1561

I’m embarrassed to be asking a question so basic, but I tried on my own for a while until I finally gave up. The “Play” option is greyed out. I figured I had to create a character first, but creating male, female, hardcore characters does nothing to the main menu. Are characters supposed to show up? What the heck am I missing?

EDIT: Nevermind. It just takes the game a few minutes to create characters, looks like. After you create them, they show up a few minutes later. Is this game still in Early Access or something? I thought this was finally released?

1562

Umm, that wasn’t the case for me. New characters show up instantly.

1563

Had the exact same issue.

1564

That’s really odd, probably some steam cloud issue.

1565

Ok, I got my first hardcore character to level 9 and then died because I forgot which key it was to drink a potion.

First impression: Wow, my main complaint with Titan’s Quest is that it never really ever felt super-satisfying to fight things in Titan Quest. Well, they fixed that problem in Grim Dawn. They used a combination of deep bass sound effects and animations to really make each strike of the sword actually satisfying and thumpy and just something that actually feels substantial. So big kudos.

Next time I play, I’ll see if they fixed the other problem with Titan Quest: playing through the same area over from the beginning without any kind of randomization in the terrain felt very repetitive. With my next character, I guess I’ll find out if that’s still the case in Grim Dawn. If it is, then I won’t make any more Hardcore characters.

1566

You are going to be disappointed. The map doesn’t change, there isn’t any randomization at all.

1567

There are some changes, with certain paths being blocked or open, but it’s all very minor.

1568

And I guess there are a couple of rare bosses that don’t always show, if I think about it. Honestly I played so much, it has all blurred together at this point.

1569

This. What changes there are are so subtle that unless you are really paying attention to the setting you won’t notice anything different.

GD, after a couple of playthroughs, has not generated any additional interest in me to go back and continue or start another character. I thought I would as new content is released, but after replaying TQ I now notice that there was something lacking in GD, something I can’t put a finger on considering for all intents and purposes it’s such a similar game in style. GD was great fun when I played it, and well worth my investment, though.

1570

I’ll do a more detailed post later, but I just wanted to say I’m really enjoying Grim Dawn. This is really surprising to me. Maybe it’s not appropriate for hardcore, but for softcore characters, I’m loving all the different characters I’ve made so far (Warrior, Arcanist, Demolitionist). Every character has big satisfying chunky moves that were missing from Titan’s Quest and are deeply satisfying to control from the beginning.

1571

The first difficulty is really easy across the board (though certain bosses are big difficulty spikes). Pretty much any old wacky build can succeed there, which is pretty nice, actually. You really don’t have to think much about any sort of optimization or resists, etc. until later difficulties.

1572

I couldn’t resist trying another character last night. This time I tried the Summoner, I forget what they’re called in this game. Occultists maybe? Anyway, another great character. The swarm of bees was underwhelming at first, but once you get a healing aura going, and get some of the other things like a beast pet, and calling down thunderstorms, then having those bees to leech some life for you can be very nice in certain situations. And I love the fact that they made this class one that is encouraged to use two handed melee weapons. It makes it so much more interesting than most pet classes.

My only concern with this character is that it’s the only character I’ve played so far that misses a lot. Does that mean I should be increasing “cunning” more, even though this character seems to need Physique and Spirit more than Cunning? Does cunning increase my offensive ability, which is what determines whether or not I miss, I believe?

1573

There is an Occultist class that can summon a hellhound, but from your description it sounds like you’re referring to a Shaman. If you combine Shaman + Occultist, the resulting class is Summoner.

1574

Yes, but it’s unlikely to be worth it unless you are building your summoner around actually hitting things. Given it’s a summoner that’s probably unlikely given most build choices but not impossible.

The official forums have a great build called the Lazy Pokemon master. It’s been kinda nerfed in that in later difficulties it’s much more hands on because your pets won’t draw aggro near as well as they used to. So you have to stay on your feet and just can’t sit there and let them mow everything down, but still a very powerful class.

I just started a reflection based build and so far he isn’t very offensive but he is pretty tough. Haven’t died once, which for me is very unusual. I mean I am very lazy, with an almost laissez faire attitude towards death in this game.

1575

Devouring swam does nice damage, but don’t overlook the debuff it provides. I actually haven’t played in quite some time, but unless something has changed, avoid cunning if you can, and get just enough physique to wear the equipment you need. Note that not all skills have hit checks. Some stuff just hits automatically. Pretty sure Wendigo Totem does that, for instance. Maybe grasping vines too.

1576

Well, the main left mouse-button skill is one that adds damage to your main attack and lets it charge up with each hit, up to 6 hits. So after 6 hits, you’re fully charged up as the Druid. (I’ll call him Druid since I don’t remember his actual class name). And I added to it so you get an extra bonus for using a 2 handed melee weapon. So it’s a strong melee class aside from the pets. But the only problem is that I miss a lot with that charge attack. My right click is assigned to the thunderstorm attack, which also requires a 2 handed melee weapon I believe. That one is badass and I’m surprised at how often I can use that. It has a really low re-use timer. I guess that one is only restricted by my mana.

I still don’t like using the keyboard for skills, so that’s still my main complaint with both this and Path of Exile. In both games, I can’t use the mousewheel to switch my right-mouse click skill, like I could in Diablo 2. That’s still my favorite control scheme for ARPGs. Just sit back and use the mouse, and occasionally use the keyboard for driving a potion.

Alas, I guess ARPG designers want the player to be more involved by having them press more keys.

I tried assigning other skills to other mouse-buttons, but it’s not as good as scrolling through right-click skills.

1577

Mice like the G600 tend to eliminate, or at least greatly reduce, those sorts of issues.

1578

I’m sorry I’m so bad at remembering names, but yesterday I leveled up my fourth character to the same point as all the others (except for the Warrior who was Hardcore, and is therefore dead). I think this character was called an Occultist? Anyway, it’s the one that can shoot an acid eyeball at people from level 1. Out of all the characters so far, this definitely felt the weakest at the beginning. Even after I had a raven pet and a hound pet, and I was casting two de-buffs on creatures, neither my pets nor I seemed to be doing as much damage to creatures as all the other characters I’ve tried so far.

But once I leveled up enough to lay down that pentagram on the ground that drains their health, and buffed up my debuffs, and spruced up my acid eyeballs, when I hit level 11, suddenly this felt like the strongest of all the characters at dealing with crowds, though other characters have been better at dealing with bosses. Still, the Occultist is pretty good against bosses too now since I have the stronger, less frequent acid eyeball as my secondary attack. Just like with the other pet character, I miss a lot with my melee weapon. But the other pet class gave bonuses to a 2 handed weapon, this class doesn’t specify so I’m using one handed weapons. So even when the weapon hits, it doesn’t do as much damage. So this is the first class I’ve used so far that relies more on abilities to kill things rather than weapons. The Arcanist (is that what it’s called? Sorry, I’m horrible with class names in this game) that dealt with elemental abilities was the next closest to that, but the Arcanist has a neat ability to spruce up your main weapon, so I still relied on a weapon most of the time to kill things.

That only leaves one more base class to try in the game, which I plan to try out tonight. The one whose picture shows a dual-wielding rogue of some kind. But I have no doubt that rogue is not what they called it, since Grim Dawn has a different name for every class.

1579

Just remember a lot of the classes don’t come into their own until much later in the game. Everything feels powerful at level 11, not so much at level 35. You aren’t really tested at normal difficulty either, if you play halfway decently, any class will beat the game.

And you know there are 15 classes, right? Sounds like you have played 5, but you said there was only one left. Am I misunderstanding?

1580

I’ve played the Warror, Demolitionist, Shaman?, Occultist?, Arcanist? There’s one other base class left to try, the one with that shows of a dual wielding rogue.

All other classes, I thought, was just a matter of which of these you picked as a second class? I’m not worried about a second class yet. I’m just getting a feel for the original 6 classes first.

That’s a shame that all the classes don’t stay powerful later.