Darkest Dungeon – Final Dungeon Quick Guide

A very brief guide on who/what to bring to the final dungeon, and generally what resistance to expect.

Quick Guide Final Dungeon

Please note: all credit goes to PKPenguin!

General Tips

Spoiler warning for the guide below! Since this discusses the final dungeon, it is obviously going to spoil things.

General tips are anything that will apply to all four levels of the Darkest Dungeon (DD1-DD4).

  • Heroes brought to DD can’t return to it unless you’re on Radiant (easiest) difficulty. (You can tell if you’re on radiant by checking for a white shine behind the skull next to your save file.) In Radiant it still usually isn’t worth doing since heroes that return to the DD start with a ton of stress and basically can’t roll a virtue.
  • Fleeing from a DD mission will randomly kill one of your heroes, unless they are the last one remaining in your party when you fled.
  • DD missions always have the same pre-scripted layout. Maps can be found online.
  • Successfully completing a DD mission will make all heroes in your roster set to 0 stress, including ones that were just on the mission.
  • You never need shovels in any DD missions.

DD1

  • Enemy types: Human, Eldritch

What to expect: Lots of bleeds and stress

Possible team composition (right to left):

  • Man at Arms: Stuns and guards will help manage the damage you take in fights.
  • Crusader: Stress heals, damage output, and stuns handily counter most threats.
  • Occultist: Heals, weakens, and damages. A straightforward way of winning fights.
  • Plague Doctor: Cures DoT (bleeds in particular), deals reliable damage with her blight, and does big stuns.

Tips:

  • This mission is the most straightforward, and has tons of possible team compositions that will work beyond the one I listed.
  • The boss at the end always has a cultist behind him. If you kill it, he will summon a much more durable minion in front of him that can be even harder to deal with. It might be worth it to focus down the boss and ignore the cultist because of this depending on your team.

DD2

  • Enemy types: Eldritch, Beast

What to expect: More bleeds, blight, more stress. Three hard boss encounters that you will need to survive through, which pretty much require your heroes to be wearing Talisman of the Flame trinkets.

Possible team composition:

  • Man at Arms: Controls the fight as in DD1, but can also guard your hero that lacks a Talisman of the Flame.
  • Highwayman: Huge damage and bleeds help a lot to fend off the very tough fights ahead.
  • Jester: Stress heals will help you with your longevity, but his buffs and bleeds are also fantastic for dealing with combats ahead.
  • Vestal: Stuns and heals will be almost necessary to survive the sheer number of fights ahead.

Tips:

  • The bosses here have an attack that will deal MASSIVE (we’re talking 50+) health/stress damage to any hero not wearing the Talisman of the Flame. Make sure you have all three equipped and that you have one hero who can guard the one that does not have one, such as the Man at Arms or the Houndmaster.
  • The map is shaped like a triangle, with the three major fights at each corner of it. You start at the center of the triangle. After each major fight you should backtrack through already explored hallways towards the center of the triangle so as to minimize the number of fights you have to take.
  • You will have two opportunities to camp. Ideally you should spend these after boss fights to recover from them and prepare for the next one, while also being close enough to the next one that your camping buffs will be in effect during the boss fight.

DD3

  • Enemy types: Eldritch, Beast

What to expect: A repeated encounter that features a boss enemy who summons a backline minion. If the minion is not killed quickly, it teleports you out of the fight, which is VERY bad for you. The map is maze-like and ideally you need to be able to handle these fights quickly enough to not be teleported.

Possible party composition:

  • Hellion: Iron swan gives huge backline reach, helping you to quickly eliminate the teleporting minion. Her damage in general helps immensely too, as does her stun, and she can self heal in a pinch.
  • Shieldbreaker: Her reach and her damage help to kill the teleporting minion quickly
  • Houndmaster: His reach with his main attack one again helps greatly with hitting the minion. His self heal also helps take pressure off of your healer, and he can defend any teammate who gets particularly low.
  • Plague Doctor: Her plague grenade is absolutely invaluable for both chipping down the main boss and killing the minion quickly. Her double stun is similarly useful, and in a pinch she can heal the rest of your party as needed.

Tips:

  • Your strategy should always be to kill the backline minion before it has the chance to act.
  • Ideally you should be able to kill the backline minion with only 1 or 2 of your heroes, allowing the rest to focus down the main boss.
  • An online map is particularly useful here to avoid unnecessary fights. The exit tile is to the right and down from the starting tile as a general rule of thumb.

DD4

This is simply the final boss fight. He is not as hard as the previous DD missions and acts more as a story element.

  • Phase 1: Wait for imperfect copies to be made and kill them. Ideally you want to kill at least 1 copy per round to keep the main boss busy summoning.
  • Phase 2: Straightforward fight.
  • Phase 3: Heal during heart fight. You can hit it to speed up this phase but it will blight you.
  • Phase 4: Be ready to lose some party members. Your party should be able to close out the fight with only 2 of your 4 heroes. Some crazy compositions can one-shot this phase and skip this however.
Egor Opleuha
About Egor Opleuha 8080 Articles
Egor Opleuha, also known as Juzzzie, is the Editor-in-Chief of Gameplay Tips. He is a writer with more than 12 years of experience in writing and editing online content. His favorite game was and still is the third part of the legendary Heroes of Might and Magic saga. He prefers to spend all his free time playing retro games and new indie games.

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