#hints and tips

This Pride Month, I’ll be celebrating some LGBTQIA books that I’m highly anticipating reading. Some have been out for a while, and some haven’t been released yet. I’ve included them here, because I am SUPER excited to read them. As always, check Goodreads, Amazon, Kobo or a reliable book blog for Trigger Warnings. While I like to celebrate #LGBT books all year round, I feel like #PrideMonth is…

Then here is a basic walkthrough on how to break the game wide open because the affinity system is laughably terrible and super easy to abuse/be abused by.

The game is basically predicated entirely on being able to control whether or not your people can stand each other. Health? Nope, ignore it. Stress? Irrelevant. Resource management? Did you think this was a tactical game? No, this is Darkest Dungeon Dating Simulator.

So buckle up, lubricate, and let’s get in it.

Step One: Make friends with the plague doctor, she will be on every mission.

Step Two: No, seriously. Unless you want to play a run on Nightmare Mode difficulty, you have to have her. She heals and strips conditions with the same skill, and her Resistance buff dings down your stress once it’s mastered. With those two skills you have a one-girl control

Step Three: Do literally anything that boosts the largest amount of affinity regardless of its effect on your game. You get so many items just passively from necessary battles that between combat items which do not take your turn to use, and your salty Plague Waifu, you will never have to worry about health.

Step Four: Make sure you equip those Combat Items. Prioritize anything that heals, ideally on high-speed characters. In addition, a stack of laudanum on someone goes a long way towards spot healing stress to keep your characters from having a meltdown and flagellating 90% of their skin off on the fly.

Step Five: Playing Cards. Collect Them. Seriously, they are your best friend. At inns they will trigger about a half-dozen rapid-fire affinity events back to back, with a high chance of positive gains. So when you get to an inn, immediately purchase every playing card deck the provisioner has, then use them all at once. Don’t worry, if you get bad luck and get a bunch of negative affinity, you can reload your save and you’ll be back at the inn without having spent anything and you can try again! Rinse and repeat til your wagon crew is a gambling addicted polycule.

Things to remember

Healing Salve is a good default Combat Item equip for everyone but if you don’t have enough then just equip whatever is the most relevant condition-stripping healing item for the zone you’re in (Salve for the Sprawl, Bandages for anywhere, etc...)

Have one person with Laudanum. A Meltdown will ruin affinity.

Do not hoard items. Use them. Suckle at the teat of the item god because they are a generous being that lactates a pure stream resources straight into your open craw.

The map when you load into a zone has green roads and broken-up blue roads. Green is good. Blue is bad. That’s all you really need to know. Unless there’s something at the end of a Blue road that you absolutely need, like a quest objective, avoid them at all costs. Fewer fights are always better.

Hospitals cure bad quirks. Save your gold for this and affinity items. The negative quirks in this are absolutely devastating and many of them will rob you of a turn.

Yes!!! Those pictures can be so frustrating!! Especially when Leela makes you play (and win!!) TWO games to get Megan’s picture from her. Lol. I’ll add screenshots under the cut for anyone who wants to see what works for me. Here’s what I do to get the pictures Rachel will accept:

1. Center the subject. You have to use both zoom and pan to do this and there are a couple where you can’t really center (Rachel especially) but get as close as you can

2. Make sure you don’t take it while they’re talking! I’m always super slow so they talk a couple of times while I’m trying to get a picture, but I just use that as extra time to get the pan/zoom how I want it.

3. Don’t cut off any part of the head! Anything at the bottom of the picture seems to be fine to cut off, but cut off any hair or any hand out to the side (Corine!!) and Rachel will make you retake it. This seems to be especially true with Megan’s picture (of a picture lol)

4. For Megan’s picture: zoom very slowly (click by click) until you can’t see any table. Pan so that she’s in the center and then make sure you can see ALL of her hair by panning up (is it down? now I’m second guessing myself). You may have to mess with the zoom a little bit here to make sure there’s no table again. It takes a second, but you’ll get it!

5. For Mel’s picture you don’t have to pan or zoom! Just click it! I usually take hers first so I have a reference of how much to zoom/pan for the other pictures.

That’s all I can think of right now. I hope it helps!!

Screenshots under the cut

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