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Darkest Dungeon 2 Act 2 Boss Guide

The Seething Sigh spawns into the middle 2 ranks with 2 lungs on each side. The Seething Sigh Has:

  • 280 Max HP, 5 Speed, Perfect Move resist and immobilize, and 2 turns per round, not counting its free actions.

The front lung has 200 HP, and the back lung has 150 HP. They are immune to DoTs, Stuns, and Move effects, though these wouldn’t do anything anyway (apparently DoT will if you somehow apply it). They are not immune to Debuffs, though only Vuln can do anything to the lungs.

The Seething Sigh

Darkest Dungeon 2 Act 2 Boss Guide

Moveset

Shallow/Deep Breath: Free action at Round Start. One/both Lungs get filled with air, which is shown by a token. If the lung takes 6% of its max HP in damage (12 for front, 9 for back), it loses this token. Sigh will only start using Deep Breath at 70% HP (196), and will use it with higher likelihood up until it reaches 30% HP (84), at which point it will always use it. Keep these thresholds in mind. These raw numbers (presumably) change if he has higher max HP from Loathing attacks, but the percentages stay the same.

Sundering Exhalation: Used as a free action if one or both lungs is filled with air at Round end. Deals 10-20 damage at 5 crit to everyone, and 2 stress. If both lungs have tokens at that point, deals 20-30 and 3 stress instead.

Wrath and Rancor: Targets any 1 hero, or 2 if at least one lung is dead. Deals 2-4 damage at 20 crit, and 2 stress and 3 burn. 1 turn cooldown

Blind Rage: Targets any hero, Deals 4-7 damage at 10 crit. Applies 2 blind, and he gains 1 block+. Applies combo if Sigh’s HP is under 50% (140 or less). 1 turn cooldown

Hysteria: Targets 1 hero, or 2 if at least 1 lung is dead. Deals 4-7 damage at 10 crit. Applies weak and shuffles, and may deal stress. 1 turn cooldown

Dying Light: Targets any hero with Combo. Deals 4-6 damage at 10 crit, deals 100% more damage if target has combo (so if you guard him the guarding unit will only take 4-6). On combo, target takes 3 stress and is knocked back 2 ranks. On combo, reduces your flame by 20. 1 turn cooldown.

The Seething Sigh’s strategy is to pump his lungs up with air and then to mitigate or disrupt the team so that you can’t stop him from using Sundering Exhalation. Each turn he will pump up one or both lungs to this effect, and you will need to be able to hit both rank 1 and rank 4 to stop him from using Exhalation. If you don’t, your team will be cleaved down in no time from the gigantic damage output, unless your damage output is so incredibly high that you can outpace him.

Therefore there are two main strategies for dealing with the lungs: Lung-killing and Lung-Mitigation. Lung-Killing is you killing at least one lung before dealing much damage to the boss, ensuring you never have to deal with Deep breath. Since Deep Breath requires a specific threshold to be accessible, you can ensure he never uses it by killing a lung before you bring him down to 70% HP. This strategy is safe but slow, and it opens you up to his double target moves after you kill the lung. In this case the main risk is that you are whittled down over the course of the fight by the barrage of low damage disruption moves coming in from the Sigh.

The other strategy is to balance lung hitting with damage to the Sigh itself, often killing it without ever killing either lung. This strategy puts you at greater risk of being hit by Exhalation if you catch a bad mitigation or disruption move, but does mean the boss has far less time to whittle you down. Normally this approach should balance DoT moves (to damage sigh himself), with flexible direct damage moves (for the lungs). Note that you will need to deal at least 21 total damage to not get exhaled on later in the fight. When the fight nears its end, you can usually ignore the lungs in favor of finishing the boss off, but make sure you time this well or else someone could die.

Success with either strategy is mainly in how you handle the important blinds and weaks that affect your team. If it affects a DoT character like PD, you’re usually fine leaving those alone, but if someone like Hellion gets shuffled around or weakened or blinded, you could be in serious danger. Carrying higher move and debuff resists to counter this, as well as debuff cures makes for very effective counter-play towards Sigh. Milk Soaked Linen in particular is an easy pick for this fight, given his double blind ‘blind rage’ attack. Holy water can deny all debuffs and even the combo token, but you only get 2 per hero.

Hysteria is the other big problem child, as shuffles can screw up certain team comps for long enough for the Sigh to use Exhalation. The tangle trophy will remove this problem, as will teams with correction moves. Bringing moves like Breakthrough, Battle Ballad/Play Out, Hold the Line, or whatever else you can use to correct your team composition without dropping tempo can do a lot to protect you from this shuffle. The weak attached to it is also a big problem, and often what I actually hold holy water for. Blind is curable with linen or can be used up more quickly with throwables. You’re stuck with Weak more often, and if Weak will mess up your ability to hit a specific lung hard enough, it’s worth curing it to ensure that you hit the lung hard enough.

Wrath and Rancor adds up over time, but you’re generally happy to see it, since it’s just a semi-weak damage and stress move. It exists more to allow the burn to finish people off and to give you a respite from the mitigation in most cases. Its stress can add up fast once it’s targeting two people though, and bringing some stress cure, especially the spring water, can put an early stop to that potential problem.

Dying light sucks sometimes, but usually isn’t a huge problem because it only comes online once he’s at 50% or less HP. Slow comps won’t hit that until they’ve killed at least 1 lung most of the time, and fast comps will only deal with it once or twice, max. Its knockback and flame reduction is a nuisance if you let the fight drag on though, as is the high stress. Combined with blind rage, it can turn off a frontliner for a very long time if you’re not careful.

If I can give one big tip, it’s to have backup damage or backup ways to hit a specific lung, typically the back lung. If your only way to hit the back lung is with Iron Swan, then the moment Hellion gets shuffled or blinded, you might be in big trouble. Having a Dismas or an Alhazred or an Audrey to serve as backup, for example, can often go a long way to smoothing out lung hits and playing this fight much safer. Saving certain powerful options, like burning stars or a souped up judgment or a Howling end in case you need them for that use is often much better than using them haphazardly.

Act 2 Boss (II)

The best heroes in this fight are the ones that can effectively Taunt sigh, bringing his debuffs towards them and not the important damage dealers, and direct damage dealers that can target rank 4 with at least a combined 9 damage, ideally more for safety, as well as the front for 12 damage (though this is way easier). DoT damage dealers also do very well against the Sigh itself, due to his 2 actions and reasonably low DoT resists. Dismas, Hellion, Vestal, and Audrey can all offer that back lung hitting job very well, and characters like Barristan and leper can draw its attention towards themselves. Leper even has the ability to ignore blind with combo, making him a great target for blind rage.

Blind cures from characters like Barristan and Bonnie also go a long way in this fight, as do Debuff cures and rank correction moves in general. This is possibly the main fight I’d consider upgrading Command for on Barristan in particular, as having a cooldown-less command can come in clutch. Its ability to up damage often allows the move from your damage dealer to consistently hit the lung threshold, and its ability to cure blind is incredibly useful. For this reason other often bad damage transfers, like Emboldening Vapours, can actually be very good here, as it allows those characters to amp up the damage of direct damage dealers when they’d normally be locked to DoT damage or unable to hit the specific lung in question.

Most of the standard combat items are good here, but debuff cures such as Linen and Holy water are especially useful. Ethereal Dust can be very useful if you need to use it to reach a specific high damage move again quickly, and all the damage boosting combat items effectively allow you to more easily hit lungs hard enough. They’re usually not as good for just rushing the boss here until you get him to lower HP.

Damage trinkets, while always good, are especially good here for a similar reason. Shimmering powder actually picks up an odd niche here, allowing you to prevent a hero from being targeted by the mitigation moves, which can proactively prevent debuffs from messing up your ability to hit lungs. Finally, DoT application items, while useless against lungs, are good for speeding up the fight once you approach the HP thresholds that allow the boss to use deep breath.

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