Darkest Dungeon II - Memento Guide

Memento

All credit goes to nerdcommando.gamestudios !

Memories are a major way to scale up your party. Not only memoried hero gets extra perks (some of which are pretty major), he also gets to keep all his quirks. And, once you lock one of his quirks in the hospital, he’ll keep it forever. Yeah, no, there’s no forever in Darkest Dungeon – just the eventual death. But he’ll keep it until then, at the very least. Nothing can remove the locked quirk – meaning you can safely Wild Tea him and stuff like this.

Locking the quirk is a very big decision, btw. No need to be hasty here – you want to lock only the very best. Which is the following:

Bloodthristy: +30 DMG dealt, +5% Crit vs low health enemies, 15% to gain vulnerability on a hit (can still be resisted). Just treat it as 30% extra damage – major for any physical damage dealer.
Deadly: +15% critical chance. Good for characters which deal both DoTs, debuffs and physical damage.
Death Seeker: -10 Stress at Death’s Door, +15% Resolute Chance. Either flagellant or 3+1 playstyle. Which means that you have 1 valuable, memoried heroes and 3 disposable newbies. All the inn buffs/combat healing goes into the valuable hero (who has this) whereas newbies can be sacrificed in the final fight. It’s a total oxymoron because the point of a death seeker is for the character to never die. This one is a bit of advanced playstyle, be wary of this.
Defiant: regenerates 5% Health at the start of each turn. Good for beefcakes.
Cosmic Hater: +15% DMG dealt vs Cosmic, -20% DMG received vs Cosmic, hitting a Cosmic is 25% of healing 1 Stress. All the important bosses are Cosmic, Shambler is cosmic, oblivion enemies are Cosmic.
Iron Constitution: +20% max HP. Flagellant and Man-at-Arms mostly as they have best self-regen in the game. Hellion might also be considered, I guess.
Lethal Feint: gain Critical Token on a miss. If 2+ targets are missed, gain two. Look, basic Leper is Trash. But Lethal Feint Leper is a Trash Thrower – you use whatever battle items you have to convert his Blind tokens into Critical tokens. And Leper with constant Critical tokens is an A-tier threat. Keep an eye out for this one.
Lightning Reflexes: +2 SPD. Slow-ish DoT dealers – Venomdrop, Flagellant, Plague Doctor, Runaway. Applying a DoT before the enemy moves or after is a really big difference.
Peacemaker, Sunny Disposition: +10% positive relationship chance, -5% Negative relationship chance. These two quirks have different names but the same effect. Best on heavy supports like Vestal or Man-at-Arms.
Tactical Thinker: +5% Crit, 15% to get Dodge+ token during each turn. This one is rather universal.
The Jinx: whenever enemy hits you, they get either Blind, Weakness, Vulnerable or Combo Token. This one is universal and rather crazy. 4x Jinx is the dream team.

Some will be surprised by not seeing Breacher here – it’s very nice on the grind but doesn’t do as much in the boss fights. This also prevents you from altering the order of your party (which will be an issue in certain fights).

Now, the good memories:

A Favorite Toy: +1 DoT damage dealt. AKA DoT’ters do +20-33% more damage with it. Crazy value,.
A Token of Friendship: +10% Positive Banter. Relationships matter but are very expensive to fix. Memories are relatively cheap so this one is an amazing offer. It’s not even about getting good relationships, btw – it’s all about preventing being screwed by the bad ones.

These two are a league above everything else.

Harmless Mischief: +1 SPD. Keep in mind that there is slowpoke trifecta (Leper/Vestal/Man-at-Arms) which has reasons to keep their SPD and 2 or below so they don’t want these.
A Promise Kept: +10% DMG. All physical damage dealers.
A Rare Treat: +10% Max HP. Anyone but especially beefcakes/regenerators.
The First Kiss: +10% Debuff Resistance. Everybody but especially Leper (mb not the lethal feint leper, though). Debuffs are nasty and are difficult to prevent otherwise.
A Walk in the Woods: +15% Movement Resistance. This one is specialized – bleed characters only. You see, Bleeder parties have to kill Leviathan, most likely twice. And Movement Resistance is crucial in that combat.