Darkest Dungeon 2: The Shroud Of The Deep Update Is Live Now

Darkest Dungeon 2 players, we have some amazing news for all of you! Redd Hook Studios has almost finalized the work on the newest update for your favorite game.

The Shroud of the Deep, as it is called, will be available in the Experimental Branch and it will be moved to the Live Branch after the team can confirm that there are no critical issues.

So, equip your best gear, polish your revolvers, say a prayer, and prepare to face the toughest foes you ever laid eyes upon.

What’s new in Darkest Dungeon 2: The Shroud of the Deep?

Starting with this update, your coach will find no easy purchase on the rotted, salt-soaked planks and jetties that connect the waterlogged homes of the Fisherfolk.

The back story here is that, after being driven to a debased worship of the sea, the denizens of the coastal regions have taken to the water and been changed by it.

The Shroud is a new full-sized region packed with a complete faction of amphibious horrors and a terrible threat from the lowest depths of the seafloor.

You’re probably wondering what to expect from this new adventure, and we’re here to answer that question as well:

• 7 new monsters, from the gestating Cabin Boy to the imposing Docker
• A New Lair Boss lurks just beneath the tideline
• 2 New Lair Boss trophies
• 6 New region-specific trinkets
• All new combat score by the inimitable Stuart Chatwood
• New narration – the Academic (Wayne June) reflects on the decline of the coastal population

New Confession: Resentment

Redemption demands an acknowledgement of failures past. Sign your confession anew, and face the personification of your second sin.

This milestone introduces the next Confession/Act 2, with new story content and a new final boss.

Narrative presentation has also had an overhaul:

• Main story narration has been moved from the Valley to the Void
• Each Confession now has an intro, repeatable lines, and an outro that tells the game story at run start and upon successful final boss kill
• Art panels have been added to support the main narrative
• Reformatted the Denial narration to match the new presentation
• Added the Resentment narration and artwork

Ordained Monsters

Monsters now have a chance to spawn as “Ordained”, which means that they are blessed with extra power by the end boss for that Confession/Act. The blessing increases the monster’s damage, health, speed, and some other stats. These powers vary based upon which Confession you signed at the outset of your journey.

The chance of a monster being Ordained increases as you approach the Mountain.

• When in the first full region past the valley, 10% of monsters will spawn as Ordained
• When in the second full region past the valley, 40% of monsters will spawn as Ordained
• When in the third full region past the valley, 80% of monsters will spawn as Ordained
• Lair bosses and corpses will never be Ordained

Related: we’ve lowered base monster HP and damage by 20%. Thus, monsters should be a little easier than before when you are in the first region. By the third full region, they should be mostly harder than before.

The goal of this feature is to establish power scaling and threat escalation as you approach the Mountain, while also slightly lowering region 1 difficulty so it’s easier to get your expedition started.

Food Redesign

The function of food has been redesigned. Before, food was used primarily to heal HP at the Inn. Now, HP is always fully healed when arriving at the Inn. Food is instead used to buff Max HP and also buff other stats. Those buffs will last for the entire next region.

Each hero can only eat one meal (consume one food item) in each Inn. So choose your best food item to feed them. The exception being the Roast Pig. You can always add a Roast Pig feast on top of everything else.

Hero base HP has been lowered by 10% across the board, to adjust for food being used to buff HP. (The worst food item buffs 10%.)

Driving

A comprehensive look at Stagecoach experience/driving/route selection/preparation will be the focus of an upcoming milestone. Meanwhile:

• Crack the Whip! Stagecoach speed now increases once you are clear of intersections and nodes, reducing travel time between nodes!
• Visual improvements to many nodes
• Adjusted road object loot table (slightly bigger chance overall; more relic than anything else)
• Infernal Torch can no longer be swapped between open stagecoach slots. Once equipped in a slot it is locked until the run is over.

Resist Encounters

• Resist Encounters will give parties with less than 4 Heroes new options for buffed Engage and Avoid choices.
• Fixed several small errors related to effects and glyphs.

Assistance Encounters

• Assist Encounters are now split into 3 variants and have new loot tables as appropriate:
  • Standard: The party receives Flame primarily
  • Combat: The party receives combat-related supplies
  • Provisions: The party receives Inn items and other useful non-combat items
• [COMMUNITY] Robbery variant Assistance Encounters de-emphasize food in exchange for more supplies/items.
• Fixed several small errors related to effects and glyphs.

Academic Study Encounters

• [COMMUNITY]New Avoid options for stressed Heroes
• New Low Relic/Low Inventory Interact options for greedy Heroes
• [COMMUNITY]Fixed Shambler Altar issues
• Fixed several small errors related to effects and glyphs
• Fixed party torch misapplication as rewards for Caged Creature and Thing in Corner variants

UI

• [Community] Skill Upgrade ALT view now available on Character Sheet
• [Community] Disease indicator on driving portraits
• [Community] Affinity preview on encounter choices
• [Community] Show equipped skills on mastery
• [Community] Space bar to enter nodes
• [Community] Patch Notes viewable in options menu
• [Community] Combat Skills tab now default on Character Sheet
• [Community] Added Random Party button to the Crossroads.
• [Community] Hero Story recap tab at Cross roads
• [Community] Slide out panels (map, character sheet, inventory, etc) can now be closed by right-click and ESC
• [Community] Show discounted prices in stores
• [Community] Double click to auto drive Stagecoach
• [Community] New Cinematic section on main page
• [Community] Autosave indicator
• [Community] Feedback on quirk removal when using a rest item or an inn effect.
• Updated all instances of RED being used as enemy target indicators to now be BLUE, to match the game’s general color scheme
• Inn tooltips now anchor more consistently to the placard
• Enter Node text sheen is now less boxy
• When a character’s name is changed in combat, the portrait tooltip should update correctly
• Fixed the ability to open UI elements before the game was finished loading
• Extended health bar on driving rosters to match stress bar width
• Max health modifiers from Inn items and quirks are no longer incorrectly combining under the Conditions tab in the Character Sheet
• Corrected The Good Doctor tooltip to correctly state it heals a disease and not a quirk
• Fix for Restorative Herbs tooltip incorrectly listing its two effects. It should now correctly list +10% healing from traveling & the +20% healing from skills.
• Raised the Inn select receipt banner to not block hero bark bubbles
• Users can no longer open the Stagecoach screen when making a choice at an encounter
• Minimap scout ping correctly waits for the encounter screen to close first before animating
• Stealth token icon color is no longer gold and now better matches its effect text color of purple
• Newly added items now get added to the bottom of your Inventory
• “Discard items for Hope” message is now more visible on the screen

Heroes

• Hero base HP reduced by 10% to account for new Food Design
• Fixed an issue where the effects of Quirks like Thanatophobia were applied when a Hero corpse “dies”
• Fixed an issue where Heroes could receive stress damage when a Hero corpse was CRIT

Hellion

• Fixed an issue where Bloodlust could be blocked by Denial of Reason

Monsters

• Reduced the base health, damage, and speed of most monsters to account for Ordainment (see earlier)
• Several types of Quirk/Trinket effects are no longer applicable when striking/killing an enemy corpse
• Champions now have a low chance of spawning in Guardian fights
• Champions now have a low chance of spawning in Lair fights
• Adjusted the pool of Diseases available to several monster skills

Creature Den

• Webber and Spitter Bite attacks can now inflict the Tarantism Disease
• Spitter Spit attacks can now inflict the Tarantism Disease
• Fixed erroneous glyphs related to food costs
• Fixed incorrect effects on certain choices

Cultists

• Fixed an issue where the Cultist Deacon did not receive the Cultist Cardinal’s passive RES Buff
• Removed the ability to retreat from Cultist Node Choices, except with the appropriate quirks

Dreaming General

• Dreaming General now spawns with a permanent Immobilize Token
• Tap Root now spawns with a permanent Immobilize Token
• Rewards now drop proper region trinkets

Librarian

• The fidelity of Librarian’s books better matches the characters

Harvest Child

• Rewards now drop proper region currency and trinkets

Shambler

• [Community] Improved rewards and are now guaranteed

Combat

• Combo Tokens now last for an additional round; this change affects Heroes and monsters alike
• The permanent version of the Immobilize Token has an updated color and description to differentiate it from the standard version
• Fixed an issue where Start Round skills (e.g. Denial of Reason) were subject to Daze/Stun
• Fixed an issue where Start Round skills were unintentionally triggering Extra Action effects
• Character movement in general has had a polish pass and should now be cleaner and snappier
• Combat Consumables now fire all vfx, tokens and numbers simultaneously, making them more responsive to use
• Guard tokens are removed when a guarding actor is captured.
• Added Combo Token to poptext when it’s consumed
• Changed CRIT poptext to now read Critical!
• Heroes now only say their Move barks when affected by non friendly skills.
• Shuffles shuffle better now. Algorithm gremlins were exorcised
• Fix for Dreaming General hit reaction delay
• Fix for exploit with Riposte that would reveal kills via token highlights

Quirks

• Sunny Disposition and Curmudgeon quirks now affect affinity ticks for the party (pos and neg respectively)
• New Heavy Handed quirk: 5% chance of moving an opponent via melee attack
• Punch Drunk’s Stun can no longer trigger off of DOT damage
• Cowardice quirk update: Take 1 stress damage when hit (5%), Move to back when in the front rank (15%)
• Pyromaniac and Field Surgeon now have token-driven bonus item skills for Fire Bomb and Healing Salve
• Various Fisherfolk and Shroud-related quirks added to reflect the existing other Biome/Faction quirks
• The Runs is now a disease, not a quirk
• Added Disarmer quirk, 10% chance of giving a weakness token to the enemy that hit the Hero
• Tarantism Disease added (chance for forced Move), exclusive to Spiders
• Algal Bloom Disease added (chance of proc’ing Barnacle or small damage per turn), exclusive to Leviathan boss
• Slugger quirk now has a chance to add Stun, which replaces the damage bonus
• Removed Strength token possibility from Vicious quirk
• Various quirk corrections and adjustments for balance and bugs
• [Community] Fixed an issue with The Jinx consuming CRIT tokens when the Hero was hit

Items

• [Community] Sneaker’s Standard: Trigger change from Turn Start to Round Start and Stealth chance increased from 10% to 33%
• [Community] Covert Cloak: Trigger change from Turn Start to Round Start
• Faceless Visage: Taunt chance increased from 20% to 33%
• Annotated Textbook and Early Experiment names properly assigned
• New Stagecoach Upgrade Almanac: The Shroud

Misc Gameplay

• Added “Heat Wave” region modifier. (Reduced Burn resistance)
• HALE battle modifier bonuses reduced from 25% to 10%
• FRENZIED battle modifier bonus damage reduced from 25% to 20%
• Adjusted food-related Stagecoach upgrades due to new food design
• Tea Service now properly reduces negative banter instead of increases it
• Battle configurations were adjusted to use multiple conditions where relevant (e.g. shambler has increased chance of spawning when torch is low AND region is closer to the mountain). Also adjusted all region # conditions for full-length region # instead of raw region #. This ensures that taking the SLUICE doesn’t mess up power scaling.
• Added new region goals for “Visit Oasis” and “Visit Creature Den”. Adjusted chances of other region goals.
• Retune of Triage Kit and Healing Salve: stacking limits reduced; prices increased. Increased heal value of Triage Kit
• Added many new hero Barks (Food consumption, leaving Shrines of Reflection, and many more!)
• Tuned down all relationship act out frequency some
• Revised the “Block partner from moving” relationship Act Out to only block moves where the partner themself is moving (now won’t block situations where the partner tries to move someone else)
• Note: we will be revising Relationships significantly in a future update

Fixes

• Fixed an issue with the Stagecoach not loading properly after changing the livery
• Fixed an error caused by toggling the Inn Provision screen too quickly
• Fixed missing gender for localization of hero death to quirk strings
• Fixed an issue with combat sorting
• Fix for resolution dropdown sometimes not updating properly after monitor switch
• Fix for meltdowns not logging in the players run log when occurring outside of combat
• Fix for being able to drive the coach while over-encumbered if you quit to the main menu and reloaded
• Fixed a softlock caused by the same hero having multiple meltdowns
• Fix for healing poptext at the Inn to be consistent with other poptext locations
• Fixed an issue when encounter choice lock-in continues through other screens
• Fixed a display issue with various quirks and effects applying before the poptext appears
• Fix to biome modifiers being rolled without biome goals
• Fix for barks overlapping with combat and affinity zoom ins
• Fixed an issue where the character sheet would become inactive if toggled too quickly
• Fixed an issue where the relationships tab on the character sheet would break when only one hero remained in the party.
• Fix to CRIT strikethrough to show CRIT value when striking through
• Various UI fixes for non-english localization
• Inn store inventory saves

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