Kingdoms - Secrets of the Coven - Retail Release

Darkest Dungeon II - Kingdoms

“The toad, the snake and the spider will delight in the blackened dawn.”

K2: Secrets of the Coven!

Secrets of the Coven is the second free module for Kingdoms, the standalone grand campaign strategy mode for Darkest Dungeon II. Secrets of the Coven adds a complete new enemy faction and associated questline to complete. Take care as you engage this new enemy, as things may not always appear as they truly are!

We hope you enjoy this free update which not only expands upon Kingdoms, but also brings quality of life improvements to both Confessions and Kingdoms modes.

If you would like to show Red Hook support for this second free Kingdoms update, we hope you’ll consider picking up the Infernal Supporter Pack, which is also now available on PC. This pack includes some truly special cosmetics that our artists have crafted for heroes and the stagecoach. 

Some Community Requested Features:

We are fortunate to have such an engaged community, and we’re excited to be including some new features that were directly requested by many of you since the release of Kingdoms:

• Kingdoms Inn Storage: Ability to store items at Inns. Currently all Inns have a default of 3 storage slots, and this can be upgraded. Stash trinkets and consumables for your traveling heroes!

• Kingdoms Sell Items at Hoarder: You can now sell items at Hoarders. Only recovers a small amount of the original value, but it’s still something!

• Kingdoms Start Option for Paths: New difficulty option (on game setup) for hero path starting options at the crossroads; wanderer, random, or full selection.

• Path Comparisons: When looking at a path on the crossroads or elsewhere you will see more information to differentiate it from the current active path

• Kingdoms Party Selection helper: After you select your party you can use Shift+Right Click on other heroes to add or remove them from the Kingdom Map Roster for placement on start.

Narration:

As many of you know, our beloved narrator, Wayne June passed away just after our initial Kingdoms launch in January. He has delivered iconic readings for Darkest Dungeon for a decade, and we want the legacy of his performance to remain untouched. As such, we will not be training an AI model, recasting the Academic, or attempting to recreate his voice in any way. His work stands for itself, and we are eternally grateful to have had such an incredible collaboration with him. Kingdoms modules 2 and 3 will not add any further work from Wayne - consider this a moment of silence in his honor.

Looking Ahead:

Work on Darkest Dungeon 2 continues! There will be a patch between K2 and K3 - more information to follow.

Thank you to our players on discord and our closed beta testers!

We really wanted to deliver the second Kingdoms module as close to the initial release as possible, and with the feedback from our players and assistance from our testers we’ve been able to not only get the module into a great spot, but were able to identify high value features to bring in which makes the mode that much more enjoyable. Thank you for your support!

GENERAL

• We moved the Cosmetic buttons from the Crossroads to a new tab on the Character sheet. Players can now change cosmetics whenever they are at an Inn or at the Crossroads via the character sheet. Note: You must have unlocked cosmetics first for this tab to be accessible. 

• Escalation 3 Flame drain has been reduced from 33% to 25%

• Greatly reduced the appearance chance of Gaunt road battles in Escalation 3

• Cage mounts Inn upgrade moved from advanced to basic wainwright inn upgrades

• Horns of War Kingdom Event: Removed effect that reduced day count by 1. Increased number of spawned sieges from 1 to 3.

• Beleaguered Kingdom Event: Updated description to reference all factions not just beastmen

• All buffs from Hero Upgrades will now appear in the Conditions tab on the Character Sheet

• Removed Taunt from most random negative token effects. Taunt will still be applied from specific effects such as those from True Entropy.

• Updated Creature Den story choice that exchanges food for a Blight related debuff to match choice description. The debuff has been changed from enemy reduced blight RES to enemies gain blight 3 on combat start.

DIFFICULTY

• Pure random skill assignment

• Added Starting Paths option allowing players to start with wanderer paths, random paths, or full selection for their starting hero roster

ITEMS

• Infernal Flames: Added +15% Candles of Hope bonus

• Fragile Flame: Now applies 2 random positive buffs in addition to the 3 random negative debuffs. It’s possible to receive a buff and a debuff affecting the same stat that are combined into a single modifier.

• Orbitoclast: Max Health debuff now only lasts 1 region in confessions and 3 regions in kingdoms

MONSTERS

Creature Den

• Webber: HP reduced from 12 to 10

• Webber: Starting Dodge reduced from 2 to 1-2 (50%)

• Webber: Web Vulnerable reduced from 2 to 1

• Spitter: HP reduced from 14 to 12

• Spitter: Starting Dodge+ reduced from 2 to 1-2 (50%)

Cultists

• Altar: no longer displays "Altar of X" skills in Academic View in Kingdoms mode

• Altar: fixed an issue with Academic View tool tip for Boneweaving showing an additional empty Target section

• Cardinal: Hollow Vessel stress damage reduced from 3 to 2

• Cardinal: Entropic Star DMG increased from 4-7 to 6-8

• Cardinal: Yawning Void stress damage increased from 1 to 1-2 (25%)

Confession Bosses

• Lock tokens used by Shackles of Denial are now colored orange instead of blue to properly reflect that they do not interact with skills and effects that can interact with negative tokens, such as Holy Water

Quirks

• Fixed an issue where Fisherfolk Hater effects were not properly applying

• Fixed an issue where the damage reduction component of Hater quirks was not properly applying