#DD2 fanatic

[angrybatart]

Welcome to Unfinished Hell!

Pull up a chair, have a cookie and/or beverage of choice or two, and look at more fucking wips that I honestly only have the energy to post right now. BUT I am trying to finish or redo a few.

My side of that art trade. I plan to redo it because....well....I REALLY NEED TO STOP DRAWING CHARACTERS HOLDING MUGS LIKE THEY'RE HOLDING A PINT OF BEER.

(Doesn't help that I've yet to play Stardew Valley...but asking my sibling helps.)

Two more Fanatic doodles before I decided I was done doodling them. For now.

And the last short comic I started before I got sick. Definitely going to finish this when I can. I think I just need a short break from drawing. Also....holiday season...bleagh...

[the-punforgiven]

I'm too tired rn to go back and double check but it just occurred to me that Crusader Darkestdungeon, despite being deeply affiliated with The Church, seems to actively go out of his way to not adorn himself with the symbolism of the holy light the way other religious characters such as Vestal and Fanatic do

As far as I can recall, without going and sorting through all the sprites too hard, I don't think you see the symbol on his surcoat like, anywhere else, which I think is kind of interesting from a lore perspective

Because like, the primary religious symbol in Darkest Dungeon is that circle guarded by lines, there's some variation but it's everywhere

The Fanatic, by contrast, has a similar religious symbol, but his is barbed rather than shielded, which makes sense given his whole deal

But like, this seems to indicate that the primary symbol of the church is some sort of embellished circle, (which iirc was confirmed by the developers to represent the mind, the lines around it both shielding and possibly caging it, which obviously plays along with the Iron Crown but also really locks in well with the Fanatic's whole vibe)

Which makes it all the more interesting that in both his dd1 and dd2 forms, Reynauld just... doesn't wear any

Like... sir

Where are you getting a cross from?

From my cursory google search the closest symbol I can find on his person is this banner here (though I know his other banners have different designs, I haven't gotten around to looking at them yet lol)

But even then, this one still leans way, way heavier on the crucifix imagery than the typical symbology of the church, which I find to be a very curious discrepancy

[darnestdungeon]

Hello! Hope it's not a bother, but would it be possible to get 3D renders of the enemies from DD2? I know the devs made a Google folder of posed renders but I'd love some proper image reference of them all considering how detailed their models are.

No pressure! Thanks for reading.

Hi there, sorry for the late reply! If you don’t mind, could you share the link to this folder of posed references you mentioned? I feel like this would be helpful for those who never heard of it! I’m not sure if this is something the devs shared on the dd discord, I’ve left the server months ago after one too many bad moderation incidents– which didn’t even involve me, I just lurked and felt bad watching it all.

About your request, I’m afraid I won’t be able to do it– someone else had already asked for dd2 enemy refs two years ago and my answer was the same, there are just way too many models. On the wiki, I just counted 74 enemies (including variations like knight/fallen templar) and bosses (end of confession + warlord), and there will still be more added on the upcoming kingdoms free dlc. 

This is just way too many for just one person to handle, it already took ages to render all the 12 heroes available at the time, the enemies would take even longer due to their drastically different sizes, I’d have to adjust the camera position and keyframes for each of them every time, slowing down even more the already slow rendering process, not to mention the effort of setting up the models in blender with their 2 textures (base color and shadows/lineart).

Another complicating factor: extracting the game assets have become unreliable lately due to some backend changes in Unity, the software dd2 was made in, which messed up a bit AssetStudioGui, the software I had been using to extract assets. For instance, I recently tried to get assets from another game made in Unity (The Pale Beyond) and kept getting errors through the extraction process, in the end there were a lot of missing assets, I had to edit a couple myself to put them in the game’s wiki. This is a great game btw but I cannot rec it much due to how miserable the animal deaths made me feel (rip entire penguin colony, I’m a monster).

Now, truth be told, none of the above reasons would impede me if I really really wanted to do it. Heck, making all those dd1 gifs took way more effort and time than rendering all the dd2 hero refs combined but I still pushed through it because I love dd1. I just don’t feel the same passion and drive about dd2 as a whole. I don’t enjoy the gameplay loop, I don’t like the backstories, I don’t appreciate the inconsistencies, like, Antiquarian was deemed “too evil” to come back as a hero, as said by the devs during a live, then turns out Flagellant was the one torturing Vestal but he gets a free pass? And he comes back as a half-rotten walking corpse? As our ally? While we have to kill other half-rotten walking corpses which aren’t obviously evil and by all means could just be attacking back in self defense (widow and woodsman)? See, I have no big qualms with any of these claims individually (sure, let Flagellant and Vestal put the past behind and get amorous, go nuts), but add them all together in the same game and it starts to feel like an inconsistent mess. 

Also, why did time only seemed to pass for Flagellant? It would be so cool if all the heroes had this crazy treatment, like Crusader coming back as a corrupted Tangle soldier, Vestal (or Runaway for the matter) being a former fanatic cult member, Highwayman as a gaunt, like a collected head that somehow survived and escaped and so on. It just feels odd to me that only one hero came back wrong, you know what I mean?

But oh well, none of this matter to me anymore. I just don’t feel like making dd2 renders for the time being, hope this explains!

[gefdreamsofthesea]

I checked the Dragon's Dogma 2 tag and the algorithm or whatever thinks my tumblr is a top DD2 tumblr which is funny because I'm actually buying Unicorn Overlord instead.

Maybe I'll buy DD2 if payday is good (via Fanatical for a discount). It looks like a great game but there's no way I'm dropping over $100 CAD on it.

[coffee-in-veins]

The Character Bingo for Damian👀? Also, thoughts on the redesign?

thank you for the ask!

i really should save drafts of those, when will i learn...

here's Damian's dd1 bingo:

frankly, i didn't think much about flagellants since i rarely used them in dd1 the game. i thought about Damian since my dear friend liked him, and he even got a supportive character role in RRR since i can easily see him hunting Bloodsuckers with single-minded religious zeal. he makes a nice foil for a decent amount of folk - Rey, Junia and Baldwin for their religiousness, Tardif for their inability to comprehend their own feeling, Sarmenti for singlemindedness. there's a lot one can play with, genuinely. i like the concept.

in-game, my biggest issue was that my flagellants always failed their very first death door checks despite their supposed high rez (hell, they had martyr's seal and it didn't flipping help in the slightest!), so i just sighed and resolved to a bunch of hwms and jesters for all my bleeding needs.

anyway, here's the same bingo for dd2:

hope it explains a lot, including my attitude towards the redesign. please bear in mind, i don't own the game (and now i doubt that i will unless it gets a nifty sale.. but i'm derailing here), so my attitude is based on text descriptions and three screenshots i've seen.

but if we want to be technical:

as i mentioned above, my flagellants died more than any other class (save for maybe vestals because i didn't play with occ as healers), so seeing literal Death chasing him is frankly hilarious;

i hate zombie characters when they are played as straightforward zombies. if they are more or less creative (fungal artillery my beloved - the yell i let out when i realized what exactly was going on with this thing was and still is priceless), then they get a pass, but you can't get any more zombie-y than a mummified guy who "refuses to die because of his will";

also the snobbery of that statement. i get that it was a magazine interview but just... others are pussies, i suppose, if they fail death check and die? wonder what does it make a non-candlefed flagellant when he inevitably bites an L and dies...

also WE ARE KILLING DEATH; no, for reals. it's Death. not a monster. not some eldritch being. not corporeal demon. DEATH. the literal aspect of it. how? why? since when it's a thing?? we are the motley crew of fuckups and social rejects; yes, they (supposedly) stopped The Heart of Darkness in DD1, but there it was more of the benefit of the estate and the looping nature of the land surrounding the titular Darkest Dungeon than anything, with a dash of Sleeper's time fuckupery and the Heir heavily implied to be cursed to keep the loop going and the Heart sleeping. and then again - you are supposed to lose a minimum of two heroes in that fight. are we supposed to perma-lose someone "Come Unto Thy Maker" style each time we fight Death? I highly doubt it, because Damian will become a liability quicker than he'd appear on a character select screen; here we are supplexing literal "i'm in my horsegirl phase" Thanatos AS A ROAD MINIBOSS; let's see what road minibosses are: a canon, a greedy woman with PTSD from her former expeditions, a pack of bandits and LITERAL DEATH; am I the only one who sees a "what the fuck are stakes" problem, here...?

also also seeing a fanatically zealous character having a move to desecrate corpses/graves is very odd, imo. yes, Baldwin/Leper has one too in dd2 - but in dd2 he is canonically no longer religious;

this is more of my quirk of trying to biologically explain eldritch fuckupery - but if Damian has coherent lines in DD2, this is a fuckup on RH part. he has no lips. he physically cannot speak as a human would, since lips and cheeks are a big part of how we form sounds to make words. if he groans, moans and wheezes only - my bad, you can ignore this point completely;

he no longer has his tooth gap. why? why, RH, why? his CC set trinket is literally Chipped Tooth. his background comic highlights him losing it. and yet his "rotting body" somehow got dental work and got it back...?

I dunno man. much like DD2 in general, i want to love it, i genuinely do, but it feels like... how do i put it. imagine amazon "hollywoodifying" DD1 with absurd stakes and literal "we're the only one who can stop the end of the world with our street magic" and making a sequel based on that and... i just dunno. i want to give it the benefit of the doubt, but the more i see, the less hope i have. huh. much like the game itself does, i suppose. it was a dd2 joke. an attempt to make one, at least.

sorry to end on such a downer note ^^' i hope you can enjoy dd2. i genuinely hope you can, i'll envy you in the best of ways. the game looks amazing and sounds decent, and i wish i didn't detest the rest of it. looking at you, gatcha.

and we end up on another rant of mine about dd2... sorry ^^' i'll try to control myself next time.

[themountaincrew]

Oh no... I have taken good long look at the list of Characters that are returning for DD2 and it not much. A lot of our old friends have all disappeared, considering the state of the World slowly crumbling into oblivion, they are either in realy deep trouble, death or worse.

Here is list of those who returned, who disappeared and my speculations what happened to them.

(Warning: might contain spoilers)

Abomination – Disappeared, fate unknown. Rehappens he finally lost the final vestiges of his humanity and beast within has taken over.

Antiquarian – With the collapse of society, many gangs of pillagers now roam the world. The Antiquarian went from a self-interested Nominal Hero driven by Greed to a remorseless bandit leader preying on people even as the world slips into madness.

Arbalest – Disappeared, fate unknown. I have no idea what might have happened to them.

Bounty Hunter – Returns, but now work a mercenary and will only travel with you for one region.

Crusader – Reynauld, our Crusader Boi and Best Friend of Dismas is missing. While his fate is unknow there is a fan theory that says that the Dreaming General, Leader of the Lost Battalion and the Boss of The Tangle, is Reynauld, which either is a future version of him or alternate version of him that never joined Dismas and Heiress at the Hamlet. Turn into a sleeping corpse by twisted plant life of The Tangle and tormented by endless nightmare from which he unable to awake up from, worse the plants that has him in grip want to make your heroes join Dreaming General/Reynauld within his nightmare plagued dreams.

Grave Robber – Grave Robber returns, blades ready.

Hellion – Our wild child is also back.

Highwayman – Dismas, our favorite grumpy Highwayman returns.

Houndmaster – Houndmaster and his dog also disappeared. There is enemy that part of the Pillagers called the Hatchetman that look like our Houndmaster and usually team up with an animal-type enemy called a Mongrel. Could this be our Law Keeper and his loyal hound?

Jetter – The crazy clown is back and ready to have last laugh.

Leper – Fromer king join the party once again.

Man-at-Arms – I hope that our Man-at-Arms can find his adopted daughter.

Musketeer – Disappeared, fate unknown. I have no idea what might have happened to them.

Occultist – Our expert in occult and eldritch knowledge returns.

Plague Doctor – The Doctor is back in house with few new tricks.

Vestal – Disappeared, fate unknown. I have no idea what might have happened to them.

Flagellant – Disappeared, fate unknown. I think that he gone complete mad and joined the Fanatics in burn down cities and libraries.   

Shieldbreaker – Disappeared, fate unknown. Maybe those horrible nightmare snakes finally caught her?

And finally:

Runaway – New to the cast, and what little pyromaniac she is.

Damn that's a long list! I don't necessarily agree with every entry, for myself, but we also haven't seen all the content for DD2 yet, so maybe the abomination could pop back up, maybe we'll find the flagelant or the arbalest, there's a lot that could happen! :D I might stay quiet about the heroes we haven't seen yet, to avoid having to retroactively rewrite their lore once it comes out. XD

[ophyfevre]

Please accept Genderbent Immolatist, one of the few drawings i put actual effort into it

[pawacelsus]

actually quick conscious thought before I devolve back into my nonsensical ramblings:

I’d love to see Junia return in dd2, but as a non-religious hero. Obviously I suspect she’ll probably come back as an enemy much like a certain someone, but I think it would be neat to see that religion holds no sway anymore. Either it’s crazed fanatics, or people clinging to hope without any power in it. None of the character’s we’ve seen so far have performed the miracles of dd1 with any faith. No Reynauld, no Damian, none of that. Everything has just been dark magic (Alhazred), or pure fucking human might (everybody else). 

If they don’t show up at all, that’ll be fine and I accept it, but I think there would be some interesting stuff to explore if they did come back, but not as religious heroes. Maybe Damian could still be the same, maybe, but it would be especially interesting to see Reynauld and Junia in this way. Could honestly write a whole lot more on this and just why I think it would be interesting (and no it’s not just because i’ll be really :( if Junia doesn’t come back or if she comes back as an enemy)

[blackroseraven]

Completed my Bloodmoon Campaign.

Got Dismas there at least, so he was able to see through the job to the end. We absolutely made a joke out of the Heart of Darkness, especially between Dismas’ Ripostes and the Hellion... being the Hellion.

Admittedly got really lucky with the clone fight. He summoned like TWO Imperfect Reflections right away, which is better than the usual 10 rounds of murdering Perfect Reflections until he finally calls out one. I also never really thought about how the first part of the fight is really where the real threat is: as outright damaging as the Heart is, it still only gets one turn. If all four of them lock on to a marked character at once they can pretty much instantly cause either Death’s Door or a Resolve Check if you don’t respond fast enough to put out the fire.

So yeah. Like. Once we got past DD2 I was pretty confident we were going to finish well. Honestly, the Necromancer Lord was a harder fight than this. Then again, the Necromancer Lord immediately summoned a Bone General and my usually-dependable Houndmaster whiffed on 90% of his attacks. We had to deal with two extra turns of fighting because he completely missed two 90% attacks at the end. I felt like we were playing XCom or something.

Now for the Crimson Court and the Farmstead, which means the Thing From The Stars, which I can usually deal with, and the Fanatic, which I... will be happy if he doesn’t party wipe me.

Overall like. I actually found Bloodmoon a lot more exciting and satisfying. Like, I’m not saying Darkest Dungeon isn’t a tough game, but it is honestly mostly fair, even if you occasionally get horrible runs of bad luck. It’s not nearly as difficult as Iratus - which is still probably my favorite game in this genre - but it’s got a lot of additional ways by which you can challenge yourself, often rewarding you for doing so.

So I’m happy that I can continue it in the postgame, and I look forwards to seeing how we do with torchless runs and all the other ways I can make my life more difficult for myself.

[vonbaghager]

This post is nearly 4 years old at this point but with the revelation that in DD2 there's an entire enemy type based around fanatical worship of fire, I would like to point directly at this post

Brewed up another Darkest Dungeon thing. This time it’s an actual, full-fledged boss.

The overall aesthetic and inspiration for this guy is based on a few things, not the least of which is my recent readthrough of Nan Quest.

Keep reading

[angrybatart]

I saw an edited rip/screenshot of a/the fanatic from Darkest Dungeon 2 (from @darnestdungeon ) and HAD to doodle them. Just a little guy.

[angrybatart]

Another fanatic doodle. They're weirdly fun to draw.

[darnestdungeon]

May the RNG gods have mercy on you so you’ll never meet this enemy party on the Sprawl. I’m not sure if it was because it was my first encounter of the entire run (I only had 1 upgrade), but this was way harder than any boss. Gotta admire their synergy and beautiful friendship, DD2 is all about teamwork indeed :’)

(More details about my great defeat under read more.)

So from the get go, the Immolatist kept giving dodge and strength tokens to one enemy every round. The tokens build up, so if you focused on the Shaman for instance, The Pit Fighter suddenly had two dodge tokens in the next turn.

When the Shaman wasn’t healing himself and another enemy (with way better heals than my Occultist btw), he was inflicting blind tokens on my heroes. I usually focus on him and take him down before he can cure anyone, but the dodge and the blind didn’t help, I missed almost every attack. He kept healing whatever little damage I managed to hit. (Maybe I should have focused on the Immolatist instead?)

The Pit Fighter self buffed every round for speed and burn (not to mention the strength tokens) and burned everyone on my team with his two attacks per turn. The burn damage started to accumulate as the battle went on, so I tried to heal my heroes whenever I could, which didn’t leave much offensive power for me to take down anybody.

I gave up when my Occultist finally died. My MaA and HWM were also at Death’s Door while their team was practically at full health. It’s been a while since I almost cried at a game, the shame of this being witnessed by @reynauldapologist only added to the pain.

[coffee-in-veins]

i’ve been thinking...

RedHook gives us two characters who always start together, always have the same names (so they are arguably always the same people unlike all others), same traits, similar skills, work nicely together mechanics-wise, have incredible chemistry lore-wise as foils to each other, gives us achievements for keeping them alive and well and giving them a story arc - and then expects us not to demand this dynamic in continuation. 

am i the only one who sees it as weird? yeah, they wanted to distance themselves from dd1, but... it’s not the thing you can easily distance yourself from. besides, they kept the lore, the world, the characters, and the areas in some capacity. what else could they realistically expect? yeah, Dismas is dev fav and could be viewed as a self-insert but... i’d argue that Reynauld is just as iconic. and he gives Dismas half the charm he has, arguably, by giving him a nice contrast. his backstory is just as complicated. if not more, i’d argue. and with the faction of fanatics introduced, he could have had quite a few interesting barks for that whole mess, either being one himself or by reflecting on how he used to be one and looking at his former behavior as an outsider now.

sure, shipping is a thing with those two, but again, realistically, what else could be expected with such a setup? i’ve seen people ship characters who never canonically met. i’ve shipped characters who skirt the technicality of not existing in canon with characters they never met. and all of the above being canon and constant is a shippers dream. i’d argue that shipping is what the internet does. what people do, if they’re into that at all. not expecting your characters to be shipped at least to some extent is weird nowadays, imo. 

i guess... i’m still salty they did my problematic crusader so dirty and would only include his helmet somewhere in the background. 

frankly, that was my sole saving grace for dd2′s sour, quiet, glum Dismas, because i connected those two unrelated facts. Dismas never got his crusader, and turned out sourpuss or got him and lost him, ending up in a quiet, sour, macabre man that we see. 

[coffee-in-veins]

Me, completely out of touch with the DD stuff: THERE IS NO REYNAULD?????

(I honestly don't remember if we talked about this already or not)

yeah... they butchered like half the classes and only 9 are available now, one of which is a completely new class that wasn't present in dd1.

currently, there heroes we have are: Audrey (GR), Barristan (MAA), Dismas (HWM), Paracelsus (PD), Sarmenti (Jester), Boudica (Hellion), Baldwin (Leper), Alhazred (OCC) and Bonnie (Runaway, the newcomer). characters are more of their own people, there are no duplicates, too.

there are 2 character slots available for dd2 development afaik, and datamining from barks leans heavily on one of them being Tardif aka BH, considering all the grunts and snorts in the mined data.

there are no mentions of Reyrey whatsoever, while Junia was spotted being one of the Innkeepers along the road ("Vestal's Secret" inn), and Josephine aka Anti was remade into a road encounter/miniboss, which brings a disturbing precedent, especially considering the "newcomers" of the setting: there's a whole new faction called "Lost battalion" who are basically undead knights with a strong affinity for the Light (having priests in their ranks) and a faction of Fanatics who burn books and worship purification through fire.

i'm stressing over this way more than i really should be, but here we are... guess it's the downside of being emotionally invested in dd1 and reymas

[coffee-in-veins]

welcome to my Shrieker's nest of curios, get yourself comfortable

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