Just like people in real life, every party member you come across has their share of quirks. They start off with at least one positive and one negative quirk when you see them in the Stage Coach, and they gain more while pushing through the horrors before them.
This guide will go over Darkest Dungeon’s quirk system, as well as lay out all of the game’s positive and negative quirks for you to peruse and hope you get (or don’t get).
When do you get new quirks, and what affects whether they’re negative or positive?
There are three situations in which your characters may receive additional quirks:
After an expedition When interacting with curios during expeditions When relieving stress at the Hamlet
Finishing an expedition brings relief, but sometimes that relief is short-lived – one or more of your characters may take on a negative quirk upon its completion.
There is no way to stop your characters from gaining quirks, but you can increase their chances of getting positive quirks from expeditions by keeping their stress low and completing the expedition’s objective.
If you leave an expedition early, the characters you took in are more likely to take on negative quirks. If you complete an expedition’s goal, you have a flat 45% chance to take on a positive quirk – and the chance of a negative one is based off each character’s stress level at the time of completion.
Lastly, a character can have up to 5 positive quirks and 5 negative quirks. A previous quirk will be overwritten if a character receives a new one, but this can be prevented via locking them in.
Removing negative quirks
Want to remove a quirk? Then it’s time for a trip to the Sanitarium, where they can wipe away negative quirks as well as lock in positive ones (for a hefty price that only goes up as a character’s Resolve does).
You can have a character stay at the Sanitarium to remove a quirk for a fee. This starts at a reasonable sum – but should a quirk have been enforced and made permanent, it will be more expensive to remove.
A negative quirk can be made permanent if left to fester for too long, or if a character interacts with a curio and is given a negative quirk it already had. It’s important to try to get rid of any truly debilitating quirks early on, before a character is heavily afflicted by it.
Some negative quirks are certainly less debilitating than others. It’s often in your best interest to let the less-than-terrible ones fester and be made permanent to avoid getting something even worse.
Locking in positive quirks
It seems locking in positive quirks isn’t that different from removing negative ones, as both are dealt with at the Sanitarium. As with removal, you can have a quirk locked in for a fee. But locking in positive quirks is significantly more expensive than removing negatives.
You can lock up to three positive quirks at the Sanitarium and your choices ca not be undone, so choose wisely.
Locking in positive quirks has two functions:
You are guaranteed to not have that quirk overwritten by another when you get a new positive quirk The positive quirk will not be erased by its negative counterpart
Those are two pretty good reasons to lock in the best of the best. A list of conflicting quirks can be found below.
Positive quirks
This list is self-explanatory, except for one bit: Quirks with an asterisk (*) next to their names have no negative counterpart to knock them off a character’s quirk list. They can only be removed manually, or if a character with 5 positive quirks receives another positive and overwrites them.
Negative quirks
Neutral quirks
These “neutral” quirks are more negative than positive. All of them are related to what a character will or will not do when in town, and often they make managing your characters’ stress relief more complicated than it needs to be.
Conflicting quirks
These are quirks that cannot be had simultaneously – and there are quite a few of them. So how do they work?
Let’s say a character has “Natural Swing”, which grants a nice +5 ACC, but finishes an expedition and receives its polar opposite, “The Yips”.
In this situation “Natural Swing” and its nice +5 ACC will be removed and instead you’ll have “The Yips” and its -5 ACC in that character’s negative quirk category instead.
It may seem like there’s a lot to remember about quirks, but you come across (and lose) so many characters that you come to memorize your favorites and lock them in, and hope for the best otherwise. That is, of course, unless you’re playing above Normal mode. If you’re new to Darkest Dungeon, just do your best. The game is out to get you in more ways than just your characters’ quirks.
If you still need a bit of help, you can check out the rest of our Darkest Dungeon guides in order to survive this punishing game.
