blindness? Slap on Worktable Loom. All of this and getting them so close to each other created a perfect storm where by the middle of the run I already knew we were going to have a good time. I was able to defend all my inns as well with well placed distributions of the heroes not in the main squad and even outfitted some of them with some great trinkets too.
Another big benefit of this run was hindsight, after completing the second Kingdoms expansion once I was now prepared for the quest steps I had to follow and how to move the quest forward, I knew how to use the quest specific item 'Witchbane' correctly, I knew how to fight the Coven specific enemies and thanks to the recent (much needed) nerf of the spiders, they were nowhere near as frustrating to fight as well especially when *SPOILERS* they become the main enemy in the game. Combine this with less emphasis on cluttering up your inventory and taking away trophy and wagon slots like the first Kingdoms expansion (I think they listened to feedback because it was not fun constantly stacking bodies in the Beastmen expansion and losing inventory space because of it).
Finally; understanding how the 'Suspicious Few' encounters in the late game worked and being able to always figure out whom were witches in disguise (psst look for the mushrooms on them) so I never failed one of those challenges and I got the final achievement 'True Sight' pretty easily. LOL this was definitely through trial and error because doing my first run I killed more then a couple innocent bystanders but not during this perfect run.
By the end; my squad was moving fast, had tons of health due to food stacking on top of food stacking (Vestal HP reaching 99), we had no issues dealing with witches or spiders, had not caught a disease in forever, had tons of great trinkets, only lost one militia defender and fought off every siege and when we fought the final boss of the expansion we did so well preparing for it that two of the heroes instead of having a meltdown went resolute instead and that was because I wanted them to get stressed out to see if they would resolute lol. I mean after investing all this time into building a strong squad, having them resolute at the end was the icing on the cake right.
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| The King in Yellow |
Thus ended the best run ever and getting all the achievements along the way just made it even better. I am mainly writing this down for posterity sake so when the game eventually screws me I know what I need to do to break it again. I feel after this run and two back to back campaign wins I might take a short break and play some other games but man I will be going out on the highest of high notes.
AV
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