You’ll want to know how to defeat Death when it appears to attack your party after a successful battle in Darkest Dungeon 2. On the hunt for the Flagellant, Death isn’t unstoppable but can be hard to beat. She has a variety of attacks to cut through health and deathblow resistance alike. A difficult random encounter, here’s what to do to defeat Death in Darkest Dungeon 2.
How to Beat Death in Darkest Dungeon 2
Since this is a surprise attack, it’s a hard battle to prepare for. Death will attack your party to retrieve the soul of the Flagellant, as he’s been toeing the line between life and the afterlife for far too long.
Death’s Attacks, Debuffs, and Movements
These are the main things to look out for when fighting Death. We’ll cover them in a bit more detail below.
- Debuffs to Deathblow resistance.
- Can inflict 1 Horror and stun the Flagellant.
- Can attack twice in a turn.
- Can inflict Stress and Bleed.
- Spawns gravestones as protection.
Upon spawning, she’ll receive several buffs, debuff the Flagellant’s deathblow resistance with Momento Mori, and start pummeling into your party.
Momento Mori stuns and inflicts 1 Horror on your Flagellant, rendering him useless for the initial round unless his stun is canceled. Death also spawns two gravestones that are untargetable, taking up the space around her.
Death has the ability to attack twice in a turn, utilizing her main attacks to mark and inflict Horror on your party. Her follow-up inflicts stress and bleed. She’ll move around the gravestones, making it difficult for heroes like the Leper to damage her when she’s in the backline.
Death’s Weaknesses
Death’s weaknesses include:
- Burn DoT
- Blight
While Death may seem like an impossible opponent, she has a pretty substantial weakness to Burn DoT, with only 20 resistance to it. If you’re lucky enough to have Burn Combat Items or the Runaway in your party, you’ll have a much easier time bringing her health down.
If we don’t have Burn available, Blight will work with her resistance at 30. Use your Flagellant’s Punish as much as you can.
Bleed will be tough to get going as she has a high resistance to it, making those skills less of a priority if you have higher-damage ones.
Additional Death Tips and Strategies
You’ll want to keep stress down, utilizing any sort of skill you may have, including the Flagellant’s Endure. If you have the Jester in your party, use Inspiring Tune every time it’s available to get rid of as much stress and Horror as possible. The hardest part of this battle is keeping your party from having constant meltdowns.
Once you have Death on its own doorstep, keep attacking her nonstop. She has 75 Deathblow resistance, so it’ll take multiple attacks before you can finally finish her off.
Rewards for Defeating Death
As a boss, Death has a special reward once she’s defeated. Along with two Mastery points, you’ll receive Death’s Flower. A trinket that can be equipped to any party member, it cures all DoT and removes all negative tokens when you first enter Death’s Door.
That’s how to defeat Death, the random encounter boss, in Darkest Dungeon 2. Need help with confession or Lair bosses? Check out the rest of our DD2 guides library.
