The Hag (Darkest Dungeon) (2024)

The Hag is a minor antagonist in the game Darkest Dungeon and one of the two bosses fought in the Weald. She was once an aspiring herbologist who came to the Hamlet to further study the surrounding biology and even worked together with the Ancestor in doing so as well as garnering his respect (which is easier said than done knowing him), but overtime, her ambitions to utilize the Hamlet's surrounding plants to comprehend the truth of the world grew into an ever consuming obsession, to such a degree that even the Ancestor himself couldn't stand it, although it was mostly due to how it impacted her looks. The Ancestor banished her to the Weald because of it where she would eventually continue her experiments blighting the local unsuspecting wildlife and presumably her colleagues into submission and cooking up any and all adventurers that were unlucky enough to run into her during their travels throughout the Old Road.

Appearance[]

Not much is known about the Hag's appearance in her glory days, but it can be presumed from the Ancestor's flavor text before the Wizened Hag boss fight that she was a "singularly striking young woman", implying that she used to take on a much more youthful and elegant appearance before self-experimentation had transmogrified her into the Hag that the player encounters during the events of the game.

During the events of the game, presumably long after the Ancestor had banished her into the Weald due to his inability to withstand her looks anymore, constant bouts of self-experimentation had taken a toll on the Hag's once youthful appearance. She now wears some form of broken coat of yellowish-green color, a blueish apron with various herbs and spices on the left side of her lower body presumably to be used as cooking spices, and some sort of hat that could be presumed to either be an actual skull or just a hat shaped like one. She is also outlandishly plump, and her entire skin is almost filled to the brim with boils of various sizes. She also holds a steel ladle for tasting, and a motif of the game's iconic Iron Crown symbol, a key aspect of every boss' clothing style, can be seen from her necklace, although the reference is very subtle.

Biography[]

Past[]

In an unknown point in time in the past, during her youth, the Hag had stumbled upon the Hamlet and served the Ancestor by sharing her knowledge of horticulture in order to assist the Ancestor with his secretive experiments regarding occultism, and the Ancestor had developed quite the respect for her because of that. As time went on however, her passionate expertise of herbology and her own ambitious desire to use said expertise as a means to comprehend the inner workings and truths of the world melded together into an unhealthy obsession which slowly but surely took a mental toll on her sanity, to the point of constantly indulging in bouts upon bouts of self-experimentation using whatever fungi and plants she could get her grubby little mitts on surrounding the locale of the Hamlet and disregarding whatever consequence that could serve as a byproduct of this heretical alchemy process. Her stance on self-experimentation had also taken a toll on her physical image, which forced the Ancestor to banish her to the Weald where she would further her experiments, blighting the fellow wildlife, her presumable colleagues, and cooking alive any outsider unlucky enough to encounter her during their traversal through the Old Road.

Darkest Dungeon[]

The Hag can be encountered by the player as the first boss that can be fought in the Weald where she is revealed to be alive and was dramatically altered as a byproduct of her obsessive exploits both during her time in the Weald and before her banishment. Commentary from the Ancestor upon starting her boss mission implies that she was behind the outbreak of fungal monstrosities roaming the Weald, and the Ancestor's comments after the player defeats her implies that many a traveler before the Heir and his mercenaries met their final fate inside of the Hag's cooking pot. If the player manages to beat the Hag Witch, the final and strongest variation of the Hag boss, the manic cannibal's reign of terror is expunged from the Weald forever, and though her fungal abominations are around to terrorize adventurers in her stead, future adventurers can rest easy, knowing the barbaric botanist is put beneath the blighted dirt where she belongs. Completing the Hag Witch boss quest also nets the player with her ladle as a trophy trinket.

The Hag can also be refought in the Endless Harvest quest in the Farmstead by purchasing the Color of Madness DLC with a 0.1% chance to spawn after the first Miller and Sleeper fights in the Farmstead, however, she will be locked to her strongest version.

Strategy[]

What the Hag lacks in decent resistances and offense she makes up for with her primary mechanic, which is her cauldron. If the pot is empty and the current expedition party consists of more than one hero, the Hag has a chance to use Into The Pot and cook one of your heroes, dealing a percentage of their health as damage every turn regardless of whose turn it is either until the pot is damaged enough or until the cooked hero is at Death's Door. Though the pot can be targeted and literally cannot dodge any attack you throw at it, the pot is immune to damage unless someone is in it. Barring the use of mod characters, this would mean that the pot is virtually indestructible so long as the Hag is around to accompany it. (note: should the Hag be defeated in combat, the pot dies along with her too.) Should the pot be somehow destroyed most likely through the use of mod characters, a coding error within the boss occurs which disables her from using Into The Pot and potentially Taste The Stew and forces the boss to utilize its weakly attack arsenal, all of which do little damage and only serve as debuff support more than anything. Also, as previously mentioned but forgot to elaborate more on, when a hero is being cooked, the Hag can use an attack called Taste the Stew, her most dangerous attack in the sense that while it does as minimal damage as her other non-pot attacks, it allows her to recover an ample amount of HP as well as inflict Stress damage, making the hero-stuffed pot more of a priority in battle. Or at least, in the Champion level version of her, since she rarely uses this attack at lower level encounters, meaning that it's very likely that the first time the player will see this attack in motion would be in the Hag Witch variant of the battle unless the player gets unlucky with either the Wizened Hag or the Hag.