In Darkest Dungeon 2, Stress is an important mechanic players must manage to complete the campaign. Here’s everything you need to know about it.
In Darkest Dungeon 2, each hero has a Stress meter that fills up from 0-10 under each hero as you play through the campaign. This resource represents the mental trauma of each character and negatively affects your heroes and their relationships when the Stress levels get too high. Once your character reaches 10 Stress, there is a high likelihood of them going into a Meltdown, which will reduce their HP to 10% and give them harsh debuffs. In this guide, we cover how to reduce your Stress in Darkest Dungeon 2, so you can maintain positive relationships in your party and avoid Meltdowns.
How to Reduce Stress in Darkest Dungeon 2
Players can take the following steps to reduce or heal Stress in Darkest Dungeon 2:
- Use hero abilities in battle like Plague Doctors Level 2 Ounce of Prevention ability or the Man-at-Arms’ Bolster skill.
- Purchase and use items like Pipeweed, Calming Incense, and Whiltling Tools from The Inn or vendors.
- Improve your party’s Affinity or relationships.
- Destroy enemies that inflict the Horror debuff first, as this status effect adds Stress every turn.
View the Academic View on each enemy to see which ones have the Horror status effect on their attacks so you know who to focus on first.
In Darkest Dungeon 2, the following actions will increase your hero’s Stress levels:
- Negative banter and low Affinity between your party members.
- Maintaining high Affinity between heroes will reduce Negative banter and increase Positive banter.
- When your party members have low Affinity for each other, certain skills will increase Stress, designated by a blue arrow in battle under the hero it affects.
- Assistance encounters will increase or decrease hero Affinity, which will affect stress levels. Choose options that highlight characters in gold rather than decisions that highlight them in blue.
- Critical hits and hero deaths may increase the stress level of other Adventurers in your party.
- Certain skills will apply Stress or Horror, which will passively increase Stress levels each turn.
Darkest Dungeon 2 Meltdown and Resolute Status Effects Explained
In Darkest Dungeon 2, once players’ Stress meter hits 10, they will go into either a Meltdown or Resolute status, greatly affecting their HP and other stats.
- Meltdown: There is an 80% chance for players to suffer a Meltdown when their Stress reaches 10. This will reduce a hero’s HP to 10% and applies a -15% Death Blow Resistance debuff, as well as reduces Affinity with each team member. There is also a chance that a negative Quirk will be added to the hero. Once a Meltdown occurs, Stress will be reset to 1.
- Resolute: There is a 20% chance for Heroes to enter a Resolute status when Stress reaches 10. Resolute will heal the hero by 50% HP and give them a +15% Death Blow Resistance buff, as well as increase Affinity with each team member and give a chance to provide a positive Quirk.
In the end, players must manage their Stress levels. Going into a Meltdown will reduce your Heroes’ relationships with each other, which can snowball the entire party’s Stress levels and make it really hard to continue on in the game. Luckily, now that you know all the factors that play into Stress and ways you can reduce or heal it, you’ll be able to make it a lot further without having to worry about the meter.
For more guides like this one, see our Darkest Dungeon 2 section.
