Going back to the plain Grim Dawn campaign for a second.
Since I hadn’t played in a while, I don’t know when they added these green shrines throughout the campaign, but I do know that they have gotten 3 of my hardcore characters killed so far. Definitely the multiple bosses that spawn when you activate a green shrine make them super-dangerous, especially when the bosses have good synergies. But at the same time, the loot these green shrines spew out is generally very good, so it’s worth it to go for these shrines even as a hardcore character. I really like this new mechanic. It adds a new spice to the campaign, and really makes you nervous each time you come upon a green shrine. Sometimes if it’s a small room with very little room for me to run away, I just say screw it, it’s not worth dying for, and keep moving.
Those are part of Forgotten Gods. They’re fun, but some of the other stuff like the random dungeon “Get penalized for this, but a bonus for this- BALANCE!” crap is annoying.
I played after Forgotten Gods a lot back when it came out. The green shrines were not part of the expansion back then.
I like the mutators. The mutators are older, maybe there since the launch of the game? I’m not sure. I know they have always been a huge part of the Crucible, so they’ve been there at least since the Crucible came out, which came out before Malmouth.
I like the mutators because they affect both you and the enemies in the same way. So if there’s a mutator that makes you weak to cold, but increases your max fire resist, then it affects the enemies the same way.
My only issue with the mutators is that you can really only read them properly when you play with mouse and keyboard, which I haven’t done in a long time. Sometimes I grab the mouse with my right hand, just to see what mutators are active, but it’s still very inconvenient. I wish I could pause the game and check what mutators are active while paused.
By the way I finished wave 150 of the Crucible tonight on the lowest difficulty. I hadn’t really given the Crucible a try with a high level character like this before. It was fun. I even leveled up all the turrets all the way while on my way up.
I could have kept going past wave 150, but I chickened out and took my reward. I’m kind of glad I did, I got a lot of blueprints. I love blueprints because unlike loot, they don’t take up inventory space, you can just make the item if you need to use it.
Yeah the loot fountain shrines are new in the recent megapatch. They’re great.
I finally found a character that I really, really enjoy playing, because it does a bit of everything. Pets, melee, range, and it melts everything. Soooo good.
When you get the chance, you should export to grimtools and post the link. I’d be curious, since I’ve never managed to make a jack-of-all-trades character in Grim Dawn. They’re all specialized in very specific ways.
If I were to guess, I’d say you created a Shaman + Oathkeeper. Archon?
I’ll do that! It’s a Conjurer (Shaman+Occultist). Roughly this:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrMvxjV
I knew a Shaman had to be involved. He really is the most versatile character in the game. I see that you’re probably counting the excellent leveled up Swarm as ranged combat. Which is fair.
Yeah. I’m focusing on Vitality damage, but the build does good Physical and Bleeding damage as well. Lots of sinergies between those skills I picked. Ranged is mostly Swarm, yes, though I can complement that with a two-handed rifle when I want to keep some distance.
That’s the one thing I miss about keyboard controls. Just being able to hit the W key to swap weapons. I don’t believe there’s anyway to do that on the controller, so I’m stuck using one weapon.
All the buttons are assignable to skills except LB/RB (potions), the back and start buttons (menus), and the d-pad. Right on the d-pad opens a portal, and I think one of the other d-pad directions lets me switch to an alternate set of buttons on the controller, but hitting that on the d-pad in the heat of combat is a losing proposition, so I never assign a second set of buttons. I wonder what the other two directions on the d-pad do though. Maybe one of them is the equivalent of pressing W? But even if it’s there, it would be too fiddly.
There is. Press the left analog.
Negative. The Left Analog stick is an assignable button, so it’s whatever skill that I’ve assigned to it.
I don’t think it is? Assignable for skills for me are D-pad left and right, face buttons, and right trigger. You can press the right analog for a second set of skills, still limited to those buttons, and left analog for me switches weapons. That was the default controller support as far as I know. Yours is different? That’s weird.
Yeah, that is weird. For me, Left and Right thumbstick have always been assignable buttons, so I’ve always assigned them because otherwise they do nothing.
I’ve used the 360 and XBone controllers. Are you using a different one maybe?
D-pad left and right sound like horrible places to put assignable skills though. Maybe I got the better deal. L and R are much easier to access than the d-pad.
Btw, if d-pad right doesn’t open the portal for you, what opens a portal?
D-pad up opens a portal. And I tend to use d-pad left and right for less used skills, like summons or toggables or buffs. Most used skills on face buttons and RT. Works fine as long as you don’t have a lot of usable skills, which is usually the case.
Handy to know is, the mouse when you activate it has it’s own hotbar, so you can use that for buffs or toggles that are always on and never need to be refreshed, frees up a ton of hotkeys depending on what kind of build you are playing.
Oh, I know that. I count on it for my Cabalist pet build. ;)
Sorry, I shelved RoT until it’s a little more baked. Super cool, but pretty rough.
Anyway, this is by far my most successful GD character. All cold, all the time. Has absolutely rolled since about level 5.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V0Lq1aV
/shrug. I leveled probably 15 characters through RoT and love it. What is it you find rough about it? To me, it’s one of the most thoughtful mods I’ve ever played. Everything is done for a reason. Areas that were more of pain than they were worth have been reduced in annoyance, and areas that people typically farmed have been increased and expanded. The re-imagining, and in a lot of cases re-creation of areas is surprisingly good.
I think the skills have been transcribe to the GD rule set better than could be expected given how different the engines and underlying systems are. Once again, I think it’s very thoughtfully done.
I found the balancing to be kinda all over the place, with hp sponges everywhere and mobs that hit like Darth Vader next to fluffy bunnies whose purpose I really couldn’t say. Elites and champions are orders of magnitude harder and all run so fast that any mobility on your toon is pointless.
Could be playing Druid is just dumb, idk. But this fell firmly into “neat! I’ll check back in 6mo” territory for me.
