How to Defeat the Siren in Darkest Dungeon

Sacrificed to the ancient fishfolk in return for jewels and treasure, the once-human Siren is the first boss of the Cove in Darkest Dungeon. The eldritch creature can be troublesome, due to her ability to charm one of your heroes to fight from her side. She can also summon aquatic monsters found in the water-logged caverns of the dungeon. You must beat her quickly, or else be overwhelmed by the pelagic horrors of the Cove.

While not the hardest boss in Darkest Dungeon, the Siren is the first taste of boss-level combat in the game, and the creature certainly has some tricks up her scaly sleeve. Here is what you need to know.

Darkest Dungeon: Best Team Compositions for Each Location

When venturing out in Darkest Dungeons, it's important to tailor your party to counter the environment and enemies you'll be fighting.

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Best Strategy to Beat the Siren in Darkest Dungeon

Darkest Dungeon - Strategy Guide — How to counter the Siren's Song and beat her in Darkest Dungeon.

Being an eldritch-type boss, the Siren is fairly weak to Blight and debuffs in Darkest Dungeon. She also has low dodge and zero protection ratings, so you can expect all your attacks to hit.

Her own attacks are weak compared to most bosses in the other dungeons. She heavily relies on other monsters and mind-controlled heroes to fight from her side. Hence, the strategy to beat her remains the same on champion-level difficulty where you only need to look out for the Beguiling Siren's Song in Darkest Dungeon.

Make sure to buy the best provisions for the Cove to reach the Siren with all of your heroes at maximum health and minimum stress levels.

Bring Holy Water to Counter the Siren’s Song of Desire

The only attack you need to fear is the Song of Desire. The Siren regularly charms one of your heroes with the lowest debuff resistance in Darkest Dungeon. You can open your character sheets to confirm which hero will be charmed, but it is usually your weakest link.

If you retreat while one of your heroes is charmed, you will lose them forever.

There are two ways to counter the Song of Desire in Darkest Dungeon:

Bring an Antiquarian as a sacrificial pawn, since she has the lowest debuff resistance among all heroes in the game.
Use Holy Water to increase the debuff resistance on three heroes you want to keep, leaving the fourth one to be charmed.

The most optimal strategy here is the second one. The Cove can be a difficult dungeon to complete, so while bringing an Antiquarian will help you farm gold in Darkest Dungeon, they drastically reduce the attack power of your team. Running an Antiquarian composition requires you to have a deep understanding of combat mechanics and enemy attacks.

Song of Desire has a 155% chance of hitting a hero in champion-level difficulty. It is unavoidable.

Best Team for the Siren Boss Fight

Darkest Dungeon - Siren Crit — The Leper does insane damage with a crit to the Siren in Darkest Dungeon.

	Rank	Skill 1	Skill 2	Skill 3	Skill 4
Occultist	4	Abyssal Artillery	Weakening Curse	Wyrd Reconstruction	Vulnerability Hex / Daemon's Pull
Plague Doctor	3	Noxious Blast	Plague Grenade	Blinding Gas	Battlefield Medicine
Bounty Hunter	2	Collect Bounty	Mark for Death	Uppercut	Flashbang
Leper	1	Chop	Hew	Withstand	Solemnity

There are two requirements players should fulfill in their team composition to beat the Siren with ease in Darkest Dungeon: heroes with raw damage, and heroes who can either guard or stun. Remember that the Siren boss fight is a damage race similar to the Weald's Hag, so you need to finish the fight quickly (as few rounds as possible) before things get out of hand.

The Siren is an eldritch monster, so the best trinkets for your Darkest Dungeon heroes are the ones that do bonus damage against the eldritch.

Set the Occultist as the sacrificial hero in this team composition. He does bonus damage against eldritch enemies, so Abyssal Artillery will do minimal damage against your heroes once he gets pulled by the Siren to her side.

Blight is highly effective in the Cove, especially against the Siren, because she takes two actions per round. That means she triggers her Blight ticks twice in the same round. Use Plague Doctor's Noxious Blast to add five Blight points for three rounds. That amounts to 15 damage by the third round.

Abomination is an excellent hero for the Cove, but not for the Siren fight. His Blight and Rake attacks hit both ranks two and three, meaning that you will be hitting your charmed heroes as well.

The Bounty Hunter is generally reserved for human-type enemies. He will not do bonus damage against the Siren since she is an eldritch, but his overall raw damage output is still impressive in Darkest Dungeon. Additionally, Uppercut and Flashbang can stun charmed heroes without doing too much damage to them.

Do not waste your turn by marking the Siren. She takes two actions per round, so you will only get one round to amplify your damage before the mark expires.

Finally, the Leper - one of the best heroes in Darkest Dungeon in terms of damage output. His role in this fight is to clear out the summoned monster before the Siren can summon another to overwhelm your party. Chop can send a target packing in one critical hit, while Hew can target both ranks one and two simultaneously.

The Leper requires trinkets and quirks that increase his accuracy. The Color of Madness DLC added several powerful quirks in Darkest Dungeon that work well for the Leper such as Prismatic Force and Hot to Trot.

There is a lot of tweaking room for party compositions against the Siren. You can switch Leper with Hellion or Shieldbreaker, who do not rely on accuracy trinkets. Plague Doctor can switch with Houndmaster, who can use Guard Dog to protect the Occultist, or the hero you set up to be charmed. Heroes being Guarded (Man-at-Arms also has a Guard skill) have a reduced chance of being charmed by the Siren.

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