Darkest Dungeon Update Adds New Hero, Monsters, and Major Gameplay Changes

Darkest Dungeon has been updated with a host of new content today, adding a new playable hero, monsters, rare trinkets, and new gameplay features.

The new hero class is called the Abomination. Designed by one of the game's "Lord Tier" Kickstarter backers, the Abomination is described as a twisted, brooding man who has been outcast by his community due to a "sickness" within him. I'm sure you can guess where they're going with this, given the theme and all: the Abomination is kind of like a werewolf, but not really.

He's unlike any other hero class in the game thus far, and has a unique mechanic that allows him to switch between two forms. He freaks out religious heroes to the point where they'll refuse to serve with him in the party. In addition, his transformation is a stressful event that'll just raise the heckles of everyone who tolerates his presence. Their stress goes down when he returns to normal, but it can definitely put them over the edge.

In addition to the new character, the update also adds two new monsters designed by Kickstarter backers. The first is the Collector, a "king in yellow" who serves as a challenging miniboss. True to his name, he collects something that players will have to discover on their own to see what it is. The other monster is the Madman, who's an insane doomsayer and harbinger of chaos.

In addition to an assortment of class-specific trinkets, the update adds a number of improvements to the AI for Veteran and Champion level monsters in the form of extra skill riders that allow them to cast debuffs and make battles against them even more interesting. Stress has also been tweaked for these high-level creatures to make it as important for players to deal with as health all the way through.

Some other significant changes have been made to gameplay, including provision limits to prevent players from loading up on too much food before missions, and a revision to the Heart Attack system that received numerous complaints from players unhappy with how their characters fell dead instantly from excessive stress levels. The new system is a lot more forgiving. Here's how it works:

• Upon hitting 200 stress, the hero is reduced immediately to Death’s Door (0 HP). Unless healed quickly, the hero will be vulnerable to death.
• Additionally, stress is dropped to 170 after this happens.
• If stress rises to 200 again and the hero isn’t yet off of Death’s Door, he dies immediately.
• If the hero is not on Death’s Door and stress rises to 200 again, the same cycle begins again (dropped to Death’s Door).
• Finally – if you have a Heart Attack and get healed off of Death’s Door, there is a persistent debuff for the rest of that quest, reflecting the wear and tear on the hero’s body.

Other changes include mortality debuffs, penalties for prolonging battles, and a ton of bug fixes and balance changes to the heroes.