Grim Dawn Anyone?

[MentalAcetylide]

I guess I've been doing somewhat ok in the game. Got repeatedly destroyed by some bosses post-lvl 35+ in Normal mode with a Nightblade + Occultist build, then made an elemental Inquisitor-Demolitionist build(lvl 77 now) that wrecks everything at range(but still need to be careful with bosses, and that god-thing in Barrowholm still destroys me). I then decided to do a mostly elemental/cold Nightblade + Arcanist build(lvl 72 at present), which seems to be working a lot better than the previous Nightblade build I tried. With much frustration, I managed to get the build into Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jMqkvN
When using toggled skill buffs, with Shadow Strike I do 43k-54k, Sacred Strike 27k-40k, and attack dps is around 17.5k. I also use Ring of Steel for groups of monsters, which does 14k-21k. This character seems to handle bosses better than my Inquisitor-Demolitionist. 1-2 Shadow Strikes + 1-2 Sacred Strikes and they're toast. I just need to kill that Mogdrogen guy iirc for that Riggs NPC in the Conclave of the Three in FG.

Anyone else here play Grim Dawn? I'm at the point now where I'm considering switching to Elite mode. The loot in this game is a nightmare to deal with when starting out. They really could've done a much better job with it.

 

[Frick]

Loot filters. Increase DPS plus the thing you need ATM.

Go for it. Resistances are your friend. Life steal is ace.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Loot filters. Increase DPS plus the thing you need ATM.

Go for it. Resistances are your friend. Life steal is ace.

Loot filters won't help with distinguishing the different types of greens though unless one is willing to memorize all of the prefixes, etc. It gave me a headache trying to plug in my equipment on Grimtools.
Yeah, life steal is nice when it works. I had my nightblade dual wielding a pair of lvl 45-ish weapons that converted % damage to health until I found something that gave me much higher dps at lvl 55.

When it comes to resistances, I have everything maxed at 80% except for Bleed @ 35%, Aether @ 74%, and Stun @ 15%. I can probably get those that are lacking much higher, but then my damage tanks, so I just have to keep farming. I have some nice elemental retaliation damage going on the character, too. It makes a big difference when you have a lot of trash coming at you.

 

[mechtech]

Played a long time ago. Think I only got 1 or 2 guys lvl 30-ish. Was looking at getting back to it and beating the dlcs.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Played a long time ago. Think I only got 1 or 2 guys lvl 30-ish. Was looking at getting back to it and beating the dlcs.

Its going to be painful starting out. When you lack high enough armor and/or resistances, some of the monsters will just a-few-shot you to death and have you trying to figure out what they're hitting you with since some of their debuffs don't stay up long enough to see what it is. Usually you can figure out what it is, but its not always clear.

 

[Vayra86]

Loot filters won't help with distinguishing the different types of greens though unless one is willing to memorize all of the prefixes, etc. It gave me a headache trying to plug in my equipment on Grimtools.
Yeah, life steal is nice when it works. I had my nightblade dual wielding a pair of lvl 45-ish weapons that converted % damage to health until I found something that gave me much higher dps at lvl 55.

When it comes to resistances, I have everything maxed at 80% except for Bleed @ 35%, Aether @ 74%, and Stun @ 15%. I can probably get those that are lacking much higher, but then my damage tanks, so I just have to keep farming. I have some nice elemental retaliation damage going on the character, too. It makes a big difference when you have a lot of trash coming at you.

Finish the story and all of the side quests with the story first, keep the expansion for later. You need to get the reputation maxed out on all non-expansion factions or almost all of them so you can get those sweet sweet +%resistance items you can just stack onto existing gear (and to buy the Reputation bonus items for other characters so you can use this advantage earlier in your future playthroughs). That's where you go to fill in the blanks in resistance for whatever setup you have. Stun resist is best boosted through this as well, on top of what you can get out of your Devotion points. You have to go to Ultimate to get sufficient reputation though, and that's also where you really start needing those maxed resistances. Prior, the focus should be clear speed and damage, survival is secondary because deaths aren't expensive just yet. Unless you play hardcore.

Additionally you can use items to boost whatever type of conversion you have going on, and the lifesteal one(s) are very valuable. Hollowed Fangs, if I remember right.

Have you tried a Nightblade with Amarasta's Blade Burst? Its mental and I see you're already converting to Cold and focusing elemental dmg. You might have better dmg output with it than Sacred Strike plus inherent AoE, also, you need Lethal Assault, its a buff on all skills, not just Blade Burst, and it adds absolute dmg numbers which is great. My best Nightblade combinations always have been Acid/Poison based, I have several and also one with Amarasta's BB, which is by far the strongest build I've ever used. I can share if you want NB/Occultist is great for this. NB/Oathbreaker is another really cool option.

Your current path doesn't seem optimal, unfortunately, because Nightblade has just cold synergy and none in fire or lightning, while Sacred Strike deals Elemental damage which is made up of 33% of each element. Also, it converts 100% of its physical damage, so there is no room for additional conversion to a specific element either (and I hope you know: you can only convert ONE time, so you cannot convert any elemental damage resulting from the initial conversion to something else!). Perhaps your idea could work, but then by swapping Sacred Strike with Cadence (which replaces your Arcanist choice) and focusing on WPS attacks on top, since NB and Soldier both have several great ones. Sacred Strike itself is a match made in heaven with Arcanist and Inquisitor, more so than NB.

Another aspect of Grim Dawn later in the game is resistance and defensive ability shredding. Are you stacking -% Resistance, -# Resistance, and Reduce Resistance on your skillset and devotions? -Defensive Ability is another great one to have to increase your crit rate by miles. This is also the main reason to pick a second class: passive or active buffs that shred resistances or increase your OA/DA and/or reduces that of the enemy. This is where the big damage is.

Loot filters won't help with distinguishing the different types of greens

I just pick them all up and sell them off, because honestly, you can use the money if you roll multiple characters, for reasons mentioned above (buying those items).

Here is the bigger Grim Dawn topic on TPU!

Grim Dawn ( Titan Quest \ Diablo fans )

If you're wishing for a TQ2, you should check out Grim Dawn, the spiritual successor to TQ being created by the lead designer from Iron Lore. Currently, they have a successful campaign on Kickstarter (http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/crateentertainment/grim-dawn) but there are only 6 days...

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[Veseleil]

Have been playing with a friend for maybe a month or two. We got bored mostly by need to collect and get rid of that insane amount of loot. Otherwise, it's a good game. Suitable maybe for people that have more time to spare though.

 

[Space Lynx]

I guess I've been doing somewhat ok in the game. Got repeatedly destroyed by some bosses post-lvl 35+ in Normal mode with a Nightblade + Occultist build, then made an elemental Inquisitor-Demolitionist build(lvl 77 now) that wrecks everything at range(but still need to be careful with bosses, and that god-thing in Barrowholm still destroys me). I then decided to do a mostly elemental/cold Nightblade + Arcanist build(lvl 72 at present), which seems to be working a lot better than the previous Nightblade build I tried. With much frustration, I managed to get the build into Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jMqkvN
When using toggled skill buffs, with Shadow Strike I do 43k-54k, Sacred Strike 27k-40k, and attack dps is around 17.5k. I also use Ring of Steel for groups of monsters, which does 14k-21k. This character seems to handle bosses better than my Inquisitor-Demolitionist. 1-2 Shadow Strikes + 1-2 Sacred Strikes and they're toast. I just need to kill that Mogdrogen guy iirc for that Riggs NPC in the Conclave of the Three in FG.

Anyone else here play Grim Dawn? I'm at the point now where I'm considering switching to Elite mode. The loot in this game is a nightmare to deal with when starting out. They really could've done a much better job with it.

Are you able to change classes / respect, so did you go from level 35 to 77, or did you make a whole new character and go to 77? I am curious if this game offers changing classes midway.

 

[MentalAcetylide]

Are you able to change classes / respect, so did you go from level 35 to 77, or did you make a whole new character and go to 77? I am curious if this game offers changing classes midway.

Unfortunately no, I made a whole new character. Once you pick a class and exit out of the skills window, you're stuck with it. The same thing for when you pick a second class. The only things that you're able to change or reset at any time during the game are skills, devotions, and stats(Physique, Cunning, Spirit), assuming you have the necessary potions or resources. However, the stats can only be changed by completely resetting them with a potion. So if you screw up a build like I did by mixing the wrong classes, you have to start a new character from scratch.
I'm sure there's probably a way to level a character to 50, clone it & save it with a different character name so you can experiment mixing other classes with that particular class without having to start from the beginning every time. I mean some players already swap out inventories by switching certain files so that they have unlimited storage space, so I don't see why they wouldn't be able to do this with characters.

 

[mechtech]

Ya

Have been playing with a friend for maybe a month or two. We got bored mostly by need to collect and get rid of that insane amount of loot. Otherwise, it's a good game. Suitable maybe for people that have more time to spare though.

I had the same issue with that and many other games like Borderlands 2. Sink a ton of time and no where near max level with only one character.

they need to make games so that after 40 hours you’re max level and beaten the game. Now add in side quests and dlcs and multiple characters to add to that. Free time is rare and precious. If I read that it takes longer than that to beat the game and max out 1 character I don’t even bother buying it anymore.

 

[Vayra86]

Are you able to change classes / respect, so did you go from level 35 to 77, or did you make a whole new character and go to 77? I am curious if this game offers changing classes midway.

The charm of the game is that it constantly invites you to re-roll completely. You'll want many characters. At least that's how it works for me. They put respec options in the perfect place imho. And even within the same class you can respec quite a lot, even for the same build its a really welcome thing, because items give you +skill affixes so you can make room to boost other stuff to a higher level. And you can overlevel skills too, which is huge for some of them.

 

[arni-gx]

i am very confused when playing this game, how to solve some side quest, main quest, etc, only hack and slash throught all games, and its stuck now.....

 

[Space Lynx]

i am very confused when playing this game, how to solve some side quest, main quest, etc, only hack and slash throught all games, and its stuck now.....

i think the entire ARPG genre is basically hack n slash and gear up and enjoy story. so if you don't like this game you prob won't like even Diablo 3/4, etc

 

[arni-gx]

i think the entire ARPG genre is basically hack n slash and gear up and enjoy story. so if you don't like this game you prob won't like even Diablo 3/4, etc

well, not exactly, i am very much enjoy all ARPG like diablo series, but this time, its very confusing how this game to solving the quest, there is no direction at all, the map its confusing too....

 

[Space Lynx]

well, not exactly, i am very much enjoy all ARPG like diablo series, but this time, its very confusing how this game to solving the quest, there is no direction at all, the map its confusing too....

i understand, i got lost a few times too in this game, its a bit annoying at times

 

[MentalAcetylide]

The charm of the game is that it constantly invites you to re-roll completely. You'll want many characters. At least that's how it works for me. They put respec options in the perfect place imho. And even within the same class you can respec quite a lot, even for the same build its a really welcome thing, because items give you +skill affixes so you can make room to boost other stuff to a higher level. And you can overlevel skills too, which is huge for some of them.

I recently had a lvl 70-ish two-handed gun toting Pyromancer that finally achieved champion of the crucible and got through the 35th shard on normal. It seems like Elemental builds suck and I'm better off just mainly focusing on one damage type and an appropriate debuff to complement it. I have a pistol dual-wielding Purifier that is Elemental and the dps is disappointing(around 35k) vs the Pyromancer(almost 75k). The Purifier is good with crowd control, but can only get through the 110th wave in Crucible & 25-27th shard in SR. When I rerolled a Witchhunter and focused on Acid/Poison, taking down bosses is easy so long as I stick & move and don't try to face-tank. Surprisingly the DPS is only around 17k, but the poison DoT seems to destroy everything and is not taken into account when calculating the DPS.
I also got a Warlord to 71 and while its nice being able to face-tank, I prefer being able to take stuff down quicker. I'm thinking of doing a bleed Warder or Trickster.

I still haven't gone into Elite mode with any of my characters yet. Some of the things I FINALLY did right with my pyromancer is I farmed dynamite & the factions a lot more before moving on with the quests. Originally I was just completing quests and not doing much else all the way through the game and was ending up with only "friendly" or "respected" for a couple of the factions(Devil's Crossing, Barrowholm, etc. I also used the inventor to break down duplicate epic/legendary equipment giving me more rare components(tainted brain, ancient heart, etc.) instead of just selling it.

 

[Vayra86]

That's it right there, nice. And yeah, I did run Elemental damage builds twice and both times found it lacking especially at the end of it. Elemental is just a whole lot harder to scale because they're 3 damage types underneath; lots of really cool buffs only touch on one of them and that's effectively 2/3rd of its potential gone. Damage Conversion doesn't quite work well either. I ran Elemental damage with an Inquisitor Arcanist build running off Word of Pain primarily. It did really clear maps so fast, esp with those two Elemental oriented devotion triggers on top, Arcane Bomb or sth and another one at the bottom of the tree.

After posting the below I noticed I didn't activate buffs.... but 36k unbuffed Word of Pain, yeah... and that's with +1800% on each element...

i am very confused when playing this game, how to solve some side quest, main quest, etc, only hack and slash throught all games, and its stuck now.....

Use the World Map and the wiki to get you past some quests if you get lost. The best tool to use is the "Checklist". There is guidance, but its not a constant arrow pointing you in the right direction, correct. Just talk to everyone every time and you can get past everything, plus discover every corner of the map to find said everyone. Some quests also involve choices, like the Trader you can save in act 2 if you give him benefit of the doubt.

Grim Dawn Tools

A collection of tools for action role-playing game Grim Dawn

www.grimtools.com