
The solution is to enter the aptly named Courtyard to burn out the mosquito nests therein. In a game where too much stress can cause your party members to go off the deep end, that's a very frustrating development. These literal and figurative buggers put a dent in how much stress your returning spelunkers regain in-town each week.

The expansion’s new horror begins on week five of a regular Darkest Dungeon campaign, at which point the Hamlet-your home-away-from-horror-is beset by mosquitoes. That's not to say Crimson Court is inviting. Either that, or the new, vampire-centric Crimson Court is just that tantalizing. Maybe I'm more like my friends than I thought. So when I learned that The Crimson Court's addition was more extension than expansion, I was worried I wouldn't be able work up the nerve to commit to the game again from scratch. I was plenty happy to beat the grueling game once and walk away. I've got a friend or two who have been more than happy to play Darkest Dungeon to completion multiple times since it left Early Access in 2016. You either need to start a new campaign or use an existing save where you don't mind turning that balance inside out with new enemies, objectives, and dangers. The Crimson Court DLC isn't self-contained, which presents the expansion's first structural hurdle. Managing time, resources, and a revolving door of adventurers is a delicate balance that players either learn to walk or bow out of altogether.

In-game time passes when you send bedraggled squads into the depths of different dungeons. That's not just a pun on the expansion's extreme difficulty, either, although there is plenty of that here.įor those new to the game-and perhaps looking at The Crimson Court as an excuse to hop aboard the crazy train- Darkest Dungeon is a brutal turn-based dungeon crawler. Platform: Windows (reviewed), Xbox One, PS4ĭarkest Dungeon's first-ever DLC, The Crimson Court, is going to be a hard sell for many players.
