Returning to the end end game of Darkest Dungeon's DLC Color of Madness brings a lot of baggage with it. The good, the bad and the ugly of all the games content. This time round I was surprised, as my third run of The Farm was so good that I ended up killing The Sleeper. Awkwardly enough I'd not reread my old posts or anything online; So no reminders of the mechanics. That said I'm happy with what I've relearned. Even moreso that any fear of the task at hand was a more self inflicted apprehension.
Not that the boss mechanics are hard; The journey to get to the bosses is the real test. Defeating the boss relies heavily on the team. Falling back into the best team to take in didn't take long and felt natural. In my case a Vestal at the back healing, a jester to apply buff and bleeds as well as offer stress relief, and up front two Shieldbreakers as a DPS tag team(mainly to apply blight to multiple targets or the the reverse order and 'just' to apply damage to a specific target.
Here's that boss fight(with some lead in/out footage).
So between a really great run downing the boss's and working out/recalling how to do it in the first place(the crystals were the most unknown); But all in all the experience gave confidence in a ' what was I worried about ' kind of way. Which seems to happen a lot..... Then again maybe I was 'lucky'.
So the grind is getting really real for me. I've not touched the buildings, but have gotten several of the trinkets. A lot more to be done to get those shards.
That's not to say that it's all gone well. I've 'lost' a good few heroes along the way. The journey to get and keep a hero at their peak takes time, training, gearing, upgrading, even more gold and luck. Thankfully they're not dead and return from limbo after another dungeon run or two. It's hard to shake the pre CoM DLC content of the gut wrenching feeling of loss when a hero goes down. It's something that feeds into the apprehension(for me, in this game at least). I know I can't help it. A failed run is still a setback.
Once a hero is 'lost' getting their trinkets back is another task, The Shrieker hoards them. Not a hard fight but another hoop to jump through.
As much of a grind as the DLC is; It has the best of the 'loss' mechanics when compared to any other parts of the games content. Loss of heroes and items that you get back.... I'm a lot more appreciative of those facts. In retrospect it makes any fear of loss unjustified; On the other hand it legitimizes the weariness of the grind. Endless mode isn't called Endless mode for no reason.
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