Introduction

Welcome to our Instrument Slinger Bard build guide! In this build, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know to utilize the Instrument Slinger build in Dark and Darker. This includes Skills, Perks, Stat Priority and more!

This Bard build focuses on a musical experience displaying full-on fury. While this build seems comical and potentially meme-worthy, it deals a lot of damage and might surprise people – all while having a good time swinging and slinging Instruments!

Skills

Song Memory 1 and Song Memory 2 are the recommended skills required to run the Instrument Slinger Build. Song Memory 1 and 2 is a must-have for any Bard player as a result of maximizing our buffs and debuffs.

Recommended Instrument Slinger Build Songs

Drum Songs

For the drums, we recommend Allegro, Beats of Alacrity, Din of Darkness and Rousing Rhythm. These particular songs allow for long-duration buffs, increasing movement speed, action speed, stats and the ability to deal damage with Din of Darkness.

Lyre Songs

For the Lyre, we recommend Ballad of Courage, Harmonic Shield and Tranquility. These songs allow for great utility buffs such as armor or magic resist shields, health regeneration and damage bonuses. However, you can also consider Chorale of Clarity to assist Cleric and Wizard teammates.

Flute Songs

For the Flute, we recommend Shriek of Weakness and Unchained Harmony. Both of these songs are useful in different ways. Shriek of Weakness shreds the resistances of your enemies, providing you with a huge damage boost while Unchained Harmony helps you to unlock chests.

Lute Songs

For the Lute, we recommend taking just Aria of Alacrity. Aria of Alacrity provides additional action speed, helping to smooth out our actions.

Perks

For this Bard build, we recommend the following perks:

• Charismatic Performance
• Superior Dexterity
• Reinforced Instruments
• Dancing Feet

The main aim of this build is to be able to be a typical support while also providing incredibly surprising damage. Charismatic Performance assists in speeding up perfect song results. Superior Dexterity and Dancing Feet allow you to switch between Instruments and weapons faster while moving faster too. Reinforced Instruments is the highlight of this particular build, providing a huge damage increase to our main weapons for this build.

Stat Priority

• +All Attributes
• Strength
• Any other Physical Damage modifier

Within the stat priority, it should be a no-brainer that +All Attributes is a great all-rounder stat to obtain. Strength is a must, increasing your survivability and damage output. As can be expected, any other Physical Damage modifier after the rest is useful too!

Weapons

Weapons for the Instrument Slinger build is a fairly obvious situation. We recommend primarily using the Lute as your weapon of choice, with a Rapier as a further ranged melee backup. For our ranged option, carrying several Drums is the recommended choice. The main reason behind these choices is due to the Reinforced Instruments perk that is exclusive to the Bard. As a result of the perk, the damage the Lute and Drums provide is staggeringly high and surprising.

Armor

For the Instrument Slinger Bard Build, we recommend using a decent combination of cloth and leather where appropriate to get the best protection-to-movement speed ratio. This can be the following:

• Leather Cap or Bard hat
• Regal Gambeson or Tunic for faster movement
• Lightfoot Boots
• Leather Gloves or Strength Gloves
• Loose Trouser

The above loadout provides the best possible resistances without compromising your movement speed. Try to build your loadout with the above in mind to yield the most optimal results. Finally, do not forget to find the associated stat priorities required for the build!

How to Play the Instrument Slinger Bard Build

Playing the Bard can take some time to learn properly, due to the amount of songs you’re trying to maintain. However, this particular build can be played simply at first, both solo or as part of a team. This build functions similarly in solo and group play.

The first thing to remember when playing the Bard is failing a single note in most Songs is fine because of the Charismatic Performance perk. Learning exactly the best note to fail however, comes with time and patience after some testing.

Before engaging a team, it is important to buff yourself and your teammates. The general priority of songs is the following:

• Aria of Alacrity
• Beats of Alacrity
• Harmonic Shield
• Ballad of Courage
• Rousing Rhythms
• Allegro

After this priority or as much of it as possible is complete, you and your team can engage the opponent with a huge amount of buffs and speed. Once you are in the range of your opponents, proceed to use the Shriek of Weakness to crush their resistance. After this, you are free to engage the enemies yourself by either throwing Drums at range or pushing in with your Lute! With all your buffs present, this Bard build should be at the movement speed cap while dealing huge damage with Instruments. This build is not only powerful as a support for your team and a decent damage threat but also just a ton of fun! It’s not every day you get to run at maximum speeds clubbing people with a Guitar and Drums!

Multiclassing Options

Multiclassing is a very experimental feature in Dark and Darker. As a result, there is going to be a ton of possibilities and build tweaks. As we and the many players of the game push further into the wipe to test Multiclassing, we’ll update this build with our recommendations! To see more on Multiclassing and what it means for the future of Dark and Darker – check out the 2024 Roadmap.

Instrument Slinger Build Guide Conclusion

That concludes our Instrument Slinger Bard build guide, providing a team-based or solo-based, amusing but powerful support/damage dealer build. This build can be run at an extremely budget price as you start with everything you need. For more builds and guides, check out our Dark and Darker section. Finally, if you’re interested in further class guides or builds, check out our Bard and Warlock guides.