 First of all, I apologise for taking this long to come back to this series of videos. I had planned on a quick release of all five episodes in the span of three weeks tops, not one 10 minute video but three months. Chalk it up to utter incompetence, will you? The Apprentice Expeditions in Darkest Dungeon are the easiest the game is ever going to get but that doesn't mean they are challenge free. Far from it. Apprentice Expeditions will introduce you to the most common enemy types in each of the four zones of the estate. And no, I'm not going to talk about the Crimson Curse DLC in the courtyard here, that topic will be spoken about in its own separate section and you'll have to wait before you get to hear my righteous anger about a whole vampiric nightmare. Back to the topic at hand, Apprentice Expeditions are Darkest Dungeons who have teaching you the basics without pulling any punches. The Myriad Curios will bleed you out and play your party with diseases until you spend a small fortune experimenting which of the provisions you have access to will bring about positive effects with every different curio. You'll work out that grabbing a couple of bandages and vows of antivenom before a mission is as important as anything in the world, especially in such places as the Cove which is filled with things that will cut you. As each week progresses and more adventurers come to test their luck there's a general feeling of things beginning to click into place as you familiarize yourself with the different mechanics by the dozen also adventuring classes. The best and cruelest option you have customization-wise is the ability to name your characters after anyone you want. Friends, family, idols, book characters, only to watch them die or be overcome by stress and turn insane. Insanity comes in different forms, most of them unpleasant to watch happening to the adventurers you've grown to care about over several missions by now. Torches are different whether you want to fight under the somewhat reliable security of the light or risk taking much greater stress and damage in the dark for the sake of greater reward really depends on the kind of player you are. I was much more comfortable in the light to start with but as I progressed I took on greater and greater amounts of risk because I knew what I was doing and also I stopped caring how many of my crazy kids would die of a heart attack. In your exploration you'll eventually come across a horrid little curio that will ask you to sacrifice a torch. If you do this shambler will appear to an unprepared player that little eldritch horror is absolutely nightmarish. He is in fact a lot worse than the apprentice level bosses or at any rate most of them. Apprentice level expeditions often don't demand much more than brute force with some skill and a bit of luck you'll often find no need for the use of a dedicated healer such as the Vestal except for those quests that will give you your first glimpse with the eight bosses across the ruins Warren's well than the Cove. I remember when I first faced these during the game's beta they seemed considerably tougher than they did now which leads me to the time that I've either become a lot more skilled, possible or not over the last three four years is it? The developers have scaled down the difficulty during these first encounters a fair amount. At any rate each zone houses two bosses most of whom are grotesque nightmarish masses of love, crafty and horror. Some are more dangerous than others and you better learn to deal with them early on if you care about progressing at anything more than a snail's space. Because veteran level expeditions that's resolve level three and four respectively are going to take the gloves off. New enemy types appear and the old ones do more damage inflict more stress and get a nice little boost in dodge, accuracy and every other start conceivable. Sending in a party that doesn't have an upgraded set of weapons in the armor is ill advised as both the health and the additional damage are very much necessary to deal with these more powerful foes. And over reliance and brute force won't necessarily cut it either. Too many foes have protection that will neglect most straight out attacks. Damage over time begins to play a greater role in classes like the flagellant, a crimson called DLC exclusive and the plague doctor with their massive reliance and bleed and blight respectively will come in very handy indeed. Debuffs, marking targets, stunning them the growing necessity for more complex strategies will make you much more conscious of the intricacy and depth of combat. Take speed for example. I recall not caring particularly about the turns my characters took rather than to one another, whether my musketeer played first or last wasn't something I put too much thought in during apprentice expeditions. Well, now that I needed a bounty hunter or a houndmaster to mark a target for my musketeer or arbalist's most devastating attack to be truly efficient, I had to make sure that it was them that played first and not the musketeer. Say that my musketeer had a baseline speed higher than that of the bounty hunter, that meant that now I needed my bounty hunter to carry a trinket that would bump his speed above that of the musketeer in order to prepare a devastating attack for the enemy backline, which often is filled with all manner of nasties that will induce nightmarish amounts of stress, the kind of stress that tends to make you masochistic, sadistic or just a bit of an abusive bully. The point of this video, if you don't want to actively endorse bullying within your adventuring parties, make sure you've got a firing squad lining their shots at the enemy backline at all times. Thank you for watching, next up we'll go deeper in my own personal world of agony. You've guessed it, I'll be covering champion expeditions.