Stress Pills, which reduced stress gain and gave stat boosts if the player had less than 500 stress.

Laudanum, which reduced stress gain, gave stat boosts when over 500 stress, and granted immunity to the Horror debuff.

These items do not alter the amount that stress is increased or decreased by when it updates.

Holding a normal torch or Ultrabright Torch halves the frequency of stress updates.

Holding a Demon Torch doubles the frequency of stress updates.

However, the frequency of these updates can be changed: These various factors change the amount by which the player's stress increases or decreases whenever it is updated.

Wearing Draedon's Heart in an invisible accessory slot.

The following situations were known to decrease stress gain:

Wearing Draedon's Heart in a visible accessory slot.

Being submerged in Lava without any Lava immunity effects such as wearing the Lava Charm.

Being submerged in Water without any water breathing effects such as Gills.

The following situations were known to increase stress gain:

The Zerg buff could be afflicted when the player had 8000 stress or more.

The Battle buff could be afflicted when the player had 6000 stress or more.

The Wrath buff could be afflicted when the player had 4000 stress or more.

The Rage buff could be afflicted when the player had 2000 stress or more.

The chance of these buffs happening were also affected by the Horror debuff. When the Heart of Darkness or Draedon's Heart was equipped, some buffs could be inflicted depending on how much stress the player had.

The Heart Attack debuff when the player had 9800 or more stress, which dealt 200 damage to the player and reduced damage dealt by 30% during the day, but provided a number of benefits during the night.

The Horror debuff, which increased stress generation and made the player more likely to get the Heart Attack debuff.

Having too much stress could cause the player to experience a few randomly inflicted effects, such as: At the maximum stress level of 10,000, the player would have gained +10% damage and crit chance but lost 20 defense and 20% damage reduction. For each 1,000 stress the player had, they gained +1% increased damage and crit chance but -2 defense and -2% damage reduction. Many factors such as the biome the player character was in, the time of day, the presence of bosses, and more contributed to altering the rate of stress gain or loss.

Stress was a mechanic added in Revengeance Mode which increased or decreased over time.

Darkest dungeon reduce stress mod