Shadows Blur Together achievement the easy-cheese way post CoM patch aka with reinforcements being called and w/o being able to cheese with 2 enemies.
Contents
Why I Made this Guide and What is Different from Before
All credit goes to Alphastep!
I created this guide because this achievement is arguably one of the most painful to get and none of the guides i had a look at seems to be working as of the CoM patch.
The reason behind that is that any enemy formation with 2 or less enemies will now call for reinforcements after they have been left alive for too long aka when you are trying to stall. That includes the 2 Rapturous Cultists in the first Darkest Dungeon quest.
The above change takes away your ability to ”protect” your crimson cursed death’s door members by placing them into ”safe spots” aka unreachable positions. It only takes a single round from the enemy reinforcements (which will probably be types that can attack every position) and some bad RNG to instantly knockdown your death’s door party members.
In a nutshell this guide will show you how to grab the achievement without breaking a sweat. Nevertheless even though the execution is really straight forward, some preparation and a couple of requirements are needed, it wouldn’t be a guide otherwise.
Strategy, Party and Important Gear
The strategy takes place in the -Apprentice- (it has to be apprentice) boss mission of the Swine Prince, the fight will be very controlled regardless of your low damage output (due to gearing).
The Party will include 2 Shieldbreakers who will bear the Crimson Curse in the ”Craving” stage with the Sandstorm camping skill, a Houndmaster also bearing the Crimson Curse in the ”Craving” stage with the Guard Dog skill and of course the only class that can be considered a consistent healer, a Vestal. Note that your Vestal will be the only one wiithout the curse to avoid its behaviour effects during the boss fight.
You will need 1 Protection Trinket on each with at least 15% PROT. There are a couple of Protection items, any with 15% and above will work but i think the most common one is “Protection boots” that gives 20% and is of uncommon rarity. Your damage output is irrelevant given how your damage intake is really low since you avoid marks. Meaning that damage trinkets are not as important here.
First Part of the Fight, the Swine Prince
Right before the boss room (should be easy to figure out where it is even if you fail to scout) you will camp and your 2 Shieldbreakers will apply Sandstorm to each other, that will prevent them from being marked by Wildbur trivializing your frontline damage intake. Houndmaster will spam Guard Dog on the Vestal amplifying his dodge making him almost consistently dodge both the mark of Wildbur and the Obliterate ability of the boss, should any marks go through. Any damage that manages to go through (mostly from Wild Flailing) should be left as is because after Swine Prince dies there will be no damage intake whatsoever and you will need your Cursed heroes as close to Death’s Door (if not at it) as possible. Only use your Vestal to heal high damage that goes through early on with the boss being at relatively high health.
Wildbur, the Cheese and the Achievement
The achievement along with the importance of the Apprentice difficulty takes place when the actual Swine Prince dies. Wildbur will be left alone having one action per round and only ever using ”Squeal” which hits for 1 damage and has 0% crit chance (even though it will probably crit one party member once every 50-60 rounds). Even though ”Bit’o Squeal” is listed as an ability, Wildbur will never cast it on Apprentice. The cheese takes place with Protection trinkets. If you have 15% Protection (have not tested if less than 15% does the trick, i have a suspicion that 10% will also work) the ”Squeal” ability will hit you for 0, aka absolutely nothing. That means that you can have your entire party at Death’s Door being hit for 0 damage every round and occasionally being stunned (which even though is annoying, it doesnt change anything). Wildbur will not call for reinforcements (obviously) and the fight will never end unless you kill him.
After a couple of ”Craving” rounds your Crimson Cursed party members (2 Shieldbreakers and the Houndmaster) will go into the ”Wasting” stage, which then opens up the window of them attacking themselves. IMPORTANT – make sure your heroes are as close to Death’s Door as possible, because after Swine Prince dies the damage intake will only come from your Wasting heroes attacking themselves.
At that point everything is a matter of patience, you have 3 heroes that are eligible of attacking themselves at 1-3 hp taking 0 external damage aka the only way they die is if they kill themselves or they expire after 61 rounds.
An argument can be made about using the same strategy but instead of 3 ”Wasting” you have 2 in ”Bloodlust” and 1 in ”Wasting”. So the 2 in Bloodlust stage will be eligible to attack the entire party and the Wasting one themselves. I have not tested this variant, if you do and it works better let me know.
Possible Mishaps
Things that can go wrong:
- 1) You get crit by ”Squeal” which means you will be hit for 1 and have a chance to die to it if you are at Death’s Door. (As mentioned above it happens once every 50-60 rounds, if at all, wiki literally states that it has 0% crit chance but you know how much RNG DD includes)
- 2) You don’t take enough damage from Swine Prince due to almost ”unmarkable” comp and when you have only Wildbur left it’s almost impossible to reach Death’s Door. This can be negated by having double Bloodlust heroes attacking the Party but your heroes need to be low regardless to make it time efficient.
If you manage to safely avoid the above (mostly the second one), the achievement is totally effortless and only a matter of patience.
Should you put my strategy into the test, i really hope it helps you as much as it did me, and make sure to let me know if everything went according to the plan.
So I gave this a try since this was the closest I could find to a current guide for this achievement after the changes to being able to delay in combat. I followed everything here but my mistake was I didn’t have the houndmaster stress heal skill selected and I died on turn 63 after my Vestal killed one of my SBs and the other 2 with the Curse had heart attacks after eventually getting too much stress.