The Darkest Dungeon expansion The Crimson Court is out today, bringing with it the villainous vampire-hunting Fanatic, a new hero named the Flagellant, and also an update to the base game that makes a pile of changes and bug fixes laid out in some not-terribly-detailed patch notes. As befits a moment of this magnitude, there is also a trailer.
"The Crimson Court is a parallel campaign experienced alongside the main Darkest Dungeon content that will provide you with new challenges and variation at every difficulty level," developer Red Hook Studios explained in a blog post. "The narrative grounding sheds some light on the Ancestor’s early days, and will be presented in the same style of cut-scenes you’ve seen elsewhere in the game."
The DLC adds the Flagellant hero class and Fanatic wandering boss, the new Courtyard dungeon region, a "full faction" of new enemies, and five new bosses "with some of the most complex and devious mechanics yet." There are also ten new Hamlet upgrade buildings and new lore-driven trinket sets, with set bonuses, for all heroes.
The base game update doesn't come with detailed patch notes because "with everything going on around the DLC launch, we couldn’t bring ourselves to go back through every commit log from the past five months for the base game," Red Hook explained on Steam. "We might’ve forgotten some stuff. Call us lazy, call us exhausted. We’re sorry, and we love you." But in broad strokes, here's what's coming:
- Character class balancing and adjustments! Highlights include Crusader’s Bulwark of Faith, Highwayman’s Tracking Shot and Open Vein, Bounty Hunter’s Hook and Slice (Now, Caltrops!), Leper’s Intimidate, and maybe the biggest of all: Occultist’s Wyrd Reconstruction (now usable in any rank!).
- Comprehensive trinket re-balancing: you’ll notice not only stat changes, but rarity/tiering changes as well for some trinkets. Thanks to Maester Silvio for his contributions!
- Added Horror (Stress DOT) to a few monsters sprinkled around the dungeons...
- Added Laudanum - a powerful tonic to combat Horror, available at a Provisioner near you.
- Revised improper quest rewards for Cove boss quests to give higher rewards.
- Inexplicably, you can now enter the dungeon with less than a full party. We advise against it!
- New Affliction act-outs! Experience the mayhem and tomfoolery of characters attacking each other and sometimes rarely even forcing a retreat! (Don’t hate us too much.)
- High torchlight levels now properly grant dodge bonus to heroes.
- Combat skill tooltip optimization.
- Bug fixes and stability improvements.
Unfortunately, the changes made to accommodate the DLC will break some Darkest Dungeon mods until their creators update them. "We were unable to get all of the information out ahead of time, but stand by to assist mod creators in understanding the changes," Red Hook said.
Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court is available now on Steam for $10/£7/€11 and "coming soon" to GOG." The base game is also on sale on both platforms, but is slightly cheaper on Steam.
