2863

There are a number of secrets in the expansion. If you are wondering which ones you are missing, try starting with looking at the achievements. they have one for most of the secret bosses.

2864

I did that new Shattered Realm thing last night. It’s kind of confusing.

There’s a countdown going down in the corner, and when you kill certain enemies, you get a message saying you got an extra 5 or 6 seconds added to the clock. Meanwhile you’re hunting enemies and hoping they drop some stuff, and when enough stuff drops, a portal opens to the next area.

But then, the countdown eventually goes down to zero. What happens then? Nothing, as far as I can tell. You keep going, you just stop getting little 5 and 6 second bonuses to the time since the time has zero seconds left. What’s that all about? Is it a score thing?

Anyway, after going through a certain stage you get to a boss stage, and then after that a guy asks you if you want to keep going or stop and get your reward. I kept going 3 or 4 times, and then chose to get my reward. I’m still kind of perplexed by what is going on.

Meanwhile in the campaign, I’m slowly making my way towards Homestead in Act 2 of the campaign. After doing the Forgotten Gods area, everything was trivially easy at first, but then I caught up to my level. And last night I did the first skeleton key area: Steps of Torment. Of course, I expected to die, since I always die in the Steps of Torment except for the Night King. Every character of mine always dies to the boss at the end, sometimes even after finishing Veteran difficulty, most of Elite difficulty, and then coming back to Veteran to do the Steps, and still dying to the final boss in the Steps.

But you know what? My Warlord character had a really easy time of it. I hit level 41 in the Steps, and switched to a new axe I was waiting to use, and I kicked a lot of ass. Most enemies were level 48, elites were 49, and bosses were level 50. And I wiped them out like they were nothing. I’m starting to feel very powerful as this haphazard Warlord who has a few points in every Oathkeeper skill except Whirlwind.

2865

So what’s the target level for the Forgotten Gods content (on Veteran)? I’ve got a level 50-something purifier that’s been through the entire base game and all of Malmouth. Would it be inappropriate to take her through Forgotten Gods at this point? Would I be better off starting up on Elite?

2866

I think Forgotten Gods just scales to whatever level you are. The enemies have really strong abilities that also scale. I only did the whole expansion area with my new character after finishing Act 1, but I also tried it with a level 60 character on Elite difficulty, and it felt much tougher, but still doable.

I’d say go for it on Normal difficulty. At least that way your resists will be stronger.

2867

Certainly feels that way. I finished the regular game on Ultimate and went into FG and it was actually a bit harder. I heard most people attempting it right after act 2 starts so I was surprised.

2868

Good to know, thanks!

2869

The staging works exactly like the crucible. The higher the stage # the more difficult the mobs/bosses (or number of boss mobs). Your reward is calculated on how many stages you complete in a row by what stage # it is and what level you are. Longer runs (I usually make time to do at least 10, since they autostop you at 5,15, 25, etc on characters who haven’t done it yet) get better and more loot. The top end of the FR seems to gives you more loot than doing 150-170 Crucible run and you get the added bonus of getting extra chests and the SR specific loot.

The countdown is for the ‘extra’ chest if you complete it in the time (deaths take a pretty heavy time penalty, like 1 minute per AFAIK). If you kill the “Superboss” tower during a run (clearly understood because it’s as big as the AOM and bigger than the FG boss) you get another top end chest.

2870

I reached Homestead with my Warlord this morning.

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

One of the reasons he’s so effective is that if there’s an enemy like the final enemy at the Steps of Torment, my Warlord doesn’t need to just stand there and face tank. I can literally keep passing through the enemy as he activates his nasty close attacks, and take him down by going in, running out, having him run through my flaming path, or just passing through him when he’s doing his nasty close spells.

2871

I took my Purifier (level 88) who has finished Act 1 on Ultimate and was in Act 2, back to Veteran difficulty and tried the new expansion area. It looks like on Veteran most of the starting monsters in the expansion area are starting around level 74 and moving up from there. So yeah, it is a cakewalk, basically, but I figured that was a good way to look for secrets in the expansion area, trying to walk around the edges, look at every nook.

But then I came back to town and decided to do the Shattered Realm. Why not? This was a super strong character, let’s see how far I could get before my first death.

I kept going and going and going and going (all enemies are around level 91-96), I got several achievements, I got a reward dialog box in the game for some reason, but I kept going. I figured out what those numbers are in the top right corner. Aside from the countdown clock, (which has never reached zero yet), there’s also a “Shard” and “Chunk” count. I had no idea what that was, since it didn’t seem to have any correlation with the numbers of shards I was collecting. I finally figured out that each time you go through to a new area, the Chunk count goes up, until you beat the boss area, and choose to go deeper, then the Shard count goes up. So that number is keeping track of how deep you’re going basically. So it’s 1-1, 1-2, 1-3, etc, 2-1, 2-2, 2-3, etc.

I was in shard 10-1, and the game crashed. It froze up completely, I had to restart my computer. Arrrrgh. Almost 2 hours wasted? I hope the game somehow remembers that I was in Shard 10 next time I log in.

2872

Some questions answered.

The game had saved my progress through the campaign in the expansion, but not my progress through the Shattered Realm, I had to start at shard 1 chunk 1.

I went up to Shard 12 chunk 4 this time and beat it. There seems to be a lack of option to just get out of the shattered realm and continue some other time from this point.

So then, can I quit to the main menu? Will that retain my progress? Will I continue from this point when I go back tot his character? Or will I have to start over? Can someone else check on that for me in the low levels? Like, Get to Shard 2 or something and test it, go to the main menu, and see if you can get back to the shattered realm when you get back, back to shard 2.

In the meantime, I have to go grocery shopping, so I guess I’ll just let the game remain Alt-Tabbed.

2873

I hit 75 on my Cabalist, but now I figure out that (duh) the build I was using, that Night King one lined upthread, is pretty out of date. I knew about some of the devotions, but apparently there are a host of things that have changed to the extent that now most of the theorycrafters think the build is not useless, but very suboptimal.

Trouble is, I don’t really know where to go from here. I can clear trash mobs with ease, and most non-boss star mobs with only a bit more effort. When I hit a boss though, it’s touch and go, and the nastier ones like the ones behind skeleton key doors or the like, pretty much one-shot me instantly without me even getting a chance to do anything. This is on Elite. I’m just now going to the Necropolis. I was thinking of trying to do Malmouth on Elite rather than jumping to Ult, but I wonder if I’d be better off just killing Log and going Ult to wrack up more levels and farm some gear or recipes or whatever (and faction).

I can’t get my +pet damage above ~500-600%, and +attack speed is sitting around +30-30%. My big issue though is resists, which with the -25% penalty in Elite are mostly at…zero. The gear I need to survive has no bonuses for pets; the pet gear, surprise surprise, has no survivability bonuses. I’m still running greens because the vast majority of the blues and purples I have are totally unsuitable for this build it seems.

I may just look around for a better more up to date cabalist build and simply respec everything. Or just go find a Warlord retaliation build somewhere…and work on another character…

2874

Your progress will stay if you are in a Grim Dawn session and you can go back (though again, the time is going to continue regardless). If you quit out of Grim Dawn it resets, however, you get Waystone recipes when you complete the quest (I’m not sure if this works on anything other than Ultimate) that will let you start at a higher Shard.

2875

The game gives you the option of leaving the shattered realms every x levels, think it’s around 5 or something like that…

2876

I came back and spent the last several hours trying to get to Shard 25, since that’s the last achievement in the in-game achievement menu (after that, they’re all the same achievements but to do it on Ultimate difficulty, or to do it on Ultimate difficulty as a hardcore character).

I didn’t see any option to leave every 5 levels, but I did get an award of a Eldrich crafting ingredient as a reward every five levels.

Also, after I finished Shard 25, it gave me the same option: Go on or collect my reward. That was surprising. So I went on. And Shard 26 was like 25 but harder. So after 26 I quit. And as a reward, one of the things I got was the recipe to start the shattering realm at 5-15, and another to start from 20-30. I haven’t created those yet, but I can forge them using the blacksmith. The recipe uses those Eldrich ingredients I got as a reward for getting every 5 levels.

I was doing great until the boss level in Shard 23. That one was insanely hard. The three bosses were in a tiny area with a pair of steps that connect two platforms. There were turrets firing at me constantly on both platforms. There were two bosses who were constantly generating more enemies for me two fight, and one boss who was so strong he could kill me in two hits. So I was trying to run around laying mines and shooting, but there was no room to run on this level, and the constantly generated enemies kept blocking the stairs so I had nowhere I could even on the tiny level.

Anyway, I had preserved the countdown easily until Shard 23, but I had about a dozen deaths there before I finally got through by killing one boss at a time (when you die, it preserves the situation, so you go back through the portal, and anything you killed or hurt stays that way).

I wonder if that was just bad luck, or have they designed Shard 23’s boss level to be that hard?

2877

That’s a shame that the Night King build doesn’t continue to kick ass.

If you do find another Cabalist build that does work, let me know. I think my non-hardcore Cabalist who is that same build is currently at 60 (it still works great at 60).

2878

I think it’s all relative. I used the night king build through act one and all through the Forgotten Gods area with relative ease. Of course this is all on normal and pre-50, but it performed admirably.

2879

The bosses are randomized and you can get some really bad situations where the bosses synergize. They can also have duplicates. I’ve had double Reaper as well.

2880

It’s probably not worth worrying too much about, right? I mean, if the only reason I was preserving that countdown was an extra chest? I didn’t find much good in those chests anyway. I found about 3 purple items, but none useful for any of my current characters. One more chest full of stuff like that doesn’t seem all that appealing.

The part that bothers me the most is that the whole things seems designed for immortal characters. There’s no way I would ever take any of my hardcore characters very far into this game mode. It’s just too risky, and some of those boss levels are way too small.

The funniest piece of equipment I found fighting my way up to Shard 23 was something that dropped from a nemesis enemy I killed, not from a chest. Check it out:

image
image.jpg1920×1080 1.21 MB

Miss Gazer Man. Notice how it severely de-buffs the person who wears it. And yet, it’s also kind of awesome, and has no level requirement. You could de-buff yourself from Level 1!! And also get +1 all skills and get really good resists too.

You know, it just occurred to me that it would be a good chest armor for early pet classes. You wouldn’t care as much about the de-buff since you don’t want to be touching or approaching the enemy anyway.

2881

The Gazer Man item (from the Secret quest in the basegame) is the same as that. It’s nice they allow it as a drop so if you couldn’t handle the Bourbon you can get it another way.

The reward both in quality and quantity are not great until the top end of the Shards (70-80) similar to Crucible.

2882

I took a stab at building a Cabalist. I don’t have one so I can’t test it’s viability.

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lV743WyZ