I think the achievement requires that it be in Veteran, though.
OMG you guys were right, this is a whole nother level with a gamepad. I tried my original character and had NO idea what I was doing, so I started a new melee character to get a feel for the gamepad controls. Once I did, I went back to my original character (a level 23 rifle guy) and switched to the gamepad and am LOVING it.
Yah the gamepad is done pretty well, there are a few things, but it’s done surprisingly well, especially considering it was tacked on and not designed that way.
I’m level 21 with my Conjurer (my attempt at Ultrazen’s Vitality DOT Tank), hardcore. So far so good. I avoided the cave and the door with the death behind it. I’m almost to Burrwitch Estates.
I love that I can use those little spikey looking weapons now that all give me bonuses to the Occult tree’s skills like Sigil of Consumption and Solael’s Witchfire. I always just sold those weapons in the past, and there are SOOOO MANY in this game. But I can use them now!
One of these days I’d love to try a Poison/Acid damage focused Witch Hunter, like this one. Unfortunately, since you’re poison focused, not health stealing focused, I don’t think this build will work for hardcore. You wouldn’t be able to survive the bosses, I don’t think. Unless you can somehow keep running away while your poison does damage. But I don’t think that’s always possible.
Yah it’s tough to play a build that always needs to kite, there are so many boss fights in clumsy places, where you need to have pretty serious defense. One of the main reasons I made that dot tank, I just wanted as much health per second as I could get lol. If you keep your defense above the crit margin (i.e. 0% chance to be crit), that character is pretty darn safe, assuming you also have good resists.
It was amusing last night that we had a party of three Occultists marching together. Mine was the Occultist + Shaman, who I call a petless conjurer. Another friend was an Occultist + Necromancer, a Cabalist, who was getting assistance from his Skeleton friends. And finally there was a third friend who was a pure Occultist so far (level 19). When in a party of three, my Devouring swarm doesn’t take down enemies very fast anymore. They don’t just melt like in single player. Instead the Swarm gets them bleeding, and then you kind of still have to whale on them.
I took Gordon’s idea and started using the poison bomb on every weapon I switch to now. It’s a nice little attack that’s weapon-based, and is very easy to find, so I have plenty even in hardcore.
We’re now on the third and final portal before the Warden. I’m kind of nervous but not really. He isn’t as hard as Grimtongue, or whatever that guy is, or that other Warlock behind the locked door in Act 1. So I think we’ll be fine.
Been leveling my dot tank and trying to finish him off, and having a hell of a time finding drops with both bleed and vitality damage, which seems completely weird to me. You would think that combo would be pretty common, maybe it’s just really horrible RNG. I’ve done countless runs in the places that usually drop vit gear, and haven’t found a single one that also has bleed on it. It’s making me wonder if certain places just won’t roll a particular thing…
I’ve been enjoying the heck out of this game; I took an earlier post by Rock8man to heart and went full tilt alt crazy - I now have a 52 lightning Vindicator, a 40 pet-Cabalist, a 30 elementalist and a 30 BWC sorcerer. I also have a 2H Forcewave battlemage but I don’t really enjoy that build. Waiting in the wings will be a pet necro and then some sort of poison/acid dot build and/or maybe a heavy cold-focused build.
My SO (I play far more due to my weird sleep patterns) has a Saboteur and pet-necro I pair with - and both her characters put mine to shame. Her L40 necro can kill the training dummy, whereas I can hardly touch it with any of my characters. :( (On the bright side, the pet conjuror is well nigh unkillable.) Not sure what I’m doing wrong, but the mobs are dying so for now I’ll just press on.
I’m finding most of the build guides at GD website largely pointless. "Get this gear, put points here, look at my video killing Crucible wave 170) and barely if at all touch on devotions. :/ There are a few good ones that go into detail on things like skill/gear priorities or devotion paths (like the two I linked), but for the most part it feels like I need to figure things out as I go. Not the end of the world but a little frustrating. For now I think I like the sorcerer best - I gravitate to range, and while the Vindicator uses guns, good weapons are hard to find. The sorcerer just uses greater fireball (from a component) and blackwater cocktail and whole groups of mobs just explode (with or without OFF.) Some bosses require some kiting, but as a long time D3 player (100’s of hours there) kiting is something I’m use to :D. Any advice or suggestions, in particular with regards to a fire sorcerer and devotions would be great. (Right now for devotions I find ones with + run speed to start out with and then go from there heh. Cannot stand plodding along at 115% run speed, ugh.)
This is really starting to click for me too, but I feel like I’ve hit a bit of a wall around level 40, where progression has slowed way down.
Some thoughts –
I tried multiplayer with a friend last night, him level 30 and me level 42. All of the enemies were scaled between us though – level 36-39. Is that just how the multiplayer works? If so, it’s kind of cool to know that I can just hop in with my friend, even if there’s some disparity in our levels.
I’m playing with Ultrazen’s vitality trickster build. Vitality damage on gear is really hard to find – I have a lot of gear pieces that are 15 or 20 levels below me because I can’t find replacements for them. There doesn’t seem to be a rune that helps vitality damage. Is it just a hard damage type to gear for? I guess the tradeoff is that I can punch way above my weight – bosses five or six levels above me aren’t really any trouble – but my friend’s getting new fire gear every level, it feels like.
I’m also really alt-happy, and I love that there’s so much to discover just in building characters.
Around what area are you? I think 40ish is when you finish Act 4, right? Then you can jump into Elite difficulty, or if you own the expansion, head into Act 5. If you ever hit a wall on leveling, it usually means you’re meant to be past a certain area already by then. That’s what I’ve found, anyway. But I don’t mind, because usually if I’m leveling slowly, it also means I’m over leveled and things are dying really fast and in very satisfying ways.
Oh, really? Maybe I should just try and power through it to get to Elite.
Or I should probably just get the expansion, right? Yeah, that sounds right.
There is a place called “mountain deeps”, it’s on the road to homestead, so you have to go through it. It’s right after the deadmans gulch waypoint. The mobs in there drop vitality gear, especially shields and 1 handers that are usually quite good. It’s my go to farm stop for any vitality character in any difficulty.
Vitality isn’t really any harder to gear for I don’t think, there is a lot of RNG in this game, and sometime you really can have a hard time finding the right combos on gear. There is also a lot of fire gear that drops early on in “act 2”, all of those mobs that are human and part of the bandits drop fire gear, so you are usually swimming in it. Gear drops actually do change quite a bit by game area, the mobs in general tend to drop green gear for the damage type they use.
I’ve got about 300 hours into GD at this point, and I learn something new or figure something out every single day, it’s amazing. There is a lot of depth to the game, but it’s also very obtuse in how some of the mechanics actually work. Getting your head around how to stack damage types, which ones to stack, which ones are supported together, and which classes are best to use those skills, is a huge jigsaw puzzle. I would say one general thing that I’ve learned, is that specing entirely in one damage type is a bad idea, you always want at least two. Which two are dependant on class combos. Vitality, bleed, and poison is a good combo for example, or vitality, bleed, and chaos. That way, it’s easier to gear, and you have a smoother curve when fighting things, as resistance is a real thing in GD. You will come up against stuff that’s more or less immune to your damage type if you just concentrate on one.
p.s. the expansion is well worth getting.
I’m likely about to buy it today because I am just having too much fun right now.
Also, any tips on inventory management? I’ve just got too much stuff.
Hang onto crafting stuff in one tab in the shared stash, obviously. Try to have to save epic (blue) items in another stash, and eventually purple in another stash.
So what about yellows and greens? I generally only keep stuff that has rare resists. So for instance, there’s not too much that has decent aether resist, bleed resist, vitality resist, chaos resist. Pierce, Poison and elemental resists are more common, so you can probably sell that stuff off.
That way, if you have the rare resists in your stash, you can pull those out at certain points in the game against bosses and such. The Warden at the end of Act 1 does mostly Aether and some Chaos damage I think. So last night I switched to some aether resist stuff from the stash.
There’s always going to be plenty of stuff that has the more common resists, so you can chuck those once they start getting old.
As for offense, depending on your build, you’ll be looking for specific things. For a dual pistol build, for instance, attack speed is something you’ll be looking for, but I didn’t generally keep older stuff in the stash, just keep the latest and greatest and throw away the old. Don’t be afraid to keep selling most things. Other than the rare resists, I don’t think there’s too much else you’ll regret selling.
A couple of other things that are rare that I watch out for: sometimes items will have damage reflection and damage absorption. Those can be deceptively good. Plus there’s a few rare (green) pieces of loot dropped by certain factions, those can be keeping around in the stash sometimes if they have the right combination of things.
Mostly though, sell everything. Keep your resists as high as possible, and sell most stuff.
Excellent tips, thank you.
Yah inventory is a constant problem for me. I’ve started offloading specific damage types to specific alts, even if I’m not playing them currently. I.E., I dump all my frost damage stuff, on a character I’ve made intending to do a frost build.
I’m still pretty much on my first character, and usually don’t make alts in games like this. Is it worth trying other classes in this game?
That’s half the fun IMO. The various class combos are lots of fun to explore.
Yep. The various classes are all fantastic, and play quite differently. Most importantly, just the basic classes are very different from each other, and you should at least try one character from each of the 8 base classes.
Posted upthread:
All 8 base classes are awesome, and the various combinations lead to some really fun characters.