This guide attempts to be a full guide to Darkest Dungeon 2 and the mechanics therein. Its main content is the sections on heroes, which go into depth on their movesets and roles. It also covers the enemies and various boss fights, as well as some other key concepts. Before each section I will try to explain what the section will give you and how it will be formatted, for ease of use. I have been playing DD2 throughout early access and prepared this guide in the 3 weeks leading up to release, intending to post it on or soon after launch day. While many things have changed for 1.0 and will still change going forward, the advice in this guide should remain mostly accurate, and this guide will be updated to account for changes and content that I didn't know at launch.

This Guide contains Spoilers. I have tried to segment these spoilers so that you can read the earlier parts of the guide without them. Minibosses and Enemies will always be named and those names will begin to show up in the very next section. Lair bosses will only begin to be named at about the midpoint of this guide (I will warn you again at that point), and Act Bosses will only be named within their section. If you see a spoiler earlier than you expect, let me know.

This guide is, as the name suggests, the length of a novel. You are not expected nor encouraged to read it all at once. Feel free to skip around or only read the parts that you care about.

This Guide’s version is .99

The guide only needs a section on Death, then all the content I intended to add for 1.0 will be complete. It then needs new sections for the four new champion enemies, and the two new minibosses as well. Act 3 boss needs an update. I plan to add in the new content from the Binding Blade shortly. If you see something numbers-wise that’s currently wrong, it’s either due to that discrepancy, or due to the numbers I used being old or wrong (as the game is constantly patched). If it's neither of those, I made a mistake. Many numbers were sourced from the wiki, for ease. You’ll know what needs to be added, because the section will just say Placeholder. It may take some time to update the guide to include the new 1.0 stuff, as I will need to play it, and desperately need a break from writing. I also depend on the wiki for numbers, so certain sections with boss move-sets do need to wait for those

Recent Additions: Act 5 Boss, Flagellant, Act 4 Boss
Up next: Changes based on balance changes and redesigns (Occultist not working with double lunge for example). Additional content additions (Duelist and Crusader, Collector, Death, etc). General pass.
Eventually, Maybe: Combat Items and Inn Items in depth discussion (These would be first), Trinkets Discussion (After those two), Additional Sample Comps (For characters added later, so they have a few extra comps that they are in).

I'm on Vacation again now, so expect the guide to be updated by the end of December with new content.

Many sections are broken up into several separate parts, sometimes awkwardly. This is because of Steam's section size limitations. I still have no idea why those exist, but oh well.

If you appreciate any part of this guide, I'd really appreciate a like and favorite. For the dopamine hit and the stars if nothing else.

A list of terms I (and sometimes only I) use in reference to certain ideas about the game, in no particular order. These are usually explained within the context of how they apply or might be useful. If some term you see within the guide confuses you, let me know and I might add it to this list.

Comp: A composition. A team comp is your team: meaning the characters you choose, the path you choose for each character, where that character is standing, and the moveset each character has. An enemy comp is the set of enemies you're facing.

Rounds and Turns: A round is the full sequence of everyone taking their actions, a turn is simply one character’s action. Sometimes it is important to know the difference. I try to use both terms accurately, but sometimes I might get mixed up. I often use Actions to refer to turns.

Region: The Area you’re going to. The regions you get to choose between include The Foetor, The Sprawl, The Tangle, The Shroud, and The Sluice. The Sluice is a bonus area that doesn’t count towards your region total. The Valley and The Mountain are also regions, but you don’t have any say as to when you go to them.

Node: Specifically these are the five kinds of paths you can have between locations. Every path will be one of these 5: A road fight, wheel damage, armor damage, Loathing, and nothing. The game refers to these as routes, but I frequently and perhaps intentionally call them nodes.

Location: These are all the locations you’re choosing between on your trip through a region. These are, in no specific order: Shrines of Remembrance, The Lair, Resistance encounters, Cultist Encounters, Beast Dens, The Hoarder, Assistance Encounters, The Oasis, Watchtowers, Academic Caches, Academic Studies, The Hospital, and the Oblivion’s Rampart and inn. We’ll discuss all of these and nodes in their own section. The game sometimes refers to these as nodes, and I call them locations.

Combat Item: This is the word used to refer to any of those items you get that you can use in battle. They have all sorts of effects and do different things. They will be talked about in many different sections, but are not listed.

Trinkets: Items you can equip to heroes for bonus effects. Each hero can hold two different trinkets. If you don’t want to get the same rare trinket twice, make sure to hold onto the original. Similarly, we won’t list all the trinkets: it's generally fairly apparent which ones are good. If I make lists, this will probably be the first list I make.

Inn items: Items you use while staying at inns. These will be simpler to discuss because they tend to fall into a few categories. Similar to the above, no lists. (Perhaps one day I will make lists).

Boss: Specifically this will be used to refer to the lair bosses and the act boss (the final boss of the run). Bosses are all fought in predictable places, meaning that good strategy often accounts for which boss(es) you plan on fighting. Bosses can not be ordained, unlike everything else in the game. Every run aside from the newly added 2 region runs requires you to kill at least one lair boss and the act boss to win. Therefore, every comp needs to be able to do these things.

Miniboss: It’s a little up in the air as to what counts as a ‘miniboss’, but here are the enemies I usually count as minibosses: Shambler, Antiquarian, The Cannon, Death, and Exemplar. Note that with the game releasing, there may be a new one I have not counted aside from Death. Minibosses can be significant challenges, but you usually have less foreknowledge about when you’ll encounter them, aside from exemplar who you will always fight at the end of region 3. They will be discussed in their relevant enemy sections (Shambler in the Cultist/Cosmic section. Dunno where death will be: Gaunt?). All minibosses can be ordained, which makes them easy to separate out.

Tokens: Many status effects are represented by tokens. The game has a token list within it, so it’s easy to tell which is which, and we have a section dedicated to the generic tokens. Tokens are generally bonuses or maluses, and can typically be measured in ‘turn’ values. A block token, for instance, reduces incoming direct damage by half and is then spent, meaning it is effectively worth ‘half a turn’ of direct damage. We’ll discuss these in more detail as they come up.

Buff/Debuff: More or less any move that applies positive tokens or effects to your guys or negative ones to the other guys. When applying anything of the sort to the enemy, the game checks a resistance to see if it sticks. All negative effects ignore 20 points of restist if the application move crits. To learn more, see Pseudo-Accuracy.

Combo: This game’s equivalent to mark. A combo token is an irresistible token that allows certain moves to gain bonus effects, depending on the move. Combo tokens seem to be valued at around half a turn, though their strength varies wildly depending on the followup and enemy in question. Combo tokens are usually quite valuable and are used in tons of different comps. Though they are comparable in style, they should not be thought of in the same narrow way that Mark often was in DD1. I will always refer to combo as either combo or combo token, and never as mark, unless I make some mistake

Combo Engine: A strategy for applying combo, usually at least once every turn. A combo engine can be as simple as one character rotating some moves that apply combo.

Pseudo-Accuracy: DD2 doesn’t have conventional accuracy mechanics. Unless an enemy has dodge or your character has blind, the attack will hit the target. However, there are mechanics that may as well be accuracy that are still present. Enemies can resist pretty much everything that isn’t direct damage through a percentage check, just like in the first game. Stuns go through stun resist, DoT effects go through their particular resist, debuffs through debuff resist, and so on. This means that these moves effectively do have an accuracy tied to what are often their most important or entire effects. These resists are constantly used to calculate actual payoffs or damage output, though in a high variance manner. For example, if your attack would apply 2 blind tokens, and the enemy has 30% debuff resist, using the move is worth 70% the enemy’s turn (.5 per blind token * [1-.3 for resist]), but this takes a form akin to accuracy, meaning the actual result is either the full application, or nothing.

Variance: How much RNG affects the efficacy of something. Direct damage moves tend to be low variance, as they always do some damage. Team-side buffs are similar outside of dodge. Moves that go through resists tend to be high variance, as they either get the full effect or do nothing. Many moves in DD2 are at least somewhat balanced by the level of variance involved.

Alpha: Alpha, in reference to the idea of an ‘alpha strike’, is a term used to reference how much an attack does the moment you use it, and how easy it is to use the attack. Some very high alpha moves, like Howling End, incur penalties when used or are inflexible. In contrast, most very low alpha moves are designed to pay off extra value over time.

Damage Calculation: It’s important to understand how it works to understand the importance of various game factors, such as higher damage ranges and different modiifers. The damage calculation in DD2 is fairly simple, but there are a few important things to know about it.

First of all, it is calculated as such: Damage Range * (All personal modifiers added together) * (All enemy modifiers added together) = Final damage range. If you crit, take the top of the final damage range and multiply it by 1.5 (typically this means a crit is around double value, but depending on the damage range itself that may not be true). Rounding works how it did in school (1.49 or less becomes 1, 1.5 or higher becomes 2. Same for any other number).

A Personal Modifier is any modifier that applies to your character. So a character with the bloodthirsty trait (+30% damage), and a strength token (+50% damage) has a final personal modifier of +80%, or 1.8 times. These are much more common than enemy modifiers.

Enemy Modifiers are anything that applies to them, usually block tokens or vulnerable tokens. If an enemy has a vulnerable token (50% more damage taken) and no other enemy modifiers are present, the enemy modifier would be +50% damage taken, or 1.5 times.

Different kinds of multipliers are effectively multiplicative with one another, but additive within their own class. A Crit multiplies the final result, and is effectively multiplicative with everything else. Personal modifiers are usually more common, so enemy modifiers tend to be more valuable.

Enemy damage calculation has one extra kind of modifier, that being Battle Modifiers. The 20% damage boost from the Frenzied Enemies and Elite enemies battle modifiers is multiplicative with everything else, for whatever reason.

Damage Transfer: Damage transfer is a concept that refers to any action that effectively transfers the damage output of one character to another one, usually because this results in more damage. A good example is the Occultist’s ‘Vulnerability Hex’. Alhazred can inflict Vulnerable tokens to increase the damage output of other team members or himself, but he can also stab something with sacrificial stab for a decent amount of damage. Therefore, using Vulnerability Hex+ to inflict two vulnerable tokens is effectively a damage transfer, because he isn’t stabbing instead. This is typically done to do more damage overall.

Tempo: Your team’s tempo is essentially how much time they spend doing things that you want to do rather than need to do, meaning proactively killing and mitigating enemies. Playing re-actively (focusing on healing, guarding low heroes, Stress Healing, etc). is typically a low tempo approach to a fight, and in some fights (like Cardinal, Exemplar, Shambler, and multiple lair and final bosses), playing low tempo is a good way to meet a slow death. This is what I’d refer to as a tempo spiral, and is one of the main ways to get wiped in DD2.

Snipe: Specifically this usually means sniping a lair boss, usually in the first region, and potentially the same one twice. Otherwise it refers to going after certain enemies in enemy comps: A team that is focusing down an enemy that is in rank 3 before any other enemy is 'Sniping' rank 3.

Relationship Correction/Correction Items: This is the use of usually inn items to try to increase a relationship that’s unfriendly or worse to at least neutral. Negative relationships are awful, so using inn items with RNG rolls to try to boost a neutral relationship to a positive one is usually worse than just trying to correct a negative one, though doing so is considerably more valuable on Stygian in particular.

Overkill/Damage-Waste: Basically, if an enemy has 10 HP, and you hit it for 20, you’ve over-killed it by 10 damage. Not usually the end of the world, but consistent damage waste can indicate a problem with your damage plan.

Incision Utility: This is the term I use to refer to moves that inflict a DoT (even if it's a small one), along with decent amounts of direct damage. These moves allow you to more easily set an enemy to Death's Door than most DoT moves, due to higher direct damage profiles, but because they still apply a DoT they will Death's Door check the enemy as soon as they take a turn. It is named this because Incision is one of these moves, but you could also call it Open Vein Utility, If It bleeds Utility, Bleed Out Utility, Punish Utility, or just something universal like 'Free Check Utility'.

Scalability: How well you can scale the damage off a move, generally through personal modifiers. Moves with higher damage ranges are generally more scalable than ones with lower damage ranges. Some moves that seem like they might do high damage, like Courageous Abandon, are held back from truly glorious damage levels because they start with low damage ranges and get most of their damage from inbuilt personal modifiers.

Just so it’s easy to understand what I’m talking about going forward for an absolute beginner, here are all the different generic tokens in the game. A character can have multiple up to a potential maximum depending on the token type, written as ‘Limit X’. You can look every token up in the game's Token glossary.

Strength: Next attack does 50% more damage. Personal modifier. Limit 2

Weak: Next attack does 50% less damage. Personal modifier. Gaining a weak token when you have a strength token nullifies both, and vice versa. Limit 2

Crit: Next attack will always crit irrespective of crit chance. Limit 2

Block/Block+: Next attack that hits you does 50/75% less damage. Personal modifier, stack with hater quirks for funny results. Limit 3. You can have both kinds at the same time and each have their own limit, meaning the total possible is 6. Block+ is spent first.

Vulnerable: You/the enemy takes 50% more damage from the next attack. Enemy modifier. Getting a vuln token will nullify a block/block+ token and itself, and vice versa, the same way weak does with strength. It will always nullify a block+ first I think. Limit 2

Dodge/Dodge+: Next attack has a 50/75% chance to miss the dodgy hero. ‘Personal modifier’, as this ‘stacks’ multiplicatively with blind. Limit 3, same rules as Block/Block+

Blind: Next attack from the blinded enemy/character has a 50% chance to miss. ‘Enemy modifier’, in the sense that similar to the damage calc, it works multiplicatively with dodge. A blinded enemy attacking a hero with dodge/dodge+ has a 25%/12.5% chance to hit, not a 0% chance. Limit 2

Speed: Character moves first next round guaranteed, unless someone else also has speed. What it functionally does is raise the character’s speed by 100 next turn, which is enough to always go first by a pretty obscene margin.

Daze: When the character’s turn happens, it is moved to the end of the round. If two characters are dazed, the one who was originally faster will go first. Cancels out Speed in the same way vuln and weak work. Gaining a second daze token while dazed will upgrade it to a stun. Uses stun resist. Limit 1, for obvious reasons.

Stun: Miss a turn. Gain 40 stun resist until your next one. Limit 1, prevents Daze.

Taunt: Targets with taunt must be targeted if you decide to use an attack move and it’s possible. It counts as a negative token, even if it’s not always functionally a negative token. Limit 3, you can resist applications of taunt from enemies, relationships, and so on, but not from your own moves that generate it. After all, what would be the point in those cases?

Guard: The character is guarded by someone else. If they get attacked and the guarding unit isn’t being attacked at the same time, he’ll jump in front. This counts as a positive token, meaning that it synergizes with some trinkets and moves. Limit 3

Stealth: Target can’t be targeted, save by cleaves that happen to hit it or by stealth piercing moves. It will also be ignored if the stealthed enemy/hero is the only possible target left, to prevent immortality and irritating enemy stalling. Each token is spent one at a time each time the hero does something. Counts as neither positive nor negative, but has some things that revolve around specifically having it. Limit 2

Riposte: Character will strike back if hit. Only Barristan and Dismas currently make these on your side, some enemies make them on the enemy side. Only attacks that do damage will get riposted. The riposte attack is a specific special attack that does 4-6 damage (at least for those two heroes). HWM’s has slightly higher crit and a 33% chance to apply combo. The riposte attack can’t be upgraded, even if the move the riposte gain is attached to is. Limit 3. Characters without riposte attacks can’t gain riposte (not that there’s any way for them to).

Immobilize: Target can’t move or be moved. Can be positive, can be annoying. If a character gets pushed into a character with immobilize and that character isn’t up front or in the back, they will trade places with the character on the other side of the immobilized character. This is really annoying most of the time. If the immobilized guy is in the front or back, the moving character just won’t move. There’s a special permanent version of this provided by one specific lair trophy. Immobilize is NOT the same as having 100% move resistance, a fact that is relevant in exactly one case. Counts as a negative token, one is spent each turn. Limit 3

These are all the generic tokens. All the specific tokens will be talked about with the character or enemy(s) they’re specific to.

This section exists to briefly explain how some things, like Flame, Stress, Speed, and HP work, so that there’s no confusion. Not to be confused with the terms section above, even though we did explain a lot there. I may add more to this list as I think of more things to add, or if someone asks about some certain mechanic.

HP: HP is very simple. Each hero has a certain maximum HP, and as enemies hit them, they lose HP. If you’ve ever played DD1, Pokemon, or pretty much any RPG, you probably know that much. HP is healed through the use of certain moves and combat items, as well as by a ‘traveling heal’, or over time as you drive forward on the map.

Stress: You can think of Stress as another ‘character health’ stat. Every character has a stress bar that goes from zero to ten. This bar is divided up into thresholds, and you can tell which threshold each is at by hovering over their stress bar or by looking at the ‘taller’ stress pips, as these mark new thresholds. The thresholds are at 4, 7, and 10, with 10 being the point where the character has to take a resolve check. This resolve check has a 75% (or maybe 80%) chance of failure by default, in which case the character will have a meltdown, losing tons of HP and relationships. If they win, they become resolute and the opposite happens. Characters will not be mean to each other within banter when below 4 stress, unless they have certain bad quirks

Speed: Each character and enemy has a speed score. The game rolls a D6 once for every character and enemy each turn and adds that result to the speed score, and then orders the turns from highest final result to lowest. If there’s a tie, the higher base speed goes first. If there’s a tie with the same base speed… I assume it’s a coin flip, but don’t actually know. This means that to be guaranteed to go ahead of someone, a character needs to be at least 5 speed above them. If you’re 4 speed above, you’ll only lose 1 out of 36 times (you roll a 1, they roll a 6). 3 is still reasonably consistent. Enemies with multiple actions will (currently) never go twice in a row, unless everyone else has moved.

Resistances: The other set of stats every hero and enemy has. These represent the character’s ability to resist certain problems or ailments. There is a resistance to every type of Damage over time, as well as one to movement effects, debuffs, and stun effects (dazes and stuns). There is also a disease resist (for diseases), and a deathblow resist (for dying). Disease and deathblow resistance are capped at 95 and 90 respectively, and the rest aren’t. If Red Hook really doesn’t want you to do a certain thing to an enemy, that enemy will generally have 200 of the appropriate resist, or be set to 'IMM', which means 'immune'.

Flame: You’re carrying around a big torch that represents the light of hope or something. It’s replenished to full at every inn, and decreases as you move through a region or take spooky or rude actions. Some other actions, like being a goody two shoes at Assistance encounters and slaying bosses will replenish it mid-region to a degree. You will get buffs if it’s high, and the enemies will get buffs and higher enemy advantage chance (which means more buffs) if it’s low. If it hits 0, you will quickly be forced into a battle with Cultist enemies, often including a Deacon or Cardinal. If you win that, you get 40 back and nothing else.

Hero Goals: Your heroes have goals. Sometimes these are easy, sometimes they are ‘kill 8 of this specific kind of enemy with this non damage dealing character’ or ‘Upgrade and use this skill you don’t want to use 4 times in a fight’. If you accomplish them, you get more of the meta currency (candles) when the run ends, whether you lose or win. This means that, yes, you can just ignore these if you have everything.

Mastery: Sometimes, when you win a fight, you get a mastery point. Some fights are guaranteed to drop them. You can also gain this through certain region goals, Shrines, and the beast den items. Runs that go well tend to produce lots of mastery. Mastery is used to upgrade skills once each at inns.

Unlocking Skills: You do this at Shrines of Remembrance, which is a location, shortened to just ‘Shrine’ for the guide. You do a minigame to do this sometimes. The minigames are generally pretty straightforward, and if you get stuck I recommend just looking them up on Youtube. Shrines do not spawn in a run if all of the skills on that team are unlocked.

Scouting: When you enter a region, the game rolls for each location and node, seeing if it reveals it or not. This is Scouting. Some interactions and quirks can also cause stuff to get revealed, such as the Watch-Tower, and this is also referred to as scouting.

Voting: When choosing between locations, heroes will sometimes vote on a destination. Go with their choice, they lose 1 stress. Don’t, and they gain 1. Usually this isn’t the deciding factor unless both choices are equal or near equal in value, or your team has very high stress.

Inn types and Modifiers: This game has different kinds of Inns, providing different bonuses or maluses. You can’t control the inn type you get, it’s RNG, but it can inform your decisions in some cases. You can hover over the sign on the top left to see what the inn effects are. Regions (except the Sluice) also have a modifier and a goal, and you do get to see those before you go in. There are a few things worth talking about:
~If a region has a goal to avoid X kind of locations, those locations will always be scouted. Meaning that, ironically, the best place to find a hospital is often the region that tells you to avoid it.
~Lairs (nodes with 2 fights and a boss) are Always Scouted. This is because you always have to win at least one lair to get to the mountain (except for within Act 1). Each region has one and it’s always guaranteed to spawn once, for obvious reasons.

Buff/Debuff Timers: For the most part, everything will disappear after 3 turns (tokens and stuff on a hero directly) or 3 rounds (rank tokens). As a rule, if this isn’t the case, it’s typically told to you what the length actually is.

Stuns: Outside of Bounty Hunter and Occultist, there are effectively two kinds of stuns. Combo stuns, which are applied using a move on an enemy with a combo token, and daze stuns, which happen when you stack Daze onto another Daze. BH gets to apply stuns for free on two moves, and Occultist uses his special token to do it. Many comps won't even run Stun strategies, but when you can they are often very strong.

Damage-Over-Time: Shortened to DoT, there are three kinds of damage over time that all work the exact same. These are: Bleed, Blight, and Burning. By default they always last for 3 turns, or 5 if the move used to apply them crits. Enemies have different resistances to each, so taking a character with Blight moves into the Foetor, for example, will typically be ineffective compared to elsewhere. If the application move crits, 20 points of these resistances are also ignored for the purpose of applying the DoT.

Quirks/Diseases: Positive and negative modifiers each hero can have. Heroes can have 3 of each, and the oldest will cycle out if you get a new one. One positive can be locked in at the Hospital, and negatives (and only negatives) can be removed at the hospital. Using inn items that remove quirks will always remove the oldest one. Diseases work similarly in that they produce bad modifiers. You can only have 1 disease, and getting a new one will cycle out the old one.

Who should I bring with me Today...?

Before we talk about how to beat this boss, play through that area, or use that hero, we need to discuss some aspects of team building. Just like in the first game, DD2 has a wide variety of heroes designed to fulfill a variety of roles. Unlike DD1, you can only have 1 of each hero, and each hero has several different modes that you can unlock that tend to further specialize them in a certain direction (Paths). For example, a Vestal with the Seraph path will focus on buffing her teammates with her consecrations, and then usually spend her other turns firing off high powered judgments. This kind of vestal performs very well in a team that involves some controlled ‘dancing’, to maximize the number of heroes a single consecration can buff each turn. In contrast, a Chaplain Vestal is going to sit up front, take hits, and smack things in the face with her mace.

If that sounds like a lot of options, that’s because it is. Each path effectively subdivides the hero into multiple options. Each hero also comes with a random couple of quirks each run (unless they’re persistent), which can in some cases greatly affect how takeable a hero is.

With all these options, where do we even begin with team building? The simplest thing to do is to define what our goals are when building a team. Effectively, we can divide these considerations into three different packages.

The first is how the team is going to deal damage. To win a fight in DD2, you have to reduce the health of enemies and bosses down to 0, and sometimes deal a deathblow on top of that. Determining how you can do large amounts of damage in consistent ways is probably the most important consideration for team building, as you must deal damage to win the game.

The second is how the team is going to mitigate incoming damage and stress. The enemies want to kill you, so using mitigation to lessen how valuable their turns are is very important. This can be further subdivided into two ideas: Reactive mitigation, which is healing, stress healing, and debuff and DoT curing, and proactive mitigation, which is debuffing and stunning the enemy, using defensive tokens, guard, and Tanks, and killing them before they can attack at all.

The third is specific to each act. We want a team that can realistically handle the final boss of the chosen confession. Bringing only front-line damage to the second act boss, for example, is a good way to get killed. Beating the big bad is the goal of any expedition, so assembling a team that can reasonably answer whatever gimmick or mechanic the boss has is close to a requirement for victory. There are a lot of different ways to do so, so you shouldn't feel hemmed in by the act boss.

Let’s discuss the forms both of these take in the next two sections, starting with discussing Damage.

In Darkest Dungeon 2, understanding how you’re going to deal damage is typically the most important aspect of team building, because a lot of other decisions branch off of how you decide to deal damage. Whether your team composition ends up being a slow burn focused more on mitigation and/or Damage over time, or an alpha heavy monster murdering machine, you can definitely win DD2. The exact way you go about it, and the ways your team will excel, will heavily depend on what comp you want to build and the challenges you intend to face.

First off, there is no accuracy system in Darkest Dungeon 2: Every attack will hit provided there are no other factors. There is a pseudo-accuracy system with DoT damage, as well as the various debuffs, as these have a percentage chance of sticking, but the actual attack will always hit. This means that thresholds in this game are very easy to understand: If an enemy has 6 HP, and your character does 6-9 damage, you will always kill that enemy if you attack it.

So with that out of the way, let’s try to understand the damage calculation. It’s a fairly straightforward system: All damage buffs are additive, but enemy modifiers are separated from your character modifiers, so they interact with each other multiplicatively. This leads us to the following equation.

The Final Damage Range = Initial Damage Range * All personal Modifiers Added Together * All Enemy Modifiers Added Together

If you get a critical hit, you take the top of the final damage range and multiply it by 1.5 times. To show this in action, I’ll use the Vestal’s move, Mace Bash+.

Vestal’s Mace Bash+ has a damage range of 6-8 damage. It also states that if you use it when she has three conviction tokens, it does 100% more damage. Her move hand of light allows her to give herself a strength token (which is also spent to increase damage by 50%), so let’s assume she has three conviction tokens and has used hand of light the turn prior. She’s attacking into an enemy that has a vulnerable token, which is a token that increases damage taken by 50%. Let’s look at how much damage this would do.

6-8 * [1 (Base) + (1 (conviction) + .5 (Strength)] * [1 (Base) + .5 (Vulnerable Token)]

The personal modifiers would already increase the damage range to 15-20, and this would then be multiplied by a further 1.5, landing the final damage range at 23-30 (it rounds up from 22.5). If she landed a critical hit, the critical hit would do 45 damage, because 30 * 1.5 is 45. That’s a lot higher than the initial 6-8 we started with. The game will show you this result before she swings, so you don't have to do the math yourself unless you're planning the hit in advance.

What does this all mean though? Well, it means a few things. For starters, it’s usually easier to get personal modifiers, but because each personal modifier only pays attention to the base damage range, the actual percent damage gain is lower for each successive personal modifier. In the above example, the strength token was only worth a further 25% increase in damage after we account for conviction, because it only added another 3-4 to what was already 12-16 damage. However, because the vulnerable token is a separate modifier and was by itself, it was worth an extra 50% of that final 15-20, or 7.5-10, which is even more than the original base damage of the move. Critical hits always look at the final result.

However, this also touches on an important point. What matters in most fights within DD2 are Damage Thresholds, and your ability to hit them. Let’s take the mace example again. If Vestal is attacking a gaunt with 11 HP, and she crits for 45 damage, that is effectively a much funnier version of just hitting him for 11 damage (with an added stress heal from the crit). He’s dead either way. If she had hit it for 10 damage, the enemy would still be just as dangerous as if she’d hit it for 1.

This means that hitting the absolute highest output outside of high HP boss fights or against very tanky enemies is usually secondary to generating enough damage to one or two tap something. This gives certain characters, especially ones that can crit very often (since crit damage is a consistent number) an edge in some situations, while giving characters that have large damage ranges but very high average damage the advantage in others. It also means that you should not put all your eggs in one basket. For example, having a comp that is dedicated to making leper hit as hard as possible would be hilarious, but in an actual fight it would be slow, because leper is only killing one thing per turn (or maybe two, with an extremely excellent hew). You could certainly still win the game doing that, but it would feel inflexible and produce a lot of damage-waste.

Speaking of thresholds, if DoT damage sticks, it’s very good at hitting thresholds (due to the consistent output of the DoT), it’s very good at checking Death’s Door (because, yeah, some enemies get that too now), it’s very good against enemies that take multiple actions every turn in general, and it’s very good against enemy ‘block’ tokens, which reduce direct damage (since most of the damage comes from the DoT, and the weaker initial hit will still remove the block token). The downside is that it can result in enemies getting actions they wouldn’t otherwise if you did not rely on it, because its ability to do high Alpha damage in most situations, is at best mediocre (DoT ticks at turn start, so if it’s enough to kill them, it will kill them before they act). Waiting on an enemy to die means letting that enemy smack you in the head, and getting smacked in the head is generally undesirable.

Finally, let’s talk about AoE, of both the DoT and raw damage variety. AoE, or ‘Cleave’ moves are often fairly underwhelming in the damage department with a few exceptions, but they’re very good at checking enemy tokens or at spreading some love when someone’s low on HP. Want to remove the dodge from multiple enemies at once? Cleaves have you covered. Many cleaves aren’t that useful outside of this role, but many are, and we’ll talk about them individually as they come up.

So how does this all come together? There are many damage plans. You can focus on Raw damage, using high alpha moves from characters like Hellion or Highwayman to flexibly take out dangerous threats in any rank. You can use more reliable crits from characters like Graverobber to hit damage thresholds, and unleash DoT damage to smooth out those damage thresholds, check death’s door, and hit enemies you plan to mitigate or just leave alive really hard. You can go hard with DoT damage, using Cause of death to create bursts of Alpha when you need it, and a strong mitigation plan (see later) to allow the high value from DoT moves to shine. You could build a comp that focuses on the enemy frontline, using heavy hitters like Leper and Hellion to cut down even the tankiest enemies, before using corpse clearing moves to bring the enemy backline up front. You could take the opposite approach, mitigating the front line as you smash down their backline, a strategy quite effective in specific areas and against cultists. Or you could build something more flexible. We’ll discuss each of these in more depth as we discuss the characters, but when team building it’s important to at least have a strong idea about how you’re going to deal damage to the various threats in the game.

You probably don't want to get shot by this thing when it's at full strength

Hitting the enemies in the face really hard is a good start, but what do you do about them hitting you in the face? That’s where the mitigation plan comes in, and despite the absolute damage focus that some people seem to believe DD2 is geared towards, the mitigation plan is very important.

The reason for this is that not all turns are created equal. For example, let’s say for the sake of argument that the enemy team has two enemies, each with 15 HP, and you have three turns left on your side (both enemies will go after that in this case). Let’s say that any combination of these turns will allow you to kill one of those enemies, and wound the other, if you decide to attack with every hero. Now, like we said up above, an enemy with 1 HP is exactly as dangerous as one with full HP. Since we know that any two attacks from our team will kill the enemy, and we only have one attack left before he gets to attack, attacking them again with the third turn will produce absolutely nothing of value. This is because next round, we could easily kill it before it attacks anyway, and if it does go first next round, the use of mitigation means that we don’t take full damage twice. Allowing it to attack at full strength therefore makes no sense. Hitting it with a weakening curse or smokescreen or, if available, a stun therefore makes more sense that just damaging it. Even if the damage reduction isn’t equal to a full turn of value (because of debuff resistance, or because it’s only supposed to go for one turn rather than two), it’s still more valuable than hitting it in the face.

While this oversimplifies the question to a degree, it makes it very clear why mitigation is so helpful. Employing mitigation through the use of blind, weak, block, taunt, and others allows you to minimize enemy turns that are going to happen whether you mitigate them or not.

Of course, mitigation, just like damage, has diminishing returns. If you can’t kill the enemies quickly at all, mitigating them heavily will still result in some damage, stress, and debuffs taken, likely more than if you had enough power to deal out death reasonably quickly. When employed at a decent level, however, you can stop or greatly reduce incoming damage, disease, and so on through properly mitigating enemies that you don't kill.

There are effectively a few kinds of mitigation aside from killing an enemy before it can act. The first is mitigation from using a tank, like the Man at Arms. Characters like him excel at directing damage and stress towards themselves, and then mitigating it through the use of primarily block and stress heals. The MaA’s Bolster+ in particular serves as a very reliable stress heal that even offers him more block, while moves like defender, retribution, and stand fast (with bulwark) direct damage towards him and allow him to reduce that damage. He even has the ability to heal himself off of Death’s door with strategic retreat.

The second is mitigation through inflicting something upon an enemy. These are primarily debuffs, stuns, and movement skills. The Runaway’s Smokescreen+ is currently the strongest debuff in the game, as it not only inflicts two blind (which is on average more valuable than 2 weak, and worth a turn by itself), it also allows a very effective damage transfer by inflicting both a combo token and a vulnerable token. Occultist’s Weakening curse is a reliable way to inflict weak and combo, and Leper can both tank and inflict weak in one move with intimidate. There are also ‘cleave debuffs’, such as the Confessor variant of Hand of Light +, Barbaric Yawp, and Plague Doctor’s blinding gas. These excel in certain fights if you’re utilizing a faster comp that plans to kill the enemies you’re debuffing in one or two turns, as it allows you to quickly realize the full value of the debuff. On the flip side, certain enemy compositions will not get cleaved by these moves, causing them to feel subpar against size two enemies or small enemy comps. Finally, there are stuns, which usually take more effort to activate. Most stuns either require a combo token, or the inflicting of two daze tokens. Generally using combo for this purpose is easier, as Daze is a little less available and also has to go through stun resistance twice. Common combinations for this often involve Jester and Barristan or Highwayman, with Jester setting up combo and those two units delivering on it, or Occultist with these characters for similar reasons. Note that in such cases, speed order becomes very important, as Jester has to go first to apply combo.

The third kind of mitigation is more generalized but still proactive team-side mitigation. This is stuff like the dodge that characters like HwM and Jester can gain, Consecration of Fortitude from Vestal (especially with some sort of dance team), Absinthe, and divine comfort because it’s a regeneration skill. These are moves that don’t really direct damage to any one character, which a tanking character would do, but they allow that character to mitigate damage if they do get attacked. With moves like Consecration of Fortitude, this can sometimes be powerful enough on its own, but in a lot of cases these are more bonuses or extra options than something to rely on, because it’s typically easier to protect one character you primarily direct damage towards than multiple characters who might all be attacked.

The fourth kind, and the only purely reactive sort, is direct healing and stress healing. This is any move or combat item that heals someone, aside from regeneration which sort of functions as both proactive and reactive. Healing is naturally very useful in all sorts of fights and situations. However, you can usually only heal when characters are below certain HP thresholds (as low as 25% of their max depending on the move!), or after jumping through some other hoops, introducing a required risk factor into the equation. All healing in this game aside from regen is percentage based, meaning that higher HP targets get more raw HP even though they’re getting the same percentage as anyone else. Having some amount of healing is generally useful for obvious reasons, and characters with self sustain healing like MaAs, Gravrobber, Leper, Hellion, and so on can introduce a fair amount of extra survivability into a comp. You can certainly win the game with no reliable healer, but having someone who can heal is very useful, especially if you’re running a slower comp. Stress healing also falls into this same category, interacting with the stress mechanic instead of HP healing.

What, then, is the proper amount of mitigation? It varies depending on the speed of your comp, but you’re usually safe with a character that has the ability to tank, maybe a decently strong debuff or two (not counting debuffs that apply vuln), a character with a dedicated healing ability (such as battlefield medicine, indiscriminate science, Divine grace, mantra, etc), and some generalized mitigation or self heals if you happen to be running characters with them. Some teams will run more or less of these depending on lineup and what exactly you want the comp to do, but this is a decent rule of thumb that can be covered fairly reliably.

Less a rule than a guideline, it’s important to consider the relationship building potential of the team. DD2 heroes do not suffer from afflictions in the DD1 sense: they usually have meltdowns when they max out on stress, and this forcibly lowers relationships by several points with everyone.

Relationships work through a roll after each inn, determining whether each hero pair gets a good relationship or a bad one (or none). Heroes that develop higher relationship points can’t become unfriendly and have a high chance to be friendly, and vice versa for low relationship scores. Positive relationships empower a skill, causing it to buff or heal their friend each time they use it. These are randomly applied but are weighted towards your more used skills. They can also have positive act outs and DBR will be higher on the heroes in question.

Negative relationships effectively work the same way but in the inverse, but with one crippling twist. The skill that the roulette selects, along with causing a negative effect to the rival in question, is forcibly equipped. This means that negative relationships can capsize a strategy by themselves, because they force you to unequip a skill you might need for one that may be useless, or they infect skills you want to use with potentially dangerous debuffs.

So, the important takeaway is that you should keep your relationships at least neutral, and ideally higher. This means that teams that do things that naturally build relationships between members have a distinct advantage over others. Here are some example actions that tend to raise or lower relationships. Note that all of the attack based stuff has to happen in sequence: a follow-up hit is a follow-up hit in the truest sense, and a revenge hit similarly happens right after the enemy attacks.

Follow-Up Hitting: The hero hits at least one of the same enemies the other hero just did. Low chance, but it’s universally available.
Revenge-Hitting: The character hits the enemy that just smacked his friend. Low chance (maybe higher if they just crit?), similar to the above.
Combo-Hitting: The character uses a combo token their friend just applied. Relatively high chance, teams with consistent combo setups end up with combo pairs becoming best friends very quickly.
Shifting Locations: The character changes locations with another character, either manually or through using a move. Reasonably consistent, but only if characters are at low stress (less than 4). At high stress, this can instead create a malus.
Healing/Buffing/Guarding/Stress Reduction: Not that common, however healing (maybe also guarding) is fairly common with heroes on Death’s door specifically, and stress healing naturally seems more common for high stress heroes. It also may just be more likely as they get lower and higher stress. These are assumptions, as I do not know the actual numbers behind it. This includes the use of most combat items, so if you don't need 'em, throw em on a friend.

Many of these have negative possibilities, such as healing a hero when another hero is low or on death’s door. The game will always warn you if an action you’re about to take will lower a relationship, but it will not tell you if an action will increase it. It used to, but the result was that playing optimally meant checking if several moves or actions would raise relationships every turn, which was not exactly riveting gameplay. It also meant that every buff combat item was suddenly OP, as even the cheapest friendly buff combat item meant easy relationship building if you had the patience. So now, we only see the negatives.

A lot of comps naturally do these things. I generally find that comps with high levels of combo usage and some simple dance setups tend to build relationships the most effectively, however if you keep all of these in mind, you can usually get a few pips over the course of a run even when running comps that don't naturally do these things.

Let’s talk about the heroes. We’ll look at their movesets and statistics, and talk about where they may be useful. The statistics we use will assume the character has all of their altar upgrades, and note that every hero has a base Death-blow resist of 75 once all upgrades are unlocked unless I state otherwise, so we won’t be mentioning that. Most heroes are useful in a large variety of situations, owing to the much larger movesets in this game. Movesets have to be unlocked through visiting special nodes called shrines of reflection during a run, and sometimes also playing and winning a minigame at said shrine. These shrines also provide a mastery point (even if you have everything unlocked), so they’re typically great destinations. The minigames are mostly simple to figure out, with the exception of Jester's second minigame, which is obtuse. You can and should look them up to see how they’re played if you’re stuck: There's no reason to waste Shrines several times if you can't figure out the minigame.

I refer to heroes by their ‘canon’ names instead of their class fairly often, so each hero will have their canon name as part of their title as well. Hero Paths are described with their intention, because how they actually work may change drastically on launch and I’d rather not rewrite entire sections based on that.

Mastered versions of the move have their effects listed second. So if a move does 2-4 damage, and the mastered version does 3-5, I’ll say it does 2-4/3-5 damage. Targeting and usage will be as follows: Used in (where it can be used) X-X, Targets (what it targets) Y-Y. This is how all the effects and rank stuff will be formatted. 4 is the back rank for both you and the enemy, 1 is the front rank (closest to the middle of the screen). All numbers are for wanderer, important differences with paths for certain moves will be mentioned. I’ve also tried to keep the character sections spoiler free, so I don’t use the names of bosses for example, just where they appear or which act they are. Minibosses and enemies are named or nicknamed, just like before.

Each character will then have a (relatively) short analysis section summing up what we talked about when discussing the moves, and an example comp. The example comp will list recommended paths, though if you do not have those, you can just run them as wanderers instead in most cases. Any buffs and debuffs that aren’t specially stated to last a certain length last 3 turns, at least as far as I know. Your characters will also drop unused positive and negative tokens after that long. Personal tokens (Winded, Unchecked Power, and Conviction) will last forever, and these tokens will be defined with their character.

We’ll go from Left to Right based on the character select screen, meaning we start with…

Interested in some Medical malpractice?

Statistics:
28 HP
4 Speed
30 bleed resist, 50 Blight resist, 40 burn resist
50 Disease resist, 20 debuff resist, 20 move resist, 10 stun resist
Movement (this is how you can move with the move command): 1 Back, 1 Up

Paths: You are always able to see what exactly paths do at The Altar of Hope's hero unlocks screen, and on your character select.

Surgeon: An incision and healing focused path, that also grants PD more HP. Useful for rank 3 or 2 PDs that want to heal and press incision.

Alchemist: More reliable blight DoTs and higher DoT resists. The various resists are also quite notable. This all comes at the cost of Max HP: She’ll have 22 at base with this path. Which you really feel if she does end up getting targeted. Definitely a backline PD path.

Physician: A path that favors PD’s support and mitigation skills primarily, at the cost of 2 DoT output for any blight or bleed move. Probably her weakest path, but one can do some fun things with it, and the DoT output still existing allows her to still use that side of her kit for DD checking and some output when needed.

Moveset

Noxious Blast: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 1-2. Deals 2-3/3-4 direct damage, and 4/6 blight DoT at 5 crit. Ignore 33 percentage points of blight resist with combo.

The combo effect serves as a pseudo-accuracy buff and can represent a lot of damage in areas with blight resistant enemies. Most of the time though, the combo effect will feel like it’s a hindrance, since you’ll want someone else to use the combo. Otherwise, it’s the highest no strings attached single target DoT in the game. This makes it great for enemies that take multiple turns or for hitting moderate thresholds in particular, and it will be a mainstay on any PD that wants to deal damage, unless you’re taking a path that weakens it in particular.

Blinding Gas: Used in 4-3, targets 3+4. Inflicts 1 blind/1 blind and 1 daze to rank 3 and 4, with a 25/33% chance to inflict combo on each (rolled individually for every enemy). Cooldown of 1

Biggest glow down in history? Well, it’s not a double stun anymore, but it isn’t bad either. Blinding gas is a high alpha cleave type debuff that tries to inflict blind to the enemy backline. This means that high alpha teams that focus on blowing up the frontline can front load this debuff when PD’s damage isn’t needed, with the intention that you’ll bring their backline up front very quickly. Unfortunately, the nature of the move means that it’s bad against comps with a size 2 in the back, small parties, or comps where you’d rather just debuff one strong enemy for more (meaning most bosses). It’s a bit niche, but it can serve well in certain circumstances. The daze and combo portion of the move are fairly secondary, as if you were going to kill the backline quickly enough for daze by itself to be relevant you wouldn't need the blind, and the combo, while powerful when it goes off, is random. The daze will sometimes give you extra time to corpse clear and bring the back up to the front, though. The 1 cooldown prevents you from using this as a double stun + quad blind with Encore or bonus turn trinkets, sadly. I probably wouldn't usually run this and plague grenade together, as they benefit separate strategies.

Incision: Used in 3-2-1, targets 1-2. Deals 3-6/4-7 direct damage at 10/15 crit, and inflicts 3/4 bleed. Ignores 33 percentage points of bleed resist with combo.

This move is normally used as her damage move with Surgeon, which greatly buffs it and nerfs her blight kit. Otherwise its niche is a little different than Noxious. Noxious generally deals more damage outside of the Foetor and allows her to sit in 4, incision deals more direct damage and applies a lower DoT, meaning it’s better for setting enemies to death’s door that you then immediately check using the bleed DoT, as incision can do it when they have somewhat higher HP. Outside of this niche and surgeon, the move isn’t bad, but you’ll normally just run Noxious blast instead, since it tends to do more damage and since you can use noxious in rank 4.

Battlefield Medicine: Used in 4-3, targets any valid friendly. Heals 20/25% of a Target’s HP if they’re below half health, clears all DoTs from the target/the target and PD herself. The move can be used to do the latter whenever a character has a DoT, but it won’t heal if they're above 50%. The move has a use limit of 3.

It’s a no nonsense heal with a very forgiving HP threshold. That makes it quite valuable, even when it’s not clearing DoTs. When it is clearing DoTs and healing, its effective heal can be very powerful. Its biggest weakness is the use limit, though in most cases if you’d use it more than 3 times in a fight you’re playing at a very low tempo, something went wrong, you’re healing from earlier fights, or the fight is very very long.

Ounce of Prevention: Used in 4-3, Targets all friendlies. Buffs everyone’s DoT resists by 15/25 percentage points, Buffs everyone’s disease resist by 15/30 percentage points. Cooldown 3/2 turns.

This actually does amount to a very noticeable party wide damage reduction against specifically DoT damage. The problem is that it’s slow and there are tons of fights where you don’t need to mitigate that, especially if you’re going reasonably fast. The disease resistance can be especially nice in the Foetor, because the Foetor is Hemic Rot city. It’s also nice in the sluice against the little pigs and other disease giving enemies for the same reason. It’s not a bad move, it’s just a rare pick due to how long it takes to pay off and how few fights are going to allow it to pay off with that much value. It’s also a high variance damage reduction, which is usually worse for slower strategies, though the fact that it’s supposed to be used when multiple DoTs are coming in over a few turns means that the variance tends to smooth out. Physician also gives this stress resist which makes it more usable but still fairly niche.

Plague Grenade: Used in 4-3, targets 3+4. Deals 1-2/2-3 damage and 3/4 blight DoT to both targets at 5 crit.

It’s a good high damage backline cleave. There are actually quite a few fights where having some moves that focus on the backline is quite valuable, such as cultist fights in particular. This one does a lot of damage and is quite reliable at its job, especially with an alchemist PD. It’s pretty common for a normal PD to run this, unless the comp is completely hyper focused on killing the front line, or you’re running her other two paths. You will be happy you have this move when killing enemies like Heralds. It's not that complex: just chuck it and watch things melt. Often the choice will be between this and blinding gas, as blinding gas tends to support a front heavy and alpha heavy playstyle, whereas this move supports more flexible or backline focused comps.

Emboldening Vapors: Use anywhere, target any friendly. Give one strength token/1 strength and one speed token. It’s worth noting that the physician path makes this give 2 strength instead of 1. Cooldown 1/0

Emboldening Vapors is a damage transfer, and not a particularly good one. There are two reasons for this. The first is that PD’s damage is actually pretty good by itself: A Noxious blast+, for example, will do 9 or 10 damage turn 1 if the blight sticks, and more as time goes on. Blight resist lowers that a little mathematically, but unless you’re in the foetor you’re probably looking at a good 6-8 damage on average, and that’s just accounting for the initial turn. The second reason is that emboldening gives strength, which means that unlike moves like vuln hex which do care about the other boosts your heroes have, outside of crit tokens strength won’t care. Physician’s lowered DoT damage and extra strength make this move pretty good on that path, but otherwise it’s very difficult to find a good place for emboldening in any comp, even when considering the extra reliability of extra direct damage over DoT damage.

Disorienting Blast: Use in 4-3-2, Target 2-3-4. Shuffle and inflict daze to enemy, as well as a 25% chance at inflicting weak. Upgraded version applies stun on combo.

Movement skills can be quite effective, but shuffles are worse than many pulls and pushes because they’re unreliable; you don’t know if the enemy is going to be shuffled somewhere where they’re crippled or one slot over where they don't care. The chance at weak is really… weird. The weak still has to go through debuff resist, so you’re probably looking at a real 20% chance, give or take a few points. It’s a little added value, but if you were after a debuff, why not just use blinding gas or some other character’s debuff? Finally, the stun on combo use is useful if you have a lot of combo and no one to use it or no stuns, however the other combo stuns (pistol shot and rampart for example), are typically just better, and you’ll usually have a use for combo in mind other than this if you’re carrying it. Physician adds Vuln to this move which does make it noticeably better, but outside of that path I would only use this if haven’t built for another flexible stun option and want a combo stun option, or you really feel like you need a movement skill.

Indiscriminate Science: Use 4-3-2, Target any friendly below 50% HP. Remove all positive tokens/positive and negative tokens, heal target 10% + 10% for each positive token/+ 10% for each positive and + 5% for each negative. Cooldown 1

This is PD’s other heal, and boy is it something. This move can either be used to heal a boatload, especially on characters like Dismas and Barristan who can generate a lot of tokens, or can be used as a debuff cleanse, as the upgraded version just removes all negative tokens. Sounds great, and it is. It’s mainly held back by two things: The fact that it requires the target has tokens to be worth it, which usually means that two turns go in to making it a heal, and the fact that the target has to be under 50% HP to be a target at all, meaning you can’t just cleanse debuffs with this unless they’re already hurt. Despite these caveats this move is frequently very useful and makes its way onto almost any PD kit. It’s even usable from 2, which means the frontline PD madmen among you get to run this.

Cause of Death: Used in 3-2-1, Targets 1-2-3. Its damage is 75%/100% of the remaining DoT on the enemy, accounting for every turn that the DoTs would tick. It ignores ALL damage modifiers and it can not crit. It removes the DoT from the enemy, and the upgraded version applies combo as a consolation prize.

What this move does is accelerate damage. Take all the DoT that will happen in future turns, and apply it all now. That means that this move turns slow damage into alpha damage. Which is great, except that this move only does that. Despite that fact, this move can serve very well in all sorts of fights with big enemies. Particularly useful for bypassing certain HP thresholds in the act 2 boss, or for speeding up the act 3 and act 1 final bosses, as well as certain slower lair bosses. Synergizes well with other DoT characters (duh), and DoT heavy strategies that need a burst of alpha in some fights. Generally if you equip this you have a specific use in mind for it, rather than it being something you use just generally. Remember that she can’t use it in 4; you don’t want to make a strategy with it and realize you have to move her mid-combat.

Magnesium Rain: Used in 4-3, targets all enemies. Applies 3 burn DoT, clears all corpses. 1 turn cooldown.

Magnesium rain is great. It deals a decent amount of damage, gets rid of stinky corpses, and pings off dodge tokens from the entire enemy team since it’s an omni cleave. Not that useful in boss fights generally, so you should switch it off for those. Corpse clear is highly valuable in all sorts of comps in this game, and magnesium rain is perhaps the best omni corpse clear. The high spread also means you can use this to try to apply DoT to low or Death’s doored enemies while still putting some damage elsewhere too. It’s hard to beat the sheer utility that this move has, though it’s notably less useful if your comp wants to kill enemies back to front in most fights (though even then it still checks dodge on everyone). Its lack of direct damage component means it also doesn’t affect block tokens. Just make sure to time it right; you don’t want it to be on cooldown when you need to clear corpses.

The Plague doctor serves well in almost any comp, offering great DoT and very consistent healing options. She fits into rank 4 quite nicely, and just using a kit comprised of her blight moves, mag rain, and her heals will perform quite admirably with a wanderer or Alchemist PD.

This kind of PD will tend to focus on three things damage-wise. The first is backline destruction, something that PD excels at, especially when paired up with heroes like Bonnie, Occultist, and Hellion. Plague grenade just does a crap ton of damage, and when combined with even one other move, such as abyssal artillery, iron swan, firefly, or pistol shot, it’s fairly common to see a one or two turn kill on one or both of the backliners. The second thing it does is damage smoothing and threshold hitting. Given Noxious Blast and grenade’s very consistent damage output and profile, it’s common to use one of these moves to finish off units that have less than ten health, or even more if that unit has been mitigated by a move like weakening curse or smokescreen. Because we know that if the blight sticks, Noxious+ will do at least 9 damage, we can rely on it to finish off those weakened enemies on the first tick, especially with Alchemist PD. The third thing that she, and every DoT character, does well is Deaths’ door checking. Moves like noxious blast do very well against targets with very low HP and a DBR, because the initial hit will put them on Death’s Door and the blight will then check them when their turn rolls around, allowing for high action efficiency compared to direct damage. Incision builds do this well in particular, and Surgeon PD will perform well in frontline focused comps that can appreciate the move and the extra healing as well as the corpse clear from mag rain.

Speaking of healing, let’s look at that side of her kit. Battlefield Medicine absolutely screams reliability, and unless you’re trying to run a surgeon PD in rank 2, there is pretty much no situation where you won’t be equipping the move. Indiscriminate science is less consistent, but it has higher value upswings, delivering very powerful healing and cleansing debuffs with the right setup. Just due to her consistency alone, PD is arguably the best healer, and definitely the most reliable. Even though characters like Vestal have more heals and more powerful heals some of the time, no character’s targeted heals are as reliable and easily accessible as PD’s are. The only thing that holds this side of her kit back is Battlefield medicine’s use limit, and even then only slightly.

Finally, let’s talk about PD’s utility kit. Magnesium rain is fantastic, clearing corpses and being an omnicleave that pings off dodge and delivers some DoTs. There are countless situations where you can find incredibly high value from Magnesium rain, and certain trinkets can also make it obscene as a damage option too. The rest of her utility kit is more niche and mainly seen with the physician path. Blinding gas does okay against certain enemy comps and if your team doesn’t favor running plague grenade, but moves like ounce, disorienting blast, and vapors really struggle against the rest of her kit. The worst of these is probably vapors, as outside of the double strength version within physician its value is too low and PD doesn’t really appreciate a damage transfer like Vapours. Moves like Disorienting and Ounce aren’t bad per se, and in fact Ounce in particular can produce a lot of value in the right case, but they struggle against the universal use that many of her other skills bring to the table.

Overall, Plague Doctor is a character that is reliable on most teams. She’s often seen as the most or one of the most powerful characters in DD2 by new players, but as you get better at the game and things like healing become less necessary, PD doesn’t quite break into that ranking. She is almost never a bad pick, and performs quite well in all sorts of situations.

Sample Comp

PD (alchemist) - Runaway (Arsonist) - Man-At-Arms (Vanguard) - Hellion (Ravager)

This is one of my favorite comps to bring to (the old version of) act 3 in particular. It offers a ton of Mitigation in the form of Man at Arms in general and Runaway’s Smokescreen. It also immediately gives you the ability to smash backlines with Plague grenade, Iron Swan, Crush, and Firefly, something very potent against cultist fights and the tangle in particular. Hellion is very useful here for that iron swan and for her huge alpha dump move in howling end, allowing a team that is otherwise specialized in dismantling backlines and putting out DoT damage to access incredibly high Alpha whenever it needs it. She also synergizes very well with the Runaway’s smokescreen, using the vuln token and the combo token very well with her wicked hack. Barristan is just generally good here, and is probably best in his vanguard path, but any will work well enough. Crush reaches into rank 3 giving the comp even more reach, and moves like retribution, defender, and stand fast offer consistent and reliable mitigation to a comp that really appreciates it. Bolster works as the team’s reliable stress heal to ensure that this comp won't end up over-stressed from slower fights. The team also has plenty of healing: PD’s heal options, Cauterize from Runaway, Adrenaline rush and Raucous’s self heal, and even strategic retreat in a pinch if you choose to run it, meaning that if you ever get into a bind, you’ll have a way out. Finally, the omni cleaves from both Runaway and PD mean that enemy dodge will peel off as soon as it goes up.

This team will shred the act 3 boss in particular, provided you don’t massively screw up in phase 1, though it will perform well against all of them. Hellion will typically be better with ravager (especially for act 2), however running her as a wanderer for the ability to swap Howling end to bleed out for specifically the act 3 boss isn’t a bad move. This team is very easy to run and to understand, and tends to perform well in nearly any scenario.

The most Lucrative graves are the ones with the freshest corpses.

Statistics:
29 HP
7 Speed
30 bleed resist, 40 Blight resist, 30 burn resist
30 Disease resist, 30 debuff resist, 20 move resist, 20 stun resist
Movement: 2 Back, 2 Up

Paths

Deadeye: More powerful ranged skills, at the cost of weaker melee skills and some move resist. This is usually what you go for if you want to put out consistent, flexibly targeted crit damage with thrown dagger.
Nightsworn: A more powerful Lunge and Pirouette, and more damage when attacking from stealth, but lowered max HP. A very swingy Audrey that has access to damage ranges on lunge and pirouette that give Leper a run for his money. Given the need for this path to move and be in the front sometimes, the HP cost is usually more dangerous than on someone like PD.
Venomdrop: Turns Audrey into a sort of budget plague doctor. Flashing daggers gains blight on hit, and everything deals an additional 2 blight (even if it had none) when attacking from stealth. Skills that move her ignore some blight resist when doing this. All of this comes at the cost of lowered damage on her ranged attacks and 3 less speed (which, ironically, puts her equal to the PD). This path can be effective, but it makes for a very different Audrey.

Moveset

Pick To The Face: Used from 3-2-1, Targets 1-2. Hits for 4-7/4-10, at 10/15 crit. Crit chance increases by 50 percentage points with combo. Ignores block tokens and removes one on hit (Note: All moves that ignore block or dodge will remove one on hit, except cause of death and backdraft I think).

Pick to the face is a good but not great melee option that demonstrates the weird balancing behind Graverobber. As you can probably tell, and will be able to see when we look at other heroes, the damage range on this thing is very wide. That’s because it’s designed to crit reasonably often: Since crits are 1.5* the top of your range, a wider range with a higher top means that crits are worth effectively more than double damage. Indeed, a crit on Pick+ will deal 15 damage, instead of… well, double the average would be 14. So it is a bit higher. The main thing that holds Pick back is that even with combo, you’re only looking at a 65% crit chance, and the combo is spent whether you crit or not. This makes this move a little awkward when it comes to reliability, a problem that we’ll soon see thrown Dagger doesn’t have. Still, this move gets to hit for 15 reasonably often off combo, which means that it hits some nice thresholds, especially if it’s being used after the combo setter did a little damage, or with smokescreen+ in particular, which will cause it to deal 22 or 23 damage off of the vuln. Stacking some extra crit onto the character can make this move a lot more reliable. The ability to ping off block without using it is reasonably nice on occasion, especially if the result is setting the enemy to Death’s door or killing it, and it is a good melee staple damage move even without combo, though not quite a great one.

Thrown Dagger: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 2-3-4, Deals 3-5/4-7 damage with 15/30 crit. Ignores guard, and ignores dodge if Audrey is stealthed when using it. It’s worth noting that Deadeye’s Thrown Dagger deals 4-6/5-8 damage, at 20/35 crit. Crit is increased by 50 percentage points with combo.

So let’s just get this out of the way. Unupgraded Thrown dagger is too weak to do its job. It has the same inconsistent crit rate of Pick+ in the best of circumstances, and a crit is just going to do 8 damage. Not critting is like tickling the enemy, and you’ll be not critting a good half of the time. If you do crit, well, the result isn’t impressive. Sure, you’ll be throwing it into the backline most of the time, as that’s where the squishy targets you want to hit the thresholds of hang out, but the resultant tickle only does half a damage point more than an upgraded noxious blast’s damage range when Dagger isn’t critting. That’s sad.

What, then, is Thrown Dagger+’s job? It’s to reliably hit damage thresholds on low or moderate health enemies with the help of combo. Thrown dagger+ with deadeye (which is likely the only time you’ll be using it consistently), hits for 12 damage on a crit, and it hits that 85% of the time. You’re more likely to hit that crit than you are to land a lot of the DoTs in the game, and the result on top of a combo setting move like fade to black, razor’s wit, or iron swan + tends to be enough to hit the thresholds of back rank enemies, especially earlier in a run. The problem is that enemies can have too much health for this combination to work well, especially later in a run, so it usually pays to find some ways to boost her damage further or to back this move up with other decent damage moves. The key to Thrown Dagger’s power is that reliability: rolling on an 85 crit to kill the enemy is often far superior to rolling on a damage range to do it. Meaning that while a thrown dagger focused Graverobber will rarely hit the sheer numbers that a character like Leper or hellion might, she’ll hit the same decently high number quite consistently. This can make her the bane of squishy targets in particular, and her output is competitive enough with combo to be usable in other scenarios. This move very strongly exists within this niche though, and doesn’t do a whole lot else other than decent consistent overall output with combo. Its low damage range outside of deadeye can make it hard to scale too, but if you can scale enough damage on it with trinkets or the rare quirk (bloodthirsty especially) in particular and take advantage of combo, it can be very powerful. This is really a strategy that gets more and more attractive the higher you can increase her raw damage, since it already comes with built in reliability.

Note that due to her high speed, this move and Pick to the face are best paired with Virtuoso Jester when using combo, as she’ll almost always go first with other combo setters, which makes combo setups very awkward.

Flashing Daggers: Used from Rank 4-3-2, Targets 2+3. Deals 2-3/3-5 damage to both targets, with a 5/10% crit rate. No special effects, however when using venomdrop Graverobber, it also deals 2/4 blight on hit, meaning it effectively works like a midrank plague grenade.

Outside of venomdrop, this move is at best a token pinger with a weak damage cleave attached. The fact that it does damage means that it does ping both block and dodge, but it only hits two targets, and it doesn’t hit them very hard. Like seriously, this is a cleave and the total damage average (not counting the low-ish crit), is 8 on flashing daggers+, or 10 with deadeye. Why? Sharpshot Dismas gets to hit a better damage range and gain strength with grapeshot.

Venomdrop makes this move quite good, acting as a midrank plague grenade. The biggest weakness of the approach is that Graverobber won’t access the blight chance increase that an alchemist PD inherently does, and that she loses 3 speed on that path, when speed is very useful for DoT users. It is a reasonable way to play a graverobber, and if you gain stealth you can use it with lunge to use the ‘hit them hard to put them onto death’s door while DoTing them’ strategy. It also means that she can more consistently go after combo setters if you intend on playing Venomdrop in 3 with Pick, something that is attractive since Pick is not adversely affected.

Outside of venomdrop, this is perhaps one of the weakest moves in her kit, though it does possess some niche applicability with the token pinging possibilities.

Poison Darts: Used from 4-3-2, target anywhere. Hits for 2-4/2-5 damage and 2/4 blight at 5/10 crit. Also possess the same crit boost combo effect that Thrown Dagger and pick have.

Honestly, the best use of Poison darts is twofold. One, to hit rank 1 on a graverobber that otherwise can’t, in which case you’re either using this or glint for the privilege. Between the two, glint probably just deals more direct damage in most cases, and Darts interacts better with enemies at low HP who have Death’s Door and certain boss-fights. Two, you run this specifically because you think the blight output will be good, or for that aforementioned Incision-Niche. This move’s actual damage output with blight is a little too weak for it to be her primary damage option outside of fights where enemies take multiple actions per round, though it’s more just ‘fair’ than ‘horrifically weak’. This move is, oddly, probably best taken advantage of by a deadeye graverobber, who boosts its direct damage a bit, allowing it to do its job decently, as base darts + will do 3-6 and 9 on crit, which are notably high ranges for this kind of approach. Venomdrop actually just nerfs this move, but you might run it there anyway if you have to put her in 4 for some reason or just have the extra space. If it’s a choice, I’d rather use pick outside of boss fights. On Deadeye, it's a boss killer.

Absinthe: Used anywhere, targets self. Audrey gains 3 dodge/dodge+ tokens, and a speed token. If she’s below 33% HP, she recovers 33% HP. Use limit 3

Absinthe is a great self sustain move. It provides a reasonably large heal and an absolute butt-ton of mitigation with the dodge. Dodge+ in particular is the best form of personal mitigation in the game, though it being a high variance form means that you can sometimes get unlucky. This move provides great value to any Audrey that expects to sometimes be in the line of fire, which is fairly common for many Graverobber builds given her movement skills. Outside of bosses it’s often somewhat wasted if you have her standing in the back all the time, but you’ll still probably use it anyway on those builds. The use limit exists because back in the day when it didn't have it it was nearly impossible for her to get killed by spamming this. That fact probably communicates how powerful the self sustain on this move is.

Dead of Night: Used anywhere, target any enemy corpse. Deletes the corpse (even on miss), Audrey gains 33%/50% HP, gains 2 stealth tokens, and loses 0/1 stress (these other effects do not happen on miss). Use limit of 3, but outside of the dinner cart enemy and beast dens, there’s no fight where you could ever use it more than 3 times.

Possibly the best self recovery move in the game… outside of bosses. It doesn’t care about her current HP, meaning you can use it whenever. It is, naturally, functionally useless in any fights with no corpses. Removing the corpse can be quite nice, though if you want it strictly for its corpse clear, something like magnesium rain will often be better. It’s very powerful everywhere that isn't a boss fight on any Audrey build, so you should generally run it whether you need the CC or not, unless you basically don't expect her to ever get hit. The setup portion of this move with stealth is a bit niche, since typically, if she has some corpses to eat she doesn’t need to set-up for much anymore, but it does allow her to snipe remaining enemies with moves like lunge with the stealth. Just like Absinthe, this is also very useful on most graverobber builds.

Glint In the Dark: Used in 3-2-1, targets 1-2-3. Deals 4-6/6-8 damage with 5/10 crit. Ignores and removes enemy stealth, and ignores 20% of DBR. Completely ignores DBR if GR uses it when stealthed, and removes her from stealth. This skips the hit they’d survive that would put them on 0 HP, meaning that the stealth version of this is the most efficient way to kill enemies with DBR.

Glint had a hell of a glow-up for the 1.0 patch, dealing more direct damage than Thrown Dagger and Thrown Dagger+ while retaining its utility. Stealth removal is very good in Act 1 and against the little swines in the Sluice in general (which now get 2 stealth tokens), and the ability to reduce DBR on a strong damage move is a good bit of further utility. The glow up also makes the stealth version of this a lot more consistent against all sorts of enemies. Glint is suddenly a very strong contender and an great pick for deadeye Graverobbers (where it’s upgraded version does 7-10 damage!), unless you plan to run them in 4.

Lunge: Used in 4-3, Targets 1-2-3. Deals 4-8/6-11 damage, at 20/30 crit. Moves Audrey forward 2 ranks, ignores block and dodge when she’s in stealth. Notably, the nightsworn version of this does 6-11/7-13

So let’s get this out of the way first. Lunge as a move is statistically phenomenal. The damage range is fairly large, but the high crit in particular pushes the average damage of lunge+ past even the leper’s Chop+, and Chop+ is a very powerful move. It also doesn’t debuff the Graverobber at all and theoretically doesn’t have any downside. It reaches all the way to rank 3, and it even ignores annoying defensive tokens if you happen to use it when she’s in stealth. If you happen to be in stealth it will pick up another 50% damage if used there while using the Nightsworn path (which you should generally select if you intend to use this move heavily).

This move is theoretically balanced by the fact that it can only be used in the back of the party, and because it moves her forward 2 ranks when used. This means that if you want to use it consistently, you have to build for it, or you have to get the trophy from the tangle boss that locks everyone in place (needless to say, getting that trophy results in some hilarious output from Audrey). The former isn’t that hard to do using a type of comp known as a double lunge comp. The sample comp that we will cover is an example of this kind of comp. This move is the primary tool for the other kind of graverobber: If deadeye graverobber is all about consistent and flexible output with combo and thrown dagger, nightsworn Audrey is all about huge average damage with lunge and the next move.

Pirouette: Used in 2-1, targets 1+2. Deals 4-7/6-8 damage at 10/15 crit. Moves her all the way to the back, gives her 1 dodge/dodge+ token, and dazes her. Cooldown of 2 turns.

Pirouette is obviously another high value move, and one that you often see in two scenarios. One is with a double lunge comp: Nightsworn powers up both pirouette and lunge, and a comp can be set up using only one other dance character to allow a lunge - lunge - pirouette combo. This gets around pirouette’s two turn cooldown and typically works well in flexible comps that often target rank 3 or the back in general at the start of a fight. The other is within deadeye teams. Pirouette also gains a damage boost from deadeye, and the use of pirouette turn one allows her to function a lot better with slower combo setters; when you want to pair her with characters like Bonnie or Alhazred who will be able to reliably apply combo but who have trouble going ahead of her, opening with pirouette ensures she can do something powerful turn 1 while giving her combo setters ample time to set combo for her (especially given the daze). The daze token here really does hold this move back as an opener, as it means her turn 2 comes out after every other enemy has moved, so I find that it performs better in the double lunge comp, but its use in deadeye is not to be understated. You can also try opening with it in a nightsworn comp, though I find that this strategy is a little slower and can fall flat against certain enemy comps. Overall, this is a high value move that fits well into both mainstay playstyles of Audrey while not stealing the show mainly due to its long cooldown and daze backlash.

Repartee: Use anywhere, target self. Remove all stealth, gain 2 taunt tokens and 3 dodge/dodge +tokens

Graverobber has one other frankly underdeveloped side of her set, and that’s tankrobber. Tankrobber tanks enemy hits using primarily dodge, and shrugs off the hits that do get through with her incredible self sustain. The main reason you don’t see much intentional tankrobber is, frankly, this move. The activation requirement here is the killer, requiring a setup stealth application to access repartee. Stealth isn’t that easily accessible with trinkets and items in this game, and having to use a button in advance just to activate this is a little iffy. You could, theoretically, use shadow fade, into a lunge, and then into this, allowing her tanking to come online turn 3 when you might want your prime tank to do something else. The problem is that this is naturally slow, and when used with Nightsworn to take full advantage of the lunge and stealth bonus damage, you have less HP to work with. You could also elect to skip the lunge and have the graverobber do no damage for the whole fight, which sounds about as appealing as it is useful. All the effective mainstay tanks in this game are able to access taunt and defensive options without setup so that they can consistently start tanking the very moment it’s needed. Audrey can’t, and for that reason even though she has the superior dodge tokens, she really doesn’t work as a main tank. At best, this move serves as some slow utility, but it mostly just isn’t used in favor of a damage focused GR with self sustain. This move does become a lot more palatable if you have some sort of access to free stealth.

Shadow Fade: Used in 2-1, Targets self. Back 2, gain 2 stealth tokens/2 stealth tokens and 1 speed token. Cooldown of 2 turns

Shadow fade doesn’t do very much, and that is its big problem. It provides a damage bonus with the stealth for nightsworn, though this really just pays off evenly by the end of the stealth while ensuring she isn’t targeted (and only in the absence of other personal modifiers). The speed token on the upgraded version helps cover for the tempo loss this move incurs. So the game basically wants you to do something like Shadow fade -> lunge -> lunge starting from rank 2, or it wants you to lunge repartee or lunge pirouette. The big problem with this is that lunge -> lunge -> Pirouette is a lot more comfortable (in fights that last that long), because not only is it a higher tempo option, but pirouette pushes you back 3 ranks, and this makes a huge difference because of how double lunge comps are set up. Shadow fade probably wouldn’t be good even if it did back you all the way up, but it would be more viable as a somewhat safer option. It's other big niche is specifically allowing lunge to bypass defensive tokens like Dodge, which can allow for some effective snipes against certain irritating enemies, like Cherubs. Outside of that sort of play, It’s rare that you even want to run this on nightsworn, much less on any other path, and most comps already handle dodge with omni-cleaves or other utility moves in particular.

Graverobber immediately contrasts the previous character by very much asking you to build at least some part of your team composition around making her work. She’s served very poorly by being within the starting four, and often comes off as looking like the weakest of the bunch. Thing is, she actually can work well enough in that comp, if she has a few of her skills unlocked. You can format the starting comp into a double lunge comp by using lunge with the highwayman’s duelist advance or Barristan's Rampart and Hold The Line. The problem is that this requires her to visit at least 3 shrines, and all five if you want to add pirouette into the equation. The side of her kit that she starts with very much favors a combo setter that she does not have in the starting 4, outside of tracking shot.

As a result she often comes off as quite weak, but she absolutely isn’t. You really have a couple of major choices with this character: Do you pair her with someone like Jester, Alhazred, or Bonnie and use her combo setup with moves like pick and thrown dagger (this is the Deadeye Graverobber sort of set-up in most cases), using her to kill key targets very reliably, or do you build a comp that allows her to use a double lunge setup, allowing for very high average damage with the caveat that it will be a very swingy average damage (This is the Nightsworn Graverobber sort of set-up), maybe also adding in pick to get some of the utility of the first option as well. If you don’t want to do either of these and just want to slot her into a comp, then one could recommend the venomdrop path with flashing daggers in rank 3, allowing her to hit pick to the face and maybe even the odd lunge to do raw damage, while using flashing as a midrank plague grenade. Regardless of the setup, she typically has room to make use of what are phenomenal self-sufficiency skills, in Absinthe and dead of night. It’s very hard to kill Audrey if she has access to just those two skills unless she’s being focused on or takes a very unlucky crit and follow up. Glint in the dark provides a high dose of consistent damage (which is less common on her kit) alongside its utility, and darts, while not ever a mainstay of her strategy, provide just the right dose of offensive utility to be recommendable on some of her compositions, and is amazing in boss fights in particular, especially on Deadeye Audrey and when combined with Combo.

Graverobber really excels in these scenarios, providing meaningful damage very consistently, only occasionally rolling poorly with her crit chance or damage ranges. She’s one of the most rewarding characters to play with as a result, though not the kind of pick you can just slot in to any team like you might a PD.

Sample Comp

GraveRobber (Nightsworn) - PD (Alchemist) OR Vestal (Seraph) - Occultist (Aspirant) - Hellion (Ravager)

I usually like to run this with PD just for consistency’s sake, but the value that Vestal can bring to the team with her consecrations is not to be understated. This is a double lunge comp, with the potential to do more than that depending on what you have Hellion do. The way this works is simple. Graverobber lunges turn 1, and then Alhazred immediately hits binding shadows to shuffle her back into 3. Audrey then lunges again next turn, and follows that up with pirouette on turn 3… if you don’t use toe-to-toe, that is. The Hellion’s Toe to Toe is a move that immobilizes her in place and gives her taunt, allowing her to simultaneously tank for an otherwise fairly vulnerable team, and to keep Audrey from shuffling to rank 1 when she uses lunge in rank 3. When you do this, Alhazred can simply swap her back to 3 with binding shadows again, cycling for as long as you want. Because this team really likes Toe to Toe, Hellion can make excellent use of her Howling end skill early in the fight without feeling like she might miss out on damage, causing this team to have the ability to put out a truly phenomenal alpha strike over the course of the first couple of turns, though after the change using Howling End early can be hard to play around. Depending on speed order, it she can also use Toe to shuffle Audrey back to 3 after Audrey steps in to rank 1, following with Alhazred's Binding Shadows yet again, though typically this requires a fairly high speed Hellion. Of course, you can simply shuffle Audrey right back to her initial position with Pirouette from 1 or 2 the moment you need to. PD provides the ability to smooth out thresholds and check Death’s door with plague grenade and noxious, and to clear corpses and dodge with magnesium rain, meaning that no enemy stays safe for long. She also provides the heals that Hellion, with her lack of defensive tokens, and any emergency situation always appreciates, as well as an option to remove debuffs in some cases. Hellion can also help snipe rank 4 very early if you need to, combining her iron swan with grenade. Or you can just pull the rank 4 up with Alhazred’s pull, disrupting the enemy team and opening up a backline target to very strong abuse. This move also combos them, meaning that you can use Audrey’s pick to follow up with a high crit chance, something that is reasonably common to do since using the pull usually means she hasn’t been shuffled back to 3 that turn. Or just follow up with the always solid wicked hack for the 50% bonus damage. This team handles most bosses very well due to its flexibility and high output, without sacrificing much in the way of sustain to get that output. It does, however, carry somewhat less mitigation than other teams, though Audrey and Hellion have self sustain to help make up for that, and Alhazred can tap into wyrd healing in emergencies. If you choose to use Vestal, the dance nature of this comp allows her consecrations to truly shine, either providing phenomenal extra mitigation or extra damage. I’d often lean towards mitigation here, as the team already often has enough damage, especially given she’ll be dumping fat judgments every turn after setting up. Her heals are also quite helpful, just as PDs are. Her slower approach does clash with this lightning fast team a little bit though.

Overall, if winning most fights in 2 rounds or less sounds appealing to you, and you would really like to do that with Audrey, it’s very hard to go wrong with this damage powerhouse of a composition. You could even replace Occultist with Jester too, though I prefer Alhazred here specifically for his pull and backup healing, and because I like him as a character.

Which do you prefer? The knife, or the gun?

Statistics:
35 HP
5 Speed
40 bleed resist, 30 blight resist, 30 burn resist
40 Disease resist, 20 debuff resist, 30 move resist, 40 stun resist
Movement: 2 Back, 2 Up

Paths

Rogue: More damage in rank 1, less in rank 3 and 4. Point black shot gives 1 riposte token. The main cost is that you’re forced to run him up front, which means he competes with some other heroes for that spot and loses the flexible targeting his ranged options would give him.
Sharpshot: Higher damage on ranged skills and 3 speed. Grapeshot blast grants a strength token on use. Weaker melee skills.
Yellowhand: Slightly more HP, all melee skills attempt to debuff the enemy with a debuff that reduces bleed resist by 10, a more powerful highway robbery and a double cross that removes block tokens (before applying vuln), and all this at the cost of your ranged skills basically doing no damage.

Moveset

Wicked Slice: Used in 3-2-1, targets 1-2. Deals 4-8/6-9 damage, with 15/20 crit. Ignores 20/30% of enemy DBR.

This move has what was once probably the most common damage range in the game, though the moves that it had it in common with were slightly changed since then. The 15/20 crit rate is surprisingly high for a standard attack move, though as we will see later, Dismas’s real crit rate is often a little less important than other characters. This move is solid. The biggest limiting factor to it is probably the targeting range: It can only hit 1 and 2, which means it doesn’t reach squishy targets the way some of his other moves might. You’ll most typically run this with a rank 1 rogue highwayman or a Yellowhand highwayman. The ability to ignore some DBR is nice for very certain enemies, though it’s usually better to deal with DBR in ways other than ‘hit them again’ for most enemies. It does decent damage to rank 1 or 2 whenever you want to, and it can be used all the way back to rank 3, making it flexible in availability.

Pistol Shot: Used in 4-3-2, hits 2-3-4. Deals 3-6/4-8 damage at 10/15 crit, Dazes/Stuns on combo.

Pistol shot has two important things going for it. One, it’s Dismas’s only option for attacking rank 4, which can be a pretty big deal in certain fights, and it deals decent enough damage to be notable in that niche. It allows him to combine well with moves and strategies that target the backline, especially iron swan+ in particular due to the second use of this move, which is the fact that it is, for some reason, a stun. This is probably one of the most flexible combo stuns in the game, as it can target all the way back to rank 4. This allows Dismas to fit in well with comps that have some access to combo, and the fact that Pistol shot is not his main move for dealing ranged damage means that you only have to use the combo token this way if you want to. It’s not like a move like Noxious Blast or Firefly where it sucks to avoid using them to save a combo token; just hit wicked slice or double tap or take aim instead. A fairly common choice outside of Rogue and Yellowhand, and universally used on Sharpshot Dismas. This move also does allow you to build Dismas as a dedicated stunner if you want to build a comp that does that, and he’ll have plenty of other things he can do when you don’t want to use this to stun. The + speed from sharpshot, it’s worth noting, can complicate using the stun a little, as it means he’s more likely to go before a combo setter. But hey, it does more damage with sharpshot.

Duelist’s Advance: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 1-2-3. Deals 3-5/4-6 damage with 5/10 crit. On use, he moves forward 1 rank and gains 2 riposte/3 riposte and 1 dodge. Riposte attacks deal 4-6 damage, have 10 crit, and have a 33% chance to apply combo

Duelist’s Advance is a move that can be used in a few ways. It can be used to cycle Dismas back to rank 1 for another point blank shot while providing riposte and some survivability. It can be used in dance teams where you expect Dismas to be upfront a lot, ensuring he tends to get hit and has some extra survivability. It is, for example, one option for a double lunge comp. It can be used to correct his position. All of that being said, it’s mostly just okay outside of these scenarios. You don’t use Duelist’s Advance just to use it, it’s a move that he has to get hit 2 or 3 times to take full advantage of, and that advantage is spread out among multiple enemies. It fills a niche, but with versions of Dismas that focus on ranged damage or situations outside of its niche, you don’t tend to need to use it that often. Not bad within those scenarios, it’s just not as generalist as a fair amount of the rest of his kit. It is also worth pointing out that you might have other means to cycle him back up for PBS in most cases, which means that this move isn't strictly necessary on Rogue builds. Decent pinger, since he always gets the riposte and dodge whether he misses or does less damage. If you know he's going to get hit for the riposte, and especially if that means he's going to get hit by the same enemy repeatedly (like a boss with cleaves), this move can do a fairly large amount of damage effectively.

Tracking Shot: Used anywhere, target 2-3-4. Ignores and removes all dodge and stealth, applies combo/applies combo and a debuff that keeps that character from gaining dodge (for 2 rounds).

This move counters two specific niches. One of these niches, countering dodge, is countered by another one of his moves, albeit not to the same degree. The other is stealth, which is a nice thing to counter, especially within the sluice and act 1. One of the major problems with this move is that there aren’t really many enemies that are both tanky enough and produce enough dodge to make the upgrade of this move all that worth it, much less in comparison to highway robbery. Sure, it applies a combo token, but that’s the only other thing it does. However, when you do fight one of those enemies, the 2 round debuff can shut their mitigation strategy down very hard.

This move also touches on a problem with a couple of moves in Dismas’s kit. Dismas Wants to be set up, he doesn't want to set other characters up as much. Yellowhand breaks the mold on this idea somewhat, but even yellowhand dismas can access the high output of a dismas when he wants to. All that aside, as a setup move this thing isn’t all that great, but as an anti stealth tool and occasionally an anti-dodge one, it is. It is genuinely quite nice against those stealth pigs, but it never really evolves past something that you pick for specific fights.

Take Aim: Used anywhere, target self. Clear your own blind, gain a dodge token and 1/2 crit tokens, and 0/1 speed tokens. Cooldown of 1 turn

Take aim is the best self buff in DD2, bar none, and there are a few reasons for this. One, crit tokens are just worth more than other offensive tokens. A crit usually comes close to doubling your damage, and so the value of a crit token is 100% of a turn minus the move’s crit (as the crit is the chance it would crit anyway). So for wicked Slice+, this move is about 1.6 turns of damage, for double tap it’s 1.9 turns, and so on. Any tempo loss for this move is mitigated by the speed token, and you even gain a dodge token for some extra mitigation. Hell, it clears blind too, the most annoying offensive debuff in the game, because why not? This move not only provides a ton of value, it also provides that value in a very consistent way. You know whether or not the attack is going to kill that enemy, and what HP it will set it to if it doesn’t. The multiplicative nature of crits also means this plays nice with other offensive buffs, both personal modifiers and enemy ones. You will run this move, especially upgraded, on any Dismas kit that wants to do damage at all, and you will use it all the time in all kinds of fights. Just realize when it’s better to do something else, usually meaning either stunning or helping to bring an enemy down before it can move. The cooldown is mainly relevant if you get blinded after using it, as otherwise there’s no real reason to spam it.

Remember though that using combat items that heal or try to affect or damage enemies will use up a crit token. So don’t do that without good reason; even though the move is a lot of value, you still shouldn't waste it. The unupgraded version of take aim is also a bit more mediocre, though certainly not bad.

Point Blank Shot: Used in 1, targets 1 (hence the ‘point-blank’). Deals 6-12/10-13 damage at 10/15 crit, applies combo, attempts to push the enemy back 1 rank, and moves Dismas back 1 rank.

Point blank shot does what it says in its name. It puts a bullet into someone 3 inches away from the gun. Given Dismas is using a flintlock pistol I suppose that would probably hurt a lot. Anyway, this move naturally does a lot of damage, and in fact the upgraded version’s damage range decides to be consistent instead of just higher. 10-13 is a very strong base level of damage, and with a not at all bad 15 crit on top of it. The problem with this move is that it’s the definition of inflexible. It can only target rank 1, and it can only be used from rank 1. The second of these can be mitigated through certain comps: a dragonfly using Bonnie (for a comp that’s so glass cannon it brings a tear to the eye), a strategic retreat using barristan, a pirouette from Audrey, or a fade to black from jester are all some examples of moves that can set Dismas up for another. You can also, of course, use that same tangle trophy that nightsworn audrey loves so much. The fact that it can only hit rank 1 means that you have no options when it comes to your target. This can be a big deal, because having even some flexibility in who you kill or attack is important. What if rank 1 has dodge, or block? What if the really important enemy is sitting in 2? What if, god forbid, there’s a corpse sitting in 1? The knockback helps avoid this last problem if Dismas is the guy making that corpse, but the point is that there are a lot of reasons you want at least some flexibility in target. The rogue version of this move gives you 1 riposte, which is a nice bit of extra value, especially if you are just spamming the daylights out of it. The combo application can empower more damage from characters like Audrey and Boudica, or allow someone to follow up with a stun. You know, if they aren’t already dead. Overall, this is a move you do have to be a little conscious of building around, and it can provide a strong return if you do, albeit a very inflexible strong return.

Grapeshot Blast: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 1+2. Deals 2-4/4-6 damage, at 5/10 crit. The sharpshot version of this also gives Dismas 1 strength token.

A pretty good no nonsense frontline cleave. Pings off tokens on what are often the targets that are trying to tank you, and does decent damage to boot. The sharpshot version of this giving you strength does push this into quite powerful territory, along with the fact that it’s the only move other than PBS you’d consider using with SharpShot that hits 1. This move generally feels pretty good, coming in handy for the aforementioned token pinging, and also for finishing off a weak enemy while making sure his friend eats a handful of bullet as well. A definite include with the sharpshot path, it’s just really good there, but it still performs okay enough on a wanderer. There’s not all that much reason to run this on Rogue or Yellowhand; Rogue will often if not always be unable to use it and will have other options for hitting 1, and Yellowhand will make it deal tickle-tier damage. It’s not uncommon that you can use this to finish off something after using take aim+, and then carry that strength into the next crit, delivering some pretty insane damage to whoever hasn’t been reduced to a fine mist.

Open Vein: Used in 3-2-1, targets 1-2. Deals 3-5/4-6 damage and 2/3 bleed at 5/10 crit. Double the base bleed with combo (4/6, doesn’t double other added bleed).

One of Dismas’s utility melee moves, this move actually fits in that utility along with good damage into one nice little package. The actual output of this move is good, about equaling wicked slice on the very first turn if we assume the bleed sticks (though that’s a big assumption), and surpassing it over time. The bleed portion means this move is good for hitting targets with block, and for putting enemies onto death’s door. The combo effect means this move accesses DoT levels otherwise reserved for bleed out and noxious blast, though the application will be hit or miss, and it’s a little bit of a worse use of combo compared to others. The biggest downside is that it won't scale very well with damage boosts in the way that Slice, PBS, and Double Tap would. It’s another solid, no nonsense move that allows Dismas to access damage that isn’t just direct damage. Dismas’s kit is full of solid, no nonsense moves.

Double Tap: Used in 3-2, targets 2-3, Deals 4-8/6-9 damage at 5 crit, Deals +30% damage if used on an enemy with less than 30/50% HP remaining, ignores 10/20 DBR

This is the ranged version of wicked slice, with a few key differences. One, its targeting is very weird. It can only hit 2 or 3, and not 4 or 1. Two, it trades most of its raw crit and some of the DBR ignorance for the damage bonus against lower HP targets, which because take aim exists is a very good trade. This is Sharpshot Dismas’s staple damage move, and you will use it like a staple damage move. Meaning you’ll either smack stuff with it, or you’ll use take aim and then smack stuff with it. The damage bonus is naturally very good against bosses in particular, because you’ll realize a lot of value off of it given their high HP. There’s not a whole lot else to say about it, it’s another no frills damage option that excels with a Sharpshot dismas.

Highway Robbery: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 1-2-3. Ignores dodge and destroys/steals 2 positive tokens from the enemy. It can only target enemies with positive tokens. With yellowhand Dismas, it will always steal 1 additional token, regardless of whether the skill is upgraded or not.

Enemy tokens are annoying. Cultist swordies give themselves block and crit, worms eat themselves up some crit and block, altars hand out block and sometimes strength like it’s going out of style. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just… make it go away, or better yet, use it for yourself. That’s what Highway robbery does. Dodge annoying you? Yoink it. About to be slammed by a crit token? Yoink it. Don’t want to claw through 3 instances of block+? Yoink them. This move naturally produces decent value when it’s used on an enemy with 2 good positive tokens, and that goes up to ‘a lot’ of value if he’s stealing them. The fact it can’t be used in 1 limits this for a rogue highwayman specifically, but in other circumstances it’s a piece of utility that universally counters positive tokens. You shouldn’t always use it, however. If an enemy has 2 block+ tokens, and PD is up next, why not just use open vein and then noxious blast instead? If an enemy has a couple of dodge tokens and is next to someone you also want to kill, why not grapeshot and maybe even pick up a strength token from it? This move isn’t always the best option, but it is often a good option, especially when dealing with specifically enemy offensive tokens, and doubly so if you know that enemy won’t die any time soon. Stealing those tokens can also mean that it produces a lot of value for Dismas himself. Steal a crit and dodge token? Congratulations on gaining the value of a normal take aim while taking it from the enemy. Really, the biggest problem with this move is that there are quite a few enemies that aren’t generating those tokens. But when you need it on any build that can use it it’s quite useful, and it's usually good enough to be used over Tracking-Shot outside of Stealth or dodge heavy fights.

Double Cross: used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 2-4/3-5 damage at 5 crit, applies 1/2 vuln tokens, and Dismas gains 1 block token. Yellowhand makes this remove all block tokens from the enemy before it tries to apply vuln tokens.

Double Cross is a move that is statistically very good that is mainly held back by the fact that it’s on Dismas. 2 vuln is a fantastic amount of damage to transfer to others, and this move even does a little damage and puts up some mitigation to boot. Applying it to 1-2 isn’t that bad at all, as a lot of hard hitters have to focus on those ranks with many of their moves. The big problem is that Dismas’s damage is already really good on its own, so applying vuln to get more damage from other heavy hitters is a bit of a raw deal, especially compared to using a move like Take Aim. Dismas usually wants to be set up, he wants someone like Bonnie or Alhazred to apply the vuln for him to hit for truckloads of damage. Using double cross to set himself up is slow and inferior to take aim, and using take aim means one of those other characters can boost his damage. However, if you decide to use a more support oriented Dismas (such as Yellowhand Dismas, which tends to feel generalist) while only occasionally tapping into his damage, then this move is obviously quite strong statistically. Great for attacking into block even when not using Yellowhand, or for enabling characters like Hellion, leper, and Audrey. It’s worth noting that the rank limitation on this means you can’t run it alongside a duo of hard hitting frontliners, which makes it a bit of a harder sell than something like Vulnerability Hex.

In the previous character's section, we discussed how Audrey really wanted you to build around her. That you could get good output from her if you oriented your team around her, at least a little. Dismas is the exact opposite. He is a direct damage dealer that is entirely self sufficient damage-wise and mostly no nonsense. Outside of maybe point blank shot there are no frills here. You hit things in the face, you use take aim to hit things in the face even harder, and you use the straightforward utility from moves like Open vein and highway robbery to do valuable things. This doesn’t mean he hates having friends to set him up: He has a very reliable stun in pistol shot that needs combo, and having a vuln setter or a strength giver to boost his damage further never hurts. He simply doesn’t need those things to function, as in most fights he will be just fine critting things in the face with moves like double tap or wicked slice. Now this generalism feels like it comes at the cost of a moveset that does not offer as much utility as some others, and he doesn’t ever come off as much of a high roller on his own. He has very little self sufficiency, only giving himself the occasional dodge or block token. He has decent HP, and he can be built to take hits with moves like Advance and Rogue’s PBS, but he doesn’t have enough mitigation to do it in the same way a tank would, nor the redirection. His utility moves are good but not necessarily great; you get a decent cleave to play with, a damage transfer move that he usually doesn’t need, highway robbery which is good, and tracking shot which is niche. Dismas is built to be a damage dealer and occasional stunner in most cases, and it’s very easy to build him this way, slot him into a comp that just needs some nice direct damage, and see results. He tends to hit for reliable and good damage, sometimes great damage with enough modifiers, but other than point blank shot his default ranges never get high enough to hit some of the heights you might see from an Audrey, or a Leper. He therefore excels at picking off key targets and doing good reliable damage constantly, but not as much at high rolling. That’s a very strong niche to exist within, and every team in DD2 needs damage, so if you don’t know who else to bring, Dismas always has your back, slotting in perfectly fine in ranks 1 through 3, and dealing plenty of reliable and no nonsense damage.

Sample Comp

Vestal (Seraph) - Dismas (Sharpshot) - Jester (Virtuoso) - Man-At-Arms (Bulwark)

You know what we haven’t had yet? A strong as hell mitigation focused comp. Here you go, this comp carries enough mitigation to make even the scariest boss blush. Upgrade Rampart and Consecration of Fortitude at the first inn, and enjoy producing stuns and mitigation tokens up the wazoo.

How this comp works is simple. Vestal goes as soon as she is able (speed trinkets on Vestal are very strong in this comp), and she casts Fortitude on Jester’s rank. Jester uses Razor’s wit and marks a target, and Barristan uses rampart and stuns it. If he can't stun it he still uses rampart to rotate back up, and Dismas uses pistol shot to stun it. Jester and Barristan produce either block or dodge + every turn from the consecration, and this gives Vestal tokens which she uses to fire 10-14 damage judgments wherever she wants every turn. If she has time, she drops a consecration of light on Dismas (don’t upgrade it), helping him hit even harder. Dismas for his part just kind of shoots things when he’s not stunning. The strong mitigation here lets him make full and easy use of take aim, only rarely worrying about finishing something off before he can use it. The best part of this mitigation setup is that it doesn’t sacrifice much on damage. Judgment hits hard, Rampart hits hard, Dismas hits hard, only jester doesn’t usually hit that hard, and he can access finale if you need him to. Worried about this comp taking some stress due to being a bit slower? Well with all the crits from Dismas and access to the great stress heal that is Bolster, there’s no need to worry. And between the endless supply of mitigation and Vestal’s two big heals, you’re more than covered on HP. Feel free to break the jester-barristan stun loop the moment you need him to taunt up with stand fast too. This team has enough mitigation to do great things in every act, though acts with act bosses that are somewhat vulnerable to stun will be much weaker to this composition in particular.

It's hard to go wrong with the defense that Barristan brings to the table

Statistics:
46 HP
2 Speed
30 bleed resist, 30 blight resist, 30 burn resist
30 Disease resist, 20 debuff resist, 30 move resist, 50 stun resist
Movement: 2 Back, 2 Up

Paths

Sergeant: A path that gives him 100% more move resist, allows him to remove weak and vuln from himself using bolster, and occasionally gives random allies with a large boost to their DoT resists. This all comes at the cost of damage, which tends to be a bit much given that all of these effects are kind of niche. Guaranteed to let you dunk on the Shroud boss, or your relics back.

Bulwark: A path that empowers his shield attack skills (Rampart and Hold the line) with more damage and stun chance, and that gives stand fast taunt. This comes at the cost of making crush and riposte weaker. Great for stun comps and stand fast enjoyers.

Vanguard: More HP, empowers crush and his riposte attack. Reduction to his DoT resists. Probably the most standard man-at-arms to play, trading some DoT resist for health and damage is a pretty great trade.

Moveset

Crush: used in 2-1, targets 1-2-3. Deals 4-7/6-8 damage at 5 crit. Heals MaAs 10/20% of his max HP with combo

Crush is a good, generic damage move. It has a reach that hits rank 3 which is fairly crucial to its effectiveness, as otherwise it just comes off as a weaker wicked hack or wicked slice. Its combo effect offers some nice self sustain and rarely competes with other heroes due to his low speed: generally if you want the combo effect of this, you can get it, and if you don’t, someone else has already used it. Needless to say, Vanguard makes this move hit like a truck, but most non-bulwark Barristans want to run this simply due to its flexible targeting and decent output. It is, for all intents and purposes, Barristan's no nonsense damage move. Even for a tank focused character like Barristan, having some access to good reliable damage is important.

Rampart: Used in 3-2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 3-6/4-7 damage at 5 crit, pushes enemy back 1 and moves Barristan forward 1, and inflicts daze. If enemy has combo, Rampart+ inflicts stun.

Rampart is definitely a good deal less generic than Crush is, though its damage output can become pretty good on the bulwark path. This move exchanges some damage and flexible targeting options for the push and the daze/stun. This move, especially with bulwark Barristan, is a fantastic stun and disruption tool. A fair few enemies have a cutoff point for being in the back or the front that causes them to use worse moves, so being able to push rank 2 into rank 3 can make either of the enemies shifting locations worse off. Still, a knockback of 1 is far less flexible than a higher knockback or a big pull in most circumstances. What really shines here is that it also serves as both a daze stun and a combo stun on top of that disruption. It’s fairly easy to make a comp with jester or another combo setter that allows him to get off a stun every turn, and combined with the extra chance and damage from bulwark, within that niche this move serves well. The move also helps with course correction and is generally small enough to not get in the way, especially since you can always rampart in rank 1 too. Use with the Leper's Bash+ for funny results.

Defender: Used anywhere, target any other friendly. Target gains 2/3 guard tokens, and Barristan gains 2 block/block+ tokens

This move allows Barristan to get his tanking online by jumping in front of a friend. There are several ways to use this. One is to cast it on his other front rank buddy. If that front rank buddy has taunt then Barristan can effectively co-opt the taunt while producing heavy mitigation. It also guarantees he gets hit against enemies that tend to or must hit the front lines, which are a lot of enemies. Two, he can cast it on someone in the back who needs it or will need it. Have a squishy unit in the back and know a first trumpet is about to sound? Throw Barristan in front of them. While enemy units that hit the backline for good damage are generally rarer, the fact that your backline tends to be squishier can make them far more dangerous. Third, you can just throw this move out reactively. Friend just got smacked for 30 by a big ass exemplar crit? Well, Barristan is slow as balls and is probably going after that attack happened, so he’ll be happy to throw his guard up in his defense. There is also one other niche use with chaplain Vestal’s mantra. Mantra heals any unit that is currently being guarded, and Barristan can provide his own guard, allowing her to very easily access mantra on that unit, to use the heal on herself, or to use it on multiple people if both she and barristan are guarding people. This move is just generally very helpful, and it’s hard not to run it because of all the times that a no nonsense guard move will be handy.

Bolster: Used anywhere, target any other friendly. Barristan gains 1 block/block+ token, and loses 1/2 stress if at 5 stress or higher. Target gets the same stress reduction, and loses all of their vuln/vuln and weak tokens. Cooldown of 1 turns

Speaking of no nonsense, Bolster is a no nonsense stress heal that stress heals both Barristan and his target if they’re sitting at 5 or higher stress. 3 stress is the important threshold point: above 3 stress relationship management tends to get notably harder. So being able to lower people from exactly 5 to exactly 3 stress tends to be a very important milestone for any stress heal. The fact that this also always stress heals barristan is actually very important, because Barristan’s job is to get hit in the face, and people who constantly get hit in the face end up with more stress. This is doubly important because stress is one of the major threats to a Barristan: A meltdown will put him on low HP no matter how burly he otherwise is. He can get smacked around all day, but with no good way to mitigate his own stress, he'll eventually meltdown and hit Death's Door. Out of the three mainstay tanks, his stress heal is the most generous to the rest of the team, but the least effective at clearing out his own stress. Even so, it’s still enough in most circumstances, and allows Barristan to more or less handle all the stress healing the average comp will need. The downside is obviously that you need to upgrade bolster to reach that magic number, and you may end up having to wait a bit to do that in favor of other good moves and damage increases. Regular bolster is a good deal worse than Bolster+.

Hold The Line: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 1-2. Deals 3-6/4-7 damage at 10 crit. Moves Barristan all the way to rank 1 and immobilizes him there, as well as gives him 1 block token. Hold The Line+ stuns on combo.

Hold the line primarily operates as a rank-fixer. This is mainly due to two aspects. One, it moves him all the way back to the front, which makes it one of the largest personal movements in the game, and he typically wants to be somewhere near the front. Two, he can’t use this in rank 1 and it immobilizes him, meaning that spamming this outside of a tangle trophy or without another immobilized unit is generally out of the question. Rampart, on the other hand, can be used from 1, and they both have the same stun effect (rampart carrying the additional enemy knockback). So you typically don’t run Hold The Line for its stun, though it can be handy if combined with position correction in some odd circumstances. Rank fixers are quite helpful against enemies like Shambler, Cardinal, the sprawl boss, enemies in the shroud, and the act 2 boss that try to disrupt the team by moving them, so this move is genuinely quite handy if equipped before you get put into those fights. This move will feel less useful if you’re running him in a comp that is used to moving around and being moved around. It’s not an auto include, but it is something you’ll smack on his bar at certain key points during a run if you feel you might need its effect.

Bellow: Used anywhere, target all enemies. Removes riposte/riposte and crit tokens, attempts to debuff speed by 3/5 points. Cooldown of 1

Sadly, this does not do damage, so no yell kill. That aside, this move is mainly equipped to deal with dangerous riposte enemies or to take advantage of its omnicleave properties. The speed malus can sometimes act as a pseudo-daze in some fights, allowing you to kill the slowed enemy before it can act when it might otherwise act earlier, not that unlike how it could be used sometimes in DD1. The omnicleave means this pings off dodge tokens, like magnesium rain and hearthlight do. There are some really annoying riposte enemies, mainly exemplar but also the knight in the tangle. You can always predict exemplar, so equipping this move for at least that fight is usually a good call unless you plan to just nuke his friend before it can act and be eaten by exemplar. The upgraded version of this move is also generally more useful during act 2 cultist fights when upgraded, due to it removing crit tokens, if you don’t just kill the altar instantly anyway. Though because of how that specific buff works, they may just spawn new ones. Because screw you, I guess. It’s a niche move that should be slotted in for a few key circumstances or if you’re really desperate for an omnicleave to check dodgy enemy comps. This move combined with defender and stand fast tends to make Barristan the living bane of Exemplar.

Retribution: Used anywhere, target self. Gain 2 riposte tokens and 2 taunt tokens/All of that and 2 block tokens. Cooldown of 1 turn. The riposte attack does 4-6 damage at 5 crit

A good generic tanking move that tends to be more efficient than the other taunt based tanking moves in the game. It provides him with 2 block tokens and the ability to inflict damage to whoever smacks him, which will typically be whichever two enemies go next because of the taunt. The riposte here is okay damage that’s weakened due to its imprecise nature. It is generally more useful for the fact that it is an attack that exists, meaning that enemies who smack him will lose a block or a dodge or whatever, or weak enemies will end up on DD or get DBR checked, and so on. The riposte damage is more impressive earlier into the run where enemies are weaker and where crush won’t be as competitive, and retribution isn’t that uncommon of an early upgrade just to give him the mitigation on top of it. A standard pick for a vanguard Man-at-Arms in particular, and generally desirable on a Barristan that isn’t a bulwark. It’s mainly held back by its cooldown, which was introduced because people would just press it literally every turn otherwise.

Command: Used anywhere, Target any friendly. Target gains 1 strength token and loses all blind tokens. Cooldown of 1/0

The only thing this upgrade does, just to be clear, is remove the cooldown, which can be nice if you’re getting hit with blind every turn. As a damage transfer on its own it’s definitely weak. It has the same emboldening vapors problem, but unlike vapors, there’s no path version of this that makes the buff good. It’s hard to get this to equal crush’s output, especially on Vanguard Barristan, though it’s easier to do with Sergeant in particular due to his lowered output across the board (Bulwark will be too busy stunning all day). The key to this move is the fact that it’s a one stop cure to the most annoying debuff in the entire game. If you know your key damage dealers will be facing down blind tokens from the likes of the sprawl boss, the shroud in general, the act 2 boss, or others, then throwing this move on is genuinely very useful. It is not the best blind cure in the game, as that honor goes to Hearthlight+, but it does come with a damage transfer, is very no nonsense, and doesn’t ever really ask for an upgrade save for situations where you feel you’ll have to spam it for whatever reason.

Stand Fast: used in 2-1, targets self. Gain 2 block/block+ tokens, and 1 block/block+ token per turn for 3 turns. Upgraded version removes combo that was put on him. Cooldown of 2/1 turns. The bulwark version of this also gives him 2 taunt tokens.

Do you hate Exemplar. Like, do you really just hate Exemplar? Equip Stand Fast+, Bellow, and Defender. Congratulations, you’ve ruined his day. Remove the combo he puts on you with this move, remove his riposte with bellow, protect comboed friendlies with defender. GG EZ.

That use case aside, this move provides a crap ton of mitigation over time, and it even calls some attention onto Barristan with the bulwark version. If you need Bulwark to get hit in the face repeatedly and to maintain his HP, use this move. It’s not something you press every combat or feel the need to use all the time, but when you really just do need to produce a lot of block, no questions asked, over the span of several turns, Stand fast will provide an incredible amount of value. That is all that it does. No damage, no debuff, no other special buff. Just block ♥♥♥♥. The taunt that bulwark offers legitimately makes this move a much more attractive staple, especially with the weakened riposte attacks.

Courageous Abandon: Used in 1, targets 1. Deals 3-6/5-7 damage at 10/20 crit. Removes all of Barristan’s block tokens and gives him a vuln token. Does +100% damage if he has a block token, and another +100% if he has a block+ token. Meaning that, yes, this move does +200% if he has at least one of each. Cooldown 2 turns

This is the gimmickiest of gimmick moves. It allows Barristan to do some pretty good damage if he goes through all that setup, and there are some major problems with it. One, it requires him to get a block token and a block+ token and to have them when he uses this to get maximum value. Having one or the other basically makes the output of this move close to point blank shot with extra maluses, so you do feel the need to have both. In any case, this means that Barristan has to not be getting hit in the face. Unfortunately, getting hit in the face is his job, meaning that this move directly conflicts with what he’s trying to do. Two, it is completely inflexible. This move has the range and use case of point blank shot and point blank shot doesn’t require any special set up. That means this move struggles in any situation where you don’t want him to use it to hit the front rank. Three, this move scales very badly with other personal modifiers. Because this move’s optimal case is basically a 200% damage personal modifier, other personal modifiers will do very poorly with it since they’re all looking at its base damage range, which is very low. This means that you can’t actually make this move do damage that is as wacky as one might expect, unlike other characters. Its constant comparison in point blank shot can be far more readily made to do that because its initial damage range is much higher. There isn’t that much reason to use Abandon outside of a niche meme build, and within that build it will not do much better than ‘alright’. Just smack 'em with the mace and let the man get hit in the face like he wants to.

Strategic Withdrawal: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 3-6/4-7 at 5/10 crit. Moves Barristan back 1 and applies combo. Upgraded version gives him speed, and if he’s on Death’s door, it will heal him by 33% and give him a block+ token. Cooldown of 1 to avoid immortality.

Strategic withdrawal is a good move for combining with approaches like dragonfly and point blank shot, allowing you to shuffle those characters back forward. It does this while applying combo, which is quite nice. The speed token tends to mean that he can choose to use rampart to immediately go into a stun off of using this, as Barristan tends to go last. Finally, it’s also an ‘oh ♥♥♥♥’ button when he’s on Death’s Door. If he gets an action before he gets merced, he can use this and save himself very efficiently. It’s not reliable in the way a move like Absinthe is, and the use case being Death’s door makes it kind of scary in some cases, but it’s there if you need a way out. If you’re not using it for these uses, you’re probably wasting a slot in most circumstances, and should probably run something more generically useful instead. If you are using it to save him, as a backup combo setter and location corrector, and especially to efficiently cycle moves like Dragonfly and PBS, then this move can provide very high value. In that last case, the advantage to using this move and Barristan is that you get to maintain that very bulky frontline tank character in the Man-At-Arms that can still use his mitigation, rather than having to run with something like Bonnie+Dismas that will end up as a glass cannon.

Barristan is probably the most straightforward tank among the three main tanks in the game (or 4, depending on how Flagellant works). He mitigates incoming damage very efficiently and has several tools to direct it towards him in Defender, Retribution, and sometimes Stand Fast. He provides further mitigation with his stuns in some comps, and does all of this while providing reliable if not super impressive damage output. Crush is a good move for teams that want to go after rank 3 in particular, while Rampart allows him to access some great disruption. Many of his moves are designed to provide very specific utility to certain comps and against certain enemies. Bellow, for instance, is absolutely wonderful against dodgy comps and comps with riposte and crit tokens, but usually not very useful elsewhere. Command allows for easy removal of blind tokens against comps that output blind. Hold the line gives him an option for dealing with enemy comps that move the team around. Swapping these skills around on him is key to his success, and figuring out when you might need to do so is very important for playing Barristan optimally.

Of course, you don't necessarily have to swap things around either. His base tanking kit and Crush already do enough to make him reliable even when not touching the utility side of the kit. Bolster serves in this role as an extremely reliable and handy Stress heal that hits the 3 stress threshold just perfectly. The fact that he can stress heal his friends by 2 stress is something that is special compared to the other two mainstay tanks; only Hellion can stress heal her friends, and she can only do so for 1 point, leaving them unhappily at 4 stress.

Finally, there is Courageous Abandon. This move is a meme. You can try to build around it with some shenanigans like using Standfast+ in the backline, then hold the line, and then Abandon. As you can probably tell, that’s a lot of work. It is, however, funny, meaning that I fully endorse it.

Overall, Barristan fits in well with any team that wants a reliable tank, and especially into any team that wants a reliable tank and stunner. It’s hard to feel poorly served with this character, since he provides so many great universal moves and a utility toolkit you do often draw upon.

Sample Comp

Occultist (Ritualist) - Bonnie (Arsonist) - Barristan (Vanguard) - Leper (Tempest)

What does a really tanky core with Barristan and Leper get you, combined with the curses of an occultist and the output and mitigation from Bonnie? A nice, relaxing, slow roll comp that focuses on mitigation while putting out some high output from the Leper and reliable output from Barristan and Bonnie. This team operates very simply. Occultist pulls and curses, offering damage transfers, combo, and enemy disruption, and the ever helpful corpse clear. He is purely utility here, though you can swap him with Bonnie if you want him to have access to his stab. Bonnie provides some more mitigation with smokescreen, and just generally good DoT output with Firefly and controlled burn. Barristan hits retribution and crush and perhaps the odd rampart to pick up a stun when you’d like to use the combo token in that way. Leper smacks things and acts as an off tank, putting out high damage chops and useful intimidates and withstands to soak up even more damage. Defender naturally synergizes with all the taunt Leper can put out. This team is virtually stress immune with Bolster and Leper’s self stress heal, and the mitigation and disruption allows Firefly to do a lot of work in particular. This team won’t be eliminating things in 2 rounds or less, but it will be able to ensure that the heroes survive happily, healthily, and sanely. Perhaps one of the most straightforward comps in this guide. Try running Bash+ on leper with Rampart+ for funny stun attempts. You could run Hellion up front too, if you're racist against Leper.

She used to be to rank 1 what black holes are to light

Statistics:
39 HP.
4 Speed
30 bleed resist, 30 blight resist, 30 burn resist
30 Disease resist, 20 debuff resist, 20 move resist, 20 stun resist
Movement: Up 1

Gains a 25% damage buff at less than 50% HP, and another one at less than 25% HP. These are, naturally, personal modifiers. These are immediately lost once you heal her above those thresholds, naturally.

She also, uniquely, has a base DBR of 80 rather than 75

Paths

Ravager: Hellion gains more HP and also more damage when she’s in rank 1. To make up for this, her bleeds are less likely to stick and she occasionally attempts to bleed herself. Ravager is usually just Hellion+.

Berserker: A little extra DBR and higher bleed chance and crit on her bleed moves at the cost of some HP, which you definitely feel more than other characters given she’s a frontliner. She only has 2 bleed moves, and they can’t both be used from the same position, unfortunately.

Carcass: Perhaps the weirdest path in the game, Carcass gives Yawp taunt, stress heals her when she gets crit, allows wicked hack to remove all enemy block, and creates block at the end of her turn depending on how many winded tokens she has. The ‘cost’ here is that she constantly generates winded tokens, meaning that she’ll be hitting like a wet noodle. A path that goes all in on her utility and tanking potential.

Before we talk about the moveset, let’s define her special token: The Winded token.

Winded is a special token that is not removed by items or moves that remove negative tokens. It will not expire on its own, will stack up to 3, and each winded token will reduce Boudica’s damage by 33% and her speed by 3. Most of her very strong skills give her winded tokens, and typically the skills that remove winded are slower and function more as utility skills. This is a personal modifier, meaning that if you have other damage boosts, even with 3 winded tokens you won’t reach all the way down to 0.

Moveset

Wicked Hack: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 4-8/6-10 damage at 5/10 crit. Deals 50% more damage with combo (this is a personal modifier from what I can tell).

Wicked Hack is a move that is very much a decent damage move that some people still think you shouldn’t use because Howling End exists. Those people are wrong, and we will discuss why when we get to Howling End. The damage output on this thing is nice and reliable, and the combo effect is one of the best no nonsense combo effects in the game, allowing her to hit a nice 9-15 damage profile with many other characters. This move combines very well with Smokescreen+ in particular, as it immediately allows her to cash in on the vuln and combo token at the same time. Even without combo this move reaches decent numbers; when it comes to frontline damage moves, this more or less works as a wicked slice with less crit and a bit more damage range. As we discussed with Wicked slice, the crit on Dismas doesn’t matter as much as it does on Hellion as a character. Generally this move is great to use to finish off medium health targets or to set them up for another hit to finish them off, which is pretty much how you'd use any staple damage move. You’ll typically run this on any Hellion, even the Carcass variant, as it picks up the utility to remove all block tokens from its target from that path. You won’t always have to use it to do this, as you can run bleed out on that path and use that on the front rank like a bleed-based noxious blast instead, but it’s a genuinely nice niche to pick up on the path that lowers her raw output so heavily. It’s fairly common that you’ll hit this a few times early into a fight and then transition into Howling end later.

Iron Swan: Used in 1, targets 4. Deals 4-8/6-10 damage at 5/10 crit. Upgraded version applies combo

Iron swan is special, in that it’s one of very few moves that can apply combo to rank 4. It’s also the only one of them outside of something like Stars that has a decent damage profile attached to it. This move is one of the things that allows Hellion to be the best frontliner for running with backline smashing comps, whereas moves that can reach into rank 3 are a lot more common. It must be used in 1, so in those comps she will be hogging the front spot, which is typically true of any comp you include her in. The damage profile is nice, but the combo also means this is one of the few ways you can get a stun on the backline with pistol shot, or get bonus crit with thrown dagger for example, and it’s typically the highest tempo option because it is always carrying that very reliable damage profile. If you’re running a comp that focuses on the backline or has a flexible damage plan that can go after the back if it needs to, and you want to run Hellion outside of Carcass, you should include this move. It’s great for cultist fights and all sorts of fights in the tangle and sprawl, though it is a bit more iffy in the foetor in particular where you’re usually more encouraged to kill front to back. It is also an absolute must have for the act 2 boss.

Barbaric Yawp: Used in 2-1, targets 1+2. Ignores and removes stealth, applies 1 weak/2 weak to both targets, and the upgraded version applies stun on combo. Gives her 1 winded token on use, has a cooldown of 1. Using this with carcass gives her two taunt tokens

Barbaric Yawp is a move that provides a fairly nutty amount of mitigation when upgraded. The double weak cleave is already really good by itself, but the fact that it picks up a combo stun in addition to it as what I assume is a homage to DD1 is fairly incredible. This move isn’t quite as top tier as it was in 1 despite all this, though it absolutely shines on carcass Hellion, as you typically won’t care about Hellion gaining winded and will absolutely want to take advantage of the taunt on this. The biggest downside to this move is its cost, the need to upgrade it, and its character. Basic Yawp is a fairly meh move at the best of times, as 1 weak cleaves runs into a problem similar to blinding gas, though with more of a ‘size 2 enemies take the whole attack’ spin on that problem. Upgraded yawp is a ton of value. The other problem is that usually, with comps with a Ravager Hellion for example, you can just kill something, and often without debuffing her. Debuffing her to put out mitigation with Ravager or even a normal hellion is a bit of an odd sell, given you’ll either have to use a utility move to cure winded next turn, or pay it in damage and speed as the fight goes on. Yawp+ is still a high value move in those cases, don’t get me wrong, but similar to the logic behind double cross, it's a bit difficult to include outside of Carcass Hellion or comps where you want her to focus more on that utility side of her kit. If you want to run a mitigation debuff on Hellion, this is really good, it's just that she often doesn't need to run that herself.

If It Bleeds: Used in 3-2, Targets 2-3. Deals 3-6 damage and 2/4 bleed at 5 crit. Upgraded version ignores 30 percentage points of bleed resist on combo.

This move has been changed in 1.0, and is now a lot closer to Incision than ‘half a harvest’. As an incision that can reach into rank 3, it provides an interesting bit of reach on a character that often lacks the ability to hit 3. This move is also more accessible with the Howling End changes, which can allow Hellion to jump into using this move for the bleed component or the rank 3 reach very easily, as well as generally being useful on a rank 2 Hellion. I think it’s likely to be a pretty alright inclusion in certain comps, though it’s certainly not extremely powerful after the slight bump either.

Toe To Toe: Used in 3-2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 2-4/3-5 damage at 5 crit. Moves Boudica forward 1, gives her 1 immobilize token and 2 taunt tokens. The upgraded version removes all of her winded tokens

Toe to Toe is a staple pick on any Hellion set, for a few reasons. One, it allows her to tank. Hellion loves to get hit in the face to enable her damage boosts and to later heal herself with Adrenaline rush or sometimes raucous. Carcass Hellion in particular sure enjoys getting punched in the face. This move allows her to successfully get punched in the face, albeit with no defensive tokens. The second thing it does is that it moves Hellion forward and locks her in place. Not the best correctional move, as the immobilize means you can’t move her again on her next turn, but it’s better than just stepping forward if she’s in rank 3 in most cases. The immobilize keeps what is otherwise a character that’s very prone to getting shuffled around from being moved, and enables some fun strategies in certain fights, like the Foetor lair boss, or in some comps like the aforementioned double lunge comp. The important bit, however, is that this move also cures winded when upgraded. That’s a big deal on a move you probably want to use anyway to tank while doing a little damage and pinging off block and dodge tokens. The upgraded version of this move is a staple on any Hellion you intend to wind at some point because it is the only move she has that’s both good and reliably available to remove winded. That doesn’t mean you should upgrade this first, as smart Hellion play will not necessitate her becoming winded often enough to require this to be a first inn upgrade. But it is something you want to get to at inn 2 or 3, generally speaking. Perhaps her best utility move.

Adrenaline Rush: Used anywhere, target self. Usable below 33% HP. Remove all winded, heal for 20/25% HP and cure bleed/all DoT effects. Receives a unique buff that causes her to heal 20% irrespective of current HP when she uses an attack. Limit 2 uses, cooldown 3 turns.

Adrenaline Rush is one of the strongest self heals in the game, owing to the special buff she receives. Sure, she won’t receive as much HP up front as a Solemnity or even an Absinthe, but she will surpass those heals over the course of a few turns, and will shed all her DoTs on the upgraded version. It also, incidentally, cures winded, which is great for a move that you’re likely to use a few turns into a long fight. If you’re smart you can predict when you’ll want to use this and drop your big fat howling end or bleed out right before then. Generally less great on Carcass since she’ll end up winded again anyway, but it’s still quite a lot of healing on a tank focused path.

This move is her other good winded cure. It is in many ways a ‘better’ move than Toe, but it is only available at low HP, meaning you can’t access it consistently. This move also sort of competes for a slot with Raucous, which is a move that’s worse for HP and winds her, but offers a stress heal. Usually this move will be the better option, but sometimes having access to the stress heal is more important. Most rank 1 Damage Hellions will not have room for both unless you neglect to run Iron Swan.

Bleed Out: Used in 1, targets 1. Deals 4-8/6-9 damage and 4/6 bleed at 5/10 crit. Winds the Hellion. Ignores 30 percentage points of bleed resist on combo

Bleed out is an inflexible move that effectively combines Wicked Hack and Noxious Blast into one neat little package. That naturally means it does a crap ton of damage, and indeed it does. It’s held back by its inflexibility, though it has some notable things going for it. One is that the fact that this move does a bunch of bleed means that it’s actually quite an effective damage move even with lots of winded already. It becomes a sort of bleed noxious blast that you can only hit 1 with, and for similar reasons it’s also nice for pinging enemy block. This makes it ideal for a Carcass Hellion in particular, as well as against the act 3 boss. Using it with the damage is an unfair amount of output that surpasses even point blank shot, Chop, and lunge. The cost here is obviously the one winded token, meaning that moves like this often serve as a sort of damage acceleration, weakening the Hellion and slowing her down, making her less able to proactively take out threats after the fact. Bleed out is a good move that’s mainly held back by its inflexibility and the existence of another move that she has that is more flexible and even more frontloaded than this one.

Bloodlust: Used in 3-2-1, Targets self. Removes all winded, gives the Hellion a unique buff that increases her damage against bleeding targets by 20/30% for five turns. Upgraded version grants 20 bleed resist. Personal modifier.

So this move will pay for itself over the lifetime of the buff now that it’s been given a 5 turn lifetime, but it still takes a while to pay back on that. The logic behind bloodlust is simple. You use it to remove winded, and you try to get the damage back from using this move over the next several turns. The problem is twofold. One, you have to bleed something to get the buff which makes the targets you pick less flexible and is another hoop to jump through. Two, it takes so long to get what is a mediocre payoff at best. Though at this point it is clear that the buff is worth it if you can constantly feed it, especially when clearing winded, you still have to hit things that are bleeding for multiple turns to get the pay off from the buff. In most fights, that’s a big ask, especially with faster comps. Why not just tank with Toe or Heal with Adrenaline rush? This move often struggles to find a place because of that long pay off time. If you really want a consistent winded cure and really don’t want to upgrade or maybe even run Toe, this will cure winded. But my advice in that case is just to be more judicious about when you use moves that wind the Hellion rather than running this specifically to deal with the backlash. This move can be okay if you build around it to some degree with characters like Jester in particular, but it’s a little bit niche.

Breakthrough: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 1-2-3. Deals 3-6/4-7 damage at 5 crit. Pierces and removes guard. Upgraded version prevents block gain for 2 rounds (like tracking shot+ does for dodge). It doesn't remove block (aside from the one on hit), just keeps them from gaining more. Hellion moves forward 2 ranks and is winded. 1 turn Cooldown

Breakthrough is, despite the changes, still a very niche move. In fact, I think the new version is worse in many situations, save for its ability to enable rank correction. Combining this with TtT will take Hellion all the way back up to 1, and an upgraded Toe will undo the Winded from this move. There's a few reasons that the other aspects of this move don't really excel.

First of all, guard removal and piercing is usually pretty dubious. In many situations you just kill the guarding unit or you simply use up the guard, putting damage on the guarding unit, and then go after the unit being guarded. There are a few specific turn order situations where this doesn't work out, but normally you'd rather just hit damage on Hellion or ping off a single guard token rather than dedicating a move slot to a move that counters specifically the rare guard, while debuffing Hellion and only being usable in the back ranks. Guarding enemies is also generally very rare.

The block debuff is nice in a few cases, however it's markedly worse than similar effects that prevent dodge gain. This is because Block is inherently easier to deal with by using DoT moves or utility moves with low on hit damage in most cases. Outside of the first phase of the act 4 final boss, it's fairly rare that you see block generation that asks for this move. This move does generally excel in that phase due to its ability to fix Hellion's positioning while denying the boss the ability to generate more block, and that is a notably powerful use, especially for direct damage focused teams.

It's weird that we got this move when we did, because the change to Howling End and the addition of more block in certain fights actually already made the original BT a lot more usable. This move is quite handy in a few fights and cases where Hellion is likely to be moved around in particular, but it's still a very rare pick.

Raucous Revelry: Used anywhere, Targets all friendlies. Winds the Hellion, Heals her by 20/25% if below 33% HP. Heals her for 2/3 stress if she’s at 5 stress or higher, and removes her horror. Removes 1 stress from every friendly that is at 5 or higher stress. The upgraded version buffs her DBR by 10. Cooldown of 1

This move, in contrast to Adrenaline, is a move that supports Hellion’s stress tanking and also normal tanking in one package. It even stress heals the party, though its limit of stress healing them by 1 keeps them from reaching the magic number, even though she can reach it. This move is pretty alright if you need the extra stress reduction. It’s the sort of move you mainly swap in over Adrenaline rush in a region if you notice stress is starting to build. As a pure healing move it is obviously far less efficient than Adrenaline rush, but you should honestly see that part of the package and the DBR buff as potential extra value. In really bad situations it can get both the heal and the stress heal at once, and that will go a long way to keeping her alive and away from a meltdown. The big downside here is the winded token, which encourages you to use it later in a fight when you’re mopping up, or after another move that produces winded (so you can just cure both with one move). This move does its job well enough, and while I wouldn’t call it a staple inclusion, it is a staple switch in move when you expect or have to deal with high stress during the run.

Howling End: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 8-14/10-18 damage, at 10/15 crit. Which is uh, a lot. Hellion moves back 1 rank, and winds the Hellion. Cooldown of 3/2 turns

Time to take this cat out of the bag. Howling End is one of the most polarizing moves in the game, because it is quite clearly extremely powerful. A high damage range like this meshes supremely well with damage modifiers, and its crit isn’t even that bad to boot. The downside to this is the winded token, which weakens and slows her in future turns, and the cooldown. Back in the day this move had a cooldown of 1, meaning you could rotate it with Toe to Toe. So she was able to access average damage that was akin to double wicked hack (it didn’t help Hack was weaker back then), but with better alpha and the ability to tank. So they increased the cooldown to 2, and now it is, despite what people seem to think, not a black hole of decision making. This is because you inevitably will lose damage using this move if the fight continues on as compared to other approaches. You know what does more damage than immediately opening Howling End and then Toe to Toe? Wicked Hack into Howling End. Or double Wicked Hack into Howling End. Or Iron Swan into Wicked Hack into Howling End. Etc. In the average fight, these other approaches will do more damage. Howling End allows two nice options. One, to just delete someone you want to delete up front, often with no help. Two, to sweep up the ends of fights nicely. It is an extremely high alpha option that will cost you a bit of tempo and overall damage if you use it incorrectly, though the loss is not critical. Plan out your fights, know about how long they’ll last, and use Howling End at the right moment to maximize output and to kill whatever key target you want to. Don’t just spam it endlessly; the damage cost isn’t the only relevant thing here. It’s also the speed cost. Having Hellion go slower than everything else, clearing winded with a weak move, and then finally hitting something again is actually a very slow approach to combat. It’s one that works well with incredibly high alpha comps, where you don’t have to pay the cost of an early howling end, but one that otherwise lowers her overall value. Double lunge comps, for example, love using this move early (if the back 1 doesn't get in the way, anyway), but mitigation focused comps may find it a bit more unwieldy. Most damage plans will use this move as an option when it’s best to use it, not as the only trick up her sleeve. When it’s used correctly, it is naturally really good, because you can effectively avoid the downsides or counter dangerous single targets with very sudden and huge output. You can still certainly win by using Howling End poorly, but you will do so much better if you use Howling End correctly.

1.0 Changed this move to back her up, solidifying it not only as a later option in fights, but as a dance tool as well. It can now allow her to synergize much better with characters like Rogue Dismas and leper, as she can quickly use this to step back and allow them to do their front rank things, possibly shifting into her bleed kit with If It Bleeds. You can still just cycle her right back up with Toe to Toe though, so I’d actually argue that this change is a buff to any ‘non-braindead’ playstyle of Hellion. It no longer ignores block or guard, which does make it a good bit worse in many cases.

Despite some of her kit being a little niche or weak, so much of Hellion's kit is exceptionally strong, to the point that running Hellion in rank 1 often feels like common sense rather than an interesting choice. Iron swan lets her contribute well to backline killing comps, Wicked Hack is a strong generic damage move, Adrenaline rush allows for some great self sustain, and Howling End mops up or kills key targets very nicely. She even has a great self stress heal in Raucous that benefits her team along with herself. The big problem is that a fair amount of her kit wants her in rank 1, and her Ravager path further encourages it. That can sometimes make her playstyle non-diverse. Sure, you can get good work out of a Carcass Hellion, Using great Yawps, Toes, and Bleed out, even if it’s not the objectively best way to tank in the game, but even that wants to sit in rank 1 to some extent due to Bleed Out and the way that Toe works. Berserker always feels a little weird given her lack of bleed focus and the inability to use if it bleeds and bleed out from the same rank. So you pick Hellion, you usually pick Ravager, and you slap her in rank 1 pretty much every time you build a decent comp with her. She’s great at it, she puts out phenomenal damage and has a great level of offensive utility while also serving as a reliable tank. Because of this, she sometimes feels like an indirect nerf to characters like Rogue Highwayman and Leper, though the back-up on Howling end goes a long way to fixing that feeling.

She can certainly be run from 2, but with moves like Toe and HE it feels a little weird without another character to help her maintain that rank (or without starting her further back and then moving her up early in the fight). In rank 1 she remains great. If you’re just interested in how to run her well, then run her strong moves like Hack, Toe, Swan, Howling End, and Adrenaline Rush up in rank 1 with ravager, and kick some ass. Otherwise, grab yourself Yawp and Carcass and use what is a genuinely fun and interesting tanking setup. In either case, you will not be disappointed.

Sample Comp

PD (Alchemist) - Occultist (Warlock) - Jester (Virtuoso, maybe Soloist) OR Dismas (Sharpshot) - Hellion (Ravager)

Do you just HATE enemy backlines? Do you want to make the tangle boss lick your boots as you beat him into the dirt? Does the idea of letting the herald toot his horn make you upset? Look no farther than this comp. This is a primo backline smashing comp, utilizing high damage cleaves in the form of Plague Grenade and Abyssal Artillery combined with some extra backline damage in the form of Double Tap, Pistol Shot, Slice Off, Harvest, Finale, and Iron Swan to absolutely decimate Backlines. The best part is, the inclusion of a Ravager Hellion and a Jester allows you to absolutely nuke the hell out of the frontline when you need to as well. This allows this team to maintain a large level of flexibility in its damage plan despite having what is otherwise a big backline focus. PD serves as our dodge pinger and a key backline hitter with plague grenade and mag rain, as well as a door checker and damage dealer with Noxious on top of her healing abilities. Alhazred generally just drops big fat noodles on the backline to push that damage further, while occasionally breaking out the mitigation side of his kit in the form of curses or pulls, and maybe a heal if you’re worried. It’s generally not bad to run stab on him too, just so he can hit the frontline with damage. His hexes set up wicked hack as well with combo or vuln, and howling end can make great use of the latter in particular. The jester and Dismas pick is a point of contention. Dismas is reliable and likes getting set up, Sarmenti puts out some nice bleed and vuln by himself and has the option of dropping a big fat finale wherever and whenever you need it, which helps keep the plan flexible. He can also correct shuffled comps with his movement skills, or if you’re feeling safe you can have him cycle around applying combo instead. Dismas, on the other hand takes the set up that's easily available from this comp and outputs reliable damage wherever you need it, and is genuinely a bit bulkier than Jester, especially if you’d opt to run Soloist. I usually wouldn’t here; its effects strengthen the strategy but also make Jester ripe for getting smacked upside the head, and the speed malus does genuinely hurt too. Take this comp into act 2 to keep the final boss from having a moment to breathe, and take it into the tangle and cultist fights to dumpster all over them.

Sun Tzu would be proud of our little arsonist

Statistics:
33 HP
5 Speed
20 bleed resist, 20 blight resist, 50 burn resist
30 Disease resist, 20 debuff resist, 30 move resist, 20 stun resist
Movement: Up 1, Back 2

Paths

Arsonist: A path that empowers Bonnie’s burn chance and the crit chance of her burning skills, at the cost of direct damage and a chance at burning herself every turn.
Survivor: A path that empowers Bonnie’s healing and regen skills, and starts her with free dodge and speed every fight, at the cost of a lower burn chance.
Orphan: A path that causes her to do more DoT damage and less direct damage in ranks 3 and 4, and vice versa for ranks 1 and 2. Using firestarter gives her a crit token, and all of this comes at the cost of some HP. A weird path that is usually just used to increase the DoT output of Firefly.

Moveset

Searing Strike: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 3-6/4-7 damage and 2/3 burn at 5/10 crit. Deals double burn with combo.

This move is fire open vein, and its damage is therefore mostly decent. With Dismas, Open Vein mainly served as a bit of nice melee utility that could sometimes do high DoT damage with combo. It was a good tool for putting things onto Death’s Door and then checking them. Searing strike does retain that niche, but that niche is a lot worse on Bonnie for a few reasons. For starters, most of the time if you’re running a Bonnie, she mostly serves as a dedicated DoT damage dealer. This is because she has highly effective DoT moves like Firefly, Dragonfly, and Controlled burn by default. Searing Strike acting as a sort of hybrid is a lot less valuable for her, because its niche is less relevant to her kit. Incision had a similar issue, though its damage could make up for it, especially on a surgeon PD. The second reason is that it can only be used up front. This isn’t as much of a problem with a Dragonfly bonnie, but it does mean that this move and firefly are mostly mutually exclusive outside of a dance team that’s trying to use backdraft, or some other comp that naturally pushes Bonnie around. Thirdly, this move, being a hybrid, has some level of anti-synergy with her two main paths: those being Arsonist and Orphan. Orphan will lower it’s DoT output, though it still allows it to serve that Open Vein niche, and arguably it lets it do so more effectively. It also lowers her HP, making keeping her in the front franks more dangerous. Arsonist lowers her direct damage, lowering the Open Vein utility on this move, but allows the burn component to be more consistent. Since Firefly is a more fire focused move, you’d tend to rather run it with Arsonist than this move. Searing Strike is not a bad move by any means, but it’s hard to find a place for it on Bonnie in most setups.

Firefly: Used in 4-3, targets 2-3-4. Deals 2-4/3-4 damage and 3/5 burn at 5/10 crit. Deals 3 burn to a random adjacent monster with combo. This burn application ignores defensive tokens like dodge.

Firefly is generally any back rank Bonnie’s staple DoT Damage move. It has a nice targeting range of everywhere but 1 and deals only slightly less DoT than Noxious blast to make up for it. The ability for this move to contribute to comps that focus on the frontline, backline, and flexible comps is genuinely quite nice for a strong single target DoT move. The combo effect on this allows this move to deal some AoE burn as well, and that AoE effect crucially ignores any defensive mechanics aside from burn resist. This is very useful in certain cases, especially when spreading the burn to characters with DBR. While the damage on the spread isn’t stellar and won’t scale the way you can make the direct application scale, you can use it to smooth out thresholds and to ensure that an enemy you plan to set on Death’s Door soon won’t want a followup DoT application. Aside from this more tactical use, you’re mostly just chucking this at things you want to kill, just as you would a noxious blast or other damage move.

Smokescreen: Used anywhere, Targets 1-2-3. Attempts to debuff target with 1 blind/2 blind and 1 vuln token. Applies combo. Cooldown 1

Smokescreen unupgraded is a bit of a weaker debuff that combines a blind with a combo application, functioning to help the team offensively and defensively. Smokescreen+ is cracked, applying 2 blind tokens, and a vuln token, and a combo. This simultaneously makes this move a fantastic mitigation tool, as it applies the best offensive debuff to an enemy, while it also acts as a potent damage transfer for characters like Hellion and Leper in particular. The worst thing I can say about this move is that the damage transfer might mean you don’t get the value off the blind, because you kill the enemy too efficiently. That’s the kind of problem you want your debuff to have. You can also just use this in any rank, meaning you can use it on any Bonnie setup, and can target almost every enemy. Smokescreen+ is the most valuable single target debuff in the game, and bringing a Bonnie that just focuses on using this and firefly is already usually effective enough on its own, even forgetting the other utility she brings to the table. Keep in mind that certain specific enemies, especially the act 3 boss, do not care about blind though, and recognize when dealing damage would be better than using this move.

Run and Hide: Used anywhere, Target self. Move back 1 rank and gain 2 stealth tokens. Upgraded version grants 3 regen. Cooldown of 2

Run and Hide is a bit of a niche self sustain move that allows Bonnie to avoid getting slapped for a few turns. There are some trinkets that can allow her to realize some value off of the stealth, and her signature inn item will synergize as well, but her moveset itself does not synergize with stealth at all. The regen can be quite nice in some cases. The big problem with this move is that it’s very low tempo and doesn’t do a lot to help the Runaway. Generally if you want the runaway to move backwards, she’s moving from the front to the back, and she can use dragonfly, which is a powerful damage move. So unless you really need her to drop all aggro for a couple of turns, you won’t normally get that much use out of this. Theoretically you could use this in rank 1 to encourage a sort of ‘anti tanking’: Since lots of monsters will tend to target your front ranks, making one of your front rank characters invisible for two turns means the other character should soak up the damage. If you know that’s what will happen, this move effectively applies much more ‘taunt’ to the target than any taunt moves can. This is a sort of hard niche to recommend, but it is something you can make work when you expect certain fights. In other cases, this isn’t a move you’ll often elect to use, due to its low effect and very rare synergies.

Hearthlight: Used anywhere, Target all enemies. Ignores and removes stealth from enemies. Upgraded version cures blind from every friendly hero. Cooldown of 1

Hearthlight is a move that frequently does nothing, but it hits every enemy, so it’s still useful. This move is great for a few different scenarios. For starters, it pings off dodge on all enemies, meaning that enemy comps that start with lots of dodge, like beast dens and cultists, can be checked with this move. Second, the upgraded version cures all friendly blind, which is exceptionally useful in the shroud and generally useful in any fight that can apply blind. You can also make this move deal damage through some trinkets that give her moves DoT damage, or debuff enemies through trinkets that can apply those, similar to Magnesium rain. It naturally counters stealth, which is particularly useful in the sluice, shroud, and act 1 cultist fights. For a move that does literally no damage, it sure does produce a fair amount of utility. It’s frequently a good idea to equip this in the aforementioned areas and if you have some reason to expect blind or dodge tokens from enemies. It’s not something you’ll need in every fight, but it is extremely useful in any fight that uses these effects, and against the act 2 and 3 boss if you elect to bring her to those.

Ransack: Used anywhere, targets 1-2-3. Deals 3-6/4-8 damage at 5/10 crit. Moves Bonnie forward 1, attempts to pull the target 1/2 ranks. Applies burn to a random adjacent enemy with combo

Ransack serves as a correction tool, a dance option, and a bit of a weak pull. The weakness of the pull is multifaceted. It can’t target rank 4, and 4 is frequently a good pull target. It also only pulls 1 un-upgraded, unlike Daemon’s pull in particular and echoing march theoretically. Its effect to only deal somewhat decent damage and spread burn is also a bit weird for a pull; you’d probably see more excitement around this move if it debuffed or applied combo in particular. This move allows her to function as the rank 2 in a double lunge comp or generally in dance comps, though I usually find other dance moves from other heroes. It also allows her to pull herself back up to use dragonfly or to access backdraft with some setups, if you don’t have that niche covered with the rest of your team. This move isn’t infrequently useful, but it is a bit on the weak side for what it’s supposed to do. If you really need a pull or want to dance with Bonnie, then this move will serve that niche, even if it’s not a startlingly powerful option for doing so.

Cauterize: Used in 4-3-2, Targets any bleeding friendly. Heals them for 25/33% and removes their bleed. Use limit of 3

Cauterize is a heal that is agnostic to thresholds, but that can only be used when the target is bleeding. Bleed is not that uncommon in this game: You’ll see it from bandits, from cultists, and from enemies in every area. In fact, every type of enemy has some enemy that can bleed you. So this move is always useful even outside of comps that bleed themselves, save in certain specific fights where you know you won’t be seeing bleed, which mainly means some boss fights. Outside of enemies applying it, you can often access bleed on your own team within some comps. Some units, like Ravager Hellion or Leper with Ruin+ can apply it to themselves, and in particular the Occultist’s Wyrd Healing can bleed your friends. Using wyrd before this can be a potent combo, especially if you were otherwise very unlucky with Wyrd’s healing output. In general though, this move is frequently available and useful and will generally make it on to most Bonnie builds as a bit of a staple. Just remember to swap it off if you’ve got something else in mind for fights where you know bleed is impossible.

Controlled Burn: Used in 3-2-1, targets any enemy. Deals 3/4 burn, and places a special rank token on the rank of the enemy that was targeted. Ignores stealth. Any enemy starting a turn on the token will be hit with 2/3 additional burn. This additional burn will not tick that turn, it will start ticking on their next turn. The Rank token will always be placed, even if this move is dodged or misses. It lasts 3 rounds. Cooldown of 3 turns

Controlled burn is the biggest argument for running Bonnie in rank 3 rather than rank 4, and that’s because it can do a lot of damage while bringing some utility to the table. First, it’s a great way to check both stealth and dodge, because it allows you to directly damage stealth users, and it will still place the rank token even if dodged, usually guaranteeing the unit picks up some burn. This extra rank token burn application won’t benefit from her arsonist or orphan path or other DoT buffs though. Second, not only does this move do a burn on hit that is only a little bit less than firefly, it trades in the combo component and small direct damage for perfect targeting range and the rank token. The rank token will incinerate any enemy that doesn’t have high burn resist and that moves multiple times per round, and it will still frequently out damage moves like firefly on slow enemies that you expect to survive for a while, such as big bosses. This move deals an absolutely obnoxious amount of damage to the act 3 boss in particular, due to his lower burn resist and multiple moves per round. The rank token being persistent also means that if you kill an enemy and some other enemy ends up in his spot, that enemy gets to enjoy being incinerated as well. If you expect certain enemies to shuffle around in a specific rank a lot, which is admittedly rare, you can use this to apply a bunch of burn to multiple enemies too. Really, the biggest downside to this move is that it doesn’t check block due to having no direct damage component, and that it doesn’t usually mesh well with lightning fast comps. A small price to pay for incineration.

Dragonfly: Used in 2-1, Targets 1+2. Deals 1-2/1-3 damage and 2/4 burn. Applies combo 25/33% of the time (rolled individually for each target). Moves Bonnie back 1

This is a front rank plague grenade, and it even picks up some combo application too. The combo here is genuinely a nice bonus, since it’s front rank combo meaning that it’s frequently usable, and because it’s attached to a DoT cleave that would create enough value by itself even in its abscence. You don’t use this intending to play around combo, you simply take advantage of the combo when it’s applied. This usefulness is balanced by its range and its movement of Bonnie. You can’t stand still and spam this like you would plague grenade, it needs a fellow dancer or the tangle trophy to do that. The range frequently means that it gets checked by a size 2 enemy, as size 2 enemies usually hang out up front. Bonnie is also a bit of a brittle character, so running her in the first two ranks consistently so you can use this move constantly can be dangerous. If you can make it work despite those caveats, it provides a lot of value. A fun move to build around or take advantage of, and you can always run her in 2 and simply open with this move, intending to spend the rest of the fight using smoke and firefly as a safer approach.

Firestarter: Used anywhere, target any friendly. Gives them a unique buff for 3 turns that causes them to apply 2/3 burn on hit. Cooldown of 2, use limit of 2

When used randomly on a friendly, this move is at best okay. It can allow big hitters to smack an enemy to death’s door and then apply a DoT, and it can produce a little more damage than bonnie may otherwise have with a move like firefly if the buff runs its full course. Naturally, that is not how you’re supposed to use this move. You’re supposed to use this move with cleaves. What’s better than a magnesium rain that does 3 burn? How about one that does 6 burn, to everyone. What about a grapeshot blast that applies burn, or a harvest, or an anamnesis, or a plague grenade? This move produces a crap ton of extra value when combined with cleaves, and that’s primarily how it should be used. The orphan version of this sometimes gives her a crit token, which is nice but not usually critical. If you don’t plan on using this move with cleaves or ripostes for whatever reason, there’s not all that much cause to run it, unless you just happen to have the slot and see a good opportunity for its use in a more generic way.

Backdraft: Used in 2-1, Targets 2-3-4. Does damage equal to 50/100% of the remaining lifetime burn on the monster in front of the target. This damage is not affected by modifiers, and does not remove the burn. Ignores guard. Cooldown of 1 turn.

Apparently, a backdraft is a big fiery explosion that can happen under some circumstances. Well, that’s certainly what it can feel like in this game, if it’s set up properly. The biggest problem is its use case: you have to get Bonnie up front to use this and you have to apply a lot of burn first, and a lot of her best burn options like to sit in the back. You need to have a strategy to get her into position to use this unless you want the burn to tick down. Or you could just use this move on a dragonfly setup, to more easily realize the value. Naturally, this move is better the more burn users you have on your team. Unfortunately, there’s not that many, as outside of Magnesium rain and Judgment, only Bonnie applies burn. When you make this move work it can do an incredible amount of damage, and it doesn’t even sacrifice the burn like Cause of Death would. But if you want to access that, you need to build for it, at least partially. This move unfortunately falls flat in fights with singular enemies, meaning you won’t see it as useful against some bosses, the act 3 final boss in particular. It also has trouble against some fat enemy comps, like the exemplar one, and it’s generally less efficient when the burn target has multiple moves per turn, since the burn will tick away quicker. Definitely more of a niche strategy, but damn if it can’t be powerful in the right case. Works particularly well with moves like Controlled burn and on slower comps, but tends to be a bit difficult to fuel for ‘insane value’. With dragonfly setups you can get ‘good value’ from it pretty readily though, particularly if upgraded.

Bonnie is a DoT focused character with a lot of utility. She contrasts Plague Doctor based mostly on that utility: While Plague doctor brought what was primarily healing and good damage to the table, Bonnie keeps the good damage and brings very strong utility options. It is difficult to overrate how effective Smokescreen is as a move when upgraded, and it’s also difficult to understate how useful moves like controlled burn and hearthlight can be in all sorts of situations. Cauterize is a nice and surprisingly reliably available heal, and dragonfly allows strong cleave fire damage to be applied to the front, so long as you’re willing to orient the team around it just a little bit. Even firestarter is frequently useful for any comp that wants to use cleaves in some circumstances, and ransack can be a decent enough pull and dance option. The only real miss in her utility package is Run and Hide, which doesn’t do a whole lot for her in most scenarios other than keeping her alive. Most of her options are fairly generalist utility that can find use for in all sorts of comps, the main exception being backdraft which is a move that asks you to build for it to at least some degree. You won’t frequently use backdraft, but when you decide to, it can be incredibly satisfying.

Running Bonnie is often as simple as putting her in the back 2 ranks, hitting firefly and smokescreen on most turns, and tapping into her utility kit as needed. Arsonist allows for reliable fire output, and smokescreen will shut down any dangerous enemy while opening them up for abuse. Orphan allows for swingier, higher fire output in this case, mostly for rank 4 bonnie, though I would generally argue the reliability of Arsonist wins out. If you want to get more complex than that, may I recommend a dragonfly focused bonnie that is intentionally kept in the front two ranks. A build like that can easily access backdraft against rank 2 or 3, and can put out very high damage against comps that fire works well on. It’s a lot of fun if you enjoy the idea of a glass cannon approach with Bonnie. Bonnie can be as reliable and straightforward or as weird as you want her to be, and as a result she caters to many kinds of playstyles.

Sample Comp

PD (Surgeon) - Bonnie (Arsonist) - GraveRobber (Deadeye) - Dismas (Rogue)

Is this a sane, sensible, consistent composition that will safely win the game with little risk involved? No, no it is not. This is a glass cannon comp that intends to take advantage of speed orders (ideally with some trinkets or inn items) to allow you to output some insane damage to the front 2 ranks. The idea here is fairly easy to understand. Dismas Opens with a Point Blank shot. Audrey then uses Pirouette, putting Dismas back up front. Bonnie usually hits smokescreen turn 1, or perhaps some other decent move or utility move. PD incisions a front line enemy or clears out the corpses, and Dismas uses point blank shot next turn. If audrey goes first, Bonnie can open with dragonfly after Dismas uses PBS, and put him back to rank 1 that way. We use Deadeye Graverobber here with the intention that she will use thrown dagger on comboed targets after the pirouette, and because trying to lunge her back up can get complicated fast. It’s a genuinely helpful way to follow up if anything that Bonnie or Dismas applied combo to is still breathing. The only mitigation this madman comp brings with it is smokescreen and healing (which has thankfully been powered up by surgeon), along with the self sufficiency skills from Audrey, and Take Aim if we count that for the 1 dodge token. This comp is not for the faint of heart: It’s inflexible, it has no tank, it relies on blowing up enemies that may start a fight with dodge or block, and it may get you killed. But damn if it isn’t a hell of a lot of fun. Don’t bring this to act 2 or 3 if you don’t want to run into severe issues in the final fight, unless you’re okay with those issues and want to watch the world burn. If you’ve ever wanted a comp that screams ‘blaze of glory’, try out this one. Run backdraft+ on this for particularly large amounts of potential fun.

The funniest jokes always cut to the quick

Statistics:
29 HP
5 Speed
20 bleed resist, 20 blight resist, 30 burn resist
30 Disease resist, 40 debuff resist, 20 move resist, 20 stun resist
Movement: Up 3, Back 2

Paths

Virtuoso: More HP and Speed, along with providing a unique buff to teammates randomly at turn start that maxes out their stress resist. The cost is lower DoT resists. Virtuoso is effectively Jester+.

Soloist: Higher damage and bleed chance, as well as higher crit on bleed skills. Less HP and Speed to make up for it. The reduced speed actually seems to be intended to encourage Solo -> Finale plays, since it results in a later turn Solo that gives you speed for the next turn, so you link the two up more readily. Despite this fun idea, the speed malus is the worst part of this path.

Intermezzo: All of Jester’s Song Skills apply bleed (meaning, yes, he will bleed friendlies), but they’re all empowered, offering a random extra buff in the case of Ballad and Play Out, and stress resist for inspiring tune. Echoing march keeps the bleed application and also tries to bleed the target when they move each turn. No cost to this one other than the opportunity cost and bleeding your friends: run with Cauterize for fun.

Moveset

Razor’s Wit: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 1-2-3. Deals 3-6/4-7 damage at 10/15 crit. Moves Jester forward 1 rank. Applies combo. Upgraded version gives Sarmenti a dodge token

Razor’s wit is one half of what I tend to refer to as “Jester Engine”, or a specific kind of Combo Engine that rotates the Jester back and forth with this move and the next one. Razor’s wit is the skill that moves him forward while doing it. This one picks up dodge on upgrade, which is nice for a skill that puts him closer to the front, but more importantly it starts with the combo application, unlike the other common Jester engine skill, meaning you never have to upgrade both to get the engine online. You are primarily running this move for the combo application and perhaps the rank correction and the edge in mitigation the upgrade provides, as otherwise you’d use some of his other damage skills.

The ‘Jester Engine’ is what makes Jester a very strong character to run with all sorts of characters, including Audrey, Hellion, Barristan, Leper, Bounty Hunter, and so on. The combo also empowers his own finale, if you choose to use that, and since this one moves him forward, it tends to mesh better with Finale than the next move.

Fade to Black: Used in 3-2-1, Targets 1-2-3. Deals 3-6/4-7 damage at 10/15 crit. Applies Blind. Moves Jester back 1 rank. Upgraded version applies combo.

This is the other half of Jester Engine. It is arguably slightly better when comparing upgraded moves, as blind will always go off so long as the enemy in question lives long enough to attack, whereas his dodge may not, especially if you’re running him in the back. However, the blind does have to go through debuff resist, meaning that if Jester does get attacked it’s worth a little less than razor’s wit+. Comparisons aside, they are two very similar moves, and the use case for this is very similar to Wit. The biggest downside is that you have to upgrade it to get combo, which you’ll often do very early into the run if you plan to use Jester Engine. This combined with Wit creates Jester Engine because Jester can just go back and forth, applying combo forever. The result is a strong, usually virtuoso Jester setup that empowers all kinds of teams and is very easy to understand and employ. Run Jester anywhere, loop these two moves, and hit big fat stuns and big fat damage using that combo.

Slice Off: Used in 3-2, targets 2-3. Deals 3-6/4-7 damage and 3 bleed at 5/10 crit. Upgraded version applies vuln.

Slice Off is a good damage move that is similar in use at first glance to moves like Open Vein and Incision, with one key difference. That difference is the inbred damage transfer on upgraded slice off. When you apply vuln with this move, the effective damage output can be monstrously sizable, allowing characters like Audrey, Dismas, Hellion, and Leper to do immense amounts of direct damage output. In those cases the bleed can be exceptionally helpful, as with this one move he’s setting up a DoT Death’s Door check and damage transfer, along with a bit of direct damage as icing on the cake. He can also just throw this out every turn, unlike other good transfers like Vuln Hex and SmokeScreen. The only thing that holds this move back a little is the targeting range missing out on rank 1 in particular, meaning it can’t set up on as many targets as your beefy frontliners may like. This move can work particularly well in setups that put a double lunge graverobber with virtuoso Jester as her dance partner. He slice offs, she lunges that target, it dies, and next turn due to his high speed he can shuffle her back into 3 with Razor’s wit somewhat consistently for another lunge. It also just generally works with any hero that hits hard, and goes well on Jesters you want to sit in the middle two ranks so that they can access both the backline and frontline sides of their kit.

Battle Ballad: Used in 4-3-2, Targets friendlies in 4-3-2. Moves target forward and gives them a strength token. Upgraded version also clears their combo and has a 15% chance to give them a crit token

Battle Ballad is another damage transfer that is notably worse than Slice Off in several ways. First, we have another case where the damage transfer is 1 strength token, even on upgrade. The crit token is nice when it happens, but can’t be relied on, and only slightly increases the value of the move. While I feel less of a problem using the damage transfer on Sarmenti here as compared to a Barristan’s Command or a PD’s Vapours, he still has to provide quite a bit of damage for this move to stack up against some of his moveset. The real power in this move comes from its ability to correct your party composition and at times to clear combo. A lot of the most annoying moves in the game move your boys around. This is especially common within the Shroud, in fights against cardinals, and when fighting the dogs in beast dens. This move, and the later discussed play-out, allow you to fix your party lineup without sacrificing as much tempo to do so. The combo clear is also very effective against the act 2 boss and the exemplar in particular, as it keeps them from accessing some of their most dangerous skills. If you’re working outside of those situations, there’s probably not a lot of reason to use this unless you want to run a buff and support heavy intermezzo build (in which case this move does become a much better sell and genuinely good if a bit random), but ballad and the later play out are both buttons you‘ll be happy to swap onto the character when the situation seems like it will demand it.

Inspiring Tune: Used in 4-3, targets any friendly with 5+ stress. Heals 2/3 stress, upgraded version removes horror. Cooldown 1 turn

It’s a no nonsense stress heal. There are a few big things going for this compared to the competition, mainly Bolster in particular. The first is that this move hits the magic number without any upgrades, meaning you can use your hard-earned mastery elsewhere if you expect to need to stress heal. The other is the horror removal, which can genuinely be very helpful in certain cases, especially the act 3 boss. Don’t want your tank to melt down early? This move is a great answer to that. The downside is the use requirement; This move isn’t available to the front rank Sarmenti, and only sometimes available to the midrank Sarmenti. It’s easy enough to transition into it after something like a Finale, provided the enemies are still alive, but it’s not available immediately in those cases like a bolster or even raucous might be. The actual total stress heal on this thing is a bit worse than Bolster+ if Barristan is also stressed when he uses it, though it does give you more of a cushion with the 3 stress heal instead of 2. It fills its niche well enough, even though it can have trouble dealing with large amounts of spread out stress.

Harvest: Used in 3-2, targets 2+3. Deals 2-4/3-4 damage and 2/3 bleed at 5 crit. Applies combo 25/33% of the time on hit (Rolled for each enemy individually as usual)

A pretty high value cleave. Its DoT output isn’t quite plague grenade, but it eeks out a little more direct damage and sometimes combos things. It’s not uncommon that you will see an opportunistic stun come out from using this move, especially because its cleave range is palatable for all the different stuns in the game (especially pistol shot). Of course, if you’re running comps where you desire to stun, why not use jester engine instead? In this case, the answer to that is so you can realize the cleave damage and advantage as well, pinging off multiple tokens, setting up useful DoTs, and hitting harder than those jester engine moves. The fact this is a 2+3 cleave means it won’t fall flat against small enemy comps, but it does against certain cultist setups, especially where backline cleaves are superior (mainly mid-rank Deacon/Cardinal and Exemplar). It’s an okay move, and one I’d want to bring into fights like beast dens in particular due to its multi-tool capabilities, but not one that blows the hinges off of most enemy comps the way backline smashing can sometimes do.

Finale: Used in 2-1, Targets any enemy. Deals 6-12/10-13 damage at 10/20 crit. Deals 100% more damage with combo (personal modifier). Jester gains Vuln and daze after use. Cooldown of 2 turns

Ah finale, in a very usable format. Needless to say this move has the best combo token payoff in the game, allowing a combo token to be worth an entire turn and not just what is usually about half of one. It also helps that the damage range on this thing is already supreme, meaning that 100% more damage means at least 6 or 10 damage, depending on if it’s upgraded or not. I’m not even going to complain about it being a personal modifier here, as that means it works phenomenally with smokescreen in particular, and getting more personal modifiers when your damage range is this good isn’t really something to complain about. Now the downside is the debuffs and potentially the movement. The daze in particular limits this as an alpha tool, because Jester will have to move after everyone else does on the next turn. Of course, if they’re all dead by then, who cares? The vuln isn’t usually as much of a problem, because he’s sitting in the back of the party at that point, though if you’re putting him back up front or using the tangle trophy, he might be in some imminent danger after this. I’d rather be vulned than Weakened in this case. Being put in the back means he has access to his extremely powerful encore ability, and to his stress heal as well, though encore is held back a little bit by the daze as a tempo tool. If used smartly, Finale will do a lot of good things in any jester comp where you expect Jester to be near the front, whether he’s there on occasion or always. Good things in this case means ‘a damage range of 20-26’, which is the kind of good thing we all want in our DD2 comps.

Solo: Used in 4-3, Targets any enemy. Applies combo, Jester moves all the way to the front and gains speed and 2 dodge/dodge+ tokens. 1 Cooldown

Solo runs Jester up to the front and gives him speed to use finale next turn. At least, that’s the intention, especially when using Soloist. What this move does in any other case is apply combo and ping off a dodge token from an enemy, which anyone can capitalize on. It also gives him quite a bit of mitigation in the dodge or especially dodge+ tokens, and the ability to gain more mitigation and put out more combo with typically fade to black next turn if you choose not to finale. The downside to this is that it’s taking him out of range to do basically anything other than finale and Fade, at least initially. No encore, no stress heal, no harvest or slice off. Just finale or fade to black. Make sure you do want to use one of those moves next turn, or otherwise be ready to shuffle Jester back one using a friendly’s skill.

Play Out: Used in 4-3-2, targets friendlies in 3-2-1. Moves target back 1, and gives them 1 block/block+ token. Upgrade removes combo on friendly

This move is the mirror to Battle Ballad in the same way Fade to black is the mirror to Razor’s wit. I actually generally like this move a bit better, and that’s for a few reasons. The mitigation on this move allows this move to be used reactively, and the ability to push someone back and remove combo makes this an instant response to Exemplar’s Prelude in particular, both fixing the person’s position, removing the combo, and protecting them in one go. The block+ is, at least to me, a bit more palatable than a strength with a chance at a crit token. A lot of the movement moves from enemies in this game that aren’t shuffling are pulling people in particular, and while you can indirectly fix those pulls with ballad, protecting the guy who just got hit and moving him back is often quite nice. The downside is that this providing defense means that this often ends up as a lower tempo ballad. If you're just correcting positions in particular you should never really need both as a rule, since they’re used from the same ranks and you can always get the same movement result using either of them. Which you choose in those cases is personal preference. You can run both in intermezzo, which means you can buff anyone in the party at any point and respond to the situation with whichever buff you feel is better. Both play out and Ballad can often cause some free relationship boosts, being a buff and move in one go.

Encore: Used in 4-3, targets any friendly besides Jester. Target gets an extra turn immediately. This free turn (like every form of free turn), will not cause things like DoT damage to tick, but will count towards moves coming off cooldown, and will use up Stun and Daze. Jester gains 1 daze and 1/0 weak. Cooldown of 3/2 turns

Encore is the strongest move in the game, by virtue of the fact that it can be any other move that your party has at the cost of Jester’s turn. You can use it to get people off Death’s Door, to deliver the final blow to a creature that needs dying with a big hitter, to guard people, to taunt, to access cooldown abilities faster, or any number of things. You can even use it to use a specific combat item a hero has equipped right when you need it. The cost is the Jester’s tempo, with him gaining a weak and daze token, or just the daze when upgraded. Jester’s direct damage isn’t phenomenal, so him picking up a weak when you’re often using moves like Wit or Slice off for their other effects isn’t a huge deal most of the time. Daze is legitimately annoying for his setup moves. The upgrade knocks this thing's cooldown down, which is the real biggest buff from the upgrade, as more encore means more fun. If you expect your Jester to be standing in the back of your party somewhat often, you should run Encore. There is really no situation where you shouldn’t have it equipped other than him being unable to use it due to his position. Use it strategically and the rewards will be great; don’t just use it to throw out an extra wicked hack or something for no good reason. Even the best move in the game can have little impact when used improperly.

Echoing March: Used in 4-3, targets 1-2-3. Pulls Target 1/2, and debuffs them with a unique debuff that will attempt to pull them 1/2 at the start of their turn. Debuff lasts 3 turns. The move from the debuff can be resisted with move resist, just as normal movement skills can be resisted.

Echoing March is perhaps the most unique movement skill in DD2. Rather than move the target once while dealing a little damage and calling it a day, this skill can move the target a total of 4 times if the debuff sticks. Ever wanted to turn off a Cherub or a Herald? Hit 'em with this (preferably upgraded), and ignore them for the rest of the fight. That is obviously really strong. The downside is that that’s all this move does (with some bleed if you’re running Intermezzo), and the base pull is 1 and not 2, so if you’re trying to use a pull to set up a target for a fast kill, it’s weaker than other options like Daemon’s pull. The upgrade legitimately makes this thing a lot more powerful and reliable, but that’s an investment that won’t pay off in fights where your pull isn’t needed. This move shuts down some enemies, but it’s frequently a bit of an overkill pull effect compared to other pulls in the game with more varied use cases. It does have some extra reliability for getting at least some pull off though, as the debuff goes through debuff resist, meaning if the movement effect fails, the debuff can still make them move when they would go if it sticks. It’s a good move that’s useful when you need a dedicated pull and it’s one of the only skills that can turn off some enemies for several turns on end, though at the cost of some of the utility that many other pulls have.

Jester is primarily a walking toolbox. Having the best combo application loop in the game, a very powerful reliable damage transfer, and the ability to easily correct a shuffled party composition with less tempo loss, it’s hard to imagine a comp where the jester wouldn’t provide at least some value. The biggest cost here is really in Self sufficiency. Outside of Finale, which is genuinely a fantastic damage skill, the Jester doesn’t really knock it out of the park when it comes to things that he can do by himself. Harvest and Slice off are good damage moves, and Fade to Black’s consistent blind combined with Wit’s consistent dodge, along with the occasional solo do allow him to push some strategies alone, but he’s at his best when he’s included in a team for the sake of enabling certain strategies with the combo and vuln that these moves provide. Look no further than Encore as proof of this: the strongest move in the game is on Jester, and all it is is a skill that just lets someone else move again, for free.

One of the best parts of this toolbox is the good speed on Jester, especially with the Virtuoso path. Virtuoso allows Jester to become the only character that outspeeds the Graverobber initially (even if only by a single point), and that makes him incredibly good at setting her up compared to everyone else on turn 1. Of course, this means he’s even more consistent at setting up all your other combo users, like Hellion, Dismas, Barristan, and Leper. If they don’t need it he’s just as happy dropping the biggest combo boost in the game with Finale and stepping into a backrank position.

That isn’t all this toolbox allows. Ballad and Play Out can correct any out of order team comp when facing down annoying fights like Cardinal or Shambler, and echoing march can shut down enemies you’d otherwise find especially annoying. His stress heal is still there as his final bit of utility, and it is just as reliable as it’s always been. Jester’s team based utility is really what defines the character, and tons of strategies in DD2 wouldn’t exist were it not for his Jester Engine and the insane usefulness of moves like Encore and Slice off.

Sample Comp

Bonnie (Arsonist or Orphan) - Audrey (Deadeye) - Jester (Virtuoso) - Leper (Any works, I usually run Tempest)

This is a Combo focused team that makes use of Jester Engine to allow Audrey to decimate Rank 2 and 3 with her thrown dagger in particular. For the most part, this means that you upgrade dagger and fade to black at inn 1, and you simply use fade to black into thrown dagger into razor's wit into thrown dagger, back to back forever. We run Leper here for three reasons. One, he’s another effective character to use with combo, without ever really needing to monopolize it, especially in the Tempest path. Oftentimes when you run a Tempest leper, it’s common to see him not needing combo after the first turn or two. That’s also where bonnie comes in. Bonnie can only set combo every other turn with smokescreen+, but that’s typically enough to enable Leper to do some high damage, especially with Vuln on top, or to further enable Audrey. Leper also brings the corpse clear to this team when Audrey isn’t eating them for HP: Purge is far from my favorite corpse clear, but it works here when it’s needed. This is helped by the fact that this team really doesn’t need tons of corpse clear most of the time, easily mopping up the first 3 ranks. When 4 is left alone, if you choose to leave them be anyway, you can just dump on them with a Dagger (even without combo), firefly, and Finale.

Leper also runs the tanking on this team, using Withstand and Intimidate, especially on turns he isn't set up. This is generally safe even on a tempest leper, though if you’d like to favor his survivability though it may cost you damage, all of his other choices aren’t bad here save for perhaps Monarch. Solemnity combines with Audrey’s general self sufficiency to help make up for the fact that this team isn’t running a dedicated healer, a decision helped by this teams consistent access to both good damage and good mitigation.

This team is a great team to pick up when learning Jester, as it runs him in the mid ranks where you can access both the finale and encore side of his kit without sacrificing his utility or access to slice off in particular. It’s also very easy to learn and to understand just in general, as opposed to more complex comps that may attempt to use moves like Finale more. The least beginner friendly thing about this comp is the lack of dedicated healer, but when run properly you rarely see the need for healing outside of a self heal here and there and the odd cauterize.

To rule, one must learn to serve. Thankfully, serving involves hitting people with a giant sword

Statistics:
52 HP
2 Speed
10 bleed resist, 10 blight resist, 20 burn resist
30 Disease resist, 20 debuff resist, 30 move resist, 30 stun resist
Movement: Up 1

Leper has a Permanent Condition that causes him to start every combat with 1 blind (50% of the time) or 2 blind (25% of the time). The other 25% of the time, he starts with none. I suppose that’s Leprosy for you.

Paths

Tempest: A path that boosts Leper’s Debuff resist, maxes out his disease resist (it adds 100% but caps at 95) and increases Chop damage at the expense of HP and Speed. Leper has basically no speed anyway, so the HP cost is the main relevant point here. In fact, the speed loss helps ensure some trinkets stay active on him when using certain inn items.

Poet: Boosts Stun resist, Move Resist, and his Self heals, at the cost of a fair chunk of damage. Sort of his ‘tank’ path, though to be frank all his paths tank very well as it is. Very good against the Shroud Boss.

Monarch: I’ll have to show the numbers on this one, just to make how it works clear. Leper loses 30% Max HP and 75% damage from his ‘Chop Skills’ (which just means Chop and Chop+, it doesn’t include moves like Hew). However, when he starts a fight with any ‘Cosmic’ type enemies in it (meaning Cultists, Shambler, and final bosses), he gains 50% HP, 2 speed, and 100% damage on Chop. At first glance this may sound like he becomes insanely amazing in Cultist fights, but what’s happening is that it’s all additive, so you have a net gain of 20% HP and 25% Chop damage in those fights. Which is still nice, but not as OP as the game makes it sound. In any fight his intimidate and purge moves will apply a vuln token. This path makes Leper a hew and intimidate brick for normal fights, but quite damn powerful in Cosmic fights. He still tends to have enough HP in normal fights to not be ‘squishy’.

Moveset

Chop: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 6-12/6-16 damage, with 5 crit. Leper ignores blind when target has combo (but still uses it up). Leper gains blind 75/60% of the time (it can be resisted).

Ol’ unreliable, or so the Leper memes go. Get used to that rank requirement for use, because Leper needs to be in the front for just about everything, and certainly everything damage related. This move hits like a brick ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥, with an insane average damage output for a standard damage move. It’s not even as inflexible as some other insane damage moves, being able to hit both 1 and 2. The problem here is Leper’s big gimmick. Leper tends to start fights with blind and tends to give it to himself when using Chop. If you’re not working within the Tempest path, there’s about a 65/50% chance that the blind from this move will stick when you account for his debuff resist. Tempest makes that a whole helluva lot better by bumping his Debuff resist up to about 50%, meaning you’re looking at blind less than a third of the time. You can bump that even higher with certain trinkets or a specific pet if available.

This means you have to be ready to deal with the blind Leper will have at the start of a fight and after using Chop in usually one of a few ways. You either have to combo the enemy you plan on hitting, which is usually the preferred approach, or you have to clear the blind with one of the blind clears in the game, or you have to get leper to carry a combat item that will allow him to clear blind. Obviously this means Milk Soaked Linen and Holy Water work (as they directly clear blind), but anything you’d throw at enemies will also ‘use’ one of the blind tokens.

As combat items aren’t infinite and you typically want Leper to be able to hit things with Chop early in a fight, you do have to spend some energy building around using Chop to some degree. The best part about Leper’s Chop as a combo move, however, is that it requires less maintenance than so many other combo characters. Compare it to, let’s say, Wicked Hack. Wicked Hack will do a little more damage on average than Chop with Combo, but it always needs Combo to realize that damage. Leper only needs it when he’s experiencing blind. This means that combo applications from characters that you often want doing other things, like Bonnie or certain Alhazred setups, can be enough to support this move on their own, especially with a Tempest Leper. Since it revolves around dealing with his blind, the combat item and blind cure answer also work as effective backup solutions to the problem, when there is no backup to not having combo for wicked hack or thrown dagger.

Purge: Used in 1, targets 1. Deals 2-4/3-5 damage at 5 crit. Knocks the target all the way to the back, and clears corpses (even on miss). Upgraded purge applies combo.

Purge is Leper’s Corpse clear, and one that also serves as the biggest knockback move in the game. There are certain enemies that you can turn off with this, though its knockback is often hampered by its corpse clear. On the flip side, having the corpse clear can be necessary for Leper, in the absence of other corpse clearers. Otherwise he might not be able to reach enemies with anything other than intimidate.

This is one of the weakest corpse clears in the game, unfortunately, and the reason for that is twofold. One, the move itself only does something to someone standing in front. Needless to say, if you’re running Leper, there’s a large chance that the thing standing in front when you use this move to clear corpses will be a corpse. So the move will usually do nothing other than clear corpses and spend a blind token if he has one. Two, the move is attached to Leper. Leper is slow and you want him to hit things in the face very hard when possible. Having a corpse clear on someone that is not slow and does not hit single targets like a truck is generally far better. This way the whole team, and leper especially, won’t have to wait on that corpse clear. This move exists if your comp doesn’t come with another way to clear corpses, but it’s generally only a good choice in cases where you have no other option. If you’re about to experience a fight where having a knockback 3 move for the front target is useful though, then this move can shine. There aren’t a ton of fights in the game like that, and fewer still where you can’t just kill that target with a Chop, but if you find one then this move will be great.

Withstand: Used in 3-2-1, Targets Self. Leper gains 2 Block/Block+ tokens and 2 taunt tokens, as well as 15/25 of every DoT resist and move resist. He also gains 1 block per turn. Use limit of 2, Cooldown 3 turns

A great tanking move, Withstand works sort of like Bulwark’s stand fast, but with some noticeable differences. You’re getting DoT and move resist with this, both things that Leper in particular appreciates. It doesn’t exactly spin the math in his favor, but similar to Ounce you can realize some definite value from those buffs. The taunt ensures the initial block tokens are spent, and the further block tokens (that sadly do not upgrade), will provide even more mitigation. This move is good value, and it’s hard to make a Leper that isn’t going to get hit in the face sometimes, so having a way to get him hit in the face for less damage is nice, even on the smackiest of tempest lepers.

Solemnity: Used in 2-1, Targets self. Heals the Leper 33/50% when below 33% HP, and reduces stress by 2/3. Use limit of 2

It’s the best self heal and self stress heal in the game, in that its value is immediately recognized and is very high. A 50% HP heal no questions asked is an insane amount of value, and the stress heal doesn't care about Leper’s current stress, making it very easy to keep stress all the way down at 0. This move is only held back by its use limit, and the only thing that does is prevent immortality. Run this on every Leper. Poet effectively makes that self heal 50/75%, which is completely unnecessary but damn powerful. The immediate payoff from this move in many ways makes Leper the best stress tank as well, though mainly in the short term and for getting back to 0 when compared to Raucous and Bolster. It’s also an entirely selfish stress heal, unlike the options from those two, restricting its value somewhat.

Reflection: Used in 2-1, Targets self. Clears Leper’s blind and combo and reduces stress by 1/2. Upgraded version gives 20% debuff resist. Cooldown of 1/0

This move is to blind what purge is to corpses. If you have a better way to deal with Leper’s blind or stress, then you’re usually better off using that than spending a turn using this. However, there is no use limit on this, and the debuff resist does allow him to pick up blind less often for a few turns. It’s a very low tempo move, but similar to solemnity it also does just allow Leper to 0 out his stress. The combo clear is very useful on Exemplar and act 2 in particular, and the debuff resist will also serve in the latter. Switching this move on for those fights isn’t that bad of a play, but for normal play you mainly equip this if you have no other good answer to blind and aren’t willing to flip a coin on him hitting and re-blinding himself repeatedly. Or if you just really want that extra stress heal.

Hew: Used in 2-1, targets 1+2. Deals 3-7/4-9 damage at 5 crit. Same combo effect as Chop. Same blind self application as Chop.

This move is a 2 target cleave that does more damage than other two target cleaves, but has the same weaknesses as Chop. The good news is that blind will be ignored if either target has combo, meaning you can use this to hit a guy that doesn’t have combo if his friend has it. You will use this move a lot on Monarch because this is not a ‘Chop’ skill and will therefore be a better staple damage move than Chop will be outside of Cosmic fights. Otherwise its main application is to prevent damage waste or very rarely as a defensive token pinger. If you expect to be fighting fights where Chop will constantly overkill or almost kill stuff, then running Hew alongside it can smooth out Leper’s play. You will usually just use someone else to smooth out the damage in the event of an almost-kill, but this is an option all the same. The ping option is worth considering, but using a move that might blind leper to do that is a little bit of a hard sell when compared to literally every other cleave in the game.

Revenge: Used anywhere, Target self. Gain 2/1 vuln (he can resist this). Gain strength on turn start. Upgraded version also clears weak and provides crit 15% of the time on turn start.

Revenge is a slow buff that does pay for itself over time, especially if you use the upgraded version when Leper is afflicted with weak. This move, compared to moves like Take Aim+, is very slow. To realize the positive value gained from this move, leper is usually going to have to swing the full 3 times. That means that outside of bosses or beefy fights, this move is generally a bit of a no-go based on tempo alone. He’ll also have to hit all 3 times, so you’d better have someone to combo for him and to handle enemy dodge. Picking up Vuln also sucks for a character that's usually sitting up front. This move sort of locks him into swinging with specifically Chop or Hew for several turns, otherwise he’ll waste the strength buff if you decide to use a move like intimidate, break, or bash. All of that being said, making hit things hard man hit things harder is good when it pays off. This isn’t even the slowest buff in Leper’s Arsenal either!

Intimidate: Used in 1, Targets any enemy. Deals 1-2/2-3 damage at 5 crit. Gives the Leper two taunt tokens, and applies 2 weak. Upgraded version ignores and removes Stealth.

Intimidate is a great utility move on a character whose utility is otherwise very selfish. It pings, it taunts, it applies weak. It even counters stealth if you need that, though only on upgrade. What’s more is that this debuff can target anything, a privilege that’s pretty rare for decent debuffs, and it even deals a bit of damage. The damage means you can finish off exceptionally low enemies and that it also pings off block on top of the dodge you’d expect it to ping off. It doesn’t generate blind, so it’s a way for Leper to discard a blind token while generating taunt as well, meaning it’s effectively a better tempo blind cure than Reflection is (unless he has 2 blind). The stealth counter can be genuinely helpful in Act 1 in particular and against certain comps with a lot of stealth, and it does often come up since Leper goes last meaning the stealth enemies will have already stealthed up. Finally, this move means that Leper can kill things by yelling at them, which is probably the real best part of this move.

The monarch version of this also applies vulnerable, which is a very helpful damage transfer on a class who’s staple damage move is turned off for 80% of fights. This bonus effect keeps this move a staple on a leper that you might feel a little afraid to use it on otherwise. A great pick for any Leper that you want to tank or have some utility in targets, token pinging, and debuff application, though its rank 1 requirement makes it difficult to run with Hellion in particular.

Ruin: Used in 3-2-1, Targets self. Gives Leper a unique buff for 3 turns that increases his damage by 20% every time he gets hit for... 3 turns. Mastered version bleeds him for 2. Use limit 2, Cooldown 3 turns

So there are a ton of major problems with this move. You might be tricked into thinking that the 20% damage buffs all have individual timers, but this isn't true and is the biggest problem with this move. You see, if that was the case, getting hit once per turn with this would create a marginally better return than Revenge over a long set of turns, as you'd realize 60% damage per hit Leper takes. You also wouldn't have a downside aside from having to get smacked. The problem is that the Damage buffs are all lumped into one buff, and will all expire together based off of whenever you got the first damage buff.

Ideally, for this to compete with Revenge, that means you'll need to get hit 3 times in quick succession (or 2 with the bleed from Ruin+), and the more you get hit on top of that the better. The problem is that there's no great way to redirect this damage into you unless you use taunt, which wastes a turn of the buff unless you didn't get hit at all before using the taunt.

So is this move competitive with revenge? The answer is: It depends. In fights where he can get smacked 2-3 times before his next turn comes up guaranteed, it's better. In fights where he can't do that, it's probably usually worse. I'd say Revenge is usually easier to use, but this move tends to possess better upside if you can make those things happen. If you really want to use this, Noisemakers or Encore can be useful in particular, as both allow him to direct more damage towards him, and Encore actually allows you to realize more return, where it doesn't with Revenge or strength tokens in general.

Break: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 4-7/4-10 damage at 5 crit. Ignores and removes all of the target’s block. Hits Leper with blind just like Chop and Hew does, but only the upgraded version ignores it with combo.

This move will definitely do a little more damage than Chop on enemies with Block. Just a little though, which is why it gets to remove all the block too. If you don’t have a more efficient way to deal with block, such as DoT moves, and you’re really afraid of running into soldiers in the tangle or something like an Evangelist, then this move will function. Though frankly, even Leper already has a good general utility move that performs well against block in Intimidate. Probably the most useful in the tangle in particular, or against enemies like Ghoul, where you can expect a bunch of stacked block. This move is really held back by it carrying the same blind effect as Hew and Chop, and the fact that it can’t ignore the blind until you upgrade it is a bit of a kick in the shins for a move you only want to use quite rarely. Not an include in most situations, though it is at worst inoffensive, being a bit of a worse Pick to the Face in most cases. I’d say most comps will just use intimidate for the role this move has instead, if it needs an answer from leper for that kind of situation at all.

Bash: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 2-4/3-5 damage at 5 crit. Applies Daze and Immobilize to the target, and immobilizes Leper. Upgraded version applies combo.

This move has one fun niche with Barristan specifically, as a Daze stun combination. If you can get Leper to have a little more speed, and upgrade Barristan’s Rampart and this, then you can combine the two to effectively attempt to stun a target twice, provided the initial daze lands of course. Since they both have low speed, they’ll tend to go close to each other in sequence most of the time. Is that a niche worth building specifically for? Probably not. But because this move dazes and combos, and rampart stuns on combo and dazes, this fun little interaction exists.

Outside of that specific application, this move is alright for Locking Leper into place, enabling daze stuns, and immobilizing enemies. Immobilize is at its best in the Foetor lair boss in particular, being useful both against the boss and on leper himself. It, like intimidate, won’t generate blind, so you can just throw this out for its immobilize and potential on hit effects. The immobilize lets this work with double lunge comps and anything else you need leper to stand still for. Also, the daze and combo go well together, allowing Leper himself to follow up on the target with a combo Chop next turn if needed before the enemy would go, or just to enable someone else. None of that is good enough to make this move a staple or auto include, as this move is still low on damage and only provides debuffs with fairly niche applications, but the effects do at least have niches worth considering for some comps.

Leper is a character that requires some amount of team building to be about him, but not necessarily to the same degree that a character like Audrey might. Sure, you do want to provide him with combo, especially early into a fight, so that he can chop away the frontline with relative ease, but as he sheds the blind and taps into his utility skills, mainly Intimidate, you’ll find that your attention is less required. Indeed, The funny thing about Leper is that half of his kit is dedicated to selfishly dealing with his own problems, if you don’t have a better solution. Purge will clear corpses, Reflection will clear his blind, and solemnity will heal him. The most generous thing he does aside from cleaving enemies in half is the weak he applies with intimidate. Ever wondered why Monarch calls on him to ‘serve’ and powers up Intimidate and purge specifically? It’s probably because those are the least selfish moves he has in his entire kit.

That selfishness does not come without tremendous upside though. Revenge can provide a decent level of extra output in certain fights, and Ruin allows Leper to reach extraordinary heights in damage for very long fights, if he gets hit a lot. Withstand is a great mitigation and tanking move held back mostly by its cooldown and use limit, and solemnity is perhaps the best self heal in the game. The only argument against that might be Adrenaline rush, if you give Adren time to work. But Adren doesn’t come with the stress heal, and even Raucous’ stress heal has a floor that Leper does not suffer from. In many ways Solemnity and at times reflection make Leper the best stress tank in the game, as other characters can not handle their own stress to the degree that a simple press of solemnity often can.

Really, the biggest oddballs here are Bash and Break. Outside of specific and in bash’s case funny niches, it’s pretty rare to get all that much use out of those moves. Bash is rather special though, being the only way to immobilize enemies in the game, outside of combat items. That is a legitimately helpful option in specific fights, and some of those fights are forseeable enough to slap it on. Break is almost always just a poorer Pick to the Face, only really serving its niche in the tangle and against Ghoul and the Cannon, and you can’t predict the latter two. Bash can always be run as a utility option in place of intimidate for rank 2 lepers, and it does pick up enough value to be good in that role.

All-in-all, Leper’s ability to serve as a great tank and damage dealer in one package allows him to be a key member in all sorts of comps, though this dual usability is held back somewhat by the maintenance he does require.

Sample Comp

Occultist (Ritualist) - Jester (Virtuoso or Soloist) - Vestal (Confessor) - Leper (Tempest)

Another nice and bulky comp that makes up for the slight bulk that Tempest Leper misses out on with the inclusion of a front rank Confessor Vestal. The key to this team is not just in serving Leper, which this team does do quite well with combo, but in the deep utility kit it can reach into as a whole.

Leper’s job here is probably the simplest out of everyone. He hits things. Very hard. I mean, that’s what you want in a Leper setup, isn’t it? He also uses intimidate and Withstand to engage in some tanking. This process is supported by the inclusion of a ritualist occultist in particular. Ritualist clears corpses and pulls soon to be dead enemies up front so Leper can enact the ‘soon to be dead’ part. He also provides some mitigation in this slower roll comp with Curse, and a phenomenal damage transfer in Vuln hex. It might be worth including Stab here, if you intend on letting Jester spin backwards to use fade to black. Jester’s placement here is key in allowing him to use his best backline abilities (encore especially), along with Slice off in particular. Slice off acts as another transfer (when upgraded) and bleed enabler, and his ability to hop forward can enable a finale when you need it. Otherwise, he’s pressing Jester Engine as needed to enable Leper, or to apply blind and gain dodge.

Vestal adds to the debuff arsenal with Hand of Light+, a cleave debuff that also strengthens her for the inevitable turn 3 mace bash. The stress heal and guard from sanctuary is what solidifies the bulky nature of the team. Illumination is utilized to help clear all sorts of tokens from problematic enemies. Your last slot can either go to comfort, as the general pick, or Ministrations, when you expect to run into Stuns or high amounts of DoT damage.

The glue that holds the frontline together is Leper’s self sustain and Vestal’s guard in particular. It is very hard for the group to crumble, even in cases where faster comps may be preferable, due to how well the duo can soak up damage and abuse. The most dangerous thing about this is Sanctuary’s inability to stress heal Vestal herself. There is also some backup healing with Occultist, with the ever unreliable wyrd.

This ends up being another slow roll comp that lets you see some big numbers from Leper as you shut enemies down with your immense toolkit and ability to burst out damage to the front ranks. The main downside is that this comp does stray a little bit into ‘All your eggs in one Leper’ territory. If you want to balance that out a bit, one could swap out Jester and/or Alhazred for someone else, potentially a damage dealer like Dismas or a very reliable DoT applier like Bonnie or PD. They all work well here.

Weaponizing eldritch horrors beyond my comprehension has never been so easy.

Statistics:
31 HP
5 Speed
30 bleed resist, 30 blight resist, 30 burn resist
40 Disease resist, 40 debuff resist, 20 move resist, 20 stun resist
Movement: Up 2, Back 2

Paths

Ritualist: A path that empowers Occultist’s Healing and curse skills (Weakening Curse and Vuln hex). The downside is that he gains vuln at turn start 33% of the time. One of Alhazred’s backline paths.
Warlock: Stronger ranged skills and Unchecked Power at turn start 33% of the time, at the cost of HP. The other backline path for Alhazred.
Aspirant: More HP, a strong Anamnesis, and stronger melee skills. To make up for this, his curses are weaker and he has less debuff resist. The main choice for frontline Occultists, unless you also want to run his curses.

Occultist has a special personal token: The Unchecked Power token.

He mainly generates these through stabbing things with combo or finishing things off with stab+/randomly with binding shadows+. These stack up to 3 and don’t disappear over time. They don’t count as positive or negative, and are used to empower or enable several of Occultist’s skills. They sometimes apply burn to Alhazred on turn start. They’re generally ‘valued’ at about half a turn each, though the value does vary depending on use case.

Moveset

Sacrifical Stab: Used in 3-2-1, Targets 1-2-3. Deals 3-6/4-8 damage at 15/20 crit. Occultist gains UP when hitting an enemy with combo. Upgraded version also grants UP on kill.

A staple damage move with good reach and usability, stab can smooth out thresholding and contribute to rank 3 sniping. While it isn’t his only option for hitting rank 3, it is a rather consistent one that is accessible on any brand of Occultist so long as you run him in at least rank 3. The only time this use requirement can really be a problem is if you’re running a Ritualist or Warlock in specifically rank 4, and the main reason to choose 4 over 3 for that is either because you don’t want to run stab, or because you need someone else in 3. In those cases you will miss this move as a generic damage option.

We do need to talk about the UP side of this move. Spending combo to produce UP isn’t great, because it’s an even trade that you don’t recognize the value from until you spend that UP. It’s better to get a damage bonus or a stun because those things pay off immediately, meaning the trade for the combo makes a lot more sense. Occultist is going to have to either use two combo tokens or kill an enemy with combo with the upgraded form of this. The latter tends to be far more palatable, as it lets him access his UP immediately and doesn’t waste the combo since the enemy died. Though in that case, you’re killing stuff, so you’ll have less targets to dump the powerful moves on to. UP in general is a bit of a conflicted mechanic, as we will see when discussing his other moves.

Abyssal Artillery: Used in 4-3, Targets 3+4. Deals 3-6/4-7 damage at 5/10 crit. Applies combo 25/33% of the time. Upgraded version stuns both targets by spending 2 UP

So we have the first use case of UP here, and it’s thankfully attached to a genuinely useful and powerful backline cleave option. The damage here is close to a move like Stab, and it hits both targets. It isn’t usually enough to take care of the backline by itself, but when combined with moves like grenade and iron swan, it can produce a lot of value. Particularly useful in the tangle boss fight. The combo effect is nice when running Occultist with Dismas or Audrey in particular, for the chance at extra damage or a stun, though it is inconsistent like other combo cleave moves.

The UP effect is something we need to talk about, as it can be really powerful. The big problem with it is the set-up involved. Getting 2 UP tokens takes at least 1 turn of work, with either Chaotic offering (which we will see later), or a kill with Stab on a comboed enemy. In typical enemy mashes, it’s very hard to realize this double stun. When you can it is probably the biggest payoff you can get off of Unchecked Power when you need it, and it’s on a move you genuinely want to use outside of that niche. Abyssal artillery isn’t a move you’ll run on every occultist, but it serves very well within those backline smashing comps in particular. Typically if you want to use this move a lot, you’ll be best served with a Warlock occultist, due to the damage and free UP.

Weakening Curse: Used anywhere, Targets any enemies. Applies combo and 1/2 weak. Upgraded version removes crit tokens from target. Cooldown 1 turn

Weakening Curse is a pretty good debuff that mainly loses out when compared to the powerful Smokescreen in particular. Unlike Smokescreen, this move applies weak and no vuln. This does mean that normally the value for this one is lower, but working with Weak does carry some advantages. Weak isn’t ever ignored by enemies the way that blind can be, meaning that this move will affect enemies like the tangle boss or the act 2 and 3 boss when they use certain (often very powerful) moves. Weak is also just generally very reliable, being a low variance form of mitigation. Curse also has a slightly better range attached to it, though it is very rare that you want to target rank 4 with weak in particular.

The combo does allow Alhazred to set himself up for UP from his stab moves, but more frequently you’ll be using it to set up another character on the team. It is not his best set up skill, but that’s not because it is bad at the job; he simply has two other very good setup skills. This move is a good and reliable debuff that you’ll see run all the time with Ritualist in particular, and will often find room for outside of Aspirant Occultists.

Wyrd Reconstruction: Used anywhere, Targets any friendly below 33% HP. Heals from 0-33/0-50% HP, completely randomly. Applies 3/2 bleed 50% of the time. Always crit heals when used with two UP (the crit heal does not affect bleed chance).

Wyrd reconstruction is back in all of its ‘crit 0 bleed’ glory. The best thing about Wyrd, and the worst thing, is its usability. This move can be used anywhere with no setup to put out some healing. The actual healing average you get out of this move is very low considering the high variance, especially on the unupgraded version. In addition to this problem, Wyrd is held back heavily by its thresholding. Even though its average heal is very weak, its threshold is set to 33%. You don’t want to be using high variance heals when characters are below 33% HP as a general rule, because they're at risk of dying.

The crit heal from UP still has to deal with its low roll potential, but it does mean that you can throw out a game changing heal every now and then with some decent luck. This move won’t crit on its own apparently or with crit tokens, so that’s the only way you can access those heights. Ritualist Occultist buffs this thing, and while it can still low roll, it does end up feeling a lot more reliable with healing boosts. The bleed allows this thing to combo with Cauterize in particular. Don’t run this move as your only heal, unless you know your comp shouldn’t need that many heals or it's the only option you have. It’s a backup heal that you use when you need it, and it works well within this niche and especially on Occultists that won’t be using their Unchecked power in other ways. It’s not that uncommon to build up 2 UP in a long fight and to just hold it for a big Wyrd if you need it, if you have no other compelling thing to dump that UP in to.

Daemon’s Pull: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 3-4. Deals 2-5/3-6 damage at 5 crit. Pulls Target 2/3, applies combo, and clears corpses. Upgraded version stuns target with 2 UP.

Daemon’s pull is the best pull in the game, bar none. It deals a little damage, has a large pull attached to it (even unupgraded), applies combo, and wipes out corpses. That’s a lot of utility in this one little package. What’s better is how this utility synergizes.

Applying combo to a squishy backliner you pull up to disrupt is possibly the best part about this move, because it immediately sets the poor target up for a strong followup from several different heroes, or a stun. This allows this move to give comps that are mostly frontline focused the ability to efficiently snipe backline targets, without any upgrades to this move. It also clears corpses immediately for those teams, meaning oftentimes the move part of this move won’t even need to land to bring the target into murder range. Tons of backline enemies are also heavily disrupted by being pulled up to the front, and this move will pull that off unupgraded without any more than 1 resist roll against even rank 4 enemies. This thing also has supreme usability, being useful on every Occultist kit due to our ability to run it in 2. Unless you decide to run occultist in 1 for some reason, or you’re running a comp that will just kill the backline instantly anyway, there’s rarely a reason not to run this move. Hell, it’s still often useful for that disruption and occasionally the corpse clear in the latter case anyway.

The only time this move falls flat is in boss fights, where pulls are rarely all that handy. Though frankly it’s still useful in the Sprawl boss for rearranging the books. The UP stun for this move is also a little weird considering you could stun both backliners for the same cost with Arty. But it’s there if you’re running this without Arty (which isn’t that uncommon), and you want to dump the UP you have into a stun. You often won’t have access to that part, however, as this move stays strong throughout the whole game unupgraded, meaning it’s usually a low priority upgrade.

Vulnerability Hex: Used anywhere, Targets any enemy. Ignores and removes all dodge, applies 1/2 vuln tokens. Cooldown 1 turn

Speaking of powerful utility, Vulnerability hex is in many ways the best damage transfer in the game against targets with low or middling debuff resist, especially if upgraded. It ignores and clears dodge which is extremely useful for damage transfers, as it allows the comp to quickly set up against the dodgy enemy in question while also providing other value. It then just applies some vuln, for big hitters like Leper or Hellion or Dismas to take advantage of.

A large amount of power from this move is due to its use case and the character it’s attached to. Alhazred’s damage, outside of burning stars, isn’t usually all that stellar. His toolkit often already excels at finishing off weak targets and setting up enemies. So a move like this is very nice to include on Alhazred. You can also run him anywhere with it, similar to Smokescreen on Bonnie, meaning it doesn’t have the awkwardness a move like Double Cross may suffer from. It then provides a very simple and often powerful effect. Vuln is usually better than strength due to how the damage calculation works, which is a further point in this move’s favor. This move is a simple and effective damage transfer that allows Ritualist Occultist in particular to shine even brighter as a utility character. It is naturally a lot worse if you don’t have big direct damage hitters to take advantage of Vuln or in cases where the enemy has notably high debuff resistance.

Binding Shadows: Used in 3-2-1, targets 1-2-3. Deals 3-6/4-8 damage at 10/15 crit. Moves Alhazred forward 1 rank, and has the same combo effect as Stab. Upgraded version gives free UP 50% of the time on use.

Binding Shadows is a move that is very comparable to Stab. Its use requirement and targeting is the same, the damage profile is almost entirely identical, and it even picks up the same combo effect. It generates UP on use when upgraded instead of just on kill, but only half the time, meaning it can be pretty slow for that job if you get unlucky.

So, the reason you use Binding Shadows is normally to take advantage of its key difference: The forward 1 movement. This allows you to build typically Aspirant Occultists that function as one of the dancers in double lunge comps or Seraph Vestal comps, while building up some free UP for use as needed. This move is also quite nice with the Tangle trophy since you can just use it instead of stab if you don’t expect a kill. Outside of those niches though, you will usually just prefer to run Stab so you don’t have to deal with the movement, unless you’re running a rank 1 occultist for some reason. It could serve as a correction move for front rank occultists as well, though running it alongside Stab for just this use seems a little iffy, especially considering the fact that Occultist has good base movement anyway, and the fact you can’t use this move in 4 for some reason.

Malediction: Used anywhere, Targets anything. Can only be used with 2 or more UP Tokens.
Deals 1-2/2-3 damage at 5 crit. Applies a unique debuff that causes the target to take 2 random DoT whenever they’re hit by anyone and anything. This can be resisted. The upgraded version also tries to reduce the target’s DoT resist, and this can also be resisted.

So now we enter the ‘UP only’ side of his kit, which unfortunately makes up an entire 3 moves. Unlike the bonus effects that some of his other moves have, these moves are only accessible if he has the UP to pay for them with. So you’d expect them to be some powerhouse moves, right? Well, kinda. Malediction is probably the most niche of the lot.

Malediction’s debuff is not permanent, meaning that it ironically does the best job at applying DoT to targets that aren’t taking multiple turns. Do you know what DoT damage excels against, typically? Targets that take multiple turns. So there’s already an inbred anti synergy there. Of course, this move can also fail to apply entirely which means you basically just passed Alhazred’s turn. Seeing high value from this move is pretty challenging outside of tanky bosses or slow big enemies. Even in those cases, it’s hard to realize all that much value from the DoT application if you’re doing decent damage with the team, except for one specific combination. Cause of Death works very well with this move, because it allows you to turn all the DoT damage into damage quickly against those slower targets. The hit from CoD will also apply some DoT, so they’ll be checked for Death’s Door if they go next too. Sadly, outside of those niche circumstances, this move will rarely see usability due to the many hoops required to make it a good enough option, except against truly large bosses. That may change if the debuff ever becomes permanent or has a round based timer, which I think isn’t unreasonable given we have Ruin in the game, but until then this is probably the least useful out of all of Occultist’s UP only moves.

Anamnesis: Used in 2-1, Targets all enemies. Requires 2 or more UP to use. Deals 1-2/1-3 damage at 5 crit, and applies 3/4 bleed.

Anamnesis is a large cleave move that will do a lot of DoT damage if it has 4 targets to hit. That’s really the kicker here. You need two UP to use this move, meaning you have to set up to use it through some means. At the earliest that means this move will go off on turn 2. Most comps will try to start killing things pretty early into a fight, to build up advantage and win the fight. So the value from this move is constantly ticking down in most cases, which isn’t what you want for a move you have to set up for.

Otherwise, this move is the only omnicleave that checks both block and dodge. Which isn’t as useful as a niche as you’d think, because dodge tends to get spread around more than block. Magnesium rain does nearly the same DoT damage as this (the same if Paracelsus has the favorite toy memory), and clears corpses without setup, so unless you really need the extra bit of direct damage or to ping off a bunch of block, Anamnesis is a pretty rare pick. You can often use this move fairly consistently on Aspirant builds with binding Shadows and lots of stabbing in general, and when used in this way it is definitely okay but rarely stellar outside of some slower comps. It can be particularly effective on the act 1 boss in particular depending on kill order.

The Burning Stars: Used in 4-3-2, Targets any enemy. Requires 2 or more UP to use.
Deals 8-16/12-18 damage at 10/15 crit. Ignores block and applies combo

Finally, a move where setting up doesn’t seem that insane. The unupgraded version of this is already around as strong as two stabs and applies combo while ignoring block, and the upgraded version is more value. The value climb from this isn’t as insane as it could probably get away with being, with this move coming out turn 2 at the earliest, but the addition of combo does legitimately make this a pretty decent value offer.

The burning meatball is mainly held back by that use requirement slowing down your ability to use it. This move is sort of the opposite of Howling End in that sense: they both do a lot of damage, but Howling end weakens you in the future and this move weakens you in the past (if you use Chaotic Offering to use it anyway). This one does have a much better range and that combo attached to it though. I wouldn’t generally build around this move, mainly because I think Chaotic Offering is awful, but it is a genuinely nice addition to the moveset if you can fit it and if you expect to generate some UP over the course of a fight, especially a longer one. This move can particularly be nice as a backup option in the Act 2 fight, though it generally is best used in longer fights to begin with as you’re more likely to realize its value without any especial input from Alhazred. Not an auto include, but generally at its best on Warlock Occultists or Occultists that you expect to feed UP via either his stabs or Chaotic Offering… if you elect to use Offering.

Chaotic Offering: Used anywhere, targets Self. Alhazred loses 15/10% HP and gains a random side effect. He gains 1 UP token and for the next 3 turns gains another UP at turn start. Cooldown of 3/2

Random Side Effects Include: 2 Burn (20%), Shuffle (18%), Weak (18%), Daze (18%), Taunt (18%), Stun (4%), Stealth (4%). Meaning that yes, 96% of the time it’s bad.

Chaotic Offering is one of the lowest tempo moves in the game, only really beaten out by Ruin in my opinion. This is really for two major reasons. One, it does nothing good when you use it. It’s the equivalent of passing a turn to allow yourself to use a UP move next turn. Two, the random side effect. The HP cost is frankly a bit whatever: It can be irritating but it’s not a big deal in most circumstances. The random side effect, however, has a 40% chance of trying to do something that will effectively neuter what you’re trying to do (possibly higher if you count the Shuffle as well, though all these effects are resistable). Weak will weaken that burning meatball you want to do, forcing you to wait another turn and use something like stab to clear it (though it doesn’t mess up Malediction or Anamnesis). Daze will force him to go at turn end which really sucks after you just spent the one turn you did have setting up to kill or do a lot of damage next turn, as it means you can’t kill something before it moves. Stun will obviously just skip his turn. The shuffle will ruin burning meatball if it puts him up front, or anamnesis if it pushes him back.

The actual value from the buff is good, as it effectively realizes something like 2 turns over its lifetime for the one turn cost (probably a bit better if using moves like Stars that tend to feel a bit more than double), but the caveats here are often hard to swallow considering you want to make this do something big after opening this. If you really do just want to access moves like Stars and Malediction quickly for a specific strategy then this move will allow you to do that. It’s probably the most tolerable with Malediction strategies in particular, though Malediction itself is rather niche. The fact that it anti synergizes with the most generally useful UP move in his arsenal, Stars, the most is a particularly large problem. I generally don’t like Occultist builds that try to make this move work, as they’re usually both random and rather slow, but it is an option (and honestly a very potent one) despite my dislike of this move.

Alhazred is a character with a very powerful utility kit that doesn’t entirely sacrifice damage to have access to that kit. The big winners on his character are his curses and pull. Weakening curse is a reliable mitigation move that applies combo, Vuln hex is an excellent damage transfer in a variety of situations, and Daemon’s pull is the strongest movement skill in the entire game, clearing corpses, applying combo, and putting out its excellent pull all in one package. His reach and damage are pretty good too, with both of his stabs reaching into 3 and Arty working as a good backline cleave. His emergency heal isn’t anything to sneeze at, though it is definitely not something you should entirely rely on if you expect to need a dedicated healer.

The most interesting and perhaps underutilized part of his kit is that UP gimmick. When you get it for free, UP provides a fair bit of extra value, but the fact that he usually relies on combo tokens or Chaotic offering to get it means that it’s fairly rare that you see that side of his kit used outside of long fights. That’s really a shame, because it means that a third of his kit is going underutilized because you simply can’t use it that well in many situations. Stars is the biggest standout due to the nice pay off and the fact that it’s a single target damage move: It falls off in general fights less than the others and provides obvious powerful value. Anamnesis sees some use, especially within Aspirant, but the fact that it requires a front-rank Alhazred and works as an omni-cleave keeps it as a bit of a niche pick that favors slower comps in particular. Malediction can be hilarious when used specifically for its strategy, but it’s not consistent and reliable, and it is held back by its debuff timer. That's a real shame considering you have to spend UP to use it at all.

The other weirdest side of his kit is the almost identical melee moves. Stab and Shadows have nearly identical damage profiles, but their usability is often very different due to the move on Shadows. Shadows allows Occultist to participate in dance teams outside of rank 4, and is otherwise usually just ignored in favor of the normal stab without the tangle trophy. Stab is generally a staple just for the reach and ability to finish things off when you need him to: A ritualist without stab will often miss having it, and it often feels like a must have for any non rank 4 Alhazred.

Generally, if I recommended Alhazred, it would be for that utility side of his kit, or occasionally for the dance potential with binding shadows combined with his pull. It’s consistent and powerful. But if you really want to make the UP side work, you can make it work. It’s just that there’s a lot of caveats when using Offering in particular that help repress what is otherwise an interesting part of Alhazred’s kit.

Sample Comp

Runaway (Arsonist/Orphan) - Occultist (Ritualist) - Leper (Tempest) - Hellion (Ravager)

This is a pretty run of the mill team setup that attempts to make strong use of Occultist’s utility tools in particular. Pull not only brings a squishy enemy into the forefront, but its combo effect empowers both Leper and Hellion, meaning that you’ll see the pull come out first in quite a few fights. We run him in 3 here specifically so he can access stab in particular, and the plan is to run Stab and pull alongside with both of his curses and his heal. Bonnie is chosen because she provides general mitigation and DoT value along with Cauterize in particular. Cauterize gets a lot of use here when healing is needed, given the self bleed from Hellion and the bleed from Wyrd. The Smokescreen + Weakening curse combination means that this team has access to two of the best no nonsense mitigation debuffs in the game, and vuln hex+ along with the vuln from smokescreen provide a lot of value when a team is running both Tempest Leper and Ravager Hellion, characters who will tend to go later in the turn and who really appreciate the extra damage.

The tanking for this team is generally solid. Hellion handles the lion's share with her self sufficiency and Toe, and Leper steps in as needed or wanted with Withstand, or intimidate if Hellion steps back with Howling End. Runaway helps smooth out any damage with Firefly in particular and can clear enemy dodge with her omnicleave. Really, the biggest downside to this Bonnie is her inclusion in 4: We run her there so that Alhazred can access stab, but we do miss out on controlled burn as a result. This team definitely takes a slower-roll approach, though it could do well in any act due to its flexible targeting options and the great pool of mitigation it has access to.

With that mace and Scowl, it's hard to classify vestal as a 'healbot' any more

Statistics:
41 HP
2 Speed
20 bleed resist, 20 blight resist, 30 burn resist
20 Disease resist, 30 debuff resist, 30 move resist, 30 stun resist
Movement: Up 1, Back 1

Paths

First, we need to discuss her personal token: The Conviction token. Unlike UP, this is typically accessed fairly reliably. Many of her skills are empowered when she has 2 or 3 Conviction. There is nothing in her moveset that she needs it to use, unlike the Occultist, nor is there a downside to holding them. The limit for these is also 3

Confessor: Gains a conviction token on turn start (same as wanderer). Changes a few moves to be more debuff oriented. Fairly flexible, I tend to run Confessor in the front ranks rather than the back, but it works for either.
Chaplain: Gains a conviction token when she gets hit in the face. Changes up a few moves to be more tanking-oriented, in particular allowing mantra to heal guarded targets and making sanctuary+ provide 3 guard. Intended for a front rank Vestal that plans on guarding and smacking things with her mace.
Seraph: Makes her consecrations last 5 turns instead of 3 (the cooldown is increased along with it). Gains conviction whenever a consecration token buffs someone. Mantra heals a butt-ton, but gets rid of the consecrations on use. Probably the closest thing to Vestal+, extremely effective with comps that utilize some consistent dance setups.

Moveset

We will be looking at the Wanderer variants of the moves, like we always do, and pointing out the important changes for paths when we talk about them.

Hand of Light: Used in 2-1, Targets 3-2-1. Deals 2-3/3-4 damage at 5 crit. Gives the Vestal strength and block, upgraded version gives an adjacent hero strength.

Hand of light is one of the moves that is heavily subject to change based on path, and its usability similarly changes a lot. Hand of light is a move that sets her up even more for the inevitably mace bash, while also giving a damage transfer to one of the heroes next to her. This can be quite useful if she’s surrounded by people who do high levels of direct damage. The low damage means this also pings block and dodge, and you don’t feel bad when this move misses most of the time because you’re mainly after the buffs. The chaplain version is the same but it shares block instead of strength, which is friendly to low damage or DoT damage dealing partners, but probably a bit worse in most situations. The value in both cases is alright, though I think the confessor variant is the best in most cases.

The confessor variant keeps the strength but loses the block and the sharing, which means it still sets her up for mace bash but it won’t set her friends up. However, it targets 1+2 and the upgraded version is a 1 weak cleave. Cleave debuffs are generally a lot better on front rank targets since they hit multiple targets more often, and the cleave nature of this also makes its token ping job even better. There’s no negative payment for using it this way either, other than the opportunity cost lost from not running other kinds of Vestals. It’s probably the strongest argument for running Confessor in ranks 1 and 2, as the fact that it sets her up and does a good job pinging tokens and setting up mitigation in one package is some pretty great utility. All three variants are perfectly usable on a front rank Vestal, the confessor variant is simply my favorite.

Illumination: Used in 4-3-2, Targets any enemy. Ignores and removes stealth and dodge, upgraded version applies the dodge prevention debuff that Tracking shot does.

The normal variant of this is sort of a worse tracking shot. It trades the combo for effectively nothing at all. It is a bit more comfortable on Vestal due to her support nature and the fact that outside of Seraph she usually doesn’t attack every turn due to her conviction mechanic. However, even then, this move only checks Dodge and stealth, so outside of those really dodge and stealth heavy fights it struggles to find use.

The confessor variant is completely different. It turns it into highway robbery, destroying 2/3 tokens on use and still countering stealth. It makes up for the lack of stealing by getting to destroy a third token and retaining the stealth check, and that can be quite impactful against all sorts of enemies. It is a fairly staple inclusion for most Confessor setups due to its high impact in a variety of situations and due to the way that Vestal’s damage output tends to work.

Judgment: Used in 4-3, Target any enemy. Deals 3-5/4-7 damage at 5 crit. With 2 conviction, +100% damage (personal modifier). With 3, also applies 3/4 burn

Just so we are clear, these different effects do stack and they both spend all her conviction. So if she uses this upgraded at 3 conviction, she does 8-14 damage and 4 burn. That is some nice value. It also has perfect reach. This move’s output is good even without all 3 conviction tokens (2 is generally good enough), but the way this move works means that it doesn’t scale as well with personal modifiers as it could if the damage range itself was changed. That effectively locks judgment into doing fairly decent damage consistently. It’s a staple inclusion for any backline vestal that ever plans on dealing damage, and especially on Seraph who can easily guarantee at least 2 conviction tokens per turn off a single action.

The confessor variant for this changes the conviction effects. With 2 it will apply 1/2 weak, with 3 it will apply 1/2 vulnerable. As with all conviction effects, these stack together. This does sound like a lot of value, and it can be, but in the average fight this version of the move struggles to pay off. This is because Confessor will only have the ability to use the full debuff on turn 3, when the enemy comp has probably already suffered some severe damage or been mitigated. If you do still need it by then, it can provide a good level of value, meaning that it shines the most in long fights where you may get it off a few times. It's not bad with 2 conviction, but it does tend to end up feeling like a worse weakening curse or weakening curse+, depending on if it's upgraded or not.

Divine Grace: Used in 4-3, targets any friendly with less than 25%/33% HP. Heals 25/30% HP, and an additional 10% with 2 and 3 conviction tokens. This 10% is additive, so if the base upgraded version heals 30%, with 2 tokens it will heal 40%, and with 3 50%. Cooldown of 2

Divine Grace, like judgment, sort of introduces us to the Vestal mindset. Vestal wants to make power plays using her conviction tokens, while using her other turns to build value in other ways. Divine Grace is a fantastic example of this for any backline Vestal. With 3 conviction tokens, this move heals nearly twice as much as it otherwise would. But due to the Cooldown of 2, using this early is generally less advisable unless you really need to, since you'll be locked out of it. When built up, Divine grace is one of the best directed heals in the game, only really held back by that Cooldown and the low threshold. It is perfectly consistent and large, the two things that anyone would appreciate in a heal. The downside is that it’s competing with other potential uses of conviction, mainly Judgment since you can’t run this and Mace Bash together. Seraph vestal creates so much conviction that this isn’t usually a huge problem, but do recognize when you need to let this move build up or save the conviction for the next turn before you go smashing another big judgment. It’s also her least nonsense heal, so it has that going for it.

Consecration of Fortitude: Used anywhere, Targets any friendly. Places a special Token on the rank of the character she targeted with this. The token provides any hero that starts their turn on that rank a block or dodge token (equal odds for each). The upgraded version places an upgraded token that gives out Dodge+ or Block+. Lasts 3 turns, or 5 with Seraph Vestal. Cooldown of 3, or 5 with Seraph.

Vestal has two consecrations, and in my opinion this is the better of the two, especially when upgraded. Dodge+ in particular is a phenomenal token to hand out to friendlies, and block+ is nothing to sneeze at either. Just dropping it on someone is good enough in longer fights, but where both consecrations truly shine is within dance teams. Because this applies buffs to heroes that start their turn on that rank, having a hero start their turn there, use a movement skill, and swap with someone means the second person can then get a buff too. Usually most comps that use this will be happy just dancing 2 people back and forth, as the value there is already massive especially with Seraph Vestal, and it’s very easy to do that. Theoretically you can make some big convoluted dance setup to get even more value out of this. This move provides so much mitigation when used in these ways that it almost feels unfair, and I generally prefer it to the other consecration because I feel this effect is more powerful than Light and that the mitigation works better with Vestal Seraph comps in particular. You can get use out of this move with other paths, though generally if you expect to use it all the time you should just put on Seraph.

Ministrations: Used anywhere, targets any friendly with a relevant affliction. Removes Daze, Stun, and any DoTs. Upgraded version provides a buff increasing the relevant resistance to whichever token(s) got removed. Cooldown of 1

Ministrations is an okay move on a character that frequently looks to power spike on certain turns. The stun cure is probably the most advantageous part of it, when you run into stuns anyway, as this effectively trades a Vestal turn for one of their turns. Vestal can therefore use this to spend some time powering up with conviction while allowing her more consistently powerful friend to get his turn back. There aren’t all that many fights that stun though, so unless you’re running pocket watch or are in the act 1 fight, it’s sort of rare that you get that effect. It also affects Daze which you can more reliably generate, but it’s less likely that that will provide value unless you know the character will go fast and kill someone on the next turn.

Removing DoTs is an indirect form of healing and in some fights can legitimately be nice, but it’s semi-rare to run into DoT levels that require direct countering. Ministrations therefore often comes off as a filler pick outside of fights that reward using it, though some builds of Vestal can fit that filler pick if you believe you’ll need it.

Mace Bash: Used in 2-1, targets 1-2. Deals 4-6/6-8 damage at 5/10 crit. Ignores all defensive tokens with 2 conviction, deals 100% more damage (personal modifier) with 3.

Mace Bash is the staple damage move of frontline Vestal in the way that Judgment is her staple damage move for backline Vestal. This move has a higher range so it naturally scales a bit better with modifiers, but to make up for that the bonus damage is at 3 conviction here. Chaplain Vestal and the odd front-rank seraph Vestal can access this pretty quickly, but the turn 3 use that Confessor in particular gets is timed about right to be quite useful on that path as well. Combined with a hand of light this will hit 16-20 and ignore defensive tokens which is very respectable from a utility focused character, and frontline Vestals generally like running Hand to ping, spread buffs or weaken, and to empower this move. Chaplain can access this more often with sanctuary tanking, which can allow Vestal to hit probably the 12-16 range every other turn reasonably often. A consistent and reliable damage move that works well on pretty much any front rank Vestal, its damage boost coming in at about the moment you'll be happy to have it.

Sanctuary: Used anywhere, targets any friendly. Vestal gains 2 block, Target gains 2 guard and when upgraded it heals 2 of their stress if at 5 or higher. Cooldown 1 turn. The chaplain variant provides 1 block and 1 block+ along with 3 guard instead of 2 when upgraded, at the cost of the stress heal.

On generic vestals, this move allows the bulky vestal body to jump in front of some attacks and to provide some stress healing. That’s an interesting combination that you don’t see on other characters, and it allows this move to have some useful flexibility on pretty much every path. You can either use it as a stress heal or to protect people, and you can use it anywhere. This move most commonly sees use on those front rank vestal builds, but you should never forget you can use it in the back.

Chaplain’s version drops the stress heal in favor of extra guard and more defense. Since you want Chaplain Vestal to get hit in the face to give her conviction, this move is a staple inclusion on the setup. I would seriously consider what you want out of the move before you choose Chaplain just for this though. The normal version is genuinely more flexible with the added stress heal, but the Chaplain version can be very valuable if you need the extra guard and defense. Chaplain does mean that you can build a Vestal tank setup in the backline if you want to give that odd build a shot though, keeping an empowered judgment that you can usually access relatively quickly. She’s the only hero that really fills that build niche well.

Consecration of Light: Used anywhere, Targets any friendly. Places a rank token that gives any hero that starts their turn on it a strength token. Upgraded version’s token gives them a crit token 25% of the time instead. Cooldown of 3 turns (or again, 5 with Seraph)

Consecration of light, similar to fortitude, is a move that can recognize a lot of value over the lifetime of the buff, especially if you use dancing and Seraph with it. This setup might actually favor a dance that’s happening in the back instead of the front, though it works anywhere. This move can provide a lot of damage, though it does so with strength which tends to be a bit less effective than other means. I’m sort of conflicted on the upgrade here. Crit tokens are much more valuable than strength, but only getting it randomly as a replacement of strength is kind of lame. Generally I’d like this over fortitude if the dance setup is already frequently very bulky, or for backline dance setups with vestal up front, where handing out extra mitigation is less useful. You’ll generally carry both on Seraph, and for the duo dancer setups, one will get used twice every turn and the other once. I typically prefer to use fortitude on the duo and light on a singleton damage dealer, like Dismas. The dismas synergy is quite notable actually, because it means that upgrading this move becomes detrimental, since Dismas will just use Take Aim. That’s a very good thing, because Vestal is often a very upgrade hungry character. Not as useful in short fights, though most Vestal comps are a bit more slow-roll. If you want to make a fast roll Vestal, then getting + speed on her with this and using a high output dance team will make that doable.

Divine Comfort: Used in 4-3-2, Targets all friendlies. Everyone gains 2/3 regen. Cooldown of 4(!) turns.

You would have expected that they’d have a hard time balancing what was probably the best heal in DD1, but apparently it was as simple as giving it a gigantic cooldown and making it regen. This move should not be thought of as a healing move. Regen does heal, obviously, but it does so very slowly, and it won’t dig your heroes out of a pit of low HP. What it should be thought of as is a party-wide mitigation buff that happens to work through regen. This move lowers incoming damage indirectly by healing off some of it when that hero’s turn comes around. It also ignores thresholds and heals a flat amount, meaning the reduction value is always the same on everyone. This move is a genuinely nice extra bit of mitigation on Vestal sets that can fit it, frequently being usable while Vestal gets her conviction up, especially on rank 2 vestals. It’s a very unique move that can fit as a nice bit of mitigative (and yes, sometimes, healing) utility in most comps, though depending on your Vestal build you might have issues fitting this. Don’t treat this as a healing move and do use it proactively, and you’ll generally find it useful.

Mantra: This move changes wildly with each path, so I’m just going to list all the effects.

Wanderer Mantra: Used in 4-3, Target all friendlies with consecrations. Heals 10%. Upgraded version gets conviction effects: with 2, it heals 20% (Total), with 3 it also applies the current consecration effect for the heroes standing on them.

Confessor Mantra: Same as above, but the 3 conviction effect cleanses debuffs instead.

Chaplain Mantra: Used anywhere, Targets all friendlies with guard. Heals 10/15%. Upgraded version additionally: Self heals Vestal 25% with 2 conviction tokens, removes 1 stress from target and 2 from vestal with 3 conviction. 1 turn cooldown.

Seraph Mantra: Used in 4-3, Targets all friendlies with consecrations. Heals 30/50%, removes consecrations.

The use case for each of these varies wildly, but to be frank two of these stand out as far better than the others. Wanderer mantra is a bit of a hybrid heal/buff skill. It heals slowly but it, like all mantras, doesn’t look at HP thresholds. Wanderer and Confessor consecrations only last 3 turns, and this move will only come online with at least 1. The ability to hand out an extra buff or cleanse debuffs can genuinely be nice in some circumstances, but this move tends to feel very slow and low impact. The wanderer one even remains slow when it's handing out the buffs. Basically, the problem with both of these is that the consecrations don’t last long, and the impact for all the work spent setting them up is fairly low unless you’re cleansing a bunch of debuffs.

Chaplain mantra is frequently usable, given the nature of the class, especially if you’re also running barristan. It is still a weak heal, but she does pick up a fairly potent self heal at 2 tokens, which are usually fairly accessible on Chaplain. The stress heal can also be nice, especially since it’s agnostic to current stress and since she lost her sanctuary stress heal when she picked Chaplain. I’d run this often on Chaplain builds, especially if you’re running her along with the Man-At-Arms. Held back a bit by the cooldown, though that’s understandable given how spammy this could be otherwise.

The Seraph version actually heals for a lot, or a helluva lot when upgraded, and it doesn’t care about current HP. The problem is you drop your consecrations to do it. Of course, if you simply wait until the end of the fight or until the consecrations will disappear, you can just get this value at no real extra cost. So use it that way. When it’s used that way or as an emergency it can be quite potent, but if you’re not using it late into the lifetime of the 5 turn consecration, you’re sacrificing a whole lot of value. Remember that those 5 turn cooldowns from seraph consecrations still exist after you use this move. It’s good, but you have to be careful with it.

Overall, the chaplain and seraph versions of this move are the clear winners, and this move is a fairly reasonable inclusion with those paths if you have the space. I wouldn’t generally run this with the wanderer or confessor paths: it is simply too slow for what it does.

Vestal is the queen of slowroll comps, and it’s easy to see that her kit revolves around multi turn strategies. The most obvious way to run Vestal is probably with the Seraph path. Slap her in 4, throw down fortitude on a couple of rotating units, and hit a big fat judgment every turn afterwards. It’s highly effective and easy to understand, though it can become a bit boring. Frequently those teams, and pretty much any backline Vestal, will run Divine Grace in particular, to get those big boosted heals when needed. I like Mantra as well with Seraph, though one could easily include other utility skills like Ministrations or Comfort instead.

My favorite way to play Vestal, however, is probably the frontline Confessor variant in particular. The weak cleave from Hand of light is genuinely very powerful, and her ability to offer mitigative utility with that and comfort alongside the occasional sanctuary means she can easily build up to a big bonk with mace bash on turn 3. The tempo for this sort of build feels just about right, not sacrificing too much speed for a legitimately strong payoff. Of course, the very effective Sanctuary, Mantra, and Mace bash make a strong return with the Chaplain variant in particular. Chaplain definitely excels in the front lines, though it can actually be used all the way from the back if you swap out mace bash for Judgment. She won’t get hit as much, but it can still function in a backline guard niche that no other character can really do. Sure, Barristan can defend and taunt from the back, but he loses access to many of his best damage options (crush especially), or has to push forward with moves like Rampart.

The biggest downside to Vestal is that slower nature, which doesn’t favor certain comps, and her upgrade hunger. A lot of her moves become a helluva lot better when upgraded. Mace Bash, Judgment, Hand of Light (confessor), Mantra, Grace, and Fortitude especially are crying out for mastery points that may be sparse. You only get two points at the first inn (outside of act 1), and any seraph vestal worth her salt is probably going to invest that into at least fortitude. If you can get past her slow roll nature and that point hunger, however, you will find a unit that can absolutely define the comps she’s a part of, providing what are some of the most powerful buff skills and utility skills in the game. Red Hook took a character that was very one note in DD1 and turned her into a varied utility powerhouse in 2, and she offers the construction of sorts of comps that are otherwise less popular when run with other characters.

Sample Comp

PD (Alchemist) - Audrey (Venomdrop) - Junia (Chaplain) - Barristan (Vanguard)

We’re rounding our sample comps out with a slow roll, blight focused Chaplain comp. Junia’s Chaplain provides a lot of survivability to any team, and it generally goes well with a Man-At-Arms for the extra mantra value and the extreme bulkiness. Barristans job here is as simple as it normally is with Vanguard. He hits retribution, he hits crush, and he soaks a lot of abuse. Of course, maybe you want Vestal to grab some of that abuse. Just guard Barristan, or anyone you’re scared for, and watch as every enemy slams into her and quickly powers up her Mace Bash or mantra. While they’re doing some decent damage and soaking up any abuse the enemy teams can throw at them, PD and Audrey will simply be sitting in the back, throwing out powerful blight options to melt enemy teams. Audrey’s Venomdrop also lets her access Pick from rank 3 without any damage malus, unlike her ranged skills, so the utility to fit in some extra direct damage is there. The damage plan for this team is pretty flexible, with the rank 2+3 and rank 3+4 blight damage options, as well as the rank 3 snipe in Crush. Despite that utility, this comp probably burns down rank 2 in particular the most effectively, and any annoying back-liners can always be brought up front through the ever reliable corpse clear in Magnesium rain.

PD provides this comp with even more healing (probably to the point of cruel and unusual overkill), and everyone else has at least one self-sustaining healing option available. So you bonk things, you mitigate, and you Blight, until everyone drops dead from your reckless violations of the rules of war. It’s very simple to play, and the sort of comp that Vestal’s slow roll nature can really appreciate. Just don’t take it to Act 2 (you can’t hit rank 4 with direct damage after all, unless you re-mix the order on this team to allow judgment), and be careful with the Foetor given the high blight resist there. It’s still often worth a trip for the unique trinkets you'd find in the Foetor, but it will be a more difficult trip than usual.

Just Walk it off

Statistics:
50 HP
3 Speed
20 bleed resist, 50 blight resist, 10 burn resist
75 Disease resist, 20 debuff resist, 30 move resist, 30 stun resist
Movement: 1 Back, 2 Up

He has 90 DBR, unlike everyone else.

When he rolls a resolve check, he always has a special meltdown called Toxic. This Meltdown is less severe (it only does -2 relationship instead of -3, it sets him to 30% HP (this means it will heal him when below that), and he gets a special Toxic token that causes enemies that hit him to take 2 blight. This token stacks up to 3 times, if you just let this man meltdown forever. The downside is that he can't go resolute, ever.

Paths

Maniac: A path that allows Flagellant to Take debuff tokens from his friends and to apply them to enemies with Sepsis. It also turns Acid rain into a weak cleave (but it loses the blight), and Cracks Punish as a support tool.
Exanimate: A path that causes Flagellant's blight skills to do more blight when under 50% HP, but it weakens Punish's blight output before he crosses under that threshold. Sepsis becomes a blight Cause of Death, and Lash's gift becomes a move that provides lots of personal tokens at the cost of it being usable at 20% HP or below, rather than 50%. Unfortunately doesn't give his blight options extra piercing, like Alchemist or Arsonist do.
Scourge: Toxic state does more than it normally does, and this path has a heavier focus on Flagellant taking Stress from others. Deathless now heals both targets, but has a CD and use limit. It's designed around you making Flag meltdown.

I'd also like to note that, unlike the other heroes, Wanderer is a legitimate contender here. In fact, in many ways Wanderer is the most consistent good pick for Flagellant.

Moveset

As usual, Wanderer skills are what we use in descriptions, but I will mention how certain paths change skills.

Punish: Used in 3-2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 3-6/4-8 damage and 3/4 blight at 5/10 crit. Flagellant takes damage equal to 10% of his Max HP. Pierces 30 percentage points of blight resist on Combo.

Punish is a move that is very close to PD's incision. Unlike PD, however, this does half an extra point of damage and has a bit less crit, and focuses on blight output rather than bleed. It also hurts the Flagellant on use, which helps to enable his skills, but can contribute to a bad situation if you play him improperly. Punish fills a very standard damage role option for Flagellant, allowing him to perform well anywhere other than the Foetor. The Exanimate version of this reduces the blight output by 1, but allows it to deal 2 more (so 1 more total) when he's at half or less HP, and it can target rank 3. I generally do not like that trade-off, especially considering what Exanimate does to the rest of his kit: Flagellant is at his best when he's permitted to work at high HP, because he relies on his HP pool to tank in a similar way to Hellion. It's also less friendly to Rank 3 Flagellant picks; though those Flags are normally somewhat weaker than R2 Flags, they can still work. However, running Exanimate there makes for a character that's nerfed more often than he's buffed. Sitting under half of your HP with an HP tank also isn't incredibly sane in a lot of cases, and he has less options to take himself out of low HP than a Wanderer. The extra reach is nice, though with the non-nerfed acid rain it can be unneeded.

The worst thing about Punish is that Flagellant doesn't have access to natural piercing in the way that PD does on Alchemist, or Bonnie does on Arsonist. Missing the blight portion of this really stinks, and without trinkets that will happen very often. Flagellant really does benefit from a Cleaver or a Poison Ring very early into the run, especially if you can sub BH in for him when you go play the Foetor.

The Maniac version of Punish is extremely notable. At the cost of 1, and only 1, blight output, it gains knockback. The upgraded version will do KB 2 and also apply combo. That's an insane amount of value, and allows Flagellant to work as a combo engine for Dismas and Audrey in particular (the KB makes it hard for him to work with characters like Hellion and Leper). In those cases the slightly smaller blight output is actually good enough to work with checking Death's Door, which is a very impactful bonus that you don't see on guaranteed combo setting moves. The biggest downside to this approach is the way that Maniac changes some of his other skills, and the fact that Flagellant has speed issues. Grab a Speed trinket or some speed buff items for this and it can be incredibly effective. It's not as good as Jester Engine for consistent combo setting, but it is very potent, especially when you account for the disruption KB 2 can provide.

Fester: Used anywhere, Targets any enemy corpse. Deletes the corpse, and applies 3/5 blight to adjacent enemies. Similar to Runaway's Combo effect, this application ignores dodge, but does have to go through resist.

This move mainly exists to be an okay way to clear a corpse, or a way for Flagellant to spend his turn without taking damage. There is a better way for R2 flagellants to effectively 'pass' their turn, but this works on any Flagellant you plan to place in the back and provides some damage to boot. This is not a premium corpse clear in the way that Daemon's Pull and Magnesium rain are, but it can be used tactfully to disrupt enemies while providing some free blight output. Naturally useless in all boss fights (and I've fought them all now, so I know that there are in fact no bosses where corpse mechanics help. Shame).

Deathless: Used anywhere, Target any friendly. Friendly regains 25/35% HP, Flagellant takes 20% of his max HP as damage. Cooldown 1

Deathless is a heal that you can use at any point to heal anyone who might need it, and its potency is equal to a BF Medicine+. That's already really strong, but the cost here for most versions of Deathless is that Flagellant pays 20% of his HP. This may sound like a lot, and it is. In fact Flagellant often takes more damage than he heals in raw HP, at least with the un-upgraded version, because of how high his Max HP is.

The HP cost on this, however, can easily be avoided or subverted. More, MORE is the obvious way, allowing him to heal right after he uses it. Sepsis usually heals him, and is available on Wanderer Flags in particular once he goes below 50%. Both of these moves are only usable from rank 2, and they both synergize very well with this move, so a Flag in rank 2 can often get very good use out of this move.

Even without healing up the cost though, a heal on demand at any time, even if it costs Flag HP, is a very good thing. If you use it poorly it can put Flagellant into real danger, and it's cooldown of 1 does mean it can be mistimed. With proper use and a comp that doesn't need excessive healing, Deathless could allow Flagellant to operate as the only healer on a team fairly efficiently.

The Scourge version Heals Flag on use, but can only be used below 50% HP and has a use limit of 3 and a cooldown of 2. Similar to BF medicine, you generally won't need all 3 uses, and the CD of 2 is still relatively tame for something that self heals the Flag by 35/50%, instead of hurting him. The biggest problem with this one is actually its use requirement: It's only usable when he's below 50% HP, similar to Sepsis. That means that it may not be available when you need it to save someone else. It seems to be designed to fill him back up on HP right after he goes Toxic (his special Meltdown), but for general use the inconsistency it can bring to the table can make it far less helpful in Ambush fights or fights where your squishies spend time getting knocked around.

Endure: Used anywhere, targets any other friendly. Reduces their stress by 2/3, increases Flag's stress by 2.

The most obvious use of this move is for going Toxic, as it allows you to stack a ton of stress onto Flagellant while reducing the stress on his friends. However, this is not the only way the move can be used. Remember the idea of Stress Thresholding? A person at or below 3 Stress suffers no consequences, but someone above that starts to get mean. Most stress heals in the game do not reduce stress below 3 (some don't even manage that). However, Endure doesn't care about current stress. He can absorb stress from friendlies all day, and set everyone to 0. You can therefore combine this with stress heals like Inspiring Tune or Bolster to keep Damian at 3 stress while lowering his friends all the way to 0, bringing overall stress levels down to a lower point than normally possible. The downside to this strategy is that it's labor intensive. Outside of this niche or trying to get Toxic with Scourge, you don't tend to touch this move, as it has a net 0 effect on stress (or a net 1 when upgraded), and all it does is transfer stress.

Lash's Gift: Similar to Mantra, every version of this move is different enough to be described differently. So Here we go.

Wanderer's Gift: Used in 3-2-1, Targets any friendly. Only usable when Flag is below 50% HP. Flagellant heals 25/35%, Target gains 1 Block/Block+ token, 1 strength token, and 1 stress. 2 turn cooldown

Maniac Gift: Used in 3-2-1, Targets any friendly with a negative token. Heals Flag 20/30%, Steals negative tokens from friendly/negative tokens and combo. Cooldown 2

Exanimate's Gift: Used anywhere, Targets self. Only usable when Flagellant is below 20% HP (!!!). Flag gains 10% HP, loses all negative tokens and combo, and gains Strength and Dodge/Strength, Dodge+, and crit.

Scourge's Gift: Used in 2-1, Targets self. Removes all DoTs/Does this and gives him 20% resistance to the DoTs removed. Flag gains 1 horror. 1 turn cooldown

Four very different tools here. Lash's Gift works as a consistent self heal on Wanderer that drops less tempo due to its ability to spread Block and strength to a friendly. The big downside to using it is the stress he inflicts on the party member he hands those buffs too. These buffs usually work best when combined with a character like Leper due to his self stress heal and due to his high average output. The block portion can be used to protect Squishies that are in danger as well. It's an okay move, the main problem with it is that it competes with Sepsis in particular as his Self heal option. There isn't a use limit on this one, though the use limit on Sepsis is usually pretty irrelevant.

Maniac's Gift is designed to set up his Sepsis while preventing Tempo loss from his teammates. This means it goes well with teammates that tend to end up debuffed (leper), though the actual full combination with Sepsis is slow. The fact it's only usable when a friendly has a negative token means that he loses access to it as a self heal in many cases, and there aren't that many fights where you just get hit by 10 Negative tokens. Something like Pulverize from the worms will do it. Losing the consistent availability is a bit of a big deal on Maniac.

Exanimate's Gift is very difficult to access. Even on Flagellants with Massive stacked HP (My record right now is exactly 125 HP), you're still looking at him sitting at very dangerous HP levels to get this out. The effect is clearly obscenely powerful, though the damage bonus from Strength doesn't do all that much for him. Crit is still decent, but not usually as good as it is on someone like Dismas outside of long fights. He gets some defense along with the small self heal, but it doesn't usually take him out of the danger zone. I don't believe that strength and crit work with the Exanimate Sepsis unfortunately, though if it does let me know. All other effects like it were standardized to not. In any case, this move is generally too dangerous to reliably access, though if you are able to, it is quite strong as a buff (though still not as good as Take Aim/Aim+ lmao).

Scourge's gift revolves around the Toxic mechanic even more, trading in stress for HP effectively. It doesn't say that it requires him to have Dots, so presumably you can use this to just get the stress. I'm not sure why you'd do that. This move is easily the weakest version of Gift, even within Scourge's niche, but it can save you a lot of HP in certain fights (Act 4 Boss for example).

The Wanderer's Gift is probably the most reliable, which is a bit of a theme for Flag, however it is badly held back by the fact that it applies stress to a friendly. The only one I'd outright accuse of seeming particularly weak though is Scourge's Gift, and even that can come in handy in certain very DoT heavy fights. The others work within their niches, though Exanimate's comes with great risk.

Acid Rain: Used in 2-1, Targets 3+4. Deals 2-3/3-4 damage at 5/10 crit, and deals 2/3 blight. Ignores 30 percentage points of blight resist on Combo. Flag takes 10% of his max HP as damage.

Has the direct damage range of Noxious Blast, but the targeting of Plague grenade. Deals 1 less blight to make up for the slight direct damage boost, I guess. This move pairs well with backline smashing teams, especially with PD in particular. 2 plague grenades are better than one. It's worth noting that the Exanimate version of this does not lose any base blight, which makes that path more attractive for this. The maniac version of this drops its blight to apply weak on cleave (and sometimes combo, like Blinding gas, on upgrade). This is generally not a great trade save for some fights with high damage dealing backliners (such as Arbalists). Blind is usually more impactful on backliners as a rule, so the Maniac version comes off as a weaker blinding gas in most cases. It's also one of the moves that hurts Flag. Outside of Maniac, this move is just great on a comp with a backline focus, and probably not that helpful if you don't have that focus and don't want that flexibility.

More! MORE!: Used in 2-1. Targets self. Flag gains 2 taunt tokens, and every time he takes damage (until the end of his next turn), he gains a 'Pain'/'Pain+' token. These tokens will heal him 10/15% on turn end, and they stack up to 3. 1 turn Cooldown.

More! MORE! (henceforth just 'more') is one of the strongest tanking moves in the game, allowing Flagellant to gain access to some very powerful self sustain while drawing the ideal amount of enemy ire. 2 taunt tokens with this move is actually very good, because it means that you don't get hit too many times, even with DoTs. Getting hit 3 times will heal Flag by nearly half of his Total HP, which is insane given how big his HP pool tends to be. It also works with moves that hurt him, meaning that it undoes Punish/Acid rain, and even causes them to effectively heal if upgraded. It also pairs well with Deathless, allowing him to pull ire and set up a big self-heal before healing a friend at the cost of his own HP with Deathless. In a way this means it pulls double duty in protecting friendlies. The taunt can also momentarily allow him to be underneath certain HP thresholds, enabling Sepsis on Wanderer and maybe even Lash's Gift on Exanimate, before healing him all the way back up. In a sense this means that it allows Flagellant to 'cheat' his HP Thresholds if used intelligently.

The other effective thing about more is ironically the fact that it is effectively a 'pass' for Flagellant. In many random fights you don't want to last hit with Flag, because his normal attack moves hurt him. So you just press this and he effectively passes, allowing his friends to pick up the kill. Fester works similarly, but this doesn't require a corpse and tends to provide more useful. A great argument for running Flagellant in the front ranks.

Suffer: Used anywhere, targets any friendly with DoT. They lose their DoT, Flagellant Gains it. Buffs Flag's DBR by 10%. Upgraded version removes his DoTs at the end of his next turn. The Scourge version of this also steals Horror (and can target people with Horror). Cooldown of 1 (for some reason).

Suffer generally feels like a weaker ministrations that's designed to get Flag underneath his thresholds and to do so a bit more safely givent he DBR buff. This is the obvious use, and DoT is far less dangerous to him than someone very squishy like PD or Audrey. However, the DoT removal applies to all DoT, not just the DoT he stole, so if you use it when you expect Flag to get hit by some large DoT output, it can effectively nullify it after just one tick. This is honestly the most interesting thing about it, other than it helping Scourge reach Toxic while keeping his friends sane in certain specific fights (act 5 boss, exemplar). The big problem with this move is that that's all it does, meaning it's very low tempo. It's actually even worse tempo than Ministrations, and not just because Ministrations also cures stuns and doesn't DoT the Vestal, but because of Vestal's Conviction mechanic, which allows her to access large tempo outputs on specific turns. Perhaps the hardest move in his set to find a niche for.

Sepsis: Another 'every version is different' case.

Wanderer Sepsis: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Usable when Flag is below 50% HP. Deals 4-8/6-10 and 4/6 blight at 5 crit. Heals Flagellant 35/50%. Same blight resist ignorance combo effect as punish and Acid rain. Use limit of 3, Cooldown of 2

Maniac Sepsis: Used anywhere, Targets 1-2. Usable when Flag has 50% or less HP, or has a negative token. Transfers all negative tokens to enemy/does this and also transfers combo. Ignores blind. Same self heal, limit and CD.

Exanimate Sepsis: Used in 2-1, targets 1-2-3. Target must have blight and Flag must be below 50% HP. 75/100% of remaining blight is dealt as damage and it is removed, Flag heals to the point that he has 45% Max HP. Use limit of 2/3, Cooldown of 2

Scourge Sepsis: Same as above, but 50/100%. No self heal, blight is not removed with combo. No use limit, cooldown of 2.

Wanderer Sepsis is in many ways the clear winner here, being like Exanguinate from DD1. It packs a lot of damage and healing into one convenient little box, and the use limit of 3 is plenty for any fight in the game. It's biggest problem is the cooldown, which means that you can only use it once in a very high pressure moment. The self heal is exceptionally strong though, especially if you'd used More the turn before to ensure the enemy put him below the threshold. You could heal 95% of his HP in one turn combining this with More. It's also available when you want it to be and deals a lot of damage. A very high tempo and high value move, and one of the things that really sucks to lose when picking a path. Generally Wanderer will run this over Lash's Gift, unless you run both.

No damage on the Maniac one. Allows him to access healing in the same way though, and to transfer debuffs over. It tends to be worse value compared to the damage, unless he got hold of a lot of negative tokens. The fact that it targets someone presumably means that it does at least check Dodge, if nothing else. A decent option, and the fact that it's omniusable is nice, though back-line Flag's often suffer less debuffs.

Exanimate and Scourge are similar. Exanimate is harder to access but it heals him up to 45% HP, which keeps him below the 50% so that his blight skills stay empowered. It can provide very high acceleration value in blight heavy teams, while helping Flag stay safe. Scourge can naturally do even more effective damage, and he doesn't have to use it below half HP. The combo requirement means that it goes well with certain heroes, though there is some conflict between running all blight and having combo.

Wanderer Sepsis tends to feel like a staple inclusion if he's up front, with the others depending on comp. You can get a ton of value out of Scourge and Exanimate in particular with certain builds, but I generally prefer the very strong consistency of the wanderer version. Maniac tends to feel rather slow as a rule, outside of some specific fights and niches.

Undying: Used anywhere, targets any friendly. They gain 3/5 regen, Flag loses 10% HP. Cooldown of 1.

A more proactive and less self hurty Deathless. It's particularly nice on Squishies, since the regen is always the same, however the value is a bit low on this, especially if you look at something like Divine Comfort. Can be used to keep heroes safe and to counter DoT damage, even in advance. It's not a bad move by any means, though I usually find that Deathless is an easier include due to its emergency properties and ability to scale with party HP buffs and to better affect other tanks. I also don't see the lower self damage here as all that advantageous, as moves like Deathless are often best used in combination with More or a soon to follow Sepsis. I'd tend to include this on rank 3 Flags in particular as a bit of utility and squishy healing, as they don't have access to skills like More.

Necrosis: Used in 3-2, Targets all enemies that are blighted. Deals 3-6/4-8 damage at 5 crit. Flagellant heals 5% per hit (in game tooltip doesn't explain this right). Cooldown 1

The nicest thing about this, outside of blight heavy comps, is that it heals him instead of hurting him, meaning it has the same pass potential as More, but a little better. The damage and healing on this can be very high if you're hitting several enemies with it, though extremely wide spread out damage tends to be less valuable. I'd generally include this in a very blight heavy comp (something with PD and Audrey with venomdrop), but I wouldn't otherwise. Even though it's a cleave it lacks the utility of other cleaves because it requires the target to already have blight, and typically if they already have blight they don't have tokens to ping off.

Flagellant is a character that combines potent enough blight output with HP tanking and perhaps one of the strangest utility kits in the game. Punish and Acid rain are the easiest to understand buttons on the kit, and Acid Rain is a potent addition to backline smashing comps in particular. Punish is actually a pretty strong move too, though special shoutouts to its Maniac version in particular. KB 2 and Combo, at the cost of only one blight output? It's a shame that that version of Punish is effectively balanced by all the other changes Maniac makes: A worse acid rain in most cases combined with making Lash's Gift and Sepsis a niche and slow combination. It's still viable, any move that cracked can carry someone on its own.

More and Deathless are in my opinion the other 2 biggest hits in his kit. More is just a fantastic move in all sorts of situations. HP tanking with Flag and More is very strong, and the way that it enables Sepsis plays while also taking the sting out of his other moves is very powerful. Deathless is a reliably available emergency heal that can top anyone off or bring someone back from the grave, with only 1 CD and no use limit. It is a lovely little move. I actually like the somewhat stricter use case from scourge's deathless a bit less, though make no mistake that that move is quite powerful in any case. Lash's Gift is also nice outside of the scourge path, though I find the stress application its wanderer version does holds that version back more than you'd expect, especially compared to Sepsis.

Sepsis is a move that is exceptionally strong all the time on Wanderer, and game bustingly strong on Exanimate and Scourge under the right circumstances. Accessing Sepsis correctly with Wanderer can lead to some exceptionally big plays, and stacking a ton of blight will naturally cause Flag to delete anything in front of him with Exanimate and Scourge. Scourge's version even has that combo niche, though losing the HP heal is a little bit of a problem.

The other moves often feel like misses. Endure and Necrosis have their moments, certainly, and Fester is a niche option for corpse removal, especially on more support oriented Flags, though it's far from the best way to handle corpses. Undying is another support oriented skill that functions decently as mitigation, though its low numbers here are rather baffling, especially given the Cooldown. Suffer is really the only move I'd generally avoid all the time, other than as an option on a scourge dedicated gamer or in extremely high DoT output fights. It can be used, however, with BF medicine+ to effectively cure the DoTs from 3 people, if you want to handle DoTs that slowly anyway.

Overall, Flagellant does his best work in Rank 2, and can do well as a side or even mainstay tank, as a healer, and especially within blight and backline smashing comps that greatly favor his tools. The only thing that holds him back is the lack of any inbuilt blight res piercing outside of combo, and the few misses on his kit. I also really do appreciate how good Wanderer is with him.

Sample Comp 1

I'm going to do 3 Sample comps for Flag, since he's not included in anyone else's comps. For now, there will only be this one.

Paracelus (Alchemist) - Bonnie (Arsonist) - Flagellant (Wanderer) - Hellion (Ravager)

This is the comp I decided to run when I took on the act 4 and 5 boss for the first time. The secret is in the combination of bulky frontline tanks and backline smashing potential, as well as the debuff in Smokescreen+. A typical turn 1 for this team will involve absolutely deleting the backline with Acid rain, Firefly, Iron Swan, and Grenade (all if needed, ideally Boudica or Bonnie can do something else), followed up by using one of the two frontliners to tank and a Smokescreen+ play, as the front line is whittled down from the never-ending assault of DoT moves. Any damage that comes in is effectively worthless against the might of More, PD and Bonnie's Heals, and Adrenaline Rush. This team makes HP tanking look like an art.

Hellion is the pick over Leper here for a few key reasons. One, Iron Swan helps push the backline focus. Two, Howling end allows the team to access very high frontline Alpha as needed. However, one could use Leper if one wanted to take advantage of the weak off Intimidate and as another option to use Smokescreen's Combo. He's not bad here, though I'd generally favor Hellion.

This comp excels in the exemplar fight, Healing over anything he does, deleting the altar instantly, and having two characters to taunt in case a Backliner gets hit with Combo. DoT also tears him down very quickly as a rule. Cultist fights are generally backline weak as a rule, and the ability to quickly decimate altar is quite handy to rid the altar buffs from Act 2 and 5 in particular. I wouldn't want to bring this comp to Act 2 in particular though, due to its lack of back up rank 4 direct damage hitting options. The only area that this comp arguably struggles is the Foetor (though the Lair Boss stands little chance). I'd generally swap BH over Flag for that region, unless I already had blight pierce trinkets for him.

I'd call this a slow roll comp, but it really isn't. The DoT output on this team is so high that backlines melt by round 2 maximum in most cases, and the frontline will follow soon. Bring this and some DoT piercing to the act 4 boss to ruin his entire day. Seriously, I barely understand the fight because of how quickly we melted him.

I"m adding Crusader first, but she's on the list ahead of him, hence the placeholder.

The crossroads reynauld always looks like he's staring into my soul.

Statistics:
40 HP
2 Speed
40 Bleed Resist, 10 Blight Resist, 40 Burn resist
30 Disease resist, 40 Stun resist, 30 Move Resist, 20 Debuff Resist
Movement: 2 Up, 1 Back

Paths:

Wanderer: Yeah, it gets its own section now, because the new path systems make Wanderer distinct. Wanderer Crusader is a mostly frontline setup with a distinct utility kit that gets emphasized more or less on his other paths. For the most part most of his paths emphasize a frontline nature, except for one of them.

Aggressor: A Reynauld who's offensive moves are somewhat switched up to favor last hitting enemies, mostly due to the addition of execution and the stress heal on kills with Smite. Feels best on teams where Reynauld is the slowest or teams where you tend to use combo with other characters.

Templar: Meant to emphasize Reynauld's tanking role by giving him a guard and access to a potent healing received buff. Reynauld's tanking kit is pretty solid, but I often don't see the need to lean into it even harder with this path, unless I really want to double down on it with a setup where he really needs to do the bulk of the tanking.

Banneret: The most transformative path on Reynauld, as it changes up many of his tools to allow them to function in the backline. A potent backline Zealous combined with his support skills allows him to function well in 3 or 4, but he loses access to hitting the front two ranks in particular (If you're running him in the back), outside of holy lance.

Moveset

Smite: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2. Deals 5-7/7-9 Damage at 5/10 crit. +50% Damage on combo

Basic Smite works like Wicked Hack, except with a tighter damage range, causing it to do 11-14 on combo when upgraded. This is decent in most of the same ways that Wicked hack is, though the lower ceiling does make Crit feel slightly less valuable in comparison. There are a few distinct advantages that this move has over Hellion in particular. The most obvious is the speed differential. Hellion has the average 4 speed, while Crusader is stuck at 2. While this is generally not favaorable for a damage dealer, it does mean that he is more friendly when it comes to combo setting, as other characters like Runaway or Alhazred have an easier time ensuring that they will go before him, allowing him to be set up. It also means that other characters, especially DoT ones, can more easily peel block tokens in particular, though as we will see, Crusader already has a good value option to deal with enemy tokens. Aside from that slight difference and the lack of any inbuilt damage buffs like Hellion, this move functions pretty much identically to Wicked Hack on Wanderer and Banneret

Aggressor's version leans in to its last hit potential, healing 1/2 stress off of Crusader on kills, but losing the combo effect. It also picks up Execution 1/2 on burning targets. Execution isn't a concept we've talked about with other characters so far, as it wasn't in the game when I wrote this guide (though I will soon insert Death Armor and execution into the concepts section, and will change those other moves when I make a full pass later this month). The short of it is that Execution 1 can be good for enabling the stress heal off this, but is otherwise generally not that helpful most of the time because single death armor enemies will die to a DoT anyway once they hit death's door. Execution 2 is a huge value jump in comparison, as many dangerous enemies can have quite a bit of their death armor sidestepped with execution 2 (even the 3 armor ones, who can simply be pinged beforehand). Last hitting with Smite isn't a rare niche, though it is something that only works on the frontline. This move works very well with the next move on our list, Zealous Accusation, and Bonnie can very effectively enable this execution as well. Generally I wouldn't hold out for Vestal to enable this execution outside of Seraph setups (which you can run decently with Holy lance setups), but she can support this as well. It also apparently picks up half a point of damage (7-10)

Templar's to me is the weakest version most of the time, healing 1/2 stress on combo. This, similar to aggressor, allows him to 0 out his stress, but it competes for combo and feels, oddly, less accessible in many fights. It also picks up the same half point of damage. You'll run it on Templar generally speaking, and if you have nothing else to take combo with, the effect isn't bad. It just feels mostly superfluous given the availability of other stress healing options and the other ways he and others can utilize combo. Decently fast comps won't utilize that stress heal all that option either, and then using combo for it can feel like a detriment.

Stunning Blow: Used in 2-1, Targets 1-2, Deals 3-5/3-6 damage at 5/10 crit, and stuns on combo. Upgraded version removes all strength and crit tokens from the target as well.

Possibly the most no-nonsense stun in a game, outside of Bounty Hunter anyway. Doesn't need an upgrade, doesn't shift him around, does a little damage. Stuns in this game are generally questionable when it comes to value, but the ability to use this, ping off a token, and use combo for a stun can be quite nice on front-line crusaders, especially if they have access to combo outside of just Zealous and Holy Lance. The biggest selling point on this move compared to many other stuns is the fact that you don't have to upgrade it to get the stunning component. Otherwise, if you want to focus on a stun comp, you may as well just run a Bulwark Barristan or an upgraded Pistol shot on Dismas. A nice additional slot in for frontline crusaders who will have access to some combo, especially in the collector fight, where the upgraded aspects will also get some use.

Zealous Accusation: Used in 2-1, targets 1+2. Deals 1-2/2-3 damage at 5 crit. Deals 2/3 Burning, and has a 25/33% chance to deal combo.

Do not sleep on Zealous Accusation. It's an easier to use Dragonfly on a character that isn't anywhere near as squishy, and a character who can utilize that combo himself fairly frequently. This is not DD1 Zealous, it went to the gym and now deals 4 burn to two targets with the favorite toy memory. Throw it out against frontline targets with block, dodge, or just in general early into a fight, and then take advantage of the inevitable combo it generates, and the burn for any necessary executions. Enables Backdraft, meaning that opening with this and dragonfly can lead to some funny output, especially versus rank 2. The thing that holds this move back the most is Crusader's speed stat, which holds it back a little more compared to most other DoT dealers. This is, in my opinion, the better cleave when compared to Reap (and it's not particularly close in most comps), and I'd go so far as to say that any crusader that you expect to sit in the frontlines should equip this most of the time.

Of course, back-line crusaders aren't missing out on this either. Banneret turns this into burn Plague grenade. It trades one DoT output compared to plague grenade for the combo application, so its damage profile is usually closer to Acid Rain. I find that oftentimes Backline crusaders are rotating for Holy lance, which kind of competes a little bit with this move, but it's a very valuable backline DoT cleave in any case, and we already know that those are very strong. If you want to sit Crusader in 3 or 4 and have him stay there, this should be his opener in most random fights. It pairs particularly well with a Sharpshot in rank 2 with an upgraded pistol shot, to make great use of its combo application.

Inspiring Cry: Used anywhere, Targets any friendly with 5 or more stress. Target heals 2 stress. When upgraded, Reynauld himself will always heal 1 stress regardless of his current stress. If he targets himself in that case, he'd heal a total of 3. 1 turn Cooldown

It's a slightly different take on Inspiring Tune. It can be used anywhere, but instead of healing 3 stress on the target when upgraded, it will heal Reynauld himself 1 stress. This move is valuable just for the stress heal, but I tend to find the stress reduction on Reynauld himself less valuable, mainly due to the aggressor path's Smite. I'd also argue that it's less flexible this way, as can choose to heal Reynauld for 3 stress, but not other characters. All of that aside, it's still a useful stress heal, though I often only slot it on if I don't have useful stress heals on other characters. I don't see the need for this and, say, Bolster+ for example, and I can often find something on his kit that I'd rather run than this if I can. That isn't a knock against this move so much as a compliment to his moveset as a whole.

Rallying Cry Used Anywhere, Targets any friendly. Removes Daze and Weak/Those and also Stun on the target. Upgraded version removes Weak from Reynauld as well. Cooldown of 1/0

It's a stun cure and not the best stun cure in Crusader's potential arsenal. There is some counterpick potential, such as when walking into a beast den due to what exactly it cures, but locking the stun cure behind the upgrade is kind of brutal for a move this niche. Probably one of the least helpful moves on his kit due to how narrow it feels and how much value you need to get out of it to make it worth pressing at all. The self weak removal is also somewhat niche due to the existence of Zealous in particular, which typically functions as a better way to indirectly remove his own weak.

The templar version of this is a guard 2/guard 3 with a 2 turn cooldown. Which is good enough to make it good. The target also gains healing received and steals/copies any regen Reynauld has if they're below 33% HP. Thresholds to transfer regen are... kind of dumb, considering that regen is at its best as mitigation, not healing. See this move as a guard with potential bonus helpful effects, as functionally that is what it will be in many situations, with a healing received buff on top. It's worth noting that this doesn't do anything to defend Reynauld himself

The banneret version of this applies immobilize to everyone on your team. It is perhaps one of the strangest utility moves in the game. The general trophy is very strong, but spending a turn to get that affect for one turn is questionable. It can enable an extra lunge or fleche (though this is usually worse than just swinging with reynauld), and can counter certain enemy gimmicks, especially shuffles from Shambler or categorize if timed properly, but it's a very weird move that you have to find specific value for, and typically not worth running outside of its counterpick uses.

Reap: Used in 2-1, Targets 1+2. Deals 4-5/5-7 damage at 5 crit. Taregts are hit with a -20/-33% healing received debuff, and the upgraded version heals Crusader 15% on combo hit.

Generally this is going to feel worse than Zealous, though the heal on combo effect can be quite potent compared to other combo effects he has access to. It also has more potential to set enemies that are already under the effects of a DoT to death's door immediately, making it a more efficient cleave when dealing with lower HP enemies that have a death armor. It's overall more niche than Zealous in a lot of cases, but when you're able to make good use of the self heals it can be quite potent, and the healing received debuff is... probably almost never useful, but it is unique.

The Aggressor version swaps out the heal on combo for an execution 1 when the target is burning. This has the same issues that execution 1 did on unupgraded smite, but it does not get access to 2. It's not likely that you wouldn't be running Smite on Aggressor either, so the main reason you'd want reap in that situation is either when there are two good targets to hit with it, or when you want the on kill effect. The upgraded version gives you strength whenever you kill something with it. This is nice, particularly if Reynauld is already low stress and doesn't need the smite bonus, but the mastery requirement combined with it being an on kill effect makes it less useful than it otherwise could be.

It's also worth noting that this move will work with the aggressor version of tenacity, and Zealous won't, because Zealous is a ranged attack. So if you want to maximize tenacity value, this will be your cleave of choice. Unless you decide to run both, I suppose.

Battle Heal Used in 2-1, Targets any friendly below half HP. Heals 20/25%. Upgraded version heals Reynauld by 10% on cast regardless of his HP. 2/1 turn Cooldown, use limit of 3.

The 2 turn cooldown on upgraded Battle Heal is gnarly, especially when compared to other heals. It's so noticeable that the upgrade reducing the cooldown here feels very important, especially considering that the unupgraded version is effectively a worse unupgraded battlefield medicine. It's solid overall and does its job, and it's nice to have this accessible heal on a frontliner.

The banneret version is usable everywhere and picks up an extra use, healing 20/30 on target, but not healing reynauld himself when upgraded (unless you choose him as the target of course). It's probably usually the better version of the move overall, on the basis of that usability if nothing else. It's hard to go into anything at length when it comes to these moves. Just use them as a heal when needed, and upgrade them when you can to reduce that cooldown and increase the efficiency of the move.

Bulwark of Faith: Used in 2-1, Targets Self. Reynauld gains 2 block and 2/3 taunt, and 2/4 regen. 2 turn Cooldown

Reynauld's taunt option, and a noticeably potent one if all you're after is taunt. Comes with 2 block unupgraded, which is something that retribution lacks entirely, and has access to a whopping three total taunt on upgrade. The regen is quite nice too, though as we discussed when we looked at Comfort, it's more a source of mitigation than true healing in most cases. The thing that holds this move back in particular is the lack of block + (Which Withstand+ would get access to), and the 2 turn cooldown meaning that timing it well is pretty important. In any case the three taunt is supremely useful, and it's pretty rare that you'll opt not to run this outside of a backline banneret setup that literally can't. Good unupgraded, and a fairly good choice for a mid-game upgrade, especially if you're running Crusader without another bruiser or off-tank.

Holy Lance: Used in 4-3, Targets 2-3-4. Deals 4-7/5-9 damage at 10/15 crit. Inflicts 2/3 burn, and moves Reynauld forward 1. Upgraded version adds combo.

A strong dance option, especially with double lunge due to Reynauld's low speed, Holy Lance is a fairly stacked move that is held back from scalability due to the split nature of its value. It's damage range is quite strong for a move with incision-esque utility, and the upgraded version adds combo into that value package, meaning that a comp that can effectively use that combo to stun or do other nasty things loves being able to rotate this move. However, because the value is in three different areas, scaling the move is less effective that scaling a move like Zealous (Which is a DoT Cleave, therefore doubly benefiting from DoT buffs), or Smite (Which has a higher natural damage range). That's not to say scaling this move is bad, just that teams that spam it have to keep that factor in mind. Combo this with stun setups, with Lunge, with Dancers, or just use it at key moments with a Banneret Reynauld that starts in 4, and it's very hard for this move not to do you justice.

Radiance: Used anywhere, targets self. Reynauld gains 2/3 Regen and a special buff that gives his ranged skills (Holy Lance and Zealous) 20% more burn res piercing. Upgraded version also gives him a buff that increases damage by 30% against burning targets. 5 turn cooldown

Radiance is a damage scaling option for Crusader that runs into a similar problem that Bloodlust does: That being payoff time. It gives you a goody bag of stuff that can help in some fights and help sustain him, but choosing to use Radiance early over moves like Smite or Zealous to gain access to a buff is a pretty rare choice. It's better if you have Bonnie on the team to enable the Radiance buff, but even still the problem persists. The four turn payoff simply isn't enough to make the grab bag of goodies worth it in most fights. It can be comboed with his guard skill in templar to pass on some regen, similar to bulwark, and it can be comboed with healing received buffs to maximize the regen payoff, but often you're better off using Crus's competitive moveslots for something else.

Tenacity: This one has 4 versions, like Mantra or Coup De Grace, so we'll just list all four of the versions.

Wanderer Tenacity: Used anywhere, Targets any friendly. Target gains 2 block. Upgraded version also grants them 10 debuff resist and the crusader himself 1 block and 10 debuff resist. 2 turn cooldown.

Aggressor Tenacity: used anywhere, targets self. Reynauld gains a special buff that heals him every time he strikes a burning target with a melee skill by 15/20%. Upgraded version also gives him 20 debuff resist. 4 turn cooldown.

Templar Tenacity Used in 2-1, Targets self. Crusader gains 2/3 block and +30/50% healing received. Upgraded version, once again, also gives him 20 debuff resist. 2 turn cooldown.

Banneret Tenacity: Used anywhere, Targets all friendlies. Everyone gains 1 block token. Upgraded version also cures daze and stun. 3/2 turn cooldown

The Wanderer and Banneret Tenacity both allow Crusader to grant Block to other characters, and this alone is very powerful. Many characters don't have access to good inherent mitigation as part of their kits, or want to do things other than mitigate. This allows those characters to gain mitigation at a fair rate, with Banneret tenacity particularly feeling strong due to its 4 total block token output. You usually don't have to upgrade it, but if you do expect stuns (such as due to a trip into the Shroud), it is quite a nice effect to pick up, as Reynauld will typically go after the stunner. The targeted nature of the wanderer version is an advantage that helps make up for the value difference, allowing characters like Hellion to more effectively block, or countering moves like Focus Fire or the ever annoying Collector Taunt Combo extravaganza.

That's not to say his other versions are weak. Templar's Tenacity primes Crusader for some huge heals, especially from Indiscrminate science due to the block tokens. Having him eat and shell out abuse, just to heal it all away is quite strong, and the block is a good pick up to boot as you prepare to heal him, even without being able to turn it in to more healing. It's a pretty straightforward move, and hard to go wrong with when Reynauld is eating up most of the abuse.

Finally, Aggressor Tenacity is very different. The most important thing to keep in mind is that it works with Melee skills, not all of his attacks. So no Zealous or Holy lance, but Reap will happily put out value. This move is obviously much better if Reynauld isn't the only burner on the team. Its value can rival Adrenaline Rush with the right setup, though it's missing the initial heal and a fair amount of the easy usability. the tradeoff is that you gain that debuff resist and can use it more preemptively. It's probably still mostly just a worse adrenaline rush, but that's still pretty good.

Statistics:
48 HP
3 Speed
30 bleed resist, 30 blight resist, 30 burn resist
40 Disease resist, 40 debuff resist, 30 move resist, 40 stun resist
Movement: Up 2, Back 2

Has a permanent condition where he has a 50% chance to apply combo when he uses combo. Essentially this means he recycles any combo that he uses half of the time.

The bounty hunter doesn’t have any paths or shrines. You unlock his skills at the Altar with candles. You can recruit him for 1 region whenever his poster appears on the wall at the back of the inn by clicking on it and choosing someone to replace. They will come back after he leaves. This deducts 4 candles from your final total at the end of the expedition, win or lose. This can be annoying when you’re starting, but once you’ve unlocked everything it basically means that he is free. He has no relationships either, but he does have stress (so he can still meltdown). His moves all start mastered, which is really just a fun way of saying you can’t upgrade them, because there’s not any non-mastered variants of the move.

Pretty much all of BH’s options are designed to be at least pretty powerful, and he’s designed so that he can slot into any team, though at times his lack of paths means he comes up short compared to other characters. We’ll discuss his moves like everyone else, and in the analysis section we’ll discuss why you’d choose to hire BH rather than where he’s good (because he is always at least pretty good)

Moveset

Collect Bounty: Used in 3-2-1, targets 1-2. Deals 8-12 damage at 5 crit. Deals 50% more damage with combo.

You can probably already tell that this is the strongest no-nonsense front rank direct damage move in the game. You can see this move as a better Wicked Hack, because that’s effectively what it is. Doesn’t even need combo to be strong, but naturally if you do have combo it will hit as hard as a Howling End with no drawback. If that’s not a good staple damage move, I don’t know what is.

Mark for Death: Used anywhere, Targets any enemy. Applies combo and 2 vuln. Ignores Dodge and Guard.

An amazing damage transfer held back by the fact that BH already hits like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ monster by himself. It’s like a better Vuln hex, and we already talked about how good Vuln hex is. Has the same problem Double Cross has: BH wants to be set up more than he wants to set up other people. If you swap him in for a combo setter and want him to support things, or just notice an enemy has dodge or a bunch of block, or you know you have a strong ass couple of followups to use with this (potentially including BH himself), this move can still come in handy.

Come Hither: Used anywhere, Targets 3-4. Deals 2-4 damage at 5 crit, attempts to pull 2, and applies combo

The existence of this move on BH probably communicates how damn good Daemon’s pull is. This move is a worse Daemon’s pull, but that still makes it a very good pull. You get more use out of this than Mark because of the disruption of the pull, primarily. Throw this to turn off Cherubs and trumpets as needed, or to set something up for a fast murder, either at BH’s hands or someone else’s.

Caltrops: Used in 4-3-2, Targets 3-4. Deals 1-3 damage and 3 bleed at 5 crit. Debuffs target move resist and speed. Ignores 30 percentage points of bleed resist on combo

This move is actually fairly weak overall. It does do a bit of nice DoT damage to the backlines, but it pales in comparison to characters with dedicated backline DoT options. The debuffs also don’t do much most of the time. The move resist penalty sets them up for a pull which is usually unnecessary, and the speed penalty can cause them to move later so that they get killed or pulled before they can act on the next turn, but it’s only a 2 speed malus. It’s quite a niche move on a moveset that’s mostly just strong generic value, and you rarely see it picked unless he has no other option for the slot.

Flashbang: Used in 4-3-2, targets 1-2-3. Shuffles, blinds, and dazes target, and also stuns on combo. 1 turn cooldown

It’s a better disorienting blast, picking up blind instead of that weird % chance to weak. This move is primarily used for its shuffle or combo stun potential, and the bonus blind on it is nice. Often when you pick up BH this move will be able to get a stun off if you have any combo on the team at all, though often hitting them with collect bounty is preferable because it will just kill them or set them up for a kill with the next hero. It’s not bad by any means, providing a nice bit of basic utility, but it stands out as decidedly ‘fair’ on a kit like BH’s.

Staredown: Used anywhere, targets any enemy. Applies 2 weak. Gives BH 2 taunt and removes any vuln he has. 1 turn cooldown.

It’s an intimidate that you can use everywhere with a bit of extra utility in the vuln clear. This makes it a great tanking move overall. You’re generally happy for BH to get smacked in the face, since you only really need him to survive until the end of the region. Keeping him alive is optional, though if you’re gonna kill him you’ll wanna kill him in the last fight. And no, if BH dies you do not get a refund, but feel free to have him meltdown as much as you desire. You do press this move fairly often when you don’t have a reason for BH to use his other moves, or when you want to attract aggro for a bit.

Hurlbat: Used in 4-3, Targets any enemy. Deals 6-10 damage at 15 crit. Ignores dodge with combo, deals 50% more damage if target is burning.

Sort of a weird combo effect on top of the burning damage bonus. Well, it’s his primary damage tool if you have him replace a backline character instead of a frontline one, though he will still have bounty in 3. The ability to hit anyone with this fairly strong attack is quite notable, as it means it fits in well with any sniping teams. It goes particularly well with Bonnie and Junia for that burn damage bonus too, though one shouldn’t think that you need to have burn to run this move. Even without it, delivering 6-10 damage anywhere you want is quite strong in its own right. Reliable and flexible damage at your fingertips.

No Escape: Used in 4-3, Targets 3-4. Deals 2-4 damage at 10 crit. Ignores dodge, Applies combo, and stuns the target. Cooldown of 2 turns

It’s a stun on a button, no questions asked. Remember how good those were in DD1? They’re still amazing in this game, arguably moreso since the game is balanced around combo and daze stuns. He has two free stuns, this one is for backline BHs. It even ignores dodge, meaning the attack itself will always land unless he’s blinded, so you can stun those annoying cherubs or spitter spiders from moment one. There is pretty much no reason not to run this on a backline BH, unless the enemy you’re about to fight has extremely high stun resist. Which you basically don’t ever see outside of a few bosses and the stun resist combat modifier.

Finish Him: Used in 3-2-1, Targets 1-2-3. Deals 6-10 damage at 10 crit. Ignores block and 20 percentage points of DBR. Deals 75% more damage to stunned enemies (I believe this means it ends up at 11-18).

Finish him has the same damage bonus problem that it did in DD1, in that you don’t normally plan on shwacking the guy you just stunned. But hey, if you do, or are just running comps that put out stuns like nobody’s business, you can run this and deal some extra damage. It also gets a bit more reach than Collect, though I’d probably just as soon run him somewhere where he can run hurlbat for that utility. It’s nice for finishing off enemies with DBR as well, though it’s probably one of his weaker no nonsense damage options. Which is to say, it’s still good, like they all are, it’s just a bit below hurlbat and collect bounty.

Uppercut: Used in 2-1, targets 1-2. Deals 3-5 damage at 5 crit. Knockbacks the enemy 1 rank and stuns them. Cooldown 2

This is his other no nonsense stun. This one doesn’t ignore dodge, and replaces combo application with the knockback, so statistically I’d say it’s a little worse. It does stun the frontlines instead of the backlines though, which can be better against certain comps. Also deals a bit more damage for whatever that’s worth. It’s still amazing: It’s a one button stun, who cares what else it does? You’ll run this on any frontline BH, just as you’d run No Escape on any backline BH. If you put him in the middle with Jester and have Jester flip him back and forth, you can just use both, when you’re not using him to ♥♥♥♥ on enemies Jester has just comboed anyway.

Bodyguard: Used anywhere, Targets any other friendly. They get 2 guard tokens, he gets 2 block tokens. Cooldown 1

It’s… unupgraded defender. Kind of a letdown for his last skill, but unupgraded defender is still good. It’s a nice bit of bonus utility on a character who mainly just murders and stuns things. It’s sort of weird to say that the equivalent of Defender is probably one of BH’s worst moves, but that’s BH for you. A good move to have available in comps you expect will need him to jump in front of things, though I generally just prefer staredown.

It is quite obvious that most of BH’s options are very powerful, and that they’re set up to allow him to do well in pretty much any comp, regardless of who he replaces. That’s great, but the question is: Why recruit BH? There are a few major reasons to recruit BH for a region, and we’ll look at all of them. Multiple good reasons may be present when making the decision.

1. The biggest reason to recruit him is to do a lair snipe. BH’s power is the same across the entire game, so if you want to kill a lair boss early and feel your team needs a bump in power to do so, then picking up BH can be great. He is an excellent replacement against certain bosses when you have characters that perform poorly against them. For example, if you have a Runaway and want to do the sprawl boss, it might be good to swap her out for BH and to reorder the comp so that BH can access his long range moves. If you have a slow roll comp and plan to do the tangle boss, throw him in there and speed up the team a little.

2. The second biggest is specifically to do certain regions over others. Let’s say, for example, you have an orphan Bonnie on the team, sitting in the back. You want to take her to the sprawl to get her some trinkets to help with her fire DoT. That’s great and a common strategy, but she’s likely to do no damage for the entire region against the high fire resist enemies in the sprawl. You’re early into the run and don’t have the damage to make up for that, so you slap BH into the comp in her place. Then once you’re through the sprawl and she rejoins, you can hand her the trinkets. Not every case is this extreme, but there are quite a few situations where BH will do a region better than a certain member on your team. If you’re feeling unconfident, that’s the perfect time to bring him in.

3. To make certain key fights easier, to take more risks, or so he gets slapped around instead of someone important. You know what fight sucks for a lot of comps? Exemplar. So why not bring BH along for region 3, and have him be the dedicated tank for the fight. Who cares if he loses his mind or gets murdered, so long as you win it’s no big deal. BH is expendable, unlike everyone else, so having him take the brunt of stress and damage, especially in the end region fight, won’t affect you long term. This can also let you take even more aggressive strategies with more fight nodes in general, which he’s often happy to vote ‘yes’ for, at no relationship expense. Let him get beaten to death and let his mind be repeatedly broken for the good of everyone else.

4. Relationship Freezing. Don’t you just love it when two heroes hate each other? You’d rather not have them scream at each other for a region, and think you can scrounge up enough items to fix the problem by the end of it. Replace one of the offenders with BH, and their relationships suddenly don’t matter and won’t change for a while.

5. Because he slots into the strategy well. BH is never bad, but some comps do make him better. This is a weaker reason since you typically build comps with strategies in mind, so the comp should work either way. But comps that are good for BH (ones with Jester Engine for example) are naturally more encouraged to take him.

6. Because he’s cool and you like him.

Note that you’re sort of encouraged to run a rank 2 or 3 BH until you unlock his moves at the Altar. He’s still good though, he’s just not as infinitely flexible as he would otherwise be. A lot of his best moves (like his stuns) are also unlockables. The starting BH has some of his worse skills, like Caltrops, by default. He still, however, has collect bounty, so hitting things with the force of a semi truck will always be in the cards.

I do not know where else to put this, so here’s a section on the Altar of Hope. The Altar is the place you go to at the start of each run, before you even pick a confession. You spend Candles (the meta currency) that you earn from playing to unlock things there.

There are five sections of unlocks, we’ll discuss some important early pickups from each. Feel free to unlock whatever you want: it’s your game and you’ll get everything one way or another. These are just recommendations. You can see everything you can get in game at the Altar aside from the individual items, so there’s no reason for me to put down lists.

The Intrepid Coast

Mainly focuses on universal bonuses that will apply to every run. Also contains skins and the infernal torch.

Early on the two main groups of upgrades to look at are pets and journey. Journey will give you those universal Stagecoach bonuses, and Pets will unlock different pets. The first three upgrades from Journey will get you more space and another stagecoach item slot, as well as more candles, so it’s easy to recommend that early. If you unlock 1 pet, you will always get that pet, and if you unlock the first 3, you’ll be able to choose between the three. I’d probably just grab the first pet at the early stage along with those journey upgrades.

Wealth is another good set of pickups that offer different bonuses, mainly at certain locations. The first upgrade is very good value for every run, and most other upgrades are pretty valuable too. I’d take that first upgrade in particular really early and then take wealth upgrades as extras when I wasn’t interested in the Journey upgrade.

Naturally there’s no reason to touch skins until you’ve unlocked anything else, unless you just really want a new stagecoach skin. The infernal torch can allow you to grind faster with higher candle rewards, but will make the game harder. It’s probably worth grabbing just the first one mid-game if you feel confident, and especially once you have some powerful hero paths and items unlocked. You can also just save it for later if you have little interest in the higher difficulties. Note that this only really applies to the first torch. It's hard to justify investing as many candles as it takes to get later torches for what is really only a small candle bonus.

The Working Fields

Item unlocks. It’s a gambling house: the item you unlock with each roll in each section is random. The price for rolls goes up the more you unlock, eventually ending up at something like 4 candles per roll.

The items you unlock are not entirely random, and are divided into 'tiers'. The price increase happens when you finish a tier. So, for example, you'll always get stale bread before the price goes up the first time for inn items, but whether you get it as the first or last item in that set is up to RNG. Every type of item unlock works this way.

Start with inn items and start with them very early. You don’t start with any food other than slime mold unlocked, so you should generally be unlocking Inn items until you get at least stale bread or Apples and Cheese unlocked. After that it’s your call: there’s useful things in every section, though I like the idea of deepening the combat item pool early too to get your hands on some more powerful items. Usually after the necessities, this is a good place to dump extra candles into, and you should look to progress your items with your hero unlocks.

The Living City

Hero unlocks and upgrades. Naturally I’d recommend unlocking all the heroes (including BH) early, though if you’d rather focus on grinding you can focus on unlocking and upgrading one powerful comp that you use to sweep the game repeatedly. I’d find that terribly boring personally, but if that interests you, may I recommend Hellion, who is quite strong as a front rank damage dealer, especially if you take her upgrades to the ravager path which is unlocked quite early. She’s also very easy to understand. Otherwise I like unlocking all the heroes before upgrading them, and dumping the extras into items while I fill up the heroes and maybe get some upgrades from the Intrepid Coast. You don’t generally need to take the hero all the way to the end early, as their signature inn item is all you get for the final upgrade, and you only get that randomly. Aim for good path unlocks and good value upgrades after you unlock them before you just fill everyone out.

It’s potentially worth taking some of the move unlocks semi-early on Bounty hunter specifically, to make using him more flexible. That way you can slot him in more easily into various comps.

The Timeless Wood

Persistent Heroes and memories. Memory slots unlock for a hero when you beat confession bosses with them, 1 slot per boss. Slotting in a memory (costs at least 2 candles) will also make the hero persistent until you reset them, you lose while running them, or they croak. Currently, maxing out the memory unlocks will make memories cheaper and give you more to choose from. It costs 85(?) candles to do this. Rather than waiting until you’ve unlocked nearly everything, I’d be looking to do this once you’ve gotten all those basics and finished a victorious run that pays out a large amount of candles. That way you can start slotting in memories immediately and at cheaper prices. Persistent heroes get buffs from memories and naturally allow you to lock in quirks for stronger overall heroes. I also find persistent heroes fun. It is far from necessary, and some people might rather wait to get memories until they've unlocked pretty much everything else.

This is just a generic early guideline. Once you hit mid-game and have gotten all these sort of basic unlocks, I’d just fill out whatever you wanted to. The only things I’d absolutely save for last no matter what are the various skins, since they do literally nothing.

So you’ve picked a team comp to run, either because it sounds fun, or strong, or you’ve only got a few heroes and have to make it work. You ride through the Valley, knock out that first gaunt fight, and find yourself at The Torch and Crown, the first inn of every run. What should you be doing here?

The first inn does as much to set the tone of your run as your team composition does, and you’ll make many key decisions here that can affect how you play out the first region in particular. These mainly involve how you spend those first mastery points, and what you want to pick up at the shop. The first shop contains what will usually be the most run defining choice you make at any shop: The Pet. Let’s talk about what you should do here.


A reasonable first shop, and a pet draft. Note that Stagecoach items require Baubles now.

The Pets and their Strengths

There aren’t too many pets in the game, so I’ll be able to discuss each one briefly individually.

At the first inn of every run, provided you have 3 or more pets unlocked, the game will give you a draft of 3 pets to choose from, like within the above picture. If you have unlocked 3 or less, you will always pick from those same three pets. Pets are free, but You can only equip one and it locks in permanently. Even if it didn’t, if you buy any extras they’ll disappear at the next inn anyway. So you get to choose one pet to do your entire run with, just don't forget to equip whichever one you get.

Generally, your pet decision will depend on your comp, what you plan to do, and what else is offered at that first store, as many pets synergize very strongly with certain other stagecoach gear.

Here is a list of pets, in unlock order. We’ll look at what they do and some reasons why you might pick them for a run

Orphan Wolf Cub: The first pet you get, and it’s alright. It gives the team 5% stress resist per luxury gear, and a boost to positive relationship chance of 10%.

If you see a lot of luxury gear, the cub is a decent pick. Some luxury stagecoach gear is very good, like the trinket organizer and the two strongbox items. There aren’t really any particularly bad luxury gear items, aside from the one that allows you to hold more candles (which is great until you unlock everything). The positive relationship chance is noticeable, especially with neutral relationships, and the stress resist can come in clutch in some fights. The cub isn’t usually the best pet by any means, but it’s a decent pet to have access to at the start and a consistently decent choice.

Pygmy Pliskin: There are snakes in my dreams all the time. This snake gives the team 10% more healed per medical stagecoach item, and randomly heals someone 10% after each node.

The random heal is okay. Traveling heals are already really strong, and the random heal is only one hero, and only usually for 3-5 HP. If they made the effect heal everyone it would be noticeably better, but this is a little extra value over a run.

The other effect is good, extra healing percent is valuable and the amount this pet provides is quite competitive. There are some really helpful medical stagecoach items, the Mortar and Pestle and Chirugeon's gear in particular. Heal bonuses are quite helpful in a variety of situations, though a few purple herbs can be used to get a similar effect. Best in teams with some decent healing options if you see medical gear early. Generally not useful if your team has no or few heals or has a very fast tempo, but most have enough to benefit decently.

Unnatural Owlet: 5% extra debuff resist piercing on all debuff moves per piece of tinkerer’s stagecoach gear. All stagecoach items that produce stuff produce stuff more often.

One of the most powerful and consistent Pets in the game. It’s at its best in mitigation teams that use debuffs, as debuff resist piercing is generally extremely hard to come by. If you get 4 pieces of tinkerer’s gear, this is like critting every time you use a debuff. All the tinkerer’s gear is pretty great, producing generally excellent combat items over the course of a run, allowing you to produce more of anything with the blueprint tubes, and allowing you to make more money with the Assay gear.

The thing is, the ‘produce stuff more often’ clause doesn’t just apply to Tinkerer’s gear, it applies to everything that makes stuff. More flapjacks, Stews, Bandages, whatever. Owlet is frequently a strong pickup if taken with any stagecoach item that makes stuff that you care about, and doubly if it’s taken with Tinkerer’s gear. I wouldn’t generally grab it over everything else if the first shop didn’t have any of these items though, and possibly wouldn't be that interested if I wasn't running good debuffs.

Reanimated Rabbit: Everyone gains 1 speed per food gear equipped. Everyone gains 1 Max HP per 4 food in inventory

Reanimated Rabbit is also frequently incredibly strong, and it’s very easy to see why. More Raw Max HP on a team is absolutely insane, as everyone gets the same raw gain from it. Squishy characters quickly become non-squishy, and bulky characters only get bulkier. Then it gives you the plus speed on top of that for food gear, which is an insane boost to have for free.

Rabbit has some minor anti synergy with very slow characters: The speed buff isn’t enough to get them to go first in a lot of cases, and it can take them out of range of using the less than 2 speed trinkets. On the flip side, it can put more people in range of using the high speed trinkets, which are also very powerful. Food Stagecoach items are often quite strong, so you're usually happy to pick one up with Rabbit. Stagecoach items like Icebox and Food Barrels are basically designed to be run with Rabbit, and the Flapjacks stagecoach item fuels it well. The stew and whiskey stagecoach items don’t synergize aside from the +speed, as the stew only produces one food item at a time and the whiskey produces whiskey which is not food, however badly we may wish it was.

The biggest downside to rabbit is that it hogs up your inventory space, especially if you don’t get Food Barrels. This problem can be mitigated with certain other stagecoach items as well, and the inventory size trophy in particular. Rabbit is usually a strong pick, and is usually an instant pickup if you see an Icebox or Griddle in your starting Shop.

Mucilaginous Slime: More stuff from looting road debris. 5% debuff resist on the whole team per piece of Road Gear.

Another generically strong pet. Debuff resist is a glorious buff to have, because Debuffs suck. Debuff resistance is, however, often rather hard to come by outside of trinkets and this pet, so this pet serves a very specific and helpful niche, and it serves it quite well. It’s difficult to say how much the road debris bonus gets you, though it makes runs feel a lot closer to the pre-nerfed road debris, so I’d reckon it’s at least decent. The debuff resist is where this shines, and there is some good road gear, mainly the iron brazier in particular. Several other road gear pieces are a bit iffy inclusions, because they do things that you don't really need, like gaining more wagon tokens. A large part of that is how buffs from carriage tokens work (We’ll discuss that later), and the randomness of some other items. Still, the debuff resist is very strong if you do get some road gear, and the debris value is nice. This guy is a good pickup if you see some road gear you want to buy in the first shop, and is a decent investment otherwise, as he’ll always produce some value.

Shrieker Chick: 2% crit per piece of scouting gear, 2 extra baubles whenever you get baubles

A little extra economy and potentially a little extra crit. Scouting gear is decent. They generally scout out certain kinds of locations or offer a general buff to scouting, and some buff the shops of locations. Since some locations are stronger than others, some scouting gear provides much more value than others. Scouting can also let you avoid certain locations that you'd be interested in avoiding, so there’s some reverse value there too. With enough scouting you can determine where virtually everything is. The bonus of a measly 2 crit per piece is kind of iffy though, and stacking up tons of scouting gear can often be overkill. The 2 extra baubles is a nice economy bonustowards buying trinkets and stagecoach items, as well as Stagecoach repairs. Unfortunately, the fact that it’s a flat and relatively small increase means that the amount of value you get from the ability in a run is relatively fixed and usually kind of low.

Larval Carrion Eater: When someone kills a corpse, they heal 30% and gain 1 crit token and 1 block token

A generic pet that can provide a lot of value for smashing corpses if your comp actually does that. Corpse deleting moves like Mag rain don’t activate this effect, which is the main problem with this pet. Much better with that one tangle trophy that I’ve mentioned like 20 times during this guide, since that makes it easier to one shot corpses. It’s very rare that you run a comp that wants to hit and destroy corpses directly, and if you’re running one it’s usually because you either elected to or forgot to bring corpse clear. In those cases this pet may provide an okay level of value. Also does nothing in bosses, which doesn’t help its case.

Hatchling Crocodilian: When anyone in the comp moves, they gain 3% damage for the rest of the battle. 20% of the time, they also lose 1 speed. Both stack forever.

Croc is a pet that on the surface seems like it favors heavy dance teams, and it really isn't always good there. Heavy dance teams often have fragile speed orders that maintain consistency tenuously, especially in the absence of certain items and trinkets. They are also very often really fast comps that don’t have time to benefit much from the effect. As a result the Malus’ ability to lessen the consistency of those teams, even a little, is usually more impactful on a strategy than the damage is.

Croc excels in dance setups with speed valleys, or dance setups that care far less about order and just happen to shuffle around. It also works better in slower comps and longer fights, where the damage has time to stack up. Croc might mess up, say, a double lunge team that uses a high speed Jester and Audrey, but it will not have any impact on a dance setup that rotates a Jester and Barristan to repeatedly stun enemies, as their speed differences are very wide. Throw a Seraph Vestal in there to make a mitigation focused comp and you’ll have plenty of time to ramp up the 3% damage buff. Losing 1 speed enough times with Jester to flip their speed orders, without also losing it on Barristan, is effectively impossible, but getting some more damage off a 6% bonus per turn on both heroes is likely to stack up over longer fights. Croc is a good pickup in teams that enable these specific kinds of strategies, but perhaps not the end-all be-all.

Crimson Tick: Whenever you kill something, 5% chance to produce ‘The Blood’ Combat item.

The blood is a super rare combat item that you normally only get at a certain version of the Academic’s study. It gives 1 target a strength, crit, and speed token on use, at the cost of gaining horror. So it’s very good, clearly, probably only beaten in direct damage output in some comps by War Horn. If we reckon that each fight has 4 enemies (it’s definitely less on average than that, but for simplicity sake), we see that we get around 1 blood every 5 fights with this. I can’t even begin to guess how many fights a typical run has, but you’re probably looking at 4-8 blood in most runs if I had to guess. Great for sniping in specifically region 2 and 3 (you won’t usually have the blood yet in time for the first possible lair, but if you do it’s obviously excellent there too), and great for some high output strategies against certain act bosses. You generally won’t need to put this on several people unless you simply want to make a certain set of enemies or a specific boss disappear. For the sniping utility and the ability to further empower certain strategies, the Tick is quite nice. It’s mainly held back by its randomness and the fact that this is the only thing it does, not providing you with universal value like some of the best pets.

Shambler’s Spawn: Or Shambly (as I call him), Or Shamblino (as everyone else does).
-100% scouting everywhere, +200% scouting for oblivion’s Ingress (so you see all of those and nothing else by default). Acts as a Dark Impulse for the whole party.

Shambly is the quintessential high roller pet. Having Shamblino will immediately make your run worse because you can’t see anything other than Ingresses. So you’ll typically waste more time taking nodes you don’t want like assistance encounters. You also might get loathing spiked (which is very bad) and are more likely to break your wheels or armor all the way to the ambush, which can result in one of the most dangerous fights in the game. Ingresses are usually great locations, so seeing all of those is nice, though they don’t spawn en masse outside of the bat country modifier.

You are also guaranteed to see the lair and any locations named in your region goal, which means sometimes it isn’t as bad as it sounds. The upside to this loss is the ability to create truly broken trinket combinations if you get cultist trinkets, and to find every cultist fight to do that. Since you don’t need to run dark impulses, you can run them with other strong trinkets or even run them together. You may just never find good cultist trinkets though. Hence ‘high roller’ pet.

Some people think he’s one of the absolute best pets in the game. I disagree. The value loss from the scouting here and the extra danger is very often more impactful than his positive effect is, and that’s partly because the extremely powerful trinket combinations you end up with function as ‘win more’ rather than something actually necessary in many cases. Sure, you can get some amazing combinations, but if you can get the same victory with less, why introduce the risk? He is still strong, however, as simply being able to skip on finding dark impulses is nice, and always being able to find one of the best locations in the game is also nice. The fun factor is also off the charts. Shambly gets a lot stronger if you pick up Trinket Organizer early on, to get more cultist trinkets and good trinkets in general, and he’s generally an autopick if that’s in your first shop unless one of the other really strong pets also has great items available. His malus can be partly turned off with certain scouting gear: +100% to find X from certain gear won’t guarantee it, but it will set it to normal. Certainly the most interesting pet to play with.

If you have Shambly as your pet, Shambler will get a buff when you fight him. I don't know what this buff is, but you should probably be more careful about potential Shambler fights with this pet.

We covered some ideas behind purchases with pets, but unless you’re making a purchasing choice based on the pet you’re running with for the run, there’s quite a lot to decide between. It’s worth noting that new profiles will have much less money. This purchase section covers purchases at the first inn and in general. I’d generally divide these early relic purchases into a few categories:

1. Stagecoach Items. They go for 25 or 40 baubles now. These purchases will generally do a lot to define your whole run, as the stagecoach items you get at the start of the game will be producing value throughout the entire game. There are a ton that are good investments, though I’d generally err against stagecoach items that affect specifically inventory size at this point, especially when the starting inventory is maxxed out in size, unless you have another reason to grab those items. Since they don’t produce anything on their own, they often won’t start to pay off for a while, and you can typically cut a few items pretty safely in most runs to keep room for anything important. The same goes for certain road gear, in the absence of the slime. Getting extra wheel health and armor health and free wagon tokens is something that often produces very little value over the course of a run unless it prevents a break, especially when you get your wagon tokens maxxed out at the altar. Stagecoach gear that produces good items (Griddle) or a long term gameplay advantage (strong scouting gear or the brazier, for example) are generally the best early investments. Stagecoach items become less valuable investments as the run goes on, though picking up certain ones that you want to produce items with for a specific strategy (i.e. the Mortar and Pestle), or types that provide more pet buffs can still be good, as is anything just notably strong.

2. Combat Items: Combat items are used up on use, and you can find or buy many more over the course of a run. Typically, there are four major reasons you’d buy a specific combat item at a shop. The first is that it’s just a very good combat item. Grabbing a smoke bomb or a healing salve with some extra money is a good investment because those items are just good in general. The second is that you have a specific short term strategy for it. The most notable is buying a stack of oil flasks because you intend to Snipe the Tangle Boss or as a pseudo blind clear for your leper, or perhaps bear traps or fishing nets because you plan to snipe the Foetor boss. These are all items that aren’t all extremely great in random situations, and that you probably wouldn’t buy without a specific reason, but that can be essential in their specific niches. The third is as a long term investment for crucial combat items. Do you spy an item that you think would do very well against your final boss? If you’ve got the money, you should probably make some space for them, given how exceptionally useful having the right items can be when going into the final boss. The fourth is that it ‘solves’ a problem with your comp. Have little or no healing? Healing salves are a great purchase. No stress healer? Grab laudanum. These ideas generally do apply to buying combat items at all shops in the game, and we’ll talk more about using combat items later.

Also, if you have a trinket that you want to use that requires it be paired with a certain kind of item, buying a combat item that counts as that kind of item is generally a great purchase.

3. Inn Items that aren’t buffs. These are usually stress relief or relationship building items specifically. Generally if you buy the stress relief items for their stress relief in particular, you’re doing it because you believe your comp will take a noticeable level of stress. Otherwise, why take them? On the flip side, buying relationship items can be a good investment in many situations. You shouldn’t typically use them immediately, but they can fix bad relationships or boost neutral ones to good. Generally the ones you want the most are items that are all positive, Like the Pig. Preemptively buying something that can potentially lower relationships, like a whiskey bottle, early is a bit more dubious, but they’re great purchases when you need to correct a bad relationship or when you expect you will need to. Finally, there are inn items used to remove bad quirks. These are good if you have an oldest bad quirk that you need to remove, or if you can chain them together to get rid of something undesirable. Both have downsides but are cheaper and more convenient than a hospital trip, and one also cures some stress.

4. Inn Items that are buffs: There’s a ton of these, and many aren’t great. Food counts, and unless you intend to snipe something really dangerous, you don’t generally need food for the first region, but you should definitely start buying food later in the run as needed. Food is also generally available at most inns, so you can tend to save your money for more impactful purchases later when you don't need it. Items like Whetstone and the tug rope are generally not great purchases anywhere, save with extra money at the last inn, due to their very low impact. Poultices can be a very good investment if you know you’ll need them or have a reason to use them in mind, such as the clarifying poultice in act 1. Some buff items are also just very high value, like the songbook of rousing tunes (which is also a stress heal inn item), and can therefore be good pickups early.

Naturally, there’s only so much on offer, so the strategy you build with the first shop and first regional offering in particular will dictate a lot about your run. As a general rule, I’d pick up at least 1 stagecoach item if there’s a good one on offer, then any really high value inn items (Pig), then I’d look at combat items and may invest heavily into them if I had a strategy to snipe a certain boss with their help (possibly even skipping items like the pig if needed), then I’d look back at inn items for stuff that may be generally helpful. And finally I’d look at…

5. Early Trinket Purchases: Uses the same currency as SC items, so you can usually look at these and those together. You will only be able to make a certain number of trinket purchases over the course of a game because there are only so many shops, and holding onto all your baubles all the time looking for that one god trinket is typically less efficient. If you see something you’d think would be generally helpful, and you have some left over from SC purchases, you should probably get it. It’s worth noting that the selection you’re getting here is of a limited pool compared to what you can find out in the world, and a lot of the strongest trinkets are region specific. However, getting a decent trinket now is a big boon, as it may allow you to play more aggressively. On the flip side, if you’re at the first inn in particular, you have the maximum number of potential trinket purchases in the future. It’s very easy to go one way or the other, but I’d generally buy a trinket early if it either provides a decent bonus to a specific strategy or team member now, or if you’d be happy running it for the whole run. Later on I’d generally lower my standards to make sure that I get something useful, unless I’ve already found several good trinkets. Trinket purchases will also generally increase in value against stagecoach items the longer the run goes, as many of the SC items will have less time to pay off and make an impact on the run.

Once you make it to the first inn, you will have 2 mastery points, or 5 in act 1. It is very important that you spend these points correctly if you want your team to operate smoothly throughout the game. This section will describe a good order of operations for Mastery spending, and will be relevant over the whole course of the game. Not all moves are built equally, and some see a bigger push in power than others when you upgrade them, so you should break these guidelines based on what you believe you need more and how powerful the upgrades are.

1. Stuff you need NOW

It is actually fairly rare that you need to master one specific skill to do a specific snipe or to ensure you survive for one more region, but if that’s the case you believe yourself to be in, that trumps any other considerations for mastery spending. This specifically means that you’re using mastery to solve an essential problem, rather than actually building the team out. This isn’t usually something that happens at the first inn unless you’ve created a really screwy comp, but it is, very rarely, something that might happen later on if you feel you’ll have to go to a region you don’t want to, or you’re not prepared for exemplar, or something of that sort. This also includes upgrading stress heals if you’re reasonably afraid that you’ll be facing meltdowns in the near future, as meltdowns can get someone killed or ruin relationships.

2. Get Your Strategy Online

You know what every deadeye Audrey strategy that utilizes a jester engine typically needs? An upgraded thrown dagger, and an upgraded Fade to Black. Making a double lunge comp? You probably want to upgrade Lunge. Getting your primary strategy online and more powerful so that you can consistently perform it in fights to great effect is very important to making the comp work. It’s worth recognizing how many mastery points your comp needs to come ‘online’ as it were, and ideally doing your best to keep that at 2 or lower. Other common examples include upgrading a consecration for a consecration dance set-up, or upgrading rampart or pistol shot for your stun comp to work. Note that strategy doesn’t always just mean combination, what it really means is moves that aren’t just staple damage that you plan to use every fight as some part of a greater plan. If you brought Bonnie to use Smokescreen in every fight as a primary source of mitigation, smokescreen should be an early upgrade. Likewise, if you brought Barristan for his retribution, getting retribution+ so he has some block on top of it is very important. Some moves are less ‘crucial’ to a strategy, and it’s worth figuring out where you can cut corners. You might want to upgrade Toe on your Hellion for Winded clear, for example, but with only 2 mastery points you might be better off playing around winded for a region or two.

3. Get Damage on Everyone

Or everyone who you plan to deal it with, anyway. Over the course of the game, more enemies will be consecrated, and if you want to kill them quickly, you’ll need to scale damage. One way to do that is to invest mastery points into damage skills. Mastered direct damage skills have higher damage ranges, meaning you get more bang for your buck from other modifiers too. Mastered DoT skills are crucial for dealing with many bosses efficiently and smoothing thresholds.

It is very important that you Spread These Out. DO NOT spend your mastery points upgrading all the damage on one character. Outside of some certain very good trinkets and one very powerful move, your heroes can only go once per turn. If you put all the mastery points on one person’s damage options, you’ll have three heroes using nothing but basic skills. Ideally everyone should get at least 1 staple damage skill that you use with them fairly frequently upgraded fairly early, unless they pretty much never deal damage at all.

4. Other Utility and Mitigation

Not to be confused with crucial mitigation skills like the Smokescreen example was. After you’ve gotten some damage on everyone (not generally after you’ve gotten all of it: that tends to be redundant), you should start looking at upgrading utility skills that you use fairly frequently but not as the core of your strategy. This very much depends on the move, as some don’t really need upgrading, such as Daemon’s Pull, or aren’t worth upgrading, such as blinding gas in many cases. This would often be when you upgrade moves like Razor’s Wit, Slice Off, Open Vein, Toe to Toe, Defender, Hearthlight, and oh so many more. These moves are all very helpful to have upgraded but are rarely at the core of your strategy or damage output, and can usually be left alone until you’ve gotten those first major things handled or have a specific use case for those upgrades. Note that in some comps, many of these skills can be central to your strategy, and will then come at number 2.

5. Healing/Stress Healing

I’m putting this at 5, but they can come drastically sooner in some comps. Getting your crucial healing moves upgraded is always nice, but generally you’ll already take less damage upgrading the above categories, so getting an extra 5% on BF medicine or even 20% on Seraph Mantra is more of a later consideration, when you might be facing down fights where the empowered heals will come into play more. Stress Healing becomes far more important if you have a slower comp in general, and I might take upgrades on skills like Bolster or Sanctuary quite early if I’m expecting to have to cure stress with them fairly often. The Healing moves are more consistently saved for later, just due to the nature of ‘stronger comp = less damage’, and the fact that Traveling Heals are quite powerful anyway.

6. Whatever’s Left

If you plan on using it, even if it doesn’t really need an upgrade and an upgrade won’t make it much better, you may as well if nothing else is left. You can also just upgrade cool skills you want to try out or something at this point. This is also the point where you upgrade skills you plan to switch to for very late game fights, mainly in regards to the final boss (and you should generally look to do so at the last inn anyway if you can). Skills like Magnesium rain or Dead of Night won’t usually do anything in those, after all, so you may as well upgrade the switch in.

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That sort of sums up the recommended order. Feel free to break this as needed or as wanted; all sorts of upgrade paths will let you beat the game. I’ve simply found this order is most efficient. Some moves, like Smokescreen, do really need an early upgrade to come online by the way, so it’s worth breaking order for moves like those in particular. Or just consider those upgrades as part of the core strategy, whatever floats your boat.

Each region’s enemies will be described in a section later on. This section is about why you’d choose one region above another, and sometimes why you should avoid a specific region.

At this point I will be spoiling the Lair Boss rewards and their names and trophies, as they’re part of the decision making, so if you don’t want to hear anything at all about them and their rewards in particular, you’d better come back after you’ve fought them.

There are 4 major regions in the game that you can pick between, as well as the Sluice. The Sluice is a special bonus region that doesn’t count towards your region count, so it’s free value. Let’s just get that one out of the way first:

If you have the option to go to the sluice (it's luck based, and won't show up in act 1) and you don’t have a good reason not to or a good reason to pick something else, you should go to the sluice. It’s free value, if you don’t count getting hit by pigs as ‘paying’. Reasons not to go to the sluice are generally: I’m afraid I will die there or I am afraid I will catch a disease there that I can not handle by the end of the run. You’ll generally get a chunk of money and usually 1-2 mastery points for your trouble, and it’s a relatively short region. I wouldn’t usually spend food before going into it if I could help it. A sluice trip also functions as a ‘mulligan’ for your region choice, since the game will generate two new regions to choose from after the fact.

Aside from the sluice, you have 2 regions drafted from the main 4 to pick from at each inn, and 3 total trips to take into them. You can go into the same region multiple times, and even beat its boss multiple times, which can be very important for certain strategies. So let’s look at some major reasons to go to each region.

Reasons To Go Anywhere

This section is for the region modifiers and region goals specifically. Every region that is not the Sluice or the mountain will have a modifier and a goal.

Modifiers modify the experience or generation in the region. They can be generically bad modifiers that reduce your DBR, make your flame go down faster, reduce DoT resist, and so on. Sometimes you can get universally good modifiers, like the one that increases your movement resist. Generally the universally good and bad modifiers don’t change your decision making that much unless they're particularly nasty, outside of maybe something like that movement resist modifier in the shroud.

Normally the ones you’re looking out for for decision making specifically are the scouting and generation modifiers in particular. If a region says there will be more X, and that you’ll scout more of X, then if you need X or want X you can go there, and if you don’t want it you can go elsewhere. Generally the strongest locations like cultist fights are good generic choices to take more of if you don’t mind going to the region in question, whereas more of something like Assist encounters is normally a turn off. More generation of locations you really need for some specific reason, typically specifically Hoarders or Hospitals, is a bit of a double edged sword. You normally only need one of these, or maybe a couple hoarders to account for luck. Having a map with 4 hospitals or 4 hoarders will generally mean you get one, but can mean you get less value from the region overall. It’s still generally a good choice if you need one though.

Goals are usually the more important bit. They offer rewards for doing a certain thing in a region. The region will generate so that they are always possible to do, at least theoretically, if it’s something that requires dodging or finding a specific location. These rewards are the main important bit, as they can either be a trinket, mastery points, or candles. Candles (these are ones that end up in your inventory) are a great reward for any burgeoning profile, inevitably become worthless once you max out, and are usually nicest if you have a buff to inventory space. Mastery points are a universally great reward, and most of the time if the game offers you 2 or 3 mastery points to do something you think you can do, you should go to that place and do it, barring some other major strategy. Trinkets are hit or miss, depending entirely on the trinket offered. You can hover over it and see what it does before you ship off. If it’s great, do it, if it’s not, then ignore it.

There is one other important aspect to Goals that can affect your play. Goals that require going to or avoiding certain nodes and locations will always reveal those locations. Need a hospital? Take the goal that tells you to bypass it, and you’ll get to go straight there. This is actually more than just bonus scouting, these will always be revealed like the lair is always revealed, even if you have, say, the shambly pet.

Reasons To Go To The Tangle

1. The first reason, as always, will be to get access to a certain trophy. There are two trophies everywhere, and The Dreaming General fight will select 1 to give you. You do get to see it beforehand, but if you don’t want to be offered it again you’ll have to win that fight and hold it.

One of these is The Nightmare’s End, which reduces the price of all trinkets in stores by 75%. This is an okay effect especially if you have a weak bauble economy during the run. You can often find some good trinkets at stores, and this nearly guarantees that you’ll be able to afford anything good that shows up at Hoarders or the Inn. The main downside is that you may have already built up or will build up a good trinket setup from trinket drops. If you have something specific in mind and especially if that something specific is a Hoarder Only trinket, this is worth consideration. It’s also not uncommon to only need to make one or two trinket purchases during a run, in which case you will tend to have enough baubles in most cases.

The other one, which I have mentioned a billion times in this guide and that is typically considered one of the most powerful trophies in the game, is The General’s Dream. What this one does is permanently immobilize your entire party and also increase damage to corpses by 200%. The corpse part is basically irrelevant in most comps, the important bit is the immobilization. What that does is make your team immune to any movement effect that isn’t the Leviathan’s drowning attack, and it also allows you to use movement skills that are supposed to be balanced by their movement as much as you want. So you can lunge forever, or point blank shot forever, or dragonfly forever, and so on, all with no setup. There are actually quite a few cases where this can be beneficial even outside of the absolutely broken situations it creates. Difficult fights like the Exemplar, Shambler, or the Act 2 boss can shuffle the party around, and this trophy turns off those aspects in the fight.

On the flip side, if you’re running a comp that, say, wants to take advantage of Vestal’s consecrations with some dancing, you should generally avoid using this trophy, unless you have no choice. It’s pretty rare that you have a comp like that though unless you’re specifically building a Seraph Vestal setup.

2. To get access to some of the powerful low-speed and tanking trinkets accessed only in The Tangle. The Footman’s Grog is good on anyone you’d expect to get vuln and/or weak, or on important damage dealers to prevent them from being mitigated. The Reverberating Redoubt and Calibrating Censer are ridiculous on slow units (Leper, Barristan, Vestal mainly), and the clenching claws are excessively powerful on any tank. There are some other okay generic trinkets too, like the Armory Key. If you feel your comp would highly benefit from any of these, a trip is often worth it.

3. You have a comp that’s very good at killing the backline, and ideally one with backline cleaves. Back to front strategies work very well in the tangle, as the Arbalists, Drummers, and Bishops all sit in the back 2 ranks in most fights, while the soldiers are usually up front. The knight is really the only super dangerous enemy that likes to end up in the front, and he’s a size 2. Backline cleaves in particular are also extremely effective against The Dreaming General, as we’ll see in his section.

4. You hate DoT effects in your current comp. Fairly rare, but the Tangle doesn’t generally apply as many DoT effects as the other 3 regions do. It certainly has some bleed on the knight and arbalest, but that’s really about it. The region makes up for it with direct damage though.

Reasons To Go To The Sprawl

1. The trophies here are a bit weaker than other options in a lot of cases, but they can still be worth looking for. The Unabridged Edition increases your scouting by 100% for everything, meaning you have perfect information outside of scouting maluses. The big problem with it is that you really have to get it early to make good use of it, and even then it’s only providing that information. Librarian is a bit harder to snipe than the general and the baby in particular. Still, if you need to go to certain locations for your strategy (often that means getting to go to the hospital), this trophy can help with that. It naturally doesn’t do anything else, so you should have something else to bring with you to the mountain at the very least.

The Complete Catalogue causes all your crits to try to apply 3 burn, but with the downside that at combat start every hero has a 25% chance to start with that same burn. The downside is usually irrelevant but it’s worth mentioning (and I, frankly, don’t know why it needs to exist). This trophy is very generic, in that most teams can get at least some use out of it, though it’s not the most powerful generic trophy in my opinion. If you expect your team to crit a lot, because you’re running a GR comp, or you have a person with the deadly quirk, or you’re running Dismas, or whatever, this will produce a lot of extra value. It also serves very well on those teams when they lack DoT damage specifically, as it allows them to access the utility that a DoT provides without having someone to apply that DoT. Nothing better than using double tap to set someone to Death’s Door with Take Aim, only for them to get burned and die with no extra followup from you.

2. Trinkets in the Sprawl often benefit characters that apply burn or are 8 speed or higher in particular. Laden lantern, Tinderbox, and Sacred Scribblings are all fantastic pickups for a Bonnie, allowing her DoT output to be heavily magnified. The Snappy Swig and Enlightening Element are also good on here and are absolutely broken on any character with greater than 8 speed due to all the free value they allow those characters to gain. The boss only trinkets are actually comparably a bit of a miss. Smoldering Hymnal can be quite nice on anyone you know will go first consistently, such as a Dismas with a speed token from Take Aim or someone you power up with a bunch of speed poultices, and the charred litany was nerfed and is generally a weak pick now if you don’t also have the Sacred Scribblings, but it does at least magnify the Alpha of your burn DoT options. The downside to this approach is that you’re taking your burn characters through the sprawl, and the sprawl has burn resistant enemies. It’s still worth it if you can swing it though.

3. I find that good mitigation and flexible damage plans do the best in the sprawl in particular. There are irritating targets that can spawn at both the front and the back, though I often find the slightly worse ones are in the back here too, with Shaman in particular being annoying and squishy. A flexible damage plan and especially one with some DoT (that isn’t burn) is extremely effective at Librarian in particular, due to his tendency to end up in different ranks and his high number of moves per round. You can certainly kill him with hyper damage frontline comps if you’re smart about it, but the easiest and least risky way is to simply have a damage plan that can hit him decently hard everywhere. A lot of enemies in the Sprawl do fairly high direct damage, which is where the mitigation often comes in. You either bring mitigation or Pit Fighter will slam people for 10 damage twice a turn, after all.

4. High burn resist and non-burn kinds of DoT naturally favor the Sprawl, so if you’ve picked up a bunch of heat shields, the game may be recommending the region to you.

Reasons To Go To The Foetor

1. The Foetor has some of the best generalist trophies in the game. The first of these is the Harvest’s Bounty, which just increases your inventory size by 25 slots. In practice, this typically means you don’t fill it up, or won’t fill it up until very close to the end of the run unless you just aren’t using anything at all. This is extremely helpful with the Rabbit pet in particular, but the ability to not have to make hard choices about what to keep and what to toss will benefit any run. Naturally gets much worse the later into a run you find it. It’s hard to be unhappy when you get this, except for the fact that you didn’t get the other one.

The other trophy is The Bumper Crop. It raises Everyone’s Max HP by 50%, and reduces their DBR by 50 percentage points. The malus might sound bad, and it does generally mean you’ll die if you end up on Death’s Door and the enemy can follow up, but when you have that much HP it’s very hard to ever end up on Death’s Door at all. This also works as an indirect buff for healing, because higher health totals mean higher raw healing numbers. The only act where I wouldn’t be as happy to have this is act 3, where the boss hits so hard that if handled poorly you’d be better off rolling on DBR. I would generally say this is the best trophy in the game, given that it highly benefits almost every comp. The only downside is really that case of a bad act 3 final boss, or just getting high rolled by a sundering steel on a squishy character with vuln or something. In most situations this trophy can make your comp feel nearly immortal.

2. The Foetor’s trinket lineup generally favors blight characters and healing at large. The big hits here for blight characters are the galvanizing goblet, corrupting cleaver, poison ring, and brilliant brew. The healing lineup is generally more modest: Ghastly Gruel is actually quite good, especially if you have a rank 4 healer. Kitchen knives benefit direct damage characters with blight characters on their team by giving them higher crit rates and heal on crit, as well as the rare free action on blight resist. You can use it on your DoT characters as well, but I’d usually rather benefit from the crit on a direct damage character. The hint of home and Hag’s Hoard are comparatively meh in most cases.

3. Generally I find that the Foetor favors frontline-smashing comps more than other regions do. There are definitely annoying backliners, but in most fights you want to kill frontline enemies (especially goats) first before you deal with them. The region also asks you to have corpse clear to keep enemies from getting their special corpulent token, so if you can’t handle corpses well it’s generally less advisable to go to the Foetor. There’s also a pretty large chance that you will be inflicted with the disease ‘Hemic Rot’ when playing through the Foetor. Tons of enemies apply it randomly on some attacks. For this reason most people prefer to go to the Foetor earlier so that they have time to cure the rot if they catch it, and the Harvest Child is quite snipeable so it’s usually not a bad call to make an early trip to the Foetor. The baby himself asks for a fairly flexible damage plan, and gets a lot easier with blind and immobilize options in particular; we’ll discuss this more in his section later.

4. Similar to the last one, high blight and disease resist along with DoT damage outside of blight does well here. There is always that infinite struggle of ‘going to the region with the wrong DoT type because it drops the DoT trinkets for that type’, so usually these concerns are minor compared to that potential payoff.

Reasons to Go to the Shroud

1. The Shroud has two trophies, one being fairly generically good and the other being very powerful within a specific niche. The first is The Lashing Tides, which lets you stack all combat items 2 higher. This not only saves on some inventory space, it means that if you’re generating lots of certain combat items or plan to hold certain ones, that you can effectively bring more of each into a fight. You know what makes any act boss easier? Four smoke bombs on one character. Or four healing salves, or three triage kits, or six laudanum, or 5 spring water. Yeah, this trophy allows you to bring in one hell of an arsenal if you have the right items. The downside is that you do need to have those items to get a payoff from this, and that you have to fight Leviathan for this. Leviathan is easily the hardest lair boss, so you do generally need a good reason to fight him (or to just be strong and later in the run) to want to do so.

The other is The Beck and Call. It doubles all bleed DoT that you apply and receive. Needless to say, if you have some good bleed moves, this can be ridiculously powerful. Ever wanted to see bleed out apply 12 bleed in one attack? Go for this. This trophy can revolutionize strategies, causing moves that are usually considered as more of a utility option, like Open Vein, to become extremely potent damage options. It is strictly a detriment when you don’t have the ability to use those moves, especially since bleed does come up in lots of places and especially the shroud. The fact that it is as niche as it is is what mainly holds this trophy back from being excellent. If you have the right comp for it though, this will allow you to decimate much of the game.

2. The shroud’s trinket lineup further favors bleed and has a fair few utility trinkets within it as well. Clasp knife, Leather Strop, and Fishmonger’s Gloves are your great bleed trinkets here, though we currently do not have a bleed focused character in the same way we have blight and burn focused ones. Nautical compass is an extremely powerful trinket, giving you random positive tokens on most turns. Fisherman’s line allows some powerful interactions with the right setup, and the sodden sweater more or less makes someone immune to bleed and movement, along with giving them some bonuses when they resist those things. The carved bodkin can pay off well on the right character or with the right trinket, though it’s a bit meh for something as niche as it can be. Pristine lure basically ends up making one character get hit forever in a lot of scenarios, which is nice with very tanky characters, and the boots are good on dancey teams. I’d generally say the trinkets from the other 3 places will be more useful, but there are some definite big hits here, especially if you are bleed focused.

3. There are tons of mean enemies in the Shroud, and flexible teams that can deal with being shifted around are at their best here. Dangerous enemies like the Fishmongress and Captain sit in their backline often, while the frontline can sometimes be host to the extremely dangerous Docker. You generally do want to be able to hit the backline well in this area even if that’s not your main focus. Movement resistance goes a long way in this area, being a counter to the ever present shifting around and the only direct counter to being drowned in the leviathan fight.

4. Bleed resist is the resist to bring here. If you happen to have the immobilization trophy from the general, that will definitely help, though it will not stop someone from getting drowned even though that’s a move resist check. Given the fact that the shroud is usually a bit more difficult than the other regions, it’s often up in the air whether or not you should go at all. I generally wouldn’t go to the shroud for no reason, but would with a good goal or a use for the trophy or trinket. I’d generally avoid trying to snipe leviathan entirely before region 2.

So you’ve chosen your region, be it your first region or your last region, and are riding off into the unknown. Luckily for you, the ‘unknown’ is actually a collection of several different types of roads and locations. You’ve gotten some scouting and have a generally decent idea of what’s coming up, so the question is: what should you prefer to go for? This section will talk specifically about that. It will not talk about the fights and enemies you might find at each: That’s the next big section of this guide.

Let’s start with roads, which are called routes and which I consistently wrongly refer to as nodes. There are 5 kinds of roads. They either have: Nothing, Rough terrain (which damages your wheels), A ‘Trap’ (which damages your armor), A fight, or Loathing. The order of power here is actually very simple, if sometimes flexible.

Fights > Nothing > Armor Damage > Wheels Damage > Loathing

Fights let you… well, fight a group. That group will either be a gaunt group, a pillager group, or a faction group (the faction being the main faction for your region). If you have less than 30 flame, the fight can also be Shambler, which is currently quite dangerous. Fights give you a small amount of rewards and potentially mastery for winning them, so if you aren’t recovering from a difficult challenge or on a knife’s edge, taking fights is better than taking nothing and certainly better than taking everything else. Some road fights can really suck if you’re unlucky, especially the aforementioned Shambler and Gaunt mashes with ghouls in particular, but outside of bad luck (and often even with it) you’re better off taking them to get the rewards, however meager. It's probably worth lowering these on the list if your flame is low enough to attract Shambler, especially early game.

Nothing is, well, nothing. You get to run over some debris for money and items, like every other road, but other than that it’s uneventful. It’s better than everything else other than road fights because everything else is always bad.

Armor and Wheel damage works very similarly, and they’re listed in this way due to a slight difference. Basically, you will ride through a hazard and lose a wheel or armor token. You have 2 or 3 of these, depending on your altar of hope upgrades, and can get up to 5 with stagecoach items. If you have maximum wheels or armor, you get a buff. Armor lets your whole team start every fight with a block token, and wheels let you get +50% traveling heal. The only reason Armor damage is not as bad as Wheel damage is because the wheel buff is usually better in my opinion. Traveling heal is very important, and that is a massive bonus to it. 1 block token on everyone is quite nice but it rarely makes a massive difference. These bonuses are only received when you have max wheels or armor, and that includes if you have a higher cap than usual. So if you have up to 5 tokens, you need all 5 to get the bonus. If you have max armor and don’t have max wheels, it’s usually better to damage your wheels if you don’t think you’ll break them. If neither is at max, it makes no real difference if the result isn’t eventually going to be you totally breaking one.

If you run out of either kind of tokens and then run over that same kind of ‘trap’ again (which is what I’ve been referring to as ‘breaking your wheels or armor’), it instead triggers a combat. This combat can be brutally awful, as a random hero will be forced to pass their turn each turn and will receive a vuln token, meaning you only get to attack and do stuff with 3 heroes each turn. This will make any fight against any comp much harder and will screw with dance teams in particular. The game will happily spawn difficult mashes for this fight too, including the Pillager cannon, Ghouls (at least so I've heard), Skivers in the Sluice, and so on. You also don’t get ♥♥♥♥ from these fights other than 1 armor or wheel token (whichever one broke down). You are honestly better off taking Loathing than one of these fights in most cases. Hell, these fights can be so bad that I’d argue the final boss of the entire run is sometimes easier than these fights.

Loathing is the worst road event in most cases. It’s also guaranteed to spawn at certain points during a region on locations (this loathing is effectively unavoidable, as it spawns at every location in a row at certain points. It’s not random). Loathing will increase the rate at which your flame drains and will increase enemy battle advantage chance, which is all irritating. If the whole Loathing bar fills up it will trigger a special ‘act boss attack’, which will inflict your party with an effect dependent on the act in question, and will, crucially, always give the final boss extra HP. That all sucks, so you generally want to avoid scaling Loathing. Loathing will decrease from taking location based fights: Resistance encounters, Cultist encounters, Lairs, Beast Dens, and the final cultist location during each region. You should prioritize keeping Loathing low: the effects of the loathing attack are often nasty, and more final boss HP can make final bosses notably more dangerous, especially if you stack the effect multiple times. What’s worse than an act 3 boss with 250 HP? One with 300.

These nodes will often affect the path you want to take, especially if you see them but not the locations in question. Loathing in particular can affect your decision making: Losing a few wheel and armor tokens usually isn’t too bad as repairing them is relatively cheap, and even getting the wheel or armor break fight isn’t usually the end of the world. Building up Loathing if done in anything other than small doses, however, is very dangerous to a run, especially if you can’t or do not want to aggressively take location based fights at the moment. It won’t kill your run by itself in most cases, but it will make your life harder.

Those are the nodes. They’re fairly simple to understand, and it’s probably pretty obvious why one is better than the other. Locations are a mite more complicated. Let’s talk about them.

Pictured: A waste of time

There are many locations, and certain locations are guaranteed. The locations we will focus on making decisions between will be the locations you do get to decide between. These locations are: The Lair, Resistance Encounters, Cultist Encounters, Beast Dens, The Hoarder, Assistance Encounters, The Oasis, Watchtowers, Academic Caches, Academic Studies, Shrines of Remembrance, and The Hospital. Oblivion’s Rampart is guaranteed as the last location before you reach the next inn, and the altar of hope is the first location you run into at the start of each run, followed by act selection and the crossroads (which is hero selection).

There are really a few major things that matter at each location. First is, obviously, the reward. Some locations give out fairly huge rewards, like Lairs and Caches. Some do not generally give out great rewards, like Assistance Encounters. Only fights and shrines give out mastery, and the lair is guaranteed to, with beast dens also always giving you an item that will at the next inn. Some rewards are highly variable, most notably what you’ll get out of Studies. Watch towers effectively only give you scouting and maybe a bit of speed, and Hoarders and Hospitals will only give you much if you have the money to pay them.

The second is relationship effects. Certain locations are coded to ‘force’ agreement unless a party member has some certain quirk that lets them say no, if that's even possible. These are the Cultist encounters for sure, and it seems like the Studies and Oases are often like this as well. Some locations don’t have a choice involved, meaning they can’t negatively affect relationships. These are Lairs, Watchtowers, Caches, both kinds of shops, and the Oblivion’s Rampart at the end. This is because you have to take the fight or the effect at all of these locations. Everything else does involve a decision that you will realistically see disagreement on pretty often, meaning they often come with a relationship cost. Forced agreement is naturally better than no choice, which is better in most cases than actual choices. Sometimes everyone will just agree anyway at a choice they can disagree on, and sometimes they will be split 2 against 2, which is typically the worst case. Bringing BH makes this latter category better as his agreement or disagreement isn’t relevant; you can always pick what he says with no negative relationship repercussions.

The third is whether you can do them effectively or not. This is mainly the big question with Lairs and Beast dens, as otherwise their rewards are generally superior. This idea can be applied to any fight, and it also applies to the road nodes leading up to and away from them. If one path will break your wheels or armor, or spike your loathing too high, you may not be able to take it without large repercussions, even if the location is pretty good.

With all that said, here’s how I typically and very subjectively rate locations in a vacuum. These ratings assume you can win the fight in question and that the roads are all equal.

Mastery Shrines > Lairs > Beast Dens > Cultist Fights > Resistance Encounters > Caches > Studies > Oasis > Assistance Encounters > Watchtower

Hoarders and Hospitals are highly variable, based on money and how much you need them. Hospitals are probably top of the list when dealing with crippling quirks or bad diseases, provided you can pay for their services.

You’ll notice that all the fight stuff is above all the other stuff aside from mastery shrines. Shrines always give mastery (unless you lose the minigame), and are used to unlock new skills, so they should be prioritized. They do not spawn when you have all the skills on your current team unlocked. Fights produce decent to good rewards and trinkets. They are also, crucially, where you get mastery points, which is the most important resource in the game. If you have a ton of Mastery, you may not rate these as highly. Cultist fights rate above Resistance encounters mainly because people can’t disagree and choose not to fight them, though there is some critical reward difference there that may cause you to favor one or another depending on region. Beast dens rate above both because of the mastery producing items, and Lairs are the most rewarding locations in the game.

I had more trouble with the middle portion here. Caches, Studies, and Oases can all produce good value depending on your team and your desires. Caches produce guaranteed value with no choice, and often a fair bit of it. I really like them earlier in runs, often more than resistance encounters and maybe cultist fights if I already feel comfortable on mastery, but I tend to take them less in later runs as I rack up money and baubles to buy the exact things I want. They are probably generally stronger than the other two, just due to the sheer free value, and in fact they usually pay out better than non-lair fights if you don’t account for Mastery.

Studies are a forced agreement location now (at least it was claimed they were, and disagreement seems very rare or quirk based), which makes them a lot more attractive. There’s also a lot of unique and powerful stuff that you can get at studies. On the flip side it is highly random as to which study version you get and what exactly you get out of it. If you’re unlucky you can just have everyone agree to get some stress and money, along with a bad quirk on someone. Scouting will reveal the type of study it is, so you can either learn what each one does, or look it up if you want to make an informed decision.

The oasis can allow you to gain the powerful mineral spring water, but outside of that it’s not all that strong unless you’ve got one guy sitting on some high stress. People can also disagree about it sometimes, generally if someone has hydrophobic.

Watchtowers are effectively a waste of a location a lot of the time, and Assistance Encounters are usually very weak for anything but gaining back some flame, if it even lets you do that. Assists are also perhaps the most disagreement prone location in the whole game. These are the only two locations I’d sometimes say are ‘bad’ outside of a specific niche, as the other non-fight locations can be quite rewarding. That doesn’t always mean you shouldn’t take them; there are situations and cases where a full scout can come in handy, especially if you’re looking for something specific or it’s early into the region and you didn’t scout nearly anything, and sometimes you need the flame or to take it easy at a certain point in the act and you’re left with an assistance encounter. In the lion’s share of cases, though, you won’t be very interested in these two locations unless they lead somewhere you do want to go.

Hoarders and Hospitals aren’t listed due to that variability. If you have a lot of money and need a specific item or items, a Hoarder trip can do more for your run than a Lair fight can. The wide selection is actually the big thing here: It’s not that you walk out of a Hoarder with more stuff than you would a Cache (though you obviously can if you’re rich), but that you are more likely to walk away with what you want specifically. Hospitals let you remove bad quirks, lock in good quirks, cure diseases, heal, and buy specific items as well. The items are often quite helpful, being things like poultices, curative combat items, the purple herb that gives more healing received. Many of these items can be very crucial for certain fights, including the final boss, so even the relatively small store at the Hospital can provide a lot of value. Locking in good quirks is mainly something you’ll do when you obtain the ability to have persistent heroes; it’s costly and won’t usually help you much if you expect that character to die or to be reset after the run.

Shrines
+ Unlock Skills
+ Gain Mastery
- That’s all it does, but you need to do that to get all the skills.
- Disappears once you get all the unlocks. Which is actually probably bad.

Lairs
+ Huge rewards, including powerful trinkets, lots of money, Mastery, and trophies.
+ You have to win one to win the game, outside of Act 1
+ No relationship affecting choices, but you can always flee if you don’t feel up to it after the first or second fight, albeit with a very paltry reward. This means you can effectively skip without the decision to skip, and the first fight is typically quite easy.
- You have to win 3 fights to make it particularly lucrative, one of which will be a boss.
- Bosses can inflict significant damage and stress, even if fought well in some cases. This result is especially common for The Dreaming General in particular. The Harvest Baby can be fairly RNG in how much strain they put onto the party.
- You are forced to fight at least one fight. It’s an easy fight, usually, but that can still be dangerous if you’re in a large amount of danger.

Beast Dens
+ Good rewards with the guaranteed mastery from beast den items
+ Predictable comps: Beast dens pull from the same pool of enemies in every region
+ You can vote to skip these sometimes, in an emergency
- You have to fight two waves with no break. In some cases this can be advantageous though.
- Some mashes (spiders, Gander, anything with lots of dodge) can be particularly nasty
- Disagreement prone; relationship loss may be inevitable

Cultist Fights
+ Good rewards, including cultist trinkets and mastery if lucky.
+ Predictable Comps: The mashes will always be cultist enemies and won’t include Deacon, Cardinal, or Exemplar (outside of the mountain ones).
+ Forced agreement without very specific quirks (always?), meaning friendlier heroes.
- Cultist mashes often inflict some notable stress and sometimes damage, especially if you don’t have a flexible or backline focused comp. Heralds in particular can be nasty to squishy backlines.
- Forced agreement means you can’t skip this one if you need to.
- You might want regional trinket rewards more than cultist rewards

Resistance Encounters
+ Good rewards, including region specific trinkets and mastery if lucky. Usually you’re going to regions with trinkets you want so this is usually a big upside.
+ Comps are reasonably predictable, but region specific. You won’t get the same thing everywhere, but you will know which kind of thing it will be.
+ You can often vote to skip these, in an emergency.
- Disagreement prone; relationship loss may be inevitable

Caches
+ Lots of stuff, often including stagecoach items and a trinket or two. Early stagecoach items can define a run. Altar gives you an extra thing when upgraded.
+ Received with no specific input: It’s literally free stuff, and lots of it.
+ Your heroes aren’t stupid enough to vote on this: Free stuff is free stuff
- Generally the big problem with these is the fact that these can’t drop mastery, since they aren’t fights.
= The sluice has a special version of this. But you can pretty much think of it in the same way. Sometimes you’ll get a completely broken stagecoach item from it. Hooray!

Studies
+ Can get a lot of interesting and special items, including some of the most powerful trinkets and combat items in the game.
+ Free combat item from Altar
+ Currently, it seems like people almost always agree in this location outside of quirk interactions.
+ Sometimes you can get good quirks. It’s probably rarer than getting bad ones though.
= Rarely you get to fight Shambly, which is rewarding at least in terms of Mastery, but it does mean you have to fight him, which you might not be ready for.
- You often get stress and bad quirks. Occasionally you have to fight a gaunt mash with a ghoul. Everyone hates ghouls.
- You might get nothing worth your time for the trip. It’s the quintessential high roller location.
= Apparently the sluice’s version of this can only give you Formless Sculpture. Which is okay but not anywhere near the best result.

Oasis
+ Stress relief on one hero is nice, but you should take the spring water where possible. It is a phenomenal combat item and provides nearly twice the value of a dip in the pool.
+ Hero’s tend to agree on this one, at least in my experience, unless they're hydrophobic. Kind of hard to be the kind of person to vote against water, I guess.
+The altar gives you 1 free mineral spring water from visiting this with the altar upgrade, in addition to anything else (so if you take water, you’ll get 4. If you bathe you’ll get 1).
- That’s really all it does

Assistance Encounters
+ Usually, if not unlucky, the best place to restore flame.
+ You get a few items most of the time, or a wagon token.
- People disagree all the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ time at assistance encounters.
- Even murdering people for their stuff at a flame cost doesn't pay out much. The survivors of the apocalypse don’t have much stuff to give. Which makes sense, and is very unfortunate for you.
- Doesn’t even get an altar bonus.


Watch-Tower
+ Scouting. That’s all it does. Can be quite nice if it spawns early. And you didn’t scout almost anything. And you’re not locked into going a certain way due to the lair or something you did scout… yeah there’s a lot of ifs here.
+ 1 speed on everyone with an altar perk. It’s not much but at least it won’t mess up your dance orders.
+ At least people can’t vote on this.
- Gives you literally nothing else.

Hoarder
+ It’s a store. You can spend those 200 relics and baubles you’ve been lugging around on a fairly wide selection
+ The ability to choose means that the hoarder can let you specifically select items and trinkets that you need for specific strategies. Clarifying poultices for act 1, stimulating poultices and noisemakers for act 3, oil flasks for the dreaming general, the drum for the leviathan, strong stagecoach items, relationship correction items and so on. He never sells food though. Of course, his shop inventory isn’t infinite, but it is a decent size.
+ free 12 relics with an altar upgrade. So you can always get a couple of combat items or one of most inn items with a visit, even if dirt poor.
+ There are some “Hoarder Only” Trinkets. Some are quite powerful though they’re often more on the niche side. Buy Sparkleball if you see it, it slaps. The inventory will also sometimes sell appropriate regional and hero trinkets too.
- Being a store, if you don’t have money, it provides very little value.
- He may also just not sell you stuff that you want or need if you’re unlucky. That’s the nature of a random inventory
- Because you can’t buy stuff if your inventory is full (which is stupid), you have to throw stuff out first. This isn’t really a big deal in most cases, it’s just annoying

The Hospital
+ Lets you remove bad quirks, cure diseases, and lock in ONE good quirk on each hero. You are STUCK with whatever you lock in until that hero dies or you reset them, so choose wisely.
+ Has an item shop portion. It’s a small shop, but it tends to sell valuable items. Can also pay to heal HP.
+ This is the ONLY way in the game to remove bad quirks that aren’t the oldest. The inn items that remove them and quirk cycling will always remove the OLDEST bad quirk. Meaning if you suddenly get off guard, you either have to gain 3 bad quirks, remove all your bad quirks through items, or go to a hospital to get rid of it.
+ The altar upgrade gives you a free 10% heal on everyone and a 1 stress heal on everyone.
- You can’t pay to remove positive quirks. Meaning that your PD is stuck with breacher until you cycle it out. This sucks a lot, but only for a select few positive quirks like breacher.
- it’s more of a maintenance location.

Let’s briefly discuss the Question Mark, or rather a location that is unrevealed.

Question marks can be anything except for Lairs or anything listed as ‘avoid or go to X’ in the goal, as these are always revealed. If you have perfect scouting for a specific node, such as Oblivion's Ingress with Shambly or tons of locations with certain stagecoach items and modifiers, you can be certain that the question mark isn’t that location. If your region modifier says ‘candles are always attached to X kind of location’, and the question mark does not have a candle on it, you also know for certain that it is not one of those locations. The inverse doesn’t work, as non-named locations could still get candles, but if you do really need to go to one of those locations with that modifier, candled question marks will be your best bet.

If you’ve scouted or been to a bunch of one kind of location, it’s typically less likely for the location to be those. If you haven’t scouted any of something, it’s worth going to them if you really need to find that thing, as it’s fairly likely that one of them will be that place. If you really have no idea, it’s probably most likely going to be an Assistance Encounter or a Resistance Encounter, as these spawn the most.

So at this point we’ve discussed early decisions, purchases, decisions between regions, and the power of different routes and locations. You’ve probably concluded that ‘taking a lot of fights’ is a generally strong strategy in DD2, and that would be correct. Without fights, you can’t get mastery, and without mastery, you’re in for a pretty rough ride once you’re out of the first region. If you don't take many fights, you'll also spike loathing, leading to a harder final boss. All of that information does very little good if you don’t know how to win those fights, however.

Because there are an incredibly large number of effective comps that one can run, this part of the guide will try to avoid focusing on specific strategies that you could run if you run specific comps. What we want to return to here are the basics: The Damage plan, the Mitigation Plan, and how you should generally use the tools of each. There will be sections with all the enemies and bossfight strategies after this one, where I will talk more in depth about every enemy and especially every boss in the game.

The Team’s Strategy

So you’ve got all this damage, and in tons of different forms. How exactly should you utilize each form, and what should you be on the lookout for? The first thing is to determine how your comp inflicts damage well, as this will very much affect who you want to target and how you’ll target them. We can generally divide damage plans into three groups: There are frontline focused damage plans, which mainly target the frontline and mitigate the backline. These comps will usually cycle the backline to the front through a corpse clear. Then there are backline focused damage plans, which do the opposite, putting most of their early damage towards the backline and mitigation towards the frontline. These are typically naturally more flexible (as they do carry frontline damage: otherwise, how could they win?) and don’t need to carry corpse clear as much, but often end up a little bit on the slower side to make up for it, and not every enemy team has a notable backline. The third group is the highly flexible damage plan, or any damage plan that can do either job adequately, but may not have as much damage dedicated to either role, or may sacrifice some mitigation to achieve this. Or maybe it won’t sacrifice anything; some comps are just that strong.

This is the first universal factor in target selection. If your team is good at killing frontlines or backlines, you’ll tend to be incentivized to follow through on that plan. You will not always follow that plan, but if it’s the most efficient way your comp has to deal with enemy comps, you’ll want a good reason for breaking from the plan. Some comps also have very few ways of dealing with certain rank targets, usually rank 4, so you’ll be a lot less incentivized to target those ranks specifically, because doing so might be impossible or very inefficient.

The second and arguably more important factor is what the enemies actually are. If something very dangerous is sitting in 1, you might want to kill it first, even if your team is backline focused. Or maybe you want to ensure your mitigation goes there on to that specific target, immediately, while you follow through on the original damage plan. Certain regions definitely favor putting more dangerous enemies into certain locations: the Tangle, for instance, puts its ever dangerous Bishops and Arbalists in the back almost all the time, and cultist fights almost exclusively run around with squishy backliners, the herald in particular being highly dangerous. In contrast, the Foetor usually runs squishy frontliners like Goats that can do a lot of damage and are typically easier to kill first. Areas like the Sprawl and Shroud tend to be more variable.

After you’ve chosen a target, you figure out how much damage you can realistically do to it, and you refine this calculation as you begin to attack it. If you expect you can kill a backliner with an iron swan and a couple of other moves, and the iron swan high rolls and hits for 10, leaving the enemy with 5 HP, you can just follow up with Plague Grenade+, for example, and expect to kill it, meaning your other damage character you’d originally dedicated to that job can be repurposed. We figure out whether we can kill it or not up front and how many resources it will reasonably take to help weigh the choice against other options and to figure out what we’re likely to dedicate to the cause, meaning we also know how we intend to use utility and mitigation. Then we refactor our assumption as the attacks come out, to recognize if we have to dedicate more or less to the venture. Get a lucky crit? You’ve got 3 characters left, more than you expected, so re-figure out how you plan to use those characters.

That sort of mental math is less important for big singular enemies, like bosses, as your strategy tends to revolve around dealing with their gimmick, mitigating them, and killing them all at the same time. Thresholds don’t mean as much when it’s just one beefy guy you have to kill.

Next, let’s look at mitigation. Most normal single target forms of mitigation, like Weakening Curse+ and Smokescreen+, are better used on enemies you don’t expect to kill as soon. While killing them while they’re debuffed isn’t exactly bad, it does mean that the debuff doesn’t recognize its entire lifetime value. So if you have some big beastly enemy you don’t want to kill yet, as you’d rather smash the squishy targets or have a damage plan in place that favors other targets, they’re prime targets for those mitigation moves.

Of course, this isn’t how all mitigation works. Moves like retribution or defender can allow for some heavy team-side mitigation, and this mitigation is often more valuable than dedicating those characters to more damage. So in your damage plan idea, you can dedicate damage characters to hitting the dudes, and characters like Barristan to mitigating with their moves unless you really need their additional damage for an extra kill or something like that.

The final piece of the skeleton is utility, or dealing with specific problems in a team. Utility moves are largely moves that are dedicated to dealing with stuff like enemy dodge, enemy block, blind, weaken, enemy DBR, and so on. These moves aren’t chosen as much for their raw damage or their direct mitigation as much as their ability to be very powerful in the right circumstances. Take Magnesium rain, one of the best Utility moves in the game. It’s an omnicleave, meaning that it forces every enemy to use up one dodge token if they have one. It clears corpses, meaning it can strand backliners in the front, deprive corpse eaters of their corpse eating, and make it easier to target specific enemies. It does a little DoT damage, meaning it’s good for putting a DoT on a low or Death’s Door enemy while doing all these things, and it even spreads out some reasonable damage onto everyone. This move isn’t lessening the damage that comes in (at least, not all the time), nor is it killing a high value target quickly, but it is providing immense value against those specific problems. So, for example, if you blow up an enemy in rank 3, and rank 4 has a gunner bandit in it, you’d be smart to use mag rain, doing some damage, pinging the dodge off of the bandit dogs (if there are any), and moving the gunner to rank 3, where he can’t access his best skills. Or perhaps you could use Daemon’s pull, pulling him up to 2 and clearing those same corpses.

With these three areas covered, one can have a strong, generic strategy to work with, and it can then be modified as needed. But what about the other things? Healing is the big one. Healing is very good for situations that go awry, but utterly useless if you’re steamrolling everything. Which is to say, it’s good when you need it to be. There is no stalling to heal in DD2 because of thresholds and traveling heal, but when exemplar puts someone on Death’s Door, you’ll be very happy to have a heal. Healing is our first and most obvious version of ‘reactive moves’, or moves you use in reaction to certain events. You heal when someone is low on HP and in danger, you stress heal when someone is at high stress (or really at any stress high enough to use the stress heal, if you have time). Reactive moves are generally quite strong when you need them, but because they aren’t proactively dealing with the threat, they usually do very little to advance the fight towards victory. They exist to keep you from losing or suffering bad negative effects, not as much to make you win. Some reactive moves, like guards, can pull double duty, keeping someone alive and further mitigating the enemy in question.

Debuff clears, like Hearthlight or Command, tend to fall into the reactive category, but because cleansing debuffs often allows you to be more proactive, they’re quite strong when the situation calls for them. Having the ability to clear off negative tokens in fights that produce them is not only highly valuable, it is also fairly rare. The moves you have access to and the strategy you’ve devised will be with you for the whole game, so make sure you swap out to make use of specific utility moves as needed.

Lastly, before we discuss individual enemies, I want to reflect on combat items. Combat items, as the name implies, are items that you use in combat. They’re all completely free actions, but a hero can only hold one kind of combat item at a time, and they are naturally used up as you use them. It would be extremely excessive to list and talk about every combat item, so we’ll talk about which roles they usually fill.

Combat items are typically either additional sources of mitigation (including healing), additional sources of utility, or additional sources of damage (usually DoT damage specifically). They accomplish these needs in tons and tons of different ways, such as by increasing DoT resistances, giving someone dodge, inflicting blind to enemies, removing corpses, and so on.

The trick is to choose combat items for three reasons. The first is that you have a specific short term strategy for them. Oil flasks, and really any targetable or omnicleave combat item, are good even if you’re not using them for their effect, because they remove enemy dodge (by being a targetable attack), and use up your blind. So they score on utility, and are useful in fights where you need those things. They should be equipped as you see a need for them, such as at Beast Dens or in The Dreaming General’s fight. Another example is the Fisherman’s Net. Immobilize isn’t usually all that great against enemies, but the nets are extremely effective against the Harvest Child in particular, due to their ability to lock down the small meat into the front rank, denying the Child’s ability to use Maw’s of Life for a long time. If you wanted to snipe the baby, you could buy these or keep these if you see them for that fight.

The second is that they cover a specific need on your team or enhance your ability to deal with a problem. If your team lacks a dedicated healer for whatever reason, pustule salves, triage kits, and healing salves are suddenly massively more useful than they already were. If you lack an omni-cleave, items like greek fire grenades, crow’s feet, and thunderclap grenades are suddenly extremely valuable in fights with dodgy enemies. Packing them with your own omnicleaves is still good in those fights because of how much dodge there usually is too. Need a way to deal with blind on the team, when you expect to see it or are running a character like Leper? Milk Soaked linen and holy water have your back (as does any throwable, to a lesser extent). The shroud’s fog is suddenly a lot more manageable if you’ve got access to those items. Lack any source of DoT damage? Well there’s a load of combat items that provide that for free, and you only need a little in those circumstances. Need a corpse clear? Suddenly that pouch of lye is looking very handy.

The third is that you have a specific use against a final boss. We’ll talk about those in their sections. There is also a fourth, where a combat item turns a specific trinket on. A Greek fire grenade will turn on a Tinderbox’s effect, because it’s an incendiary.

If I can stress anything about combat items in particular, though, it’s that you should use them. I know that sounds obvious, but it’s very easy to hold onto them looking for more advantage. While this might be a good approach to using certain high value combat items that can flip a fight on its head or save someone’s life by themselves, like healing salves, and it might be useful for combat items that are filling a utility you lack, you will get a crap ton of combat items that aren’t all that useful or are only marginally useful. Throw them on and use them at the first opportunity. It’s either that or you toss them, and you will inevitably toss some no matter how hard you try to use ♥♥♥♥ up. A combat item you don’t use has only managed to waste a slot in your inventory, so it’s better to take whatever slight advantage they offer quickly. Don’t need the extra speed or strength token from stimulants? Use them to increase the chances you one shot something in some random fight. Shimmering powder not all that handy? Use it for the two speed when it might be okay. Anti venom, burn salve, and bandages are general ‘use when you can’ items too, unless you have a specific place you want to use them. Which items you treat this way are up to your comp and strategy, but it is very common that you’ll use more items in this way than you won’t, to be frank.

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The rest of this guide will be about the enemies and the boss fights.

This is your Second Last Warning for Spoilers.

Some names have already been spoiled, as I warned before, but from this point on, I won’t be concerning myself with spoilers at all. The section names will be spoiler free though, so the sidebar is safe. However, some pictures will contain the ordainment buff, which will spoil the names of Act Bosses. After the enemies, we will conclude.

Lair Bosses and Act bosses will come with a move list. The rest, including minibosses, will just be described like all the normal enemies, though often with more detail. Note that the numbers for the moves, HP, and Speed come from the wiki, so if something seems somewhat off and it’s not because of Ordainment, that’s probably why. It’s not consistently updated and stuff sometimes gets changed in game. When I’ve been able to catch something wrong or out of date I have corrected it within this guide, but there’s no telling how much is exactly right or wrong.

I also have pictures for most of the enemies, but not all of them.

We will start with sections for Generic Enemies

They are generic in the sense that they are within factions that show up everywhere. This means Beasts, Gaunt, Bandits, and Cultists/Cosmic enemies (the act bosses will have their own sections after all the enemy sections).

All enemies will be given a priority score, from 1 to 5, 1 being higher priority and 5 being lower. Higher priority enemies should be targeted first barring literally all other factors. This is extremely subjective, and you will likely disagree with many of these scores.

Targeting priority will attempt to take the tankiness of the enemy into account in some cases, though generally enemies that do very bad things will score as high priority even if they’re also beefy. I will show the base HP and speed of the enemy as these are normally important, but I will not show the other statistics, as they take up too much room. These stats will be higher on ordained enemies, of course, as will their damage and other things, so keep in mind that these are their base stats. I will also note DBR as part of the enemy's stats if an enemy has it.

Zombies. They're generally squishy and inflict stress and diseases. Show up at road fights, though occasionally certain ones will be in Factional mashes.

Lost Soul
Priority: 3 if in front 2 ranks, 5 otherwise
HP: 13, Speed: 1

The game’s most basic enemy. He has two moves, and both only hit the front two ranks. Chomp (the move he uses in the front 2 ranks) is the clear problem child here, and why he ranks at priority 3, because chomp can rarely inflict a disease if you’re unlucky, and will sometimes inflict stress, meaning that this move is somewhat dangerous in the long term. You should generally kill lost souls early, because they’re weak and can inflict that disease. Backline Lost souls only use a weak blight move and move forward 2 ranks, so they’re typically useless. Lost Souls are fairly slow so you can normally kill them before they chomp someone. Depending on speed order, in lost soul filled enemy comps the back ones can sometimes cycle the front ones to the back before they move, wasting everyone’s turns.

Widow
Priority: 2
HP: 13, Speed: 2

I wouldn’t kill these before I killed front rank lost souls if I was running a fast comp, as though the Widow will do more stress over a period of time, she can’t disease you. This consideration flips if your comp is relatively slow, as reflection can inflict quite a bit of stress from its horror on top of the weak that it inflicts given time. She can also stun people with desperate grab. She can’t use her stress attack in the front 2 ranks, and can only use ‘Don’t look’ which is a weak blind and stress inflicting move in rank 1 (it will back her up to 3). If you’re not worried about the disease, she’s clearly worse than Lost Souls, but otherwise the two are fairly competitive.

Urchin
Priority: 1
HP: 11, Speed: 5

Inflicts a mess of stress with his song of shadows and haunting melody combo, and he can inflict diseases too. He can’t use Haunting Melody without being in stealth, but his stealth move has no cooldown, so if you plan to remove his stealth make sure you can follow up. Ideally you will roll a high enough speed roll to kill this guy before he can do anything, but with his base speed of 5, that’s fairly up in the air. Not the worst gaunt, but probably the second worst one.

Woodsman
Priority: 4
HP: 34, Speed 1, DBR 25

Apparently he can inflict diseases with Fell the Tree, but I’ve never seen this. Tree is generally just a big direct damage hit. Protect the child is an annoying guard move that also moves him back up if he’s in the back, but if the enemy he guards will die from something like DoT anyway, this may function as him wasting his turn. His Carve the Toy move hits fairly hard, bleeds, and inflicts a little stress, but it’s not too bad overall. He can’t use fell the tree in the back ranks. Usually when you see this guy, you want to kill his squishy friends first, and then focus on him, as he takes more abuse and tends to do less long term damage to a team than the others.

Ghoul
Priority: 1
HP: 36, Speed 4, DBR 25

Ghoul is perhaps the worst normal enemy in the game. Double ghoul is often considered the worst comp in the game, and if it isn’t it’s at least up there with the likes of Double Docker.

Ghouls have 3 moves. Rend and Skull toss are both annoying, crit a lot, and deal pretty notable levels of stress. Skull toss stuns and rend bleeds and can disease on top of the damage and stress they both do. However, the main issue isn’t these moves. It’s Howl. Howl is an omni-cleave that inflicts horror on EVERY hero in your team. If that wasn’t bad enough, it can give everyone a disease (it’s always the same disease: The Worries, which reduces stress resist. So not that bad in the grand scheme, but still a disease). The worst thing about it, however, is that it lowers your flame by 10, which sucks. Ghoul won’t kill you outright most of the time, but Ghoul can make it much more likely to die as the run goes forward due to howl. It doesn’t help that he gains a free block whenever he uses any move. Kill with extreme prejudice. Due to his bulky nature, you may still elect to kill squishy targets before him, but you should be planning on killing ghoul quickly. Chances are he’ll get to howl at least once: don’t let him live long enough to get through the cooldown so he can do it again.

I call them bandits, but they’re technically specifically ‘Pillagers’. Bandits, their pets, and their cannon. A returning face from DD1 is also included amidst their ranks…

Pillager Hatchetman
Priority: 3
HP: 18, Speed 2

A fairly standard damage dealing enemy. He can inflict combo for his mates to follow up with Finishing Blow, which does more direct damage than low blow and inflicts stress. If he’s in the back, he uses Wild Swing, which is basically a waste of a turn so that he can move back into 2. He also can’t use finishing blow in 3, but he will use low blow. There’s nothing that outstanding or notable about these guys, and they aren’t a huge threat on their own in most cases.

Pillager Crackshot
Priority: 1 if in rank 4, 4 otherwise (5 in 1)
HP: 15, Speed 4

A ranged enemy with two very good skills in rank 4, those being front mortar (a stun and push directed at your rank 1 that deals high damage), and shell shock (a stress and weak backline cleave). If he starts there, you can neuter him with a pull. In 2 and 3 he uses blister shot which basically just does a bit of damage. If he’s in 1 he uses frantic retreat, which moves him back 2 and does negligible damage. He can never get back to 4 without the help of Antiquarian or a wild swing from a hatchet man if he’s pulled out of it, so you can consider any non-rank 4 crackshot to effectively be neutered.

Mongrel
Priority: 2
HP: 13, Speed 5

Can guard and gain riposte, and generally hits harder than his hatchet man masters. Starts every fight with 1 dodge, which is annoying. He’ll mess up other kills with his guard, and deal some pretty noticeable damage and bleed (and crit all the damn time), with his attack and his riposte. Probably the most dangerous normal pillager enemy in most cases, which is a bit funny considering he’s an animal and they’re all people.

Firemouth
Priority: 2 in rank 3 or 4, 3 otherwise (5 in 1)
HP: 15, Speed: 5

She breathes fire, hence the name. Her fire breath is probably similar to blister shot in a lot of ways, but it inflicts a fire DoT and gets the ability to target 1 at the cost of a slight bit of direct damage. Up front she uses flint strike which is her version of emergency retreat, though it only moves her back 1 (so she doesn’t get to go right back to 3, presumably). Her most dangerous move is Flash Fire, which she can only use in rank 3 or 4. It’s a front rank cleave that can sometimes inflict blind, and is otherwise similar in damage to breath (though on two targets). It’s probably less bad in most cases than front mortar or shell shock, but it’s still a consideration. She is also ruined by pulling her.

Implication
Priority: 1 in terms of danger, 4 in terms of bulk
HP: 38, Speed 0. Starts with 2 block+ tokens. 200% resists against all DoTs, since it’s a giant metal cannon.

They’ve finally done it. They’ve finally designed a cannon that can load itself. No more ‘matchman’ nonsense. Despite the priority, you’ll usually kill the cannon last, because it’s very bulky and immune to DoTs. It can be blinded, stunned, pulled, and weakened just fine though. It uses Load Shot first (which will back it up 1 rank and give it two block+ tokens), and then it will either use BOOOOOM or Misfire! You want it to use misfire, obviously, but it’s random. It actually has variations of each of these that target more people. The simplest way to understand it, though, is that the farther back this thing is, the more targets it hits. So make sure it’s up front when it attacks if possible. Boom does a ton of damage to anything it targets, and misfire just cures stress. Ideally you will kill this before it does its cycle twice, as it is usually pretty hard to kill it before it does at least one cycle.



Antiquarian
Priority: 5 (it’s almost always just too difficult to snipe her)
HP: 26, Speed: 6, 25 DBR

The Traitor! Antiquarian is running around looting people of their valuables, because she’s greedy. You are people, hence the fight. She gets 2 actions per turn when she has allies, the first of which will always be used on ‘Protect Me!’. Protect Me will push the target to the front or back depending on which enemy she targets (firemouths and crackshots will go backwards, and the others forwards). She will also be guarded by the person for two attacks. Her other turns will be spent on many different moves. Festering Vapours is probably the worst one, being an omni-cleave that inflicts blight and stress, as well as gives her dodge. Nervous Stab hits surprisingly hard, and gives her dodge+ on use. Flashpowder will blind and daze someone, and stun them if her friendly hatchet men put a combo token on her target. Invigorating Vapours will give everyone a dodge, and might give them a strength token. She also apparently gives an inherent buff to all her allies (more speed, crit, and debuff resist), while she’s alive.

Generally you should kill Antiquarian last even though she has pretty strong moves. Having to chunk through 2 guard tokens every turn to hit what is a fairly tanky enemy with DBR is a hard sell, especially since her friends get to hit you the whole time. When she’s alone she can still take a stab at you, but her survivability will be drastically reduced without her Protect me! Skill. Up front she also loses access to Festering Vapours and Flashpowder, which is good for you.

Also, fun fact, she never dies. She just runs away. Hence no ‘Deathblow!’ text when you beat her. That also means the Antiquarian you fight is always the same canonical character, just like your heroes are. She also drops special trinkets that pay attention to how much money you have. Some of these are quite good, though you can’t really search for them outside of taking lots of road fights since her appearance is random, and you’re already taking lots of road fights, aren’t you?

Specifically ‘enemies that show up at Beast Dens’, not everything that counts as an animal. Apparently Carrion Eaters can now also show up in the Sluice random fights, by the way.

Carrion Eater
Priority: 4
HP: 17, Speed: 1

A fairly basic and somewhat tanky enemy from Beast Dens. On its own it will just munch someone, dealing a little damage and some bleed, and The Oozes disease if you’re unlucky (The Oozes isn’t that bad). If you leave it alone with a corpse, however, it might elect to eat it, evolving it into the next enemy and giving it Block+. Generally it’s better to kill the more dangerous beasts, even if that risks this guy getting his dinner. Alternatively you can kill these first, intending to bring the beast backline up front. Both approaches work well.

Carrion Devourer
Priority: 4
HP: 23, Speed: 2, DBR: 25%
Spawns with 2 block+ tokens

This tougher Carrion eater gains a new move, HP, and the ability to generate crit and block from its corpse consumption. It typically takes more effort to kill these than other beast den enemies, due to that high HP and block+. If you don’t kill them quickly, they’ll happily eat up the corpses of the enemies you do kill though, granting them those buffs. Their actual attacks are a stronger version of Munch, and Pulverize, which is a weak move that inflicts 2 weak and 2 vuln. These guys feel like the tanks of beast dens in most cases, and despite their corpse eating ability, killing them first is usually worse than killing their squishier friends


Rabid Gnasher
Priority: 3
HP: 14, Speed: 4
Spawns with 1 dodge token

Gnashers can either rush forward with rabid rush, inflicting bleed and rarely Rabies, and giving themselves dodge, or they can move backwards (when already in 3 or 4) with Fetch, which pulls their target forward and also sometimes inflicts Rabies. They’re a fairly standard enemy in most cases, and Rabies is worse than The Oozes but not that bad overall. Their dodge props up their survivability, as without it they tend to fall in one or two hits.

Gander
Priority: 1
HP: 23, Speed: 2, DBR: 33%
Spawns with 2 block+ tokens

Ganders are probably the most dangerous individual enemy in beast dens, able to take a lot of abuse and dish out large omni-cleaves, huge single target damage, and a massive 3 stress daze attack that buffs them with strength too. They also buff all their friendly Gnashers with higher bleed output and crit chance. Despite his priority of 1, you may elect to kill him later depending on your damage plan, since he tends to spawn in the back. It’s very rare that you’ll elect to kill him last though, even though he is quite tanky, specifically because of how dangerous he is. Gander fights seem pretty rare, but when you do see them, be ready for some abuse.

Spitter
Priority: 2
HP: 14, Speed: 3
Spawns with 2 dodge+ tokens

A very dangerous enemy, especially when paired up with the next enemy. Their job is to stand in the back and to spit poison into people’s eyes. This spit blinds people, and is guaranteed to crit with combo. Up front they can only use Bite, which is fairly weak. Spider comps are generally one of the primary reasons Omni-cleaves are so nice to have access to in Dens.

Webber
Priority: 1
HP: 12, Speed: 5
Spawns with 2 dodge tokens

The setup unit for spitters, this unit has a move called Web that Stuns, Comboes (apparently it will only combo later in the run and with Spitters in the comp), and puts down 2 vuln tokens. Ouch. Otherwise they use bite, and their bite is a bit better than spitters, but still fairly weak. The stun and vuln is absolutely obnoxious, and is why you generally want to kill these quickly no matter what they spawn in with. In spider comps you can just kill these and burn the corpses, forcing the spitters into the front line, where they’re worthless. Spider comps are arguably the most dangerous comps the Beast den puts out, outside of Ganders.

Including all the Cultists and Shambler. The Act bosses have their own section, but they also count as ‘Cosmic’.

Altar
Priority: Variable (Do not ever kill last if possible)
HP: 20, Speed: 7

On its first turn it will take a free action to apply a specific confession-based buff to the whole party, which will only disappear when the Altar is killed. The specific kind of confession also affects what ‘Bone Weaving’ does in addition to giving 1 block token. These are the main reasons why the priority is so variable. Act 1 and Act 3 generally carry lower priority for Altar, as the buffs he puts out are generally weaker/more counterable, and/or make it harder to target Altar himself. This is especially true of the act 3 buff that gives out taunt; and act 1’s danger depends on how well you counter stealth and the specific fight. Act 2 Altar, however, is high priority. The buff, which gives everyone crit 1/4th of the time when being targeted by any attack, is ludicrously powerful and extremely dangerous, often making it worth planning to snipe Altar somehow. The Bone weaving there also hands out strength, which is easily the worst of the three. Act 4 tends to be fairly strong and worth killing the altar early over if you have the ability to do so reasonably, and Act 5's buff is highly variable: Sometimes it hurts your comp a lot, other times it may actually help your comp.

Flesh weaving is a single target big regen buff that can screw up DoT approaches and can be particularly annoying with big enemies (exemplar especially). If you leave him for last, he will suicide by using Azoic end, which does a bunch of damage and stress. So, don’t leave him for last if you can help it.

Buffs:
Act 1: A cultist can gain 1/2 stealth tokens at round start.
Act 2: All cultists gain crit 25% of the time when hit with anything.
Act 3: Each round, one cultist aside from the altar will gain 1 or 2 taunt.
Act 4: Altar has a 50% chance to give a friendly cultist a free action every round. Seems to hand it out before Dot Ticks. The target cultist's normal turn comes before their freebie seemingly, So DoT effects can still kill them before they'd get the free action.
Act 5: Whenever hitting any cultist, 25% of the time the person that did it gets hit with Knockback 2. Presumably rolls multiple times when using cleaves.

Bone Weaving: Always gives 1 block to the target, additionally...
Act 1: An extra block
Act 2: A strength token
Act 3: Cleanses blind
Act 4: ?
Act 5: ?

Cherub
Priority: 2.5 (5 if in front ranks)
HP: 14, Speed: 8
Spawns with dodge or dodge+

A squishy debuffer that inflicts weaken to your frontliners, blind to your backliners, and can inflict horror while giving itself dodge+. Generally whether I target these first or not depends on my damage plan specifically. It is squishy but the dodge will make it difficult to kill very quickly. Useless in the front 2 ranks, using only a weak direct damage move that moves it back 1 rank. His moves all have cooldowns (outside of the front rank move), so you’ll never see the same one twice in a row.

Evangelist
Priority: 3 (5 if in back ranks)
HP: 28, Speed: 1, DBR: 5%
Spawns with block

The tanky-ish frontliner of the cultist faction. Evangelists mainly deal and take damage, though they can inflict blind sometimes and a little stress. Generally these aren’t the most dangerous enemies in a cultist comp, but they can buff up with Nocturne Commune to gain crit and block, making them tankier and able to dish out a pretty big bleed hit. The bleed in particular can add up when facing two of these and allowing them to hit you repeatedly. Their front rank moves include a bleed dealing attack and a bleed dealing cleave (the latter can rarely apply blind, the former puts on some stress and more damage) as well as the aforementioned buff, and in the back they only use Rush judgment to get back to the front. The potential damage their bleed can put out shouldn’t be ignored, but they tend to be less dangerous than other cultists overall.

Herald
Priority: 1 (4 if in front ranks)
HP: 18, Speed: 4

Herald has the ability to put down a sizable DoT to BOTH of your backliners. Seriously, it’s nuts how much damage first trumpet does to your squishy backline. He can also target someone with Clarion Call, removing 2 positive tokens and dealing 2 stress. On higher act difficulties, he can use inversion to move the debuffs you placed on his brethren onto himself, and then to change them to buffs on his next turn. He can use that move in the front ranks too, and it moves him back, so you’re never safe from him undoing your mitigation. An imminently dangerous enemy for your backline, and a good target for pulls and disruption if you can’t just eliminate him from living.



Cardinal
Priority: 1 (if you can kill him in time)
HP: 46, Speed: 4, DBR: 33%

Cardinal is one of the three big boy cultists, and is generally more dangerous than Deacon. While he lacks the raw damage output of his brother, he more than makes up for it with the ability to disrupt your team with Shuffles, inflict large amounts of stress to everyone or single targets, and by having a debuff centric Exultation.

We do need to explain the worship mechanic now though. When one of the three big cultists is alive (this guy, Deacon, or Exemplar), their smaller friends generate worship when they do nearly anything. When they get two worship, they can use a free move on their next turn called ‘Worship’ (go figure), that will heal the big boy and give him one of the tokens. If the big boy gets 2 tokens, they can use exultation, which is different for each of them. This version of exultation gives the entire enemy party dodge+, and hits your entire party with damage, Vuln, Weak, and Stress.

So generally two strategies open up for Deacon and Cardinal. You either kill Deacon or Cardinal first before Round 3, as that’s the round where the adds can start to Worship. This is typically very accessible with high alpha teams, especially against Cardinal who has very little defensive protection aside from shuffling you and Exultation. Alternatively, you kill the adds first. This is safer and works best for slower comps, but it does mean the big boy gets to hit you more. I usually use the former strategy on Cardinal, hence his priority, whereas it depends more for Deacon. Blind tends to be way better on Cardinal than weak, and high move resistance can go a long way towards helping against his Yawning Void.

Deacon
Priority: 3
HP: 41, Speed: 2, DBR: 33%
Starts every combat by using ‘The Flesh Warps’ when at act 3 or higher, which randomly increases his damage reduction against melee or ranged skills by 50%. It alternates between each kind of DR every round after the initial cast.

He has a stress cleave in Weight of Worlds, which also locks everyone in place. Other than that he mainly just deals damage with Sundering Steel (big single hit and stress), or flesh from bone (moderate damage and bleed). His exultation only targets the front rank, and does about two bazillion damage. It also bleeds for 10. It can easily kill someone if the cultists can follow up or you get a bad speed order. So be very careful about it. It also apparently buffs his party with Dodge+ as well.

Quick killing him is definitely an option, but it tends to be a lot harder due to his DR buff, especially if Altar is also giving him block. It is more normal for medium or slow comps to simply kill the adds while mitigating Deacon. Since Deacon mainly relies on his direct damage, mitigation is quite strong against him, and you can often throw a smoke or weakening curse on the guy while you clean up his friends.



Exemplar
Priority: 1
HP: 101, Speed: 4, DBR: 75% (!!!)

Exemplar is either a miniboss or a boss depending on who you ask. Outside of Denial (due to it being short), you will always face one exemplar who starts with an Altar at the end of the third region. He will almost always be ordained when past act 2 (in which he can never be ordained), so those stats are a bit misleading. If you are lucky enough to get him non-ordained, then he is a lot easier.

Exemplar is a very aggressive foe with 2 turns per round. He can inflict horror and sometimes vuln on two targets with Rapturous beauty, which is annoying but generally a move you’re happy to see compared to his other moves. His combat loop outside of that is to use Prelude to apply combo, pull, and blight someone, and then the fall to use that combo, hit the target with a truckload of damage and to give him Worship. If the fall does not hit someone with combo, he won’t get worship (and he’ll only use it if someone has combo). Prelude -> The Fall is very capable of killing someone, so be ready for that case. The Fall can only hit rank 1, 2, and 3, so if your comboed character is in 4, he can’t be targeted with it. You can also just guard them (often the best) or use a taunt to prevent him from following up.

The other way he gets worship is through Pillar of Sacrifice, which will eat his ally for 1 worship, and give him regen and 2 riposte tokens. His ripostes hit pretty hard, so carrying a move like Bellow or highway robbery to counter it is worth considering. He can only eat an ally once that ally reaches 2 worship and he will always choose to. Note that theoretically, the add could use worship on him to give him a token as well, and to heal him more than his regen will. It is just very difficult for the speed order to support this conclusion, given his double actions and the fact that he’s forced to use pillar of sacrifice when his ally has 2 worship. You’d usually have to double stun him to make that happen, which is basically impossible.

When he gets 2 worship tokens, either through eating his friend or using the fall (typically both), he will use his Exultation. It does horrifying damage to two targets, and summons in another cultist if possible. This cultist can be any of the 4 size 1 cultist enemies, so Cherub, Evangelist, Herald, and Altar. It is slightly more likely to be another Altar. Evangelist will spawn in front, the others in back.

Exemplar is in many ways a damage race that is about keeping him from using the fall and exultation. Killing his partner is usually not that helpful outside of act 2 (due to the resentment buffs), even though he can eat them. Using high value mitigation and redirection, especially with a tank, and powerful DoT moves and direct damage moves is the key to success here. Do not play against Exemplar reactively unless you need to, he WILL make you Tempo spiral with his huge damage output. It is sometimes worth letting people stay low or at death’s door to push more damage towards Exemplar, just to avoid tempo spiraling.

In particular, the Man-At-Arms performs very well in this fight. Not only can he guard comboed and low HP heroes with Defender, he can remove combo from himself with Stand Fast, he can taunt with retribution and sometimes stand fast, and he can remove riposte with Bellow. Of all the tanks, hellion has the hardest time, since she relies entirely on healing and taunt for her mitigation, meaning that outside of Carcass she might get slammed down fast. DoT damage characters like PD, Runaway, and Flagellant perform very well against his multiple moves per turn.

Really, the best part of this fight is the near complete lack of debuffs coming onto your side. You have the ability to push damage very quickly without any interruptions, and you should take that advantage as much as you can while mitigating him with powerful tanks or debuffs. Exemplar is the last big test before you enter the mountain, so if you can get past him, you typically have a good shot at victory.



Shambler
Shambler’s Stats have been changed for 1.0. I’ll add them in later and revise the strategy if needed
Shuffles you on combat start

Shambler’s moveset is simple. He uses one of 3 moves, one of which is a shuffle with stress, two of which apply DoTs, and all of which will randomly apply combo. These moves all summon 2 shambler tentacles (when possible), that can use two moves. ClapperClaw, which works just like the first game, boosting their speed and damage permanently while giving them a block token. They also have wriggling feast, which they use on the comboed hero to heal themselves and the boss, and which will also give them the same stat boost as Clapperclaw.

Shambler’s fight is a balancing act between dealing damage to Shambler himself and killing his tentacles. You do need to kill the tentacles so they don’t overbuff, but if you spend all your energy on it, you’ll take a bunch of stress and damage from the shambler itself. My general recommendation is to kill the one oldest tentacle every turn (as possible) while dealing with the boss. This way no tentacle gets overbuffed, and you can still do damage to Shambler himself at a reasonable rate. Depending on where the tentacles are you may have to break from this plan, but it’s a solid plan to go in with. Characters that can rearrange themselves easily and who can act from many different ranks naturally do better in this fight, given the guaranteed and intermittent shuffles. With the buffs, Shambler will probably be capable of doing some pretty noticeable stress and damage, but a solid team should be able to handle him most of the time as he comes up.

Shambler only spawns in at a specific kind of Academic’s Study, and at road fights when your flame is under 30. During the fight your flame will be set to 1, and afterwards it will be boosted to max

These are the enemies you see in the Sprawl. The ones that can set themselves on fire. They generally do damage fairly aggressively and inflict burn. High alpha teams with flexible damage plans work well in the sprawl, as enemies can not ignite turn 1.

Note: Igniting is a free skill that many Fanatics have. It raises their stats, including Max HP (which heals them), and tends to open up new moves while empowering the older ones.

Whipper
Priority: 4
HP: 16, Speed: 1

A fairly basic enemy with an annoying omni-cleave when he does ignite. Whip crack is a basic damage move, and whip trip is a disruption move that pulls 1 and immobilizes someone, which can lock them into a place they don’t want to be. If he’s in the back he might use fiery haze instead, which deals no damage but brings him up front while inflicting blind. The two former moves inflict burn if he’s ignited, and whip trip can inflict combo if a specific other enemy is present. When ignited he also gets Infernal Taskmaster, which does a little damage and inflicts burn and a chance at stress onto everyone. Fairly non-dangerous compared to many other sprawl enemies, but he can certainly hurt, especially if ignited.

Shaman
HP: 12, Speed: 4
Priority: 2

A support unit that can do surprisingly high damage, Shamans seem to have a high chance to ignite before other enemies as well, though he still can’t on turn 1. He can throw out blinds and damage before he ignites, but after he does he gets access to a very annoying guard move that guards someone and gives him dodge while healing both of them. His other moves also get stronger (though he loses his blind move), and he gains access to a surprisingly strong front rank cleave when he’s in the front ranks. Despite what you might have assumed, this guy isn’t ruined by pulls. He can also apply combo for the special enemy mentioned in the Whipper entry. Generally, these guys are good first targets if you can target them, as they’re very squishy, do reasonable damage and disruption, and can mess up your kills with guard.

Sacrificial
Priority: Highly Variable
HP: 13, Speed: 2
Spawns with 2 block+ tokens

This guy’s job is to move to rank 1 one rank at a time, and then to use A New Sun when he takes his turn there, which hits everyone for hilarious amounts of damage and stress, and kills the sacrificial. The closer he is to rank 1, the higher the priority, eventually reaching ‘kill at all costs’ if he’s in rank 1. His low HP and block+ means that DoT tends to ruin his day. He functions entirely as a Kamikaze.

This man is why you should do your best to avoid choosing the ‘ambush enemy’ option when it’s offered to you before resistance encounters in The Sprawl. If he spawns in 4 and you pick that, you’ll get to enjoy watching him move straight to rank 1, using a new sun immediately if you can’t kill him before he takes a turn. The rest of the sprawl isn’t that impacted by being moved around, so just ignore that option when it comes up if you have the choice to. Shamans also seem to love to guard this thing if they’re both alive.

Flayer
Priority: 2
HP: 12, Speed: 2
Spawns with dodge

A sort of weird damage dealing dodge tank sort of enemy. Many of his moves give him riposte and/or dodge, especially when ignited. However, if you can get through that he’s quite squishy. Generally he’s a good early kill, as denying him the ability to set up riposte and more dodge is generally quite nice, plus his Blade Tornado from igniting is genuinely horrifying as a front rank blind cleave that also gives him dodge and riposte. I often kill this guy first, even before shamans, unless sniping the shaman is very easy.

Pit Fighter
Priority: 3 (higher priority the longer he lives)
HP: 41, Speed: 1, DBR: 33%

A tanky damage dealer, the Pit Fighter gets two punches per turn. His normal punch, Pummel, puts him forward, hits fairly hard, and can reach all the way into 3, which is fairly unique. His other punch, jawbreaker, is accessible if he’s up front. It does some more damage and also 1 knockback and daze, but it can’t reach into 3.

He will give himself a unique buff on turn 2, Accelerant, which allows him to apply burn DoT with all his hits and increases his speed. The longer he’s alive, the higher this buff goes. Generally, Pit fighter is a good target to kill after you get rid of highly valuable squishy targets, like the Flayer and Shaman, or at the start if you think you can do so quite quickly. He doesn’t accelerate all that fast and can be mitigated very well with a tank or most debuffs (though he will chew through mitigation fast with two actions), and his double actions and lack of any defense leave him very open to DoT attacks and high damage moves in general.

Immolatist
Priority: 2 (4 if in the very back)
HP: 16, Speed: 7, DBR: 25%

A debuffer and buffer, the immolatist can spend its turn igniting and buffing a friend with strength and dodge, burning a corpse to heal everyone, or just throwing fire in your face. When he’s not in the very back, he can use Flaming Lasso, which will hit both of your backline characters with damage, burn, stress, and blind. It’s a very annoying move, and the main reason why this guy ends up as a typical second or third kill, once he’s moved out of his usual starting position of 4. His buffs and heal is annoying, but normally not worth killing him over to stop him from using early. He seems to really love using funeral pyre while there are corpses, so you can often just do some damage to him or a friend and expect him to use a turn up doing that.

Her Ladyship
Priority: 1 (3 if in the very back)
HP: 23, Speed: 8, DBR: 25%

A harder Immolatist. It’s the sprawl’s ‘Champion’ variant enemy, so you’ll only see her starting at higher confessions. Her moves are named differently, but they’re all more powerful versions of Immolatist’s moves. So she’s a scarier immolatist by default, hence the higher priority. She does get one extra move though. Her friends will be able to apply combo while she is in the party, and if they do she can use Combustion, which is effectively like Cause of Death. It will do 200% of the remaining burn as direct damage to the target. Ouch. Presumably ignores modifiers like CoD and Backdraft, but I’ve never actually seen her use this move, so I do not know for certain.

We may never know why the library decided to hire a pyromaniac to take care of books.

The Librarian
HP: 116 (140 ignited), Speed: 4 (6 ignited), DBR: 33% (50% ignited)
3 actions per round, 2 when ignited
It’s worth noting that he’s functionally immune to movement effects and burn (200% resists)

Moveset

Page Burner: He will always use this first if any books are in front of him. Lower the stack size of the stack in front of him by one level (the equivalent of 15 damage, though they will always be set to the next threshold, so 30, 15, or 0). If he finishes off a stack of books with this, he’ll immediately use the move Burning Bright for free (which is at the end of this list). Randomly inflicts stress to a party member (even if they have the book burner quirk, weirdly enough).

Mandatory Reading: Used in 2-3-4, Targets any hero. Deals 4-8 damage at 10 crit, 2 burn, and 1 stress. Staple damage move.

Categorize: Used in 3-4, Targets all heroes. He rearranges the heroes into alphabetical order (right to left) based on the name of their Class (so renaming the heroes won’t affect this). I thought this was just a random shuffle, but apparently not. Cooldown of 8, which means that it’s pretty hard to see this more than twice, max.

Burnout: Used in 1 when not ignited (when books still exist), Targets 1+2. Deals 4-8 damage at 5 crit, 2 burn, and moves him all the way back as far as he can go, while giving him 2 dodge tokens. This move is your punishment for thinking you can waste a turn of his by moving books behind him.

Smokestack: Used in 2-3-4, Targets any hero. Inflicts the hero with 2 blind and 1 vuln, and he gains 1 dodge. 2 turn cooldown. A single target mitigation move, primarily.

Burning Bright: Used anywhere, targets everyone. He will only ever use this if Ignited (see next entry), or when he has just destroyed a stack of books. Deals 3-6 damage at 5 crit and 2 burn. Gains dodge when not ignited.

Ignite!: Used in 1 when all books are gone. Increases his stats (and also heals him 24 because he gains 24 max HP), sets his turn limit to 2 per round, and allows him to spam burning bright for the rest of the fight. If you get this far and the fight isn’t likely to be over in the next few hits, you’re usually in big danger.

--

When you spawn into the librarian fight, there will be three separate stacks of books of varying sizes. The books will have 45, 30, or 15 HP depending on stack size. ‘So’, you inevitably think, ‘this is like the Prophet, I’ve just got to get through the books to get to him, right?’

Then he starts burning them.

The Librarian will use his first turn, every turn, to burn a stack of books. He will burn one ‘level’ off the stack, which is equivalent to 15 HP. The books can only take damage in 15 HP increments. If He (and only he) finishes off a stack of books, he will immediately get a free action to use an omni-cleave called burning bright, which deals damage, stress, and burn to everyone.

He will then spend his other two actions using some of his other moves. While Mandatory reading is a strong staple damage move, you’re usually most concerned about his mitigation moves: Categorize and SmokeStack. Categorize will arrange everyone based on class name, which can flip your entire group around or barely change anything. He will tend to only use it once, maybe twice, every fight because of the cooldown and use case. Smokestack is the more annoying choice here, effectively accomplishing the same thing as a Smokescreen+, but instead of combo he gains dodge on himself. His dodge from Smokestack and burning bright can inflate his survivability, as otherwise 116 HP is the lowest for any lair boss.

If he makes it all the way to the front when all the books are gone, he will ecstatically ignite and start spamming burning bright twice a round. This will inflict tons of burn and damage across the party, and will quickly lead to a wipe if you can’t finish him off.

So the goal is usually to kill him before he does that, and flexible damage plans do this the best, being able to target him regardless of what point in the fight you’re in. Hyper alpha comps that can smash him in a couple of turns when he gets into their range can perform well as well.

The fight also introduces another question; should you kill the books. At first blush the answer seems like ‘no’. Why speed up the fight and decrease the timer? However, if you finish off a stack of books yourself, you’ll deny him access to the burning bright he gets from finishing off a stack. If you know your comp doesn’t need the extra time, it’s worth last hitting book stacks to deny him the damage and dodge from Burning bright when possible. Of course, if you miscalculate your ability to kill him, this can lead him to ignite sooner. This approach is particularly common with teams that front load more of their damage or for teams that aren’t having much trouble doing damage to him in the first place.

Most heroes do excel in this fight, but heroes that can flexibly target many different ranks effectively do the best, such as PD, Hellion, Man-At-Arms, Grave-Robber, Occultist, and even Jester. Movement skills are also very nice to have access to in the fight, allowing you to rearrange the books so that he spends a larger amount of time in areas you want him to. Having effective ways to clear dodge and to prevent him from getting more (mainly illumination and Tracking Shot+) is also quite helpful, but he doesn’t produce enough for it to be mandatory.

The only character of note that performs particularly badly in this fight is Bonnie. Though she really enjoys getting sprawl trinkets, Bonnie can’t do much damage to the boss at all, due to her reliance on the burn DoT. However, she does find a niche with her ability to clear blind and clear a dodge in one swift motion using Hearthlight+, while relying on Smokescreen+ to apply mitigation and act as her damage transfer. She can even use ransack to move books around and correct her position, and in a very odd case, one might be able to access backdraft by using the books, which I do not believe are immune to burn. Other than Bonnie, the role heroes play is typically obvious: Your tanks will soak up his mitigation moves and abuse, especially if they can’t reach him when he’s in the back, and your damage dealers will focus on him with whichever move they can hurl onto him. With Tracking Shot and Illumination’s recent change, you can also deny him his dodge for a pretty long time despite his high activity with those moves.

If he ends up in the front and ignited, you should probably focus on killing him almost exclusively. Tanks don’t do well against Omni-cleaves, and the only forms of mitigation that work particularly well against burning bright are blind and dodge. While throwing a Smokescreen+ at him isn’t a bad call, most of your characters should focus exclusively on damage. If you’re in this position, it’s sometimes worth focusing on damage even above healing people off of Death’s Door, as the burn will stack on everyone fast, and you’ll end up with a full squad at Death’s Door if you don’t finish him off quickly. Burning Bright is not the end of the world, though it is certainly quite dangerous, especially since igniting means you’ll need to chunk through another 24 HP.

Also, in my experience, book stacks generally spawn with 6 or 7 total rounds worth of Page Burning, so that’s typically your time limit. Rearranging the books can be really powerful, mostly for getting the highest stacks into the front, because many teams will deal with him better there. They can also be rotated using movement skills to make sure he remains in one spot for longer or to delay burning bright without killing books, as he is happy to burn whatever you put in front of him. If you put a stack behind him, he’ll always end up burning that last, as he’ll burn his way to the front and then use burnout to go back to 2. This approach can greatly increase how long he is in rank 2, which is a major boon to comps that run heroes like Leper or Rogue Dismas. It is fairly effectively achievable with moves like Purge and Rampart.

I generally find this boss to be the second hardest to snipe overall, though the comp you’re running can very much change that estimation. The danger is mainly that early game comps have less damage, and this fight is very much a damage race. Some very helpful items (aside from the universal healing and DoT clearing items) include anything to ping dodge with (basically anything you throw at him), the anti burn combat items (the powders and burn salve), noisemakers (mainly to ensure he uses smokestack on that target), blind clear (he inflicts two, so milk soaked linen and holy water are noticeably better), and attack boosting items (War Horn, The Blood, Stimulants. All will allow you to more easily kill him in time) as well as DoT items (anything that inflicts the non burn DoTs. High moves per round = quick payoff).

The faction enemies of the Shroud. It’s worth noting that in every combat within the shroud, a combat effect can happen that causes your heroes to randomly get blind or vuln, and sometimes stress. You won’t get both blind and vuln on the same character. This effect is random, but its ability to show up any time after turn 1 means that high alpha comps have a distinct advantage against the gimmick. Otherwise, Comps that deal with being moved well are superb here as Fisherfolk love to move you around, and flexible damage plans tend to perform well against the myriad threats and against the boss himself.

Some of the Fisherfolk can inflict a special token: The Barnacles token. It causes heroes to gain 1 bleed when they move, no matter how they move. Wears off in 3 turns and is limited to 1.

Wharf Rat
Priority: 5 in front, 3 in back
HP: 14, Speed: 6
Starts stealthed 25% of the time

A fairly basic enemy. He either uses sucker punch, which is a normal damage move that inflicts some bleed, or Briny Spray, which will stealth him and inflict 2 stress and the barnacles token. He can only use Briny spray in the back, hence the priority difference. It’s a rather crappy move due to the high stress, but it does have a 2 turn cooldown, meaning his priority drops back to 4 for a couple of turns after he uses it. If he’s in the front you can generally leave him alone for other enemies, which is great because tons of enemies in the Shroud are way more dangerous than this guy.

Fish Monger
Priority: 2, (4 if in rank 1)
HP: 16, Speed: 4,
Gets 2 turns per round

A backline sniper that focuses on setting itself up for crits, the fishmonger doesn’t typically deal crazy damage on its own, but it can ramp up slightly over time. It has a permanent condition that will allow it to deal 1 extra bleed when it uses its bleed attack after it crits with any move (for the whole fight). It tends to open using Whetstone, which gives it dodge+ and a crit token, before immediately following up with Flense. This unit’s relatively low HP and multiple turns mean that DoT damage absolutely melts it, but high direct damage options can quickly kill it before it can do much as well. It can also use Debone as a debuff move, inflicting a weak or a vuln, which is irritating but far from the worst the Shroud throws at you. It’s more dangerous than the wharf rat, but less than many of the other enemies. It’s fairly reasonable to kill this thing quickly, preventing its ramping and output almost entirely, and it’s forced into a weak move to back up if it’s in exactly rank 1, though with two actions per turn this is less crippling than other enemies. The big danger is the stress that her high number of crits and debone can inflict onto the party, as well as her ability to slow the party down with Debone and her Dodge. Only occasionally is the problem the actual damage.

Cabin Boy
Priority: 1
HP: 13, Speed: 4

You’d think the enemy called ‘Cabin Boy’ wouldn’t be priority 1, but his gimmick is that he buffs up turn 1, and then hits someone (and often diseases them) turn 2, randomly transforming him into any other Fisherfolk enemy. That includes Dockers, by the way, if he has room. The buff can give him tons of different tokens, but only 1. If he transforms into something it will start with 2 block+ tokens and a unique permanent buff giving it 25% more damage, 3 speed, and a 33% chance to produce a block token when hit for free. So yeah, kill this thing before it can transform. Your life will be much easier.

Bosun
Priority: 3 (2 if in midranks)
HP: 17, Speed: 3

The staple enemy of the Shroud, these guys are notable for being fairly bulky, pushing and pulling people around, and stunning. Yeah, the basic shroud enemy has a stun. Only midrank Bosuns have access to that stun, and it has a 2 turn cooldown. It also debuffs your move resist slightly. Otherwise they use a push (if up front) or a pull (if in back), targeting the front and back respectively. The stun can target anyone. He doesn’t hit that hard though any barnacle tokens can allow him to inflict bleed as he disrupts the party. Generally a higher priority if your comp has issues with being moved around, though the real problem is often that stun in particular. Quite the powerful tool to see on a basic enemy, and one that certainly incentivizes you to kill the midrank Bosuns more quickly than any other Bosun.

You'd think I'd have a picture of the Bosun, but apparently I didn't take one.

The Hull Keeper
Priority: 2 (1 in midranks)
HP: 24: Speed: 5, DBR: 25%

The champion version of Bosuns, now with DBR. Has all the same moves, though his sodden rigging has a cooldown of 1 and applies vuln, a movement resistance debuff, and a lotta stress. His movement skills both move 2 instead of 1, making him far more disruptive. His special move, which he can only use once per battle, is Riptide, which hits everyone and has a chance to give out barnacle tokens as well as a debuff that causes bleeds to last longer. The rules for this guy are more or less the same as the Bosun, though with the caveat that Sodden Rigging is oh so much worse now. He’s worth killing quickly if he’s in the midranks, and even outside of there his movement skills can be the bane of heroes like Leper.

Captain
Priority: 1 if in 4, 3 otherwise
HP: 23, Speed: 2

The Captain is the strongest enemy buff machine in the game due to his special skill, All Hands on Deck, which gives all his friends 2 random positive tokens. It has a cooldown of 2 and requires him to be in the back to use it. So you’d better pull him or kill him before he does it. Seriously, that buff is ridiculously strong on any enemy in the shroud. Otherwise he’s mainly relegated to some debuff and damage moves, which can apply weak, stress, barnacles, and that special bleed debuff. I’d say that outside of the back rank he’s usually less annoying than Bosuns, since he doesn’t have a stun or moves, but does hit harder. He will bring high damage and stress to a team if you allow him to buff his friends, and especially if you let him do it more than once. You can also kill a friend of his, like a wharf rat, quickly and corpse clear as an alternative.



Docker
Priority: 1
HP: 46, Speed: 0, DBR: 33%

He would perhaps be the most dangerous size 2 enemy in the game were it not for Ghoul and Shambler. Docker is primarily dangerous for 2 reasons. One, he hits as hard as he looks like he’d hit. Hull breaker hits for an insane amount of damage and can easily put a squishy hero right onto death’s door. It also has a knockback attached to it sometimes. He also has an even more annoying ability in Make Way, which cleaves, stresses, and shuffles the whole party. It has a cooldown of 3, so you’ll ideally only see it once, but it can mess up the party cohesion all by itself. If he’s in the back he’ll use Brine bucket, which is a weaker move (for him) that applies barnacles and can reach into 3.

Docker is an enemy you either kill quickly or mitigate, ideally both. His reliance on raw damage is his biggest flaw, allowing characters like Man-At-Arms to handle him well with tanking, or characters like Alhazred to greatly weaken him with a debuff. You should generally never just leave him alone, unless you have no choice. When you are effectively mitigating him he actually isn’t that dangerous outside of his shuffle, but the moment you let him hit you in the face with a full strength Hull Breaker, there’s a good chance that someone’s in severe danger. It’s a blessing that he can’t really follow up on it very well by himself.

Honestly, I don't know what Bonnie sees in him

The Leviathan
HP: 155, Speed: 5, DBR: 33%

Has a permanent immobilize token, like what the tangle trophy gives you. Also has 200 move resist too, not that that matters. 200 stun resist as well, which does.
He only has 1 turn per round, though it will basically never seem that way due to the various free actions he gets.

He also summons a Hand, with the following stats:
HP: 24, Speed: 4,
2 turns per round. Still has that immobilize token and the 200% stun and move resist.

Moveset

Breath of the Sea: A free action at round start that targets everyone, only if the hand isn’t present. Adds blind (33%) or vuln (66%) to everyone. 66% chance to do 1 stress.

Eyes of the Storm: There are two versions of this, the first version targets 2 people randomly, and the second only one. Otherwise they’re both the same: dealing 3-7 damage at 5 crit, ignoring dodge and blind, and applying a ‘gaze’ token, which basically means the hero is marked for the hand. He uses the second version if the hand is present and no one is marked, otherwise he uses the first version.

Tidal Surge: An omni-cleave that he uses when the hand is present. Deals 3-7 damage at 10 crit. Applies barnacles 33% of the time, 1 stress 50% of the time, and rarely the algal bloom disease.

Deep Rising: Summons the hand. Free action on round end if there was no hand at round start.

Hand Moveset:

Undertow: Targets a marked hero in 1-2. Attempts to capture and pull them underwater and ignores blind and dodge. If this happens, the hero will remain there until you defeat the hand, taking 4% of their Max HP as damage per turn. They’ll be dropped in rank 1 when you free them. This Move checks Move Resistance. Tries it once at the start of each round as a free action until it captures someone.

Batter: Targets a marked character like Undertow. Deals 6-8 damage at 10 crit. Shuffles target and inflicts 1 stress.

--

The Leviathan is the Winner of ‘Hardest Lair Boss’ several months running. The reasons for this are mainly his high HP and stress output, and his gimmick. He kidnaps a hero, similar to bosses like The Hag, but he has a lot more bulk than she ever did.

Essentially, if he doesn’t have a hand on the field, he’ll mark two people and summon one. The hand has 24 HP and will abduct one of the marked heroes before beating the other one. The abduction works like The Pot did, where the hero will lose HP every turn they’re drowning. This abduction works entirely off the move resistance stat. That hero is naturally unable to act while they’re underwater, and will not have an action the round they are saved.

The leviathan will sit in the back 2 ranks while the hand is there and use his tidal surge to spread extra damage to the party, and will otherwise open up a new cycle with Breath of the Sea and Eyes of the Storm after you kill the hand. It effectively takes him an entire round to get a new hand out, rather than just 1 action.

So the first important thing to know about this fight is the fact that Undertow looks at move resist. This is the only time that Immobilize (whether the general trophy or otherwise), will not save you: it has to be move resist. A drum or two to your frontline will make this fight a whole lot easier. The hand spends its real turns using batter, which does notable damage and disruption but is much more tame than disabling a hero is.

Despite my comparisons to the hag, this is not a hag fight. Leviathan is way beefier than hag, and the hand is fairly weak to DoT moves and high damage output. While the hand has someone drowning, they can’t contribute their output to the cause. Furthermore, after you kill the hand he won’t do much other than debuff you and hit you with the mark for a turn, meaning you can pile on damage. There's not an instant instantaneous new hand.

You absolutely should kill the hand in this fight. You pay a lot of damage when you don’t and you put that character in fairly high danger. DoT moves are quite efficient at this, as are high alpha moves. Normally you’re looking at dedicating 2 moves to a hand kill, with one of them being a DoT. You should generally only kill the hand if it successfully undertows someone, however. If you resist it then just let him batter you and attempt it again; killing it quickly will just result in the same resummon.

The leviathan himself is fairly simple outside of this mechanic, cleaving you and debuffing you intermittently. DoT damage is alright against him, as the fight tends to go on fairly long, but it’s not as efficient as it might be against the Librarian or the Harvest child, who take multiple actions. Strong flexible output from characters like Dismas, Hellion, GraveRobber, and Bounty Hunter will go a long way to ending the fight quickly and countering the hand.

The key to this fight is not getting tempo spiraled. Stay on top of the hand and on top of incoming problems. Use useful combat items aggressively when needed to cure blind or to push more damage on him or the hand. If he locks a hero underwater and you can’t kill the hand or have other horrible problems to deal with, it’s easy to get killed from his cleaves and the hand’s disruption. That’s primarily why this fight is so difficult as an early snipe: early on teams may lack the damage necessary to handle him efficiently. It gets much easier if you have built up some damage using mastery and trinkets beforehand, and ideally if you have access to higher move resist as well.

The barnacles he can place on heroes can be a big danger in this fight when he uses Batter, as the extra bleed can quickly finish off a weakened hero. It’s fairly rare that they are the deciding factor, but they’re worth remembering given he's a boss that otherwise will not inflict DoT damage.

Combat items that help you quickly take out the hand are quite helpful, like the Bone Saw or the DoT combat items. Having healing items is extra helpful here for helping a character that was drowning if they need it. Items like Noisemakers can allow you to direct his gaze easily towards a character with high move resistance, though tanks can usually do this on their own. Debuffs are helpful against both targets, weak in particular, as many moves ignore blind. Debuff cures are still good here (frankly they’re good in every fight that’s not The Dreaming General), and items that give characters damage will allow you to more smoothly kill the hand or to more effectively rush down the leviathan himself. Most other items aren’t all that good, and sadly there is no combat item to increase move resistance. Pretty much every character performs well enough in this fight for different reasons, and there aren’t any overt losers like Bonnie was for The Librarian.

As mentioned, the drum inn item in particular is very, very good to use before going to fight The Leviathan, due to how undertow works.

Or: Cadavers. These are the factional enemies for The Tangle. Back-line destroying comps tend to do well in the Tangle, and the Tangle tends to focus on direct damage with some access to bleed. They also tend to be good at mitigating incoming damage through block, and tend to work together to an extent. Note that they received some heavy buffs in 1.0.

Foot Soldier
Priority: 3
HP: 17, Speed: 1, DBR: 0
Starts combat with block

The boring wall of flesh of the tangle. Unique in that he has some DBR. He’s fairly tanky and his atrophic cut hits pretty hard. If he’s in the rank 4 he’ll use his equivalent of wild swing to get back up. Atrophic cut slightly reduces your DoT resists, mainly so that his friends can inflict bleed on you slightly more easily. The worst thing about him is that his cut hits pretty hard and reaches into rank 3. Fairly easy to mitigate in favor of killing his more dangerous friends in most cases, he exists to take hits and to do some damage. After the update, these guys do hit quite hard.

Drummer
Priority: Depends on Enemy Comp, Don’t kill last
HP: 19, Speed: 5.
Gets a free action at round start when his friends are alive to do an ‘Order’ attack. When he’s alive, the entire enemy comp will have +200 move resist.

Drummer is a support unit that allows its allies to use very powerful moves in the form of orders. The order he does is different for each unit. He uses Defensive formation on foot soldiers (which makes them guard him and gain block and DBR) Volley on Arbalists, and Slay the Wounded on knights. The worst of these is definitely volley, though it’s very rare that he spawns in with an Arbalist from what I’ve seen. Volley will enable the next Arbalist attack to hit everyone. Slay the Wounded will allow the knight to use a dangerous front rank cleave.

Generally he’s at his highest priority when paired with the knight, as arbalists are already high priority and squishy enough to kill quickly. Other than orders, he can use a move that increases everyone’s speed, a move that puts taunt on one of your units and stresses them, and a move that kills himself to inflict stress on everyone. He does this last one if he’s the last man standing. It’s no Azoic End, but it's stress you could do without. Typically you either kill the drummer early or you kill him as the second last enemy, depending on enemy comp and how you deal damage. I would usually want to kill him first if he’s paired with a knight unless I had a high alpha comp that could instantly blow up the knight, and later otherwise.

Bishop
Priority: 2, 4 if up front
HP: 22, Speed: 2
Spawns with 1-2 of his benediction tokens, which enable powerful skills

Bishop’s basic move-kit isn’t that robust. He hits either your back or front with damage, either from using strike up front or smite in the back. Smite deals some stress. He otherwise uses penance to give himself 1-3 of his special tokens, which he can spend on two other moves.

One of those moves is Serve Once More. It targets any friendly Cadaver corpse and revives the enemy. The best way to counter this, other than just killing bishop before anyone else or before he can use it, is to use corpse clear. It is naturally terrible if he does get to use it, especially if used on something like a knight, as it means you have to fight that enemy a second time. The other move, which you see a lot more, is Purge the Unworthy. It only costs 1 token, but deals decent damage and 2 stress, and removes the targets positive tokens. It’s the bane of setup characters and tanks in particular, enabling his direct damage counterparts to quickly bust through. Generally, Bishop is a strong pick for an early kill in a faction that’s made up of dangerous backliners, even though he is fairly beefy.

Arbalist
Priority: 1, 5 if in rank 1
HP: 15, Speed: 1

Arbalist’s job is to sit in the back and shoot you. In rank 4 he uses piercing bolt, which does high direct damage, a stress, and ignores block. It will add up quickly, even on tanks. In the mid ranks he uses serrated bolt, which is still dangerous, trading block pierce and a little damage for bleed. Arbalists will stack up damage more quickly than their counterparts if not pulled to the very front or dealt with. Luckily they’re quite squishy and make fantastic first targets. Up front they use hip shot, which does little damage but backs them up 1 rank. The volley order makes either piercing bolt or serrated bolt (whichever they’re allowed to use) get replaced with an omnicleave version. You don’t want to get hit by that.

Bullseye Barret
Priority: 1, 5 if in rank 1
HP: 20, Speed: 1, DBR: 15%

The champion variant of the Arbalist. Works more or less the same, but uses a free turn on his first turn to use Chosen Target, which puts a special mark token on the target that makes them take more damage from Barret. Barret already hits very hard, being a stronger Arbalist, so that’s pretty dangerous, and he tends to try to follow up on that mark. Other than that the main addition he brings to the table is the extra survivability. The HP can go a long way, but the worst change here is the added DBR. Think of him as a less squishy and more dangerous Arbalist, as that’s basically his entire identity.



Knight
Priority: 2, 1 if on Death’s Door
HP: 36, Speed: 0, DBR: 60% (!!!)
Spawns with 1-2 block, Gains 30% damage and 5 speed while on Death’s Door

A hard hitting Tangle enemy that inflicts bleed with all his attacks (except Have at You, which is the move he uses to move to the front from the back). He hits pretty hard, but outside of Flashing Blade, it’s fairly easy to mitigate him. When he hits Death’s Door, however, he gets a massive buff instead of weak tokens, so make sure you have a way to finish him off when he gets there, ideally quickly and with moves that lower his DBR. Biting Blade does a lot of damage and bleed as does his riposte, and En garde clears blind and gives him block and that riposte. Having someone like MaAs, HWM, or Confessor Vestal to remove his en garde tokens is often very helpful, as the riposte hits shockingly hard. His order move deals a little less damage than Biting blade but cleaves the front line and inflicts 4 bleed, and he’s very good at surviving long enough to use it. As with many strong size 2s, mitigation is the key here, and knight can be killed first or last depending on your comp.

The Dreaming General
And his sidekick: literal tree roots
HP: 185, Speed: 3, DBR: 50%
Has 200 move and stun resist

In rank 4 there is an invincible tap root. It can’t be afflicted by pretty much anything, it’s just there so you can hit it.

Moveset

Unsettling Whispers: Targets any hero and deals 6-10 damage at 5 crit. Inflicts 2 stress with a 50% chance of 1 stress to other heroes. His staple damage move

The Waking Dead: Used when the Tap Root has 3 tokens on it. Targets heroes with the soil tokens on them (the ones with the soil stirring under them), dealing 10-20 damage and 4 bleed at 10 crit. Ignores blind, taunt, and stealth, and removes the tap root tokens.

Nightmare: Used when every hero is fully encased in the vines. Hits everyone for 10-20 at 10 crit and resets the vines.

Tap-Root Moves

Creeping Growth: Used at the start of every round. On round 1 this just spawns in all the vines, on rounds 2 and up it grows 2 of the vines one stage.

The Growth Recedes: Used when hit, one of the vines (at random) that has grown any amount is reset to stage 1. Gains one of the tap root tokens when you hit it as well

The Soil Stirs: Used every two times it uses ‘the growth recedes’, if soil tokens aren't already placed. Places soil tokens on two random heroes. Doesn’t ignore taunt.

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The Dreaming General is a very slow and easy to understand fight. Every round, starting on round 2, two of the vines will grow towards a hero, and if they reach stage 3 (they grow one stage when they grow, starting at 1), that hero will be encased. This damages them on turn start and locks the hero into using a move that just skips their turn and stresses the party. If everyone gets encased, the General will use nightmare and reset all the vines.

The flip side is that as you hit the tap root, which is how you keep the vines from growing, the general will get access to his Waking Dead move, which does a lot of damage itself. But it’s still better to take a few of those on the chin than to get encased in vines in most cases.

This fight therefore has a very specific approach, one that favors backline cleaves and certain combat items in particular. On round 1, do not hit the tap root. There is no reason to and it will still get the tokens. From thereon, you ideally just want to hit the tap root twice per turn with literally anything to make the vines recede, while hitting the boss. At this rate he will use The Waking Dead on every Odd turn, so round 3, 5, 7, and so on. It’s a good idea to mitigate this by either getting squishy targets out of the way, using dodge, guarding them, taunting the soil tokens, or applying weak to the general.

Rinse and repeat until you’ve killed him. It’s primarily an attrition boss. If you’re playing optimally, you can stop hitting the root near the end of the fight to save on some incoming damage and stress.

The most important thing to know about the fight is that Anything counts as a hit when you hit the tap root with it. Have 4 oil flasks? That’s 4 free hits to the tap root. Have crow’s feet? Thunderclap grenades? Any combat item that targets enemies at all? It counts if you hit the root with it. So the best way to handle this fight is by using those items or by using backline cleaves, which will hit both the root and the general. Make sure you also don’t hit the tap root more than twice per turn when you start hitting it. Since it reverts the vines all the way, if you see a slow character having a vine come towards them and know both of your tap root hitters (or just the one, if he has an item and a cleave) will move first, you can see if that vine completely encases him to get more value from removing it. If it doesn’t you’ll need to hit the vine three times that turn, which isn’t the end of the world if you have some items. Normally it’s just simpler to stick to the normal hit tap root twice a turn strategy. This approach can slow down the fight somewhat if done on those even rounds (as you may be able to delay Waking Dead), but can introduce a little less predictability into the fight.

If you have the HP and damage to chunk through his huge HP pool, you’ll win in the end, but you’ll tend to take some stress and damage doing it in every case. Ideally you’ll win before turn 5 so you only take one Waking Dead, but how quickly you win depends on your output and comp primarily. Hell, if you’re really fast, you can do it before he takes his round 3 action. His HP is generally a good deal too high for that though, even if your team does explosive levels of damage.

The best combat items are any combat items that hit stuff (for the aforementioned reasons), and especially Oil Flask because you can carry four of those at once and probably don’t have much other use for them. Heals are also very good so that you don’t have to drop tempo to heal, as dropping tempo can often affect your ability to defend against the vines. Damage items can accelerate the fight too, but I’d generally only want higher value ones like the War Horn or Blood, and not so much something like stimulants. DoT items are slow to work on him, but the fight is usually pretty long, so they can usually get value if you use them early. Single target DoT items can also be held as a backup taproot hitter.

PD and Occultist excel in this fight due to their backline cleaves, allowing them to hit both the root and general with the same attack. Otherwise most characters do well enough, so long as they can deal damage. Characters like Bonnie that also get nice omni-cleaves or backline hitting attacks do have an advantage over others as an alternative or backup taproot hitter. Characters with Dodge and block feel particularly good against the Waking Dead. Most comps can beat the general reasonably with combat items, but ones that implement those backline cleaves and some Hero side mitigation tend to take less damage and stress overall. Weaken can also work well on the general.

Really, this fight has historically been more likely to kill you in an hour or two via meltdowns and messing up relationships than directly, though with the new bleed on Waking Dead, he is somewhat more able to actually kill someone.

Also known as: gentry, which you can think of as the Landed Elite to make it easier to remember.

Several Plague Eaters can inflict disease onto the party. This disease will be Hemic Rot, which causes the hero to gain a weak 15% of the time on round start. It sucks and will mess up thresholds. It’s often worth not choosing the Foetor as the final region if you don’t have a good reason to go there to avoid getting Hemic Rot.

Comps that deal with frontlines well and that are carrying corpse clear will tend to do the best in the Foetor, as most of their more dangerous squishy targets tend to be up front. Corpse clear not only brings that backline up to the front after you’ve killed the frontline, it also keeps those corpses from being eaten. If they do eat a corpse, the plague eater that did will gain a Corpulent token, allowing them to use their strongest skill once. Only 3 plague eaters (Lords, Dinner Carts, and Ladies), will eat corpses.

Butcher
Priority: 4
HP: 23, Speed: 1

A fairly standard, bulky enemy. Up front he’ll use Carve, which will do some damage and bleed. In the back he’ll use Meat Hook or Hack: Hack will move him from 4 to 3 (and is only used in 4), and Meat Hook is a pull that can sometimes inflict Vuln. When on the field with Livestock enemies (who I normally just call ‘Goats’), he can use one of their meat tokens to use Vile Feast, which will do a small heal for the enemy team. He’s not that dangerous, though it’s worth pointing out that him being alive gives all Livestock enemies a 50% bonus in damage output (it stacks if there are 2 or more Butchers). In those cases you should probably just kill the goats first anyway. Somewhat unique, in that he’s one of the few plague eaters that doesn’t sometimes hit you with Hemic Rot.

Dinner Cart
Priority: 3
HP: 40, Speed: 1, DBR: 25%

One of the two bulky backliners you’ll see in the Foetor, the Dinner cart will usually spend its time in the back using Sickly Sweet, a move that inflicts taunt and a blind along with some decent damage. It’s one of the many ‘Hemic Rot’ moves as well, inflicting the disease 1 out of 10 times. His other two moves, Excoriate and Regurgitate, are relatively weak and are used when he’s up front. Excoriate does more damage and bleed, but Regurgitate, uniquely, creates a corpse in front of him. This is the only way outside of Beast Dens that you’ll see more than 3 corpses in a fight before the fight ends. Not that it’ll be around long, as he’ll happily eat it or any other corpse to heal and get access to his special skill: Bilious Mortar. It’s actually very similar to Sickly Sweet, trading in the taunt and blind for stress damage and blight, and carrying a slightly higher Hemic Rot chance. It’s annoying but probably the tamest of all the corpulent skills.

Maid
Priority: 3 in back, 5 in front
HP: 18, Speed: 3

The counterpart to the Butcher, in that neither of them eat corpses or inflict diseases. This one also gives the goats a buff by existing, though the buff in this case is 20% resistance to pretty much everything, and 2 speed. This primarily makes them harder to kill with DoT options. The maid herself is a fairly basic enemy. In the back it will use Larval slop which will apply a large blight DoT to any of your guys outside of rank 1. It’s ability to reach into the backline with fairly high DoT damage is what makes Maids a higher priority than something like butcher. Up front it will use backsplash, which will just do a little direct damage and move it back. If there is a Goat, it can use a move anywhere to give that goat some block and riposte, and if the special Goat (Black Philip) is in the party, she also has a move to apply combo. Maids are generally best dealt with or pulled reasonably soon to keep your backline safe, but normally only after you finish off the Goats in particular.

Livestock: Otherwise known as Goat
Priority: 2
HP: 14, Speed: 1

A hard hitting, squishy frontliner, the Goats provide a source of sustenance for their brethren, allowing many of them to gain regen by using up their Meat tokens. They have a basic push and pull move, both used in the front, and a more dangerous push option if they’re in the back, which will also move them forward 3. Their most dangerous move is Invasive species, which doesn’t have any special activation requirements but does have a cooldown. It does fairly high damage and removes a positive token. Goats hit surprisingly hard for such a basic enemy, especially if they’re accompanied by some Butchers, and should generally be dealt with quickly due to their squishy nature and their ability to offer their friends Regen by existing. Just remember to remove those corpses, so their friends don’t get to eat them post-mortem. Its riposte can actually inflict the rot on you, though it will only get this riposte from Maid.

Black Philip: Otherwise known as GOAT
Priority: 1
HP: 20, Speed: 2
Gets 2 turns per round. For some reason.

The champion variant of the Goat, The GOAT hits harder by virtue of having 2 turns per round. Its version of Invasive Species has been replaced by King of All, which can thankfully only be used when a combo token is present, but will do high damage, steal positive tokens, and knock your hero all the way to the back. By virtue of being a bulkier, more active version of the goat with more meat tokens, Black Philip is naturally a very high priority kill.

Lord
Priority: 3
HP: 30, Speed: 1, DBR: 25%

The lord is the other bulky backliner, and is generally a bit worse than The Dinner Cart due to one move in particular. That move is Baneful breath. Baneful Breath wouldn’t be that bad of a move if all it did was omni-cleave you for a bit of damage and a chance at stress and weak, but it carries a chance at inflicting the dreaded Hemic Rot. The chance is only 10%, but being an omni-cleave, it gets to try to hit that 1 in 10 4 times per attack. He can only use this move in the back, so quickly killing his buddies and clearing their corpses can often easily disable the lord. You can also just pull him to take him out of breath range.

Outside of breath he can either use Tongue lashing to buff a friend with strength and move them forward, or fleshy backhand to do some decent damage and knockback one of your heroes. When he eats a corpse he heals (like everyone else who can eat corpses), and gets access to Bilious Cannon, a high damage single target stun that has perfect range and that also inflicts pretty high stress and a 6 point blight. Bilious Cannon is capable of killing someone, and the stun is pretty irritating, so denying him his corpses or utilizing blind and dodge to get him to miss with it is often a good move.

Lady
Priority: 2 (3 if in Rank 2 specifically)
HP: 20, Speed: 4, DBR: 25%

Ladies are the final plague eater enemy, and the last one that eats corpses. Ladies get some pretty strong moves at base, using Be Our Guest in the backline to effectively hit your backline with plague grenade, or Mulch up front to hit your frontline with damage, stress, and a chance at the rot. She also has another move, Mother’s Embrace, that does a pull 1 to both midrank targets with low damage. This is the only move she can use in rank 2, and is easily her least effective move. She's less dangerous in 2, but she can eat a corpse to get out of there sometimes.

Her corpulent Skill is Bilious Wail, which is like a blight-based Magnesium rain, dealing a little damage, 1-2 stress, and 3 blight to your whole party. This move also sucks, though I don’t think I’d say it’s as bad as Bilious Cannon specifically. Her dangerous move-set makes her a pretty high priority target in most cases.

The Harvest Child
Along with some extremely undercooked and very smelly piles of meat

HP: 120, Speed: 1, DBR: 33%
Gets 2 turns per round

Spawns in with a little meat and a big meat. The little meat starts in the front, the big meat stars in the middle. Their stats are as follows:

Lil Meat
HP: 47, Speed: 5

Big Meat
HP: 52, Speed: 5

Moveset

Maws of Life: Used in 1, targets 1+2. Deals 6-10 damage and 3 bleed at 5 crit. Moves the Baby back 2 ranks (which should push him all the way back).

Sapid Droppings: Used in 4-3, Targets 3+4, Deals 2-3 damage and 2 blight at 5 crit. Moves the Baby up 1 rank.

Tantalizing Tidbit: Used in 4-3, targets any hero. Deals 2-4 damage and 1 stress at 10 crit. Moves the baby up 1 rank.


Big Meat Move

Mouthwatering Aroma: Used anywhere, Targets 1+2. Deals 1-2 damage, with a 67% chance to inflict the Hunger token, and a 50% chance to inflict Vuln.

Lil’ Meat Move

Tempting Aroma: Used anywhere, targets 3+4. Deals 1-2 damage, with a 67% chance to give a hunger token and a 50% chance to give a blind token.

The Hunger Token is a special debuff (it does go through debuff resist and is curable like other debuffs) that forces a hero to move 1 rank forward if possible. If the hero starts in or reaches rank 1 through this effect, they will be locked into a move that forces them to ‘eat’ one of the meats. When they do this, the meat takes a little damage, and they receive a battle long-debuff that reduces their Max HP by 15%. This max HP reduction stacks and is irresistible.

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The Harvest Child is a brittle lair boss that relies on the disruption its Meat provides to survive. The Baby’s strategy is simple: he uses one of his two move forward moves until he reaches the front, and then uses Maws of Life when he’s up there. There is no cooldown on any of these moves, so if he somehow gets stuck up front he will spam Maws of Life forever. If this was all that happened, he would be a brittle and easy to defeat boss, but the meats exist to screw with your composition and to grant him additional survivability.

The little meat will blind your backline, and the big one will vuln your frontline. They will both hit you with hunger tokens, which will cause your party to get mixed up and will your front-line's turns, as rank 2 will reach rank 1 and eat, and rank 1 will start there. Minimizing time spent eating is one key to this fight.

So, how do we deal with the meat debuffs? You can kill a Meat, which is the first major way, and if you do you should kill the bigger one, as that’s the one that affects your frontline and costs you more turns. However, this allows the Baby to use Maws of Life more often. If you kill Both meats, he will only use Maws, which is very dangerous. Even strategies that want to kill a meat should generally avoid killing the little meat, as though the blind is annoying, 2 maws of life per turn is much worse than 1.

Normally, however, you simply won’t kill the meats. It’s better if you use something like a smoke bomb or smokescreen on the big one, if available, or dodge to make it miss, so that it won’t debuff your frontline. Missed attacks carry no risk, and the Meats only attack once per turn, meaning that two or three applications of blind is usually enough for the whole fight. The final major way to deal with this debuff is with items like Holy water and moves like Indiscriminate science, which can be used to reactively cure the hunger tokens. Otherwise, you should focus on damaging the boss while applying Immobilize to your front-rank hero and to the little meat (when it is in front of the baby) as possible. Immobilize is the other big key to this fight because of how it interacts with the boss.

If you immobilize your front rank, only your front rank will be able to eat. Rank 2 will be safe, no matter how many hunger tokens they get. If you immobilize the whole party, such as through the immobilize trophy, they’ll never move at all, meaning the only disruption the meats can bring are their debuffs and their ability to make rank 1 waste its turn. If you immobilize the little meat while it’s in 1, the Harvest child will never be able to reach rank 1, meaning no Maws of Life. This can put your backline in danger if it’s squishy from Sapid droppings in particular, but the result is usually a lot less dangerous than Maws. Fishermen's Nets are the best for this, since they apply double immobilize, but the bear traps and Leper’s Bash can also accomplish this to a lesser extent. Knockback skills can keep the Baby back longer as well, so stun comps with moves like Rampart can often perform quite well.

Baby is a boss that can easily cause a Tempo spiral if not careful. Due to the high level of disruption he inflicts on the party, if you find you’re stuck reacting to what he’s doing constantly, trying to heal through things and fighting to survive rather than to win, his debuffs will stack up as will his bleed and blight from Maws and Sapid. This is a fight that you ideally finish quite quickly, to deny his chance at disruption and to deny the ability of the HP debuff to stack. Healing gets worse the lower your Max HP gets, so reactive strategies will simply turn off when you get later into the fight.

Baby’s big weakness outside of Immobilize is his low HP and his multiple actions per turn, causing him to go down fairly quickly to Damage over time and just high burst in general. Baby is probably the easiest lair boss to snipe due to how brittle he is, but his highly random mechanics can mess up a party early on if you don’t bring good items or a good comp and are unlucky.

The hero highlights here are definitely Leper and Hellion, due to their access to immobilize on themselves, as well as DoT characters (even PD: his blight resist isn't that high for a boss in an anti-blight area. Alchemist PD in particular does good here). Characters that can also easily correct their position, like Jester or Barristan, also do very well here. Jester in particular is a favorite pick of mine here, due to his ability to fix positions with his own movement or the movement of others, to set up stun comps, to bleed and vuln the boss with slice off, and for his ability to easily generate blind and dodge on demand. He could even theoretically use echoing march to try to stall the boss out even more, by pulling meats forward. Bonnie’s Smokescreen+ also does wonderful work against the big meat in particular. Outside of that, any high damage and rank flexible character will perform well enough, but I would generally steer away from squishy frontliners in particular. Maws of life can quickly run through their health, especially if they're forced to eat the meat once or twice.

My favorite combat items here are those that apply immobilize (as stated), Healing and DoT curing items (he has blight and bleed, and the healing items allow you to keep tempo), Smoke bombs and dazzlers (to be used on the Big Meat most of the time, not the harvest child), Holy water (cures debuffs), Milk Soaked Linen and throwables (blind cures). Attack boosters are also very good here in particular, because of how brittle Harvest Child actually is. Finally, clotting powders in particular will reliably block against Maw’s bleed and offer stress heals in the face of a dangerous attack. The blight powders will do the same against droppings, but that move is a little less predictable. I really love DoT dealing items in this lair boss especially, due to his brittle nature and the fact that he takes 2 turns per round. 1 incendiary bomb or ball and chain is more than 10% of his HP by itself, and the Bone-Saw will ruin his entire day.

The Sluice faction. Only 4 enemies here, and no boss. The comps here seem to be fairly counterable with any comp, though having some flexibility for enemies like Skiver is important. Bring stealth clears. Omni-cleaves will also go a long way, as two kinds of pig spawn with dodge.

Swine Skulker
Priority: 2
HP: 15, Speed: 4
Spawns with 0-2 Dodge tokens

The stealthy damage dealing pig, the skulker’s main gimmick is his tendency to use Skitter to give himself 2 stealth tokens and a strength. He then follows this up with any of his moves: Pigsticker if he’s up front, which will have a massive crit rate, and fouled shank or ragged hook from the back. All of these will deal blight from stealth, though the fouled shank will always deal some and can inflict a disease. Front-rank Skulkers can deal some huge damage with pigsticker in particular, and are often best countered with a tank that’s using taunt. Stealth clear is the obvious counter to these guys, and it’s worth packing some chalk dust or a stealth counter move when going to the sluice just for their stealth, to avoid their high output and ability to hit you multiple times from stealth with blight.

Swine Skiver
Priority: 1
HP: 20, Speed: 3
Starts with 0-2 (1-2?) dodge

He’s back. You remember him, don’t you? From a nightmare, in DD1. Yeah, he’s still an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥. He uses Cripple them to absolutely decimate your back 3 ranks with blight, damage, and stress, and he uses spit to roast to turn your Leper off for an entire fight by pushing him all the way to the back and stunning him. If you’re lucky, he’ll use Shrieking flight up front, which will only do some damage and move him all the way back, so that he can start again.

Skivers do tremendous damage to a team. They should be killed immediately and with extreme prejudice.



Swine Brute
Priority: 3
HP: 40, Speed: 0, DBR: 25%
Spawns with 1-2 block

A very tanky and hard hitting combatant, the Swine brute exists to soak damage and to hit your front line with powerful attacks like Squeal and Smash. Squeal is a single target stress attack, and Mallet is a front rank cleave that mainly deals high direct damage but can deal a bit of stress. If he’s in the back he can use gore to stun, bleed, and knockback a target while moving him up front, which means he’s actually more irritating in the back. Normally it’s better to mitigate him and kill some/all of his friends than to rush him down because of his bulk, but without a mitigation strategy he can deliver quite a lot of damage to any team’s frontline.

Wilbur
Yes, That Wilbur
HP: 48, Speed: 0, DBR: 33%
Spawns with 1-2 block+

The champion variant of the Swine Brute and our old friend. Or allegedly anyway, he sure can show up a lot. He is a harder hitting version of the Brute and uses many of the same tricks. However, the Skulkers gain the ability to mark targets while he’s around, and he will use Obliterate Body, his special move, on anyone unfortunate enough to get hit with a combo token. There’s no rallying-flare to save you anymore, though moves like Stand Fast can be used to remove said tokens. Treat him like a harder swine brute and be wary of his high damage with Obliterate Body and Masses in particular.

The following sections will be all the act bosses. They will be formatted more or less like the lair bosses were. They will naturally be named within their sections, so this is your last call for spoilers. There are five, one for each confession.





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They said they were making this easier, so if the fight seems easier than this describes or has lower stats than what is listed or the pictures show, that’s probably why.

The Shackles of Denial


There are 4 Shackles. Each Shackles Has:
90 55 HP, 4 Speed, and Two Special Attacks
Each Shackle gives a different buff to its allies when it is killed. The Individual Shackles and their on-death Buffs Are:
The Latch of Regret: Grants its allies 20% more damage permanently.
The Bolt of Lamentation: Grants its allies 10 crit permanently.
The Padlock of Wasting: Heals its Allies by 33% (it will heal for 30 if they aren’t HP boosted)
The Shackle of Despair: Its Allies will inflict blind or weak 10% of the time on hit.

Generic Moveset
All the locks have these moves

Crippling Doubt: Hits up to 2 random targets for 4-6 damage at 5 crit and 1-2 stress.

Paralyzing Fear: Targets any hero, deals 3-6 damage at 5 crit, applies vuln and has a 75% chance to apply stun. Can’t apply stun if less than 3 heroes alive

Lock Specific Moves
Each Lock has a Denial Attack and one special damaging attack. The special Damaging attack will be used by whichever lock used its denial that turn. I.E. If regret uses its denial to lock you out of melee attacks, it will use Ruptured Vessel on its turn. Everyone else will use one of the two generic moves.

The Denial Attack: Each turn, one Lock will lock you out from using certain kinds of moves. Regret will lock you from melee attacks, Lamentation from ranged attacks, Wasting from Heals, and Despair from stress heals. They won’t be able to use the same one twice in a row until there are two or less locks left, at which point it’s random. The last lock will use its denial every turn.

Ruptured Vessel: Targets both front rank heroes with 10-13 damage at 5 crit. Applies weak. Regret’s Skill.
Mental Lashes: Targets both Back ranks with 6-10 damage and 5 crit. Applies blind. Lamentation’s Skill
Cerebral Falter: Targets any hero. Deals 8-11 damage at 5 crit, and applies 4 of a random DoT type. Wasting’s Skill.
Overwhelming Anguish: Targets 1-2 heroes randomly. Deals 8-11 damage at 5 crit, and inflicts 3-4 stress. Despair's Skill.

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The Shackles of Denial is a reasonably approachable fight for any team composition, but not one to be underestimated. The Locks have a total aggregate HP of 360, and have to be killed one at a time. Whenever a lock dies it will buff all of its allies.

The way the fight works is fairly easy to understand. Every turn a lock will lock you out of one kind of skills. These can be all your melee attacks, all your ranged attacks, all your healing moves, and all your stress healing moves. For the most part, the most impactful denial is whichever damage type your team specializes in, followed by the healing denial, followed by the other damage type denial, and then the stress denial.

So managing this fight comes down to a few things. One, kill order. You should kill the locks in an order that benefits your team. If your team only deals ranged damage, and the last lock alive is the ranged denial lock, then congratulations, you can no longer kill the boss. So in that case, you should kill that one first.

The locks spawn in a somewhat random order, so if you have a specific damage plan that may affect the order in which you kill the locks, but my general recommended order is this one:

If your damage is primarily melee or ranged: Kill the lock that locks that one down first, then Wasting (his buff doesn’t do anything, since it’s just a heal), then the other damage lock, and then Despair. If your damage is well split, you can opt to kill Wasting first instead.

We always kill Despair last because his denial is very rarely impactful, and because his buff is the worst of them all. We kill the damage locks first so that we aren’t locked out of damage, and we kill Wasting second because his buff is not very impactful and because his ability to lock out healing can get someone killed.

Now that we understand our kill order, let’s talk about the moves. Crippling Doubt adds up over time, mainly in terms of stress, but is generally the least dangerous attack. It exists to check that you are killing the locks, as if you allow them to live and do this several times a turn you will eventually get smacked with meltdowns, which can quickly end the run. The more dangerous move is Paralyzing Fear, which can stun people and set them up for more damage. Using stun resist poultices at the last inn before the mountain makes this move a lot more manageable, as do debuff cures and moves like ministrations/items like smelling salts on your team.

The special moves are the hardest hitting moves in the arsenal, and often come with debuffs. This communicates something very important about the fight. You should use your enemy targeted mitigation on the locks that you expect to use their special move. If Regret opens up with denial of arms, he’s a great smoke bomb target, as you know he's about to use his big move. Moves like blinding gas and Hand of Light (Confessor) are great on turns where you will cleave debuff the lock that will use its big move, and this strategy generally works best on the locks that have lower debuff resist (Regret and Wasting).

The most important aspect of this fight, in any case, is that you start killing locks as quickly as you can. Having good heals and strong mitigation is great, but the faster you kill locks, the less damage, stress, and stuns you have to worry about. Killing key locks will also mean that their denials can’t disrupt you anymore, often speeding up your damage for the rest of the fight. Do not be scared of those buffs. Even Despair’s buff isn’t as bad as Despair being alive, they exist to keep the fight from becoming too easy as you kill locks. Giving the other locks 20% damage because you killed regret, or 10 crit because you killed lamentation is nowhere near as impactful as the kill on said lock is.

The locks are fairly straightforward and are designed to be approachable, but not easy, with any comp. Killing them quickly and in the right order (or at least close to the right order, depending on how they’re arranged) is the biggest key to this fight. Once you’ve smacked down the first couple of locks, Victory tends to be within your grasp.

All of the heroes perform well in this fight, though the faster damage dealers specifically tend to do the best due to the fight's nature. DoT is a little worse in this fight since the locks only get 1 turn per round and there are 4 of them, but it’s still far from worthless. Characters that can remove debuffs, like PD and Vestal, can perform well here, as will tanks that can soak damage, stuns, and protect low heroes. The key isn’t in any one hero selection, but in your ability to remove the locks that threaten whichever specific comp you have.

Many combat items do well here. Dazzlers and smoke bombs can mitigate the special lock attacks very well. Smelling Salts cure stun and offer dodge, which is very useful in this fight, and holy water will counter any of the debuffs. Healing items let you keep tempo and save someone from death, and remain generally useful for that. Mineral spring water in particular is often helpful as it wipes a lot of stress and heals for a bit, though it is stopped by 2 different denials and should probably be used early as a result. Finally, direct damage boosting items like War Horn are especially great here, as they allow you to snipe down a lock very quickly.

The Seething Sigh



The Seething Sigh spawns into the middle 2 ranks with 2 lungs on each side. The Seething Sigh Has:
280 Max HP, 5 Speed, Perfect Move resist and immobilize, and 2 turns per round, not counting its free actions.

The front lung has 200 HP, and the back lung has 150 HP. They are immune to DoTs, Stuns, and Move effects, though these wouldn’t do anything anyway (apparently DoT will if you somehow apply it). They are not immune to Debuffs, though only Vuln can do anything to the lungs.

Moveset

Shallow/Deep Breath: Free action at Round Start. One/both Lungs get filled with air, which is shown by a token. If the lung takes 6% of its max HP in damage (12 for front, 9 for back), it loses this token. Sigh will only start using Deep Breath at 70% HP (196), and will use it with higher likelihood up until it reaches 30% HP (84), at which point it will always use it. Keep these thresholds in mind. These raw numbers (presumably) change if he has higher max HP from Loathing attacks, but the percentages stay the same, as does the amount of damage you need to deal to a lung to deflate it.

Sundering Exhalation: Used as a free action if one or both lungs is filled with air at Round end. Deals 10-20 damage at 5 crit to everyone, and 2 stress. If both lungs have tokens at that point, deals 20-30 and 3 stress instead.

Wrath and Rancor: Targets any 1 hero, or 2 if at least one lung is dead. Deals 2-4 damage at 20 crit, and 2 stress and 3 burn. 1 turn cooldown

Blind Rage: Targets any hero, Deals 4-7 damage at 10 crit. Applies 2 blind, and he gains 1 block+. Applies combo if Sigh’s HP is under 50% (140 or less). 1 turn cooldown

Hysteria: Targets 1 hero, or 2 if at least 1 lung is dead. Deals 4-7 damage at 10 crit. Applies weak and shuffles, and may deal stress. 1 turn cooldown

Dying Light: Targets any hero with Combo. Deals 4-6 damage at 10 crit, deals 100% more damage if target has combo (so if you guard him the guarding unit will only take 4-6). On combo, target takes 3 stress and is knocked back 2 ranks. On combo, reduces your flame by 20. 1 turn cooldown.

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The Seething Sigh’s strategy is to pump his lungs up with air and then to mitigate or disrupt the team so that you can’t stop him from using Sundering Exhalation. Each turn he will pump up one or both lungs to this effect, and you will need to be able to hit both rank 1 and rank 4 to stop him from using Exhalation. If you don’t, your team will be cleaved down in no time from the gigantic damage output, unless your damage output is so incredibly high that you can outpace him.

Therefore there are two main strategies for dealing with the lungs: Lung-killing and Lung-Mitigation. Lung-Killing is you killing at least one lung before dealing much damage to the boss, ensuring you never have to deal with Deep breath. Since Deep Breath requires a specific threshold to be accessible, you can ensure he never uses it by killing a lung before you bring him down to 70% HP. This strategy is safe but slow, and it opens you up to his double target moves after you kill the lung. In this case the main risk is that you are whittled down over the course of the fight by the barrage of low damage disruption moves coming in from the Sigh.

The other strategy is to balance lung hitting with damage to the Sigh itself, often killing it without ever killing either lung. This strategy puts you at greater risk of being hit by Exhalation if you catch a bad mitigation or disruption move, but does mean the boss has far less time to whittle you down. Normally this approach should balance DoT moves (to damage sigh himself), with flexible direct damage moves (for the lungs). Note that you will need to deal at least 21 total damage to not get exhaled on later in the fight. When the fight nears its end, you can usually ignore the lungs in favor of finishing the boss off, but make sure you time this well or else someone could die.

Success with either strategy is mainly in how you handle the important blinds and weaks that affect your team. If it affects a DoT character like PD, you’re usually fine leaving those alone, but if someone like Hellion gets shuffled around or weakened or blinded, you could be in serious danger. Carrying higher move and debuff resists to counter this, as well as debuff cures makes for very effective counter-play towards Sigh. Milk Soaked Linen in particular is an easy pick for this fight, given his double blind ‘blind rage’ attack. Holy water can deny all debuffs and even the combo token, but you only get 2 per hero.

Hysteria is the other big problem child, as shuffles can screw up certain team comps for long enough for the Sigh to use Exhalation. The tangle trophy will remove this problem, as will teams with correction moves. Bringing moves like Breakthrough, Battle Ballad/Play Out, Hold the Line, or whatever else you can use to correct your team composition without dropping tempo can do a lot to protect you from this shuffle. The weak attached to it is also a big problem, and often what I actually hold holy water for. Blind is curable with linen or can be used up more quickly with throwables. You’re stuck with Weak more often, and if Weak will mess up your ability to hit a specific lung hard enough, it’s worth curing it to ensure that you hit the lung hard enough.

Wrath and Rancor adds up over time, but you’re generally happy to see it, since it’s just a semi-weak damage and stress move. It exists more to allow the burn to finish people off and to give you a respite from the mitigation in most cases. Its stress can add up fast once it’s targeting two people though, and bringing some stress cure, especially the spring water, can put an early stop to that potential problem.

Dying light sucks sometimes, but usually isn’t a huge problem because it only comes online once he’s at 50% or less HP. Slow comps won’t hit that until they’ve killed at least 1 lung most of the time, and fast comps will only deal with it once or twice, max. Its knockback and flame reduction is a nuisance if you let the fight drag on though, as is the high stress. Combined with blind rage, it can turn off a frontliner for a very long time if you’re not careful.

If I can give one big tip, it’s to have backup damage or backup ways to hit a specific lung, typically the back lung. If your only way to hit the back lung is with Iron Swan, then the moment Hellion gets shuffled or blinded, you might be in big trouble. Having a Dismas or an Alhazred or an Audrey to serve as backup, for example, can often go a long way to smoothing out lung hits and playing this fight much safer. Saving certain powerful options, like burning stars or a souped up judgment or a Howling end in case you need them for that use is often much better than using them haphazardly.

The best heroes in this fight are the ones that can effectively Taunt sigh, bringing his debuffs towards them and not the important damage dealers, and direct damage dealers that can target rank 4 with at least a combined 9 damage, ideally more for safety, as well as the front for 12 damage (though this is way easier). DoT damage dealers also do very well against the Sigh itself, due to his 2 actions and reasonably low DoT resists. Dismas, Hellion, Vestal, and Audrey can all offer that back lung hitting job very well, and characters like Barristan and leper can draw its attention towards themselves. Leper even has the ability to ignore blind with combo, making him a great target for blind rage. Blind cures from characters like Barristan and Bonnie also go a long way in this fight, as do Debuff cures and rank correction moves in general. This is possibly the main fight I’d consider upgrading Command for on Barristan in particular, as having a cooldown-less command can come in clutch. Its ability to up damage often allows the move from your damage dealer to consistently hit the lung threshold, and its ability to cure blind is incredibly useful. For this reason other often bad damage transfers, like Emboldening Vapours, can actually be very good here, as it allows those characters to amp up the damage of direct damage dealers when they’d normally be locked to DoT damage or unable to hit the specific lung in question.

Most of the standard combat items are good here, but debuff cures such as Linen and Holy water are especially useful. Ethereal Dust can be very useful if you need to use it to reach a specific high damage move again quickly, and all the damage boosting combat items effectively allow you to more easily hit lungs hard enough. They’re usually not as good for just rushing the boss here until you get him to lower HP. Damage trinkets, while always good, are especially good here for a similar reason. Shimmering powder actually picks up an odd niche here, allowing you to prevent a hero from being targeted by the mitigation moves, which can proactively prevent debuffs from messing up your ability to hit lungs. Finally, DoT application items, while useless against lungs, are good for speeding up the fight once you approach the HP thresholds that allow the boss to use deep breath.

I have been told this boss has been reworked AGAIN so this section is probably not currently accurate. Again. Taunt on tanks still seems to be the king of this fight, in any case. I'm just not going to update this fight until I'm sure they're done changing it, and ideally at that point it will be a good fight, unlike what we have in the current iteration.


The Focused Fault
Aka Lil Limerence

The fight starts with 4 small eyeballs. They have 6 HP each and 8 speed, and they all start with Dodge. They respawn at their first stage at the start of every round if killed. Higher stage eyeballs revert one stage when killed, rather than dying. When they all reach Stage 3, they disappear and the Focused Fault spawns in and attacks immediately.

Phase 1 Moveset



Small eyes: 6 HP, 8 Speed

Observe: Targets mirrored rank, ignoring stealth and taunt. Applies a special seen token on hit and 1 stress, and evolves the eye to stage 2 or 3 (sometimes). The evolution isn’t random and is based on factors that I don’t know, but I do know it will tend to happen more later in the fight, so that you can’t stall forever. Won’t evolve to 3 instantly in the first two rounds.

Gaze: targets the hero with their seen token. Does 2-4 damage at 30 crit, applies weak or vuln or daze on crit. Ignores stealth and taunt. Evolves him.

Medium Eyes: 8 HP, 6 Speed

Detect: Same as Observe, but deals 2 stress. Does not evolve him. You mainly see this if Observe missed or was dodged or if someone dies.

Glare: Same targeting as Gaze. Deals 4-8 damage at 30 crit. Evolves him, gives him dodge and strength, and has the same debuff effects as Gaze. Also ignores stealth and taunt.

Big Eyes: 12 HP, 4 Speed

Detect: Same as above. Same use case as above.

Glower: Same as glare, but with a 6-12 damage range. Gives dodge+ instead of Dodge

When every eye is a big eye, the fight will immediately go to Phase 2.

Phase 2 Boss and Moveset

Focused Fault has 250 HP, 8 Speed, and 0 DBR. He has low resists to everything except stun and move (which are 100%, though you can’t move him anywhere, he’s Size 4). He gains a free action when he spawns and copies positive tokens whenever he crits, for some truly god forsaken reason. Has 2 turns per round. If a hero without a seen token crits Captain Limerence, they get a combo token placed on them.

Behold: He uses this if no heroes have any Seen tokens. It deals 4 stress and places 1 seen token on everyone. Which is very bad. Can be dodged or can miss though. If it does miss, he’ll just use it again.

Limerence: Deals 16 damage, and 25% more per seen token, at 30% crit. Targets any hero with Seen tokens, all at the same time. So this will deal 20 without critting or mitigation at the very least, as his targets will have at least 1 token. Applies a vuln and a special debuff that permanently reduces healing received by 25%. Also may apply horror. Ignores Stealth and Blind.

Suppress: Used when at least 2 heroes have a combo token, and targets them. Applies… Some amount of debuffs. Patch notes weren’t clear.

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Focused Fault is a two phase fight where the gimmick is that you want to get the Seen tokens onto as few heroes as possible. Before the change this was mainly accomplished with high speed and taunt, but now it’s mainly accomplished through using comparable speed with guard, by moving heroes, or by moving enemies. Eyeballs will always detect their mirrored hero, so if you can move heroes or them around, you can control who they target. Guard will also redirect any targeting to the defending hero. So in phase 1 you want to kill eyes that place tokens on characters you don’t want them on, and set the turn up so that when they revive they lock on to people you do want them to. Dodge and blind can be used to accomplish this more easily by making them miss their initial casts; otherwise, you have to kill them completely to make the token go away. Your early focus should therefore be on killing the eyes that place bad tokens, and on building up dodge and blind to prevent more bad tokens, while getting the tokens onto good targets. Omni-cleaves are very good for wiping off dodge here, as are any moves that ignore dodge completely. Their debuffs can be annoying but they’re typically squishy enough that they aren’t the end of the world. They can sometimes stack considerable damage themselves if you drag phase 1 on for very long. In the past phase 1 usually ended at around the Round 4 mark, but that may be different now.

So once they all hit Stage 3, they disappear and the Focused Fault flies in. If you did a good job with the tokens, they should all be on a beefy tank like Barristan or Leper. He will immediately hit Limerence, and from then on mainly just use limerence twice per round until you’re all dead.

The strategy at this point becomes all out damage. Smack the absolute living ♥♥♥♥ out of the eyeball, while focusing as much defense as you can on the tank. Stand fast on Barristan is particularly good here, as it allows him to develop more block to resist Limerence with. Withstand on Leper also does well, as does Intimidate and weak application. If you crit a lot he’ll use suppress, which is probably bad but we don’t know what it does currently. Behold just exists so that he can start killing everyone else if he chews through the tank.

That about sums up the whole fight. It’s very simple, he doesn’t have any special tricks other than just nuking dudes to death. It is a very demanding fight despite that. Phase 1 needs to be close to perfect, and phase 2 should result in you doing very high damage to quickly burst him down. 250 is still a lot of HP, though it is hampered by the lack of DBR and the lack of Dot resist. DoT characters and Cause of Death do very well here, as do general high damage dealers.

Barristan, Leper, and Vestal are key picks here. Vestal will almost always have access to Conviction as Chaplain, and can guard with Sanctuary for 3 defensive tokens. Barristan’s Stand Fast does a lot of work tanking, and he also has a guard. Leper is a great tank, held back mainly by his lack of guard skills. Hellion is a bit weaker as a tank outside of Carcass, due to her lack of block tokens and reliance on healing for mitigation. She can still work but generally not as well, due to the healing debuff and high output of the boss. Good tanks will likely get low due to meltdowns before HP damage, so you still have an effective time limit.

High damage is a must on your other characters. That can be high DoT damage from the likes of PD and Runaway, or high direct damage from characters like Audrey and Dismas, or both. It just needs to be high. Despite his 2 actions per round, Cause of Death can still do a lot to accelerate the fight if used near the end. Ideally your damage should be able to kill him in 3-4 rounds (preferably less, but that's a reasonable mark), which means you would have to deal a total of 60-75 damage per turn with your dealers. Being a little slower than this isn’t the end of the world, but this fight does need to be wrapped up quickly.

Damage Dealing Combat items with high impact do well here. That means DoT and direct damage items. The shards from the studies in particular do a ton of damage in one throw to the boss, dealing 10 DoT (meaning 30 damage). healing items can give your tank more longevity especially in the face of a meltdown, as can stress cures, though it needs to be used before the healing debuff sets in. Laudanum will cure horror here. Omni-throwables are nice in phase 1 in particular, and holy water should theoretically cure the suppress debuffs. Smelling Salts will cure the stuns and dazes of Suppress (if those still exist), and offer some dodge which is very useful. Finally, Invigorating Intoxicant can be very useful in a pinch. Most everything else is pretty low impact.

This fight gets much easier if you use the purple herb inn item and the stimulating poultice. The former keeps the healing debuff at bay, and the latter allows you to compete more readily in speed with eyes, which is helpful. The inn item that increases DBR is also nice. Anything that increases the resolute rate of your main tank is extremely helpful, as it will greatly increase their potential survivability, as is anything that increases damage on damage dealers.

The Ravenous Reach

-Similar to the next boss, I've sourced what I can from the wiki, from VoDs, and from my own experiences. So if something is wrong, it's because I made a mistake or got bad information somewhere. I am generally confident that outside of natural crit rates I know what does what in this fight though, so any such mistakes will either be number based (wiki), or probably small oversights on my part.-

The Ravenous reach is a three phase fight that tries to enact simple but powerful strategies each phase. The stats for each phase will be shown below.

Movseset



Phase 1: Phase 1 has 65 HP and 6 speed, as well as 2 turns per round. It has low (20) DoT resists but 100 stun resist. It has two moves. At the end of each round, all block+ tokens are converted to strength tokens.

Ideation: Targets 4-3-2, applies combo and stress and sometimes can apply extra combo to an adjacent hero. Boss gains block+

Setback: Targets 1. Deals 22-24 damage at ? crit. Knockback 3, if target has combo: Ignore dodge, Stun, deal 100% more damage.



Phase 2: When going into phase 2, Boss will get at most (always?) 1 action in that round in the new phase. It has 75 HP, 8 Speed, and much higher (75) DoT resists. Stun resist stays at 100. In this phase, the Reach gets 3 actions per round, and will rotate between his two moves.

Precise Intent: There are two versions of this move. One targets the front two characters, the other the back two, otherwise they are functionally the same. Boss gains 2 dodge tokens and applies the special 'contempt' token to the targets, which makes them valid for Teardown. It ignores dodge and... immobilize (? this might be a bug and is intended to be blind) when the target is comboed. Inflicts a permanent debuff of '+1 bleed duration', and this move also inflicts stress.

Teardown: Targets heroes with contempt tokens. Deals 8-12 Damage at ? crit. Inflicts 6 bleed. Duration of the bleed doesn't seem to scale with crits (probably due to his access to crit tokens), just the debuff Intent can apply. Removes the contempt.



Phase 3: Similarly, if it has an action (always?), it will preserve at most one action to use Rumination the moment it transitions to phase 3. It will also get Last Grasp as its free action as normal. Phase 3 only gets 1 action per round but it will always use Last Grasp as a free action at the end of the round. It has 100 HP, 5 speed, and 40 DoT resists and Debuff resists. Stun resist remains at 100.

Rumination: Targets all Heroes. Boss gains 2 riposte tokens, heroes randomly gain horror, bleed, and combo. He will use this as his one action every turn.

Last Grasp: Targets all heroes. Deals 6-12 damage, and also deals damage equal to lifetime bleed remaining onto any character with bleed. If a hero is comboed: Reach recovers 5% HP per comboed hero, and those heroes also lose all their positive tokens. Done as a free action at the end of every round.

His Riposte deals some damage and 6 (iirc) Bleed.

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It could be easy to think of Reach as three minibosses in one boss, but that's not exactly the case, as each phase does feed into the next to some extent. The most divorced phase is definitely the first phase. His gameplan is comboing someone and trying to smash people into the backline to get that person up into rank 1, to absolutely obliterate them. Normally he doesn't achieve this, but Setback does so much direct damage that it might not even matter. A high block tank does best against setback, able to easily mitigate the huge punches with block+ in particular. Man-At-Arms is therefore the obvious pick, but Carcass Hellion, Vestal, and Leper are all good enough, as are debuffs to weaken Setback, if you can land them through the large debuff resist. You don't necessarily need to be able to tank several of these, as phase 1 tends to fly by pretty quickly, especially if you have DoT based damage dealers. SInce phase 1 mainly mitigates through Block+ and has very low DoT resists, heroes like Bonnie, PD, and Flagellant are the obvious MVPs for this phase, able to inflict good output without caring very much about block. This phase is definitely the easiest phase for those DoT characters by far. Otherwise moves that remove or prevent block gain are quite useful here. New Breakthrough is supremely strong for the only time in its life, correcting Setback's knockback, preventing block gain (when upgraded), and pinging off a block token to boot. Hellion has other advantages that we'll get to in later phases.

Phase 2 often functions more as set-up for phase 3 than something that can kill heroes on its own. He marks heroes with the unresistable contempt token and inflicts a bleed duration debuff with Precise Intent, then uses teardown on them, bleeding them and dealing some decent damage. This is when bleed resist and bleed cures start to become very helpful in the fight, and moves like Ounce and Bloodlust can provide a load of value in both this phase and the next. His main mitigation now is dodge and his high DoT resist, meaning that direct damage heroes become more favored, as do dodge counters like Tracking Shot and Illumination. His dodge will be converted into crit at turn end, which can be knocked off with Weakening curse or bellow if need be. Just like the first phase and the next one, this phase ends up very simple to understand, but if you're not prepared for his specific strategy, you can end up taking a lot of bleed that can lead to your undoing in the next phase.

Phase 3 is perhaps the simplest phase of them all to understand. He uses Rumination once every turn, giving him Riposte that can be handled adequately with Bellow, tanky heroes, or token destruction/stealing moves. It will also randomly bleed, horror and combo heroes, all of which encourage you to push through this phase quickly if possible. All of this is adding up to his big free action: Last Grasp. Last Grasp is an omni-cleave with a bleed Cause of Death attached, decimating even the tankiest heroes if they wrack up enough bleed from his riposte and phase 2. Being able to handle the output and to efficiently deal with Riposte is key here, as is bleed resist, as usual. Due to his lack of defensive options, this phase is actually often only a turn or two away from dying, especially with very high damage options like Howling End, Lunge, high efficiency DoT moves (Controlled burn is particularly nice due to not running into Riposte), and the right use of heals and bleed resist.

The summary may be short, but his simplicity means there's not a whole lot to talk about. His strategies are specific and countered by specific kinds of items and setups. Anything that helps Bleed resist or cures bleed does well here, as do Combat items that inflict DoT damage in particular (as these bypass his Riposte and block+). Damage pushers like Blood and Warhorn can also function very well, especially in phase 3, and healing items are naturally great for lifting people out of the danger zone. The lowly bandage is an MVP in this fight, as is the pustule salve and clotting powders. Inn items that add bleed resistance are also naturally quite good. Reach does test your ability to strategize to a fine point, since he can be shut down hard through certain moves and items, but once you know how he works, figuring out what to bring and how to orient your comp tends to be a fairly easy question to work out.

The Body of Work
Piloted by literally you

BEFORE THIS FIGHT: I've listed some phantom spawning positions, however regardless of whether you have your characters on that list or not, you must ensure you have some options for dealing with both rank 4 and rank 1, ideally both on any characters that can hit both. Otherwise you may have issues killing the adds.

-Note that numbers and effects are (mostly) sourced from the wiki, and that this boss is reasonably new, so if something doesn't line up that's why.



Phase 1



The Gut of the Coward

The Gut has 175 HP and 6 Speed. It takes two turns per round, and it crucially has 100% blight resist (and the more normal 40 resist for the other two). Blight teams are currently the most common Mono-DoT team builds, and they will function much more poorly in this phase. He only has 50 stun resist, so stun comps do decently here, and that's generally true for the rest of the fights. He inflicts 1 blight to anyone that hits him with a melee attack.

Moveset

Gastric Juices: There are two versions of this, but one Targets Rank 1 and 3, the other 2 and 4, and they are otherwise the same. Ignores dodge and blind. Places two special rank tokens, those being the Gastric Juice tokens, in the ranks of the selected units. These inflict 3 blight on turn end. He'll use this when rank tokens aren't present (so first at the start of the fight, and after he uses Catabolize).

Trammel: Targets any hero. Deals 4-7 damage at 5 crit. Applies immobilize. Cooldown of 1. Pretty much the staple direct damage move for Gut.

Acid Reflux: Targets any Hero. Deals 2-4 damage and 2 blight at 5 crit. Deals 1 stress, with a 25% chance to do an extra 1. Inflicts a debuff that reduces blight resist by 10%.

Catabolize: Targets everyone standing on a Rank token. Removes the rank token, inflicts damage equal to the total remaining blight on the target, removes the blight, and inflicts horror. Apparently has no cooldown, but he seems to always use this a good few turns after Gastric Juices.

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We'll be talking about each phase individually because the Body is effectively three separate bosses rolled into one. The Gut of the Coward's plan is fairly simple, and he's easily the easiest fight of the three, save for perhaps blight heavy comps that struggle against him.

His game plan involves trying to inflict blight onto targets over usually a couple of rounds, typically throwing out Trammel and Acid Reflux between his loop start and loop end. This isn't actually all that threatening in itself: His blight output isn't all that high, and it's very hard for him to kill reasonably healthy targets. The main danger in this phase is the horror inflicted from Catabolize in particular, and the stress from Reflux to a lesser extent. The act 5 final boss is long. It's easily the longest fight in the game, and can often stretch on for 20-30 rounds, especially if you get the phase 3 soft lock. While no phase individually is all that dangerous (with phase 2 perhaps being the most likely to kill people outright), stress is very dangerous in this fight because of its length and the abundance of stress application and horror especially. Therefore we don't actually usually care that much about the damage this phase is putting out, unless our team is very slow, so much as the stress.

Therefore, tanking efforts should be aimed at keeping stress reasonably low. Characters like Man-At-Arms are great in this fight in general due to their easily accessible stress healing on themselves and on others. Raucous revelry on Hellion is particularly strong, due to its large self stress heal and the AoE stress effects, though running her in this fight can be dangerous due to the KB in phase 3.

That's not to say the damage should be entirely ignored. If low blight resist heroes stand on the rank token, it's easy for them to end up taking around 20 damage from catabolize. Dance comps are sometimes more susceptible or less susceptible to this rank token, depending on where it's placed. If you're dancing off of the token, then that's great. If you're dancing onto it, you can rack up a lot of blight. Regardless, the key to this fight in general is sustain. If you have answers to the eventual meltdowns you might face, to the stress gain, and to the long whittling down of HP, you'll tend to be fine. Losing characters in this fight tends to lead to a domino effect where you can't defeat the boss reasonably (as we'll see in the final phase).

Gut isn't that tanky, thankfully, only sitting at 175 HP. Non-blight forms of DoT (bonnie especially) do very well in this phase, and all DoT forms tend to do well in the other phases. High general output is also good here, though it's worth mentioning that scaling with tokens specifically can be very dangerous in later phases of this fight. Overall the worst thing about Gut is usually the stress he puts on you and how that interacts with this lengthy fight.

Phase 2



Infernal Gaze

He has 200 HP, 6 Speed, and also takes two turns per round. His resists are all normalized again, with 40 resist to every DoT type and 50 stun resist. His debuff resist is a bit higher at 40.

Moveset

Glare: Targets any hero. Deals 1-2 damage at 5 crit, and ignores dodge and blind. Target gets a special token that effectively 'marks' him for haymaker, and Boss gets one too and also gets an HP threshold. I'll explain what the HP threshold does when we look at Haymaker.

Covetous Glance: Targets any Hero with at least 4 positive tokens. Steals all of them. Ignores dodge, taunt, and blind. Rest in Peace fellow Take Aim+ Enthusiasts. Might have a Cooldown, can't say for sure.

Hammer: Targets 1-2, Deals 6-10 damage at 5 crit. Deals Knockback (dunno how much). A stronger, if less flexible, trammel.

Trammel: Targets 2-3, Presumably also does 4-7 damage at 5 crit like the Gut's version (I do not have the numbers for this one). Can't hit 1 or 4, unlike the Gut's version. Perhaps that's because of how his leg must bend when he raises it into the air...

Haymaker: Targets the hero with the special token. Deals 20-40 damage at 10 crit. Will ALWAYS crit if you haven't done enough damage to hit the HP threshold. Applies stun and removes dodge, and applies 1 stress with a 50% chance at 1 more. Ignores Dodge, Blind, Stealth, and Taunt (Hence it's an 'unavoidable blow'). Does not ignore guard though, or damage reduction from Block and Weak. Good to see you again, old limerence damage range. Seems to use this late in the round that happens after he uses Glare.

He also has a Riposte attack, though the only way he will gain riposte is through stealing it. It deals 6-9 damage at 5 crit.

I'm assuming the hidden move is a special '100% crit' version of Haymaker for when you don't hit the HP threshold, as I have always hit the HP threshold.

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The infernal gaze immediately separates itself from the gut by being able to realistically kill someone, though luckily it lacks DoT to follow up its gigantic Haymaker hit with. The fight really does revolve around Haymaker and occasionally his ability to steal tokens.

First, let's get Haymaker out of the way, as dealing with HM is the key to the fight. Haymaker will do a ♥♥♥♥ load of damage to one target even if you hit the HP threshold. Hell, you could just get unlucky and get crit anyway. As we know from the old version of the eyeball, 20-40 damage isn't something to ♥♥♥♥ around with. Luckily, you can mitigate it very easily with block or weak, and the Glare attack does respect taunt, so if you are able to get taunt up before he uses Glare, you can very easily get him to hit the 'right' target. Otherwise guard, block, and weak is the obvious counter. Unless your entire team outspeeds him, he'll never go twice in a row (this is true for any boss or enemy with multiple, non-free actions), so you can generally prevent the death of someone who takes a big hit from this on the chin in the worst case. After he delivers Haymaker, he'll start the loop over again, using glare, some other moves, and then Haymaker. Generally speaking if you're keeping up with the Damage thresholds, you won't see Haymaker more than twice maximum.

The other big issue with this phase is his ability to steal positive tokens. If you're running, say, a DoT team, you might not notice this effect. But if you're making heavy use of damage dealers like Dismas, or a tank like Barristan who generates tons of positive tokens, it can be hard to play around it. Knowing that '4' tokens is the threshold for stealing is the key (at least according to my source). A Take Aim+ that happens at turn end will get to avoid having its tokens stolen, as will one used with Encore into an immediate followup, as he'll spend one one way or another. A move like Defender or Stand Fast won't hit those thresholds by themselves either, as they only generate one type of token that stacks up to 3, but a move like Retribution might get Glanced. This issue is the most serious with these two characters most of the time, and it can be a problem with some Seraph Vestal setups in particular. Personal tokens, like Conviction and Unchecked Power, naturally don't count, so those methods of power scaling are better here. Finally: A place where I don't hate Chaotic Offering as much.

It's generally best to treat this phase as a damage race while playing around Covetous Glance to the extent you can, as that will allow you to hit HP thresholds and keep incoming damage to a minimum. Strong sources of mitigation should be used for Haymaker (especially guard with Block+), but otherwise your ability to put out damage trumps most other considerations. The HP threshold works more or less identically to the Lungs from Seething Sigh, though with more time to hit it and a much higher amount to hit, and without locking you in to direct damage.

Final Phase:



The Hateful God

He has 999 HP, though he effectively only has 199 HP if you have all four heroes and don't get 'phantom soft locked' (We'll talk about this later). 10 speed and 1 action per round, though his actions aside from his attack moves are freebies. You also can't see his movelist in game, which is cute but means I can't verify information easily.

He summons in 2 adds: The Proclaimers, and the Phantoms. All the phantoms look different (they're based off the Shrines), but they all function the same. Phantom Spawning locations I know will be listed, but unless a character can't hit four, you should probably just run moves that can hit both 1 and 4, or at least have a pull or shuffle on someone, to avoid the dreaded phantom soft-lock, which we will discuss later.

Moveset: Hateful God

Shackles of the Past: Used once at the start of the fight. Applies one of each 'Denial Lock restriction' debuff to each hero. These will cycle every time the hero takes an action. They are removed from a hero when that hero uses 'Exultation' (Explained later). These denials are the same as the ones in the 'Shackles of Denial' boss-fight: Meaning one stops all melee attacks, one stops all ranged attacks, one stops all stress heals, and one stops all normal heals.

Samsara: Used as a free action at round end if no proclaimers are present, if no heroes are 'facing their failures' (Meaning if no phantoms exist), and also used if you kill one proclaimer but not the other one fast enough. Summons 2 proclaimers in ranks 1 and 4, or 1 if there's already one in existence. I'm not sure if there's some cooldown logic to this move or something, but typically the way he'd use it when not summoning in a fresh batch was the round after I killed one proclaimer, if the other was still alive.

Futility: Targets any hero, deals 6-10 damage at 5 crit, Shuffles, and inflicts Horror.

Spreading Stain: Targets every hero. Used if he has 2 worship tokens. Deals 10-16 damage at 10 crit and destroys all positive tokens.

Strange Axis: Targets any hero with 4+ positive tokens. ignores dodge (maybe also blind?), Inverts all tokens. This actually turns taunt into stealth which is kind of cute. Doesn't seem to work on Riposte or crit.

Face your Failures: Used at round end as a free action after you kill both proclaimers. The Target is your choice, though you have to select a hero that you haven't already picked for this move before. Summons a phantom. The phantoms spawn location (either 1 or 4) is HERO DEPENDENT. It does not care what your current moveset or path is. Here's a list of the heroes and where the phantoms spawn. If I don't know, it's ? with a guess. This is assuming it can't be random for some characters, and there's no real way for me to know for sure. He won't use this after everyone has faced their failures.

Plague Doctor: Front
GraveRobber: Back
Highwayman: Front
Barristan: Front
Hellion: Front
Runaway: Back
Jester: Front
Leper: Front
Occultist: Back
Vestal: Front
Flagellant: Front

Proclaimer Moveset



I don't have the numbers, as they're not on the wiki. Same with the phantoms by the way. All their moves grant them a worship token, except, of course, Worship.

Edge of Oblivion: Used by the front rank Proclaimer. Targets 1-2, does some damage and applies taunt to the proclaimer.

Fading Ember: Used by the front rank proclaimer, Targets 1-2. Deals some damage and applies stun. A good reason to kill the front rank one first.

Empty Vessel: Used by the back rank proclaimer. Targets 2 (1-2?) heroes, and inflicts some low DoT damage and stress.

Stars Align: Used by the back rank proclaimer. Buffs all enemies with one of these tokens randomly: block, dodge, block+, dodge+, crit.

Worship: Used when Proclaimer has 2 worship tokens, and is (presumably) a free action. I have not seen this (hence the ???), so I don't know what it does other than granting Hateful God a worship token at the cost of Proclaimer's tokens.

Phantom Move


This is what happens when you phantom softlock and abuse guard to win anyway.

Phantoms have 30 HP and two actions per turn. They can only take damage or be afflicted by DoTs from the chosen hero, but they can still be comboed, moved around, and debuffed by other heroes. Controlled burn will always work on any phantom (at least based on the last time I played the fight), because the rank token is independent of heroes. Otherwise they get massive DR and Resist buffs against other heroes, functionally making them invincible to those other heroes.

Every time they attack they will use 'Regression', which always targets the hero you selected to spawn it. It does some damage and 1 stress, and gives the phantom a tiny buff to crit and damage that stacks forever. It will ignore taunt and stealth, but does, weirdly, respect guard.

--

So here we are, the final phase of the final boss. That HP value seems daunting, though if you were like me you probably assumed going in that there would be some way to cut that down to size. And there is! The loop for this fight is simple: You kill both proclaimers while dealing with his constant horror and disruption, then select a hero to face their failure. The Hero or Bonnie beats up their phantom, and then they get to use a special move called Exultation. It's a free action that will deal 200 damage, restore some flame, reduce stress by 5, and heal the hero an amount. If you do this four times, which won't always happen if your damage is good, you will deal 800 damage. This also removes the lock debuffs from the hero using Exultation.

So the first question is: Which hero should you pick at each instance of face your failure? There are a few criteria to use. The most important is probably their current denial token. Don't pick a hero that's sitting on the token that will prevent them from attacking, since they need to attack to kill their phantom. Aside from that, favor heroes that are more disrupted by those tokens. Characters like Barristan can often do other helpful things when under certain tokens, such as using Bolster or retribution when melee locked, whereas, say, a Sharpshot Highwayman is literally turned off outside of Take Aim+ when he has his range lock. Healers like PD can also be prevented from saving lives by an ill timed HP lock, whereas characters with more flexible kits may barely feel the effect of the locks at all.

On the subject of Phantoms, let's discuss the 'Phantom lock', or what happens if the character you select can never damage the phantom. This is one of the lamest ways to end up losing this fight, and it will at least slow you down if it happens. The phantom will scale infinitely until it kills the character, and really your only recourse is spamming guard on them from a very beefy Tank and dealing hundreds and hundreds of damage to the Hateful God. This is very doable with Barristan or Junia, but naturally not preferable. Bringing a Pull or Push can allow other characters to move the phantom, but otherwise you're pretty much stuck smacking the boss until the boss dies. There's really nothing else to say on it: Bring moves in your kit that can handle rank 1 and 4, and keep in mind where the phantoms will spawn.

Next, let's talk proclaimers. They aren't that dangerous by themselves, but allowing the boss to omnicleave you because you can't efficiently kill them isn't good, and you have to kill them to access the phantoms. The front one is more dangerous by virtue of its stuns and its taunt, though the back one isn't a slouch either with its stress and buff in particular. Normally you'll either kill both quickly, or you'll kill one of them twice while you more slowly kill the other. Usually that means you kill the one in rank 1 twice, and the second one dies right around the second time you kill the front rank one. If you can't put out enough damage to kill both reasonably close together, then you will never encounter phantoms, and will probably lose as a result. They'll also allow the boss to spam his omni-cleave which, while not the worst worship move in the game, is still not something you want to see. Characters like Hellion, PD, and HWM excel against proclaimers due to their flexible targeting options.

Finally, the Hateful God. He's actually simple. Outside of his freebie moves which just apply the original locks and summon in the adds, he will just use Futility every turn, inflicting damage, horror, and shuffle, when other factors aren't present. Dealing with stress, or at least having a way to heal off a meltdown, is the main key to this fight, alongside having a way to deal with the shuffle on this move. It's not really that dangerous, since he only has 1 turn every turn to use it, and he just randomly targets. Having some stress healing on the team and maybe something like Laudanum or Mineral spring water, combined with some decent rank correction moves or other ways to deal with the shuffle, tends to handle the main brunt of this fight.

The only other move you should see (as you'll ideally never see the Omni-cleave), is Strange Axis. This just inverts all tokens. Yes that's all tokens, not just the positive ones, though he will only use it on someone with 4 or more positive tokens. So again, moves like take Aim+ and Retribution+ will draw the ire of this. This is actually not that bad on Take Aim+, as he only has 1 move per turn and has 10 speed, so it's easy for Dismas to spend the speed token before he can use SA in a lot of cases. retribution will only flip the block into vuln and the taunt into stealth (funnily), the riposte will stay. Really this move is far less annoying than Covetous Glance due to the Boss's design and the way the move works.

Just smack this guy around when you're not smacking proclaimers or phantoms, and you should easily hit the 199 damage threshold. You'll actually very likely end up making it to 400 damage and only needing 3 exultations. Hateful God isn't meant to be that hard or complex, and the only time he's all that dangerous is if someone dies to an earlier phase or gets phantom softlocked.

Heroes with flexible targeting options naturally do well in this fight, mainly due to the proclaimers. DoT does in general given how long the fight is, though blight struggles against Gut. Tanks are amazing in this fight for a variety of reasons, especially if they have guard. Finally, heroes with self sufficiency, high damage, and stress heals all do very well here too. This boss is honestly easier than Act 3 and 4 in most cases, and is probably designed to be high on spectacle and a little lower on challenge.

I really like curatives for this fight due to how long it is, including stress heals and normal heals. Ideally both. Spring water is the GOAT here, and laudanum is nice too, as are the usual salves. Damage boosting items are mainly good for killing phantoms: throw a blood on the guy facing his failure to face it very quickly. They can also be used for that phase 2 HP threshold or just to speed up 1 or 2. Most other items aren't all that great, mainly due to the length, though the DoT damage items can be used by the heroes facing their failures in similar ways.

If you've made it past act 4, you can definitely beat The Hateful God! Just be ready for the grueling nature of the fight, and remember to prioritize flexibility on people so that they can kill Proclaimers and their phantoms effectively. Nothing is worse than Phantom Soft-locking in this fight and losing it because of that, or having someone get smashed with Haymaker before you hit the final phase.

A friend created this masterpiece, because I said I thought the Act 3 boss was cute

Darkest Dungeon 2 is in many ways a more approachable game than its prequel. While it takes a very different style to its progression, following a design more comparable to a game like STS, its clear mechanics and fun turn based system are what keep me hooked on the game. Frankly I like the shorter runs: My main problem with DD1 was that a campaign took a very long time and that I’d inevitably tire of the game before I finished. DD2 has lots of variety compared to 1 in its character design, skills, and paths, and a much more approachable gameplay progression system that, while perhaps more derivative than DD1's was in some ways, I appreciate a lot more on a personal level. The differences also mean that this game does not invalidate its prequel.

Overall, I certainly enjoy DD2, perhaps a little too much, and decided I’d provide this guide to the community due to that enjoyment, and because I like the written word more than Videos.

If you enjoy guides but hate reading, I'm sorry I have introduced you to a personal hell. I recommend you check out ShuffleFM over on Youtube. He’s made guides for Darkest Dungeon for a long time, and will be putting out lots of content for the DD2 release.

I hope you got something useful out of this monstrously large guide, and I really hope you didn’t just read straight through the whole thing. If you did, then congratulations, you’ve finished a whole novel’s worth of guide. You might be nearly as insane as I am for writing this. This was more of an intrinsic thing for me, as I enjoy writing and wanted to challenge myself on productivity, but I would appreciate any likes or favorites you give this guide, and any comments and ideas you leave below. There is probably plenty to disagree with, after all.

I plan on updating this guide a few weeks after launch. I need to rest and would like to have time with the new content in DD2, as well as to play some other games. I might quickly add in a section for the Flagellant and new Act Bosses just to remove the ‘Placeholder’ sections if I experience a second wind, but they may not initially be as robust as other sections.

Legal

All rights reserved. If you want to quote the guide or use a part of it for some sort of block-quote in an otherwise original work or blogpost, you must directly reference this guide and provide a link to it within your article, making no claim that the content is anyone’s but mine. Copying or Republishing Sections or the whole guide without my express permission is a no-go.