Most of the UI in Darkest Dungeon is intuitive, but I can't seem to figure out how to get descriptions of my characters Afflictions. When hovering a Trait, a tooltip describes the Trait, but hovering Afflictions and/or clicking them doesn't seem to do anything. What have I missed?
Way to get the description of an Affliction in-game
darkest-dungeon
Best Answer
While the game does not contain any explicit descriptions of afflictions per se, you'll have to use external resources for that, there is a limited set of things that an affliction can do.
A: Cause additional stress, in response to:
B: Deal damage to friendly targets, at the start of their turn (does not consume their turn).
C: Act on their own
D: Refuse help Help counts as:
E: Reduce statistics
Generally, each affliction will affect statistics in various ways. Most will for example lower resistances by 25%, Health by 10%. When your character is afflicted, you can view their status screen to check what stat changes have been applied.
Some afflictions may also increase statistics (most notably the Flagellants' Rapturous state.
Not every affliction can have all the effects. In general, the name of the affliction is a big clue as to which effects are enabled for that affliction. For example, a paranoid induvidual is likely to refuse help, and act on their own, but won't hurt themselves or others.
Most affliction effects seem to have about a 25% chance of occurring whenever they can occur. To catalogue the exact effects, you'll have to look into the game files.
One event per hero
A hero can only react to something once, even if their affliction has two separate possiblities in response to an event. It is however possible for two different afflicted heroes to react to an event. For example, if a masochistic character is crit by an enemy, they may comment how much they liked it (upsetting everyone else), and then the fearful hero could complain about how hopeless the situation is, causing a triple load of stress on the two remaining heroes.