INTRO:
Sometimes, a package may have something that someone wants, but it also has things that are undesirable but are unavoidable, because they are built into the things that are good. Such is the case with the Crimson Court, the first official (and price-tagged) expansion to Darkest Dungeon.
In the base game, there were glimmers of potential that were overlooked, or at least not built upon, by Red Hook Studios. Examples include the backstories of the adventurers, more complexity in the gear system and dungeon-delving that is not run-based.
All of these are only partially realized in the expansion, and held back by overarching design goals that have set the game in stone. Nonetheless, it is not entirely a waste of time.
PREMISE:
The titular Crimson Court is what has become of the nobility that was once overseen by the Ancestor. Prior to the onset of his obsession with the esoteric and occult, the Ancestor is a bitter man that loathes his station and the decadence of the so-called upper-class who purportedly serve him.
A chance, almost-fatal encounter with a formerly human would-be paramour had awakened the dire ambition of the lord. With the realization that mere people can attain powers far beyond mortal by paying the small price that is their humanity, the lord poisoned all of the nobility with wine spiked with inhuman ichor.
Somehow lost in their own madness, they would no longer be a concern for the lord, who then went on to perpetrate the villainy as was shown in the base game.
As for the nobility, they have degenerated into bug-like hybrids with a thirst for blood and a hunger for flesh. With the seeming death of the lord, they are now out and about, looking for more victims to satisfy their hideous appetites.
THE COURTYARD:
The courtyard is the first notable piece of content introduced by the expansion; it can be revealed on the estate screen by doing any quest and returning to the hamlet, upon which the Courtyard is revealed. The courtyard has new dangers and opportunities, which are provided by the inhabitants, the ruined edifices of their homes and whatever remains of their luxuries.
THE BLOODSUCKERS:
The nobility, and the hideously huge mosquitos that follow them are the new category of enemies that the player would encounter. They are not the only new ones, but they will be the most prolific, for better or worse.
All of them are very resistant to Blight, thanks to the Crimson Curse that runs through their veins. However, they have low resistance to Bleed, even at Champion quest difficulty.
Perhaps the most worrisome thing about them is that most of them can inflict the dreadfully problematic disease that is the Crimson Curse. There will be more on this, and specific types of enemies, later.
(The mosquitoes are called “Sycophants” in-game, but it is hard to believe that they could be sapient enough to suck up to anyone.)
Unlike other enemy groups, Bloodsuckers can always do something nasty in any position. Therefore, the player might not want to dilly-dally in their elimination.
THE INFESTATION:
When the Courtyard is revealed (and inadvertently roused by the player), the infestation of Bloodsuckers also begin. The infestation level is shown in the estate screen, though without any clear explanation of what the levels mean.
Anyway, higher levels of infestation mean higher chances that Bloodsuckers would replace a group of enemies in other locales. This is similar to how the Collector might replace an enemy encounter, but this is worse; they can appear in rooms too.
INVITATIONS:
For some esoteric reason (typically explained away with magic), the adventurers cannot enter the Courtyard without being invited; neither could they forcefully breach it. However, there is a way to get in.
Only a few types of Bloodsuckers would venture to other locales. Incidentally, these are the servants of the nobility, or their drones, if they happen to be non-sapient. One of these is the Gatekeeper, a special variant of the Manservant that is carrying an invitation letter.
He is actually looking for anyone other than the adventurers, so the invitation is not for them. In fact, most of his attacks will be infuriating insults, which inflict considerable stress. If the party could not slay him quickly enough, he escapes, putting a mosquito in his place and filling any empty slot in the enemy group with other mosquitos; this also inflicts Horror on the entire party.
Defeating his group and killing him grants the player one of the precious invitation letters, which the player spends to ingress into the Courtyard.
THE BLOOD:
The “Blood” is the foul liquid that is presumably brewed from red blood. Canonically, it is the choice drink of anyone that has the Crimson Curse (though the Bloodsuckers can drink from other sources), and it is the only thing that is keeping the most fatal symptoms of the Curse from killing the infected. Blood also grants buffs to the infected; this will be described later.
The Blood can be gained from killing Bloodsuckers, though it is not a guaranteed drop. Blood can also be gained weekly from a certain building that the player can build through the District system, which will be described later.
PERSISTENT COURTYARD MAPS:
The four main quests that are associated with the storyline of the Crimson Court happen to take place on maps that are already pre-designed, i.e. they are not procedurally generated. The player could go to the wiki for the game, download screenshots of the maps, and the maps that the player get would be exactly one-to-one, right down to the locations of enemy groups, curios, barriers and traps.
These also happen to be the biggest maps in Darkest Dungeon thus far; the only map that is much bigger is the map for the third (and most frustrating) quest in the Darkest Dungeon.
They would be next to impossible to completely explore in just one go. Hence, the maps have one trait not shared by any other map in the game: their states are saved and kept as separate game files that are not deleted. Anything that the player has discovered, such as curios and scouted enemy groups, is retained as data in those files.
In fact, the player can have a party leave and have the next one return the next week, exactly where the previous party left off, even if they are far from the entrance of the map. This can be a bit unbelievable, but it is very convenient.
All these mean that the player could plan for forays into the Courtyard, if only to maximize the gains that can be had. This is just as well, because the Courtyard is a trove of Trinkets, some of which would be Trinkets that are introduced by the expansion. There will be more elaboration on Trinkets later.
LOCKS:
One of the obstacles that the persistent Courtyard maps would pose are locks. There are at least two types of locks in each map. To open these locks, the player has to find the corresponding keys, which take up space in the player’s inventory. If the player has the misfortune of coming across a locked room without the key to open it, the party has to backtrack all the way back to the previous room. This can be dire, because the corridors in the persistent Courtyard maps are terribly long.
COURTYARD CURIOS:
The Courtyard also has its own curios, most of which are associated with the Bloodsuckers, the Blood and, most dreadfully, the Crimson Curse. Unprotected interactions with them carry risks of the Crimson Curse, and in the case of the curios that look like a pile of bones, even summon Bloodsuckers for a fight.
There is one curio that the player is likely to covet: the “Wine” Crate. Using the Shovel on this yields Firewood. The player’s party does not start with any of it, despite the Courtyard maps being massive. Therefore, getting Firewood – and multiple units of them too – is a great way to keep the team going. Of course, the player will still to watch out for night-time ambushes.
BLOODLIGHT & DIFFERENT USE FOR TORCHES:
The Courtyard maps do not require the maintenance of the light meter. However, torches have other uses. Firstly, the player can simply use a torch to give the entire party a small Accuracy buff for one battle. The torch can also be used to burn eggs and hives, which is just as well because they are disgusting and burning them relieves the adventurers of considerable stress.
As for the light meter, it is replaced by the perpetual “Bloodlight”. Presumably, this is not due to the colour of the sky over the Courtyard, but the presence of mosquitoes. The Bloodlight guarantees that every tile in the very long corridors that does not have an icon has a stress-accumulation script. It would take not long for adventurers to accrue considerable stress from just walking around.
There is also a penalty for Bleed resistance, which makes most of the attacks by Bloodsuckers in the Courtyard worse.
PARTICULARLY TROUBLESOME BLOODSUCKERS:
All of the Bloodsuckers are nasty, but there are some that are much more dreadful than the others. The Bloodsucker manservants have high Dodge ratings, higher than even the Sycophants. They are easily the most annoying Bloodsuckers, because of their ability to guard others, thus preventing the player from eliminating Bloodsuckers that are more dangerous than them.
The Cavaliers are perhaps the nastiest of the Bloodsuckers, mainly because of their high damage output and the ability to attack from anywhere within the enemy group. All of their attacks cause de-buffs. They also have high Protection ratings and considerable HP reserves. However, Cavaliers are one of three Bloodsuckers that do not have a Bloodlust form, thankfully.
THE THIRST:
Most of the sapient Bloodsuckers, and the mosquitoes, have the dreaded attack that is The Thirst. This attack inflicts moderate damage while applying the Bleed de-buff. It also causes the Bloodsuckers to move forward in their ranks, which may be a good thing if the player is trying to kill them.
What is not a good thing is the chance of the attack to infect the victim with the Crimson Curse. There are other sources of infection, but this is the only one that is not within the player’s ability to control, at least not reliably.
BLOODLUST FORMS:
If an attack with the Thirst lands, the Bloodsuckers turn into an empowered form of themselves. These forms are not any tougher or faster (despite their looks), but the set of attacks that they have earlier is swapped for a much nastier set. They may even get new attacks.
For example, where the Manservant would not do much with the dish that he is holding earlier, he will open it and show its awful contents when he is in his Bloodlust form; this of course inflicts stress.
There is no way for the Bloodlust form to be reverted.
THE COURTYARD NOBLES:
The Baron, the Viscount and the Countess are the bosses of the Courtyard. These are completely different bosses, and they have no variants like the ones in the other locales do.
As to be expected, many of them are powerful, but oddly (and thankfully), they do not inflict the Crimson Curse on party members.
Getting to them requires the player to navigate the Courtyard mazes and find the keys that open the locks that bar the player’s progress; there is always one lock ahead of the room with the boss.
After the last Courtyard noble has been beaten (and the knowledge of the cure to the Crimson Curse somehow attained), the darkness in the Courtyard somehow transfers to the greatest of their statuary. This gives the player repeatable boss-killing quests, albeit against a type of boss that is far more hardy and tedious to fight than the high nobles.
CRIMSON CURSE:
The Crimson Curse is likely the most problematic disease that any adventurer could ever get. The pre-existing diseases are not lethal (for whatever reason), but this one is; initially, it cannot be cured either.
The Crimson Curse has several stages of progression. The first is passive; the victim gets a speed buff, but some resistances, especially to Bleeding, lower. The victim remains fully in control of the player.
If the victim is not given the Blood, he/she will deteriorate to the Craving stage. Their penalties are worse, but the speed gain is better. If the player feeds them Blood at this stage, they enter the Bloodlust stage, in which they gain impressive bonuses and the penalties are reduced to a mere penalty on Bleed resistance.
If the victim is not fed in the Craving stage, he/she soon deteriorates to the Wasting stage. There are nothing but penalties at this stage, and death is imminent. Feeding him/her Blood resets him/her to the Passive state.
The player can only manually feed the Blood to the Cursed during quests, but any Wasting victims will automatically drink one unit of Blood just before they die, thus relieving them.
The main problem with the stages other than Passive is that they make the infected rather unreliable, as if they have a perpetual Affliction. (Getting an Affliction makes them even worse.) They may refuse healing, buffing and worst of all, attack team-mates; these are only a few examples.
As long as the four main quests remain active, there are only two ways to cure the Curse. The first is to slay the next Bloodsucker boss; doing so resets the infestation level in the estates and also somehow cure everyone that has the Crimson Curse. The other is to get the Cure from the Fanatic, which is easier said than done.
After the last boss is slain, the sanitarium gains the cure for the disease, and it can be removed like any other, if the player wishes it. Besides, having the Crimson Curse somehow inoculates the infected from other diseases.
CRIMSON COURT TRINKETS:
The adventurer classes have backstories; these have become apparent after Red Hook released comics that show these. Of course, this would not mean much if their backstories are not used for gameplay purposes. Incidentally, Crimson Court does have such a gameplay element, in the form of particularly powerful class-specific trinkets. Some of these trinkets do not even have penalties.
The main draw of these trinkets is that they come in pairs, one for each official adventurer class. When equipped together, they enable another set of properties – not all of which are beneficial.
Some of the trinket pairs bolster what are already popular configurations for the adventurers, some others mitigate their weaknesses. For example, in the case of the Vestal’s trinket set, one of them might be useless to players who do not use the Vestal’s melee attacks. However, it does substantially increase the damage of her melee attacks and also gives them a significant critical bonus.
However, these trinkets generally can only be obtained during quests in the Courtyard; they are also offered as rewards for completing high-rating quests. Therefore, if the player wants to collect them all (and collecting Trinkets is likely to be what long-time players of the game would be doing by the time this expansion comes out), the player has to risk the infection of the Crimson Curse.
Furthermore, the narrative value behind these trinkets is diluted because of the presence of multiple copies of the same adventurer class, all of whom have the same backstory. There is also the question of how these items managed to end up in the Courtyard in the first place.
THE FANATIC:
The unreliability of those infected with the Crimson Curse is not the only problem with the disease. If the player’s party goes into a quest with any member that has the Crimson Curse, there is a chance that a certain awful person would appear to accost the party; this chance is higher if the party has more infected members.
The Fanatic is an unpleasant boss, worse than the Hag that his coding is actually based on. The encounter with him may replace an encounter with a regular group of enemies, just like the Collector. Fortunately, the player is given some fore-warning about his appearance; the Fanatic’s splash art appears in the loading screen if he is slated to spawn in a map.
As mentioned already, the Fanatic is based on the Hag. He can snatch a party member and stick them onto a pyre, disabling them and dealing damage to them over time. Unlike the Hag though, he switches places with the Pyre very often. Most importantly, the Pyre is actually destructible. Unfortunately, if the player thought that destroying it would gimp the Fanatic, the player would learn a painful lesson, like he/she would have if he/she thought that killing Wilbur the flag-bearing pig would make the Swine monarchs easier.
Defeating the Fanatic grants one unit of the Cure for the Crimson Curse (strongly suggesting that he is a terrible hypocrite). The Cure can only be used during a quest, however, due to limitations in the coding of the game.
THE FLAGELLANT:
Perhaps the most welcome piece of content is the Flagellant, another official adventurer class to be added to the game. Red Hook Studios has invested some effort into designing him, because he introduces a few types of secondary effects to skills.
The first of these is “Transfer”, which transfers Blight and/or Bleed de-buffs from characters to other characters; in the case of the Flagellant, from other party members to him, as befitting his impossibly selfless yet selfish personality. The second is a healing-over-time buff, which works to reduce the damage-over-time from Blight or Bleed. The third is percentage-based healing.
He also has completely different Death’s Door states; where the other characters suffer severe penalties, he gains buffs instead, making him very powerful. He also heals other party members upon reaching this state, and somehow gives them buffs. He also has naturally high Death Blow resistance, which can be further altered with trinkets.
It is very tempting to exploit his near-death bonuses. On the other hand, there is always a five percent chance that a Death Blow will land, regardless of how the player has managed to tweak his resistance to Death Blows.
The Flagellant also has ingrained personality issues that cannot be addressed in any way. The first is that he cannot be fielded with other Flagellants, adamant as he is to be the only one to suffer the “Burden”. The second is that he can only use the stress treatment of flagellation, though he would not gain any negative (or positive) quirks from it; the treatment is also very effective.
Perhaps the biggest personality issue that he has is that he cannot gain any Virtue, and will ever only gain one particular Affliction if he is over-stressed. This affliction makes him much more powerful and faster, but he gives up much of his Dodge rating and like all afflicted, becomes unreliable.
It can be unpleasant to learn the hard way that any Trinket that improves chances of getting Virtues are completely useless on him.
(He is also considered as “religious”, so he would not abide by the company of the Abomination, though this was addressed in the Colors of Madness DLC.)
DISTRICTS:
Another piece of content that followers of the game are likely to welcome is the system of Districts.
After having upgraded all establishments in the Hamlet, there is no more reason to collect Heirlooms. The Districts introduced in this DLC package would give more reasons to do so.
Districts are practically buildings, presumably built on whatever secure grounds that the player has somehow claimed from the estate. Many of these buildings initially appear trashed, suggesting that they had been there in the estate in the first place.
The Districts grant bonuses that are always available to any adventurers that benefit from them, if they do not benefit everyone already. For example, there is a District that makes food much more effective, e.g. healing 10% of health for each unit of food eaten.
On the other hand, the Districts are a reminder of how grinding-heavy the overall gameplay is.
VISUAL DESIGNS:
Like the base game, Crimson Court relies on the artwork of Red Hook’s artists to make visual expressions.
The Courtyard has become no more than a bloody swamp filled with the remains of the victims who fell to their terrible appetite, and unnatural red light illuminates the sky over the courtyard. (This is the aforementioned Bloodlight.)
The Bloodsuckers still try to live like nobility, but their terrible attempts at opulence only makes them look more hideous. What is even more appalling is their transition from still being vaguely humanoid to a monstrous hybrid of bug and people.
Overall, the visual designs of the Courtyard and the Bloodsuckers are significantly different from those of other locales, which is to be expected as this is a continuation of Red Hook’s design policies for the locales.
To summarize the looks of the Courtyard content, it is more of the grim-dark presentation that can be expected from Red Hook Studios, though the twisted decadence of the Bloodsucker nobility is a viciously entertaining touch.
The appearance of the Fanatic somehow causes the backdrop to change to that of a grim scene that shows a field of pyres, presumably lit by the Fanatic. It would have been impressive, if it was not unintentionally silly. It can be goofy to realize that the player’s party has transitioned from an indoors environment like the Warrens to under a smoke-filled sky.
The Flagellant may look a bit goofy for being almost topless and not doing much to avoid hits, but his nasty scars and bloody extremities would not be out of place in the game (though he does look like he belongs more on the other side in the order of battle).
There is artwork for each of the District buildings, but having them placed in a horizontal scrolling menu hidden behind a button might have diminished their visual appeal.
SOUND DESIGNS:
Most of the sound clips that are introduced are for content in the Courtyard. The buzzing of bugs is particularly noticeable, for better or worse. The chirps of the Bloodsuckers as they take attacks are also memorable, as are their pathetic whines when they die (which is always a relief). The Flagellant also comes with his own set of sound clips, some of which are about his wanton bloodletting.
There are additional music tracks too, including the one for the fight with the Fanatic; this track also happens to be accompanied by screams, presumably of the people that he has burnt.
The Narrator also has additional lines, most of which is for the Courtyard content. In particular, there are the lines for the cutscenes that show the beginning of his spiral into ambitious madness.
CONCLUSION:
The Crimson Court does the least that expansion packages should do: introduce new gameplay elements, more of the same content that was/is likable in the base game and elaborate more on the backstory/main story. However, it also introduces more luck-dependent gameplay, especially the Crimson Curse that is practically an Affliction in the guise of a disease. It is not easy to enjoy the additional content with this looming threat, but as ever, perseverance is what Darkest Dungeon demands.