Darkest Dungeon: The Crimson Court 175,000 Copies Sold, Future Plans

Red Hook Studios’ first expansion for Darkest Dungeon, The Crimson Court, is off to a great start: just several weeks after its release, the expansion boasts 175,000 copies sold. Upon reaching this arbitrary yet impressive milestone, the developers have outlined their plans for the nearby future. Have a look:

Courtyard quest 1 (Burn the Hives) being misleadingly long/difficult for level 0’s: There is now an embark warning letting you know this quest is not suitable for fresh recruits, and is longer than a usual/ no-firewood short quest. We wanted to get the new content in front of players as soon as possible, but unfortunately this resulted in some people feeling tricked into taking underpowered heroes into a rough dungeon. This should help a bit with that, letting you know that diving right in is up to you. It’s not a milk run quest, for sure…

Content gated by RNG-determined drops: We like the slow building of the infestation, culminating in an invitation drop/opportunity to challenge a Courtyard boss. However, our goal was not to lock all that bloodsucking goodness away from our players. To help move things along, last week, we added 1 invitation to the quest rewards of each previous Courtyard boss quest in order to provide players with a chance to sample the next epic dungeon whenever they want. Further invitations remain lootable from Gatekeeper mobs at High infestation levels, and are generally required to complete the quest. (The quests are designed to take more than 1 attempt to get through.)

Blood management and drop frequency: Related to the topic above, while we’ve tuned blood drop rates few times, we’re planning on adding a ‘Gather the Blood’ courtyard quest, which requires no Invitation, and will become a reliable, primary source of blood. Random drops from mobs will become less frequent, but this quest solution provides a) a reliable way to collect a supply of blood, and b) access to the courtyard content without an invitation. This change will go live later this week.

Chatty cursed and afflicted heroes: Last week, bark times, interaction pauses, and several other timing delays were shortened in an effort to sand down the rough edges. Additionally, we’re removing the party stoppages associated with Curse progression – you can expect this latter change later this week.

The Fanatic lacks incentive: The Fanatic is designed as a hunter boss – one that the party should fear. To raise the stakes (get it? hilarious) of his encounter, he will drop an valuable tonic, “The Cure”, that will clear the Crimson Curse from an affected hero! He’s also getting his loot tables punched up to add more incentive for enduring his roast.

We take your feedback, critiques, and criticisms seriously, and will continue to monitor your impressions and discussions. We love our game, and are committed to improving it with the community’s help.

PSN RELEASE: August 22nd!
One of the most common questions we have right now from the community is, ‘When will the DLC hit PSN?’ After reviewing the work that’s left to be done for bug tickets and support issues, and factoring in the time to get through certification and store prep, we are targeting August 22nd. This is a bit later than we originally intended, but it will result in the most stable and smooth release, which is ultimately the most important factor. August 22nd isn’t that far away and we are excited to bring the DLC to our PS4 and PS VITA players.

CHINESE and KOREAN LANGUAGE SUPPORT
We are excited to add Chinese and Korean language support to the game. We are in the process of harvesting the community translation contributions and then we’ll identify all the new strings that need translated. We will have a more in-depth update for this soon, and will try to give an idea of expected schedule for release of those languages.

IS DARKEST DUNGEON COMING TO OTHER PLATFORMS?
Many of you have been asking about Switch, Xbox, tablet, and such. The short answer is that yes, other platforms are planned for release. We can’t formally announce anything just yet, but news is not far away and we can’t wait to share with you!