Red Hook Studios' Darkest Dungeon is a dark roguelike game set in a Lovecraft-inspired world. Players are called upon by an unnamed relative to come and save their ancestral home from the horrors he accidentally unleashed on it and the surrounding town. The game was a massive success and even ended up with 2 expansions. The Crimson Court and the Colour of Madness all added to the look and feel of the game and presented more new challenges and events. Given all of the luck, RNG, and randomly generated events present in the title, the question is: can Darkest Dungeon players speedrun the game?
At its core, speedrunning requires precision, skill and intimate knowledge of a game to get through it as fast as a person possibly can. This isn't a problem with most games because players can learn the best way to blast through quickly. However, a game like this demands that actions be thought through and that players take their time. This is an experience that wants to make players feel tense and make sure caution is taken, considering the vast number of things that can go wrong. However, if a player took the time to learn the ins and outs of every single affliction or encounter chance that could happen, it may be possible to plan things during a speedrun.
On top of the myriad of afflictions and chance encounters, players would also have to prepare to go against the narrator's advice. When entering the first dungeon initially, the narrator will warn players that retreat from a dungeon is sometimes needed to ensure the party's survival. Players will need to practice to get good enough at the game to do the missions as fast as possible and in a single run. This is a considerable setback as the game's nature ensures things won't always go to plan, so even planning a speedrun out would be a difficult task.
Even getting around all of that still presents possible issues, as Darkest Dungeon is a game with a ton of random chance and events tied to it, and also one with lots of RNG. New heroes showing up in the wagon, how much damage heroes do when they hit or even what goes on inside a dungeon is all mostly random chance, so players who want to speedrun would need to memorize all the different types of things that could happen in a game and plan accordingly for each one. This is probably the most difficult challenge to overcome because one wrong move or bad event could doom the entire run. These are harder to predict and plan for, which means the game becomes even harder to attempt speedrunning on.
There is, however, a possible path to doing a speedrun despite all this standing against a player. The Steam version of the game gives access to the Steam Workshop, where people have posted mods and other fan-made changes. This could enable players to better prepare by adding a new class or making gold or other items easier to procure. This by no means makes the game easier, but it does help to mitigate some of the hardships that would otherwise sink a speedrun normally.
Speedrunning Darkest Dungeon requires that players go against the nature of the game and what it expects them to do. Essentially, the player will need to prepare by fighting back against the game itself trying to end the run at every chance. Given all the hardships, random chance, and the game's very nature, can players actually speedrun Darkest Dungeon? A speedrun of the game is possible, but only with the utmost preparation, memorization and luck will players find they can achieve a speedrun of this challenging title.