Hi everyone from our Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills guide. Runaway is the most misunderstood character in DD2’s cast. Runaway is the glue that can hold a team together and inflict devastating burns on the enemy. Bonnie is easy to overlook as a hero as she is a more situational hero and needs certain teams to shine. Runaway fulfills multiple roles like all the heroes in DD2, but always works well in dance teams.
Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Welcome to our Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills guide. A complete and total guide to one of the strongest and most misunderstood heroes in the game. This guide will go over each of her skills, paths, and how to best use her.
Orphan
- Orphan is a flexible front-liner (and a devastating back-liner if you have the right trinkets). With the right allies she can become a powerful buffer, and enable a followup crit to deal strong damage. This path will do best in rank 2, and have the flexibility to perform well without losing momentum when shuffled into the back-lines. With alligator and a dancing team, this can become a destructive front-liner.
- Searing Strike. 5 stars. The +20/40% buff, along with any damage buffs allows for this attack to scale effectively. The low burn is also useful to proc DBR on dying enemies.
- Firefly. 2.5 stars (5 with burn boosting trinkets) This is a safe option to have equipped, and will let you get in back lines without losing momentum
- Smokescreen. 2 stars. As a DPS you’ll do better to deal damage instead of debuffing
- Run and hide. 3 stars. A great survivability skill.
- Hearthlight. 2 stars. A serviceable niche skill, best used in regions with a lot of dodges, and when mastered blind. Paired with on hit trinkets, it can provide reliable debuffs on the enemy team.
- Ransack. 5 stars. Gets Runaway back into the front lines while also dealing damage and pulling back lines to the front.
- Cauterize. 5 stars. Bleed is a common dot and off healing is invaluable to survivability.
- Controlled Burn. 2.5 stars. This is okay, but you have more powerful moves Maybe useful to switch to this skill if your going against a boss. But otherwise I wouldn’t select this.
- Firestarter. 5 stars if you have allies that deal AOE damage. This ability can allow enemies to deal 2 burn to the entire enemy team with skills like anamesis, magnesium rain, bellow, etc. This also will crit her next attack, which is very useful paired with buffs like consecration of light. Without the right allies though, it makes this skill more awkward to use, making it potentially a 2 star choice.
Dragonfly. 4 stars. It deals the +dmg in rank 2 and + burn in rank 3. A point of dmg on two targets is usually not outstanding, but can go a long if you keep cycling the skill. It is best you used with an ally who can move back, like Jester’s Fade to Black, GR’s shadowfade, or MAA’s strat withdrawal
Backdraft. 3.5 stars if you’re able to get heavy burn damage.
Things to be aware of.
R4 orphan does less frontloaded damage with firefly, so you can’t ping low hp enemies off.
-20% hp does make her more squishy
Survivor
Survivor works as a ghost that keeps your team alive. She doesn’t get hit due to dodge tokens, her job is just to stay alive and keep the rest of the team alive.
- Survivors skill rating
- Ransack. 5 stars Good for damage and moving into a better position.
- Smokescreen. 5 stars. Works excellently
- Any burn causing skills are automatically one star. So firefly, dragonfly, etc.
- Independant burn causing skills are usually 5 stars. Control burn, firestarter, etc.
- Fire Starter. 5 Stars with the right team. Firestarter is based on the buffed hero’s burn chances, and not her own. Heros who can reliable stay on the offense can build it DoTs, on top of CB
- Cauterize. 5 stars. Naturally.
- Searing Strike. 2.5 stars.
Arsonist
Arsonist is a devastating backline warrior, but a God of dance. Arsonist is the strongest (in my opinion) path for Runaway. This path is best when used with a team that allows Runaway to dance between ranks 2 and 3.
- Searing Strike. 1 star.
- Firefly. If using her in a dance team, 2.5 stars, as a backliner, 5 stars. Firefly is a poor option when dancing, as you’ll want to ransack if you’re in the backlines. If you’re using her as a backline burn hero however, this is a powerful DOT.
- Smokescreen. 2 stars. Same reason as Orphan.
- Run and Hide. 3.5 stars. Decent survivability.
- Hearthlight. 2 stars. Same reason as Orphan.
- Ransack. 5 stars. Good damage and lets you move forward.
- Cauterize. 5 stars. Off healing is important.
- Controlled Burn. 2 stars, you have better options to cause burn.
- Dragonfly. 6 stars. 4+ burn while applying combos to the front two enemies, this skill is Runaway’s strongest move.
- Firestarter. 4 stars with the right allies. The same reason as Orphan.
- Backdraft. 3.5 stars. You’ll be able to build some serious burn in rank one with dragonfly.
Things To Be Aware Of
As a Runaway fangirl, I would describe her cons more as things to be aware of. But with that in mind there are a few things you need to pay attention to, or you run the risk of her joining Reynauld
- Low health (though runaway has some good survivability skills to offset this.)
- May need to rely on defense tokens from other sources
- Only source of stealth is Run And Hide
- One of the more mastery reliant heroes.
- Low raw damage compared to frontliners like Highwayman, Leper, Hellion, etc.
Trinkets! There’s too many trinkets for me to go over which ones are the best, but in general, trinket’s that boost Runaways burn are priority pick’s. Below are a few trinket’s that she works best with.
- Knitted Blanket.
- Jealous Whisper.
Corrupted Bile Gland.
Below is a more in depth version of trinkets.
Trinkets
Due to the sheer number of trinkets, not all can be mentioned. But heres a rundown on some of the better ones.
These are very general so I’ll only note the stuff specifically applicable to RA/her paths:
- Clotting Cruor (+BLD res – Burn res, indelible version only bld res) – RA has the highest burn res out of the entire cast so balancing out her strengths and weakness can be beneficial. Bleed is more common than burn, so it is usually a good trade off (generally, don’t use this in the sprawl lol)
- Heat Shield (+Burn res – Blight res, indelible version only burn res) –
- So you know how arsonist can like just take off 80% of her hp if you’re unlucky? Let’s make those odds better for you and have that not happen. Other paths will enjoy this in the sprawl but so will the rest of your team
- Dark Impulse Burn edition (50% burn res, 1 stress/turn if burn) – same as heat shield for arsonist
Other Stuff:
- Bulwark Band/Clandestine Cape/Guarding Gauntlet (Turn start: dodge/stealth/block 15%, gain on miss: blind/vuln/weak) – RA is very reliant on other people’s defensive tokens, being unable to generate her own (other than stealth)
- Fate’s Forteller (Heal 20% on DoT resist) – a funny little combo with arsonist, where you have a 25%*burn resist% chance to heal 20% hp per turn
- Skeleton’s Sight (Heal 2 stress on DoT resist) – similarly this also has a use with arsonist but i find that healing>stress healing
- Laden Lantern/Tinderbox/Sacred Scribblings/Enlightening Element/Snappy Swig (Burn stuff) – you said that you would cover this but yeah its burn stuff
- Insulating insignia/unwavering standard (block on random ally during turn or combat start, combo or weak if first) – you could put this on someone slower, but RA is again, reliant on other people for defensive tokens
- Poison Ring/Fishmonger’s Gloves (Blight on hit (25%) if noxious item, Blight Piercing if noxious item, blight self (15%) on miss, bleed instead with serrated items)
- Locked Jaw (+200DoT piercing, -100Debuff Piercing) – nukes smokescreen for burn, I wouldn’t recommend this because smokescreen is pretty good but this is an option for guaranteed burn. Requires a impulse or shambler pet so that’s another downside
- Corrupted Bile Gland (Apply on hit 3 Blight/3 Burn or 3 Bleed, Gain on hit 3Blight/Burn or Bleed) – High risk high reward. Makes her whole kit better but hearthlight/dragonfly get the most reward.
- Charred Littany/Smoldering Hymnal are more burn trinkets that i didn’t get to in the first wall
- (Credit to loudmute on discord for typing this out)
Example Teams
This is the best comp with runaway, and it will wipe any boss without struggle except act two.
- Alchemist, Nightsworn, Arsonist, Carcass
- Soloist/Virtuoso, Orphan/Arsonist, Flag works as any, Tempest
- Good for raw damage. Seraph, Sharpshot, Orphan, Ravager.
- Alchemist, Arsonist, Confessor/Chaplain, Venomdrop/Nightsworn.
PD sits in r1, GR can dance between r3 and r1 while RA has the option of using dragonfly to hop into r3 to move GR to r2 (most useful with venomdrop to recast SF without needing GR to spend an action to move back to SF ranks)
Citations
I got both of these photos from a run with Orphan, but this is easily possible to do with arsonist as well.
If you cant read the second image, it says 19 burn, 5 turns, on round two.
We have come to the end of our Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills guide. Runaway is one of the strongest heroes in the game. Runaway is a more niche hero and needs more focus to shine. We hope the guide was helpful. Feel free to comment for your questions or suggestions.
