Nah. You are given plenty of tools to deal with monsters with resists, the game isn’t throwing brick walls at you.
If you have a character that focuses on exclusively one type of damage, and you customize your gear/devotions to do so, you are pigeon-holing yourself but that one type of damage will be ridiculously lethal. You’ll melt through most enemies like butter. If you run into a enemies that are resistant to that type of damage (something that happens early and often throughout the game, by the way, so it’s not like some late-game surprise) you just need a way of dealing with that. That means one of your two classes needs to have a way to reduce the resists of the damage type you do.
And if you focused one exclusively one type of damage with no way of mitigating resists or anything like that? Well, you done goofed. It’s not a brick wall, though, just tweak your build. Each class has multiple types of damage they do, and you get to pick two classes. The options will be there, you don’t need to re-roll.
Bleh, I’m not talking about specking into specific damage types etc, I’m talking about the uneven nature of the game in general. Your character can be going along just fine, with no indication that you’re in any kind of danger, and then the next second you get hit like a truck, often one shotted. /shrug. The game is very uneven in it’s progression and how it treats certain damage types. Titan Quest had exactly the same problems.
That’s true enough. I would never play this game hardcore. Even though I know as much about it as I do now, I still die unexpectedly all the time.
The only way I can see a viable Hardcore mode is if they did something like Borderlands, where you get a “second wind” when you die, something like that, where the first death doesn’t count, but if you die again in the next minute, then you’re really dead. Something of that sort.
You get one-shotted sometimes, it’s true. But if you learn when to activate your defensive skills, drink that potion, and get the hell out of dodge, you can usually survive damage spikes.
The only real ‘wall’ I’ve seen so far, pre-Malmouth anyway, is Elite Loghorrean. I think the issue with him is partly that his hit point pool is so huge it turns the fight into a real marathon. I just beat him with my blademaster, and it was a tough slog. I drank a lot of potions and died a bunch of times.
On the other hand, it’s the final boss on the 3rd difficulty level out of 4, so I don’t feel like the toughness is totally out of bounds. As for Ultimate, my Arcanist has been pretty much cruising (she’s level 82 now). She’s up to Loghorrean, in fact … wondering how rough that fight is going to be.
I have beaten Hardcore veteran a bunch of times, with all different builds. It’s not too bad, take a more defensive mindset obviously, you can fly through like on non-hardcore really, no need to grind or anything.
Note that your stash from non-hardcore is separate from hardcore. A few points to consider:
Maybe wiki the Act bosses and try to take some relevant potions for them.
Probably best to avoid the special skeleton key areas Steps of Torment, Port Valbury and Bastion of Chaos unless you really know what you are doing inside those.
It is fine to dive into trash headfirst but best try to always keep an escape route open.
Look for some defensive devotions.
I like hardcore but the consequences are severe! If you can do veteran then Elite is a breeze really, especially if you do Malmouth. Ultimate however…
Last night I took a break from Act 6 and went back to the dungeon at the end of Act IV using the Skeleton key. Most of the monsters in there were still 79-80, and were blue to me, so I had a really easy time of it. Right up until the end, where the final boss killed me. It was a big battle though, I almost had him down to a quarter health, and if I hadn’t gotten too aggressive and tried to avoid his hits longer instead of going full on attack too soon, I would have gotten him.
Oh well. I have reached Revered status now on both Black Legion and Outcast, and Kymon’s people. I had already reached Revered on Homestead and Coven’s guys.
Only a few factions to go. The starting town, Devil’s Crossing, is where my faction rating is the lowest, since it requires killing Cronley’s Gang or whatever they’re called. They’re not enough of those enemies in the game.
man, this game is good. I jumped back in after I saw that they added controller support, and it finally CLICKS for me. I just don’t think these kinds of games are as good using mouse and keyboard. Some of the skills are a bit harder to use obviously but still, I’m having a blast and its so much easier to control things. I started a purifier and a witchblade, both up to level 35 now,
Woo hoo! Beat Logorrhean on Ultimate difficulty with my Arcanist. Honestly it didn’t seem that much harder than Elite Loggo, but I went in loaded for bear. Had about 8 different potions (bug juices & resistances) going at all times. Died 3-4 times but never really felt like it was out of reach.
Your post inspired me to create a new character last night. I primarily wanted to see if I still loved the controller when playing as a melee character. I also wanted to see if it was possible to create a shield-using character who could kick ass and stay alive.
So I created a Soldier (for now), who is going to put points in the shield-using skill for the first time. And I think my second class will also be defense focused, and I was thinking Arcanist. That way I can put points into Maiven’s Sphere of Protection and Mirror of Ereoctes as defensive spells, and also lower enemies’ physical resistances using Flash Freeze+Absolute Zero.
Who knows if that will be a fun build or not. Theoretically, just blocking attacks and surviving all the time could be relatively boring compared to all my other builds, which focus on attack. We shall see.
At least it will make a nice contrast to my Purifier as a short break.
I personally always max an AOE as first thing, helps speed the early game, so for Arcanist probably OFF then refund the points later. Cadence is fine but single target i think.
Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Do the Fireball + Flash Freeze thing to get through most of Normal difficulty. That’s such a deadly combination. Freeze them and then blast them with extra fire damage.
I wish I had gone battlemage, instead I went Arcanist + Demo, which works great but just isn’t as good at the end game. Eventually you will probably want to convert over to Callindor’s Tempest with Cadence, which plays wonderfully with a controller. Think mobile point blank aoe, you just drive around smashing everything in a 360 radius.
So I now have 533 (!) hours played on Grim Dawn according to Steam – which is more than double the next highest (Skyrim, at 250).
Normally these days I’m only gaming after 9-10 PM when the kid has been put to bed. It’s just soooo tempting to revert back to the ‘game of least resistance,’ and at the moment that’s certainly Grim Dawn.
I have 556 hours in Grim Dawn now. And yeah, second place DiRT Rally is way behind at less than 200 hours.
I only play games for about 50-60 minutes a night as well. These nights I start with 5 minutes of Wolfenstein II, one game of Nex Machina, and then the remainder with Grim Dawn. I don’t count it as the game of least resistance though. I find myself still looking forward to playing it when I’m at work. I eagerly await my Grim Dawn time, still. The Ashes of Malmouth has been a real shot in the arm for the game in that way. Suddenly Elite difficulty is desirable to me, not just Veteran. And even the skeleton key dungeons. The only part of the game I didn’t enjoy is The Crucible. I’ll probably not try that one again unless I get greedy for devotion points.
So back to my Soldier last night. I’d forgotten that I can’t pick my second class for a long time. So just enjoying being a soldier so far. I went into Blitz, and Blitz is such a great Area of Effect attack. Using the controller, you can be strolling along, and then select someone from across the screen, and Blitz rushes you to that enemy and devestates them if they’re all clumped together. I love it. And having a shield is not an impediment to this, because Blitz adds shield damage to your other weapon’s damage. So all in all, I might stick with Blitz as my AoE attack for a while. Maybe even for the long haul. It’s just so fun to use.
All of Soldier skills are so desirable, it’s hard to find points for all the ones I want. I need to grab some more points from the Arcanist tree somewhere to put into more Soldier skills.
