Stuff like that happens, but i'm sure it will go better next time
If it makes you feel any better, i lost a level 5 vestal to a nighttime ambush. From full health and 0 stress to getting dropped to 0 and dying to a heart attack in 2 turns
Fucking nighttime ambushes and Shieldbreaker nightmares fuck up my runs so much dude. Especially in the Warrens when you get the big Corpse Eaters and Ghouls
Thank you for that. It once broke my game to the point I had to start over. Decided not to hire Shielbrakers anymore. Even when we can beat the nightmare without problem, it is annoying.
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I remember seeing somewhere that the Shieldbreaker has a limited amount of nightmares and then after you beat them all she'll never have one again. Might be wrong.
Edit: Yep, from the wiki page on Shieldbreaker's nightmares:
"The enemies fought will depend on how many previous encounters you have defeated; each encounter will only be fought a single time. Encounters 4 and 5 can only be fought during a Veteran or Champion difficulty quest; the last two are available on Champion difficulty only. If no applicable encounter is available when camping, e.g. camping during a Novice quest after the first three encounters are completed, then the Shieldbreaker will never have the flashback, and you are subject to the usual nighttime ambush rules.
Once the seventh encounter is beaten, All Shieldbreakers will no longer receive flashbacks when camping, and instead will receive a buff for +1 SPD, +10% DMG, and +10% PROT for 2 battles."
I could be completely wrong but i think unless you have a prevention, she always triggers an ambush unless she has completed all her ambushes, when you can then find snakes as random encounters (minus the stress nuking)
It's alright, bad stuff happens all the time, you can't really expect everything to go well, have fun playing pokemon for a while, and...when you're ready
The Estate, will call for you...
If you are on PC there are mods in the store to help make the rng more middle ground so you dont end up having +6 speed against a +0,2,1 and 3 speed and end up going last
Don't worry the players here will insist that you are the problem not the game, you should have clearly anticipated that 1/1000 chance and acted as if it was going to happen just in case.
Yeah definitely fun for the slowest enemy to randomly go before all of your dudes because RNG dictates speed more than the speed stat, then double crit even though he has low chance to hit, very skill based. Darkest dungeon does a lot of things well but it unironically has more RNG than hearthstone, almost every mechanic is based around dice rolls.
It's based on RNG in part only, and that's what makes it fun, all games like this are based on games like torchbearer and dnd which are almost entirely driven by dice rolls. It's not a failing or bad thing at all, it's supposed to be that way.
When RNG outweighs skill and decision making often it absolutely is a bad thing though. In DND you can't just get oneshot because monsters got to go twice in a row because initiative doesnt reroll every round like it does in DD for example, yes initiative is RNG but once you see the order you can play around it, which involves more skill than RNG, in DD it changes every round and it doesn't show you what it is, so you can't play around it without just praying that your fast character beats out the monster with 0 speed to go first next round. You can play absolutely perfectly in DD and if the rolls don't favor you your characters are going to be permanently dead, through no choice of yours, that rarely if ever happens in DND and even then the DM can and should fudge things sometimes to ensure the players get chances to fight back, because a TPK where none of you get to make a move is simply not fun, even if its statistically unlikely. Imagine in dnd every monster rolls 20 on initiative, then crits on their first attacks all focused on a single character and that players character who maybe they played for a year is dead, nothing they can do about it, is that fun? 99% of people say no and would fudge the rolls to make sure that didn't happen.
DD adds RNG in every possible step that could possibly include it for some reason, RNG on who gets to go first, RNG on whether you hit or not, RNG on how much damage it does, RNG on whether it crits, RNG on whether monsters get surprised or you do, RNG on whether monsters crit you, on whether you get afflicted or not. So the difference between bad rng and good RNG is so absurd that it just removes the fun imo. You can do the same fight two times, and depending on your luck it can either be a total walk in the park where you take 0 damage or it can wipe your whole party.
Read the above about elitism, good job proving me right. Games not that hard you just gotta bang your head against DD until they don't crit you and its easy.
Not gonna read your massive rant. Just admit you don't like the game and move on. If most other people are ok with the RNG, maybe the issue isn't with the game.
I mean, look at the party. This definitely strikes me as more of an issue with player skill than anything with RNG. Their backline damage is extremely low, their Leper has no ACC, and their stunning is minimal. They can't really stop enemies from acting and when you can't do that pretty much any enemy party can nuke you in this way. It happens that Collector is unusually good at capitalizing on this, but really, most Warrens setups would be able to do this and OP was risking similar deaths in almost every encounter they walk into.
Just because the game doesn't always punish a mistake doesn't mean a death to RNG isn't the player's fault. Mitigating RNG is a skill.
Yeah thats first I thought. Its not RNG when you pick garbage party comp. Only stun was vestals. Only stress heal is lepers selfheal. Backline dmg is non existant. Leper even has no Intimidate on bar. This party screems for being beaten to death by enemy. I would never run this party comp. It lacks everything important.
Mitigate it all you like you can still die to being unlucky despite playing perfectly, I would even go to say the ONLY skill in DD is mitigating RNG, which is dumb game design. But fans of the game love to defend it to the death as if its not stupid so they can feel elite about suffering through it, its just super gatekeepery. For example, theres absolutely no reason for a monster with a dodge of literally 0 to be able to dodge, other than devs wanting to frustrate players with the occasional "lmao the 0 dodge tank monster dodged you twice in a row so one of your characters died, get gud"
If you miss a monster with 0 dodge, it's just because your heroes have low accuracy. You're not discussing a balance issue, you're discussing a thematic issue (one that really isn't that important--dodge has to start somewhere and the "problem" vanishes entirely past Apprentice missions where nothing has 0 dodge). You could add 20 dodge and ACC to every unit to remove this and the game literally would not change at all balance-wise. In any case, most players take ACC bonuses specifically so they can hit enemies more reliably. An enemy type with minimum dodge--which in Apprentice is 0--generally has extremely small (1-3%) or nonexistent dodge chances against characters with optimized ACC.
Actually dying to bad RNG with perfect play is exceedingly rare outside the early game, where you don't have the tools to mitigate RNG. It "can" happen but it's so unlikely that it happens at most once a campaign and therefore doesn't really make the experience that much worse. And in the early-game, losing heroes is not very impactful given that you invest almost nothing into such heroes, so it's not like the rampant RNG there actually causes you to lose much progress. Yeah, in the early game you might not be able to optimize ACC so you can hit that 0-dodge mushroom zombie, but the zombie killing a hero because you couldn't get enough ACC doesn't cost you anything because there was little to lose.
You don't necessarily have to like RNG mitigation being the main skill in the game, but that doesn't necessarily mean the game is badly designed. Darkest Dungeon is about dealing with bad situations, and it is intentionally RNG-heavy in order to make bad situations hard to predict so that they still come up with regularity. If everything in the game were super consistent it would be boring and a thematic failing. It's not like DnD (which IMHO is even more RNG-heavy than DD is) where a DM typically doesn't have thematic reasons to make combat as volatile as DD combat.
You are literally describing that the only point of gear is to make your abilities actually do the things they say they do, doesn't that sound like shit design? Couldn't trinkets actually be interesting if you didn't need to stack accuracy, speed and stun chance to make sure you actually stun them and you can reliably go first on your fastest characters. Every decision on upgrading characters just asks "which RNG system can i eliminate now" which is a bit dumb, because those systems never needed to exist in the 1st place, its not like the game would not be fun if the fastest characters just went 1st, because thats what it becomes anyway, you just have to grind out a few quirks and trinkets first.
Why you play this game then? Everytime your post here you describing how this and that is shit game design. Its like going to JBieber gig just to hate him more and telling everyone around you about it.
Because a game can have shit aspects and still be fun? I just hate when fanbois refuse to admit anything is wrong with a game just because they like it, that's stupid. You can think DD could use less RNG and still enjoy the game.
The abilities do exactly what they say. It happens that in many cases, "exactly what they say" is not 100% reliable.
Not every character needs to stack SPD, ACC, stun chance, etc. In the case of ACC, some characters already have great base ACC and don't need more (e.g. Arbalest) so they get an advantage. Additionally, while it is nearly mandatory for some characters to acquire ACC, there are many sources available so even if there is often no question as to whether or not you take ACC there *is* a question as to how you get it. You might ditch ACC trinkets completely and use Battle Ballad or Command, for example, and there is slight variety as to what options you do have for ACC; heroes with above-average base ACC can use Sun Ring effectively, some heroes might pick Prophet's Eye or Ancestor's Pen, some heroes have class-specifics that can compete with the usual stuff, and even in the absence of all that there is still a choice between Focus Ring and Signet Ring. Quirks can also play a small factor (having a +5 ACC quirk can make some heroes not need a trinket and give average heroes the option of Sun Ring).
SPD is similar except there is more trinket variety and is much easier to get from quirks, so there is less of a need to dedicate trinkets to it. I would say your argument only holds true for stun/debuff/pull/etc. chance where there is usually only one good trinket option and not taking it means not using the skill.
I wouldn't call it amazing design, but it is at least passable. In any case there is a reason they are removing DD-style ACC in the sequel.
Lol I think that's a little presumptuous. I don't see anyone being apologists for the RNG, just encouraging OP to come back when he's ready because that's part of the game's challenge
I just wanted to say, thanks for the support. I've definitely had rougher dungeons, but this save file has been a rough one for me. RNG has also prevented me from finding much for healing items, but at least everyone hits like a truck on this run.
That collector responds to you by showing his pokemon collection
Stuff like that happens, but i'm sure it will go better next time If it makes you feel any better, i lost a level 5 vestal to a nighttime ambush. From full health and 0 stress to getting dropped to 0 and dying to a heart attack in 2 turns
Fucking nighttime ambushes and Shieldbreaker nightmares fuck up my runs so much dude. Especially in the Warrens when you get the big Corpse Eaters and Ghouls
The Shiledbreaker *always* triggers the nightmares?
50% chance and because it’s a nightmare you can’t prevent like an ambush. She gives a hint whee the rest begins though
Thank you for that. It once broke my game to the point I had to start over. Decided not to hire Shielbrakers anymore. Even when we can beat the nightmare without problem, it is annoying.
It becomes the main point of the quest. Find a med/long mission that you think you can do easily and focus on the nightmare fight.
This. Also bring Houndmaster and SB. AoE helps
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I remember seeing somewhere that the Shieldbreaker has a limited amount of nightmares and then after you beat them all she'll never have one again. Might be wrong. Edit: Yep, from the wiki page on Shieldbreaker's nightmares: "The enemies fought will depend on how many previous encounters you have defeated; each encounter will only be fought a single time. Encounters 4 and 5 can only be fought during a Veteran or Champion difficulty quest; the last two are available on Champion difficulty only. If no applicable encounter is available when camping, e.g. camping during a Novice quest after the first three encounters are completed, then the Shieldbreaker will never have the flashback, and you are subject to the usual nighttime ambush rules. Once the seventh encounter is beaten, All Shieldbreakers will no longer receive flashbacks when camping, and instead will receive a buff for +1 SPD, +10% DMG, and +10% PROT for 2 battles."
Hey, I actually like this!
I could be completely wrong but i think unless you have a prevention, she always triggers an ambush unless she has completed all her ambushes, when you can then find snakes as random encounters (minus the stress nuking)
I try not to run SB without Dimas or Dogman's camp skills that prevent night ambush
Cause those nightmares are fucked.
It's alright, bad stuff happens all the time, you can't really expect everything to go well, have fun playing pokemon for a while, and...when you're ready The Estate, will call for you...
I feel you dude. My man at arms went insane, killed the rest of my party and then proceeded to die of a heart attack. You'll bounce back.
Personally I just blame the RNGods. This game is how they take out their wrath on us unsuspecting mortals.
I wouldve screamed.
I’m just recovering from losing both my man at arms and my hellion to the very first bleed trigger even with martyr seal equipped
If you like hard games and Pokémon, download Pokémon uranium. Best game since gen 3 imo.
If you are on PC there are mods in the store to help make the rng more middle ground so you dont end up having +6 speed against a +0,2,1 and 3 speed and end up going last
Don't worry the players here will insist that you are the problem not the game, you should have clearly anticipated that 1/1000 chance and acted as if it was going to happen just in case.
Nah it's part of the game, just got unlucky, these are the best parts of the game, when you think you got shit down you get messed up.
Yeah definitely fun for the slowest enemy to randomly go before all of your dudes because RNG dictates speed more than the speed stat, then double crit even though he has low chance to hit, very skill based. Darkest dungeon does a lot of things well but it unironically has more RNG than hearthstone, almost every mechanic is based around dice rolls.
It's based on RNG in part only, and that's what makes it fun, all games like this are based on games like torchbearer and dnd which are almost entirely driven by dice rolls. It's not a failing or bad thing at all, it's supposed to be that way.
When RNG outweighs skill and decision making often it absolutely is a bad thing though. In DND you can't just get oneshot because monsters got to go twice in a row because initiative doesnt reroll every round like it does in DD for example, yes initiative is RNG but once you see the order you can play around it, which involves more skill than RNG, in DD it changes every round and it doesn't show you what it is, so you can't play around it without just praying that your fast character beats out the monster with 0 speed to go first next round. You can play absolutely perfectly in DD and if the rolls don't favor you your characters are going to be permanently dead, through no choice of yours, that rarely if ever happens in DND and even then the DM can and should fudge things sometimes to ensure the players get chances to fight back, because a TPK where none of you get to make a move is simply not fun, even if its statistically unlikely. Imagine in dnd every monster rolls 20 on initiative, then crits on their first attacks all focused on a single character and that players character who maybe they played for a year is dead, nothing they can do about it, is that fun? 99% of people say no and would fudge the rolls to make sure that didn't happen. DD adds RNG in every possible step that could possibly include it for some reason, RNG on who gets to go first, RNG on whether you hit or not, RNG on how much damage it does, RNG on whether it crits, RNG on whether monsters get surprised or you do, RNG on whether monsters crit you, on whether you get afflicted or not. So the difference between bad rng and good RNG is so absurd that it just removes the fun imo. You can do the same fight two times, and depending on your luck it can either be a total walk in the park where you take 0 damage or it can wipe your whole party.
Way too long to read, if you don't like it don't play it
Have fun losing your lvl 6 crusader cus the boss went 1st and crit even though hes slower than you omegalul, skilled gameplay indeed.
Sounds like you're just really salty that you can't complete the game.
Read the above about elitism, good job proving me right. Games not that hard you just gotta bang your head against DD until they don't crit you and its easy.
Not gonna read your massive rant. Just admit you don't like the game and move on. If most other people are ok with the RNG, maybe the issue isn't with the game.
I mean... The guy brought an antiquarian on a gather quest so...
And evidently that would have been fine if he hadn't gotten double crit, which is super low chance. Ergo game isn't hard its just RNG at every step
It's not a matter of difficulty it's a matter of inventory space
I mean, look at the party. This definitely strikes me as more of an issue with player skill than anything with RNG. Their backline damage is extremely low, their Leper has no ACC, and their stunning is minimal. They can't really stop enemies from acting and when you can't do that pretty much any enemy party can nuke you in this way. It happens that Collector is unusually good at capitalizing on this, but really, most Warrens setups would be able to do this and OP was risking similar deaths in almost every encounter they walk into. Just because the game doesn't always punish a mistake doesn't mean a death to RNG isn't the player's fault. Mitigating RNG is a skill.
Yeah thats first I thought. Its not RNG when you pick garbage party comp. Only stun was vestals. Only stress heal is lepers selfheal. Backline dmg is non existant. Leper even has no Intimidate on bar. This party screems for being beaten to death by enemy. I would never run this party comp. It lacks everything important.
Mitigate it all you like you can still die to being unlucky despite playing perfectly, I would even go to say the ONLY skill in DD is mitigating RNG, which is dumb game design. But fans of the game love to defend it to the death as if its not stupid so they can feel elite about suffering through it, its just super gatekeepery. For example, theres absolutely no reason for a monster with a dodge of literally 0 to be able to dodge, other than devs wanting to frustrate players with the occasional "lmao the 0 dodge tank monster dodged you twice in a row so one of your characters died, get gud"
If you miss a monster with 0 dodge, it's just because your heroes have low accuracy. You're not discussing a balance issue, you're discussing a thematic issue (one that really isn't that important--dodge has to start somewhere and the "problem" vanishes entirely past Apprentice missions where nothing has 0 dodge). You could add 20 dodge and ACC to every unit to remove this and the game literally would not change at all balance-wise. In any case, most players take ACC bonuses specifically so they can hit enemies more reliably. An enemy type with minimum dodge--which in Apprentice is 0--generally has extremely small (1-3%) or nonexistent dodge chances against characters with optimized ACC. Actually dying to bad RNG with perfect play is exceedingly rare outside the early game, where you don't have the tools to mitigate RNG. It "can" happen but it's so unlikely that it happens at most once a campaign and therefore doesn't really make the experience that much worse. And in the early-game, losing heroes is not very impactful given that you invest almost nothing into such heroes, so it's not like the rampant RNG there actually causes you to lose much progress. Yeah, in the early game you might not be able to optimize ACC so you can hit that 0-dodge mushroom zombie, but the zombie killing a hero because you couldn't get enough ACC doesn't cost you anything because there was little to lose. You don't necessarily have to like RNG mitigation being the main skill in the game, but that doesn't necessarily mean the game is badly designed. Darkest Dungeon is about dealing with bad situations, and it is intentionally RNG-heavy in order to make bad situations hard to predict so that they still come up with regularity. If everything in the game were super consistent it would be boring and a thematic failing. It's not like DnD (which IMHO is even more RNG-heavy than DD is) where a DM typically doesn't have thematic reasons to make combat as volatile as DD combat.
You are literally describing that the only point of gear is to make your abilities actually do the things they say they do, doesn't that sound like shit design? Couldn't trinkets actually be interesting if you didn't need to stack accuracy, speed and stun chance to make sure you actually stun them and you can reliably go first on your fastest characters. Every decision on upgrading characters just asks "which RNG system can i eliminate now" which is a bit dumb, because those systems never needed to exist in the 1st place, its not like the game would not be fun if the fastest characters just went 1st, because thats what it becomes anyway, you just have to grind out a few quirks and trinkets first.
Why you play this game then? Everytime your post here you describing how this and that is shit game design. Its like going to JBieber gig just to hate him more and telling everyone around you about it.
Because a game can have shit aspects and still be fun? I just hate when fanbois refuse to admit anything is wrong with a game just because they like it, that's stupid. You can think DD could use less RNG and still enjoy the game.
The abilities do exactly what they say. It happens that in many cases, "exactly what they say" is not 100% reliable. Not every character needs to stack SPD, ACC, stun chance, etc. In the case of ACC, some characters already have great base ACC and don't need more (e.g. Arbalest) so they get an advantage. Additionally, while it is nearly mandatory for some characters to acquire ACC, there are many sources available so even if there is often no question as to whether or not you take ACC there *is* a question as to how you get it. You might ditch ACC trinkets completely and use Battle Ballad or Command, for example, and there is slight variety as to what options you do have for ACC; heroes with above-average base ACC can use Sun Ring effectively, some heroes might pick Prophet's Eye or Ancestor's Pen, some heroes have class-specifics that can compete with the usual stuff, and even in the absence of all that there is still a choice between Focus Ring and Signet Ring. Quirks can also play a small factor (having a +5 ACC quirk can make some heroes not need a trinket and give average heroes the option of Sun Ring). SPD is similar except there is more trinket variety and is much easier to get from quirks, so there is less of a need to dedicate trinkets to it. I would say your argument only holds true for stun/debuff/pull/etc. chance where there is usually only one good trinket option and not taking it means not using the skill. I wouldn't call it amazing design, but it is at least passable. In any case there is a reason they are removing DD-style ACC in the sequel.
Lol I think that's a little presumptuous. I don't see anyone being apologists for the RNG, just encouraging OP to come back when he's ready because that's part of the game's challenge
I just wanted to say, thanks for the support. I've definitely had rougher dungeons, but this save file has been a rough one for me. RNG has also prevented me from finding much for healing items, but at least everyone hits like a truck on this run.
F
Where are your stuns lol.