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

Black Legion: Welllllll…you aren’t quite what we would call “respected”, per se.

Mark: The %$&* you say!

#justgrimdawnthings

Well you’ll need that stuff when you get to elite. ;-)

What’s incredibly frustrating is that I can’t find something blue with more than one property I want. There’s some rings available at some vendors that have two properties. Like it might have elemental resistances, and chaos resistance. Great! Sign me up! But then it also has 4 or 5 other properties that are either worthless or irrelevant but a nice bonus I guess. Meanwhile, some of the yellow equipment I have on now has just the three properties I want, and nothing more. So it’s really hard to get rid of. Any potential replacement usually has only two of the three properties I want, and then a bunch of junk. Or more often, it only has one property I love, like Aether resistance or Attack speed or Chaos Resistance, but then all the other properties are junk.

Sort of makes me wish for the first time that I could craft my own equipment, taking out single properties from other blue equipment I have by destroying it, and then combining those properties in my own crafted item. If they think that would be too powerful, they could even restrict it to just three properties maximum, so you can only craft yellow items. It would still kick ass though.

Dusts (or whatever they’re called, from the rep merchants) and crafting components tend to fill those gaps for me.

There’s also Grim Dawn’s Law to consider, which is that you only find great items that are useful for other characters, never the one you’re playing.

Does the weapon comparison tool take all of your abilities into account?

Meanwhile, last night my Purifier (Inquisitor + Demo) was on a cleanup run. I went east of Burrwich to get that sole Devotion shrine in that one bonus area. And then I did bounty tables for the Rovers until I had enough faction to get their big quest that requires me to get a bunch of other stuff for that devotion shrine I’ll be getting to in Act 3 soon past Fort Heron.

So mostly clean up, but pretty satisfying cleanup, now that my dual guns are laying so much waste. I also got to the Thermite Mine in the demolition skill tree, and was using that all night. Oh my god, you guys, Thermite Mines are sooooo weird. It’s like tossing a grenade, I guess. It goes a certain distance, and then it doesn’t activate right away. When it does activate, it glows, and then it starts spewing fire if someone steps on it, but usually enemies move right off it right away.

BUT! You can spam the shit out of it and throw mines everywhere. But there’s an opportunity cost. You see, if you’re throwing mines, you’re not shooting the shit out of things with your guns. And the whole thing with guns is attack speed and attacking people a LOT. So if you’re spending all your time laying mines, you’re not shooting things.

Anyway, it was a good experimental night, as I tried to find the right balance of trying to kill bosses using the help of the Thermite Mines to lower their Fire resist so that my Fire strike shooting would do more damage to them.

I think it takes your primary ability into account. So whatever you have selected under left mousebutton.

Thanks!

Heh. Maybe it’s just me, but I laughed out loud when it gave me the “Junior Explorer” achievement just now.

I changed a few things around for my Ritualist (Necro + Shaman) and things are going pretty well now with respect to my pets living. I took all but one point out of the Blight and dialed down the Briarthorn to like 4 points and dumped points into Shaman to get the Wendigo totem and max it out. That makes an incredible difference. Plus I respecced a few devotion points to get Shephard’s Call for my attack and Twin Fang for the Skeletons and both damage and survivability has gone way up… at least for now!

Really makes you appreciate Diablo’s crafting that allows you to change a stat on all equipment. That was a really good idea by Blizzard.

Progress report: I reached Fort Ikon and this morning, the second portal in Necropolis. Very close to the end now.

I’m thinking of gathering enough armor that I can get rid of the Explorer’s Set that I’m wearing. I’ve gotten one or two pieces that would be much better than what I’m getting with the Explorer’s set. Specifically I’ve found a few chest pieces that will be great, and a couple of helms that would be better. But I still have to find a good replacement for the pants and shoes. Once I find all four pieces, I’ll switch away from Explorer’s set altogether, all at once. Of course, I’m a little reluctant because Explorer’s set has really helped to keep me alive through most of the game. I haven’t found anything else that gives me 30% stun duration reduction, for example, that you get with a full explorer’s set.

Meanwhile, I did enough bounty table stuff to get good with Homestead to the third level, and Black Legion to the second level. It’s the first character I’ve played that got the black legion to the second level, so now I have learned a few recipes I never knew before, like Arcane Spark and a couple of other things. Now I have to decide whether to alienate the Black Legion again by signing on with the Outcasts like I usually do. Or should I shun them and go all in with the Black Legion? Maybe this character can actually get to Honored status (tier 3) with the Black Legion if I fight the Outcasts.

I continue to kick a lot of ass, though I am finding it impossible to find guns that are better than my yellow guns. I have found one candidate that looks decent on paper, even though the damage comparison number claims it’s hugely negative compared to my current guns. I think if I augment it and put the other ingredient on it, then it will finally be a fair apples to apples comparison, and that it might be better than the yellow guns I have. I didn’t want to switch like that though. I wanted to switch when there was a gun SO much better, there would be no doubt.

Of course, I don’t really have problems killing things. I do have problems surviving sometimes. Aether (green stuff) using enemies and Vitality damage and Bleeding damage are all still pretty deadly bosses sometimes.

At level 50, you start getting only two points every time you level up instead of 3. In this build I want soooo many more points!

http://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2mMEWG2

I want more Vindictive Flame! More Thermite Mine! More Flame-Touched! More Blast Shield!
On the Inquisitor side, I want more Bursting Rounds! More Storm Spread! More Aura of Conviction! More Inquisitor Seal and Arcane Improvement!

This might be the first character where I’m really looking forward to moving through Elite difficulty. I just hope that Elite difficulty itself doesn’t throw cold water on all that.

Still, one thing I like about the expansion is the option to move back and forth between Act 1 on Elite and Act V on Normal. It keeps things fresh.

Do it! As I have said before, I think Elite is the best difficulty, it makes it challenging enough without going overboard (Ultimate). It’s pretty great when you beat a Nemesis, as well, which are really tough, but I have never met one in a confined area and have always been able to run as needed. They make some of the big bosses look easy.

It does force you to really look at your character and think about it through. I had to redo my first character, concentrating on a couple of powerful skills and damage types because I was dying a lot. I was picking whatever sounded cool (which was everything).

Plus I am starting to get revered status in my Elite game. I haven’t ran any table quests. A nice side bonus.

You could do that before couldn’t you?

I really don’t think Elite is sooper hard as long as you pay attention and pop a few potions before certain boss fights. The Loggorhean on Elite is tough, but general questing, not so bad IMO.

Ultimate is more of a slog.

I took my Commando elite earlier today and after a good bit of Crucible gaming to earn Devotion points to use for improving resistances, I’m doing OK so far. Still in Act 1 but haven’t died yet despite killing tons of bosses. Quite a few blue drops so far too, which is a very nice change.

Normally what keeps me from going forward in Elite isn’t the difficulty, it’s the complete mess that the inventory is by that point. We’ve talked about how there’s so many resists to keep track of, so many damage types, plus armor, plus critical damage, physical damage, pierce, and so on. All of it feels pretty manageable on normal, but by the time I get to Elite, it all just becomes too much to juggle, especially when it comes to what to keep in the shared stash, what to throw away, what to keep in the regular stash, etc.

Maybe this time I should just do a house cleaning. Once I reach Elite, just clear out my normal stash, sell everything, treat it like a clean slate. Fuck getting bogged down and trying to figure out what’s best.

As to what to do with the shared stash? Just keep the low level blue items in there. Screw Legendary items and Empowered blue items. Those can be kept in the individual stashes maybe. There just isn’t enough room to keep both in the shared stash.

My inventories are a mess. The only semblance of order is that 1) I put all purples in shared stash so anyone can access them conveniently, and 2) first page of shared stash is devoted to mats/potions/etc.

I don’t like to get rid of blues, so they tend to clutter up my individual inventories.

I still save a lot of greens and a few yellows. I’m incorrigible.

I reached Act V last night, and compared to my Necromancer, this has been a breeze so far. I won’t lie, I did die a few times to the vitality damaging super fast boss in the first area, until I learned to run away from him and dodge him effectively.

My Vitality resist is my biggest vulnerability at 28%:

After that Aether resist at 38, and then bleeding at 44. Chaos, poison, elemental are all at 80. Physical resist is only at 11%, so I guess technically getting walloped in melee is still the big way to die, so I always need to run run run.

35 points available. You kill me Rock8man. ;-)

Edit: it’s interesting seeing your character/set up. Just neat to see how other people play when I have a bit of background so it’s not a random screen shot.

Shouldn’t you have more bags? Seems like there should be one more?