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

Definitely a welcome improvement!

Have they ever fixed the problem with binding a movement key? (if anyone else does that). It used to be all kinds of wonky, as it was highly variable when it did and didn’t work, and how it interacted with casting. I stopped playing the game because of it, as using mouse for movement is repetitive stress territory for me.

I’m definitely looking forward to better controller support. Grim Dawn is my favorite ARPG despite having to use the mouse, and I gotta tell you, I just hate click click clicking the mouse all the time in any game, but you do it SO MUCH in an ARPG. Being able to play Grim Dawn with a controller would be a dream come true.

Fortunately for my carpal tunnel issues, I find I can mostly play ARPGs with a combination of holding down the mouse button and key-presses on the other hand. I can’t imagine playing such a game with a controller!

It’s why I always bind a force move key in games like this. I actually give up a slot in POE to do it, as they don’t have a direct hotkey for it. Holding down a key is one thing, but holding down a key while you are also moving that same hand around all the time is a recipe for serious injury.

I also use Autohotkey to activate multiple skills in a row with one key press. Another thing I found is that there’s a Loot key binding, unbound by default, which will pick up nearby loot. It is still one object at a time, but tapping the space bar repeatedly with the thumb is easier for me than clicking.

I am going to incorporate this, thanks for the heads up!

The expansion area is starting to become a bit of a slog because I am not sure what I am supposed to be doing. My only active quests are to Find Barrowholm and find something for an undead guy in a dungeon (who I have no idea how to find again). The maps are huge and I think I have found 3 or 4 things now that I haven’t been able to activate. I don’t know if I need faction, to do a quest first, or what. Which wouldn’t be a big deal, but since the map doesn’t show them, I don’t know how I am supposed to find them again, especially since the maps are huge. Really need a better quest log and map.

I haven’t reached the expansion area yet. But I have reached Fort Icon (yesterday). Today I’ve been doing bounties for Death’s Vigil in order to get enough reputation (5000) so that I can get the next level of their quest chain.

In the expansion city area, it IS confusing. I finally made it to the final boss, who is handing me my ass constantly; I can’t get him below 1/2 no matter how hard I try, so I think I need to level more (I’m about 62 or so). I really hate the navigation there.

I don’t love the expansion zones at all, so far. Maybe they’ll get better but I’ve most been busy with new toons in the new classes.

The swamp and the ruined city are, shall we say, somewhat uninspired, at least in my view. The questlines are ok, but there’s way too much annoyance and not enough actual fun. Organic poison-plant turrets? Ugh. Aethereal turret things? Ugh. Swirling balls of aether damage? Ugh. Ugly-ass ruins with obscure pathways that are hard to find? Ugh.

Still, I enjoy it overall.

This is exactly what I’m doing now. I don’t find it a slog, yet, mainly because I clear maps anyway so tend to find everything. I had to up my poison resistance early on in the area because of those plants bombing me, but mixing it up with bounties keeps me from getting annoyed too much. I’ve never gotten a faction to revered (because I end in the level 50s, in past games, disliking high-level play) but I’m going to go for it with my current game since I’m doing AoM anyway. Hoping all that variety keeps it from becoming “ugh.”

I always clear a map as well, but that is not really my problem right now. I have found 2 landmarks and one person, I can’t interact with yet and I don’t know why. Which is not really a problem in that I am sure I will figure it out, my problem is finding these places again. They show on the mini map when close, but since I tend to mostly play on weekends, how am I going to find these place again a week from now without going over the whole map again? While I am enjoying the game, I really don’t feel like backtracking and fighting all these plants again.

Faction is much easier to get to revered if you finish the game and start over on elite. My first character, who wasn’t good enough to make it through Ultimate difficulty, got revered on most of the factions on elite. I also find elite a lot more fun, its the sweet spot for difficulty, you get better drops, and you get the nemesis enemies.

I got a lot of cleanup done today.

This has been a weird run for me. I got unlucky in a lot of ways.

  1. I never became “respected” by the Rovers, which always happens in previous runs, so I never got the quest to get the various items to unlock that one shrine.
  2. I never got any drops for Manticore Eyes, so I was never able to make the Rune I wanted that enhances my pets.
  3. I missed some of the quests by my faction.
  4. Once I did get the missing quests, I still had to do faction bounties in order to get Respected to the final quest.

So yeah, there’s other stuff I’m forgetting too, but basically yesterday and today, I got a lot of backtracking out of the way, finally. Now I’m ready to go deeper into the Necropolis to end the game. Of course, with the expansion this won’t really be the end of the game, which is cool, because the end always felt like a bit of an anticlimax to me.

Hopefully with Ashes of Monmoth they’ve actually got a cutscene ending, like they had a cutscene at the beginning of the game.

I stayed up way too late last night, finishing up the game. Well, the pre-expansion game. It was cool to see that the main game now has a cutscene ending in the style of the intro, which leads the player from the end of the main story to the beginning of the expansion. Before the expansion I used to find the ending so anti-climatic. There should always be some kind of payoff in an ARPG at the end. It doesn’t have to be a big elaborate production like in a Blizzard game, but there should be some kind of song and dance number on a budget, at least.

So I was pretty happy to see a cutscene there that actually explained what happened during the final boss fight.

Tonight I’ll finally start the expansion content.

Big patch just hit. I wonder what’s in it. I hope they didn’t nurf my skeletons, I’ve already been having a hell of a time trying to stay alive long enough for my skeletons to kill stuff. Running around is not a great strategy in this game. It’s too easy to get hit by everything.

Here’s the Necro changes, @Rock8man

Finally got Demolitionist unlocked, all my glorious skeleton warriors now have fire weapons!