Darkest Dungeon Butcher’s Circus DLC Update To Add Arena PvP Battles

A new DLC for Darkest Dungeon called The Butcher’s Circus is adding online PVP matches and is set to release sometime in May. This is the third DLC expansion to come to the game, after 2017’s dungeon-based Crimson Court DLC and 2018’s infinite survival mode in The Color of Madness. The game has also been supported post-release with two new character classes.

Darkest Dungeon was a hit when it first released in 2016, following a year-long early access period. The game is a dark turn-based RPG with roguelike elements, punishing difficulty, and grim, Lovecraftian themes. It turned many heads with its unique Stress mechanic and its broad array of character classes, many of which deviated from standard fantasy RPG tropes in truly original ways. The game was discouraging but never impossible, and it offered an addictive gameplay loop that got many players hooked. The DLC expansions only bolstered the game’s success, offering new challenges and tantalizing rewards to drive players back into danger and dismay. The last DLC was released in 2018, and the year after that developer Red Hook announced that a full sequel to Darkest Dungeon was in the works. It seemed that content for the first game had finally reached an end.

Red Hook, it seems, thought otherwise, and have now announced The Butcher’s Circus as a new expansion for the game (thanks, Eurogamer). The Butcher’s Circus is a multiplayer expansion, which is somewhat at odds with the rest of the game thus far. It tasks players with assembling a team of four champions to take on other players in a gladiatorial arena. Reassuringly, player’s arena combatants are separate from the roster assembled to take on the main campaign, and they don’t need to risk their best monster slayers for virtual glory. New PVP-focused trinkets are being added which can give heroes an edge in combat, and Red Hook has also announced a banner customization system which should prove to be a fun diversion.

The chief appeal of Darkest Dungeon has always been the combat, but for all the many horrors and nightmares the game tasks them with eradicating, players have never gotten the chance to test their mettle against other players. The Butcher’s Circus is set to give players that chance next month. The game’s acclaimed composer Stuart Chatwood has already been confirmed to provide new music to accompany the brutal struggles in the ring. Details on matchmaking and progression have yet to be revealed.

This is a rather significant departure from what, until now, has been an exclusively single player experience. More Darkest Dungeon content is hardly a bad thing but it will be interesting to see how the fans respond to such a strange new addition. With the sequel somewhere on the horizon, the timing for a new expansion is also a bit strange. Still, this is a very interesting new expansion for an already excellent game, and could prove an excellent way to get fans back into a game that, even after so many years, still has plenty more dark secrets to uncover.

Source: Eurogamer

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Peter Morics
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Peter has been playing video games ever since he was a child, pulling his chair up to the TV so he could hold the GameCube controller for Wind Waker. Video games have been a vital part of his life ever since. They’ve been an important piece of his academic career as well; at the University of Redlands, where he studied Creative Writing and Theater, he once submitted a philosophy paper on the video game Soma. Today, in addition to his freelance work for Screen Rant, Peter spends most of his time blogging, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and, of course, playing video games. He believes that video games are an important and oft overlooked medium for telling stories, as well as an excellent medium for having fun. His favorite video game is still Wind Waker, the one that started it all, and he credits the fun he had with that game as the reason he’s here writing for Screen Rant today.

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