Darkest Dungeon might be more than a decade old, but Red Hook Studios hasn’t finished with it just yet. Following the launch of The Fire’s Edge on August 18th, the developer has released another hotfix for the original game. Retail build 27868 is now live, bringing across fixes that were tested on the coming_in_hot beta branch earlier this week. The biggest of those addresses a problem that had effectively silenced audio across the game’s modding scene.
There are fixes for The Butcher’s Circus, controller navigation, and a particularly nasty Drowned Crew softlock too, making this a small update with some fairly important changes.
Mod Audio Should Be Working Again
The headline fix is aimed squarely at Darkest Dungeon’s modding community. A recent build introduced an Audio Bank problem that stopped mod audio from working altogether. Red Hook initially pushed a Windows fix to the coming_in_hot public beta branch on August 24, allowing players to test it before rolling it out more widely. With that test apparently going to plan, the fix has now moved onto the regular retail branch.
Mod creators don’t need to update to the latest version of FMOD for their audio to start working again, although Red Hook says doing so still isn’t a bad idea.
That’s an important fix for a game with such an active modding community. Custom heroes, enemies, overhauls, and plenty more have helped keep Darkest Dungeon busy long after its original release, so having audio suddenly disappear from those creations was considerably more disruptive than your average bug.
The community itself is still producing plenty too. This week’s official Mod Showcase highlighted The Uncrowned, a stance-based rogue who enters combat in stealth and gains access to powerful Cloaked abilities until he attacks.
Drowned Crew Should Stop Trapping Your Run
There’s also a fix for an issue involving the Drowned Crew and the Flickering Lamplight trinket. That particular combination could previously cause the game to softlock, leaving players unable to continue. Build 27868 removes the problem, meaning you shouldn’t find a promising run brought to an abrupt halt simply because a particular boss and trinket happened to meet.
The fix actually appeared in build 27850 last week, alongside several other changes following The Fire’s Edge, and has now been included in the latest retail build. That earlier hotfix also dealt with a Butcher’s Circus prize box crash, missing Duelist trinket strings for players without The Color of Madness, and restored the auto-center map and controller options.
The Butcher’s Circus Gets Some Attention Too
PvP players haven’t been forgotten. Maximum HP trinkets in The Butcher’s Circus should now correctly affect a hero’s starting health, fixing an issue where the bonus wasn’t being applied when combat began.
Red Hook has also dealt with a strange problem involving corpses. Clearing an enemy corpse could previously leave an invisible corpse behind, potentially interfering with combat despite there appearing to be nothing occupying that position. That should now be gone too.
There is still one significant problem affecting Mac players, however. Red Hook lists The Butcher’s Circus being unable to connect to its server on Mac as a known issue, so that one is still waiting for a fix.
Controllers Get Another Useful Fix
Anyone playing The Fire’s Edge with a controller should have an easier time with the Ashes to Ashes town event too. The event wasn’t properly navigable using a gamepad, which has now been corrected. It follows the restoration of controller options in the previous hotfix and should remove another unnecessary obstacle for players who aren’t using a mouse and keyboard.
There’s one other known issue worth mentioning: The Fire’s Edge DLC banner currently doesn’t appear on the main menu for Mac and Linux players.
The Fire’s Edge brought Red Hook back to the original game with new content, and the studio has also revealed that it’s working on a new and improved mod loader following requests from the community. Further improvements to the modding experience are being considered, with another release planned around the end of August.