Bosses - Darkest Dungeon Guide - IGN (2024)

There are currently 13 different Bosses in Darkest Dungeon. Each one is very difficult to beat and requires a different strategy for each individual boss. Each boss also drops their own respective trinket whenever they are defeated at their highest level, with the exception of the Darkest Dungeon bosses and secret bosses.

To fight most bosses, you must get them as a quest in the Estate Map. You can achieve this by doing regular quests until the experience bar for a dungeon reaches the maximum capacity. An interesting thing to note is that bosses will always be found in the farthest amount of tiles from the starting room.

Ruins Bosses

Necromancer

The Necromancer is one of the bosses of the Ruins dungeon. This is considered the one of the more balanced of bosses, as he isn't too difficult (if you prepare yourself well enough) but isn't the easiest. It's recommended that when you fight him, you have characters that can pull him back to the frontline, as his attacks spawn a Bone Soldier enemy in the slot in front of him, and force him to move back a space.

For this reason, taking a Bounty Hunter, Occultist, or multiples of the aforementioned characters is advised, so that if he does get multiple skeletons, you can just pull him back to the front. A Hellion is also considered a good character to bring, as she has a stun that will almost always stun the Necromancer. A Crusader would be good as well, since his Smite ability hits Unholy monsters very hard, and the Necromancer is an Unholy enemy.

Trinket: Necromancer's Collar

Prophet

The Prophet is the other boss that resides in the Ruins dungeon. When you fight him, he will always spawn in Position 4, with three wooden pews on the other positions with each one having greater health the closer they are towards the Prophet. In order to efficiently defeat the Prophet, one must either attack him in the backline directly or break the pews before fighting him.

His main method of attacking is by an attack called Calamitous Prognostication at the start of each turn, which is a ranged attack that marks one to two positions on your team. Once they are marked, the next time the Prophet uses the move Rubble of Ruin, he will deal a tremendous amount of damage to anyone standing on the marked positions. He also has various attacks that increase stress, cause blight, and stuns the characters. The best way to defeat him is to attack him with bleed and blight, as he will use many turns casting Calamitous Prognostication and Rubble of Ruin.

Trinket: Prophet's Eye

Warrens Bosses

Swine

The Swine boss resides in the Warrens dungeon. He's not very difficult to defeat if you play your cards right. First off, the main boss is in the frontline of the opposing team, meaning any frontliners will have a very easy time hitting him. Another reason is that his main form of attacks rely on having a target marked. Because of this, he has another enemy that stands behind him, called Wilbur, which marks your team members at the start of the round.

If there aren't any marked team members, he will use a move that has a very high chance to miss and hit for a moderate amount of damage. Most people will kill Wilbur on their first try because of this, however, this is a very bad thing to do. This is because if you kill Wilbur, the Swine boss will become enraged and constantly hit the entire party with attacks that will always hit for high amounts of damage. So killing the Swine boss is the best course of action when you fight him.

After this, Wilbur will gain an attack that stuns the entire party, but most of the time it will not stun everyone on your team. The final reason as to why the Swine boss is the easiest is because even if your team members gets marked, the Swine Boss himself is very slow so you can easily heal anybody who is on Death's Door with a Vestal or Occultist.

Trinket: Wilbur's Flag

Flesh

The Flesh is a one-of-a-kind boss that can be found in the Warrens dungeon. It is unique in that it is not necessarily a single boss, but four seperate enemies that transforms constantly and share the same health bar. At the start of the turn, each piece will usually transform into a completley seperate one, retaining any status effects from the previous piece. Along with this, each type of piece has its own PROT, SPD, and resistances.

The Head is the main part of the body that damages the player with the most damage and causes Bleed, the Bone is the one that stuns the party with its attacks, the Heart heals the boss by healing one of the other parts, and the Butt causes blight on the party.

The main strategy to defeating this boss is to completely ignore the Bone and Head, as they have a high amount of PROT, especially the Bone. On the other hand, the Butt has a decent amount of PROT while the Heart has absolutely none, so you'll definitely want to attack them when you can. Another efficient tactic to defeating the boss is to kill it easily with Bleed, using a Hound Master or other party member that can cause party-wide Bleed/Blight, like the Jester and Plague Doctor. In the end, however, ranged characters are highly recommended for hitting weak pieces that might spawn only in the backline of the enemy party.

Trinket:Flesh's Heart

Weald Bosses

Hag

The Hag boss resides in the Weald dungeon. She's more difficult than she looks, mainly for two reasons: she resides in the backline of the team, where most frontliners have a difficult time hitting, and one of her moves, called "Into the Pot", will remove one of your characters from the game and put them into a pot "enemy" that takes up the frontline of the team (this pot cannot be destroyed by usual means and does not require death to complete the boss, simply killing the Hag will kill the pot). She will always use this move when there is nobody in the pot currently, and she will usually be the first one to move at the beginning of a round.

They will continuously take damage until the pot is knocked over by dealing enough damage to it, or they hit 0 health. After this they will pop out with a Death's Door status and be moved to the front of the slot, which could also affect your team's efficiency as shifts will almost always occur in positions. To counteract these is simple in theory, but sometimes will not work out the way you expect it to be. First off, to counter that she is in the backline is simple enough: don't bring anyone with you to fight the Hag that can only hit the front two slots of the enemy team. This means that the Leper and Crusader are generally useless in a fight against the Hag. It's recommended that you bring multiple Bounty Hunters or Hellions to a fight, since they can easily hit the backline and deal a large amount of damage.

The Hag can also not be pulled to the front of the team, so attempting to pull the Hag will result in failure. To get around the whole pot issue, it's very simply as well: ignore the pot and whoever gets thrown into it. Hopefully the one who is thrown in is not anyone important, the biggest focus you should have when fighting the Hag should be to hit her as much as possible. When the person comes out of the pot with Death's Door, simply heal them with a Vestal or Occultist and it will be fine.

It seems easy enough, but there is another reason as to why this is considered difficult boss: the Hag can use two skills in a single round when a party member is in the pot. This means that even if you ignore the person in the pot, her damage output will be quite large as all of her abilities affect the entire party. The best advice I can give you against the Hag boss is this: bring party members that can hit the backline and at least one healer who can make sure those that come out of the pot don't die to the Hag.

Trinket: Hag's Ladle

Brigand Pounder

The Brigand Pounder is a giant cannon enemy that can be found in the Weald dungeon. On its own, it only has a single attack that is used to spawn a Brigand Matchman along with two other Brigand enemies. While the Brigand Matchman is alive, it has the capacity to deal an insane amount of damage to the team when the Matchman uses its own move called Fire in the Hole, so dealing with the Brigand Matchman is the absolute first thing the party should focus on.

Ignoring the other Brigand enemies is recommended unless you are very patient, as they will just be respawned by the Brigand Pounder as soon as there are no enemies besides the Pounder left. The Pounder itself has a very high amount of PROT and practically is immune to status effects, so bring characters that can easily deal with heavily armoured enemies or bring a character that can reduce the PROT of an enemy, like the Hound Master.

Trinket: Fuseman's Matchstick

Cove Bosses

Siren

The Siren is a boss that resides in the Cove dungeon. When fighting her, she will use a move called "Song of Desire" that will charm a member on your party to move to her side for around three turns, although it has the chance to fail. They will use all the attacks that they can learn, even ones that have not been taught to them yet.

While doing this, she can also summon Cove enemies with the ability called "High Tide". It's recommended that you do not take a Man-at-Arms along with your party, as he can be quite troublesome to deal with if he goes to the enemy side. An efficient strategy to dealing with her is to simply stun her during her first turn, hopefully have nobody stolen by Song of Desire on the second turn, and then stun her again on the next turn. Blight is also recommended against her, as she has a very high Bleed resist and has two turns in which she will quickly take damage from the status effect.

Trinket: Siren's Conch

Drowned Crew

The Drowned Crew is a boss that resides in the Cove dungeon. When the fight first starts, the boss will pull a random team member to the frontline and summon a Drowned Anchorman with a buff granting a high amount of PROT and resistences. It will always do this at the beginning of a turn if there is no Drowned Anchorman at the current time. It's best to deal with this enemy after it uses its move, "Heave Ho!", because it immobilize the party member in the first position from moving as well as cause them to take stress damage over time and healing the Crew as long as the party member is immobilized.

However, when it does use "Heave Ho!", it will lose the PROT bonus meaning you can kill it at that point. However, if you think you can do it, you can stun the Anchorman from doing the move and focus on attacking the Crew, although it has a fairly high amount of Stun resistance. Once you've done that, simply continue to hit the Crew until they're dead, as the moves they have are not very strong to point out any weaknesses against. Crusader and Plague Doctor are great party members for this fight, as Crusaders can deal a high amount of damage to the Unholy enemies and Plague Doctor can Blight the Crew very easily. Having characters that are weak to being shuffled in the party, as "All Hands on Deck!" will be very annoying to deal with.

Trinket: Crew's Bell

Darkest Dungeon Bosses

Shuffling Horror

The Shuffling Horror is the boss found on the first level of the Darkest Dungeon, the final dungeon in the game. When you fight him, he will spawn with a Cultist Priest. His attacks consist of dealing a large amount of damage to two characters while also causing a strong bleed, dealing a low amount of damage but shuffling the entire party, and dealing a low amount of damage as well as a good amount of stress damage while summoning a Cultist Priest or Defensive Growth enemy.

The best strategy for this boss is to first kill off the Cultist Priests, or any other enemy he spawns for that matter, before attacking the boss himself. He not only has a large amount of HP, but also a moderate amount of protection. Because of this, it's recommended you take characters with you who can bleed him out. You can also blight him, but he has a high amount of blight resist compared to his bleed resist so it's not as recommended. It's also highly recommended you take a character that can heal off stress, as this is his main form of damage.

AncestOr/Heart of Darkness

The final boss in the Darkest Dungeon. It first starts off as the Ancestor fight and has several layers which ends in the Heart of Darkness.

For the beginning of the fight, you'll have to fight the Ancestor and three copies of himself that you will need to defeat, due to the fact that the Ancestor is immune to all forms of damage. Eventually, an Imperfect Reflection will spawn, dealing one damage to the Ancestor once it is defeated. For this form you'll want to stun as many as possible due to the fact that the Reflections have low stun resistance.

After the fifth Imperfect Reflection, you'll be able to attack the Ancestor finally. He'll spawn 3 Absolute Nothingness in fornt of him, which act similarly to the Prophets' pews. They can't be destroyed and have 999 DOD, so don't think about attacking them. The Ancestor will attack your party dealing a large mount of damage and having the chance to cause bleed. He'll also move around in regards to positioning, so be sure to bring characters that can attack all positions, such as the Houndmaster or Highwayman.. Once his health is down to 0, he'll spawn a Gestating Heart.

The Gestating Heart itself is not very scary, it only heals a character by 12 whenever you attack it but has the chance of causing bilght when it does so. Once it is defeated, it will be in its final form, the Heart of Darkness.

This part of the fight is very frightening, because essentially you'll have to defeat it with only half of your party remaining. It has a skill called Come Unto Your Maker which will instantly kill a target, however he only uses it in two instances: when he is down to 2/3rds of his health pool and you have four party members, and when he is down to 1/3rd of his health pool and you have 3 party members. He also has several moves which inflict a different status effect: a stress attack that prioritizes stressed heroes, a blight attack that prioritizes heroes with low blight resistance, and a bleed attack that prioritizes heroes with low bleed resistance.

The strategy to defeat this part of the boss is to deal as much as possible with your entire team at the designated health points, which are at 170 and 83 HP each. It's difficult to do so, but try and burst him down right before those HP marks to deal as much damage as you can so that when you lose one of your party members, their damage isn't wasted.

Secret Bosses

Shambler

The Shambler is an Eldritch boss that can appear in one of two ways: either as a fight in a hallway when your party is in total darkness or whenever you use a Torch on a Shambler's Altar curio, an altar with a red orb in the middle. It will summon the Shambler and you will have to fight him in total darkness if you do so.

Your party will always be surprised when fighting this boss, no matter the circ*mstance. If you run away from his fight, he'll show up in the next one. His main form of attacks are attacks that move him either forward or backward and deal either bleed or blight, while also summoning little Shambler Tentacles. These tentacles aren't too strong when they first come into the fight, but each time they hit successfully they will be buffed quite a high amount. The Shambler will summon more if they die off, making killing them a bit unattractive, so try and focus the boss down instead.

He also has another move which shuffles the party and deals 10 stress damage, making this boss very annoying to deal with if you have a team that relies on party placement.

Collector

The Collector is an interesting boss in that he only appears in a hallway whenever your party is at least 65% full. He also drops items that are impossible to find outside of his fight, so some people purposefully wander dungeons to try and trigger his fight. He drops either a Puzzling Trapezohedron, worth 2500 gold, or one of three unique trinkets: Barristan's Head, Dismas's Head, or Junia's Head.

The main way the boss attacks is that he summons three Collected enemies, which are floating heads of Highwaymen, Vestals, or Man-at-Arms. He summons any 3 to the front (the ones he spawns are random) and moves himself to the very back. Each head does something different: The Collected Highwayman deals moderate amounts of damage while causing bleed, the Vestal can either buff allies or heal them individually, and the Man-at-Arms can guard allies, including the Collector. The Collector can also deal stress damage to the frontline and deal damage to a target in the first three positions, causing bleed, marking them, and healing himself for the damage dealt and more.

The best way to deal with this boss is quite simple really: stun the Collector before he uses Collect Call (he has a low amount of speed) as he has a low amount of stun resistance, then wail on him. If you couldn't stun him, then always target the Collected Highwaymen that spawn for attacks. The other two are not really threatening as they cannot deal damage to you, but leaving the Highwaymen alone can be scary. Area of effect moves work great on this fight too, for when the Collected Man-at-Arms guards the Collector. However, you can stun the Man-at-Arms as well to make sure he doesn't do so. The fight is easier than most bosses, so just remember to stun him as fast as possible so that he can't spawn any heads and if he does, target the Highwaymen first.