Red Hook Studios has revealed the release date for Darkest Dungeon's upcoming The Butcher's Circus DLC. The PvP update will launch for the PC version of the game on May 28th.
This news comes via an official Steam update posted to Darkest Dungeon's community page by Red Hook. In the update, Red Hook says that "all players who own Darkest Dungeon on Steam" will be able to join the fray. The team is promising that The Butcher's Circus will bring "an interesting new way" to play the game. It'll focus entirely on PvP encounters between players and will make some pretty big changes to the way combat functions. Don't worry, though - if you're playing single-player, combat will work exactly as it's always done.
So, how will The Butcher's Circus alter Darkest Dungeon's combat?
Red Hook's Steam post also gave some insight into how PvP combat will work. Usually, at the start of each combat round, Darkest Dungeon rolls combatants' initiative to determine turn order. In The Butcher's Circus, however, the game simply flips a coin and grants first turn to the winner. The loser of the coin flip gains a team-wide buff that lasts the whole first round Whichever player wins gets to choose which hero they want to use first. After they've acted, the loser can choose which of their heroes to use, and action alternates in this way until all heroes have acted.
According to Red Hook, more changes have been made to the combat "to enhance the PvP experience", but the studio is staying tight-lipped on what they are. We do know that the abilities will be separately balanced for The Butcher's Circus, and you won't be using your own characters from the main campaign. You'll have to discover them for yourself in Darkest Dungeon's Arena. You can wishlist the DLC right now on Steam ahead of its May 28th release. No word yet on when (or if) The Butcher's Circus is coming to consoles. We'll bring you more on that as we get it.
Are you looking forward to checking out The Butcher's Circus in Darkest Dungeon? Hoping for a console release? Let us know in the comments below!
