Five Tips and Tricks to Survive in Dark and Darker

If you're planning to jump into the February playtest of Dark and Darker, you might initially find yourself struggling to survive attacks from enemy players, as well as the PvE enemies inhabiting the dungeon. 

This guide will provide you with five quick and easy tips to help you improve at the game and get safely home with your loot. 

To improve your chances in combat as a new player, one of the best things you can do is prioritize getting rid of your starting weapon as soon as possible. 

If you get lucky, you might be able to loot a better weapon than what you start with, either from a chest or container in the dungeon or from the body of a dead enemy or player. 

If you aren't able to find one however, you can instead purchase one from the Weaponsmith. 

You can view the weapons currently in Dark and Darker on our Weapons page. 

In Dark and Darker, it's quite common for enemies to be nearby even if you cannot see them yet, due to the narrow corridors and dark areas in the dungeons. 

To help you get a head start on your opponents, it is very helpful to keep listening for sounds that may spell trouble, such as footsteps or weapon sounds. You can start to paint a mental picture of what exactly is around the corner, such as the number of enemies, what skills they are using and if they are players or AI enemies. 

Once you've heard the sounds, you can start making a plan about how you want to proceed. 

This applies pretty much all the time, regardless of what types of enemies you are going up against. You can make use of the game world in various ways to help protect you from enemies. For example, you can jump on top of objects to gain some height over enemies, often making it difficult for AI enemies to hit you at all, and making it harder for players to land headshots. 

You can also utilize cover to surprise your enemies, for example you can momentarily hide around a corner while winding up an attack animation, and then emerge to quickly land a powerful blow against your assailant before they have a chance to react. 

It's also normally a bad idea to stand still while fighting - try to move away from enemy blows by jumping or stepping sideways or backwards. It's better to do this than to rely solely on blocking to protect yourself. 

This point follows on from the last one. In Dark and Darker, attacks to the head come with a 1.5x damage modifier, which can be decisive in a close brawl with an enemy. 

Therefore it's good to protect your head from damage whenever possible. You can do this by jumping on objects to get a height advantage, making it difficult for enemies to hit your head, or by using obstructions in the world, such as doorways or walls that make it difficult for some weapon types to swing and hit you in the head. 

In Dark and Darker, its always very useful to have an abundance of healing supplies. You can purchase these from the Alchemist. 

Healing potions will slowly tick, increasing your health gradually over time. However you can augment this effect by drinking healing potions of different qualities at the same time. 

For example, two healing potions of the same quality will not stack their effect - the second one you drink will simply refresh the duration of the first. 

However drinking two potions, each one of a different quality, will cause both of their healing effects to run alongside each other, thus increasing the speed at which you regain health. 

We hope you enjoyed this guide about Dark and Darker, the co-op dungeon crawler developed by Ironmace.