Grim Dawn Alpha starts tomorrow

Level 85, now time to get my rear handed over by Nemesis monsters (2 factions currently at Nemesis level, Chthonian and Aetherials, Undead at less than 2000, Kymon's and Darius miles away).

A tip for the ultimate difficulty: you REALLY need those resists. The DoT's hurt like HELL. Thankfully the Blood of Dreeg Passive give me massive poison resist (went form -8% to 80% lol), but I might have problems with Bleed (only 26%, after Ultimate's -50% penalty). My other DoT resists are at least 60%.

Now to look up end game gear grinds...
 
From what ive read the gear drop rng is completely random. I'm surprised they went that way instead of loot tables. I'd have preferred being able to focus the end game grind for a specific set. Oh well, hopefully that means the drop rates aren't as silly as D2.
 
It's the same system as TQ: you just farm specific areas/monsters and pray to the RNG Gods.
 
I went ahead and grabbed this tonight. Didn't feel like going out drinking :D

I will say, I did not expect much going into this. I mean shit, Diablo 1 was the first video game I ever bought.

I'm up to level 15 as an Occultist so far and am really enjoying the game. I just hit 15 though and got to what felt like a new town and got a bit overwhelmed with everything though. Gonna take a break for day 1.
 
chockomonkey said:
From what ive read the gear drop rng is completely random. I'm surprised they went that way instead of loot tables. I'd have preferred being able to focus the end game grind for a specific set. Oh well, hopefully that means the drop rates aren't as silly as D2.
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I'm on my second lvl 85, and the only real complaint I have is that gearing is a bitch. It is absolutely, completely random except for monster infrequents. Been very tough to gear my characters as it seems like everything that drops is for a different build. I'm still wearing gear from A3 normal in A3 ultimate, that's how hard it been for me to find upgrades. I have a ton of epics and a decent number of legendaries (had to get a stash tool to store it all), but maybe one piece in a hundred is for my build. Seems like a lot of people have to turn to trading (or more nefarious means) to get their gear. I've still been able to clear A3 Ult without resorting to trading, but as far as beating the raid type bosses (avatar of mogdrogen, bastion of chaos, some nemesis bosses, etc) or really maximizing my build potential, it's been very trying. Steps of Torment, Bastion of Chaos, and the Cronley's hideout through to the Hive Queens nest (this one especially) are your best farming routes. Fabius can only spawn in Cronley's hideout, so he's the easiest nemesis to find (and arguably the most difficult...I can't even make a dent in him, but I'm a caster), and there are a ton of heroes/elites between Cronley's and the hive, plus dynamite that you'll need for treasure trove farming. Don't forget about the legendary blacksmith in tyrants hold (elite/ultimate only), he'll craft random legendaries for you in exchange for rare mats. Farming for a specific piece of gear is still an exercise in futiliy though, and boss farming is akin to D3 (pointless). It's a fantastic arpg, best since D2 IMO, I just wish the loot tables were a bit different and that it had a better end game (like maps in PoE, or the D3 ripoff is said maps). I'm hoping they'll add something when the first expansion arrives.
 
Yeah, finding the correct legendary can be rather taxing. I was pretty excited when the BIS off hand (Skull of Gul'amash) dropped on my way to Fort Ikon on ultimate.

I haven't been back to Cronley's hideout, been just progressing through the acts, I am nearly at Fort Ikon, I must say, either my class has some OP thing going on (I am using Vitality Caster - Shaman/Occulitist) and I am running into surprisingly little trouble, even when I am being swarmed with 3 or 4 Stars.

Nemesis is another level though. I just killed Salazar with gear I found on the way there and again, the boss is surprisingly easy.

Didn't try SoT yet lol...

Question: Apart from the outcast, do all legendary drop from all bosses, like it is in D3?
 
SoT on Ultimate difficulty I meant.

SoT being Steps of Torment, you know that first door that requires the Skeleton Key to pass? (There is one in Bastion of Chaos as well).
 
Alright. Up to lvl 26 now. There is just SOO many different stats going on.... I can't even begin to figure out a long term build plan yet. All my damage is basically coming off a measley firebolt add-on to my weapon which I tacked on the Devotion Falcon that does AoE.

I dunno how anyone would even begin using more than one class lmao.
 
That's partly why I played several characters only briefly to learn about the game. My vitality caster is actually my 6th char or so, and the first char to go beyond level 40. My soldier was my previous best, but I abandoned him after I found that he could no longer deal with the monsters. Did some Pure shaman as well, but it eventually became either AoE or survivability, and I was really not fond of the latter, since it massively gimped my kill speed.

Once I was satisfied that I learned enough about the game mechanics, I went to Grim Dawn forums and picked one build, which I picked Ultimate Vitality caster (the choice was random really, I didn't appreciate how Occultist and Shaman synergise until I found that, short of doing really stupid thing, I was practically invincible due to the massive amount of healing from Wendigo Totem and Sigil of Consumption).

If you want to try multiclassing, I'd pick two which share the similar kind of damage (Ultimate Vitality caster, as the name suggest, share Vitality damage, as well as having some massive vitality resist debuffs) or use the other class for the passives (Battlemage for example uses a lot of soldier passives), but Occultist/Shaman combination isn't just Vitality damage, pet damage is also viable.
 
I went with Arcanist and Occultist.

My real question that makes me wonder if I completely f'ed up my build.....

So, like I said earlier. My main damage is coming from the Firebolt(which is attached to the Falcon 15% proc passive Devotion) that is a smoldering ember perk on my weapon. There are also 2 other passive attacks that can proc during my attack from other items.

I am not using my sword to melee combat AT ALL.

So, to my question. I am dumping points into Chaos damage/Bleeding/and Burn which synergizes with my skills and the passive procs. Because all my attacks are beginning with the smoldering ember Firebolt am I getting all the build bonus'es ?

I am not sure if what I just said above makes sense or not. Hard to explain. I am noticing my damage going up over time using the same Firebolt as a baseline attack though. At lvl 30 everything still dies fairly easily. I did my first Skeleton Key dungeon and got completely raped by the final boss who was like lvl 37 or 39.
 
aeonrevolution said:
I went with Arcanist and Occultist.

My real question that makes me wonder if I completely f'ed up my build.....

So, like I said earlier. My main damage is coming from the Firebolt(which is attached to the Falcon 15% proc passive Devotion) that is a smoldering ember perk on my weapon. There are also 2 other passive attacks that can proc during my attack from other items.

I am not using my sword to melee combat AT ALL.

So, to my question. I am dumping points into Chaos damage/Bleeding/and Burn which synergizes with my skills and the passive procs. Because all my attacks are beginning with the smoldering ember Firebolt am I getting all the build bonus'es ?

I am not sure if what I just said above makes sense or not. Hard to explain. I am noticing my damage going up over time using the same Firebolt as a baseline attack though. At lvl 30 everything still dies fairly easily. I did my first Skeleton Key dungeon and got completely raped by the final boss who was like lvl 37 or 39.
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As a Warlock (that's what your build is called), you probably shouldn't ever be using your sword. Your attacks should be overwhelmingly skill based unless you're doing some kind of niche melee build I don't know about (totally possible, I don't even pretend to know every build). You should probably be carrying a wand/scepter with a caster off hand. I don't have much experience with Archainst yet, but my pyromancer uses the demolition and occultist trees. Personally, I'm not crazy about the Occultist tree as a primary, but it has a lot of buffs and debuffs that are really helpful. Solaels witchfire is a nice one, curse of frailty is a wicked debuff, blood of dreeg is really good for extra healing. I didn't really like sigil of consumption, the AI will avoid it or move off of it as soon as you cast it, so it can be hard to use. I didn't level it up past lvl 5 though, s it may get better at higher levels. The hellhound is pretty helpful at blocking enemies or tripping up the AI if you're a caster. The damage sucks unless you really are invested in being a summoner, but I trip up bosses with that dog all the time. The AI will lock onto you as the target, but the dog will block their way, allowing you to just wail on them. Cheesy, but effective for some of the more difficult fights. The archainst tree has a ton of offensive skills, that's where I personally would be looking for my main attack skills.

As for your question, yes, any passives/aura buffs you have will apply to any damage you do unless specifically stated otherwise (eg, must have a two handed melee weapon/shield/ranged etc equipped). I think that's what you were asking.

chenw, yes, any gear can drop from any monster aside from a few exceptions like the sword that drops as part of the super secret, ultimate difficulty only quest *wink*, monster infrequents and nemesis items (which I'm not sure if those even have legendary variants..I think so...). Some legendaries can only be crafted via blueprint drops (essentially all the top tier legendary helms and of course, relics). Otherwise, everything else in the loot table can be dropped by any enemy, depending on their level.
 
It's not too hard to F up a character, but it's not too easy either.

Stat points are totally non-refundable (assuming you don't use trainers), and so are mastery points, but everything else (skills and Devotion) are refundable. So if you didn't go too nuts with Stat points or Mastery, you might still be OK.

Some builds require maxed out masteries for both of your dual classes.

My experience with Sigil of consumption is a little different. Even with say caster bosses, I put a Curse of Fraility on them, which slows their movement (I didn't max the base curse, only about 4 points in), and have +6 Sigil on top of maxed Sigil. Sigil increases its radius the higher skill you go, so basically you reach a point where if the boss tries to move away, by the time they move out of your initial Sigil, your Sigil is off cooldown again and ready to be plomped at their feet. This doesn't even take proc based Sigil of Consumption casts from my items (I currently have 2 SoC procs). And I also found that 'hugging' the boss makes them less prone to move (I generally hug the boss if he doesn't have any sort of ouchy type melee attacks, as the range of Wendigo totem is rather limited). generally, the only time that I can't get Sigil of Consumption under my enemies feet, is because I have to move away from the said enemy, not the other way round. Lastly, if the enemy does move out of my Sigil, nothing a well placed Doom Bolt can't solve :p
 
I'm finally getting to the point where I'm familiar enough with all the stats that selling full bags doesn't take an hour any longer (phew!).

Hit 35 last night and purchased a green tank chest and green attack/casting speed gloves. Greatly helped my survivability and damage output. I'm wrecking shit again woo!

I'm still really enjoying my chosen build which is basically Cadence modified for 50% elemental damage and the sky shards. Then i use frost bolt, slam, diplomacy, and earthquake all from items!

I really like being able to get some good moves from items.. cause otherwise i'd feel like i have nowhere near enough talent points.
 
I think that is what is taking me awhile to get used to. I'm used to Diablo 3 where all your powerful attacks come from skill points(well, you know what I mean). In Grim Dawn your best attack might just be a random skill granted from an item.
 
aeonrevolution said:
I think that is what is taking me awhile to get used to. I'm used to Diablo 3 where all your powerful attacks come from skill points(well, you know what I mean). In Grim Dawn your best attack might just be a random skill granted from an item.
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Item granted skills certainly plays a role in GD, even the loading screen tips says that some builds even depend on the item granted skill.

I just haven't come across one yet :p, my build doesn't have one. The BIS items for my build are either resist buffs (like Void Ward) or procs (like my 2 other sources of Sigil).
 
Finally maxed out my Arcanist tree last night. The addition of Devastation and Start Pact is just brutal. Doing so much damage now, all happening in like 2 levels.

Now with Devastation, I can drop my Earthquake boots and get some better defense there.
 
chenw said:
How do you find your survivability as a Arcanist?
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Well its really good right now since I just upgraded a couple items, so my chest, legs, and helm are all really good. I gained about 1000 hp from these three pieces and tons of armor to boot. The helm also had an aoe stun and confuse ability so with that and frost nova survivability is quite good. Also running 5 points in the defensive shield move for 10% damage absorb and my resists are decent.. 50-80 on most, a couple like vitality and chaos are in the teens.

But this is still my first ever pass on veteran difficulty. I'm assuming in the next difficulty I will likely have to switch to a shield if I want to continue using cadence as my sustained dps.
 
Question: On shields i see that it has a % chance to block X damage... yet when an enemy minion blocks me, it seems to negate all damage. Is this correct?
 
Finished the game on Ultimate difficulty, so far nothing majorly difficult with the game, with exception of Nemesis monsters. I met 3 different ones (Aetherial, Chthonic and Undead) in 5 meetings, won in 2 of those meetings.

With the Nemesis monsters, again, resist is the key to survival. I am currently running on close to max resist (77%+) in 8 damage types, and I am still taking significant damage from Nemesis boss's. With the undead boss, I found Hoarfrost Ointment to be essential (the one that prevents you from being frozen).

In comparison, the Final boss (Alkamos, Lord Executioner) in Steps of torment was way easier than the Nemesis monster (Moosilauk3, the Chillwind) that came before it. I didn't nearly move as much, probably not at all.

Haven't tried Bastion of Chaos dungeon yet, will do that shortly.

I did however, get my rear handed to me on a silver platter with dressing in one of the more obscure bosses, in an effort to avoid spoilers, I hide these behind spoiler tags:

The Dev's actually had the guts to name a boss phase "The final form", then names the NEXT phase "The Actually Final form". Barely managed the final form, the actually final form gave me the T's up.

Oh, and did I mention he is also skilled in cloning?

Not much to do now except to complete the Hidden Path quest on all 3 difficulties, and then gear farming time.

Also, I hate the dev that thought it was a good idea to need Ectoplasm for Skeleton key.
 
Amen to that.

But it has me wondering a few things.

Basically, as you may know, I run the Vitality based conjurer, which has a ridiculous amount of healing (3 different sources of Sigil of Consumption, a lot of Vitality based procs also leeches life, Devouring Swarm and Wendigo totem, not to mention the ridiculous amount of resist debuffs which dramatically increases the healing done by the aforementioned skills), and basically I have been living off that, to great effect, as some bosses would have easily killed me outright if my healing sources were down to only Wendigo Totem (it's the only type of healing that would work on monsters with 100% leech resistance). The boss I mentioned in the spoiler is one such monster, which promptly led to my rear handed back to me.

Beyond the healing, the conjurer possesses only continuous buffs that reduces damage taken (Possession for example, no pun intended), but has little actual damage migitation skills, none if we remove all of the devotion based skills.

Without being a tank, how would classes like Nightblade or Arcanist based even survive?
 
I'd love to know that as well. Ive seen very few life leech weapons , and haven't seen anything of the sort in either soldier or arcanist trees
 
I wonder if the loots scales to the current level you are don't think I'll get it without any real story mode.
 
For less than $5, I'm in for sure.

EDIT: Just purchased. I mean, it's $4.24. Come on....

The new patch looks pretty legit as well. I'll try and hop on tonight and see what's up.
 
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For five bucks it seems like a no brainer for me. For some reason I like this style mode from then on out rather than constantly replaying the story mode.
 
Holy cow the damage buff my spec got with this patch O_O

Cadence went from 2k to 3k, shard gained about 800 to the top and bottom.

I like the red X they have now on gear i'm unable to currently wear; nice ui improvement.
 
Looks like my vitality caster will feel right at home with this DLC (the more trash there are around me, the less likely I am to die, ironically).

Pity it clashes directly with D3 season 7 though
 
D3 is such a laggy game for me that I gave up on it again even though it is quite fun nowadays. Can't have fun running in place with the world paused around you, then everything moves and "You Die" pops up.
 
I have a different experience with it (1440p on a 970) and it's mostly a smooth ride. The only problem is that i can't have chrome or a movie open these days, or it will stutter often.

I had changed a few settings since, so will try again.
 
cageymaru said:
D3 is such a laggy game for me that I gave up on it again even though it is quite fun nowadays. Can't have fun running in place with the world paused around you, then everything moves and "You Die" pops up.
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Playing in Borderless Window mode fixed all that for me.

Runs like butter with everything maxed at 1080p.
 
I meant actual internet latency causing dropped packets and freezing D3; not my PC freezing up. :)
 
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