FULL Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills List (EARLY ACCESS)
This Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills List will tell you every skill and mastery upgrade the Runaway learns in Darkest Dungeon 2.
If you’re playing Darkest Dungeon 2, you’re going to want to know which skills each character can unlock so you know which characters you want to focus on upgrading. This Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills List will tell you all the Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills so you can decide whether Runaway is worth your time.
NOTE: This list is from the launch release of Darkest Dungeon 2 early access and numbers may change between the time this guide was written and the game’s full release.
Darkest Dungeon 2 Class Skill Lists
Plague Doctor – Grave Robber – Highwayman – Man at Arms
Hellion – Runaway – Jester – Leper – Occultist
Without further ado, let’s get into the Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills List.
1. Searing Strike – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Searing Strike deals 3-6 damage and inflicts a 2 damage burn.
Usable: Ranks 1-2
Targets: Ranks 1-2 (Single Target)
Searing Strike Mastery Upgrade: Increases damage to 4-7 and burn damage to 3. Inflicts burn on an adjacent monster if the enemy has a combo token.
Review: Searing Strike is Runaway’s standard bread and butter attack and it’s a pretty good one. Deals decent damage and inflicts a decent DoT. If you use Runaway you’ll use this skill a lot because she doesn’t have any other great direct damage skills.
2. Firefly – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Firefly deals 2-4 damage and inflicts a 3 damage burn.
Usable: Ranks 3-4
Targets: Ranks 1-3 (Single Target)
Firefly Mastery Upgrade: Increases damage to 3-4 and burn damage to 5. Inflicts a 3 damage burn on an adjacent monster if the target has a combo token.
Review: Firefly has less upfront damage and more burn damage than Searing Strike, as well as the option to hit rank 3. The problem is it requires Runaway to be in rank 3-4 when most of her good skills are only available in rank 1-2. So, in effect, if you have this on your loadout, the only time you’ll get to use it is when Runaway gets knocked out of position.
3. Smokescreen – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Smokescreen inflicts 2x blindness tokens.
Usable: Ranks 1-2
Targets: Ranks 1-3 (Single Target)
Smokescreen Mastery Upgrade: Inflicts vulnerability and a combo token in addition to blindness.
Review: Smokescreen is a great support skill. It can really debilitate a big monster and save you from a lot of damage for two turns. Unlike most single target buffs and debuffs, this one is actually worth casting. One of Runaway’s better skills.
4. Run and Hide – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Run and Hide grants stealth and moves the user back 1 rank. One round cooldown.
Usable: Ranks 1-4
Targets: Self
Run and Hide Mastery Upgrade: Heals 3 health in addition to other effects.
Review: One of Runaway’s worthless skills and probably one of the worst skills in the game. Stealth is kind of nice, but definitely not worth wasting a turn to cast, and a 3 life heal is barely noticeable. Only good if you’re on death’s door and have no healer.
5. Hearthlight – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Removes stealth tokens from all enemies. One round cooldown.
Usable: Ranks 1-4
Targets: Ranks 1-4 (Targets All)
Hearthlight Mastery Upgrade: Removes blindness from all allies.
Review: Hearthlight is another pretty useless skill that Runaway gets. There are only a handful of enemies that use stealth and they’re mostly easy to deal with. Removing blindness is nice, but there are better ways to do that on other characters.
6. Ransack – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Deals 3-6 damage, pulls the target one rank forward, moves the user one rank forward.
Usable: Ranks 1-3
Targets: Ranks 1-3 (Single Target)
Ransack Mastery Upgrade: Increases damage to 4-8 and increases crit chance to 10%. Inflicts a 3 damage burn on an adjacent monster if target has a combo token.
Review: Ransack is a decent skill. It helps Runaway get back in position if she gets knocked out and the pull is also situationally useful. It’s not amazing but Runaway doesn’t have a lot of amazing skills, so it’s probably one of her better ones.
7. Cauterize – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Cauterize heals the target for 25% health if they have a bleed token. Cures bleed. Three uses.
Usable: Ranks 1-3
Targets: Any Ally
Cauterize Mastery Upgrade: Increases heal amount to 33%.
Review: Cauterize is one of Runaway’s best skills. Bleeds are incredibly common and the heal amount is significant. Because of this skill, Runaway makes a great backup healer.
8. Controlled Burn – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Places a controlled burn token on the rank the target is occupying. Unaffected by dodge, stealth or blindness. The controlled burn token inflicts a 2 damage burn on any enemy that starts its turn in the position where the token was placed.
Usable: Ranks 1-2
Targets: Ranks 1-4 (Single Target)
Controlled Burn Mastery Upgrade: Increases the damage of the burn to 3.
Review: Controlled Burn is great for stacking low damage burns… but that’s also what almost every other skill Runaway has does. You could use this, or you could use Searing Strike over and over. You’ll do more damage with Searing Strike.
9. Dragonfly – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Dragonfly deals 1-2 damage to the enemies in ranks 1 and 2 and inflicts a 2 damage burn. Moves user back 1 rank.
Usable: Ranks 1-2
Targets: Ranks 1-2 (Targets All)
Dragonfly Mastery Upgrade: Increases damage to 1-3 and burn damage to 4.
Review: This skill is mostly useful to remove block tokens from the enemy frontlines or to inflict burn on multiple enemies at once. It’s situationally useful and the situation is common.
10. Firestarter – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Firestarter makes an ally apply a 2 damage burn on hit.
Usable: Ranks 1-4
Targets: Any Ally
Firestarter Mastery Upgrade: Increases burn damage to 3.
Review: Whether Firestarter is good or not depends on your party composition. It’s useful when you have characters that can hit multiple enemies at once. Firestarter is great with Jester’s Harvest skill, for instance. Otherwise, it’s better to just use your Runaway’s turn to deal damage directly.
11. Backdraft – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
Backdraft deals a 50% of whatever burn DoT damage is remaining on the monster in rank 1 to the target monster. Ignores block tokens.
Usable: Ranks 1-2
Targets: Ranks 2-4 (Single Target)
Backdraft Mastery Upgrade: Increases the damage to 75% of DoT damage.
Review: Backdraft would be really good if Runaway had the ability to stack up large amounts of burn damage, but the most you’ll see in any real world situation is about 9, meaning this skill will do 4-5 damage or 6-7 damage with mastery, and that unimpressive damage requires multiple turns of setup and a very uncommon situation.
Best Skills – Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills
In my opinion the best Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway skills at the time of writing this are:
- Cauterize
- Searing Strike
- Smokescreen
- Ransack
- Dragonfly
Darkest Dungeon 2 Class Skill Lists
Plague Doctor – Grave Robber – Highwayman – Man at Arms
Hellion – Runaway – Jester – Leper – Occultist
That about covers it when it comes to the Darkest Dungeon 2 Runaway Skills List. Be sure to check the main page for more RPG game guides, and check out the Darkest Dungeon 2 section for more guides for this game.
