One of the most terrifying fights in the entire game, the Act Three boss—Focused Fault—boasts the highest damage and stress output of any boss in Darkest Dungeon II.
Focused Fault appears as a large cluster of human eyeballs with a massive one in the middle surrounded by spiked teeth. Talk about nightmare fuel.
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The fight is divided into two parts—Phase One and Phase Two. The former has you face off against four mutating Cloistered Eyes, while the latter has you fight Focused Fault itself.
Considering just how daunting this boss is, we’re confident you will need all the help you can get. Continue reading our guide on how to beat the Act Three boss—Focused Fault—below.
How to prepare for the Focused Fault boss fight in Darkest Dungeon II
Before you go toe to toe—or eyeballs to eyeballs—with Focused Fault, you will need to prepare thoroughly for the fight by making sure you’ve taken care of some essential prerequisites.
One of the first things you can do to make your time against Focused Fault easier is by leveling up your heroes to ensure they possess the necessary attributes and skills to take on this formidable boss relatively easily.
Another important aspect to take care of before taking on the Focused Fault is increasing all relationships as much as possible as positive relationship boosts can increase Heal and decrease Stress during the battle, which can most certainly make or break the entire boss fight for you.
When preparing to leave the Mountain, there are a few things you can do to optimize your readiness for the Focused Fault fight. They are:
- Buffing all your heroes with the best food you have at your disposal.
- Reduce the Stress of all your heroes.
- Heal your heroes as much as possible.
When it comes to Inn items, you will want to purchase ones that increase your Stun resistance, debuff resistance, and healing. A few of the items that will do these exact things for you are:
- Oddly-Tuned Lute (Jester signature item).
- Clarifying Poultice.
- Mop and Bucket.
While we’re on the topic of items, you should definitely be utilizing combat items as they are the best option you will have at your disposal for getting rid of the multiple debuffs inflicted by Focused Fault. You will also want ones that get rid of the eyes’ Dodge.
Keep in mind that all the stalks as well as Focused Fault have some resistance to each damage-over-time type, so having those stacked can keep the damage going while your party heals itself.
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Below are some of the best combat items you can use against Focused Fault:
- Holy Water
- Mineral-Rich Spring Water
- Smelling Salts
- Thunderclap Grenade
- Otherwordly Fragment
- Incendiary Cocktail
- Ichor Bomb
- Laudanum
With all of these prerequisites achieved, you can make your way to the Focused Fault boss fight.
Focused Fault stats and abilities
Phase One
The first phase of the battle is relatively easy as long as you stick to the basic blueprint for defeating the stalks, which are the boss enemies that can mutate into stronger versions of themselves, in the first phase of the Focused Fault boss fight.
Before we get into the nitty-gritty, however, you should familiarize yourself with the stats and abilities of these imposing enemies.
Cloistered Eye
- Enemy Type: Cosmic
- Max HP: Six
- Speed: Eight
- Bleed: 20 percent
- Blight: 20 percent
- Burn: 20 percent
- Stun: 10 percent
- Move: 10 percent
- Debuff: 10 percent
- Death Blow: 0 percent
- Effects: Spawns with Dodge, respawns next round when health reaches zero
- Size: One
- Turns per round: One
Abilities
| Skill name | Target | Damage | Crit Rate | Effect |
| Observe | Matching hero rank | – | – | Self and target gain a Focus token. If the target has a matching Focus token, transform into Bifurcated Eye or Cluster Of Eyes. Adds one Stress stack to the target while ignoring Blind token. |
| Gaze | Hero with Focus token | 2-4 | 30 percent | Self gains Stealth token while transforming into Bifurcated Eye or Cluster Of Eyes. On the landing of a critical hit, place either a Weakness, Vulnerable, or Daze token. Ignores Blind token. |
Bifurcated Eye
Stats
- Enemy Type: Cosmic
- Max HP: Six
- Speed: Eight
- Bleed: 30 percent
- Blight: 30 percent
- Burn: 30 percent
- Stun: 20 percent
- Move: 10 percent
- Debuff: 20 percent
- Death Blow: 0 percent
- Effects: Becomes Cloistered Eye when health reaches zero
- Size: One
- Turns per round: One
Abilities
| Skill Name | Target | Damage | Crit Rate | Effect |
| Detect | Random hero | – | – | Self and target gain Focus token. Adds two Stress stacks. |
| Glare | Random hero | 4-8 | 30 percent | On hit, gain Dodge and Strength tokens, transform into Cluster Of Eyes. On a critical hit, place either a Weakness, Vulnerable, or Daze token, ignore Blind and Stealth tokens. |
Cluster of Eyes
Stats
- Enemy Type: Cosmic
- Max HP: 12
- Speed: Four
- Bleed: 40 percent
- Blight: 40 percent
- Burn: 40 percent
- Stun: 40 percent
- Move: 10 percent
- Debuff: 40 percent
- Death Blow: 0 percent
- Effects: Becomes Bifurcated Eye when health reaches zero. Spawns Focused Fault when four of self is present.
- Size: One
- Turns per round: One
Abilities
| Skill name | Target | Damage | Crit Rate | Effect |
| Detect | Random hero | – | – | Self and target gain Focus token. Adds two Stress stacks. |
| Glare | Random hero | 6-12 | 30 percent | On hit, gain Improved Dodge and Strength tokens. On a critical hit, place either a Weakness, Vulnerable, or Daze token. Ignore Blind and Stealth tokens. |
Phase Two
This is where the proverbial poop starts to hit the fan. The Focused Fault itself has finally emerged, and it is on a mission to deal the most horrendous amounts of damage you have ever seen in your playthrough of the game.
Before we tell you how to deal with this monstrosity, make sure you familiarize yourself with its stats and abilities.
Focused Fault
Stats
- Enemy Type: Cosmic
- Max HP: 250
- Speed: Eight
- Bleed: 30 percent
- Blight: 30 percent
- Burn: 30 percent
- Stun: 100 percent
- Move: 100 percent
- Debuff: 30 percent
- Death Blow: 0 percent
- Effects: Starts with an extra option. Copies all positive tokens on a critical hit.
- Size: Four
- Turns per round: Two
Abilities
| Ability | Target | Damage | Crit Chance | Effect |
| Behold | All heroes | – | – | Places Focus tokens, adds four Stress, only used when no hero with a Focus token remains. |
| Suppress | All heroes without Focus | – | – | Adds two Blind tokens, two Weakness tokens, one Daze token, and a 33 percent chance of a Stun token |
| Limerence | All heroes with Focus | 20-40 | 30 percent | Adds -25 percent healing received debuff (cannot resist), 50 percent chance of a Horror token, ignores Stealth and Blind tokens. |
How to beat the Focused Fault in Darkest Dungeon II
Phase One strategy: Stalks
The four stalks start the fight with high speed, applying one of each Seen Token on each hero, mirroring their positions unless they are forced to target another hero. Seen Tokens are the key to the entire boss fight, acting as a Horror effect as well as a target for the Focused Fault’s brutal attacks.
If all four heroes are marked, you will incur upwards of 60 damage per turn on your entire team, which is not feasible for your success.
The solution is to move your heroes around all the positions so the Seen Tokens all end up on one person. Other options include moving the eyes themselves with disruption skills and using Guard abilities.
Killing a Cloistered Eye will remove its respective Seen Token, but the Stalk will return the next round. If you leave the Cloistered Eyes alone for long enough, they will grow into Bifurcated Eyes, and then into Cluster of Eyes. Once all four stalks reach their maximum level at the same time, they will bring forth the Focused Fault.
Phase Two strategy: Focused Fault
Your main focus (no pun intended) for Phase Two should be on damage mitigation and haste. Focused Fault will strike anyone marked with Seen Tokens with disgusting amounts of damage along with applying a debuff that lowers healing received from all sources by 25 percent. Since you need to defeat the boss before it wipes your team out, damage mitigation is key.
Abilities and effects that can apply Dodge and gain Block or Weak can assist the targeted heroes and keep them alive for another three to four rounds before they start to melt down from Horror and Stress.
The good news is the Focused Fault possesses no Deathblow resistance, and neither does it have good DoT and Debuff resistances, which makes having high damage per turn on your team crucial to beating the second phase. Since it has two turns per round, DoTs proc more often as well.
Plague Doctor’s Blight, Runaway’s Burn, or Hellion’s Bleed act as simple ways to apply threatening DoTs. Heroes with side DoT effects like Graverobber’s Poison Darts and Highwayman’s Open Vein are good choices as well.
Another thing you need to keep in mind is Suppress, which applies a slew of negative Tokens onto your heroes, including Stun. Make sure you don’t focus entirely on dealing damage and give your damage-focused heroes ways to remove or ignore effects from skills like Suppress.
Remember, Focused Fault is an incredibly tough boss, so even if you fail after a few attempts, make sure to keep applying what you’ve learned and continue trying your best.
