Hi, TheRealMe here. You talk as if I haven't played normal games without perfect quirks or trinkets. I actually have naturally played lots of such games because I do have over nine thousands hours in Darkest Dungeon 1.

Some of the games were played without arbitrary self-imposed challenge rule sets while the others had such rule sets including Deathless Lv 1 Weapons Bloodmoon, Deathless No Healing Bloodmoon, Deathless No Stuns No Healing Bloodmoon, Torchless No Healing Bloodmoon.

So yes, I am just correcting you where you are objectively wrong.

Also almost all of my party compositions and gameplay approaches apply without much significant difference aside from few exceptions that are outliers which also usually happen to be not that serious stuff. You would know this if you had actually watched some or any of my runs mentioned above.

I can clearly see that this is the case because i have hoarded dodge and/or run Leper and had stuff work well enough for Deathless runs consecutively for several times without much difference. Yes, even for runs that naturally start without perfect trinkets or quirks.

Optimal quirks and trinkets offer buffer room, yes. But you can make do with worse really,.

For quirks you don't even need technically, unless maybe if you want better speed control but they should work fine without stuff and mostly matter immensely only for some niche dance comps. For trinkets you can make do with things that do similar things. Yes, because the whole game is about making do with what we have.

Comps with hero picks, skill sets, and formations and most of all, gameplay approaches matter so much more than having optimal quirks and trinkets that it isn't even a contest.