Dark and Darker: 6 Things You Need To Know About The Free Version (2024)

Dark and Darker is a fun-to-play, dungeon crawler role-playing game, that sets its focus on some great sword and sorcery, hack-and-slash gameplay. This gameplay takes part in dungeons, which the player can either explore and overcome alone or tackle as part of a group. With 9 different classes, each with multiple build options and a whole range of skills, the game is very obviously inspired by classic fantasy role-playing games, with its roots in Dungeons & Dragons.

Dark and Darker has a free-to-play mode. But being a free player has some serious restrictions associated with it. So much so, that it could be said that the free-to-play version of Dark and Darker is little more than a playable demo. It can be fun, but it is very obviously intended to entice players into spending a little cash to unlock legendary account status and open up everything in the game.

6 Only One Character

So Choose Wisely

This is arguably the most serious restriction for free-to-play players in Dark and Darker. The player can only create a single character build. If they want to try a different class, they will need to delete this character and start from scratch.

Of course, nobody wants to throw all of their hard work in the trash and start again. Unfortunately, new players really don’t know how a class will work out in Dark and Darker. This means free players will likely have to go through several delete-and-restart iterations until they find a class and build they like.

5 Only Normal Modes

With Limited Playability

There are two map modes in Dark and Darker. These are Normal Mode and High Roller Mode. In the latter mode, the player has a chance to loot any item in the game, up to the artifact tier. In Normal Mode, loot is cut back considerably.

A free-to-play player is restricted to only enjoying normal mode maps. These are not much of a challenge once the player learns how the game works. It can also be hard to find a group for Normal Mode, as most people ignore it entirely if they can. Normal mode is OK for solo play in this dungeon crawler though. So players who intend to only ever play alone might be fine.

4 Can’t Use Anything But Basic Gear

Even Green Items Are Banned

As already indicated above, the free-to-play version of Dark and Darker only allows the player to enter Normal Mode maps. There is a severe gear limitation with Normal Mode, and only basic tier items can be used.

Therefore, even if the player does loot some better gear while they are playing through a Normal Mode map, they won’t be able to equip it and use it in their next dungeon crawl. All the player can do is either sell the item to a merchant or save it in their stash in case they ever decide to become a pay-to-play customer.

And of course, as the player can only use basic gear in free-to-play mode, money has very little use outside of buying consumables such as potions and bandages from merchants. Even if a merchant has a good piece of gear for sale, it is pointless to buy it as it can’t be used in a Normal Mode dungeon.

3 Limited Player Stash

The player stash is a place to store equipment, items, and consumables outside of the character's main inventory. Unfortunately, for free-to-play players, the amount of items the player stash can store is quite limited. However, this is not the worst restriction.

In free-to-play mode, the player has no access to a stash that is shared across their characters. Readers are probably thinking, why is this a problem when free-to-play only allows one character anyway? Well, if a player wants to delete their single character and start again, you guessed it, the stash goes with it. This is a huge drawback, as the player can’t store gear ready to equip a new character when they restart.

2 No Access To The Market

Meaning No Player To Player Trading

In Dark and Darker, free-to-play players have access to all of the NPC merchants in the lobby. However, these merchants stock a very limited range of items. They also pay terrible prices when the player wants to sell off their loot from a recent dungeon run.

Pay-to-play players have the option of joining the Trade Guild. If they choose to do this, they can then access the marketplace. This is a game-wide player auction house, that enables player-to-player trading of items and equipment. Free-to-play players cannot join the Trade Guild or access the player marketplace.

1 Limited Lobby Members

And Long Start Waits

The percentage of free-to-play to pay-to-play players in most lobbies is quite small. This means that it can often be very hard to find a group to match the player's gear level. The game will then try and find the player in a group as close to their level as possible.

This means two things. Firstly, it can mean a very long wait to even get into a dungeon crawl group. Secondly, the player will often find themselves very weak compared to the rest of the group if they can find a game. This can make it difficult to earn experience.

Dark and Darker

Platform(s)

PC

Released

August 7, 2023

Developer(s)

Ironmace

Genre(s)

Action RPG