Target priority in Darkest Dungeon is usually taught as “kill the stress dealers first”. That is right, but it is right for a reason that the stat files make explicit: the enemies worth killing first are the ones where damage-to-kill is lowest relative to the number of future actions you are removing.
A Bone Courtier costs 21 damage to remove and acts at speed 10. A Pelagic Guardian costs 102 damage to remove and acts at speed 2. Both are one enemy. One of them is five times the price for a third of the tempo.
All figures here come from darkestdungeon-enemies.json, parsed from darkestdungeon.wiki.gg, at Champion tier.
Damage-to-kill, not HP
Because PROT is a percentage reduction, the damage you actually have to deal is HP divided by (1 − PROT). That single conversion reorders the whole bestiary:
| Enemy | HP | PROT | Damage to kill | SPD | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bone Rabble | 16 | 0% | 16 | 3 | With low HP, no protection, low speed, very poor resistances (save for bleed), and weak, inaccurate attacks, this enemy is by far the weakest of all Unholy enemies and should be considered a very low priority in battle. |
| Bone Courtier | 21 | 0% | 21 | 10 | Bone Courtier is an Unholy enemy found in the Ruins, and one of the first enemies encountered that specialize in dealing Stress damage. Though ill-suited for combat, their signature Tempting Goblet is a well-known source of stress in the earlier stages of the game. |
| Crone | 27 | 0% | 27 | 10 | Sinister agents of the Hag, the Crones are women that joined of the Coven of Witches that resides within the Weald. Utilizing a curious mixture of herbs and other unsavory ingredients, these women operate by debuffing heroes for their allies to strike, inflicting stress while dimming the torch, or poisoning heroes… |
| Rapturous Cultist | 26 | 0% | 26 | 9 | Rapturous Cultist is an enemy can be encountered on the first 2 expeditions in the Darkest Dungeon. With their high speed, Rapturous Cultists are likely to act first during a turn, using their Flesh Wall ability to guard one of their damage dealing allies from your attacks. |
| Brigand Raider | 25 | 25% | 33 | 5 | Elite Brigand Cutthroats are equipped with improved armor and weapons, Brigand Raiders are most often seen accompanying Brigand Vvulf’s personal group of enforcers. The Brigand Raider is a stronger variant of the Brigand Cutthroat which appears during Wolves at the Door, and within Champion-level dungeons. |
| Bone Arbalist | 31 | 0% | 31 | 7 | The Bone Arbalist is a common long-range combatant found in the Ruins. Like the player’s own Arbalests, they operate by firing crossbow bolts into the fray from the safety of the back ranks, and end up in an awkward position if drawn to the front. |
| Cultist Priest | 46 | 0% | 46 | 7 | Of all the Cultists who have gathered throughout this land, there are a select few whose fanatical devotion and worship is so great that they received a “Great Blessing” by their New God and had their bodies remade in its image – a twisted amalgam of flesh, teeth, eyes, and tentacles to a “comprehensible” form unlike… |
| Bone Defender | 31 | 45% | 56 | 2 | Bone Defenders are enemies commonly encountered within the Ruins. Their large shield leaves them well-armored and capable of taking a beating, and they can use this resilience to protect the other undead soldiers guarding the area. |
| Bone Bearer | 52 | 15% | 61 | 7 | The Bone Bearer is an enemy that appears only in Champion-tier expeditions in the Ruins. While it remains standing, the banner it bears will inspire any nearby undead to fight with increased strength, and its horn may imbue individual allies, living or undead with a surge of power. |
| Ghoul | 57 | 40% | 95 | 7 | Flesh-eating undead who can be found in Veteran or Champion-level dungeons, Ghouls are often accompanied by Gargoyles, Maggots or Cultists. They have fairly high protection and health, and can cause bleed and stun along with respectable health and stress damage - not a foe to be underestimated. |
| Bone Captain | 68 | 33% | 101 | 2 | The Bone Captain is an enemy that appears in Veteran-tier or harder expeditions in the Ruins. These undead soldiers, befitting their rank, are tough and strong, using their large maces to clobber the heroes. The weight of their strikes can cause the very ground to quake, leaving those affected dazed and reeling. |
| Pelagic Guardian | 51 | 50% | 102 | 2 | Pelagic Guardians are enemies that appear in the Cove. Unlike its seafolk brethren who resemble pirahnas, the Pelagic Guardian resembles an octopus, standing on several of its tentacles. |
| Unclean Giant | 137 | 0% | 137 | 2 | The Unclean Giant is a large Human/Beast type that appears in the Weald, infested by the terrible fungus that has run amok within it. These lumbering monsters are capable of using the spores of the fungus on their back to inflict Blight and shuffle the party, or clobber the front lines with the uprooted tree they… |
| Swinetaur | 88 | 40% | 147 | 2 | The Swinetaur is a large enemy that appears in Veteran-tier or harder expeditions in the Warrens. This amalgamation of Swinefolk and centaur operates like a jousting knight, creating distance between itself and the party before charging at them, delivering a powerful blow with its spear to either the entire party at… |
| Uca Major | 82 | 50% | 164 | 2 | The Uca are a large enemy encountered in the Cove, covered in a thick, heavy carapace capable of withstanding even the mightiest of blows. In addition to their nigh-impenetrable shell, they possess massive claws capable of sundering even the thickest of armor and inflicting gaping wounds upon flesh. |
Read the top and bottom of that table together. The five cheapest enemies to kill all move at speed 9–10 or 5. The five most expensive all move at speed 2, except the Ghoul at 7.
That is the design: fast enemies are cheap and slow enemies are expensive, so a party that kills in HP order spends its damage on the wrong half of the board.
The 2x rule for PROT
Two entries show why PROT has to enter the calculation:
- Bone Defender: 31 HP at 45% PROT = 56 damage.
- Bone Captain: 68 HP at 33% PROT = 101 damage.
The Defender has less than half the Captain’s HP and costs more than half as much to kill, while being Large-adjacent in defensive value and moving at the same speed 2. If you are choosing between them — and in the Ruins you often are — the Captain is the better target per point of damage, because 101 damage removes 68 HP of body while 56 removes 31.
The extreme case is the Uca Major: 82 HP at 50% PROT is 164 damage, more than the Unclean Giant’s 137 for a 137-HP body with no armour at all. Against 50% PROT, raw damage is close to a waste; damage over time ignores PROT entirely, which is why blight and bleed are the correct answer to the Cove’s armoured front line.
Speed is the multiplier
Two enemies with identical HP are not identical. One acts first every round, the other acts last.
- Speed 10: Bone Courtier (21 HP), Crone (27 HP)
- Speed 9: Rapturous Cultist (26 HP)
- Speed 7: Bone Arbalist (31), Cultist Priest (46), Bone Bearer (52), Ghoul (57)
- Speed 5: Brigand Raider (33 damage-to-kill)
- Speed 3: Bone Rabble (16), Brigand Bloodletter (68 HP, 0% PROT)
- Speed 2: Bone Defender (56), Bone Captain (101), Pelagic Guardian (102), Uca Major (164)
A Crone at speed 10 with 42.5% dodge is the single most annoying cheap target in the game: 27 damage to kill, but a 42.5% chance that each attempt does nothing. Against high-dodge targets, accuracy trinkets and multi-hit skills beat single big swings, because each miss costs a full action.
“Bone Courtier is an Unholy enemy found in the Ruins, and one of the first enemies encountered that specialize in dealing Stress damage.” — darkestdungeon.wiki.gg, Bone Courtier stat block
That quote is the whole priority rule in one line: the cheapest enemy on the board is also the one whose attacks do not come out of your health bar, they come out of your stress bar. Stress damage compounds across a dungeon in a way that HP damage does not.
The three-pass target rule
A workable procedure that uses the numbers above:
Pass 1 — anything that dies to one hit. 16–27 damage-to-kill enemies at speed 9–10. Kill these on sight, before they act twice. That is the Bone Rabble, Bone Courtier, Rapturous Cultist and Crone.
Pass 2 — the expensive fast ones. 46–95 damage-to-kill at speed 7. The Cultist Priest, Bone Arbalist, Bone Bearer and Ghoul all fall here. They are not cheap, but they act before your tanks and they will act again.
Pass 3 — the slow walls. 101–164 damage-to-kill at speed 2. The Bone Captain, Pelagic Guardian, Uca Major and Swinetaur. These are the last targets, not the first, unless they are the only thing left.
The mistake almost every new player makes is inverting passes 1 and 3: spending three rounds chewing a 45%-PROT shield while two 21-HP casters free-hit the back rank. The combat guide covers positioning and skills, and reading enemy intents covers which action each body is about to take; this page is only about which body to point them at.
When the rule inverts
Three situations break the standard order, and all three are visible in the data:
- The enemy is guarding. PROT from a guard effect is separate from base PROT and stacks on top. If a Bone Defender is guarding the Courtier, the Courtier effectively has 45%+ PROT until the guard breaks. See guard and protect.
- The enemy fires an automatic action every round. A 61-damage Bone Bearer that triggers an auto-action at the end of every round, as long as a corpse is present, is worth more than its HP suggests — it is a permanent value engine until it dies.
- The enemy resists your damage type. A 164-damage Uca Major is 164 damage only if your damage is raw. With blight, it is 82 HP and the PROT never applies. Resistance changes the price of the target, so the table above is a raw-damage table.
Applying it to a region
The undead counter guide applies this to the Ruins, where the eight Bone enemies span 16 to 101 damage-to-kill and the resistance column is uniformly hostile to bleed. The enemies guide has the same breakdown region by region.
The short version of the whole page: enemy HP tells you how long a fight lasts, enemy speed tells you how much it costs, and PROT tells you whether your damage counts. Kill the cheapest actions first and the expensive walls last, and most fights in this game become arithmetic instead of attrition.