Darkest Dungeon Double Lunge Team Build Guide

This guide aims to help new players with team building and encourage discussion between veterans. Feel free to ask any questions or talk about what you would change. We start today with a particularly effective Double Lunge composition.

Scholars and Dancers

Grave Robber: lunge, thrown dagger, shadow fade, Pick to the Face
Trinkets: Letter Opener and Raider Talisman. This makes GR able to outspeed rank 3 more reliably and lunge far deadlier with better acc and dmg, on top of this you get a scouting chance.

Plague Doctor: Blinding Gas, Plague Grenade, Battlefield Medicine, Noxious Blast
Trinkets: Blashphemous Vial and speed (Mildred Locket, Baron’s lash, feather crystal…). Blashphemous vial is an auto pick for any PD, +Acc and +Stun chance make blinding gas so reliable; meanwhile, the speed allows Plague doctor to stun backline before they act.

Crusader: Holy Lance, Battle Heal, Inspiring cry, smite
Trinkets: Focus ring and Ancestral Scroll. More acc and crit to allow holy lance to reliably kill the dodgy backline; the scroll will make Crusader support moves far more effective (+you can swap it at camp for more stress heal)

Occultist: Hands from the Abyss, Wyrd Reconstruction, Weakening Curse, Sacrificial Stab
Trinkets: Demon’s Cauldron and Ancestral Pistol/Ancestor’s Signet Ring. Demon’s Cauldron is an auto pick for Occ, look at that +stun chance and +crit which makes Hands from the abyss one of the best skills in the game. The acc help him to land hit more reliably than either choose more security with the +prot of a signet ring or the option to outspeed monsters with a pistol (+3 speed).

Explication

This is called a double lunge team (allow Grave Robber to use a high burst dmg two times in a row), it is very fast at controlling the enemies, whether by bursting or stunning them in the first turns. The plague doctor naturally opens fights with blinding gas, this way she prevents a lot of stress and guarantees that the backline will be killed before they act whether they outspeed your other 3 heroes or not. Grave Robber will follow with Lunge, this can secure a kill right away or at least severely injure rank 3. Often this leaves Occultist to stun rank 1 or 2, but he can also finish off a backline left on few hp by Lunge. And finally, thanks to his low-speed crusader is guaranteed to act after Grave Robber, now in rank 3, he can use the holy lance, repositioning the grave robber in rank 3. This means that turn 2 Grave robber gets to use lunge once again for another burst of damage.

You can also swap Plague doctor for an antiquarian for a nice cash run team

Strengths:

• High damage on the first two turns of combats
• High speed
• Very good backline damage
• Very good stuns
• 3 different sources of healing, with DoT cure
• Prevent stress as well as able to heal it
• Can prevent nighttime ambush
• Can cure diseases

Weak points:

• Slower tempo after turn 2
• Squishy
• Not a lot of camping self buff

Which area to bring them?

This team performs well in all areas except for weald. The big hp and prot enemies (fungal scratcher/artillery, unclean giants, virago…) will make sniping monsters harder to achieve, the fight can’t be secured in two lunge like with other monsters mashes. This will results in the team being exposed to more damage that it can take; in addition this team doesn’t have lot of answers to big frontline damage of this area.