Darkest Dungeon “Fiends & Frenzy” Update Released

Updates to both the official website and the Steam announcements section alert us to the availability of a new “Fiends & Frenzy” patch for Darkest Dungeon that adds “new heroes, new bosses, new loot, and more!” to the turn-based, side-scrolling RPG. The former shares some bite-size info, but the latter goes for the full patch notes and later hotfixes, so I’ll quote from that:

Build 8855
New Features

• New Hero Class! Man-At-Arms
• New Hero Class! Arbalest
• New Ruins Boss! Gibbering Prophet
• New Warens Boss! Formless Flesh
• New Weald Boss! Brigand Cannon
• New Loot: The Ancestor’s Trinket set. Ultra-rare items once held by the Ancestor himself – be warned, some of these trinkets are only found in the pitch dark!
• New Building! Ancestor’s Statue: Click the statue to open the Ancestor’s Memoirs – a record of all cutscenes and boss backstories!
• Heart Attacks! Don’t let your heroes get too stressed. If your stress bar fills again past affliction…it’s over.
• Sell your junk! In the Trinket Inventory, hold shift to see sell back value, shift+click to sell trinkets
• Crit-heals! Heal, critically!
• Tons of Party Names as created by Kickstarter and Humble backers!

UI Improvements Hamlet

• Added z-depth to the Hamlet, improved building menu interaction, revised all times of day
• Graveyard: Added a background and new Caretaker pose; Tombstones change to reflect resolve level at time of death, UI improvements, scrollbar
• Activity Log: UI improvements for easier ‘at a glance’ parsing of the activity log, scrollbars
• Trinket inventory now supports sorting by class restriction and rarity, and a scrollbar
• (Unequip all Trinkets) button for quick Trinket wiping
• Updated art on remaining incomplete trinkets
• Quest Select: Approved party names from player survey
• Updated roster sorting buttons’ colors to reduce visual noise
• Class sort now sorts by preferred position

Dungeon

• Added hotkey ( c ) to bring up/dismiss character panel
• Manual torch snuffing for more control of lighting level (mouse over torch for instructions)
• HP bar animation when healing for greater visual feedback
• Additional map controls and logic (-/= or -/+ on numpad to control map zoom)
• Map now follows the party, remembers its zoom setting after scouting

Misc

• Clarified presentation of PROT (protection) in some places. PROT starts as a % which gets multiplied by the hero or monster’s Max HP. This gives a damage mitigation (armor points) number. For example, 20% PROT x 30 HP = 6 Protection pts. Each hit that lands will have 6 points absorbed before any damage gets through. Additional future work expected.
• (Marked) no longer referred to as (tagged) in some tooltips
• Improved various menus and icons in the game
• New / unique trinket art for trinkets with missing art

Gameplay / Balancing Improvements

• Darkness is now more deadly: reduced player crit bonus in low light, slightly increased chance of players being surprised in low light, increased stress damage in low light, slightly increased monster dmg in zero light, slightly reduced gold bonus in low light
• Adjusted Dungeon / Region leveling to fit new boss plot quests
• Max upgraded Roster size increased – this may be temporary!
• Trinkets: Tuning of Trinket award rates and rarities
• Trinkets: Balancing/redesign pass on many Trinkets
• I’m stuffed! Limit added to Food consumption to reduce over-eating exploit
• Plague Doctor: increased Blight Resistance
• Bounty Hunter – Hook and Slice is now reworked as a rank 3 / 4 targeting bleed attack
• Bounty Hunter – Slight nerf to Finish Him damage bonuses on the Stun Killer effect
• Leper – Revenge removed ACC penalty and slightly reduced CRIT bonuses
• Leper – Intimidate: reworked the skill to be a strong debuff skill with some damage, affects ranks 1/2 together
• Reduced Crit-heal percentage
• Reduced companion stress from Death’s Door
• Slightly reduced average crit damage from monsters
• All L3/L5 monsters have slightly increased HP which may make for slightly longer fights / increased value of buffs and debuffs.
• Many size 2 monsters have more HP (Carrion Eater, Swinetaur, Unclean Giant)
• Crone: now harder to hit, increased Crone’s Curse debuff and added extra target possibilities to her debuff attacks
• Swinetaur can now do running attacks from ranks 2+ instead of 3+. Ole!
• Monster Brains – improvements to default brains to make somewhat more deadly as monsters level up
• Monster Brains – more monsters have their own brains (much more to come)
• Original bosses (Necromancer, Hag, Swine Prince) now have nastier behaviors as they level up
• (Heal Received) buff now on certain Skills and Trinkets
• And probably a few secret things…

General Bug Fixes

• Activity Log entry cutoff issue
• Activity Log names update when heroes are renamed
• Torch disabled during ambushes with tooltip explanation
• Health bar showing up on second quest bug
• Profile reposition bug on Main Menu
• Raid Results UI layout fixes
• Non check-marked room bug
• Miscellaneous string edits
• Fixed AOE (+) positioning
• Fixed Plague Doctor camping pose
• Non-loading screen narration interrupting loading screen bug
• Swine Prince targeting fix
• Battle camera bug, getting stuck at the end of a round
• Removed background barks on Provisions screen
• Blood splatter no longer appears on misses and dodges
• Crash fix when death and Affliction check occur simultaneously by trap
• Narration queuing fixes
• Traps not appearing when spawned in a corridor previously visited
• Prevent surprises from occurring in tiles previously scouted or visited
• And more.!