There are 37 entries in the Darkest Dungeon boss file, but they are not 37 fights. Some are phases of one encounter — the Ancestor’s first form has 5 HP and 100% PROT, the Gestating Heart has 189, the Heart of Darkness has 252. Some are objects that share a room with a real boss, like the Cauldron sitting in front of the Hag. And some, like Wilbur and the Barrel O’ Bombs, exist only to support the thing you actually came to kill.
Sorting them by health is the least useful thing you can do with the data. Sorting by damage required after PROT reorders the entire list.
All figures come from darkestdungeon-bosses.json, parsed from darkestdungeon.wiki.gg, at Champion tier where one exists.
Bosses ranked by damage after PROT
| Boss | HP | PROT | Damage after PROT | DODGE | SPD | Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Countess | 480 | 30% | 686 | 25% | 4 | 3 |
| Flesh (Head) | 204 | 70% | 680 | 22.5% | 7 | 1 |
| Baron | 280 | 10% | 311 | 22% | 10 | 3 |
| Heart of Darkness | 303 | 0% | 303 | 23.75% | 10 | — |
| Shuffling Horror | 195 | 33% | 291 | 23.75% | 2 | 2 |
| Swine Prince | 271 | 0% | 271 | 22.5% | 2 | 2 |
| Mammoth Cyst | 190 | 25% | 253 | 23.75% | 3 | 2 |
| Crocodilian | 223 | 10% | 248 | 32.5% | 9 | 2 |
| Siren | 244 | 0% | 244 | 35% | 7 | 2 |
| Brigand Vvulf | 240 | 0% | 240 | 20% | 4 | 3 |
| Fanatic | 203 | 15% | 239 | 25.5% | 9 | 3 |
| Shambler | 158 | 33% | 236 | 22.5% | 2 | 1 |
| Necromancer | 215 | 0% | 215 | 22.5% | 10 | — |
| Prophet | 215 | 0% | 215 | 27.5% | 2 | 3 |
| The Collector | 137 | 0% | 137 | 0% | 7 | — |
| Hag | 135 | 0% | 135 | 27.5% | 7 | 2 |
Damage after PROT is HP ÷ (1 − PROT). Dodge is listed separately because it multiplies the requirement again: the Viscount’s 23% or the Siren’s 35% means a real share of your attacks produce nothing.
The Flesh is the trap in this table
The Flesh has 204 HP — respectable, not enormous — and 70% PROT. That turns it into 680 damage, second only to the Countess and effectively tied with her.
That is the single most counter-intuitive number in the game’s boss design. A party that walks into the Flesh with raw damage is fighting a 680-point wall; a party with damage over time is fighting a 204-point body, because blight and bleed never check PROT. Its resistance row is 85% bleed and 65% blight — high, but workable, and far cheaper than attempting to out-damage 70% armour.
The Shuffling Horror shows the same pattern at a smaller scale: 195 HP at 33% PROT is 291 damage, which makes a mid-sized Darkest Dungeon miniboss more expensive than the 244-HP Siren.
Action count is the other multiplier
PROT sets the price. Actions per round set the pressure.
| Actions | Bosses |
|---|---|
| 3 | Countess, Baron, Fanatic, Prophet, Vvulf, Viscount, Drowned Crew, Shrieker |
| 2 | Siren, Swine Prince, Crocodilian, Shuffling Horror, Mammoth Cyst, Templar Impaler, Templar Warlord |
| 1 | Shambler, Flesh, Hag |
| Not listed | Necromancer, Collector, Heart of Darkness |
Three actions is the ceiling. It is why the Countess is the hardest fight in the file despite being slow at speed 4, and why the Fanatic at 203 HP is more dangerous than the 244-HP Siren: three actions at speed 9 out-pressures two actions at speed 7.
The bosses with no action entry in the file are not necessarily single-action — the field is simply absent — so treat those rows as “unknown” rather than “safe”.
The four resistance archetypes
Every boss in the file falls into one of four shapes, and the shape decides your party more than the health bar does:
1. Both channels open. Necromancer (20% / 20%), Collector (20% / 20%), Shambler (40% / 40%), Heart of Darkness (47.5% / 47.5%). Bring whatever you have. These are the forgiving fights.
2. Bleed only. Hag (65% bleed / 105% blight), Fanatic (90% / 125%), Countess (90% / 110%), Crocodilian (95% / 125%). Blight stops landing; bleed keeps working.
3. Damage open, control closed. Prophet (45% bleed / 45% blight, but 145% stun), Swine Prince (40% / 40%, 140% stun), Vvulf (75% / 75%, 100% stun). Both DoT channels land, but the stun column shuts down the plan players default to.
4. Nothing works. The Cauldron at 200–245% on every channel, the Barrel O’ Bombs at 200% on every channel. These are objects, and the correct response is to walk past them or kill them with raw damage, not to apply statuses.
“The Hag always appears taking up rank 3 and 4, while her pot takes up ranks 1 and 2” — darkestdungeon.wiki.gg, Hag stat block
That one line explains why the Cauldron’s immunity matters: you cannot remove the object in front of the boss, so the fight is defined by reach rather than by damage type.
Stun resistance decides whether control exists
Three numbers cover the whole roster:
- 50% — the Collector. Stun-lock is a real plan.
- 75% — the Necromancer. Still a real plan, slightly less reliable.
- 87.5% to 100% — Heart of Darkness, Fanatic, Shambler, Vvulf, Hag, Swine Prince. Control is off the table.
If you build a party around stun-locking bosses, it works on exactly two of them. That is a narrow enough base that stun should be a bonus tool, not a plan.
Which page covers which fight
The individual guides go deeper on the fights that need it:
- The Hag — 135 HP behind a 205-HP, 100%-PROT Cauldron.
- The Necromancer — 215 HP at speed 10 with 75% stun resistance.
- The Collector — 137 HP, spawns at 79% pack fullness.
- The Countess — 480 HP, 30% PROT, three actions.
- The Fanatic — 203 HP, three actions at speed 9.
- The Shambler — 33 flat PROT, one action, zero torchlight.
- Brigand Vvulf — 240 HP plus a 30-HP barrel with two auto-actions.
- The Heart of Darkness — 252 / 303 HP across a three-phase finale.
The boss database has the raw tables for all 37 entries, and the difficulty ranking sorts them by disruption rather than by damage required.
How to prepare in one pass
- Look up the PROT column. If it is 30% or higher, bring damage over time or expect the fight to double in length.
- Look up the action count. Three actions means you cannot heal through it; you have to shorten it.
- Look up stun resistance. Under 80% means control is available; over 100% means it is not.
- Look up the two DoT resistances. One of them will be under 100%; that is your channel.
- Check whether the encounter has an object. Cauldron, Barrel, Wilbur — the real fight is often the support entity, not the boss.