I did the Ancient Grove with my Warlord yesterday.
At this point, I’d managed to finish and beat all 3 of the other rogue-like skeleton key areas, so I was really hoping to do this one too. Sadly, the last boss managed to beat me, just like he beat my Purifier.
That last room is a bitch, because there’s so many flamethrowers in there that make it an environmental hazard like no other. Even with max fire resist, standing in the wrong spots is deadly I think.
If I do another run at it, I’ll have to be mindful of that.
So I took my 3rd character, a Warlord and ran through the whole game on veteran, finished at level 66 as I did most nook and crannies on the maps. starting a epic run but this time bee lining grabbing important things only. Shield thrower and retaliation and I’m a killing machine and my health barely moves. I have mostly stuck to the story line and haven’t really explored the end game content, I always thought that is what you did after winning on ultimate but I will have to rethink those thoughts.
My Warlord is almost done with the game on Veteran. I liberated the final base for the Malmouth resistance this morning before coming to work. There’s still a few quests left for Malmouth, and after that I’ll have finished on Veteran. I’m currently level 67. I did run through each of the skeleton key areas twice though, except Ancient Grove. I still have to do the Ancient Grove one more time to try to successfully finish that quest.
I blew through veteran with my warlord. Only stopping at the shrines to finish out devotions. Started ultimate at 67. Just finished up act2 now at 76. Going to need to grind gear soonish but still breezing through most mobs.
So if you use a token to unlock Ultimate, it seems like you still need to go hunt down all the shrines on the different difficulties? Do you have to do the same for quests, aside from the extra bags?
Last night I finished up Malmouth with my Warlord. It’s amazing how much quicker Malmouth was in comparison to doing it with my Purifier on Elite difficulty, which is the last time I went through the area.
This time I just kind of breezed through it, phase shifting between the enemies and running everywhere.
After I beat the game, I went back to get rid of my one remaining quest: To complete the Ancient Grove.
I did beat the final boss in the Ancient Grove this time, but something happened at the end, and I died. So I wasn’t able to collect any loot, but I got credit for finishing it, so I got it off my quest log. Yay! I do wonder what kind of loot I would have gotten though, since I’ve been seeing some really interesting blueprints and purple items drop lately. I got to level 72 or 73 by the end.
I started the game on Elite difficulty, but boy it is way too easy. Obviously Elite difficulty Act 1 doesn’t scale up this high. So I’ll have to run through it and get to the Forgotten Gods area, which should scale up properly.
Edit: By the way, the last shrine I got in Malmouth was actually my 55th shrine, so by completing the game on Veteran, I got all the Shrines. I did start the game in the Crucible to get those devotion points first though. So for someone who doesn’t do the Crucible, I’d guess that the shrines in the game are probably about 8 short of completing your devotions on Veteran.
In the characters I’ve been working on, I’ve hit 55 devotion points long before getting to Malmouth in Elite. I’ve still not found a character build I really like though. The closest is my dual-wield pistol Pyromancer I guess, who is 78 at the moment in Elite.
I’m getting a bit distracted by Last Epoch at the moment, but I’ve managed to take my dual-sword character about halfway through Ultimate now. Haven’t really run into any roadblocks, character feels quite powerful still and has a ton of defensive tools.
The only deaths I’ve had lately are a boss where I stood right in the glowy circle that obviously should not be stood in and my first nemesis encounter which was the splitting beast one which I encountered in a dangerous terrain area so he was getting buffs as well as just being buff himself. I got the achievement for killing a nemesis, but when there were 3 of him I could no longer keep up.
I need to get some more OA as the character really needs to crit but none of the good OA gear I’ve found has fit nicely into my resistance needs yet. Still, I continue to progress and am confident it’ll handle the game just fine outside of the nastiest encounters. For those, some gear is wanting.
How is Last Epoch? I was deciding between that and Pagan to mess around with and ended up going with the latter. I liked it but it’s a different kind of ARPG to something like Grim Dawn.
Last Epoch looked interesting, but I the presentation is what tipped me towards Pagan. I’m not a graphics whore or anything, but the animations in the videos on Steam looks pretty rough and choppy and that sort of thing tends to bother my eyes after a while. How have you found it in-game?
the graphics are definitely the weak point for me right now. It looks like the skill customization is going to put it on pace to compete with PoE and GD for building potential and it’s been very stable for me.
I also had my doubts given the graphics but some of the later levels look a bit better, and the skill customization is fantastic. It’s definitely a real beta, but I’m currently playing it despite wanting to advance in GD so it’s got some good hooks.
I am the type of person who prefers planning a build to playing it though, so having all these new skills to plan around is right up my alley.
I made quick work of Act 1 Elite last night. Basically just ran my way to the Warden and finished him off.
Then I went into the Forgotten Gods expansion area on Elite, and boy, it’s much tougher. With the Elite difficulty resistance penalties, I was still mostly maxed out on most resistances, but my poison resist was down to 53.
No big deal right? Nope. The first boss I came across (a giant beetle-type creature in one of the early caves) destroyed me with his poison. My 10,000+ hit points didn’t matter much against all the poison and acid damage. Geez.
I thought maybe it was a fluke, so this morning I went into that cave again and tried to beat the giant beetle. Phew. Nope. So I crafted anti-venom stuff and put it on my belt, so my poison resist was 73. I went into the cave again, and this time was able to beat him pretty easily.
Lesson learned. Don’t let your poison resist linger around the 50s. That shit makes a HUGE difference.
I’m coming up on the problem of having no more inventory space again. I need to go through my stash and clear out everything that’s lower level than 50, no exceptions. Even if it’s green or blue and fabulous.
Of course, hardcore is different. My friends actually have the discipline to keep all the low level items in the shared stash that can help hardcore characters survive Veteran difficulty. I was in multiplayer with them last weekend, and they have some amazing items in their shared stash for some many different character types. I don’t have that kind of discipline. Once a character gets high enough that they don’t need that item anymore, no matter how cool it was, I get rid of it.
I should designate one tab in the Hardcore stash to be just low level items from 1-40. Nothing goes in that tab except for good low level items that will help low level hardcore characters survive.
I did try that out. I wouldn’t recommend it. It only adds to the problem. With that app, you’re keeping even more and more and more stuff. So even more time has to be devoted to inventory management, which is dumb.
Even though I offloaded most of my items to that app, I won’t bother bringing anything back from it because I don’t want to waste my time sorting inventory, I want to play the game.
However, I do want to hold onto certain sets. And like I said, certain low level items that are really good for my hardcore characters early on. And I think I can do all that with the inventory room they give you in the game itself.
