Awesome / Darkest Dungeon

Many fall in the face of chaos... but not this one! Not today!

—The Ancestor

As a moments subpage, this page is Spoilers Off.

Gameplay

• Learning why the team setup is called “The Gatling Gun.”^note Vestal, Grave Robber, Highwayman, Highwayman.
• Somewhat understated, but when you upgrade your blacksmith you might hear: "Fan the flames, mold the metal; we are raising an army."
• Facing down a boss who is throwing everything they have at your Flagellant, leaving him at death's door throughout the whole battle. The Flagellant goes rapturous and refuses any last second healing. Then in the final round, with a bomb lying at his feet, he yells “It falls to me to bring you into the light!” and ends the battle with an exsanguinate critical hit. Doubles as Nightmare Fuel.
• The very INTRO of Darkest Dungeon is one for the game itself. Not only does it set the tone and setting of the game perfectly, but is an impressive pieces in its own right, visually, audibly, and in writing.
• If you play your cards right and you're really lucky, sometimes you can come out of an expedition with a net reduction in stress. Not only does this save a good amount of money destressing the heroes, it's also a crowning moment of badassery for them: they delved into the depths of madness and horror, and their response upon coming out again with packs crammed with loot is something in the vein of: "That was a fun little diversion!"
• When at Death's Door, any damage to the hero has a base 1-in-3 chance of being a mortal blow. You can mitigate this, but the deathblow chance can never go below 13%. Still, seeing a hero be such a Determinator so as to constantly defy death is amazing — even more so if they hold out to the battle's end. The game even acknowledges such a feat with an achievement.
• Any time you land a Critical Hit, usually accompanied by an amazing Badass Boast from the Ancestor.
  "A singular strike!"
  "The ground quakes!"
  "A decisive pummeling!"
  "Back to the pit!"
  • He also doesn't slouch when you kill an enemy.
    "Continue the onslaught! Destroy. Them. All."
    "These nightmarish creatures can be felled! They can be beaten!"
    "Seize this momentum! Push on to the task's end!"
  • There's also the bits of commentary when you defeat a large enemy.
    "The bigger the beast, the greater the glory!"
    "Their cursed champion falls!"
    "Monstrous size has no intrinsic merit, unless inordinate exsanguination be considered a virtue."
  • Landing a critical hit that kills an enemy has Wayne June deliver an especially badass one-liner.
    "Obliterated!"
    "Annihilated!"
    "Destroyed!"
  • Even crit heals and buffs can be accompanied with their own unique boasts.
    (Upon being buffed) "A time to perform beyond one's limits!"
    (Upon performing a crit heal) "The flesh. Is. KNIT!"
• Any time an adventurer's resolve is tested and they come out Virtuous. These guys have seen horrors unimagined, have battled with the stress of what they've seen, and they've come out on the other side resolute in their path. This also awes their companions, relieving some of their stress.
  • Courageous heroes not only become resistant to stress, they occasionally inspire the rest of the party to keep fighting, relieving their stress as well.
    "A moment of valor shines brightest against a backdrop of despair."
  • Focused heroes double down on finishing the battle quickly, and they receive a large accuracy and crit boost that can be shared with the party.
    "A moment of clarity in the eye of the storm."
  • Powerful heroes direct their stress into an Unstoppable Rage that is expressed in a large damage boost. This also can be shared with the party.
    "Anger is power — unleash it!"
  • Stalwart heroes get an increased PROT boost and Deathblow resist, and from time to time relieve their own stress — they find the strength in them to repeatedly defy death and madness.
    "Many fall in the face of chaos... but not this one! Not today!"
  • Vigorous heroes gain a large SPD and DODGE boost on top of healing themselves from time to time, letting them avoid dangerous blows and keep fighting in pinches.
    "Adversities can foster hope, and resilience!"
• Speaking of critical hits, the heroes themselves get in some awesome one-liners of their own.
  Abomination: I have clawed back my freedom from worse than you!
  Arbalest: Hell's fire I'm good!
  Bounty Hunter: Called your bluff, friend.
  Crusader: Thou art judged!
  Hellion: I will FEAST on your HEART!
  Houndmaster: Mercy is for the courts!
  Leper: The tide rises. And the tide falls.
  Man-at-Arms: This line will not break!
  Occultist: Behold! The unquenchable fire of the stars!
  Plague Doctor: One more cadaver for the cart.
  Vestal: You are DAMNED!
  Flagellant: Flee from the holy bearer, you impious fiends!
• As if these boosts weren't enough, there's also the quotes heroes drop when Virtuous.
  Courageous Bounty Hunter: 'Tis tough... not tough enough.
  Focused Man-At-Arms: I am one with my mace! I am one with my shield!
  Powerful Grave Robber: Enough lolly-gagging. Now I aim for the heart.
  Stalwart Jester: I care not. And so I am immortal.
  Vigorous Leper: The reaper is well known to me. I do not fear him.
• Gaining a virtue in battle is a CMOA in its own right due to it being Heroic Second Wind combined with Heroic Willpower, but it is doubly awesome if it happens during the Drowned Crew fight. They use an anchor attack to force the heroes to feel what the Crew did as they were drowned, causing said heroes to gain stress. If the hero it targets gains a virtue, they shatter the anchor, and all attempts to use it on them after that will fail. It also heals 5 stress for the rest of the party.
  Virtuous Hero: I will not join your doom!
• Getting out of any dungeon with a net loss in stress. Your heroes faced unholy undead and blasphemous abominations, destroyed them with impunity, and found the experience therapeutic.
• The slow death. Unforeseen. Unforgiving.
• It may be a rare event, but once in a long while, one of your heroes will return from the dead. Of the three quotes spoken by the narrator, one speaks volumes of how badass they are to have pulled that off.
  Back across the Styx - Boatman be damned!
• The Wolves at the Door event is easily the hamlet's Darkest Hour when it gets assaulted by the Brigands. Your heroes are not on an expedition to clear out the surrounding horrors, they're sent to defend their new home. The combat music is the unique "Town in Chaos" track to drive home that it's the hamlet's Last Stand, and winning is a really gratifying feeling.
• Successfully keeping Reynauld and Dismas, the first two heroes you get at the beginning of a new save, alive all the way up until the game's completion, especially if you send them to fight the Final Boss and have them be the only two who walk out of it alive. It's not an easy feat, but it's definitely something to feel proud of. The game even gives you an achievement for doing so.
  On the old road we found our redemption.
  • As mentioned below, ONLY sending in Reynauld and Dismas to avoid triggering Come Unto Your Maker: a Crusader/Highwayman build like that can actually work surprisingly well, with Reynauld using Battle Heal and Inspiring Cry to keep the two alive, whilst Dismas uses Duelist's Advance and Point Blank Shot (occasionally with Wicked Slice) to bring the smackdown. Throw in about several dozen Aegis Scales to be on the safe side, and The Heart Of The World goes down against a walking tin can and someone only armed with a knife and pistol.
• In regards to the Ancestor, where it is revealed in the final flashback in Crimson Court DLC that he managed to kill/incapacitate the Countess with just a knife, all by himself. At that point, the Ancestor is a young aristocrat with no experience in the Eldritch, so this is mighty impressive.
• The ending. Sure, you only managed to knock out the Eldritch Abomination that claims to have created all life on the planet as a whim... but you knocked it out until the next moron decides to awaken it again, and it's implied that you kill yourself to remain its guardian forever despite knowing the agony it puts you through. Nice work, chum.
  • It's implied in the ending that not only do you knock out the Heart, but that in committing suicide, the Heir traps it in a Stable Time Loop to prevent it from ever escaping.
    • It's actually implied in the New Game Plus mode that your player character a ghost that mentions how History Repeats — the implication being that the player actually plays TWO Heirs, with the Second Heir essentially a Legacy Character taking up the First Heir's duty to guard against The Heart Of The World, and the first Heir's spirit staying around to help guide the Second Heir.
• Some of the heroes' quotes when you hover over them for sacrifice to the final boss. Some of them directly challenge and mock the Eldritch Abomination before you, while others freely offer themselves for the good of their allies, others simply accept your decision and face it head-on, and some even long for it.
  Crusader: Unholy foulness! I will take you with me!
  Highwayman: No way out. Hmph, let's do this.
  Leper: Spare the others, I am ready.
  Bounty Hunter: ...hm.
  Hellion: Send me to Hell then! AAAKYLORAAAHHH!
  Occultist: Finally, the face of my tormentor. Come, then.
  Man-at-Arms: I go with a clear conscience. I've given my all.
  Antiquarian: So I'm the final antique, yet nothing will be around to collect...
  Abomination: Whatever awaits, it cannot be worse than what I've endured.
  Musketeer: All for one, and one for all!
  Houndmaster: Steady, girl. If we're called, we answer.
  Flagellant: I've waited long for this! DON'T TAKE IT FROM ME.
  Shieldbreaker: Another nightmare. A fitting audience for my last dance.
• Somebody managed to beat the final boss... without anyone dying. Yes, that's right, he stacked enough buffs and dealt such a powerful blow that it never got to use the otherwise guaranteed One-Hit Kill "Come Unto Your Maker". The comments sell the WOW factor:
  Commenter #1: You sir/madam, have stared into the abyss and made the abyss turn away in fear and cry.
  Commenter #2: "After all the bloodshed, the chaos, the friends we've lost along the way, we stand here at the gates of hell itself, and here we stop the carnage. Because today, there will not be any death. Today, there will not be any sadness. Today, there will be no mourning, no terror, no fleeing. Because on this day there is but one noise, drifting through the air and into my diseased body's ears through my mask of steel. And it is rain in the forest."
  Commenter #3: You stared into the face of a god, a creator and destroyer. You looked him in the eyes that caused minds to break and souls to rend, and you found him... lacking.
  Commenter #4: "And ye, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for I am pissed off, high as fuck, and swinging a man-sized blade of FUCK YOU!"
  Commenter #5: To defeat the abyss, one must get really angry and snort a lot of drugs.
  Commenter #6: damn son, you didn't just stare into the abyss, you leered at it through a cold steel mask with the diseased eyes of a man with nothing left to lose, and cleaved it in twain with one empowered swing of a mortal blade.
  Commenter #7: (speaking from the Ancestor's P.O.V.) You know what? Normally I would say "THE GROUND QUAKES" but HOLY FUCK MAN, I'M PRETTY SURE YOU JUST BROKE [THE] UNIVERSE IN HALF WITH THAT CHOP 0_0
  Commenter #8: It had all come down to this. The final battle. The journey to this point had been long and grueling, with many friends and allies having fallen in their efforts. Now the last group of would be heroes marched into the Darkest Dungeon, all having resigned themselves to the fate that they might not survive. 3 doctors and a leper, seemingly doomed for failure now stood at the brink, having uncovered the truth about the Ancestor, about how he sacrificed his own humanity for power beyond imagination. Here they stood, the leper barely able to stand from his grievous wounds, only the swirling fumes of whatever concoctions the doctors were using on him and his own willpower and anger keeping him up as the Heart of Darkness pulsed steadily before them. With a guttural roar, the leper swung at the foul heart with all of his might. The 3 doctors watched in awe and surprise as the leper's swing nearly split the Heart in two, Eldritch blood splashing onto the cold stones of the manor floor and onto the leper. Standing straight for the first time in a while, the leper closed his eyes and smiled a bit at what the sound of the blood hitting the floor reminded him of. "Rain in the forest."
  Commenter #9: (speaking from the Heart of Darkness's P.O.V.) What... what is this power?! WHO THE F*** ARE THESE PEOPLE?! SCREW THIS I'M OUT, KEEP THE DAMN MANOR!
  Commenter #10: I am imagining a truly enraged Leper being constantly injected and fed potions to make him stronger for ten minutes as the Eldrich horror observes in horror. Then the hulk figure that is the newly buffed Leper swinging down at it as if he was smashing an orange.
  Commenter #11: this blade can split in two a diety, and the wall behind, and the ocean below...
  Commenter #12: imagine being an eldritch god and dying to a diseased boi and his harem of failed medical students
  • To make it better, he specifically set out to do this after the developers themselves told him it was impossible to defeat the Heart of Darkness without anyone dying. Meaning he proved the makers of the game wrong.
  • The same guy then went on to beat the final boss again... with 4 Antiquarians. The class that the game itself goes out of its way to tell you is not well-suited for direct combat. At this point, the Heart of Darkness may not want to bother with waking up again. Ever.
  • Another guy tried to replicate the no-death run, and things took a turn for the weird. Somehow, nobody died.
  • There is another way to avoid triggering Come Unto Your Maker... Bringing only two heroes to the final battle.^note The Final Boss only uses Come Unto Your Maker if your party has 4 members at the first threshold, and 3 members at the second threshold. Someone did this successfully. It's also possible to do this using only Reynauld and Dismas.
    • It's even possible to do this with just Dismas.
  • After the Color of Madness update, it's actually possible to kill The Heart of Darkness in literally ONE ATTACK. Best part is the Jester's comment afterward.
    Jester: Truly amusing.
    • As with the first no-death boss fight, this one has its own share of comments both awesome and funny:
      Commenter #1: local guitarist kills ancient evil by bowing
      Commenter #2: That's what you call a great concert. Especially the drugged performer part.
      Commenter #3: "In the end, he will be laughing, still..." Laughing at the Heart of Darkness it seems.
      Commenter #4: Rain in the forest 2 confirmed by Fourtwoflow
      Commenter #5: BEHOLD THE ALPHA AND OME- never mind he's dead
      Commenter #6: Let's put a smile on that face!
      Commenter #7: So what you're saying is, give a musician proper backing and a ton of drugs of dubious origin and he'll gain the power to slay gods? Seems legit.
      Commenter #8: BEGONETHOT
      Commenter #9: Homeless Guitarist Breaks Heart With Masterful Performance
      Commenter #10: Breaking news: Retired veteran screams at doctors while clown kills God
      Commenter #11: " O O F "-Heart of Darkness, probably
      Commenter #12: The greatest joke of all
      Commenter #13: Who would win? The Very Being Of Despair And Chaos or Some Clown With Space Meth
      Commenter #14: "Be you angels?" "Nay! We are but MEN!"
      Commenter #15: Absolutely mental Jester inhales 5 shard dusts and one-shots eldritch god.
      Commenter #16: (speaking from the Jester's P.O.V.) "Your vibes are atrocious" 200 damage crit

• There are plenty of epic moments during the Butcher's Circus, which are only taken up to eleven by the Ancestor’s quotes.
  • When there are two characters left, one from each side, who BOTH have the “Last Man Standing” buff that gives them death's door resistance, a dodge bonus, and a damage bonus, the ancestor drops this line:
  "One. Must. Fall!"
  • Doubles as a Funny Moment, but there’s glory to be found in the line that gets said when your opponent surrenders.
  Their resolve is broken! You have won!