Take time to deliberate, but when the time for action comes, stop thinking and go in.

Napoleon Bonaparte Greetings Hamlet Dwellers! Today we wanted to give a glimpse into some of the mechanical changes as well as the release date for The Butchers Circus. Grab a friend or a foe and prepare yourselves because the Circus arrives at the Hamlet on May 28th. In just a few weeks, all players who own Darkest Dungeon on Steam can join the fray! We cant be more excited to have a release on the horizon as weve been heads down deep on Darkest Dungeon 2 and Circus development and havent had the pleasure of being able to present something to our community in some time. Soon, we can welcome you inside the big tent for us all to celebrate what we think is an interesting new way to play Darkest Dungeon. As a little preview, lets go over probably the biggest difference players will see when jumping into the ring: changes to turn order and initiative. Normally in Darkest Dungeon, at the start of each combat round we roll all combatants initiative to establish a turn order. This initiative is the combination of the characters speed plus a die roll. We dont explicitly show who will act next because we like there to be some amount of unknown information that represents the chaos of a fight. Instead we use gold pips on the actors to show who has yet to act. However, in the Circus, it works quite a bit differently.
At the start of a match there is a coin flip, whomever wins the flip acts first. That is of course quite valuable, so the loser gets a special team-wide buff that lasts for the entire first round. The starting player then gets to choose which hero to use first. Thats rightno initiative! After that hero acts, play passes to the other player and they in turn get to choose a hero to act. Action continues to alternate back and forth between players in this way until all heroes have acted. Then a new round begins.
Although we are fans of some good old-fashioned RNG (as you well know), relying on the base game initiative system would introduce too much randomness into the outcome of a single PvP combat match. This new mechanic introduces a huge new layer of decision making into combat. Do I go for immediate damage with Crusader or Leper? Or do I set up some marks with my Houndmaster or Bounty Hunter so that my Arbalest can score big kills? Should you activate the hero most vulnerable to being stunned first, even though ideally youd like to leave them for last in order to combo or do a saving heal? It creates an interesting cat and mouse dynamic for the first half of the match as you attempt to outmaneuver and activate your chosen strategy while interrupting your opponents. Along with the initiative change, weve also made other combat changes to enhance the PvP experience, but well leave you to discover those in the Arena. Its a whole new battle out there! However, rest assured that the single player campaign and combat will continue to function as they always have. Add The Butchers Circus to your Steams Wishlist today and be notified the minute the DLC releases on May 28th! In anticipation of the release, we also invite you to join our Discord and speculate wildly with our welcoming community! Discord link: https://discordapp.com/invite/darkestdungeon Blog link: https://www.darkestdungeon.com/the-butchers-circus-dlc-releases-on-may-28th/