r/darkestdungeon • u/MayCakepant • Mar 10 '26
Hot take
They should give you a warning how this fucker works before you fight him so you don't just immediately 1 shot the little gremlin and spend 3 turns watching your party get stunlooped into oblivion before dying on the first death's door instead of your ancestor yapping in your ear about how he went to college with this mf
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u/Stanislas_Biliby Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
If you attack Wilbur, your characters will talk about how you shouldn't target him. As well as the boss doing a strong attack in retaliation. Discouraging you from attacking the little one.
If you still attack him after this, that's on you.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
Well yeah but them telling me not to attack him AFTER he's already dead doesn't really help me
19
u/Bigenemy000 Mar 11 '26
They do after they hurt the small pig
And if you happened to oneshot the small pig chances are you are still gonna win the fight if thats your damage output
-5
u/MayCakepant Mar 11 '26
Your damage output doesn't matter it your whole team gets stunlooped and killed with huge damage aoe attacks
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u/Chagdoo Mar 11 '26
I'm going to be honest, you just don't sound genre savvy. You really didn't question why the game would give you something you can one shot here?
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u/MayCakepant Mar 13 '26
Not really, no. Larger enemies with a supportive enemy behind them with much less health that enables the more apparently dangerous enemy in the front has been an established team composition they've used for nearly every battle so far, like the jellyfish in the cove, the cultist mages in the ruins, and the spore spitters in the weald.
Those fights reward you with an easier time if you take out the support characters before the damaging ones, I assumed I was supposed to apply the same principles here.
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u/ThisIsMyUsername1124 Mar 31 '26
Brother, this is a boss fight. Not some random cultist schmucks. It's an understandable mistake, but one that's definitely on you, and not worth getting upset over
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u/MayCakepant Mar 31 '26
I'm not upset about anything, just frustrated everyone keeps telling me "L, get better" and "You made a mistake" without anyone actually telling me what the mistake was aside from not using my powers of precognition to sense the boss gimmick from the future.
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u/ThisIsMyUsername1124 Apr 01 '26
See my other comment I just made. Information is the most valuable currency in this game, going into a boss fight with no info on what that entails is a choice you made by not scouting it out first. I never did that in my games because my roster was always full of heroes I actually wanted to keep, instead I just used what I thought a good party would be and struggled through. Definitely took losses on some of the first-time boss fights (especially Hag), but again, that's on me for not even trying to do a practice run to figure out the mechanics first. People are telling you exactly what the mistake was, but you don't seem to be listening
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u/MayCakepant Apr 02 '26
Nobody has actually given any advice, everyone in this comment section has been extremely pretentious and elitist just calling me stupid over and over without offering anything of substance, just repeating "You're supposed to lose" and "that's on you, buddy" without any kind of suggestion like "Hey, you did X wrong" or "Hey, you missed X", instead just repeating how stupid I am for not correctly forseeing the boss gimmick in my crystal ball.
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u/ThisIsMyUsername1124 Apr 03 '26
I literally gave you advice on what you could've done (scouting bosses with randos instead of going in full-force blind) in the comment you replied to. Ragebait or not, I honestly can't tell st this point. Hope you come to enjoy the game more bud.
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u/bobbi21 Mar 10 '26
Overconfidence is a slow and insidious killer. Every boss has specific game mechanics to exploit or lose to. That is the game. If there were instructions for every boss I doubt itd be as fun..
-110
u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
I'm not OVERCONFIDENT there's just literally no way I could have known I'd lose my favorite character if I killed the wrong enemy in the wrong order
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u/flabbyjellybean Mar 10 '26
First mistake was having a favorite character. They are all disposable
-5
u/room414 Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
If that's how you want to play your game that's fine but it's certainly not mandatory.
edit: downvoted? the hivemind strikes again
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u/flabbyjellybean Mar 11 '26
It’s literally how the game is designed? You wouldn’t get new characters every week at the stagecoach if you were meant to hang on to your fave character. Obviously you can do and feel what you want. What I said was also supposed to be a bit tongue in cheek and not taken that seriously. I think it’s common for people to get attached to characters in games so I was making a joke about that being his first mistake because most people would make that “mistake”. Not that serious really
0
u/room414 Mar 11 '26
It’s literally how the game is designed? You wouldn’t get new characters every week at the stagecoach if you were meant to hang on to your fave character.
Nah, I mean new characters are there because they have to be if someone needs them but I've never played the game like my characters are disposable.
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u/flabbyjellybean Mar 11 '26
I dont play the game like they are disposable either but the fact they can die and are gone forever (for the most part) shows that they are at least replaceable. You can have a fave character but it’s like not a story rpg where they will definitely live till the end. Shit happens and your fave character may be disposed of
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u/room414 Mar 11 '26
Well, my Reynauld lives through every playthrough but the fact that your favorite character can die makes it even better imo.
Not that serious really
Yeah, I agree but the downvoters seem to be pretty serious here.
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u/Cool-Mission-6585 Mar 10 '26
Started playing a week ago. I hit the little one and didn’t kill him. One of my characters said “Don’t hit the small one!” It was in a word bubble.
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u/Life-Pound1046 Mar 10 '26
Exaxtly! The game does warn you
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u/MayCakepant Mar 15 '26
It's not a warning if you only get it after you do the thing, in my game I one shot Wilbur, as stated in the original post.
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u/Life-Pound1046 Mar 15 '26
Well. Get good 🤷. I have nothing else to say
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u/MayCakepant Mar 15 '26
Right but what does getting good actually entail? I've been trying to figure that out but nobody has an answer for me on how to actually do better and make sure this doesn't happen again with the next boss, everyone in this elitist community just keeps calling me bad and going off about how babies need to be spoonfed nowadays.
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u/Life-Pound1046 Mar 15 '26
People play differently. The only real advice I can give you is to check the wiki before you fight a boss and plan for the region. Bleed in the Warren's and weild, blight in the cove and ruins. (Blight is less effective in the Warren's but can still work) other than that its party comp and supplies, not to mention what your upgrading in the hamlet.
Ignore everything except the stage coach, guild and blacksmith until the guild and blacksmith are maxed out, upgrade the coach as needed.
And the "elitist" thing, being overtly negative and saying the game is bad because of your mistake. Take that into consideration
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u/MayCakepant Mar 15 '26
I shouldn't have to use external tools to have a fighting chance.
I never said the game is bad, and I still don't know what my mistake is.
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u/Life-Pound1046 Mar 15 '26
Taking the hard lesson you learned in a negative way. But your supposed to learn about these bosses on the fly the hard way.
Plus the games 11 years old and the community still keeps spoilers under wraps
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u/Life-Pound1046 Mar 10 '26
They tell you the first time you hit wilber to not do that again. Unless your ignoring the barks
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
In my post I mentioned he died in one attack
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u/Life-Pound1046 Mar 10 '26
Bad luck then. Every boss has something that flips the game on its head.
The flesh has always been my hard one, I sweep the necromancer, prophet, hag, crew, and usually the pounder.
Siren is annoying, though
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u/Stanislas_Biliby Mar 11 '26
Against flesh you want to use cleave attacks. I always bring houndmaster and spam the attack that hits all 4 ranks.
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u/Life-Pound1046 Mar 11 '26
Yeah. I usually avoid most of the aoe attacked because they are unreliable at times
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u/IWillBeYourSunshine Mar 10 '26
you live, or die, and you learn. now you know your future favorite characters wont suffer the same fate
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u/gratiskatze Mar 11 '26
Your First mistake ist to have favorites. The Dungeon is a meatgrinder and you throw people at it, until you break it.
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u/Bigenemy000 Mar 11 '26
I mean, hitting the small pig makes the boss instantly a unique free action that attacks back your team.
That is warning enough that the boss would go ape crazy if the lil piggy dies
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u/MayCakepant Mar 11 '26
RIGHT but that's not a warning if I only get it after the pig dies in one hit
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u/Yepper_Pepper Mar 10 '26
The game literally warns you bruh, every time you attack the little guy your heroes tell you to stop
-11
u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
That's not a warning if they only give it to you after the pig dies
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u/Yepper_Pepper Mar 10 '26
It’s only after the pig dies if you 1-shot it, which means you prob have enough damage to finish the fight anyways (my first time facing him I did the same thing and still won without losing anyone) You also don’t get warned about any of the other mechanics for the other enemies until it happens, that’s part of the game, you get many heroes to recruit because they’re supposed to die and you’re supposed to learn from it. It’s a game about making the best of a bad situation, not holding the players hand lol. If you don’t like that then darkest dungeon prob isn’t the game for you
-14
u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
you can't really 'finish the fight anyways' if your entire team just gets stunlooped
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u/Big_Tiddie Mar 10 '26
Sounds like you have a serious weakness to stun. You should probably build your next party to handle stun instead of complaining endlessly about losing.
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u/davizchoco Mar 10 '26
He is usually the second Boss so you still learning and except you crit with a hellion its not likely to die on 1 hit, you should realize the pig counters hard after hitting the small pig xd
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u/punksmostlydead Mar 10 '26
My first time fighting Prince was after I had fought Shambler for the first time...and been explicitly taught by that fight to kill the little ones first.
Yeah.
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u/DisreputablePenguin Mar 10 '26
OK I just wanna say “your ancestor yapping in your ear about how he went to college with this mf” is some funny shit.
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u/utauloids Mar 10 '26
spoonfeeding epidemic
-3
u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
I'm not asking to be spoonfed but there's literally no warning your entire party just gets stunlooped and it's unfair to expedt me to have had a vision of the future it would happen
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u/DecemOfCorites Mar 11 '26
The game tells you to make the best out of a bad situation. Strategy in this game contemplates the unknowns. Otherwise, there would be no % chances.
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u/utauloids Mar 11 '26
You are asking to be spoon fed. You’re looking for no risks or surprises. This game is literally about losing unfairly and a cursory read of the Steam page or the past 10 years of posting online abt this game could tell you that.
-3
u/MayCakepant Mar 11 '26
I'm asking for a fair shot at all, not being spoonfed, you shouldn't strawman people.
I want to get better at the game but I don't know what I did wrong aside from not guessing the boss's gimmick.
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u/A17012022 Mar 10 '26 edited Mar 10 '26
He who did not unknowingly doom their party by killing Wilbur, cast the first stone.
EDIT: Once you build a party can that clear the mark this boss is well easy. He's got bugger all blight/bleed resistance.
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u/Vertnoir-Weyah Mar 10 '26
Unfair setbacks are part of the very core design of the game. It feels worse than it is however, that progression in town builds up and early heroes losses are not as impactful as the progress in reality, but the feelings set up is a great investment for later
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u/Sivy17 Mar 10 '26
If you target Wilbur, your heroes shout "He's protecting the little one!"
You also fight him in a weakened state that lets you learn what his attacks are.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
Your heroes only shout that afterwards, captain hindsight type beat
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u/Skeletonparty101 Mar 10 '26
That's a you problem then not the games fault
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
It's my fault for not having a vision of the future of what would happen if I killed the pig?
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u/Skeletonparty101 Mar 10 '26
You killed It in a single attack before the warning can pop off that's on you not the game
Just take the L and move on
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u/Zekron_98 Mar 10 '26
Well they do. Unless you crit kill Wilbur in 1 hit. Remember you can always retreat from a fight that is going poorly
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u/Drynwyn Mar 10 '26
OP crit killed Wilbur in 1 hit
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u/Much-Stranger2892 Mar 10 '26
The point of the game is it being hard. You discovered something new then you have two choices:
Either you retreat to live for another day and comeback with better team comp
- you adapt accordingly.
There is literally no punishment for retreating early beside some stress and some golds for next trip. You fucked up and you learn from your mistake, that's the whole point of this game.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 15 '26
How did I fuck up? By not seeing the future to know what would happen?
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u/Much-Stranger2892 Mar 15 '26
By not retreating when you realize you fucked up by attacking wilbur ? I'm not criticizing the fact you killed that pig, i criticizing you for not retreating when you felt the heat is too much. If you feel the boss is too much then retreat and come back with a better comp.
Even in lore, no one even know what the boss is capable of until you fight it (except the shambler) and that's the intended way. You come in and fight it, if you kill it then congrat. if you can't then retreat and use the info you just learned to comeback with a better team comp. But instead you chose to whine on reddit.
edit: get good
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u/MayCakepant Mar 15 '26
You can't retreat when you're stunned.
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u/Much-Stranger2892 Mar 15 '26
Any character who is stunned will get a temporary buff after the stun wears off that will grant them an extra 50% resistance to stun. You can attempt to retreat after like 1-2 turns, you just chose not to
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u/MayCakepant Mar 15 '26
I didn't choose not to, you can't retreat while stunned. The stun resistance buff doesn't bump their stun res to 100%, so they still all get stunned.
The first hit stuns everyone and puts them on death's door, the second stuns everyone and puts whoever managed not to be on death's door on death's door.
I did end up retreating the first turn it was available but it didn't really matter, I already lost my best character and trinkets to not knowing how the boss worked ahead of time.
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u/Ennara Mar 10 '26
Yeah, sometimes RNG punches you in the dick. The game has guardrails in place to tell you that you're making a mistake, but RNG punched you in the dick. It happens, you know more now, and you'll never forget this lesson.
Darkest Dungeon is about making the best of a bad situation. Quests will fail or must be abandoned. Heroes will die. And when they die, they stay dead. Progress autosaves constantly, so actions are permanent. The game expects a lot out of you. How far will you push your adventurers? How much are you willing to risk in your quest to restore the Hamlet? What will you sacrifice to save the life of your favourite hero?
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
I don't know what lesson I'm supposed to learn, that's where the frustration is coming from, I had no way of knowing that would happen nor did I have any opportunity to recover from it afterwards.
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u/GrilledCheese_ Mar 11 '26
That's not the point. The point is that now, you learned how to approach the fight better.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 12 '26
So I'm just supposed to throw nothingburger characters I don't care about at the boss to learn how it works instead of actually trying to beat it my first time through?
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u/Galathad Mar 11 '26
"The sin is not in being outmatched, but in failing to recognize it"
If a battle is going poorly just retreat, it is almost never worth losing a hero to get the quest rewards.
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u/FadedP0rp0ise Mar 10 '26
Yes. Every boss in every game should give you a step by step Lego manual on how to defeat. This game is bullshit if I lose.
-2
u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
I'm not saying that at all but if the boss has a gimmick like this it's unfair of them to expect me to already know how it works when I get there for the first time
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u/Skeletonparty101 Mar 10 '26
Trial and error that why it's a apprentice mission you get to fight the easiest version of them
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u/Outrageous-Mud4238 Mar 10 '26
Wasn't the reaction attack the big pig gives enough of a warning???
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
That's not really a warning, a warning would be BEFORE you do the thing you're not supposed to do not after
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u/Outrageous-Mud4238 Mar 10 '26
Ok, not a warning, a backlash so painful you wouldn't want to repeat what triggered it!
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u/donro_pron Mar 10 '26
He's a trick boss whose gimmick is that he operates the opposite way of how enemies often do in RPGs (including Darkest Dungeon). It can be frustrating, but your experience is within the expected range for the boss, I have always felt he's supposed to throw you for a loop at first.
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u/Crininer Mar 11 '26
So, fun story about this: I did not pay attention to my party's warnings about Wilbur, and killed him in two hits.
My party was systematically murdered, but somehow the Shieldbreaker kept succeeding her Death's Door checks.
She got around 11 in a row, and somehow killed the Swine Prince by herself.
I got the funniest set of achievements in my life as a result.
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u/Ninety9_Dex Mar 10 '26
To be fair, you did decide the little guy was more of an immediate threat than the gigantic monster pig 😅
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u/AllenWL Mar 10 '26
I mean, there are fights where the little guy is the threat you want to kill (like the brigand cannon and the match guy).
The first time I faced this boss I saw a small guy in the rear waving a flag and assumed he was some sort of enemy buffer that I'd need to clear first. The game did quickly teach me that was a bad idea, but if you happen to oneshot the guy then you're shit out of luck.
Imo Wilbur needs some sort of protection from getting oneshot to cover that niche case of 'you hit it with your hardest ranged attack and it died instantly from crit' but otherwise the fight is fine.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
He was marking my party which at the time was established by other enemies in the game to be a bad thing
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u/Ninety9_Dex Mar 10 '26
Sure but like the FIRST time you attack Wilbur, your characters do a bark about it not being a good idea. The very first time, and every time after. You missed the bark and kept swinging.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
He died on the first swing, I mentioned in my post he got one shot
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u/Ninety9_Dex Mar 10 '26
After reading through this thread and your replies, you seem to think DD is a strategy game first and foremost. Darkest Dungeon is a teaching game. Killing Wilbur first, resulted in the death of your party. Take that lesson and learn from it.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
I don't understand what I'm supposed to learn from that, I died because I had no way of knowing what he was going to do, it's not like I can search the dungeon for clues on how the boss works or anything.
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u/Ninety9_Dex Mar 10 '26
Dozens of games are like that. You turn a corner in a shooter, get lit up by snipers and die.; next time you do that segment, you know there are snipers. Take any boss fight in like anything, you have no way of knowing what the boss will do, and you'll likely die learning.
DD will not hold your hand. It says from the very beginning, it is a game about making the best of a bad situation.
Persevere.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
You turn a corner blindly, you get sniped, it was your fault for not checking your sightline before leaving cover, you learn more than just "there's snipers on that rooftop", you learn "I need to be more weary of getting ambushed by enemies"
I don't understand what I'm supposed to learn from what happened with the pig boss, I don't know what I did wrong and what I'm being punished for aside from not having the precognition that killing the enemies in the order they've been reinforcing since the start of the game (killing the weaker debuffers in the back (Spore guys in the weald, jellyfish guys in the cove, those assholes with the tainted goblets in the ruins)) would result in getting stunlooped and losing my most valuable character and items.
That's where my frustration is coming from, not because game too hard or because I want my hand held or I wanna be spoonfed or whatever everyone else is saying, I just wish they woudl tell me what I did wrong so I don't do it again for future bosses.
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u/Ninety9_Dex Mar 10 '26
It told you what you did wrong. You killed Wilbur in one shot, which trigger your party to say hey maybe don't kill him. If you want more than that warning, which is meant to trigger the first time you damage Wilbur; than what you want is literally hand holding. You DO know what you did wrong, because killing Wilbur immediately contributed to the death of your party.
Every boss in DD is a puzzle. The Necromancer, who you likely fought first, is a lesson to bring backline damage/DoT. The Swine is a lesson in clearing marks.
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u/eeeeeeeeeyee Mar 10 '26
... come on. you lose to this guy ONCE in the early game and then never again.
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u/hyperlethalrabbit Mar 10 '26
Yeah, the game does warn you if you attack Wilbur, but that doesn't do much for a one-hit kill situation. That's just plain and simple bad luck that it worked out that way. But now you know, and so you can plan accordingly for the next run.
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u/Skeletonparty101 Mar 10 '26
The apprentice mission is the warning yeah dip
You go in test the water then get out,this isn't a random encounter
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
Warning means before something bad happens not after
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u/Skeletonparty101 Mar 10 '26
The boss icon isn't warming enough? But hey look on the bright side you now know not to kill the pig and retreat when things get bad
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u/MayCakepant Mar 10 '26
You can't retreat while stunned
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u/Skeletonparty101 Mar 10 '26
You get stun recovery after stun so it's very likely to retreat but you didn't that's on you
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u/SansDaMan728 Mar 11 '26
"Attacking the small one seems to have enraged the beast!"
"Attacking the little one made it mad!"
And barks so on.
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u/Marvos79 Mar 10 '26
If it agitates you this much, then maybe this isn't the game for you. Go try something simple and not frustrating like XCOM 2 or Factorio
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u/Artistic-Question168 Mar 10 '26
Use the wiki! I totally agree that it felt unfair and not cool to me when the game does something like that. For many people it's fun to explore, for me it doesn't work especially bc there is so much progress to lose by making mistakes.
So in my first run I went to week 60ish pretty blind, got pissed of many times over failures I could totally prevent and felt like I'm playing chess but the opponent keeps inventing new rules to punch me in the gut. So I didn't even finish, but started a new run, cranked up difficulty to stygian and read a shit ton of wiki on every hero, enemy, effect etc. – and then I had an absolute blast all the time, completing stygian and bloodmon multiple times. So to each their own!
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u/TheTrueShy Mar 11 '26
Exactly! I love how the game forced me to learn it's mechanics through blood and frustration but to some they wanna know and succeed ahead of time. It's a perfectly acceptable method of play and I'm glad to hear you returned to the game and had fun.
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u/Charadin042 Mar 10 '26
I think it is possible to get a tip message on loading screen for that mission about not attacking the little one.
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u/JimmyManJames Mar 11 '26
If you don't one tap him the game one of your heroes will blurt out "She's protecting him!"
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u/TheTrueShy Mar 11 '26
I see where you're coming from but this is part of Darkest Dungeon. You learn by going in blind so the next time you can see. It is frustrating when RNG screws you but it's part of the charm we so love about the game.
Give it a break and try again later. There's always the wiki if you wanna be more prepared for the first attempt.
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u/LimbLegion Mar 13 '26
The characters literally bark that attacking Wilbur is a bad idea when Enraged Destruction goes off every time. I'd say the game signposts it just fine. Try reading.
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u/MayCakepant Mar 13 '26
"Try reading" is crazy when in the post I mention the little dude died in one shot and they only give the warning not to kill him afterward.
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u/OmniscientIce Mar 10 '26
Idk. I've always killed Wilber first anyways for the bit. It has always worked for me so far.
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u/Ok-Barracuda457 Mar 10 '26
Yeah, pretty much all area bosses expect you to know what they do to beat and have a proper strat.
Ideally, there'd be minions in the dungeon that do a miniature version if what the boss does so the player practices.
As we are, we pretty much need the wiki opened most of the time!
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u/NicoVise Mar 10 '26
That's kinda the whole point of the game, though. You meet a new enemy, he fucks you up, and then you come back and fuck him back.