Darkest Dungeon features a wide range of bosses to challenge in the depths of your family estate. While most bosses are rather easy to come across as they lurk in specific areas of the map, others are special random events that are less predictable.
The Collector is one of these random bosses and encountering him is a particularly rare event. For everything you need to know about his spawn conditions and how best to defeat him, we've got it all covered right here.
The Collector Spawn Conditions
When you have 13+ inventory slots full, the Collector has a 5% chance of appearing as an enemy (or less depending on difficulty).
He can be a difficult boss to beat but offers some worthwhile rewards if you're up to the challenge. Once you defeat the Collector, he will either drop a Puzzling Trapezohedron worth 3,500 gold, or one of three exclusive trinkets.
Recommended Party Setup
As always, make sure all of your party members are well-equipped and be sure to bring along enough provisions and torches. We especially recommended always having bandages on hand when attempting to lure out the Collector.
Due to the very rare chance of this boss spawning, it's difficult to prep a team tailored for the Collector as you'll most likely encounter him while naturally playing through the game at some point. However, if you can work a party setup similar to the below recommendation for your general play, you'll be well prepared should the Collector appear.
- Vestal: Perfect choice for the healer.
- Someone Who Can Stun/Drag To Position One: Such the as Occultist or the Bounty Hunter. (The Occultist also has an Eldritch damage bonus too.)
- 2x Any Good DPS That Can Target Position One: Such as Crusader, Lepers, etc.
The Collector Boss Battle Strategy
The Collector is an Eldritch/Human boss. The most important thing to know about this fight is that the Collector will use Collect Call to summons three adds to fight alongside him on his first turn.
The Collector can summon "Collected" versions of the Highwayman, Vestal, and Man-at-Arms. There can only ever be one of each of the latter, but there can be two Collected Highwaymen. Once his adds are summoned, the Collector will move to position four and his new adds will be in front of him.
Start the fight by using Stun on the Collector, this will give you a couple of turns without having to worry about his adds. You can throw a DoT on him too, as he has low resistance to both Bleed and Blight.
Once you defeat any of his adds, there is a chance he will use Collect Call again to replenish his ranks, with the odds increasing with each add you kill, before becoming a guaranteed reaction to you killing all of his adds.
As such, we recommend that you largely ignore the adds as the Collector will just summon them back again. The only add that you should bother to defeat is the Collected Highwayman. The reason for this is because the Collected Highwayman will deal some serious damage to your heroes and gets a damage bonus when the Collector marks your team.
Use one of your heroes to drag the Collector into position one where you can really hack at his HP. Alternatively, if you have a different party setup, you can concentrate on using heroes who can attack position four.
The Collector and his Collected Highwayman can inflict bleed on your party, which is why we recommend bringing along plenty of bandages. The Collector will increase the Stress level of your heroes with Show Collection, and will also heal himself with his Life Steal move (as well as mark your heroes). Heroes with strong DPS output are recommended to finish him as soon as possible.