Darkest Dungeon – How to Rearrange Heroes’ Skills

90% of the time, the only time I want to backtrack is if there's a fight at the end or the middle of the corridor, and I want to go back and rest/use a log for the health or stress heal before getting in another combat. This almost always happens because I just fled a fight, or almost lost a fight halfway through, but occasionally it happens because of a bad trap or curio interaction if I'm already borderline.

The backtracking penalty is there make sure attempting to go to the next room is a commitment with consequences if you overreach, but it only really matters in medium or long dungeons, because in short dungeon if you can't take a fight you need to just leave. It also means you can't just access curios you like in a corridor that ends with a fight or a wall/rubble without "paying" for them with the fight/shovel, but I feel like that's less important.

The system was changed with the most recent DLC, so I'm just going to defer to the wiki:

Stall Penalties will not occur if the remaining enemy is a 'large' creature (takes up 2 spaces).

The first Stall Penalty will occur if either of these 2 conditions are met:

• At the end of two full rounds after there is 2 or fewer enemies remaining.
• When a player uses 2 or more stalling moves when there are 2 or fewer enemies remaining.

If the remaining 2 enemies are one of or a combination of the below enemies, the first Stall Penalty is reached after only 1 round.

• Bone Arbalist
• Bone Courtier
• Bone Rabble
• Bone Soldier
• Collected Man-at-Arms
• Collected Vestal
• Crone
• Fungal Artillery
• Madman
• Maggot
• Pelagic Guardian
• Pelagic Shaman
• Swine Drummer
• Swine Skiver
• Webber

There's also a long list of stalling moves, the gist is that it's any move that doesn't deal damage to the enemy.