Dread Delve

Darkest Dungeon is the game where the party stands in a line and the line is the whole tactical problem. Every ability states which of the four ranks it can be used from and which of the four ranks it can reach, so a shove is worth more than a wound — and behind that sits the idea the game is actually famous for, which is a second meter that fills with everything the dungeon does to a person and empties into nothing good.

This is that shape, one screen and one sitting: four bees, eight callings, a lantern you spend honey to keep lit, and a retinue you will bury and replace. It is an homage and it says so. Nothing is lifted — every calling, every foe, every curio and every noise here was written from scratch — and it is not connected to Red Hook Studios in any way.

The first run on a device opens on a five-page primer covering the four rules below — ranks, dread, the lantern and death's door — because not one of them is discoverable at a price worth paying. Skip is on every page of it, on the button or on the S key, and nothing is running while it is up. No run after the first one is stopped by it; the Primer button in the Comb Above, or H from anywhere, puts it back.

Ranks are half of every skill#

Rank 1 is at the front of your line and faces their rank 1 across the middle of the screen. Rank 4 is at the back, out of reach of most things and unable to reach most things.

Every skill face carries two rows of four boxes. The top row is where it can be used from and the bottom is where it can reach. A Fletcher's Bolt is `from 0011, reach 1111` — she can hit anything in the room, and only from the back two ranks. Shove her to rank 2 and three of her four skills go grey without a point of damage being dealt.

• Half the comb is trying to break your line. A Bone Drone's Backhand shoves; a Hag's Kin hooks you forward; the Hag's Ladle throws two ranks at once. That is what those moves are for.
• Some of your line wants to move. A Scout lunges forward to hit and slips back out. A Piper reels forward. A Brawler is the only bee on the roster genuinely comfortable at both ends of it.
• Standing order is set in town. Tap a rank to hold that bee, tap another to swap them. It is the most important decision in the Comb Above and the one people miss.

The dread is the game#

Every bee carries a second bar, and it fills from crits taken, from allies falling, from the dark, and from foes whose entire attack is a noise.

At 100 it cracks, and three times in four it cracks badly.

A bee that reaches a hundred while already broken does not take a second affliction. It takes a heart attack, which puts it straight to death's door and through it if it was standing there already. A second heart attack in one fight is always fatal. That is the clock on every fight that has gone on too long, and it is why a fight is never worth dragging out.

The lantern#

Light is a difficulty dial you hold, and it burns down about nine points a room.

A taper is fifteen honey and puts forty points back. That is the whole loop: the dark pays for the tapers that keep you out of it, and deciding when to stop paying is most of the game.

Death's door#

Zero health is not death. It is a bee standing at the door with a coin flip waiting on the next hit — and every round it survives there is a round somebody could have spent healing it. That is what makes a Warder's Mend the best card in the game and why a retinue without a heal has to win every fight in three rounds.

Losing a bee is expensive and losing two is a bad night. Losing all four in one delve is the run, and it is the only ending there is.

A delve, and turning back#

A delve is a straight corridor of rooms with a guardian in the last one. Rooms are hidden until the lantern is close enough to see them, so scouting range is the light — radiant shows you the next three and pitch black shows you nothing at all.

• Fights are two to four things, each standing in the rank it prefers.
• Curios are a thing in the corner with two or three ways to touch it, one of which usually wants an item you may not have brought.
• A camp is one hour and one choice: bind wounds, sit a while, or stand watch.
• A collapse wants a spade, or it wants everybody's health and nerve instead.
• The guardian is at the far end and there is no way past it. Felling one is what pays in full.

Retreat is on every corridor screen, and it is a real decision rather than a safety valve: you are paid only for the rooms you actually cleared, you score nothing for the delve, and the board moves on anyway — that gallery is spent and the next one is still harder. Turning round buys you a retinue and costs you five hundred points.

The Comb Above#

Between delves: hire from the wagon, spend a night in the Chapel to take thirty-five dread off somebody, pay the Sanatorium to lift an affliction, pay the Smith to sharpen a bee, and buy tapers, jelly, salve and spades. The wagon's price climbs with the depth on the board — replacing the dead is what the deep pay is for.

Everything you cannot afford is on the same screen at the same time. That is deliberate.

Posting a run#

Sign in with Discord and the run posts itself the moment the last bee falls; play as a guest and it is kept as a personal best on this device instead. The board ranks on score and shows the delve you reached beside it, which is very nearly the same number twice — clearing delve N pays N × 500, so the delves add up on themselves and everything else is small change. The arcade page has the longer version of how the boards work, and the other cabinets.