Grim Dawn - An ARPG from Crate (ex Iron Lore aka Titan Quest devs)

Lol, I ran around for a couple hours trying to figure out how I borked the main quests, and what I was suppose to be doing… That part of the game is handled really badly, should get a congratulations popup, and a ‘do you want to move to the next level’ option or something.

That being said, I think this is the best ARPG ever, great game.

They only add that stuff in the next chapter. You don’t get endings unless they want to add to the story.

(For example, the main campaign in Act 4 used to not have an ending either, but the Ashes of Malmouth expansion added a cutscene ending to the main game in order to setup the expansion).

So, if we ever get a second expansion, we’ll get an ending to the first expansion.

I figure once you’ve killed the gigantic pile of goo that summons a billion adds, you’ve won the game/expansion for that difficulty level.

This weekend I kept playing the beginnings of @Ultrazen’s Trickster. One mistake I made early on is putting 16 points into Devouring Swarm. What I didn’t realize is that this power suddenly starts consuming way too much mana, to the point where I have to constantly drink potions to be able to stay on the offense.

I solved this problem by dialing back the points I’d put into Devouring Swarm. Going down to about 10 points instead of 16 did the trick. And I put those 6 points into getting my core classes higher, which increases my stats, which also gives me more mana to use. And honestly, I’m almost to the Warden now, and I don’t really feel the need to pump up Devouring Swarm any higher than 10 so far, since it still does so much damage to all my enemies so far. No need for overkill at this point, and I don’t need to quaff potions.

Note: This character still hasn’t died. Maybe I’m beginning to know the game well enough to try another hardcore character one of these days.

My @Ultrazen trickster is around level 40 now and crushing everything. I even did Steps of Torment and only died just after I’d killed off the big bad, and only because I’m an idiot. What’s more, the build is fun – a number of ways to approach every combat. I still haven’t gone for Storm Totem yet because I figure there’s not much point until I have the mastery to grab its “transmute” as well.

Cheers, Ultra. So far so good.

Lilith, Level 69 Trickster

Lilith

Awesome! Yah, I like builds that give you the tools to kite if need be, and that build is great for it if you have to. Most of the time you can just facetank stuff, but when you need to, you can still do quite a bit of damage on the move. It’s one reason the storm totem becomes more important later on, and higher difficulties, the need to kite happens a bit more often, especially depending on gear, so it tends to show up in your spec, right about the time you start needing a little extra DPS while on the move.

I have been having some serious alt-itis attacks the past week, I’ve started about 5 new builds lol. This game is just so much fun for build/theory crafting, which is one of my favorite things to do.

Agreed. It’s my favorite part of ARPGs, and that’s why this is my favorite ARPG by far now.

I take back what I said upthread about there being too many damage types. The reason for it is that it provides them a lot of flexibility on how many different types of classes they can make. Sure, you could make these same classes with less damage types, but there would then start to be a lot of repetition in various abilities for various classes.

And since you want the player classes to have access to a ton of damage types, that means the enemy gets access to all those damage types as well, which means the players now have to protect against all those damage types too.

I’d be more happy with all the damage types if they were distinct from one another. One thing that I really like about Path of Exile is how each elemental type has a status effect on crits. LIghtning is fundamentally different from Fire because it applies Shock instead of putting a burning DoT on the mob. Ice freezes, which itself is much more defensive. So now you have very distinct considerations in what damage types you want to focus on.

Right now, the only damage type that has a distinct feel for me in Grim Dawn is Vitality, simply because a lot of those abilities tend to be associated with life leech. For the others, though? Do I really care that Spell X does Chaos damage vs Fire damage? Not really, other than the fact that I’ve chosen to fill up one particular bucket vs another, i.e. my Shaman will grab the lightning damage gear while my Demolitionist will grab the fire gear. There’s not really an interesting decision being made on that level, which I think is unfortunate and a missed opportunity. I’d like to see the damage types be much more thematic than they are.

Grim Dawn has that too.

Ice damage crits freeze. Lightning damage crits do shock, don’t they? It’s a little harder to tell than freezing, obvious. As you said, Vitality damage is usually associated with life leech. Poison tends to do more damage over time. Bleeding seems to be a medium term damage over time. You’re right that Chaos vs Fire seems to be the closest of two damage types. I’m not sure myself what exactly the difference between those two is. However, I get the impression that more things in the game have resistance to fire, less to Chaos. So fire damage will usually be higher, but you’ll encounter more resists, while Chaos numbers will be lower for you, but you’ll face less resists, so they don’t need to be as high.

I bought this game in early access, played a character to level 7 then never returned. My SO started playing a month ago, and I decided to give it a go this past weekend. Now I’m not sure why I never played it earlier. It’s a lot of fun. As others have stated, the urge to start different characters is strong. I have two now and must resist creating any more until I get farther into the game as I just finished the first act with my solo character. That said, I’m looking forward to trying out a ranged tank and ice caster. :D (The trickster build looks like fun too …)

The first thing I did when I started playing was to get the base 6 characters you start off with to level 15 or so. So my solution to combat the urge to try the different characters was to not fight the urge. :)

And then each of those six characters chose another class to combine with. And that was the start of my theorycrafting different types of characters to try to get them a good combination.

And now the expansion has added two more base classes. So the total number of combinations to er… 35 characters I think, if my back of the hand calculations are correct. I have so many more characters to theorycraft!

It’s actually 28.

http://www.grimdawn.com/webfiles/guide/gdx_classNames01a.jpg

I was counting the pure classes as separate. So you can be a pure Soldier, for example, and not pick a second class. So that’s 8 more, so I was off by one. 36 is the total. Though I suppose you’d be severely gimping yourself in terms of stats in you’re only one class. But boy, you’d have a lot more points to dump into abilities.

Oh, right, you’re right! I forgot pure classes. 36 it is, indeed. My bad.

I like some of the pure classes. My pure Arcanist is the most effective toon I’ve made. My pure Nightblade has super DPS but is squishy as hell. My mostly-pure soldier is insanely survivable when in full shield spec, but my god boring to play. Pure Necro is decent, though for maximum pet craziness, Cabalist is better.

Alright, I’m deep in this too reading all the posts and not posting. I think I’m pretty bad at this sort of theory crafting and have been hesitant to post. I got a Necromancer / Soldier combo up to level 50 recently and it seems to be dropping effectiveness quickly as I continue to level. I thought I’d do awesome skeletons with the party buff ability soldiers have and then sword and board tank for them. Now deep into the expansion content and killing enemies is taking a really long time.

I think I need a break. So I’m starting up a ranged character (my other high level is a nightblade / shaman combo, so I’ve never done ranged). I started Demolitionist and am either going to secondary into Inquisitor or Arcanist, but haven’t yet decided. Also trying to controller for the first time. Kiting + Controller feels pretty relaxing so far with all the easy mobs in the first section.

Just got dual pistols for my Trickster, lev 29 I think. Getting a real Roland vibe now. :) As was explained to me up thread, attack speed is way cool.

I just read a post on reddit on the very issue:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Grimdawn/comments/7sa6ks/looking_for_some_pointers/

Great idea! (You’re such an enable.)

Currently leveling this character, fairly ridiculous so far, but early days still. So much fun though.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/nZor0lGV

Lightning based 2h ranged build, with a lot of PHYS damage on the side.