History VideoGame / DarkestDungeon

* PoisonIsCorrosive: [[AmbiguousSituation Ambiguously]]. Despite not having a circulatory system, skeletons can be blighted, and in fact have very low resistance to it. Then again, it's not really clear what "blight" is actually supposed to be, and skeletons are stated to be immune to bleeding precisely ''because'' thy have no circulatory system.

* MuckMonster: The Formless Flesh is a barely-sentient pile of leftover pig goop from The Ancestor's experiments with the Swine. One day it came alive(probably from all the demonic energy coming off those pig parts), and now it's your job to kill it before it gets out of control.

* ArcherArchetype: The Arbalest class subverts the typical impression of lesser strength for such characters compared to melee-based characters by being an armored ActionGirl holding a very large crossbow like a ChainsawGripBFG.

* NintendoHard: It's a roguelike, so this is to be expected; if you don't know what you're doing, the dungeon will be your grave. Some of the more prominent examples:
** Healing outside of battle is very limited, healing abilities are either reliable or powerful (not both), and [[AllDeathsFinal any character who dies is lost forever]] outside of a rare town event. Trying to squeeze more healing and stress relief in-battle is penalized by "stalling" skills quickly causing enemy reinforcements after a few turns
** Stress is difficult to deal with when inside the dungeon and can snowball into a colossal catastrophe if it goes out of control, adding very harmful quirks or making the characters break down when they would need to keep their cool the most.
** Stress effects are completely random. Your hero might shrug off his stress and become courageous, inspiring the rest of the party… or your tank could [[DirtyCoward become Fearful, fleeing to the back of the formation]], your healer becomes a {{Sadist}}, [[LeeroyJenkins bum-rushing the enemy with her dinky club]], and your damage dealer turns into a Masochist [[SelfHarm and gleefully turns her knives on herself]]. God help you if you get an [[DisasterDominoes Abusive]] hero…
** Your inventory is incredibly limited, leading to the dilemma of [[ResourcesManagementGameplay bringing enough torches and food to move through the dungeon and having enough space to gather the treasure from the dungeons]]. And if the lights go out, then your party will take constant stress damage, while both friend and foe gain high critical chances. [[HardModePerks On the other hand, treasure rewards are greatly increased…]]

Visit their website [[http://www.darkestdungeon.com/ here.]] On February 3, 2015, the Steam version was released as an Early Access title. The game was fully released on January 19, 2016 for Microsoft Windows and OS X computers, with a Linux release on April 26th, 2016, and a release for UsefulNotes/PlayStation4 and UsefulNotes/PlayStationVita consoles on September 27th, 2016. A paid DLC expansion named ''The Crimson Court'' was released on June 19th, 2017 for computers, and on August 22nd, 2017 for consoles. A second DLC, named ''The Color of Madness'', was released on June 19th, 2018. The [=iPad=] version was released on August 24th, 2017, and ''The Crimson Court'' is scheduled to be released later. A UsefulNotes/NintendoSwitch version was released on January 18th, 2018.

* FriendlyNeighborhoodVampire: The Wizened Shrews of the Courtyard are the only Bloodsuckers who aren't immediately hostile, and are willing to pay handsomely for The Blood rather than take it by force. Of course, it's still unwise to bother a vampire without an offering.

* NotSoInnocentWhistle: A hero with the Kleptomaniac quirk suddenly making a whistle as the party gets to an easy treasure container (e.g. sacks, crates, backpacks) is something to dread. Hope there wasn't anything too valuable in it!
* NoCasualtiesRun: Nearly impossible as of the current version. [[spoiler:Even if you are lucky and skilled enough to reach the final boss without getting a single hero killed, you will almost always lose at least two heroes to its insta-kill attacks. It ''is'' possible to [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGsTZtH8308 beat it without anyone dying]], however.]]
* NonHealthDamage: Stress damage, which primarily acts as a character's inverted SanityMeter. It can be applied through events or certain enemy attacks, like Swine Wretch vomit, which applies 10. Accumulate enough of it, and your character runs the risk of an Affliction that has the potential to hose the rest of your party. Accumulate too much, and your character suffers a heart attack, which puts them on Death's Door -- and if the character is already on Death's Door, they die instantly. While Health is restored immediately upon returning to town, Stress remains until it is healed at either the Chapel or the Tavern. Sending high-Stress characters into another dungeon run without providing them with some relief is a recipe for bad times.
* NoPartyLikeADonnerParty: When adventuring in the Warren, it's entirely possible to get large quantities of valuable food by using medicinal herbs on a swine dinner cart, which are full of ''butchered human corpses''. [[GameplayAndStorySegregation Shockingly, this doesn't stress the party at all.]]
* NoSelfBuffs: Camping skills that can target allies generally can't target the user.
* NoSell: The ''Shieldbreaker'' DLC introduces the "Aegis" effect ([[GratuitousLatin Latin for shield]]) which will block the next attack, but does not stop any accompanying effects, including blight and bleed. However, it is only available via combat skills to the eponymous character. (Even the Man-at-Arms does not possess it, in spite of using a much larger shield.) Other characters can only gain it by using the Aegis Scales, which are only dropped from the Snake enemies that only appear in Shieldbreaker's Nightmares, or in the rare random encounters after all of her Journal pages have been collected.

* HiddenEyes: ''Literally every person in the game''. Clearly an intended style choice for the game's artwork. The only characters with visible eyes are some of the monsters and the Gibbering Prophet, who has visible eyes due to ''[[EyeScream holding them in his hand.]]''

* {{Necromancer}}: The boss of the Ruins, [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin the Necromancer]].

* OurCentaursAreDifferent: They're fat, diseased, have a badly deformed arm and are porcine from the waist down, rather than equine.

** The lower the ambient light is, the quicker stress is gained.
* PunctuatedForEmphasis: A few of the Ancestor's quotes are quite aggressive in this fashion.

--->'''The Ancestor:''' [[spoiler:You still consider yourself an entity separate from the whole. But I know better. And I. Will. ''Show you.'']]

* TimedMission: Playing on Stygian difficulty (formerly named NewGamePlus) turns the whole game into one: The player has 86 in-game weeks to defeat the FinalBoss or they are issued a GameOver and their save file erased. Getting 12 heroes killed will do the same. If the player has the Crimson Court DLC in place, Stygian difficulty is replaced with Bloodmoon difficulty, which extends the time limit to 100 in-game weeks to accommodate the additional bosses.

** Even sane Heroes can fall subject to this if they develop a negative behavioral quirk, such as a fascination with the dark arts driving them to read unspeakable secrets written in BlackSpeech on tanned human skin or a fixation on food compelling someone to eat the rancid, decaying meat found on a dinner cart in the Warrens. This can lead to keyboard breaking moments such as when one of your heroes decides to open a locked item and triggers a trap when you had a key in your inventory.

** During early access, torchless runs were quite popular, as with the right party composition, the additional treasures gained outweighed any actual risks. The developers responded by introducing a small chance, whenever the party walks in total darkness, that one of the {{Bonus Boss}}es randomly appears and attacks the expedition.

* SigilSpam: The spiked arc "Iron Crown", shows up all over the place in the game. Firstly, it appears over a torch for the game's own icon, it is seen within the crest used for the Estate's coat-of-arms, it's going to appear over your heroes ''a lot'' to indicate them gaining stress or becoming afflicted, and the symbol or its silhouette appears in much more subtle places for much of the rest of the game or many of the heroes' comics. The name for it comes from an objective in the second map of the Darkest Dungeon, which has the same visual appear over it when activated.

** Several trailer of the game actually ends with the Narrator namedropping "the Darkest Dungeon".

* CuriousAsAMonkey: A hero with the Curious or Compulsive quirks has a high chance of putting his or her hands on a dungeon curio without being prompted because they want to see what it is, how it works, or what's inside. [[CuriosityIsACrapshoot That's never a good thing]] (especially if you have an Antiquarian, as you won't get Antiques and Rare Antiques from curios that anyone other than her specifically interacts with). Unlike any of the other "-mania" quirks, Curious and Compulsive don't have a specific curio type that the hero is fixated on; they'll muck around with literally ''everything''.

* CuriousAsAMonkey: A hero with the Curious or Compulsive quirks has a high chance of putting his or her hands on a dungeon curio without being prompted because they want to see what it is, how it works, or what's inside. [[CuriosityIsACrapshoot That's never a good thing]]. Unlike any of the other "-mania" quirks, Curious and Compulsive don't have a specific curio type that the hero is fixated on; they'll muck around with literally ''everything''.