InDarkest Dungeon 2, you need to take all the help you can get. The odds are stacked so thoroughly against you, particularly in the later Confessions, that the tiniest percentage change to one stat or another can be the difference between life and death for your party of anti-heroes.
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This is where Trinkets come in. Each party member can equip two of these, and they offer bonuses that range from negligible to game-changing. Their effects may seem underwhelming at first, but as you unlock more options via the Altar of Hope, they become an indispensable part ofmany team compsand strategies. Here are ten particularly shiny trinkets that you should pick up when you get the chance.
10Temptation
Temptation is one of Darkest Dungeon 2’s ‘Cultist Trinkets’: Trinkets that offer huge bonuses, balanced out by requiring you to equip a Stained trinket, or the Shambler’s Spawn pet, to activate them. It may just be the most powerful Trinket in this category, too, providing a 50 percent chance of giving the equipped character an extra action each turn.
If this effect triggers once or twice in a battle, it will swing things massively in your favour: such is the power of taking an extra action in Darkest Dungeon 2. It’s such a powerful effect, in fact, that Temptation’s downsides, occasional damage and a huge reduction to deathblow resistance, feel almost irrelevant in comparison.
9Vengeful Kill List
The Vengeful Kill list may just be the best Trinket in the game. Like the Bounty Hunter it’s attached to, however, its power is balanced out by its scarcity. You need to encounter the Bounty Hunter, a semi-rare event in itself, then have the good fortune to receive this as his starting Trinket: a set of nested events that requires a lot of luck on your part.
If you do come across it though, prepare for sheer carnage. Every kill you make with the List attached grants a permanent three percent damage boost, which can stack up to 12 percent per fight if you let your Bounty Hunter get all the glory. After a few battles, the extra damage this Trinket provides will be enough to trivialise eventhe fiercest bosses in the game.
8Thrilling Tablet
Usually, losing a hero in Darkest Dungeon 2 is a catastrophic, run-ending event. The Thrilling Tablet lets you put a positive spin on such scenarios, however, by providing obscene 100 percent boosts to health and damage for each hero that’s missing from your lineup.
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On a tanky hero like the Man-at-Arms, the Thrilling tablet can allow them to single-handedly take down bosses and elite enemies without breaking a sweat. It’s not a Trinket you should attempt to build around, as the increased flexibility more party members bring will usually outweigh the stat bonuses it provides, but it’s a great pickup from the Hoarder if you find yourself backed into a corner late in a run.
7Cursed Coin
A Trinket exclusive to the high-damage Highwayman, Cursed Coin lets you double down on that crucial aspect of the character by adding five percent damage for each positive token he possesses. Once mastered, Take Aim provides four positive tokens by itself for a 20% damage boost, and that number can easily go higher with the help of support skills like Emboldening Vapours.
In addition, the Coin also has a good chance of adding Riposte tokens with each use of Highway Robbery, a staple skill in the Highwayman lineup. The reduction in critical hit chance included to “balance” the Coin is negligible, and easily avoidable, making this the best Trinket for one of thebest characters in the game.
6Sparkleball
Unlike in many RPGs, status effects in Darkest Dungeon 2 aren’t a niche novelty but an everyday occurrence. Most enemies, even the low-level fodder types, are capable of inflicting a status or two on your harried heroes, forcing you to learn the in-game status glossary inside-out before you can properly engage with the game.
These statuses are just as powerful when inflicted on your enemies, and the Sparkleball lets you do just that with startling efficiency. Every Sparkleball-backed hit can inflict up to five separate statuses, ranging from minor hits like Daze and Immobilize to game-changers like Vulnerable and Weak. While the individual chances for each status are low, the high rolls with the Sparkleball are dazzling to behold.
5Snappy Swig
The Snappy Swig is a Trinket that can only be found in the Sprawl region, Darkest Dungeon 2’s urban hotspot in the literal sense of the word. It increases the amount of Burn damage the equipped hero inflicts, making it a great choicefor the Runaway, but more importantly it has a 50 percent chance to grant a Crit token every turn, assuming your speed is over eight.
For heroes with high base speed, like the Jester and Highwayman, eight is an easily attainable total with the help of some Stagecoach items and Trinkets. Once you get there, a Crit token every other turn will greatly boost your damage output, letting you end fights sooner and retain your resources for the long road ahead.
4Nautical Compass
If Nautical nonsense be something you wish, then this is the Compass for you. Found among the briney beaches and rotting planks of the Shroud, this Trinket provides one of five tokens at the end of each turn: Block, Strength, Dodge, Crit, or Stress.
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Each has an equal chance, so you’ve got an 80 percent shot at a good outcome, with two in particular, Strength and Crit, being very good indeed. The potential Stress downside is notable, but easily managed with the Stress healing skills you should be packing on every team comp anyway. With this Compass in hand, your enemies will be flopping like a fish in no time.
3Storage Room Key
Some Trinkets in Darkest Dungeon 2 go beyond mere stat adjustments and act more like new paths for a given hero, altering their moves and playstyle in interesting ways. The Storage Room Key is one such Trinket, turning the Plague Doctor into more of a support character than a healer.
With the Key equipped, Plague Doctor’s Ounce of Prevention skill will also apply Block to your entire party in addition to its usual status resistance effect, and Emboldening Vapours will add Regen as well as Strength. The tradeoff is that Battlefield Medicine will have its effectiveness halved, but the extra resilience that buffed Ounce of Prevention offers will more than offset that.
2Price Of Pride
Price of Pride is a brilliant self-contained story of a Trinket, revealing the central tragedy of the Man-at-Arms character with nothing more than three words and an image. It’s just as good mechanically too, providing two hugely beneficial effects with only a mostly-insignificant downside.
Each time the Man-at-Arms is hit with Price of Pride equipped, he has a 33 percent of gaining a Block Plus token. For a character that deliberately takes hits for other party members regularly, this is a major boon. In addition, the Bellow skill gains a ten percent chance of inflicting Stun on enemies. This sounds low, but when you consider the fact that Bellow hits all enemies at once, your chances of getting a stun in each turn become fairly reasonable.
Gaining Blind if you’re first in the turn order is excellent flavour, punishing the Man-at-Arms for rushing headlong into battle, but it’s very unlikely to actually happen in-game due to his low base Speed.
1Raven’s Reach
Sometimes the best Trinkets are also the simplest. Raven’s Reach is simplicity incarnate, as it does one thing and one thing only: provide a 20 percent damage boost to ranged attack skills. This is a significant buff, and while the effect is obviously comparable to that of the Gnarly Knuckles, which do the same for melee attacks, ranged attackers tend to perform better than their melee counterparts in Darkest Dungeon 2.
Specifically, the Highwayman and Occultist are two of the best damage dealers in the game, and both do their best work from a distance. The extra Stress gained from missing attacks can be annoying at times, but skills like Take Aim can help you to avoid it in most cases.
