Party Compositions - Darkest Dungeon Guide - IGN (2024)

This page is dedicated to party compositions that work well in Darkest Dungeon. There are 3 different factors that usually make up a good team:

• Having at least 1 dedicated backline that heals the party. This will usually be a Vestal or an Occultist, as their backline capabilities are greater than that of a Crusader or Leper, and their heals can recover the health of your party by a much higher amount. The preference on taking which one depends on the person, as Occultist has more utility while Vestals have a higher chance to actually recover the health of your party. This doesn't mean your party needs a healer, however it is highly recommended you take one for regular parties.
• Having at least 1 dedicated frontliner that deals damage to enemies'. This one is a little bit more fluid, as you can have many different classes take up this role. Generally, however, this will be either a Hellion, Highwayman, or Leper, due to their very high damage output. What you do with these frontliners is also very fluid: You can have a team centered around buffing a Leper so that his low ACC isn't much of an issue, or a build centered around stunning the entire enemy team with a frontline Hellion and a backline Plague Doctor.
• Having at least 1 backliner that pulls or a way to deal with the opposing backline. Many enemies that are in the backline are very fast and can cause your team to have a high stress count if you don't kill them fast enough. For this reason, taking a Bounty Hunter or an Occultist to use their skills that allow them to pull backline enemies to the frontline is usually a good idea. However, as an alternative, if you have a way to deal with the opposing backline outside of pulling them to the front and beating them with your own frontline, you can do something like run a Plague Doctor with the ability to stun the backline and hope that they don't dodge. As their dodge chances are quite high, it is for this reason that people prefer to simply take a Bounty Hunter or Occultist so that they can deal with the backline easily.

Team Examples

In this section, I will be showing off some examples of teams that are considered to be good along with how to use their skills to the best of your ability.

PLEASE NOTE THAT TWO TEAMS BELOW ARE OUTDATED AS THEY WERE CREATED IN A MUCH EARLIER PATCH OF DARKEST DUNGEONS. IF YOU WANT YOU CAN ADD YOUR OWN TEAM RECOMMENDATIONS FOLLOWING THE FINAL RELEASE OF DARKEST DUNGEONS.

Team 1 - Standard heal/stun

• Vestal - Mace Bash / Judgement / Dazzling Light / Divine Grace
• Bounty Hunter - Collect Bounty / Come Hither / Flashbang / Finish Him
• Crusader - Smite / Zealous Accusation / Stunning Blow / Battle Heal
• Hellion - Wicked Hack / Barbaric YAWP! / If It Bleeds / Breakthru

This is what I'd like to consider a standard team, mainly relying on heals and stuns. In the back we have a Vestal whose main purpose is to heal the team and use Dazzling Light to stun any frontliners. When your Vestal is at full health, using Dazzling Light is the skill you want to use, unless your team has taken some damage, then you will want to use Divine Grace instead to heal them. If only the Vestal has taken damage and you don't need to stun anything or don't want to risk missing with Dazzling Light, using Judgement is the best option.

Next, we have a Bounty Hunter who will usually just pull backliners to the frontline using Come Hither and then use Finish Him to deal massive damage to any stunned enemies. Flashbang is also another option for when you need to stun an enemy if your other team members haven't done so already. You should only use Collect Bounty when you want to hit a frontliner and the target is not stunned, as it has a higher critical chance than Finish Him.

Next up, we have the Crusader. He has very good damage output with Smite and Zealous Accusation, although Zealous Accusation shouldn't be used too often as the damage modifier it has causes the damage to be lower than normal, however, you should use it when you know it can guarantee a kill on an enemy. Stunning Blow will allow you to stun a frontline enemy, and that is very useful for this team. Battle Heal is also good as it is another form of healing for your team, which compliments your Vestal nicely.

Finally, we have the Hellion. She is the biggest damage dealer by far, being able to get to insanely high damage if you play her correctly and buff her during campfires. Wicked Hack is a good move against frontliners, while If It Bleeds is good for taking care of enemies with low bleed resistance. Barbaric YAWP! is another reason why she is used in this team, as it has a very high stun chance as well as being able to stun 2 enemies at the same time at the cost of being debuffed in damage and dodge chance. The rest of your team has a good damage output, however, so this is not an issue in any way. Breakthru should be used similarly to the Crusader's Zealous Accusation, as it can hit multiple enemies but should only be used when you know you get a guaranteed kill out of it.

If you haven't noticed, every single character in this team has some way to stun enemies on the opposing side. The Vestal has Dazzling Light, the Bounty Hunter has Flashbang, the Crusader has Stunning Blow, and the Hellion has her Barbaric YAWP! This means that your team will have a lot of time to either heal or deal a bunch of damage to the opposing team, allowing you to have a good chance to not only stay alive, but lower the chance of your team getting hit with stress enabling moves or critical hits.

Team 2 - Highwayman/Grave Robber pull

• Occultist - Sacrificial Stab / Wyrd Reconstruction / Vulnerability Hex / Daemon's Pull OR Vestal - Mace Bash / Judegment / Dazzling Light / Divine Grace
• Bounty Hunter - Collect Bounty / Come Hither / Flashbang / Finish Him
• Grave Robber - Lunge / Flashing Daggers / Shadow Fade / Poison Dart
• Highwayman - Wicked Slice / Pistol Shot / Point Blank Shot / Open Vein

This team is built to be centered around the Highwayman and Grave Robber combo, which revolves around using the Highwayman's Point Blankl Shot and the Grave Robber's Shadow Fade. Both of these moves are very good, however, they force their respective characters to move back a slot when they use it. When you use a Highwayman and a Grave Robber together, however, this will allow you to loop these skills in the fastest manner possible. You can also just use two Highwayman with Point Blank Shots instead of having a Grave Robber, as that will work too. However, if you do this, you won't have access to a stun, which might or might not be very useful in various situations, so be careful.

So right now we have the main combo: using a Highwayman (or two Highwaymen) and a Grave Robber to loop their Shadow Fade and Point Blank Shot skills, now we just need to fill the backline. What most people do is that they use two characters with pull abilities, so that Point Blank Shot deals with the weakest enemies first. Pull abilities mean that they literally pull backline enemies to the frontline, and there are currently only two characters that can pull: Bounty Hunters and Occultists. Bounty Hunters are already great characters, but in this setup, not only can you pull weaker enemies to the front, you can also do massive damage with Finish Me since Shadow Fade stuns enemies.

If you notice in the image attached to this subsection, I use a Vestal instead of an Occultist, simply because I just don't have one in my current roster at the moment. Because of this, I simply replaced him with a Vestal as their roles in the team are very similar. The main reason you use an Occultist is for three reasons: the heal, the pull, and the hex. The heal is a very great move that can heal your team for a very large amount, up to 10 health at the first level. The pull, similarly to the Bounty Hunter's, is great since it pulls backline enemies to the front, where your Highwayman can use Point Blank Shot to deal with them easily. Finally, the hex is also great for this team since you have a Bounty Hunter with Collect Bounty. You see, Occultists have a move called Vulnerable Hex that allows them to mark a target. Collect Bounty is a move that deals bonus damage if the target is marked. Put two and two together, and this team together allows you to deal a large amount of damage through a combination of pulling weaker enemies to the front, taking care of them with the Highwayman, and then dealing with larger enemies using a combination of stuns, marks, and strong damage output skills.

Have any more party combinations that you think might be interesting enough to share? Post them in the comments below, or edit them into the wiki yourself!