KickStarter Grim Dawn

[Contagium]

guess you never played nox?

No, that one is eternally on my GOG wishlist. I'll take it it's good.

 

[<3sRichardSimmons]

Nox is good fun, but it’s not a traditional diablo-clone style of aRPG.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I don't even like ARPG really and I have played GD 1300 hours..WTF..

almost no other game comes close to that in my life for hours played. Maybe various iterations of panzer general and or icewind dales, but probably not

 

[Snorkack]

Thanks for the helpful responses! Right now I'm leveling a Demolitionist/Arcanist and having a blast, quite literally. Flash freezing the whole screen, then shattering everyone with artillery support and a cluster bomb is such a satisfying experience. Same with the Nightblade mastery I dabbled in briefly: Shadow striking past enemy hordes and filleting their backline, I could do that all day every day.

 

[DeepOcean]

I have to say that with exception of a few quality of life stuff, the new gear and the shattered realms, this latest expansion is really lackluster. I mean, half the maps are only desert where you just kill shit nonstop and the same mobs nonstop and contrary to other areas of grim dawn, those endless constructs, bettles, ghosts and undead have pratically zero backstory. It is Titan Quest all over again and I don't say that on a flattering way. Sure, people could argue that on a ARPG, you just kill stuff non stop but at least on base Grim Dawn, killing the Dermapteran Queen was a side quest with some dialog and some explanation of why that was important. Here on the expansion area, not even that.

On the base game, the factions are fighting for humanity survival and you felt a part of the struggle, what was really cool, the cultist douchebags you fight for have almost no exposition on this expansion. I mean, there were a few quests and unique encounters spread through the whole map on previous areas, not much of that here. Just endless undead, the same reused ruins and desert. Halfway point, they change the enviroment because it became obvious the endless desert was awful but things didn't improve much.

It is a pity, but the lack in quality was noticeable on this expansion, the expansion area felt like an area of a random mediocre Diablo clone. If they released more monster types, the new dungeon, the new gear and the shattered realms on the base game and had skip those lackluster areas on the expansion, it would have been better.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I have to say that with exception of a few quality of life stuff, the new gear and the shattered realms, this latest expansion is really lackluster. I mean, half the maps are only desert where you just kill shit nonstop and the same mobs nonstop and contrary to other areas of grim dawn, those endless constructs, bettles, ghosts and undead have pratically zero backstory. It is Titan Quest all over again and I don't say that on a flattering way. Sure, people could argue that on a ARPG, you just kill stuff non stop but at least on base Grim Dawn, killing the Dermapteran Queen was a side quest with some dialog and some explanation of why that was important. Here on the expansion area, not even that.

On the base game, the factions are fighting for humanity survival and you felt a part of the struggle, what was really cool, the cultist douchebags you fight for have almost no exposition on this expansion. I mean, there were a few quests and unique encounters spread through the whole map on previous areas, not much of that here. Just endless undead, the same reused ruins and desert. Halfway point, they change the enviroment because it became obvious the endless desert was awful but things didn't improve much.

It is a pity, but the lack in quality was noticeable on this expansion, the expansion area felt like an area of a random mediocre Diablo clone. If they released more monster types, the new dungeon, the new gear and the shattered realms on the base game and had skip those lackluster areas on the expansion, it would have been better.

I agree. I did not finish the desert crap for those exact reasons. Despite it being an ARPG the earlier parts of GD seemed much more fleshed out and interesting with gritty details and notes and stories and quests. The desert shit was just beetles and raptors jumping around all over the place and it was just endless and felt meaningless. Perhaps after playing 1300 hours I was tired of it, but I actually think it was just more lazily slapped together. I would rather start over with a new character and play up through ashes of malmouth than play through forgotten gods I think.

 

[Lacrymas]

Both AoM and FG are developed with the express purpose of change of scenery I'd say. Both of them aren't that good. Don't get me wrong, they are still expansions to one of the best, if not the best, hack and slashers ever, so they are still worth it, but like I said before they don't fix anything because the level designers aren't very good and the narrative is meandering. I'm curious what Crate are going to do now. Aren't they developing a city builder?

 

[Snorkack]

When I played through the base game, I thought to myself that although it is at times repetitive, they at least had the courage to come up with a unique setting and didn't resort to the standard ARPG generic dark forest, generic swamp, generic desert, generic volcano mountain. Then I installed the DLCs.

By the way, I managed to pull a new char to elite difficulty thanks to you guys... which resulted in my Fail of the Week. I bought the item with my zookeeper, placed it in the shared stash and started new with a level 1 inquisitor pistolero on normal. But you can't access the stash right away tho! So first, I beelined to the reanimator under Burial Hill, picking up two garbage pea shooters on the way and killed him, leaving me at level 4. Got back to devils crossing, accessed the stash and used the difficulty unlock thingy.
So, new game on new difficulty, oh hey, that dude next to the gate has already the yellow question mark over his head, do they already let me in? Yes, he does. And he also gives me 5000 XP for it. Sounds great? Well, except now I'm suddenly a Level 9 dude, fighting Level 9 elite zombies with just my Level 1 garbage gear. Everyone two- or threeshots me while I need to put up to 20 bullets into a single standard mob until he goes down. This is the time that I realize that there aren't any blue/violet items that can be worn before level 20 (the only equipment colors I keep in the stash).
Right now I have to decide whether I want to force myself through what will probably be the most painful couple of levels I'll ever experience with the game, or whether I just go back to Normal like some limp-dicked loser ;(

Seriously though, did I miss the proper way how to legitimately start a level 1 character on Elite without having to slay Reanimator on normal?

 

[Lacrymas]

I warned you :p The trick is to get powerful gear from crafting in the Crucible and maybe play it a bit to get a few levels and devotion points. You do have to kill Reanimator, so I'm not sure if it's possible to start a higher difficulty on literally lvl 1.

 

[Ziem]

you can start elite/ultimate on l1
open the stash in crucible with your lvl1 guy and take the difficulty token, then start a normal game and use it (cant use it in crucible for some reason, unless they changed that already)

 

[Lacrymas]

Oh, right, there's a stash in the Crucible, totally forgot about that.

 

[Snorkack]

I warned you :p

You did. I secretly hoped what you wrote didn't apply for elite, too.

you can start elite/ultimate on l1
open the stash in crucible with your lvl1 guy and take the difficulty token, then start a normal game and use it (cant use it in crucible for some reason, unless they changed that already)

Thanks, never checked out crucible since I usually don't care for gauntlet modes.

Just think about that for a moment: It took four posters and two DLC for me to figure out how to start a game on elite with a level one charakter. Am I just a retard or has Crate indeed found the most inconvenient and convoluted way of setting a game's difficulty in modern gaming era?

 

[Lacrymas]

This feature is mainly targeted at veterans of this game and I suspect it's a little more convoluted on purpose so that newbies don't accidentally stumble on it, and then complain the game is too hard. It's kind of a stretch, but who knows.

 

[RoBoBOBR]

Snorkack just suffer through it for a bit, getting to lvl 20 on elite is very quick, quests take care of that, plus gear drops are based off your lvl so you'll get some good yellows soon. Plus there's several guaranteed greens in the starting area.
Also devs explained the difficulty tokens quite well in the update write-up when they released it.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

Both AoM and FG are developed with the express purpose of change of scenery I'd say. Both of them aren't that good. Don't get me wrong, they are still expansions to one of the best, if not the best, hack and slashers ever, so they are still worth it, but like I said before they don't fix anything because the level designers aren't very good and the narrative is meandering. I'm curious what Crate are going to do now. Aren't they developing a city builder?

agree, but AoM seemed superior to FG..at least to me....or at least I was able to finish it and all its side quests. With FG I stopped about 1/3 the way through, or perhaps even less.

 

[Lacrymas]

You might be right, I still haven't finished FG either, lol.

 

[udm]

I preferred the desert area in FG, if only for the fact that I fucking hated navigating the urban areas in AoM. The narrow clickable areas were a nightmare to handle.

 

[DeepOcean]

Well, technically, you can go to Ultimate with a level 1 character but wihout max resist on everything, you will be one shot by a random ice or fire zombie and doesnt matter if you have 10000 of HP.

Just go straight to the shrines on normal and ignore the quests and everything, finish the game on elite to get some faction rep and some decent XP, after a bit of faction grinding, you can get max resists easy and go to Ultimate. Farm crucible for rare crafting materials like those blood of Chton, make a ton of skeleton keys and buy alot of Malmouth potions and go farming the dungeons on Ultimate non stop (steps of torment and Bastion of Chaos are the best ones for farming because monsters in there drop material that can be used to malke more skeleton keys). Once you have some decent gear from the dungeons, time to try the shattered realm or go higher levels on the Crucible for farming for gear as those are the quickest ways to get some nice gear.

Of preference, choose classes with skills where you don't need to stop moving to kill shit like word of pain from the inquisitor to kill shit on normal while you hunt for those shrines and get some needed levels for elite, hunt for those easy to get notes on the hubs on ultimate and try to do the mission to kill the reanimator on Ultimate as soon as you can(it isn't that hard to do), you can get to level 20 -30 before you even started normal if you know what you are doing.

I don't recommend melee builds for leveling up, or at least melee builds without a shield before some serious gearing up, especially if you are doing hardcore, dont ignore your defense rating and plan to have more than 85% resist on the main elements the boss uses, some of the hardest bosses will debuff you and getting a crit (because of the low defense rating) on an element with lowered resists will mean being one shotted. I mean, you can try to survive with melee two handed weapons with life stealing but pretty much all bosses resist to it so you can't tank them only trusting on life stealing. Once, you have the ultra powerful sets, that becomes irrelevant and you can face tank all bosses with ease.

 

[Generic-Giant-Spider]

I made a build using Nightblade and Oathkeeper and focusing on Poison that was pretty good once it got rolling and became stronger the more +Poison gear dropped. I believe the important skills I took for NB were Nidalla's Hidden Hand, Night's Chill, Merciless Repertoire, Shadow Dance, Shadowstrike and Nidalla's Justifiable Ends. For Oathkeeper I took Righteous Fervor w/ Dreeg's Reproach morph, Consecration, Ascension, Clarity of Purpose, Guardian of Empyrion with Scion of Dreed morph, Celestial Presence and maxed out Path of the Three. I forget the majority of Devotions but I know I took the Scorpion one and the Abomination one that had the huge AOE nova attack.

By the time I stopped playing I had some Venomblade set items that immensely upped my killing power and could do Crucible until my fucking boomer hands tired out. I'd recommend it if you're looking for a more glass cannon-y melee style.

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I warned you :p

You did. I secretly hoped what you wrote didn't apply for elite, too.

you can start elite/ultimate on l1
open the stash in crucible with your lvl1 guy and take the difficulty token, then start a normal game and use it (cant use it in crucible for some reason, unless they changed that already)

Thanks, never checked out crucible since I usually don't care for gauntlet modes.

Just think about that for a moment: It took four posters and two DLC for me to figure out how to start a game on elite with a level one character. Am I just a retard or has Crate indeed found the most inconvenient and convoluted way of setting a game's difficulty in modern gaming era?

it is convoluted. Also don't forget that even after you activate the damn elite badge or whatever you then have to exit out of the game to the main menu and change the difficulty in the settings yourself as well from normal to elite and then go back in and play. I made that mistake just the other day after not playing for like 3 or 4 months and did not figure it out until I had been playing for like nearly 2 hours. Was pretty annoyed. Also the Faction Reputation Scrolls or whatever they are called......

 

[Cyberarmy]

So, someone moded D2 into this with all classes and acts. You can even make combos between D2 and GD classes. Look good.

https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/mod-reign-of-terror/35347

 

[Lacrymas]

Diablo 2 has an even worse campaign after act 1 though and it doesn't feature endgame challenge content. GD could've benefited from just shuffling the acts around a bit. Act 2 should've been act 1 100%, the threat of the Aetherials should've been gradually introduced, not be literally the first quest. We should've not known at first how the Grim Dawn has affected the world beyond the destruction, i.e. the aetherials and the cult should've been kept for later.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the only benefit of d2 was closed b.net

 

[Snorkack]

Dicking around a bit with multiplayer and other builds, I finally managed to reach ultimate difficulty. Act 1 was a complete breeze, then Warden Krieg 100-to-0'd me with some strange darts out of the blue. I guess this is where resistances start to matter. Now here's my issue, I often can't tell what kind of damage hit me. From the visual FX it's rather easy to figure with elemental damage, but the others are confusing. Poison/Acid often looks like Aether damage, I don't know how chaos damage looks different than vitality damage, and no idea how to tell internal trauma apart from bleeding. Physical vs. Piercing... I guess the former is melee damage, the latter ranged?

Anyways, is there an easy way to differentiate those types? A death recap or something like that?

 

[Lacrymas]

You don't really need to do that, you just have to max all resistances either way. And you kinda get a feeling of what kind of damage kills you easily as you play more, but again you just need to max everything. I'd max poison/acid as fast as possible as I've noticed it's the hardest one to avoid and kills you insanely fast, especially in the AoM swamp area. It's also the easiest to max by crafting antivenom.