Grim Dawn Alpha starts tomorrow

Glad to hear this game is finally getting the full attention of the [H] community!!

Enjoy fellas!
 
Sorry if it's already been mentioned, but is there any link/guide for semi beginners for some tips and good builds? I remember playing this about a year ago and just kind of lost interest.
 
chenw said:
You unlock the higher difficulties by completing the campaign of the lower difficulties, works pretty much the same way as in Diablo 2 and Diablo 3 Vanilla, where if you want to access Nightmare, you have complete normal, and if you want to access Hell, you have to complete Nightmare, etc.

Veteran is an exception, it's a slightly more difficult version of Normal where all oranged named 'Champions' spawn in pairs. This is only accessible in Normal.

Also, as side effect, you can actually complete quests in different ways between difficulties (such as choosing to help the Apprentice or the Master).

I am not actually sure how factions work in that regard though, but I plan on playing a secondary character for the two factions I pissed off.
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Ah, I was mainly responding to the part where you said "(Elite is the first I tried it on, didn't even bother on Normal/Veteran)." But I see now that you were talking specifically about "Cauldron of Souls" and not about the game in general.
 
This has been quite enjoyable so far, but i'm only about 4 hours in. I just found out last night that if you combine some of these fragments you find everwhere, some of them give you moves!

Are these something that people build around? or is it just for low levels?
 
You can add them to weapons and armor any time I don't know how the shrine thing works I only cleansed one of them and some stuff spawned out and gave me some loot.
Then a skill Tree pops up with extra abilities. I'm in the last area of the game not sure if I should finish it or wait for DLC...
 
chockomonkey said:
This has been quite enjoyable so far, but i'm only about 4 hours in. I just found out last night that if you combine some of these fragments you find everwhere, some of them give you moves!

Are these something that people build around? or is it just for low levels?
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There are higher level ones. Most of the time I use them to shore up my weak spots. Like poison resistance. Depending on the build you have the skills can be a nice addition.
Here is a list of them. I've used that site lot on the past.
 
chockomonkey said:
This has been quite enjoyable so far, but i'm only about 4 hours in. I just found out last night that if you combine some of these fragments you find everwhere, some of them give you moves!

Are these something that people build around? or is it just for low levels?
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Dreeg's Infinite Gaze skill you get from the Mark of Dreeg's component is def. a skill you can build around if you're going for a poison/acid build. I use it with my witch hunter and it shreads mobs pretty good, you just need to be surrounded for it to be effective. That with Evil Eye Bombs, Sigil and Blood of Dreeg for the adcth and regen makes a great combo.

Also there are skills like greater fireball ( I think it's called) that can be effective at higher levels.
 
finished the game finally I'm level 39 I know I can Grind till 50 to get good gear but I'm done. Final Boss was a hoot died about 12 times
 
Thanks guys. Holy cow are there a lot of them. One thing I was really surprised at seeing in this game is faction rewards at reputation levels. Interesting twist! Hopefully they aren't as grindy as, say, trying to get Exalted with Stormpike Guard =P
 
It can be grindy but I would say it is not WoW rep grind levels of bad. I've gotten about 200 hours in since release spread out between six characters. Haven't played in months but I will be back once they do an expansion.
 
Comixbooks said:
finished the game finally I'm level 39 I know I can Grind till 50 to get good gear but I'm done. Final Boss was a hoot died about 12 times
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You only finished Normal Difficulty.

There is Elite and Ultimate difficulty after that.
 
Comixbooks said:
You can add them to weapons and armor any time I don't know how the shrine thing works I only cleansed one of them and some stuff spawned out and gave me some loot.
Then a skill Tree pops up with extra abilities. I'm in the last area of the game not sure if I should finish it or wait for DLC...
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The shrine gives Devotion points, which is accessed via the Devotion tab in the Skills screen.

The first Devotion point would invariably have to go on at least one of the 5 devotion 'nodes' at the center disc. The central disc would give you certain affinities that unlock other constellations, and completion of constellations would further unlock higher constellations.

There is a trick that you can set your devotion points, and then refund the lower constellations and the higher constellations would still be active, which can then be used to spend on other more useful constellations.

Across all 3 difficulties, there are 50 shrines. I am just after act 3 in Elite and have 39, some will end up in Ultimate difficulty.

If you are asking about shrines that require specific weapon/armor components, you just have to carry the components it is asking, and once you have all of them, "accept" button will be available and the shrine will consume the items and give you the items and loot.

For example, if the Shrine requires you to have Scavenged plate and a Aether Shard, you need to have both in your inventory. Note, for weapon/armor components, it has to be 'complete', not partial. Meaning you need to combine 3 partial Scavenged Plates (monsters and stores drop partials) to get 1 full Scavenged plate.

At higher difficulties, the shrines will start asking for components that can only be made with the Blacksmith, and they often require some amount of reputation with various factions.
 
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chockomonkey said:
This has been quite enjoyable so far, but i'm only about 4 hours in. I just found out last night that if you combine some of these fragments you find everwhere, some of them give you moves!

Are these something that people build around? or is it just for low levels?
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I know that the components remain useful throughout the game (the dropped ones are often used to create the rarer ones), so it's best to start collecting early.
 
For those wondering about the shrine locations, here is the world map with all of them marked, for all difficulties. Made by yours truly! Iirc, there are 26 on veteran, like 17 in elite, and 10 in ultimate plus a hidden quest one. Something like that anyway. You can only collect 50 of them all together. It's best to get all of them in veteran that way you'll be off to a good start and you wont need that many more for the later difficulties.

meh, the file uploader kinda compressed the pic a bit, here is what it should look like. http://images.akamai.steamuserconte...osite-to=*,*|1991:2048&background-color=black
 

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So is everyone playing this in single player? How's the multiplayer community?

The amount of resists is insane! Do you guys have all these maxed out for the last difficulty?
 
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I have only played Single player, but that's purely due to preference, that and I doubt my location will do nice to any pings (Asia tend to have over 100ms ping connecting to US based servers, more if it is on the east coast).

I got some resists on some pieces, but only managed to max out 2 so far (fire and lightning), and out of the rest, poison seem to be the most damaging (I only manage 32% poison resist).

Granted, I am only level 69 (no jokes please) and still haven't reached Fort Ikon on Elite, so I am still ways off.
 
Started over with a Warden. Switched to Veteran. It's not that much harder, but the drops seem better. This is eating my time, just like WoW did. Taking a break to clean the garage. :p
 
Veteran difficulty's most important difference to normal is that the orange named bosses spawn in pairs, it's not too hard in the beginning, but I found they soon become quite annoying, especially once the general level of the area you are in is significantly higher than yours (IE even when trash mobs have red level text).

This is partly why I switched to Ultimate Vitality Caster, I was trying all sorts of classes until I came upon that one, and the healing from that thing is borderline stupid (Wendigo Totem, Sigil of Consumption and Locust Swarm all have life leech) only environment damage or DoTs can actually force me to use my constitution, most of the time I come out of any combat full health, but that is getting a little tricky as now I am getting hit more significantly harder towards the end of Act 3.

I think I will continue to play this character into ultimate difficulty. My second class is most likely going to be a Demo/Solider, to round off my 'other faction' and 'that dungeon faction'.
 
I finally settled on going battlemage last night. Put some points into soldier's cadence with the elemental damage modifier maxed at 50%. I thought it'd do more damage than it does considering all the elemental bonuses I have, but its probably cause I only have one point in cadence itself. I'll bet once I get that one pumped up it'll have a lot more physical damage to convert into elemental damages.

Really digging this game so far. Quite fun and addictive, though confusing at time when I'm trying to spec but have no idea how many of the games modifiers even work lol

This game always has me playing until I cant even keep my eyes open any longer haha, been awhile since I've played a game so engrossing.

edit:
Is there an up-to-date wiki for this game? the information that pops up in google seems to be out of date, for instance:

Discord (Skill)
 
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Nevermind, I completely misunderstood, didn't realise discord was changed
 
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Boom Warden down! Put a few more points into cadence and now its doing more damage than the ice spear move from the chilled steel components. My challenge is becoming survival.. Armor is a confusing stat in this game lol, for now I'm just trying to get more of it. Should also probably put more points into the immunity move for arcanists
 
Right, finished Elite, going into ultimate now, and my god poison hits like a sledgehammer...

Also, ran into my first ever Nemesis monster in Elite, got my rear royally handed over, and he wasn't even that many levels above me (72 vs 74).

Yep, resists definitely needs work. Also started to run a battlemage alt using Callidor's Tempest. easy to play, if not mana chewing.
 
So when a node in the skill tree has +15% elemental damage, in addition to other things, does this bonus apply only to the move to which the node is linked or is it a global damage buff?
 
Generally speaking, in the scenario you described, the passive node only boosts the skill it is attached to.

Exceptions apply, especially if it doesn't make sense. EG if the skill doesn't do any damage, then the passive generally buffs for all skills that use that kind of damage, provided that the criteria is met.
 
Too bad there isn't an "armory" where we can link gear. Got a perfect axe for my Warden the other night. Level 40, and at ~6200dps on vet.
 
Thanks, chewn. That does make sense and was kinda what i was thinking, but wanted to be certain.

Although this game does lack features like the armory and lacks some polish here and there (like having the same icon for both the buff duration and the skill recharge timer, which is annoying), I must say I haven't had this much fun with a game in a year, when I picked up Divinity: Original Sin last year. I had tried to play some other RPGs like the Witcher 3, Pillars of Eternity, Path of Exile (again)... and just couldn't find the right combination of fun gameplay and compelling world/story. Pillars, for instance, I was totally getting into the story and lore but I just couldn't dig the gameplay. Path of Exile is just so bloated with its grind, and for reasons I can't really put my finger on I could never give a shit about its story.

Anyway, this game has been so great. The world and enemies are unique enough to feel fresh but familiar enough that I don't feel lost. It's amazing to me that it's a) so cheap, b) so fun, and c) diablo 3 still is more popular. lol

Actually weighing all the stat options on gear with ability points and working out my spec has been an absolute pleasure. This is what an ARPG is supposed to be!
 
Actually my taste in ARPG in general have changed since my younger days.

Gone are the days where I would try new things out, and build new characters just for a couple of stat points.

In are my attitude that I want to build the perfectly statted from the start. That's why I don't have issues with D3's skill system, I can try stuff without penalties. I no longer have the time nor the patience to level up another entire character just to see if one passive would work or not.

Just like in real life, I am terrible at starting/learning things from scratch, and I usually end up with stuff that doesn't work, but give me a starting build, and I can work my way into the build and change it to suit my style.

Grim Dawn isn't ideal, since you can't refund mastery nor stat points (the latter made my Conjurer non-ideal, because I already put 18 points into Cunning, hopefully it is not crippling), but at least devotion and skill points are cheaply refundable.

This is why I also hate games where a respec costs a week full of grinding.
 
chenw said:
Actually my taste in ARPG in general have changed since my younger days.

Gone are the days where I would try new things out, and build new characters just for a couple of stat points.

In are my attitude that I want to build the perfectly statted from the start. That's why I don't have issues with D3's skill system, I can try stuff without penalties. I no longer have the time nor the patience to level up another entire character just to see if one passive would work or not.

Just like in real life, I am terrible at starting/learning things from scratch, and I usually end up with stuff that doesn't work, but give me a starting build, and I can work my way into the build and change it to suit my style.

Grim Dawn isn't ideal, since you can't refund mastery nor stat points (the latter made my Conjurer non-ideal, because I already put 18 points into Cunning, hopefully it is not crippling), but at least devotion and skill points are cheaply refundable.

This is why I also hate games where a respec costs a week full of grinding.
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As have mine! My taste in games it seems is always changing with time. I cannot believe how many times I'd restart a new character in D2 or WoW back in the day for messing something up. Guess it was just cause I had more time... but yes. I spent a couple points in spirit on my battlemage before i realized in order to hit people i really needed to be pumping cunning. So, I can completely sympathsize with you over wanting to not waste time in gaming any longer with restarting for the sake of a couple stat points. However, D3 just took it too far the other way where I never felt i was actually building a character. Grim dawn, for me, has been the perfect mix. Easy respeccing (it's still really really cheap and i've been able to try moves and out remove the points if i don't like it) and cool skill trees.
horrorshow said:
You can use this to reset mastery/stat points: Cheat Engine :: View topic - [v5.99] Grim.Dawn.v1.0.0.4.PLUS.104.Trainer
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Awesome!!!!!!!!!

And now with this, I can regain my two wasted stat points and regain my realization of the perfect character!
 
chenw said:
Much appreciated.

Used it, thinking about uninstalling it now, I want to use it as sparingly as possible. I don't even want to use it as a way to respec, let alone to cheat with lol.
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Yeah, I'm a bit of a purist myself.
 
How do you guys see your fps in this game to optimize graphics settings? I typically use rivatuner which came with afterburner, but I cannot get it to show up in this one game, for some reason.
 
I don't use fps meters, but one thing I have found is that the game stutters in the following:

1. Fort Ikon and various locations when shadow is turned on (the quality of the shadow doesn't matter, as long as it is ON).
2. When there is a LOT going on, as in an entire screen of monsters and you/your minion battling, lowering details here didn't seem to help much either, but I haven't tested it extensively, because it's hard to group a massive amount of monsters.

I am running a single 970 on 1440p, with otherwise maxed details, I don't see much stuttering except for the above two.
 
Thanks chenw. I definitely notice that the game lags more when I get a large group of mobs on the screen, which makes sense. I also have a dated PC i'm using for this game, but my 580 never gets maxed out, nor does my CPU. The most I ever see out of either is about 40-50% utilization. I'm going to dig deeper into this today and hopefully find some tweaks to better use the power I do have available.
 
^For solid 60fps set Lighting to the lowest in the vid options. My framerate used to fluctuate quite considerably until someone suggested lowering the lighting, now its constant 60fps, and you don't even notice a difference in quality. It's a known issue/fix.
 
For me, I'm at 1080p, 4xAA/16xAF, Fullscreen, Textures set to high, everything else to medium, with all additional boxes checked besides Depth of Field and Triple Buffering.

For some reason, triple buffering seems to increase stutter for me. *shrugs

Solid 60 fps at all times.

(it just isn't a very well optimized game.... but really I attribute my needing to lower settings due to my first gen i5)
 
Thanks guys. I posted on the Grim Dawn forums about monitoring FPS, and they let me know there's a built-in monitor in Steam lol I never knew that!

Anyway, turns out i was getting 20-30 fps.. no wonder it felt jittery. Sadly, with my old ass system, changing settings hasn't really been able to get much more.
 
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