The Collector

The Collector is virtually guaranteed to use Collect Call on his first turn, spawning a combination of Collected Highwaymen, Collected Men-at-Arms, and Collected Vestals. There is a 3/7 (~43%) chance to spawn a Collected Highwayman, a 2/7 (~28.5%) chance for a Collected Man-at-Arms, and a 2/7 (~28.5%) chance for a Collected Vestal. At most one Vestal or Man-at-Arms can be present at any time, while Highwaymen are limited to two.

The Collector is more likely to use Collect Call if there are fewer Collected present:

• He has a base 3x chance to use it if there are 2 Collected left.
• The chance increases to 9x if there is 1 Collected left.
• He is guaranteed to use it if there are no Collected Highwaymen, or if no Collected are left.

Aside from Collect Call, the Collector will also use Show Collection and Life Steal, with a slight bias towards Show Collection.

Collected Highwaymen have only one skill, Headhunt, which can target any position, with a 3x higher chance to target heroes with Mark.

The Collected Man-at-Arms can only use its Guard, Head Games, if there is at least one other Collected alive aside from itself; it will almost always guard either the Collector or a Collected Highwayman. Head Games has a 2x chance to be used over Head Knocker, which has no biases towards targeting.

The Collected Vestal normally has a 2x chance for either its Buff Headache or its stress attack Head Rush, and a 1x chance for its healing skill Headstrong. It has a significant bias to buff (2x) or heal (5x) the Collector. Otherwise, it will usually buff a Collected Highwayman (4x) or just use Head Rush.

When the Collector is killed, all the Collected will die as well.

The Collector is generally considered an easy boss, with the main difficulty being that he appears more or less at random. This makes him especially dangerous in the early weeks (while heroes are still at Resolve Level 0 and have few upgraded skills or equipment), or after a difficult fight when the team is already at low health or high stress.

As the most commonly encountered boss in the game, strategies effective against the Collector are also strong strategies in Darkest Dungeon as a whole. The Collector effectively serves as a test for party-building:

• Can the party deal enough damage to the back ranks?
• Does the party have any Stun skills or crowd control skills to shut down dangerous enemies?
• Do all heroes have above a certain minimum threshold of health?

The Collector will continuously summon and re-summon minions, pushing him back to rank 4. Thus the party will need be able to deal damage to the back ranks to kill him quickly. Alternatively one may take advantage of the Collector's low Move resistance to pull him forward.

An effective strategy is to try to Stun the Collector on turn 1 before he can act. He has relatively low Stun resistance and health for a boss, so getting a free turn to attack him can trivialise the fight. A skill with a +stun chance trinket can usually reach an 80% chance to stun him.

By far the biggest challenge when facing the Collector is the Collected Highwaymen. Headhunt is one of the most damaging non-boss attacks in the game and has high Critical Hit chance; it can easily bring a hero to Death's Door, with subsequent the Bleed damage or another attack killing them. It is highly recommended to Stun or disable Collected Highwaymen whenever they appear, then kill them as quickly as possible. It is also recommended to raise each hero's maximum health so that they can survive a critical Headhunt plus one tick:

In fact, Headhunt belongs to a category of skills (along with the Brigand Bloodletter's Point Black Shot, the Swinetaur's Boar Rush, and a few others) that have similar maximum damage values. The safe HP thresholds above will allow a hero to survive all of these attacks with at least 1 HP.

The Collected Vestal and Man-at-Arms are comparatively less dangerous. The Man-at-Arms' Guard can be countered with Stuns as usual. The Vestal's Buff can be potentially quite dangerous when applied to the Highwayman or the Collector himself. However, one can control the behaviour of both by simply stunning and killing the Highwayman, preventing him from attacking and at the same time forcing the Collector to use Collect Call.