That’s a bummer, especially when you had such nice gear.
Edited to add: I’m sure it’s little consolation, but I went in there at 46 with my Vindicator, who is chewing through stuff, and he died in about 10 seconds (his poison resist was only 46% so that may have contributed to his quick demise).
Set Item Transmuting seems like a pretty great change. I don’t play enough to ever actually complete a decent sized set and having always just sold off duplicates. Guess it’s time to start hoarding them!
This will just exacerbate the lack of room in the shared stash. Now there will be a reason to keep duplicates around from now until the release of the second expansion? Oh man, there’s no room for that stuff. I guess in the regular non-shared stash, from now instead of storing weird rare resist stuff (Chaos resist, Aether resist, Vitality resist, etc), I’ll start storing duplicate set items instead.
My hardcore builds continue to get more and more defensive. I’m determined to get at least one solo character through the game on Veteran difficulty so that I can get access to more recipes, etc.
This is my current Battlemage:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NK0qPo2
Mainly using the complete Guardian set. The bad part about that set is that it includes a weapon. And so many of my abilities are partially tied to the weapon I use. So I don’t do nearly as much damage as my defiler used to do at the same stage, which really chafes on me.
On the other hand, notice I still got the Turtle Devotion. But you know what? This character has never had the Turtle kick in. That’s a good sign. That means I’ve never been low on health so far. I’ve got 18% Physical resist, which helps a lot. And if you change the difficulty on grimtools there to Normal, you’ll see that my other resists are pretty good too, mostly maxed out on the common ones, including elemental, pierce, poison and stun. And the others are not bad.
I just need to get over the fact that using Cadence as a default attack means I have to hit enemies 3 times in order to get that third, strong hit.
An update on my hardcore Battlemage: So far so good. I beat act 4, which unlocks Elite difficulty. But I didn’t immediately go to Elite. I went to Act 5. In softcore, Act 5 usually really kicks my ass. But with the Battlemage tank, I was able to live. I came damn close to dying against a couple of bosses though. There’s some tough hombres in Act 5, even with (mostly) maxed out resists and decent physical resist and high damage absorption. Act 5 is no joke.
After reaching that Act 5 hub, the Coven Bog, or whatever it’s called, I got a little cocky. You know what? If anyone can beat the dang Steps of Torment dungeon, I bet it’s this gal. She’s so freaking tough. So I’ll do it!
I went in there, and as usual, it wasn’t so bad even with enemies scaled up to level 50-54 mostly (I was level 50). I had to decide if I wanted to face the last guy. With a softcore character, I’ve never beaten that last guy. Ever. Even with a level 80+ Purifier, I still died to that last boss. Could the battle tank really take him?
Let’s find out! So I went in, and did my usually face-tanking. And I beat him. Woohoo! My first victory in the Steps of Torment. He was level 56 I believe, maybe 57 or 58, I can’t remember now. So only a few levels above me. He was doing a lot of damage to me, despite all my resists, but I was able to absorb or block enough of that damage with my shield and various abilities that I could drink potions on a regular basis and keep pounding away at him slowly until he died. Honestly, the guy in Act 5 you have to beat before the Coven was harder than this guy for my Tank. She’s pretty tanktastic.
For now I’ve just kept all my equipment. I know that this means that all my equipment is super old by now. But it helps that I reached Respected status at Kymon’s faction, and was able to put three +25% physical damage augments on myself. (Two rings and one amulet).
I’m still rolling around with Oxana Troy’s Flash Freeze, with Absolute Zero really pushing down people’s physical resists, which really helps when it comes to doing damage. I know my original plan was to switch over to Callidor’s Tempest. That’s always the plan, because the internet says that Callidor’s Tempest in the late game rocks and melts all the enemies around you. But man, I just love freezing enemies so much. It really helps in survivability too, to have your enemies just freeze every few seconds, which interrupts all their attacks too. It’s hard for me to fathom switching all my O.F.F. + Absolute Zero points into Callidor’s Tempest.
We shall see. If I ever get that far into the game. Right now my goal is simply to keep going and finish Act 5 if I can. Maybe I’ll take a break and start Act 1 on Elite tonight. Previous experience tells me that this is much easier than Act 5 on Normal.
I was playing before work this morning. I found a corner of the map in the bog that I’d never seen before. And it lead to an area behind a skeleton key door in Act 5! I had to cleanse the Ancient Grove!
I knew it was asking for trouble, but come on, that’s pretty much why I play this game, right? So I went in, and kicked a lot of ass. And I even beat the final boss! But wait, what’s this? He was coming back to life, even bigger and stronger than he’d been before! No! I had to put him down!
You are dead.
RIP Battle Tank. I will truly miss this character. God, that was a satisfying run though. My first time in the Ancient Grove, and I almost beat the whole thing. I still count that as a moral victory damn it!
Hey, congrats on beating Loggo in hardcore!
Thanks! He wasn’t very hard compared to various bosses in Act 5 though. They really ramp up the difficulty in Act 5. In retrospect, maybe I should have finished all 6 Acts before I tried the Ancient Grove. Then I could say I beat all of Veteran difficulty as a hardcore character.
One interesting aside by the way. Inside the Ancient Grove area, before you fight the big boss at the end, there’s a friendly plant that sells items. He sells recipes too! And they’re for purple items. And they’re darned expensive. I couldn’t afford them all. But I sold back the potion recipes. I don’t use potions anyway. (Though maybe I should use some of those special potions?)
I bought all the other recipes and learned them. So even though that character died, and all that amazing loot I was collecting in that area was lost, I still was able to learn some cool recipes from a plant.
Since that last death, I wanted to take a break from my own theory-crafting, and try a build from the internet for once. Surely these guys have it all figured out way better than me (although that’s usually not as fun as making it up yourself).
I also wanted to do the polar opposite of playing a tank.
So I looked up pet builds. And after some searching, it seems like most people believe the Night King Cabalist build is one of the strongest pet builds out there. It’s not very intuitive. But luckily he has a REALLY detailed explanation for all his choices. Like why he avoided all kinds of bonuses and devotions that I personally used for my pet builds. It’s actually a very interesting read. At first my reaction was “This guy is crazy, this is a stupid build”. But the more I read his explanation, the more it makes sense. My only real concern is whether it can work for a hardcore character.
I have to tell you, doing the crucible last night for the first 18 levels of this build, it was the fastest I’ve ever done the Crucible. Skeletons are crazy strong if you dump 16 points into them right away at the very start of the game. Everything just dies as you walk around.
Have run this build for a wile. Have not tried it in hardcore however. As long as you keep your pets up and mobs focused on them its a fun pet build.
I ran through Act 1 with that Night King Cabalist build. And I mean that literally, I ran through it as my pets killed everything around me. I’ve never finished Act 1 so fast before. And I even made it partway through Act 2 last night.
So far so good. I keep finding enough good pet damage gear that I keep increasing my pet damage, so they’re still killing everything in one shot, with bosses now taking a few seconds at most. The Warden went down in about 3 seconds, then I waited for him to turn into his second form, and then the second form went down in about 5 seconds.
Hey, if nothing else, at least I’m getting a lot of amusement out of this build. Recall upthread that when the expansion came out, I played a pure Necro (almost) build, and my skeletons were never this strong, ever. I guess the order in which you take skills matters a lot. In that build, I didn’t have my Skeletons up to 16 points until I was well into Act 3, as I was leveling up skills slowly and trying out all the various things that a Necro had. There’s something to be said about playing a build that’s so laser focused on damage. It’s very liberating to go through all my loot that I pick up, and go “sell, sell, sell, sell, sell”, even for blue loot, because if it doesn’t have pet damage enhancements, I’m not keeping it on this run.
Edited to add: This build so far is very susceptible to death though. Just a couple of times some enemies attacked me instead of my army, and I almost died right away. Death will not be surprising at all when it comes for this character. The whole philosophy is to do so much damage so fast, that even bosses don’t have time to kill me.
Making my way through past Homestead last night, I finished the two Conflagration areas as well. Going into the Conflagration area in Port Vasbury, or whatever it’s called, was a bit of a crazy idea. This character has no Aether resist, and there I was running around in an area with swirling clouds of aether that can’t be destroyed or reasoned with. You can only run away from them. And run away I did.
This character is so different from every other one I’ve played in this game. I don’t even have an attack button assigned to the controller. All I do is run, curse things, sometimes tell my minions to attack boxes and crates and walls and focus fire on a single enemy, and I constantly cast Blood of Dreeg, which heals everyone in the party. And I also drink potions, of course. I don’t even worry about bosses and enemies and such. I just concentrate on running away from things and staying alive, and my pets mow down the enemies (including bosses) pretty darn fast. It’s very liberating.
I still don’t think this character is long for this world. Surely I’ll mess up somewhere and let things touch me. And then it will be curtains. But until then, this is so much fun.
For my pet based Cabalist I have right click bound to pet attack and like you said my left button is not bound to anything except for the default attack skill, which I don’t ever use. I should probably we find it to move instead which would make more sense.
You have to be a little careful when using the pet attack command, because your pets will run right past people to go where you direct. That means if you’re sloppy you can allow bad guys to get right up on you since your pets will just run by them.
Like you all ever do is cast blood of Dreeg and that necromancer buff… Call of the grave? Something like that. I do use a potion though. The Rovers sell a pet buff potion that lasts for 10 seconds and does +100% damage for pets. I usually keep a gigantic stack of those in my inventory and pop them whenever I’m fighting boss. They are really cheap also.
This is my first character that I took the high levels, but he also feels very squishy, just as your guy feel squishy to you. Perhaps it’s because all I ever look for on gear is pet damage, speed, or vitality. So my resists are fairly terrible and I don’t have a lot of armor either. My second and third characters, who aren’t pet-based, have much tougher gear and better resists.
Woah. Cool. I’ve never used a potion in this game. (except health and mana potions, of course). This potion sounds like something perfect to assign to the 3 or 4 buttons I have empty right now on the controller.
You haven’t even used bug juice? Those are great to quaff before boss battles.
Buff potions for fights? Pah! The only potion I have ever used in Grim Dawn, besides health and mana of course, is the pet buff potion. I must have 20 different types of potions in my stash but as usual for my hoarding nature, I’m always afraid to use them.
Sounds intriguing. What is bug juice?
All the royal jelly recipes. You get the first one with that Rovers quest to acquire 3 royal jellies, and find others along the way. They provide hit point/mana regen buffs, and one increases your max HP. Since they last for like 6 minutes they’re good ‘fire and forget’ buffs.
My Cabalist finished Act 4 on Sunday morning. And then I completed various bits and bobs like the Hidden Path quests, getting the de-activated shrine for the Rovers, and the Outcast quests (including going into Steps of Torment and completing them). I then completed Act 5. And I reached the Malmouth Resistance in Act 6 last night before I finally signed off.
Man, this game is so much fun. There’s so many little hidden areas that I still sometimes forget about, and other little hidden areas that I don’t ever remember discovering before. Believe it or not, as many characters as I’ve played, this is only my second time in Act 6. My pure Necro was never able to make it through Act 5 because my skeletons kept dying. I remember trying to find poison resistance for them so that they would survive somehow, but it’s really hard to come by. Who knew that the answer to surviving Act 5’s poison was just MOAR DAMAGE. The secret is offense, offense, offense. It’s the one time that strategy has ever worked in this game because there’s 8 (or 9) skeletons, and each one gets whatever boost I get.
As I got to the underground sewer system headquarters of the Malmouth Resistance, I believe I had just reached level 58. So far I’ve had pretty good luck in constantly upping my damage to keep up with enemies so that they all still go down fast. I even went after the Mad Queen on the hidden path, and took her down very quickly.
I’m very tempted by Elite difficulty. But at the same time, I don’t want to get distracted again like I did with other characters. I want to finish Act 6 with a second character, and see if I can beat Veteran with a hardcore character.
Took a break from the regular campaign to go to the Bastion of Chaos dungeon.
I’d forgotten that this dungeon has “environmental hazards”. Basically these crystals come up out of the ground in each room. You can’t destroy them, they just pop up like little turrets and fire off Chaos bolts everywhere. You just have to kill enemies in the room fast and keep moving past the turrets.
I made it to the 3rd level of the dungeon, and then suddenly I died without any advanced notice except I was in a room where two or three turrets had popped up.
Oh well. I don’t know for sure, but this might be a blessing in disguise. I might finally be cured of my Grim Dawn addiction for a while. Hopefully I can put the game down now until Forgotten Gods comes out.
/suspend thread with me talking to myself.