Damage that climbs with the danger
At the start of each fight, a Death-Seeker’s attack damage is multiplied by 1 + 0.04 for every danger level above 4. Below danger 5 the trait adds nothing. The league’s stairs run from danger 4 to danger 9:
| Danger | Example floor | Damage bonus |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | The Threshold | none |
| 5 | The Sunken Stair | +4% |
| 6 | The Hall of Lamps | +8% |
| 7 | The Weeping Gallery | +12% |
| 8 | The Vault of Names | +16% |
| 9 | The Long Dark, The First Deep | +20% |
The multiplier is applied to the hero’s attack damage stat once per fight, so it covers every hit they land, basic attacks and abilities alike.
The reckless side
Death-Seeker also adds +0.15 recklessness to the combat AI. Recklessness is the appetite for risky options: the hero commits to attacks more readily, steps into exposed positions and holds back less. For scale, Reckless adds 0.3 and Hot-Headed 0.25. Death-Seeker sits halfway, with no courage change, no discipline cut and no extra threat.
Risk in this game ends in being downed, and a downed hero rolls for a lasting injury afterwards (25%, or 40% if Frail). So the trait’s two halves pull together on the hardest floors: more damage, and more chances of getting hurt while dealing it.
Choosing the route
When a Death-Seeker leads the party to a fork, they lean +2 toward the “Lair” side room, which holds one named enemy, and −2 against the known path. The leans feed a logistic curve, and these are large: with nothing pulling the other way, a Death-Seeker leader takes the Lair about 94% of the time it is offered and any other side room about 80%, even with the party hurt. Put someone else in the leader’s seat if you want the party to come straight home.
Jobs
Bounty postings list Death-Seeker among their disliked traits: “A thing that has killed everyone sent after it. They have been looking for exactly that.” A disliked trait takes 6% off the hero’s suitability for the hunt. The game does not want a hero who wants to die chasing the beast that kills people.
How to use a Death-Seeker
Save them for your toughest delves. On a danger-9 floor they hit a fifth harder than their sheet suggests, all fight, every fight. On easy floors they are an ordinary hero with a reckless streak.
Because the trait invites injury, pair it with anything that makes a hero hard to keep down:
- Death-Defying turns the first knock-down of each delve into a stand at 15% health.
- Indomitable stops injuries turning grave.
- Quick to Mend shortens the absence when they do get hurt.
- Blood-Drunk rewards fighting on at low health, which a Death-Seeker tends to do.
Small hooks
Quest reports have their own Death-Seeker lines. The hero card links the trait to Aggression and Bravery; that link is descriptive and does not change either attribute.
Conflicts and rarity
Death-Seeker can never appear with Cowardly.
- Rarity: rare, neutral · draw weight 14 of 6,365 · about 1 recruit in 180
- Founding draft: any card.
- In the wiki’s archive: first present in the 2.1.8 build (absent from 2.0.7).
Recruiting
Worth a premium on a damage dealer for a guild that regularly runs the deepest stairs, and close to neutral for one that does not. Keep them out of the leader’s seat unless you are happy to fight every named foe the dungeon offers.