Grim Dawn - An ARPG from Crate (ex Iron Lore aka Titan Quest devs)

Thanks. Those maps are fantastic. I wish they had that type of display within the game too. But now that I know about that website, at least it will be easy to switch to that. If there’s one thing that Grim Dawn and Titan’s Quest are better at than any other PC Game, it’s handling Alt-Tab behavior.

The first time I went through the doors opened by the dungeon key, the enemies were about 8-10 levels above me, so I eventually lost. Same with my Sorcerer, outleveled by about 8-10 levels, so I eventually lost. Well, I finally found the Steps of Torment again tonight after making another key. Unfortunately, they weren’t level 37-40 like last time. They were level 47-50. So once again 8-10 levels above me. I guess whenever you use the key, it’s designed to be well above what you can handle. That makes me sad. :(

Oh well. I guess there’s plenty of game left without going into the dungeons.

They are supposed to be tough. The game scales to your level, but unlike many areas, they have no level cap (or a very high one), iirc, so they will remain above you. That level difference can certainly be handled though, but you either have to be able to take some punches or be good at avoiding damage.

It’s kind of mean that once you choose a side between the Wizards and the Warriors, you have to actively go out and kill the other side. Why can’t we all get along and fight the monsters together maaaaaan? Give peace a chance. Oh well. Die Wizards!

They have a level cap for each of the difficulty settings. I went back to normal/veteran Torment at level 60 something and everything was in the low 50s IIRC. Obviously it was easy at that point.

Elite I am not sure, think it was around my level of low seventies when I did it (which might not be the cap, but I think they were around my level).

Speaking of the factions, The Black Legion/Outcasts were the only ones I never maxed out. Seemed like it would take a lot of time to get both of them maxed, but it is doable.

Both of them? So I didn’t have to pick one or the other when they both had question marks over their heads and I was told to choose one side?

Yeah you still have to pick sides if you want the quests, which will give you a faction boost/hit, but you can make up for it by killing monsters. I didn’t do it, but there is a achievement for maxing out every faction. I was actively trying to get it but burned out playing Ultimate with my crappy build.

This also happened to me. I adapted by doing two things:

  1. Alt-Tab out. Your desktop and all the other apps still work fine. They do a great job with their Alt-Tab behavior. And when you switch back, the game is still paused for you.

  2. I stopped watching TV shows and spent less time with my wife. This gave me more time to get to the next rift gate. :P

Part of that is knowing where they are. Once you know that, you can beeline if you need to, making most of them not too bad.

I went back to my Sorceress tonight and did this. Respec’d all the points away from the aura that enhances fire damage and put it in Devestation instead. I got it up to 12 out of a possible 16. Very impressive.

What I really need is a way to survive though. With all these meteors coming out of the sky, it’s even harder to tell when someone sneaks in and touches me, which almost kills me every time. The screen just gets so busy I have a tough time telling that I’m in trouble until I’m actually in trouble and almost dead.

Even at the harder levels, running through old levels isn’t too difficult. Outside of a rare boss/hero character in the middle of a map or finding a nemesis, you can pretty much run through and they will only follow so far.

I am replaying TQ now, and they really should have put break points in GD as frequently as they did in TQ. It’s nice knowing you only have to go so far for a good save point.

It’s killing me that I can’t play this game for long periods anymore without my PC shutting down and rebooting. I tried playing Civ V, I tried playing DOOM, I tried playing Path of Exile. But I can’t get my head into those games, I just keep thinking about Grim Dawn constantly. No other game makes my PC shut down, but it’s the only one I want to play right now, damn it.

Out of the blue Grim Dawn started crashing on me a couple of weeks ago. Mystified I kept trying different things until I noticed people always blamed overclocking your video card. I completely forgot I had OC’d mine to a minor degree but nothing else crashed. I reset it back to factory and boom, no more crashes. I had played 100+ hours with it overclocked with no crash so it was odd when it just started doing so.

I only bring this up because I read a couple of reports of people having to underclock their GPU to run Grim Dawn without crashing randomly. Worth trying I guess, though that could still put the issue at the feet of the PSU or the GPU.

Hot damn @Gendal, that worked. I underclocked my video card. Instead of the default for my video card I limited it to -5% power limit, and instead of 1000 Mhz max core clock, I made it 900 Mhz max, and instead of 1300 Mhz Memory Clock, I made it 1200 Mhz. And then I played for about an hour with no problems. There were a few instances of the game skipping frames during intense combat sequences, but I’m fine with that. At least it didn’t shut down my computer again yet.

So the root of the problem is probably the PSU, I’m guessing. But as long as this method keeps working, I’m happy to keep using it.

Checked your fans/filters and such to make sure it isn’t a cooling issue?

Awesome. Something about Grim Dawn stresses video cards.

It’s likely not a cooling issue. When it fails, it’s usually around 62 C. It’s way warmer than that when I’m running stress tests and whatnot, and those don’t make it fail.

I have grown to love their crafting system in this game. In order to craft the Juggernaut talisman, I need to first craft several other things. And those things need other ingredients to be crafted. And some of those need ingredients that need to be crafted. And in some cases, I just need to purchase the recipe for one of the ingredients first, but in order to buy the recipe, I need to first have a certain standing with that faction. And in order to have that standing with that faction, I need to kill certain enemies and do bounties for them. So yeah, I love that the crafting kind of ties it all together.

One thing I’m still leary of is their damned complexity. I think I counted 19 things you can be resistant to. On the front page of your stats they only show you 10 things you can be resistant to, but I kept coming across various items that raise resistances not listed in those 10. For that you have to go to the second page and third page of your stats, which then list a lot of other things, including those other resistances. So yeah, it’s tough to know what to prioritize in your equipment sometimes when there’s so damned many things to keep track of. So I just ignore most of it except for elemental and poison resistances, which serves me pretty well in normal difficulty. Until I got to Act 3/4 when Aether resistance suddenly became huge. The red blood resistance would be nice too, if I knew what that was called.

i don’t know, other ARPG keep it fairly simple compared to Titan’s Quest and Grim Dawn when it comes to types of enemies and types of damage, and I think are better for it. But I’m just enjoying Grim Dawn so much, it’s hard to get too mad at them for their overly complex systems.

There are flat-out too many damage and resistance types. It makes the whole system (and gearing properly) more cumbersome than it needs to be. Having said that, they don’t become a big deal until the later difficulty levels (though can certainly help with bosses if needed) and it isn’t as bad as it looks. The approach I usually took is to use skills, gear, and crafting to cover the major bases with one big gap, then cover the gap with augments. I just found it easier that way.

I have to say, playing TQ now, the fewer resistances to worry about is a pleasant change after GD. Except finding gear at all for some of them seems to be impossible early in the game.