Darkest Dungeon 2: Beginner's guide Darkest Dungeon 2 guide, tips

On this page of the Darkest Dungeon 2 guide you will find tips useful at the beginning of the game and for beginners.

Last update: Thursday, October 28, 2021

This page of the Darkest Dungeon 2 game guide contains the beginner's guide, which includes various starting tips on Stress, healing, status effects, combat, and more. These hints will ease you into the game and help you avoid death.

Since there have been significant changes when compared to the original, we recommend this guide to those familiar with the series, as well. Below are some important tips for those starting out in Darkest Dungeon 2:

• Heal
• Stress
• Effects
• Combat
• Saving
• Inn

Heal

1. Healing in DD2 is difficult. For this reason, try to stun and blind enemies often to lower the chances of being hit - especially by enemies who also inflict negative statuses.
2. If you have units that can heal Life / Stress, you can take advantage of the much easier combat encounters on the blue paths to heal up the physical and mental state of your companions.
3. You can use various ointments (combat items) for healing.
4. The unit that is great at healing others is the Plague Doctor with the Battlefield Medicine skill.
5. You can also heal yourself in the Field Hospital during an Expedition. You can restore health with Relicts, and purchase useful healing items in the store.
6. Some heroes, such as the Grave Robber, are also able to heal themselves. This is convenient when many heroes need healing.
7. Throwing away unnecessary items instead of using them improves Hope - this is a statistic that affects the Profile level at the end of each journey and increasing this level allows you to unlock new heroes.

Stress

1. You should always manage your Stress levels carefully. It's much more difficult to treat it, even at the Inn. Additionally, when Stress reaches its maximum value, the hero gets a heart attack and their health drops to a minimum, which turns them into an easy target (also, all of the hero's relationships significantly deteriorate).
2. The Plague Doctor has a skill called Ounce of Prevention. Master version of the skill reduces the Stress of all party members.
3. The Combat Item called Laudanum is used to reduce Stress during combat, available for the price of 3 Relicts from merchants (Hoarder/Inn/Field Hospital).
4. You can also reduce your stress with numerous items in the Inn - some you can buy right away (e.g. Dartboard). Not every hero can use every item - Quirks often prevent this from happening.
5. Try to set out on the next Expeditions with Stress as low as possible.

You can find more about this on the Relationships, Stress page.

Effects

1. It's a good idea to stack damage over time effects (DOT) such as Bleeding or Blight: the first successful attack deals the indicated amount of damage for a number of turns. It also reduces the enemy's resistance to the effect. Each subsequent attack with the same effect, even performed by a different hero, will increase the damage dealt and refresh the effect's duration (up to 3) in which the effect will be active. You can apply different statuses to an enemy at the same time, as long as they aren't immune to them.
2. Remember that status effect damage is inflicted at the beginning of the round - e.g. there is no point in attacking a bleeding enemy that has 2 HP if they're about to take 3 points of damage at the start of the next turn. Damage.
3. It is worth using an attack with the DOT effect as the last blow on the enemy: if it doesn't die from your attack, the effect will probably kill them.
4. By hovering over an effect token, you'll see how much damage it deals over how many turns. This way you will decide who to help first.
5. Learn the locations . Opponents in specific locations have their own effect resistances and can inflict them on the heroes. This way, you'll be better prepared. Use the Inn Items to increase your resistance for the next expedition, choose the right trinkets and heroes' skills, get the right healing items, such as anti-bleed bandages.

Combat

1. Don't get into too many fights. You'll earn money in fights, reduce Loathing, and earn Mastery Points. However, the Relationship loss and the risk of fighting at a low Flame level are significant and can lead to almost irreversible consequences.
2. Enemies don't have to die though, even if the DOT takes 6 Health and they have 4. Enemies in DD2 also stand at the Doors of Death and may not die when they lose all health. Instead, they will wait for the final blow - in some situations, it may be worth sacrificing the hero's movement to be sure that the opponent will fall, than risk getting counterattacked one more time before dying.
3. The graves that appear after eliminating the enemy effectively prevent access to distant enemies. To remove them, you can destroy them, remove them with hero abilities (not available at the start of the game), use special Combat items you find or use swap abilities (to switch an enemy with a tombstone). Pouch of Lye (Combat Items) removes graves from the battlefield.
4. Critical hits reduce Stress. Sometimes they will also lower the Stress of your allies. In a bad situation, it's a good idea to use tokens to buff the critical attacks of allies that specialise in them (e.g. Highwayman). However - enemy critical attacks will raise the Stress level of the heroes.

1. On the trail, before approaching a marker and starting a fight, always check the condition of your heroes: their relationships, selected skills and their combat items. Once you activate the marker, you won't be able to modify anything anymore. It would be a waste to start a fight while forgetting to take healing items with you or not remembering to improve extremely negative ally relationships.
2. Use weak AoE attacks on the enemy to get rid of their tokens (e.g. Dodge or Block).

Saving

1. The game constantly saves automatically: it has no manual saving options. As a result, you have to deal with the consequences of your actions and weigh the risks of each decision. The game is saved on an ongoing basis even during combat, after each opponent's turn, so, for example, quickly closing the game won't save you from losing a hero. Only in the Inn is the game not saved - if you have used the wrong items, you can restart the game and redo your preparations
2. Profile level - sums up for each played and completed Expedition. Even if you fail your first Expedition, you'll get several Profile levels that unlock new Heroes, Quirks, and items that will appear in the game.

Inn

1. In the Inn, try to use as many Inn Items as possible to improve relationships, remove stress and heal your companions. In DD2, the capacity of the equipment - stagecoach is very limited and the place is easily filled with - not always useful - items.
2. Throwing away unnecessary items instead of using them improves Hope - this is a statistic that affects the Profile level at the end of each journey and increasing this level allows you to unlock new heroes.
3. The Inn is the only place where you can distribute Mastery Points and upgrade the Stagecoach.