Introduction and Themes
This guide is a largely spoiler-free guide that talks about the general mechanics of the Darkham Horror fanmade campaign made by Frostmaze. If you're interested in learning what the campaign's unique mechanics are, and hearing suggestions for investigators and cards that are particularly well suited to the campaign, read on!
Based on the Darkest Dungeon videogame, in Darkham Horror investigators must delve into the deep dungeon underneath their ancestor's estate, and confront the otherworldly horrors within.
General Mechanics
Big Nasty Bosses
Darkham Horror contains lots of big Elite enemies with lots of life, and often very high levels of damage. You'll need to make sure you can deal with these enemies - evading or canceling their attacks can be important, and relying on limited use cards is going to be an issue if you don't have ways to recharge or replace them. Likewise, relying on limited use events like Backstab to take our Elite enemies just won't cut it here.
Careful with Doom
Darkham Horror has two Ancient Evil style cards. Be careful if you intend to play Mystic doom cards or you can potentially be caught off guard. Many of the scenarios also have short, repeatable final acts - meaning cards that need doom to stick around will struggle, but there's plenty of "Witching Hours" to play doom cards during without worry.
Damage and Horror Are Threatening
Damage and horror are a constant worry in this campaign. While it does give you some tools to help handle it, it'll never be enough. The damage comes in many forms - many small pings, direct damage, massive damage boss attacks, and more. Extra soak and healing will be well appreciated, especially if you can share it with others. In higher player counts, this damage will even go up, as some encounter cards force damage and horror onto all investigators. Some of the encounter cards also deal extreme damage or horror - unless you discard cards or lose resources. So having extra resources and cards in hand can give a helpful buffer.
Dungeon Crawling
True to the videogame, several scenarios involve dungeon crawling - with "do all you can" mechanics that often involve exploring randomly placed locations and having to make your way out. Cards that can help with backtracking, looking at unrevealed locations, and moving around enemies in grid-placed locations will all be useful.
Encounter Canceling
A notable number of encounter cards end up harming every investigator at once. In higher player counts, being able to cancel these encounter cards can save the entire group a lot of pain - the more players you have, the better they will be!
Evade Uses
While it can't be the primary enemy management, having someone in the party who can Evade can be a massive help - and not just for the bosses mentioned above. Cards that help take advantage of or profit off of Evading can find plenty of payoff.
Extra actions
Extra actions in any form will be lifesavers. Be it using them to remove many nasty treacheries that require actions to use, getting extra actions to damage bosses, using the supply items given to you by the scenario, or just running from place to place, extra actions will be especially useful, as often the campaign will demand lots of actions in a very short period of time.
Lots of Experience
Darkham Horror hands out a lot of experience - when building your deck, leave room for plenty of upgrades. You can expect 40-50 XP in total by the end if you do well.
Parley Opportunities
There are multiple opportunities to Parley major enemies throughout the campaign - while it's never going to be able to carry you on its own, if you run Parley cards with their support, you'll find plenty of places to make use of the support.
Deckbuilding Advice
The suggestions below aren't by any means required, or even characters I've necessarily played the campaign through. Rather, these are just observations of characters who might be particularly well suited to the campaign, including things that might not be top tier, but have a very strong synergy with the campaign mechanics.
Suggested Investigators
Leo Anderson: Leo's revolving door of allies can help provide him the soak he needs to survive, and he has a large variety of weapons available to him - both reliable melee weapons like the Switchblade or big gun builds that require a lot of XP.
Tommy Muldoon: There's a lot of damage in the campaign, and Tommy is good at soaking and mitigating it. Assets that let him soak for allies and cheap survivor soak will help keep the party alive in the toughest scenarios.
Norman Withers: Norman is good at getting clues, but can also take powerful mystic attack spells - which will come in handy against the difficult boss enemies. His automatically drawing weaknesses on the top of his deck is a help, not a hindrance here - you're going to draw them anyway, and he just makes sure they don't count against your normal draw.
Vincent Lee: There's a lot of need of healing, and Vincent can get more benefit when doing so. Better still, Vincent can also make use of the healing cards given in some of the scenarios. His Bonesaw and decent Combat stat also mean he can reliably switch from gathering clues to helping to fight the bosses when needed.
Alessandra Zorzi: There are a number of enemies that make great Beguile targets, and there's lots of scenarios have Parley actions you'll be wanting to use repeatedly. Alessandra slots in well, and can help solve a lot of specialized problems.
Tony Morgan: There are times in this campaign where you'll want to stab an enemy with a switchblade half a dozen times, and can't even expect to kill them. Tony's combat potential is extreme, but Darkham Horror can test even him.
Akachi Onyele: There's a lot of strain on mystics and their charges, especially with combat spells in this campaign. Akachi's bonus charges and the ability to refesh spells in downtime with her signiature can help make sure she has the lasting durability needed.
Dexter Drake: The other option to dealing with spells running out of charges is just to replace them - and Dexter is great at that. He's also a good user of the curse spells, which can regain charges on their own.
Stella Clark: Stella has higher than normal health and sanity pools and a seal heal in her elder sign, and her signiature skills can help her "pass" some otherwise outrageously high difficulty treacheries. She'll need to consider what assets give her the best long term plan for contributing, but has to worry about defensive options far less than other investigators.
William Yorick: In terms of sheer durability, there's few better than Yorick. Even if he chooses to use weapons with charges he can recur them with his power, and he's never short of assets to take damage for him.
Notable Player Cards
Dodge: A simple and often overlooked card, some of the enemies have truly terrifying damage and horror values - and a simple level 0 dodge can provide more damage negation than some much more expensive cards.
Flamethrower/Shotgun: You'll need to bring a lot of support for them, but Darkham Horror is a campaign that provides a ton of XP and has some enemies who can take a lot of shotgun blasts to the face. Big, expensive guns can work well here, as long as you have someone else to handle smaller enemies, or some other plan for them.
Pocket Telescope: The dungeon delve scenarios are often a hunt for crucial locations in a grid of facedown locations, and allowing you to peak at them can save a lot of time - and prepare you for any danger you might be walking into.
Prophesiae Profana: A number of scenarios require investigators to return to the starting location to progress or before resigning, so the ability to do so as just one action is a real help. Plus, if you're being relied on to evade enemies, the Agility boost will come in handy. While it's XP intensive, there are plenty of ways to search it from your deck.
Haste: Very often you'll be repeating the same action in the campaign - be it attacking a boss over and over, or running multiple locations to get back to the dungeon entrance. There's also a number of story assets with activate abilities that you can easily weave in between using fight or investigation tools if you run out of enemies or clues at your location.
Stir the Pot: There's multiple cases of enemies all spawning in specific locations, spawning alongside other enemies, or even just waiting around aloof until another enemy appears. Stir the Pot helps you clear out these groups of enemies cleanly with as ingle card.
Armageddon / Shards of the Void: The one thing mystics will struggle most with is just not being able to put out enough damage before their attack spells run out of charges. Both of these spells can recover charges on their own, making them far more reliable when trying to fight against boss enemies with massive health values.
Earthly Serenity:Earthly Serenity is the best healing card in the game, and Darkham likes to use small damage pings (to get around Deny Existance) and direct damage (to get around asset soak), making healing significant better.
A Test of Will: Survivor does't have much for treachery negation effects, but there's enough XP in the campaign to make the exile versions of A Test of Will worth considering, especially against some of the nastiest, party-wide treacheries.
End of the Road: A large number of scenarios have a final act that repeats multiple times - and comes out very early. End of the Road will be playable for the majority of those scenarios, letting you play it whenever you need it - or just immediately for value.
More on Darkham Horror:
Darkham Horror: Spoiler-Light Review