Darkest Dungeon 2: 10 Best Starting Quirks (2024)

The early game in Darkest Dungeon 2 is the easiest place to make a mistake. A wrong path with your under-geared heroes can end your run almost immediately. But with the right quirks on the right heroes, the early game can be a breeze.

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Each hero starts with a positive and negative quirk, and thanks to how dangerous long, protracted fights can be, the majority of the best quirks are the damage based ones. This is more important to keep in mind for the early game because your party will lack easy ways to end fights while sustaining as little damage as possible. This is why, when you start a new run, be sure to keep an eye out for these useful quirks.

10 Gentry/Fisherfolk/Fanatic/Cadaver Hater

This quirk is only good at the beginning of a run. Since the start of every run is when your heroes are at their weakest, any form of damage increase will help you get through your early fights faster. The benefits from this quirk are also incredibly useful against Lair bosses early in a run, since those enemies will hit hard and try to stress your team out.

If you see this perk on your damage or tank heroes, be sure to visit the region associated with that enemy type at some point early in your run. Once you get what you need from that region, start trying to replace this quirk because it will no longer be useful.

9 Cosmic Hater

Besides Lair Bosses, the next two biggest threats to your run - the Cultists at the end of each region and the Act Boss - are Cosmic type enemies. This means a hero with Cosmic Hater will have a better chance to get you through those fights than with another quirk. While it's a mediocre quirk at the start of the run, it pays off to keep this quirk around.

8 Sanguine

Built in stress healing is a useful benefit because it makes the Sanguine Hero more self-sufficient and frees up your stress-healing heroes to do other actions. The increase in Resolute chance is also wonderful in the early game to cover cases where the hero gets too stressed out from an early fight and your stress healing skills aren't upgraded yet.

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7 Sunny Disposition

Negative Affinity can make your runs far more difficult than they need to be. While negative relationships have a high chance of affecting already upgraded skills, there is still a possibility it can choose a skill you don't need on your hero and ruin your meticulously, well-thought-out build. In comparison, a positive relationship will make runs much easier, especially if they buff a skill that's regularly used by your heroes already.

Since negative relationships can be so detrimental, Sunny Disposition becomes an amazing quirk at any point in a run. It will reduce the chances your heroes will form negative relationships with one another while also maximizing the chances that they'll go into the next region with a positive relationship instead.

6 Evasive

This quirk is a mixed bag. On the one hand, you get 2 stacks of Dodge+ which will help even the squishiest Hero become untouchable. However, gaining -5% to positive relationships and +5% to negative relationships can be a steep price to pay without taking the proper steps to mitigate it.

But the survivability this quirk adds to your Hero is worth the cost. Being able to leave a long series of fights with more health than you would have without Evasive is what makes is a testament to its value.

5 The Jinx

Perfect for any hero with Taunt or Protect in their skill set. This quirk allows your tank hero to spread out more debuffs to enemies. With Protect or Taunt, it's now possible for your tank to debuff every single enemy on the opponent's side in a single battle round.

4 Natural Eye/Natural Swing

Both of these quirks accomplish the same goals of increasing your hero's damage with no downside. For heroes like the Hellion, the Highwayman, or the Leper, these quirks can help nudge their damage into mountain-shattering levels.

3 Bloodthirsty

Out of all the quirks in the game, Bloodthirsty gives the largest damage buff for the smallest downside. Its damage buff is large enough to overshadow most trinkets, and when compared to other quirks, its damage buff is only outperformed by Lurker which gives a 35% damage buff, but it's only active if you have low enough light.

2 Deadly

Deadly is an amazing quirk because critical hit chance is useful on every single hero in the game. Increasing a hero's critical hit chance will increase their damage output and help reduce stress on your team, making heroes more self-reliant.

For heroes with already high crit chances, Deadly will make their critical hits even more reliable, which in turn increases the effectiveness of Trinkets like Murder Weapon (15% to instantly kill an enemy when you crit) or Kitchen Knives (Heal 2 HP whenever you crit).

1 Breacher

By far one of the best quirks (both early and late) in the game because of just how many benefits it applies. Block+ allows the hero with Breacher to weather through the heaviest hits in the game and emerge on the other side with barely a scratch. Strength allows the hero to hit back even harder, and Taunt is often a buff for front line heroes because they have the health pool and buffs to survive all the attacks directed at them instead of their teammates.

Ideally you would get this on a front line hero or a damage dealer that moves a lot and doesn't mind taking a few hits. If you see this quirk on one of those kinds of heroes, make sure to lock it immediately and complete the act, so you can keep this quirk for future runs.

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