As you progress through Darkest Dungeon, you'll often need to stop to build a Camp. When you have Firewood in your inventory, you can right-click it to build a Camp. A camp can be built only in a room and not a hallway.
Camping consists of two phases: the food phase and the skill phase.
In the food phase, you must choose how much food is eaten.
You can eat:
- 0 food and take 20% damage and +15 stress
- 2 food and have no effect
- 4 food and gain 10% health
- 8 food and gain 25% health and -10 stress
If you have lost one or more members of your party, the required food for each tier is reduced by one quarter for each dead party member (thus, if you have a party of three, you only need six food rather than eight). Keep in mind that diseases and quirks which modify how much a hero needs to eat will affect the cost here as well. Someone with stress fasting, for instance, won't require any food if over 50 stress, lowering the feast cost from 8 to 6 and so on. Someone with a tapeworm, however, will make the feast cost 10. Afflicted heroes can sometimes refuse to eat (or receive camping buffs), suffering further stress and health damage.
After that, the skill phase will start, where you can use Camping Skills. Each skill costs a certain amount of time points, of which you have a total of 12 to spend.
Skills can heal heroes, lower their stress level, or buff them.
Each class has their own skill sets. There are also shared ones which can be used by all heroes except the Flagellant:
- Encourage - (Time Cost: 2) Reduce stress by 15 for one companion.
- Wound Care - (Time Cost: 2) Heal 15%, remove target bleeding and blight for one companion.
- Pep Talk - (Time Cost: 2) -15% Stress damage for one companion for 4 combats.
Note: Before you stop to camp, you can right click any hero to select which camp skills you'd like to use, assuming you've trained more than the starting 3.
What skills a hero can perform can be changed in the Survivalist building in town.
Once you are out of time points, you are ready to sleep. Clicking the rest button will end the camping session.
After Camping, there is the possibility of a Night-Time Ambush, unless you used a camping skill to prevent a night-time ambush.
If a Shieldbreaker is in your party, there is a chance that you will face a special fight against a party of illusionary snakes, which can't be prevented by skills like Vestal's Sanctuary. If you have a Shieldbreaker in your party at the start of a Medium or Long quest and a Nightmare will occur during the night of Camping, the Shieldbreaker will warn about it with a specific bark at the start of the expedition. There are a total of seven encounters:
3 encounters in Novice level dungeons
2 encounters in Veteran level dungeons
2 encounters in Champion level dungeons
As soon as you have completed every encounter per dungeon level, they will stop occuring for every mission of that dificulty. They also don't have to be completed by every Shieldbreaker individually (f.e. if you complete the 3 Novice level Nightmares with 3 different Shieldbreakers it still counts). Also note that only one Nightmare can occur per expedition, meaning that you can't face 2 Nightmares during one Long quest
Camping will also replenish the Torch level to 100.