Why is the game balance so bad? If I complete a mission on any difficulty, I should have enough wealth to upgrade buildings, character talents and weapons and be able to pay for the provisions for the next mission. Don't get me wrong, I don't mind hard games with grind - I've put 2,000+ hours into Dark Souls games - but playing a bunch of apprentice games with discardible characters for the next 10 hours just so I can upgrade my high level characters is really unappealing.

The best strategy I have come up with is to recruit characters from the stage coach, run them through apprentice mission with no torches and then discard them rather than pay for stress reduction and use the profits to upgrade my level 5 characters - is this really what I need to do? I hope not 'cos apprentice missions are boring and discarding characters to make money is unispiring - basically, I need to not emotionally invest in any character but just adopt the mentality of a souless accountant and exploit a bunch of powerless characters to accumulate wealth and then discard them once they are too broken to be of any benefit to me. How do I make enough money to pay for the stress accumulated in a mission and have money left to upgrade skills equipment, skills, and buildings? It's BS! I'm 69 hours in and have never had enough money to purchase a single camping skill. Consequently, I have all these level 5 characters with level 3 skills and level 3 equipment that I don't wanna run them through Champion missions 'cos they are underpowered and because of the perma-death will get lost. I kinda enjoyed it in the beginning because it reminded me of pen and paper RPGs I used to play in the '80's and the Lovecraftian tone really appealed to me however, the last 10 hours or so have just become ridiculously tedious? What's my problem?: I run missions successfully (level 1, 3, 5) but by the time I pay for stress reduction that I accumulated in the mission there's not much money left to upgrade skills and equipment.

Darkest dungeon like games