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Grim Dawn |OT| It's always grimmest at dawn.

Played the DLC for a half hour or so, and I'm seeing the same problem as I did in the main game. The loot just sucks. There's tons of it but it's all useless. I'm not even at the level cap and I just never get upgrades, ever. From 1-51 I probably changed weapons 4 times? Maybe? It's weird. The loot grind doesn't feel rewarding so I never got the urge to go to the level cap, along with the fact that I have to grind out the same areas over and over to level because I never get good gear to challenge harder enemies. The crucible seems fun but I did 30 waves and didn't get anything. At all. That's a fairly early cash-out, but out of 5 chests you'd think I'd get something, anything.
 

Miletius

Member
Played the DLC for a half hour or so, and I'm seeing the same problem as I did in the main game. The loot just sucks. There's tons of it but it's all useless. I'm not even at the level cap and I just never get upgrades, ever. From 1-51 I probably changed weapons 4 times? Maybe? It's weird. The loot grind doesn't feel rewarding so I never got the urge to go to the level cap, along with the fact that I have to grind out the same areas over and over to level because I never get good gear to challenge harder enemies. The crucible seems fun but I did 30 waves and didn't get anything. At all. That's a fairly early cash-out, but out of 5 chests you'd think I'd get something, anything.

Four times seems pretty low for that range. Generally though, the game is pretty old school in it's sensibilites, which means that, as you get higher, power increases will get harder to come by. Some people adore that, some people don't.

FWIW, I found something to do all the way to around level 80 in the game (played through veteran + nightmare). I enjoyed it, but I won't be going back. The game is great, but it's not as replayable to me as DII or Titan's Quest.
 
Played the DLC for a half hour or so, and I'm seeing the same problem as I did in the main game. The loot just sucks. There's tons of it but it's all useless. I'm not even at the level cap and I just never get upgrades, ever. From 1-51 I probably changed weapons 4 times? Maybe? It's weird. The loot grind doesn't feel rewarding so I never got the urge to go to the level cap, along with the fact that I have to grind out the same areas over and over to level because I never get good gear to challenge harder enemies. The crucible seems fun but I did 30 waves and didn't get anything. At all. That's a fairly early cash-out, but out of 5 chests you'd think I'd get something, anything.

That's weird. While leveling I get so much loot that I'm often conflicted on choosing between several different pieces. The last 10-20 levels though I've already gotten an established build with gear in mind so it's just a journey to get the specific pieces.
 

Akai XIII

Member
Bought this a few days ago, played for 10 hours already. The random game freezes are a bit annoying.

Went for Soldier/Demolitionist.
 

Purkake4

Banned
Bought this a few days ago, played for 10 hours already. The random game freezes are a bit annoying.

Went for Soldier/Demolitionist.
I remember something about item generation causing random freezes back in the last pre 1.0 build, but I thought they fixed it.

You may want to try to turn down particle effects/debris in the options and see if that helps. Also check your graphics drivers.
 

Akai XIII

Member
I remember something about item generation causing random freezes back in the last pre 1.0 build, but I thought they fixed it.

You may want to try to turn down particle effects/debris in the options and see if that helps. Also check your graphics drivers.

I upgraded the drivers, didn't help. Entering full screen mode then exiting unfreezes it.
 

Robofish

Member
Anyone know if this game is coming to mac? Been waiting years for it

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?p=11405

RHIS (dev)

There definitely was one! The answer is that we need to concentrate on getting the game completed for Windows before we can even start looking into other platforms.

The main stumbling block is that there is no DirectX for mac.


There seem to be some solutions in this thread if you really want to play:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/219990/discussions/0/610573567804014217/
 

Robofish

Member
Bought this a few days ago, played for 10 hours already. The random game freezes are a bit annoying.

Went for Soldier/Demolitionist.

I had that too and installing it on an SSD(if you have one) did the trick for me.

Every time i picked up an item it would stutter to the point of freezing the whole screen. Very annoying.
 

Cracklox

Member
Was accidentally sick yesterday so spent a good amount of time in the Crucible. I like it, but on Aspirant at least, up until around wave 70 or 80 its a bit of a snooze. Starts to get interesting around there, and above wave 100 can start getting pretty tough. I wasn't actually able to complete the 150 with any of my toons. I think the best I did was 130ish.

Challenger on the other hand seemed to be about where my guys should be at the moment. Good level of challenge pretty much from the get go. I got one toon to 50 and cashed out cause it was getting pretty tough. Also lost another at wave 7 or something when I was taking it a bit too easy. Something tells me to even get to Gladiator I'm gunna need a bunch of gear upgrades, and then likely have to switch up to a more meta build to complete it. Not sure if i like the idea of that but we'll see what happens.

The loot, as always, seems a little all over the place. I can say I got more Manticore eyes to drop playing yesterday, than I did in the couple of weeks before that (though, I wasn't really farming for them). I had one run where I died in the 90s on Aspirant that gave 3 rare crafting mats and a purple, but then when I cashed out at 50 on Challenger I didn't get shit. Not even a blue. RNG gunna RNG I suppose.

I did read on the forums though that the quality (as opposed to number) of chests that spawn at the end are directly influenced by your score. Gotta keep them multipliers up. Not sure how they're graded between the various ranks of Heroic, Supreme, Valorious etc. The higher rank ones all look pretty similar too
 

Cracklox

Member
Is multiplayer good (with random people)?

That's not really a thing at the moment. It's more a single player offline game, with an added multiplayer option, but that's geared towards playing with people you know. In other words no matchmaking or lobbies right now.

I'd be totally down with teaming with rando's in the new survival dlc too. Not so much the campaign, but the dlc seems really well suited for the occasional pug
 

Nordicus

Member
It is interesting to (try and) synergize your builds in co-op. I'm demo/soldier while my friend is demo/occultist. I smack things in the face with Aoe strikes and fire buffs, while my friend shoot fire bullets from behind. Dunno how far we'll make it in hardcore though, sometimes we play pretty fast and loose :p

At least we both have bunch of blues stored up for second attempt
 

bati

Member
Is this game less of a grindfest than Path of Exile?

What do you mean? I'm an avid PoE player and I don't find it particularly grindy. In fact it's very easy to get a character to mapping level and get some nice gear through trading.

As for GD, I found it pretty boring overall. Honestly, I just don't see a point in single player or open-bnet style arpgs.
 

Robofish

Member
What do you mean? I'm an avid PoE player and I don't find it particularly grindy. In fact it's very easy to get a character to mapping level and get some nice gear through trading.

As for GD, I found it pretty boring overall. Honestly, I just don't see a point in single player or open-bnet style arpgs.

As a guy who played POE for over 2200hrs selffound. POE IS grindy.
You can make it to mapping sure but the really good items DON'T drop.
It's still a good game. I liked it very much.
 

mstevens

Member
I'm about to finish up my run of Titan Quest and I think it's time to finally give this game a shot. My first play through I'd like to make someone pretty overpowered while I get used to the game mechanics, before branching off and being more creative. Are there some fun, overpowered builds that don't rely on getting good loot drops?
 

Purkake4

Banned
Saw thread, remembered how disappointing the ending was. Left sad.
Considering that you are expected to redo the ending quite a few times in an arpg, I don't think it's a huge issue.

Unless you mean the boss fight, which is kind of bad, yes.
 

Nordicus

Member
Are there some fun, overpowered builds that don't rely on getting good loot drops?
Poison damage Witch Hunter (nightblade/occultist). Although my build when I played the game through Normal was fairly unoptimized, I dealt such huge damage to minions off-screen that I missed out on several bosses' gimmicks by killing them so fast.

Start with Occultist, pump points into Dreeg's Evil Eye while advancing the mastery, and at Occultist mastery level 10 you can get Focused Gaze, which turns that little spammable poison projectile into a group-melting cooldown nuke.

Here is one of the more current builds from Grim Dawn forums
 

Cracklox

Member
I'm about to finish up my run of Titan Quest and I think it's time to finally give this game a shot. My first play through I'd like to make someone pretty overpowered while I get used to the game mechanics, before branching off and being more creative. Are there some fun, overpowered builds that don't rely on getting good loot drops?

The aforementioned Posion Witch Hunter is good, but can be a little glass cannoney, which by the time you get to the second difficulty can be tough to manage when your just starting. I know because that was my first character. I ended up leaving her at the beginning of Elite for a long time before recently respeccing and now shes a nuke and in ulitmate. Getting your head around resists, where to get them from, and other important defensive stats can take some time.

For this reason I'd recommened anything involving Soldier. It sounds like it might be a bit boring but they really have everything you need (survivabilty, aoe, ultility etc) and are by far the tankiest class. If you mix that with something like Nightblade (for a Blademaster) or Shaman (for a Warder) you should have a pretty cruisy time through to Ultimate. Blademasters have had one or 2 nerfs recently, but thats right at the high end where it is cutting Nemeisis kill speeds from 10 sec to 15 and shit like that. There's much wailing and knashing of teeth going on over at the official forums, but its not something you'd notice until you really get into finetuning your character.
 

velociraptor

Junior Member
What do you mean? I'm an avid PoE player and I don't find it particularly grindy. In fact it's very easy to get a character to mapping level and get some nice gear through trading.

As for GD, I found it pretty boring overall. Honestly, I just don't see a point in single player or open-bnet style arpgs.

I think it's very grindy. Good gear is expensive and it takes ages to reach level 90. Also the fact you have to complete the game 3 times on each of the three difficulty settings for each character.

I played a helluva lot of PoE in the summer but I just feel burned out by it. My character is still weak despite all the hours I put in and I followed a damn guide, lol.
 

Jimrpg

Member
Man only 12 pages? This game seems criminally underplayed. Still there's 600,000 owners on Steam though, so that's pretty good.

I loved Titan Quest, and have been meaning to get into Grim Dawn, but I'm not done with D3:ROS yet.
 
Man only 12 pages? This game seems criminally underplayed. Still there's 600,000 owners on Steam though, so that's pretty good.

Had a long open beta period which made the release a whole lot less hype I feel. So there wasn't really much excitement behind the floodgates when it finally released. Still love the game though, just wish I could find more time to play these days.
 

Nordicus

Member
I loved Titan Quest, and have been meaning to get into Grim Dawn, but I'm not done with D3:ROS yet.
If you loved Titan Quest, you're in for a treat. In a lot of aspects Grim Dawn is a straight up better game.
Each character has to go through normal, cruel and merciless.

So 3 times per character.
Hmm, well if leveling up every possible character type is one of his grinding concerns, then we're looking at either 3 (every mastery used at least once) or 15 (every dual-class combination) different characters.
 

bati

Member
I think it's very grindy. Good gear is expensive and it takes ages to reach level 90. Also the fact you have to complete the game 3 times on each of the three difficulty settings for each character.

I played a helluva lot of PoE in the summer but I just feel burned out by it. My character is still weak despite all the hours I put in and I followed a damn guide, lol.

Give it another chance with a different character type (different layers of defenses, specifically). PoE is a very deep game and it takes a long time and first hand experience with different characters to really grasp the depth the game has. After a while you'll be able to make your own builds just by instinctively knowing where to path on the tree - and after that comes experimentation as you try out crazy synergies with many of the uniques in the game - when the game clicks like that it's like a drug, no other ARPG I've played offered anything even remotely like it, except maybe D2 back in the day, but I was too young to really appreciate it back then.

Re repeating the content over multiple difficulties - you're not meant to explore every zone, most experienced players just rush to quest objectives, a lot of them even skip the side quests that don't give quest rewards - if you do everything and play at an average pace then you're probably looking at ~15-20h to reach level 70 which is where you can start mapping (can be done sooner obviously, but a new tier of equipment unlocks at 70 which makes it a good break point).

As for getting to 90 - if you don't stop to pick up and identify every rare item then it doesn't take long at all if you chain maps with a good build. There are a lot of subtle things like that in PoE that might seem counter intuitive at first (like not picking up items) but once you try it and see that you make even more currency and XP/h that way it's eye opening.
 

Maledict

Member
My biggest problem with PoE is that it's effectively a single player game. Their engine completely breaks down whenever we play it as a group, no matter our specs or connection strengths. Huge fps drops, massive lag in game, and way too much crap on screen to be enjoyable from multiple players casting spells.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
PoE was great until late game. Then it become kinda frustrating, killing tons of shit for very little payoff.

D3 has it beat when it comes to time invested vs rewards.
 

Maledict

Member
PoE was great until late game. Then it become kinda frustrating, killing tons of shit for very little payoff.

D3 has it beat when it comes to time invested vs rewards.

Yeah, the system they have for unique drops was awful. I was doing tier 5 maps and getting level 19 uniques. Never once had a unique drop that I could actually use.
 

bati

Member
My biggest problem with PoE is that it's effectively a single player game. Their engine completely breaks down whenever we play it as a group, no matter our specs or connection strengths. Huge fps drops, massive lag in game, and way too much crap on screen to be enjoyable from multiple players casting spells.

True, but this is supposed to change with the new expansion - one of the major focus points is engine optimization.

PoE was great until late game. Then it become kinda frustrating, killing tons of shit for very little payoff.

D3 has it beat when it comes to time invested vs rewards.

Also true. PoE has RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG. It's RNGception. And while this does mean that risk/reward ratio is on the low side it also allows for item drops that sell for hundreds or thousands of dollars - it's pretty much like D2 in that regard.

I have to point out though that the law of average still applies here - people can consistently accrue lots of currency in temp leagues simply by playing the game, not the market - and the more you know about the game the easier this process is (like knowing where specific Divination cards drop, for example, or which temp league mechanics are the most profitable, what are the current meta builds, etc). Most of the people who end up with really good gear in temp leagues end up buying it, not finding it themselves. There are of course also cases where you get some really good items yourself and then buy the missing pieces and reroll to a new build that's supported by those uniques.
 

Robofish

Member
If you loved Titan Quest, you're in for a treat. In a lot of aspects Grim Dawn is a straight up better game. Hmm, well if leveling up every possible character type is one of his grinding concerns, then we're looking at either 3 (every mastery used at least once) or 15 (every dual-class combination) different characters.

Ah ok. I didn't look at it that way.
 

velociraptor

Junior Member
PoE was great until late game. Then it become kinda frustrating, killing tons of shit for very little payoff.

D3 has it beat when it comes to time invested vs rewards.

This is how I feel with PoE.

I initially had an absolute blast with the game, but my interest for the game has taken a complete nosedive. I just feel like I've put in too many hours for not much at all.
 

Nordicus

Member
Ah ok. I didn't look at it that way.
Well yeah, if one says this
Also the fact you have to complete the game 3 times on each of the three difficulty settings for each character.
and doesn't mean "same character plays a difficulty through 3 times" then I suppose he means the main 3 archetypes leveled up. Although there are 7 classes (total, hybrids included) in PoE, but he's interested in just the three.

*shrug*

Or maybe I'm overthinking the ambiguous text and it's "3 times, once on each of the three difficulty"
 

velociraptor

Junior Member
Well yeah, if one says this
and doesn't mean "same character plays a difficulty through 3 times" then I suppose he means the main 3 archetypes leveled up. Although there are 7 classes (total, hybrids included) in PoE, but he's interested in just the three.

*shrug*

Or maybe I'm overthinking the ambiguous text and it's "3 times, once on each of the three difficulty"
oops - just realised what I typed didn't quite parallel what I had in mind.

Yes, for each new build, you have to complete the game three times (Normal, Cruel, Merciless).
 

Nordicus

Member
oops - just realised what I typed didn't quite parallel what I had in mind.

Yes, for each new build, you have to complete the game three times (Normal, Cruel, Merciless).
GD has the same system. Grim Dawn's areas are not random however, so it might feel either more repetitive that way, or you appreciate knowing where the quest locations and the next area are located so you waste less time on subsequent playthroughs.

Edit: it surprises me every time when one of my subscribed threads moves from Gaming to Gaming Community
 

bati

Member
Grim Dawn's areas are not random however, so it might feel either more repetitive that way,

That's one of the biggest flaws the game has imo. Along with its almost maze-like design of maps, with small obstacles everywhere. I found it extremely annoying to traverse GD's maps, D3 and PoE (of the recent arpgs) flow much better in comparison.
 

Nordicus

Member
Looks like the Crucible DLC might be a decent way to level your character quickly. My friend had a level 20 poison witch hunter waiting when his hardcore Demo died to a OHK rock throw from a golem. RIP pet buff synergy

That's one of the biggest flaws the game has imo. Along with its almost maze-like design of maps, with small obstacles everywhere. I found it extremely annoying to traverse GD's maps, D3 and PoE (of the recent arpgs) flow much better in comparison.
I found the outside areas alright, but with dungeons I do see your point. Constant U and L-turns in cramped spaces
 

Robofish

Member
Well yeah, if one says this
and doesn't mean "same character plays a difficulty through 3 times" then I suppose he means the main 3 archetypes leveled up. Although there are 7 classes (total, hybrids included) in PoE, but he's interested in just the three.

*shrug*

Or maybe I'm overthinking the ambiguous text and it's "3 times, once on each of the three difficulty"

Let's say we are both right ;-)

The way you explained it you were correct though.
 

Cracklox

Member
Looks like the Crucible DLC might be a decent way to level your character quickly. My friend had a level 20 poison witch hunter waiting when his hardcore Demo died to a OHK rock throw from a golem. RIP pet buff synergy

Yeah those mossy shamblers are rough. They've ended quite a few crucible runs for me as well. I play super cautious when I see them now

Re leveling, not really yet. The hotfix increased xp gains some, but the campaign when you know all the quests and can rush them down quickly, is still the way to go. I took a Commando from 1 - 72 over the weekend and stopped in the Crucible at around level 15, and it was just too slow going. I bailed at wave 20 and the xp wasn't great. That same character did 1-100 in challenger last night at level 75 and I got around a half a level worth of xp, which probaly isn't great for 30-40 mins work.

Not to mention factions are off in the crucible, and devotion points are aquired a little slower as well
 
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