There’s not much to keep your spirits up in Darkest Dungeon 2. The runs are long, the enemies are a constant drain on your physical and mental resources, and the bickering between your party members is an infuriating distraction from your ultimate goal. It’s a game that lives up to the ‘Darkest’ part of its title perfectly (though not the ‘Dungeon’ part, strangely).
One bone the game throws you to keep a glimmer of hope alive is the new Pet system. After unlocking them via the Altar of Hope, you can bring one Pet along on each run. Some are traditional cuties, while others are adorable facsimiles of the monsters you face on your journey, but all have something unique to offer when it comes to helping you out, mechanically and emotionally, during your runs.
10 Hatchling Crocodilian
The Hatchling Crocodilian is an interesting proposition on paper: a Pet that encourages players to break out of their set party comfort zone and experiment with a more fluid, movement-based game plan instead. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite hit the mark for a couple of key reasons.
Firstly, the damage boost it offers as a reward for moving is extremely minimal and will only start to add up to something significant over the course of a drawn-out boss fight. Secondly, the Crocodilian also comes with the completely unnecessary downside of occasionally dropping your speed for the rest of the fight after each move. As a Pet that only works in specific scenarios and actively hinders you a good chunk of the time, the Hatchling Crocodilian more than earns its last-place spot.
9 Larval Carrion Eater
At first glance, the Larval Carrion Eater looks extremely powerful. It offers a sizable heal, as well as Block and Crit tokens, in exchange for killing a defenseless enemy corpse. Unfortunately, the trade-off of devoting 1-2 attacks to the corpse in question is rarely worth the benefits this Pet offers in exchange.
Two attacks could be better spent dealing with the remaining live enemies in the battle, or setting up your own, more powerful sets of positive tokens. It does give your party members a secret ‘sixth skill,’ letting those that can’t buff or heal quite so easily do so, but it demands a slower playstyle that doesn’t mesh especially well with the game as a whole.
8 Crimson Tick
With its performance entirely dependent on the whims of fate, the Crimson Tick is one of the most inconsistent options available at the Darkest Dungeon 2 pet shop. After landing a killing blow on an enemy, the Tick grants you a five percent chance to receive the highly useful combat item ‘The Blood,’ which applies Strength, Speed, and Crit: all the ingredients for a proper beatdown.
Unfortunately, this means that 95 percent of the time, Crimson Tick does absolutely nothing for you. You can probably expect one instance of The Blood per region if you take on a few battles in each, though, of course, that figure can fluctuate if you’re extremely lucky or unlucky. With those expectations in mind, you’re generally better off sticking with a more consistent Pet for your runs.
7 Unnatural Owlet
One of the Pets that synergizes with a particular type of Stagecoach item, the Unnatural Owlet rewards you for accumulating Tinker’s Gear as you progress. It does so by granting you increased debuff resistance piercing, up to a maximum of 20 percent, with four items of Tinker’s Gear equipped.
With the right shop luck and the right party setup, that is to say, one that employs a lot of debuff and status-inflicting skills, the Unnatural Owlet can perform admirably. It also has a separate effect that increases your chances of generating items via Stagecoach Items, which gives it potential even if you’re not running Tinker’s Gear. That said, even when firing on all cylinders, it’s not the most impactful Pet in the pen.
6 Mucilaginous Slime
Like an inverted Unnatural Owlet (and not just one that’s sleeping upside-down), the Mucilaginous Slime offers your party increased debuff resistance for each item of Road Gear you have attached to your Stagecoach. This is more useful on the whole since, no matter what kind of party you’re running, you’ll have to deal with enemies inflicting debuffs near-constantly throughout your run.
This is a solid benefit, and it’s topped off with an increased chance of receiving item drops from road debris you crash through. These are rarely anything special, but they can add up over time, particularly in the game’s later, longer Confessions.
5 Shrieker Chick
The Shrieker Chick, despite its obnoxious-sounding name, is actually one of the more quietly powerful Pets in Darkest Dungeon 2. Granting an extra two percent chance of critical hits for each item of Scouting Gear you have equipped, it can increase your odds of a more powerful hit by up to eight percent in an ideal scenario.
This doesn’t sound like much, but when you consider the base critical hit rates of your skills and other factors such as Path choice and Trinkets, it builds to a significant collective buff. The Chick also increases the amount of Baubles you receive each time you do so, which helps you to afford the Scouting Gear you need to enable its peak performance: a subtle but important extra ability.
4 Shambler's Spawn
Cultist Trinkets in Darkest Dungeon 2 offer huge benefits to their wearers, with the caveat that you need to equip a mostly useless Stained Trinket alongside them to unlock their full potential. With Shambler’s Spawn, you can ignore this restriction entirely, freely equipping up to two Cultist Trinkets per party member with no need for activators.
This is an extremely powerful ability that breaks a fundamental rule of the game. Still, it’s balanced nicely by the massive penalties to scouting the Shambler’s Spawn imposes on you, leaving you guessing where you’re heading next. Cultist Trinkets are also fairly uncommon in early Confessions, meaning this is one best kept for late-game runs.
3 Orphan Wolf Cub
In addition to being a comforting presence in a game where few home comforts exist, the Orphan Wolf Cub also boasts the honor of being the best standalone Pet in the game. By this, we mean the Pet that provides the most benefit without you needing to fulfill any specific conditions yourself.
Just by having the Wolf Cub aboard, your party receives a ten percent boost to their positive relationship chance: a key stat that’s easily overlooked. The Cub’s second ability, which provides Stress resistance based on the Luxury Items you have equipped, can largely be ignored. However, if you have the chance to lean into it, it can complement the first ability well to ensure a tranquil party atmosphere throughout.
2 Pygmy Pliskin
Since nearly every enemy in Darkest Dungeon 2 hits hard enough to take a sizable chunk out of your party’s collective health bar, you should grab every source of healing you can get your hands on during each run. The Pygmy Pliskin is one of the very best options available in that category, providing a free ten percent heal to a party member after each location, and increasing the potency of your healing skills by ten percent for each Medical Gear item you have equipped.
Together, these abilities give you a huge amount of survivability, letting you take on more battles, and thus earn more Mastery and rewards, without worrying about your characters dying in the process. Regardless of your party setup, this is a Pet you should prioritise.
1 Reanimated Rabbit
The Reanimated Rabbit has the highest power ceiling of any Pet in Darkest Dungeon 2. With the right Food Gear setup (including the Food Barrels and Griddle), you can build up a veritable feast of excess Food, which will then translate into extra health for your party thanks to the Rabbit.
In addition, you also receive a nice extra speed boost for each Food Gear item you have equipped, meaning that a well-built Rabbit party can be faster and tankier than any other. When you can outspeed your opponents and easily absorb any attacks they land on you, the rest of the run will fall into place sooner rather than later.