Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game – Questing and Exploration

Hello, Darkest Heroes!

Today, we bring you a brand-new article, our third one, regarding our highly anticipated upcoming project Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game. We’re so thrilled to be sharing these tid-bits with you, because they reveal important aspects of the game that will definitely give you a better feel for what kind of game it truly is!

Let’s talk about questing and exploration!

The shifted corridors and sloped vaults of our ancestry are beginning to feel familiar. – The Ancestor

In Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game, players portray a group of heroes who have answered the Heir’s call and decided to take the carriage to the estate. Once there, they’ll meet other adventurers and will be asked to form teams, in order to go on expeditions, venturing off further to perform various tasks. However they may seem, these tasks are not random. They are a series of quests, set forth by the Heir, that need to be achieved – rituals of purification, salvaging of important relics, cleansing lairs, decimating monsters, and much more.

When in the hamlet, the Heir will visit the heroes and give them a choice between two issues of utmost importance that concern the estate. The heroes will then have to choose which of the two is most important and embark on their new quest. This choice is not to be taken lightly, as different rewards and treasures will be granted depending on the decision made. But desperate times call for desperate measures, and certainly time is not an ally. During this phase, the estate’s foes will conspire against the heroes and the hamlet itself, seeking to expunge the Heir’s influence from the land, once and for all. This is why the heroes will have a limited amount of time for a couple of quests before they must deal with each and every foe that awaits them. And as soon as all three of them have been dispatched, the Darkest Dungeon will emerge as ominous and terrible as rumored.

Expect to be surprised as no two campaigns of Darkest Dungeon: The Board Game will be the same. Each and every quest will be affected by a foe’s lingering presence, altering the severity of the quest’s effects. A hero needs to be a well-trained, seasoned adventurer in order to brave these dangers and step into the darkness. In choosing to do so, they relinquish the safety of the light, and risk it all…

I knew all these paths once; now they are as twisted as my own ambitions. – The Ancestor

Once the heroes cross the threshold, they’ll find themselves exposed and prone to danger, as the evil influence of the Darkest Dungeon will seek their absolutes demise. Venturing forth into the entrance room, the heroes realize that it is a place in which the crossing of boundaries from civilization to darkness is both literal and metaphorical. From there, they will have to decide how to proceed. Most of the time, they will have a map of the location, but they won’t know for sure what twisted and malevolent aberrations await them around each corner. Various traps and ambushing monsters litter the corridors alongside mysterious curios with properties unknown.

The heroes must then decide whether to scout ahead or proceed with the exploration head on. Scouting can be a strenuous activity, as the heroes will have to leave the safety of their party to venture forward into unfamiliar shadows. To the ones left behind, tension and a constant feeling of vulnerable exposure prevail while they await the party’s return. Once they do, the heroes will combine their findings on a briefly scribbled map, attesting to what’s coming up ahead. This is why scouting takes time and deals some stress to all party members. A fine risk for a worthy endeavor, because if the party decides to explore without scouting first, they will foolishly rush into unknown danger, heightening the risk factor.

When exploring, the party will decide how to move and where to go, picking a nearby room as their target. To simulate the party’s cautious advance, each hero must roll two exploration dice – or just one if they have scouted beforehand. This dice roll represents things that transpired as the party traveled the corridors from one room to another. The heroes might encounter some heavy debris that block their path, devilish traps, mystifying curios, or simply nothing at all. Hopefully, they’ll be well equipped and prepared for all kinds of problems. Shovels, antidotes, bandages and extra torches will be those items that aid the heroes in their journey through this den of evil. But the quantity and quality of their provisions depend on the quest they chose and what gifts were given to them by the Heir before they departed the hamlet.

The cost of preparedness – measured now in gold, later in blood. – The Ancestor

As they move forward, the light, the promise of safety, will be an invaluable ally. For when it burns bright, monsters scurry away back into the shadows and some of them might even be dazed by its bright flame. But when the flame flickers and the torchlight dims, evil will rear its ugly head.  Most monsters have lived in the darkness of these forlorn places for far too long and know how to move faster and hit harder while bathed in shadow. Their attacks will become more intense and hope will swiftly fly away. The piling stress will bring despair and helplessness to the heroes’ hearts, as they find out that the strongest of demons they must encounter actually dwells deep in their own hearts. It is a common occurrence to witness an accomplished swordsman being reduced to a helpless victim as a result of some psychological shift, for these cursed places will seek to drive even the most virtuous mind to insanity.

When the heroes finally step into the room, they will come face-to-face with the brutal truth: a chamber brimming with monsters, a lair filled with treasures, a crevasse housing a relic, or another empty room that simply echoes their fear of what could be next. But when they encounter any of the various denizens that lurk in these dark passages, at least the familiarity of battle will offer some respite from the fear that dogs their every thought as they reach for their weapons and brace for combat!

So, then, how does combat work, you may ask? This is no small inquiry… and you’ll find out in the next article!

Most will end up there, filled with game knowledge, awaiting a merciful release! 

Launching October 20th on Kickstarter ! Click on the Image above to. be notified on launch!

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