The Hamlet is a little village that serves as your base of operations in Darkest Dungeon. There are several buildings here at your disposal, each offering a different service.
You can recruit new heroes, upgrade your gear and skills, unlock new camping skills, cure diseases, provide stress relief to your battle-worn heroes, and purchase provisions before heading out.
Hamlet is where you prepare for each of your weekly missions. Upgrading these facilities, hence, becomes all the more important if you want to increase your survival chances in the game.
The only problem is that resources are incredibly limited in Darkest Dungeon.
Each building has several levels that you need to unlock for various rewards, and you will need a ton of resources to max out every single facility in the Hamlet.
If you spend all of your resources on the wrong building upgrades, your progress will suffer. The following guide will tell you exactly which building upgrades you need to unlock first to make your early game easier in Darkest Dungeon.
How to upgrade buildings in the Hamlet
You require heirlooms, not gold, to upgrade buildings in the Hamlet. It is also important to understand that you need different heirlooms (sometimes in combinations) for different building upgrades.
You earn heirlooms as rewards for completing dungeons. You also gain them randomly from curios and battles in each dungeon location.
Similar to gold, you need to hold on to your heirlooms. It can take several dungeons to get enough heirlooms for a single building upgrade.
Even though there are ways to farm heirlooms fast in Darkest Dungeon, it is still heavily advised to not waste them away on random upgrades.
Which buildings to upgrade first in the Hamlet
The upgrades below are in the order you should follow once you start your Darkest Dungeon journey. Once you have done the building upgrades given below, you can continue to do any of the remaining upgrades in any order you wish. This list is all about giving you a good start.
#1 Stage Coach (Stage Coach Network)
The Stage Coach is where you can recruit new heroes every week to increase your playable roster. This is perhaps the most important facility in the Hamlet because you are going to permanently lose a lot of your heroes over the course of progression. You will, hence, need the Stage Coach to have a continuous supply of heroes (fodder) as replacements.
Stage Coach Network gives your three new heroes by default each week. Upgrading this should be your first priority. Upgrade it to level 3 so that you are receiving at least five new heroes each week.
The increased number of heroes will also increase your chances of recruiting different classes for various team compositions in the game.
You will need the following heirlooms in total:
- 24x Deeds
- 25x Crests
#2 Stage Coach (Hero Barracks)
Hero Barracks is another part of the Stage Coach. This upgrade increases the size of your playable roster. Since you have already upgraded the Stage Coach Network for more heroes every week, you need to upgrade Hero Barracks to make space for them in your roster.
Upgrade Hero Barracks to level 2 to be able to have a maximum of 16 heroes in the game. This should last you until the mid-game.
You will need the following heirlooms in total:
- 8x Deeds
- 10x Crests
#3 Blacksmith (Weaponsmithing)
Blacksmith allows you to upgrade gear to give your heroes better weapons and armor.
Something you need to understand is that Darkest Dungeon is all about aggression. There are no points for playing safe. Hence, you will get a lot more value to upgrade your weapons for more damage instead of armor for more defense.
That is why you need to upgrade Weaponsmithing to at least level 1. This will get your weapons to rank 2 which is more than enough for all apprentice dungeons.
You will need the following heirlooms in total:
- 8x Deeds
- 8x Crests
#4 Guild (Instructor Mastery)
Every hero that you recruit from the Stage Coach comes with a random set of unlocked skills. You can send them to the Guild to unlock any other skill and also improve their skills for better damage or heals.
Hence, upgrade the Instructor Mastery to level 1 as soon as possible to combine your offensive measures with your Blacksmith upgrades.
You will need the following heirlooms in total:
- 6x Portraits
- 14x Crests
#4 Abbey (Cloister and Transept)
The Abbey is where your heroes go to relieve stress. You will be using this facility a lot during the course of your progression, especially for heroes with religious quirks.
Upgrade both Cloister (meditation) and Transept (prayer) to level 2 to increase your stress recovery and reduce treatment costs. There is no need to go for level 3 to add another slot unless you have fully upgraded the Stage Coach and have over a dozen heroes in your roster.
You will need the following heirlooms in total:
- 24x Busts
- 30x Crests
#5 Blacksmith and Guild
It is now time to return to the Blacksmith and Guild to give your heroes another massive power spike. This should be around the time when you will start doing veteran dungeons.
Upgrade Weaponsmithing to level 2 for rank 3 weapons, and Instructor Mastery to level 2 for rank 2 skills.
You will need the following heirlooms in total:
- 20x Deeds
- 15x Portraits
- 59x Crests
