Darkest Dungeon 2 Guide: Grave Robber Abilities, Skills, & Masteries

DARKEST DUNGEON 2: Grave Robber Skills, Abilities, and Masteries

This Darkest Dungeon 2 guide is from early access. As such, some of the information may change over time. If there are significant changes I will make a new video guide. These skill guides are mainly to show you all of the character’s moves and masteries so you can choose who to unlock things on first.

Hey everyone, Adam here with a Darkest Dungeon 2, Grave Robber Guide. In this guide I’ll go over all the abilities for the Grave Robber as well as what adding a mastery point to each skill does for you. My hope is that this video series will help you decide who you’d like to unlock skills on first during your playthroughs.

Skill One – Pick to the Face: The Grave Robber’s first skill is Pick to the Face. Pick to the face is a melee skill that can be used from any of the first three positions but can only hit one of the front two enemies. This skill actually does really decent damage, has respectable crit, and bypasses block tokens. Perfect for enemies that are almost dead but have that last token to go through. Using a mastery point on Pick to the face will increase the top end damage to 10 from 7, bump up the crit slightly, and make it so that if an enemy has a combo token, it will consume it in order to add an additional 50% crit to this attack (for the current round only, of course).

Skill Two – Thrown Dagger: The Grave Robber’s second ability is thrown dagger. Thrown dagger can be used from any of the back three positions and hits an enemy in any of the back three positions on their side. This skill has moderate damage, great crit chance, and bypasses guard. Perfect for finishing off those pesky Urchins the Woodman is guarding. As a bonus, if the Grave Robber is stealthed this skill will also ignore dodge tokens. Using a mastery point on this skill will increase the top end damage slightly as well as double the crit chance. In addition, if the enemy has a combo token, Thrown Dagger will have it’s base crit chance increased to 80%. I recently had a run in which, with trinkets, I routinely had a 92% chance for thrown dagger to crit!

Skill Three – Flashing Daggers: The third skill of the Grave Robber is Flashing daggers. Flashing daggers is an AOE skill that can be used from any of the back three positions, and hit’s both middle positions of the enemy ranks. This skill does very little damage per target and has low crit chance, though spending a mastery point here will increase both slightly. While seemingly a weak skill on the surface, flashing daggers has three main rolls. First, it can be used to remove tokens on two enemies at once. For instance, it can be used against the four cultist fight to get rid of a dodge token on an evangelist and a cherub in one turn. Second, you can use this on a low health enemy to finish them off while still putting some damage into another enemy. Lastly, as always, AOE skills are great for on-hit effect trinkets as it gives you an extra roll.

Skill Four – Poison Dart: The fourth skill for the Grave Robber is Poison Dart. Poison dart can be used from any position other than the front and can hit ANY enemy position. Poison dart deals relatively low damage but also leaves an enemy with a blight damage over time effect. Using a mastery point here will increase the top end damage slightly, double the crit chance to 10%, and double the blight damage to 4 per tick. In addition, the move will now consume an enemy’s combo token for a 50% additional chance to crit. This is important because a move that applies a DOT will have its max duration increased to 5 rounds from the standard 3, giving you 8 more damage of total blight.

Skill Five – Absinthe: Next we have the recently nerfed fifth skill of the Grave Robber, Absinthe. Absinthe is a self-heal that, if under 25% health, will heal the Grave Robber for 33% of her maximum HP. This skill will also leave her with three dodge tokens, making it so that the next three attacks against her have a 50% chance to miss, and a speed token which will increase her position in the turn order for the next round. Using a mastery point will upgrade the dodge tokens into dodge plus tokens, which have a 75% chance to dodge rather than the base 50%. Regardless of the upgrade, this move can now only be used three times a battle … before the nerf you could use it as much as you wanted!

Unlockable Skills Now we are on to the skills that start out locked. You’ll need to visit and complete Shrines of Reflection to gain access to these skills. If you’d like to see all of the Grave Robber’s Shrines of Reflection be sure to check out that video from me in the comments and description.

Skill Six – Dead of Night: The Grave Robber’s sixth skill is Dead of Night. Dead of night can be used from any position in order to destroy a single enemy corpse. Doing so will heal the Grave Robber for 33% of her health and leave her stealthed which synergizes well with several of her other skills. Upgrading this skill with a mastery point will increase the heal to a whopping 50% as well as remove a point of stress from the Graverobber. This skill does have a battle use limit of three, which may seem like it doesn’t matter, but there are fights in the game in which mobs can spawn additional corpses, namely the Dinner Cart enemy.

Skill Seven – Glint in the Dark: The next unlockable ability for the Grave Robber is Glint in the Dark. This skill can be used from any of the first three positions and hits any of the first three of the enemy. Glint deals moderate damage, has low crit, but ignores stealth as well as 20% of the enemy’s deathblow resistance. Using a mastery point here will increase the damage and crit as expected, as well as cause Glint to completely ignore the enemy’s deathblow resistance if she is stealthed. Due to this skills ability to remove stealth, I strongly suggest switching it in if traveling through the Sluice, where stealthed swine are common. The deathblow ignore can also be nice for turn-limited road fights, bosses, and high loathing, but is sometimes hard to decide what move to give up in order to fit it in.

Skill Eight – Lunge: On to the eighth skill, Lunge. I absolutely loved Lunge in the first game and would occasionally make entire parties around ensuring the Grave Robber could use Lunge every single round. This is definitely still possible as many classes do have skills that move them forward, allowing the Graverobber to be pushed to the back for follow-up lunges. Lunge has high damage and high crit, and will send the Grave Robber forward two positions on use. This skill can only be used from the back two positions and can hit any of the front three enemy positions. It also ignores dodge tokens if the Grave Robber is stealthed, making inn buffs or trinkets that have chances to apply stealth excellent choices for this character. Using a mastery on Lunge increases the top end damage as well as bumps the crit chance to 30%. In addition, lunge can now bypass block tokens in the same manor it can do so with dodge tokens.

Skill Nine – Pirouette: The grave Robber’s ninth skill is Pirouette (peer-uh-wet). This skill can be used from any of the front two positions and hits both front-line enemies with a pretty decent damaging aoe. Using this skill will also send the Grave Robber to the back position on your team while leaving her with a dodge token and a daze token. The daze token is unfortunate as it is going to cause her to go last during the next round if not removed. Upgrading this skill increases the damage and crit chance and changes the dodge token to a dodge plus token, which, as mentioned earlier, makes it so the next attack directed at your Grave Robber has a 75% chance to miss. This skill has a 2 round cooldown.

Skill Ten – Repartee: The 10th Grave Robber ability is Repartee (Rep ar tee). This skill can be used from any position but does require the Grave Robber to be stealthed. Using the skill will remove stealth but add three dodge tokens and 2 taunt tokens to the Grave Robber. Upgrading this skill with a mastery point will change the dodge tokens to dodge plus tokens, making for some pretty reliable dodge tanking.

Skill Eleven – Shadow Fade: The final skill for the Grave Robber is Shadow Fade. Shadow fade can be used from any of the front two positions, sending the Grave Robber back two spots and giving her stealth. Upgrading this skill also gives a speed token which will ensure she goes early in the next round’s turn order so that you can put that stealth synergy to work right away.

And that does it! Every single ability for the grave Robber. As this is early access, of course, many of these could change over time. But, given what we’ve seen so far, the essence of the moves should remain, with just specific numbers being tweaked as we move forward.

I hope you enjoyed this Darkest Dungeon 2 Grave Robber Skill Guide. If you did, please let me know by subscribing on YouTube, hitting the like button on the guide videos there, and leaving a comment. It also helps tremendously to share this post and website to others you think may find it helpful!