Darkest Dungeon Patch Makes Brigand Vvulf Less Gittish

Brigand Vvulf can flipping well do one. If you, like me, have been playing a fair bit of Darkest Dungeon [official site] since it added town events, you've likely run into that horrible raiding git. You've likely had him and his pals barrel into your hamlet and light it up then lost a mercenary or two figuring out how the encounter works. You've likely had him return a few weeks later to do it again, highlighting the worst parts of Darkest Dungeon. Good news: as of last night's update, Vvulf is now less irritating.

If it's been a while since you've raided the Darkest Dungeon, I'll explain. Town events are random little happenings, mostly small bonuses like free medical treatments or bonus XP and damage in a certain dungeon. There's also a chance that Brigand Vvulf will come a-rampaging. He brings a level 6 mission set in your own hamlet, with obstacles aplenty, bandits capable of proper nasty crits, and Vvulf himself at the end with wicked bombs. He's not impossible (I think I beat him on my third go? fourth?) but it's a nasty surprise while you figure out how the mission works. Oh sure you could skip the mission but then Vvulf and his pals would raze two random building upgrades. Gits.

Vvulf's event came around too frequently. That is now turned down. Vvulf and pals could come back later even if you killed Vvulf. That is now fixed. You couldn't retreat from the Vvulf fight without abandoning the whole mission. That's now changed.

The mission was a frustrating stumbling block for me for a while. It invoked the worst part of Darkest Dungeon, the boring grind to rebuild, restaff, and relevel after disaster strikes. That stuff's not a challenge, just tedious busywork. Stanters has written about that a bit.

Mind you, I've no sympathy for high-level players who found Wolves at the Door a good mission for farming. You gits and your fancy equipment, why do you even need more!

Oh, and another nice change in this update: item and skill descriptions now have a touch of colour coding for keywords like Trap, Bleed, Debuff, Bleed, and so on. A little extra legibility is hunky-dory.

Anyway! The party I've been having the most fun with lately is a frontline of two Highwaymen plus a Jester or Grave Robber all leap-frogging each other with skills like Duelist's Advance, Finale, and Lunge. A fluid frontline lets them bypass placement restrictions on some powerful skills, and it's nice to not care at all about having heroes in the 'wrong' position. Good stuff. What are you into at the moment, gang?