The long-awaited Radiant Update for Darkest Dungeon just went live in Red Hook Games’ debut hardcore RPG. Fans of Darkest Dungeon will be pleased to know that the game’s overall difficulty is still brutal, but the main thing this update addresses is just how grindy the campaign can be.
From the Radiant Update patch notes on Steam:
This update was built around two major pillars:
Radiant Mode: Radiant Mode is a version of the game that is intended to take less time overall to complete than normal (“Darkest”) mode. The mode is still challenging–monsters have the same stats and nothing about permadeath has changed. But some gameplay rules have been flexed or altered in ways that reduce some of the more time consuming mid and late game elements.
Improvements and Additions (to all modes): we’ve reviewed tons of feedback over the last few months and have added a bunch new features, content, revisions, and fixes.
The game now basically lets your turn on Radiant Mode if you so choose in order to progress through the story and level up your heroes in a much quicker fashion. Mid to late game progress should now be much easier, but that’s not where the new stuff ends.
Four new monsters (Bone Bearer, Hateful Virago, Swine Skiver, and Squiffy Ghast) now appear in Champion level dungeons, and tons of additional tweaks have been made to the economy and a new item-based quest has been added too.
Our thoughts on the Radiant Update?
Darkest Dungeon was one of our top picks for RPG of the Year at MMORPG.com, so we at GameSpace are predisposed to liking it. It’s a really excellent title, and these tweaks just make a great game better. But we’re all really waiting for that first major DLC: the Crimson Court.
