Darkest Dungeon 2 Location Guide: The Valley, The Tangle & More

Despite the crushing darkness and hopelessness of this Lovecraftian-inspired roguelike, players will find themselves visiting a variety of different colorful, albeit frightening locations in Darkest Dungeon 2.

Each environment has a distinctive look of course, but more importantly they are distinguished by their enemies and combat styles. Prepare your adventurers and tactics accordingly, for the Darkest Dungeon’s cruelty comes in for those unprepared to venture into the darkness.

Here are the main locations in Darkest Dungeon 2:

– The Valley
– The Tangle
– The Sprawl
– The Foetor
– The Mountain

And here’s everything you need to know about Darkest Dungeon 2’s environments, including which enemies you’ll face.

 

The Valley

After setting up the adventuring team of heroes, the first location players will move through is the Valley – the shortest environment to traverse. Here players are guaranteed to visit a supply cache and a couple more encounters before reaching the first Inn.

Essentially, the Valley acts as a kind of launchpad to get players started and ready for the road ahead. It will not show up in future path selection when moving between stages.

In the Valley, you may meet enemy types that will make an appearance throughout all locations as they’re not tied to any one particular area. These enemies are zombies, bandits, and cultists.

Zombies are quite weak and frail and shouldn’t cause much issue. Bandits are tougher than zombies, but their attacks and abilities are usually simple and occasionally can spawn with heavy artillery, which can cause significant damage. Melee bandits do love attacking the front two ranks of the adventuring party and can easily overwhelm the heroes if the party lacks healing or damage mitigation items and abilities.

Cultists are the most dangerous of the common enemy types as they have a variety of tough units, as well as nasty evasive ones that cause stress damage. Cultists aren’t necessarily the most dangerous of all the current enemy types, but they will provide a decent challenge.

 

The Tangle

The first chooseable environment when making your way to the mountain, the Tangle is a dense, craggy, and uninviting forest that’s grown over a forgotten battlefield. As a result, the Lost Battalion, remnants of a forgotten army, call the Tangle their home.

The Lost Battalion resembles a vaguely medieval-inspired army with sturdy foot soldiers, coordinating signal drummers, ranged crossbowmen, towering knights, and supporting bishops. Resilience and durability is the name of the game for the Lost Battalion with many of their units starting with buffs to damage resistance. Altogether, these enemies don’t hit quite as hard as some of the others, but they can certainly be a headache for more fragile hero parties.

 

The Sprawl

The Fanatics occupy the Sprawl: burning ruins of a once great city overtaken by zealotry, despair, and brutality. As players enter this location, the abundance of fire makes the theme of the Fanatics abundantly clear.

Fanatics are arguably the most dangerous enemy type as they combine durability and high damage in equal measure. Many of their units have self-buffing abilities that unlock new levels of damage, as well as the chance to lay down fire DoT effects per successful hit. Moreover, the Fanatic support units have ways of healing or increasing the maximum health of their brethren.

Enter the Sprawl at your own peril and only if you can confidently eliminate the most dangerous Fanatic damage-dealing units.

 

The Foetor

The final selectable environment is the Foetor, once rich farmland that has now become corrupted, barren, and rot-ridden. The Plague Eaters, monstrously deformed and mutated men and animals feast, party, and consume what little life there is in this putrid wasteland.

Plague Eater enemies love their disease and decay and many of their attacks may lay blight DoT effects on the party, while being resistant to blight themselves. More importantly, enemies in the Foetor utilize combo moves more than any of the other major enemy types as they consume corpses and specially designated livestock support units to prepare more powerful abilities. They also happen to be the most outlandish and disgusting enemies currently in the game.

Unfortunately, it’s quite difficult to completely prevent Foetor enemies from activating their combo moves, so it’s best to find ways to blind them or increase the adventurer’s own damage resistance to mitigate as much damage as possible.

 

The Mountain

The Mountain bookends the first chapter of Darkest Dungeon 2’s narrative. Here, players will be tested on their combat skills, as well as the party’s overall level of readiness to engage with a strange and horrifying foe, the Brain of Darkness. The Mountain environment is even shorter than the Valley and only serves as the final challenge stage, giving you no opportunity to rest.

Each location offers its own style of challenge and difficulty. To best tackle these locations ,it’s wise to maintain a balanced team equipped with items that are able to answer as many weaknesses or potential vulnerabilities as possible. Even so, be prepared for the unexpected and expect to be overwhelmed, from which you will learn and become stronger and better.

Darkest Dungeon 2 is available now on PC.

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