Just picked up Darkest Dungeon. Any tips/suggestions for a first-timer? It took me a little while to realize what the dots under an action meant. I assumed they were some sort of energy consumption, but it means where they can stand, and who they can target.
Is there any way to like rest or camp?
You'll be able to camp on medium or longer missions and the game will automatically give you a camping kit in your inventory for those missions. Each character has camping skills that you can use to deal with stress, raise health, cure diseases, acquire an item, or add buffs. There's a chance you'll get ambushed at night when resting, although a few camping skills prevent it.
Don't be afraid to use a guide for the game. The wiki is valuable, as it tells you what each curio you find during missions does and what item can be used to achieve the best result.
I'd also recommend downloading a few quality of life mods, like the one that expands your inventory and the one that allows you to have a larger roster. The game is hard enough without having to ditch half of your valuables on any given quest because you inevitably run out of inventory space. This also means you won't spend as much time scraping for money to keep the stress level of your characters down, or to treat their negative quirks that can quickly stack up.
My best advice is to just learn the characters and the various ways they can interact. You'll pretty much always want to have a healer in your party for obvious reasons, with the Vestal and the Occultist being the best choices for that purpose. These characters can be used more offensively too, but that's something to worry about later once you get some trinkets that make those playstyles more practical. The Flagellant can function as a healer too, although I think he was a part of the Crimson Court DLC so not sure if you have that and he can only heal when his health drops past a certain point. If you do, I would highly recommend not activating it for your first playthrough because it makes the game much more difficult, although I would activate the Flagellant because he's a useful character who can stack bleed damage on enemies.
Generally speaking, what you want is two frontline combatants and two support characters, although there are characters who can do significant backline damage like the Arbalest. The game sort of gives you this at the start, as your first four characters will always be Highwayman, Crusader, Plague Doctor, and Vestal. Just note that each character will only start with four of their skills unlocked and you will have to pay to open up the rest. Sometimes they don't have their most useful skills unlocked, which is annoying.
The Antiquarian seems pretty useless if you just look at her skills, but she's actually one of the most important characters in the game because you'll find a lot more money (or items worth money) with her in your party. She's great on medium length runs where you want to fatten your purse. Just make sure you use her to open all chests and curios, because you only find the special items that only she can find if she's the one to interact with them.
Get to learn your skills as well, as you can find some pretty nice party combinations that work very well together. For example, you could build a party focused around bleed damage with something like Flagellant, Hellion, Jester, and a healer. Or you could build around stun with Crusader, Bounty Hunter, Plague Doctor, and Vestal.
Stress is usually more dangerous than damage, as it's tougher to manage and less classes have abilities that can lessen it. The Jester is useful because he is one of the only classes that can lessen stress for any other party member. You've probably already experienced this, but once you get to 100 stress, your character will usually break and develop an affliction that will cause them to sometimes refuse to take an order, attack a teammate, or just take action on their own. More rarely they will develop a virtue, which drops their stress and has positive effects. Don't expect that to happen often, though. A lot of camping abilities can help you deal with stress too. With all of that in mind, it's often beneficial to deal with stress dealers in an enemy party first rather than damage dealers.
Make sure you keep an eye on the quirks your characters have too. Negative quirks will eventually lock in and become more expensive to remove, and some of the quirks are really bad. Deal with those and skip the ones that are more manageable. You can handle a quirk like stress eater, where a character eats two food instead of one when over a certain stress threshold. Others are far more damaging, though, and should be quickly removed in the Sanitarium. The same goes for diseases, which can be treated in the Infirmary.
Oh, and if your first go at the game is disastrous, as it probably will be, don't be afraid to just restart. It's usually easier to do that than to try to recoup after a horrible early game run where you lose heroes or stress gets out of control, which is pretty common for first time players. You usually get your ass handed to you until you start to understand the mechanics and how to best deal with each enemy type.
And if you want to have fun, take a level zero party into the Darkest Dungeon at the very start of the game. I think there's even an achievement for it.
