 The difficulty spike from the previous expedition sparks much more of a challenge with these new expeditions, and I won't lie to you. When I encountered this, it felt like a slap to the face. The new enemy type's introduced a nod to the problem, no, no, far from it. It's the familiar ones that had a problem. They are buffed so insanely much armed with the capability of doing nauseating amounts of health and stress damage in a very short span of time, as little is over a single turn or two. But I thought I could handle it, judging from the few short expeditions I first tackled, which is why I decided I would attempt to get my grubby hands on the first of several of the highest quality trinkets in the game, the ancestral ones. My first few long champion level expeditions were really the point I realised how much more demanding the game had become. Demanding, it felt downright and fair seducing even, seeing some of my favourite longest serving adventurers be reduced to nothing in the span of a turn. Well, not nothing, I suppose they were reduced to a bunch of gravestones in my Hamlet's graveyard, but that still is not something you want to go home to, is it? It was a meat grinder in brutal and delusion of control over this game which was supposedly tactical, slipping away to reveal a marked lack of control. And worse than that, the deaths of several characters I had spent tens of hours levelling up and tens of thousands of gold in upgrades in terms of armour, weapons and skills. These deaths were a blatant disrespect of my time when I finally felt like I had truly progressed towards besieging the darkest dungeon itself. After taking a few days long break, I went back into it. I had taken time to tink it over and… well, what were the most memorable moments I had? Hmm, let's see then. One of the eight bosses, the Swine God, nearly murdered my entire party for a mistake entirely of my own making. To explain what happened, I'll need to give you a bit of background first. At some point, during my experiences with the difficulty level, I finally noticed just how useful the Highwaymen's repost ability is. Repost allows this dashing rogue to respond to any attack coming his way with an attack of his own. The Highwaymen, buffed with sufficient amounts of melee damage in a higher chance to crit, is an absolute beast once the punches come rolling. With a few dodge buffs as well, as offered by classes such as the man at arms or the antiquarian, he'll deliver crit after crit with barely a scratch to show for it. That ability is useful in every feasible scenario I can tink of. Every scenario but one. And that one is, you guessed it, the bossbuffle with the Swine God. You see, this God of tits and swine is something of a mentally deficient beast, taking his order from the tiny but deadly Wilbur who marks the king's enemies for him. While I had forgotten in my infinite lack of wisdom was that killing Wilbur doesn't make the Swine God happy. In fact, it enrages him, and once he's enraged, he delivers ridiculously powerful attacks to the entire party. All of which have a very high chance of stunning. The fact that I survived that particular nastiness without any casualties makes me extremely lucky. If not for having alongside the Highwaymen a leper, who is without a doubt the most physically devastating character class you can have on your roster, I would have died horribly, horrendously, and I might as well have quit the game right then because I really liked that party. Another favourite moment of mine was when I nearly got party wiped while fighting the formless Flesh. This was nearly at the end of the game, and I had allowed my recent successes over previous bosses in the Crimson Court's counters to get to my head. I thought I was immortal. You know, we're basically gods and didn't spend too much time considering who would best do in my fight against the formless Flesh. Not at losing three of my four characters was bad, at that point I truly had left caring about what happened far far behind me, and this had the added benefit of unlocking the lone survivor achievement I began worrying I would never get. It's an achievement you get for killing a boss with one man left standing if it wasn't self-explanatory enough. The man of the hour, a flagellant who literally managed to bleed out the Flesh with his techniques of ex-sanguineation, while he himself was perilously close to bleeding out. I particularly enjoyed listening to all the different boss entries, which finalised the Ancestors' myriad tales of how he managed to screw over just about every type of living being he met. Not a nice guy, my Ancestor, till I could have guessed as much. I'm a piece of work myself, you see. It was rewarding to at last unlock these pieces of the average puzzle. Annoying June's tailor performance is such an absolute joy to listen to. This truly is among the best examples of how much atmosphere can be injected by the right narrator into a taffle that doesn't necessarily have much of a story to it. And let's face it, the story here is a bare-bone excuse to go through this ridiculous gauntlet for a hundred hours or more, and having fun with the exceptionally well-written one-liners makes that all too easy. But to return to the late game, I do think it borders on being tedious more than it should, for comfort's sake. More could have been done perhaps to make the game feel challenging in a way that doesn't also waste your time or give you the perception of wasting your time at any rate. At the end of the day, I do feel like with ample preparation and a careful team composition, a lot is in your control, but for a few in-game weeks there, I didn't. And that seeped away at the fun of it all, and nearly made me reconsider doing this deep dive. Thank you for watching. Next up, I'm tackling the courtyard. This one, I really got worked out for that.