Radiant or Darkest: what changes in levels and costs

Checked against Darkest Dungeon (Steam build 25810065) · November 3, 2026

A Darkest Dungeon campaign is played in one mode, and the mode quietly changes the numbers. A hero with 21 resolve experience is level 4 in Radiant but level 3 in Darkest, and a dungeon reaches its higher levels with far less experience. If a level you see does not match a guide or a wiki, this is usually why. Here is the difference, and how to see your campaign’s mode.

Find your campaign’s mode

Open the whole profile folder in the editor. The Estate tab shows Mode: Darkest, Radiant or Stygian. The editor only shows it. The editor uses it to work out every level on the Heroes and Dungeons tabs.

Hero levels (resolve experience)

Experience needed for each resolve level, 1 to 6:

  • Darkest and Stygian: 2, 8, 14, 24, 36 and 48.
  • Radiant: 2, 7, 13, 21, 29 and 40.

So a Radiant hero reaches the top level with 8 experience fewer, and the gap grows with each level (level 5 needs 29 instead of 36).

Dungeon levels

Experience a region needs for levels 1 to 7:

  • Darkest and Stygian: 2, 6, 10, 16, 22, 32 and 42.
  • Radiant: 2, 6, 10, 14, 18, 22 and 28.

The first three are equal; from level 4 Radiant needs a lot less. A dungeon’s level decides which quests it offers, boss quests included (see practise a boss fight). If a dungeon level in a Radiant campaign seems too high for a guide, check the mode first.

Costs and the Hamlet

  • A hero’s weapon and armour upgrades cost 8,750 gold each in Radiant, 11,500 in Darkest and 14,750 in Stygian.
  • The Stage Coach has one more recruit-quality upgrade in Radiant.
  • Heroes resting in the Hamlet recover stress twice as fast in Radiant (10 instead of 5), and random hunger checks do not happen.
  • The rules for which heroes may join which quests are looser in Radiant, and town events are rolled with different chances.

Skills cost the same in every mode. Radiant keeps Darkest’s monsters and permanent death.

What this means for the editor

On the Heroes tab the resolve level shown follows your mode, so a hero’s experience from a Darkest guide gives a different level in a Radiant campaign. Pick the level you want and the editor writes the matching experience. On the Dungeons tab you type the experience, and the tab shows the level it gives, so use the tables above.

This is for your own offline single-player campaign. The editor makes no backups, so copy the profile folder first, and edits are at your own risk.

Sources