Grim Dawn, a Diablo-style Action RPG

[Sirian]

But yea, must not corrupt the experience of a solo toon.

Not that far in the game yet, to care about purity of experience. Also, for this game, purity could hold more than one definition. The game has (a significant number) of sections that scale to the toon's level, at least up to a point.

My highest level toons are in their late 40s and still on Normal (Vet) difficulty. Contrast this to D2's late 20s for a full clear and low 50s for a full clear of all three difficulties.

Grim Dawn is bigger / longer than D2. The design is (a lot) less linear. The various scaling parts mean that doing things in different order will result in different experiences, loot drops, and challenge levels, even for otherwise identical builds with stastically similar luck. There is also a larger shared stash, which I have not (yet) isolated any toons from. The gear seems a bit less critical than in Diablo (where it wasn't all that critical) because the game design grants a larger percentage of base stats from sources other than gear.

I am getting *really* close to the end of the first difficulty level on my pair of higher-end toons, but I've also played through most or all of Act 1 on six different builds now. There's a lot to report on, but perhaps the most noteworthy thing is THAT THERE ACTUALLY IS a lot to report on.

Melee builds that focus more on offense than on defense are even more "tactile". My Nightblade build uses a string of "proc off auto attacks" skills by using auto-attack on LMB and investing in the procs. Each proc can then proc its OWN zodiac-based skill, if a I choose constellations with abilities in rather than ones without. (That one even has to consider how to mesh one's tree skills with one's zodiac skills because attack-based zodiac skills must each be bound to their own, different tree skill to proc is a layer of design depth I've simply not seen before in any ARPG). Thus, I have been buried in gameplay and spreading my experiences around across more builds because a proper review needs to cover three dimensions not just two. ... Anyway, the Nighblade build: I'm using a pseudo-teleport skill on RMB. It's very hard hitting and can proc a zodiac skill at a high rate, so I have tied "The Bull" constellation skill to that one, which delivers a short-range moder-hitting AoE on 5 out of 6 uses along with the hard--hitting single attack skill I bound it to. But the teleport has a 4 sec cooldown, and it can only apply to targets to which there is a valid travel path (thus not through walls or across canyon gaps). ... The rhythm of the teleport attack mixed with the auto-attacks that are proccing one of several skills at random (or, failing that, just a feeble auto-attack swing) is combined with sticking to fast-swinging, lighter damage 1hand weapons being dual-wielded, where I can hold down LMB and drag cursor from one target to another with continual rapid strikes. The high rate of attack will proc more zodiac bindings once I mature the toon far enough to unlock more than one such ability. ... This build is INTENSELY tactile, with ability to prioritize targets and hop around taking out spellcasters or hitting bosses with the teleport attack, whittling mobs with the interim flurry of dual-wield strikes and procs, and having to concern oneself with defensive maneuvers and mini-kites because, after all, this build is not all sturdy. Then there's--

Oh never mind. Just buy the game already if you are at all an ARPG fan (or find some time to play it if you are KoP).


Builds I have experienced so far:

1) Pure Soldier, started solo, switched to MP because it plays better paired with others (esp glass cannons who actually need you to draw some aggro away from them). Shield-carrying tank build with high health regen, high defense, moderate retaliation damage, threat-building and taunt tools.

2) Hunter build (technically called a Pyromancer): Occultist with pet-skills-only combined with Demolitionist focused on Fire Strike line on LMB plus the fireworks launcher on RMB. Skill points split about 50/50. One zodiac bind for each mouse button ability. This toon has been paired its whole life with wife's teleport/auto-proccing Nightblade who focuses on acid/poison damage and procs like 5 different weak zodiac abilities instead of going for a couple of stronger ones like most of my builds do. (She is glass melee. My hound is the tank for both of us, and it is spotty with grabbing aggro on bosses or really large mobs of trash. My Raven is our healer (or what passes for a healer in this game) and has decent ranged AoE it shoots now and then).

3) Pure Arcanist, intense focus on missiles plus strong zodiac skill on LMB, near-maxed flash freeze (with wide radius) on RMB, and 3-sec invuln with (now down to) 15 sec CD on spacebar. Glass cannon with absolutely immense mob-killing DPS but high vulnerability to bosses. (The invuln skill is a recent investment to try to survive tough boss encounters more reliably. It helps. Some. (The arcanist invuln has no heal and no retaliation damage but lets you continue to move and shoot, while the Nightblade 3-sec invuln freezes you in place and bars any action, but heals you and reflects incoming damage. Very different tactile experiences.)

4) Conjuror. (Occultist/Shaman, the two pet summoning classes). This build is all pets. Only attack available is a (very) weak pistol, used mostly to shoot open junk containers or bust down breakable doors/barriers. (I can't even bind a zodiac skill to it because you have to be using a tree skill for that. Just using default-attack by itself doesn't work.) I can report that pure pets is viable through normal. The pets can be trained up to generate threat, and you get three of them total. They have more sturdiness and more DPS than Diablo 2 necro pets, but also face larger groups of mobs and a wider array of bosses, as well as areas that scale to player level so cannot be cheesed around by leveling up "past" them before doing them.

5) Shaman/Soldier fusion called a Warder. (These are the two Str-based classes). 2-hand user with auto-attack procs on LMB and Shaman's lightning-strike AOE on RMB. This dps melee build is a lot less of a glass melee than the Nightblade, and it will eventually get a teleport skill of its own from the Soldier tree. (The soldier teleport is called Charge and moves at about half the travel rate of the nightblade version, among other things). Lacking that skill as yet, though, this build has to manage large groups of enemies in a more traditional way and faces much more difficulty in trying to target enemy ranged first, as the enemy melee swarm and can block the way during indoor encounters).

6) Nighblade, described above.


The game has far more optional areas, side quests, secret areas than Diablo 2, and it adds the "bounties" which are repeatable quests with a small variety of targets and tasks. The bounties scale to player, although bounties from act 1 and 2 of normal have been found to have maximum caps on enemy level for a portion of the bounty targets (but not all).


This leaves me wondering where all the Diablo players have gone, considering that Diablo was the original focus of RB.

I know we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of Diablo 1, but surely not all the folks I played Diablo with from RB are retired from gaming or died of old age. ... Surely not. Can't be. ... Where are you people hiding??


- Sirian

[KingOfPain]

I quite like the Nightblade, seems that's my highest toon, and probably because of that (D2 Assassin) Dragon Flight skill. I always loved teleport skills in D1 and D2 (which can include Charge, LA and Dragon Flight), the lack of such a skill (or such a poor implementation) for a sorceress was one of he biggest disappointment in D3.

The biggest deal in the early games that trumps Grim Dawn over D1 and D2 both, is that it doesn't put much demand on mana/energy, so one can have fun using the skills without hinder right from lvl1. And wtf was that stamina requirement in D2, eh?

I know we're coming up on the 20th anniversary of Diablo 1, but surely not all the folks I played Diablo with from RB are retired from gaming or died of old age. ... Surely not. Can't be. ... Where are you people hiding??

Not all. Look up RB on Steam and you may see a few around.
Personally, I keep an eye on the General and Diablo forum more.

[Sirian]

Personally, I keep an eye on the General and Diablo forum more.

Aye. I went ahead and posted an alert and link in the Diablo forum, just in case that catches the eye of some old timers who would be interested.

[El Grillo]

I haven't played any ARPGs to completion before, but this sounds fun and I'm looking for something new to try. Hoping to run some co-op later this week.

[Rowain]

I have now completed normal-vet (witth exception of the last 2 bosses which were done on normal) with a pure Soldier build (lvl 48 now).
Using no active skills from the soldier tree till lvl 40 (attack was with normal attack + Poison bomb and Lightning ring) till lvl 40 then started to use cadence (+ Fighting form and Deadly Momentum).

Devotions completed: Bull, Tortoise, Shield Maiden and Eel

As Sirian said it is a far bigger world than Sanctuario. And I look forward how my newly started Occultist will do. I won't do a pure build this time. I plan (just lvl5) to pair it with Demolitionist. Going Curse, raven and firearms.

There have been situation during the soldier-run whre I really wondered how a range-dependant character can solve it. Hopefully I find a solution when I get there

[Sirian]

There have been situation during the soldier-run whre I really wondered how a range-dependant character can solve it. Hopefully I find a solution when I get there

I completed my first run a couple of days ago, with my Arcanist (pure ranged). Mind you, she did not survive all encounters. I would have to refer to her stats, but I think her death count at the final rift (waypoint) was 12, and add a couple more from the last section of the game. (Did not do skeleton keys, btw). She was 54 upon completing Vet and did Vet the whole way. One death of end of game boss (in first ten seconds of fight) felt like a decent performance.

Build at time of completion was lvl 50 Arcanist Mastery, maxed out Missile (all four components), maxed out flash freeze with half-done second component. Maxed out 3-sec invuln and maxed out damage mitigation aura (the one that cuts in to your dps), with bits and pieces scattered around. +2 Arcanist skills from items (so when I say "maxed out", this means that with the +2 added in I got the skill to the level where it would have topped out without the bonuses -- in some cases the maxout was true, going in to beyond-max territory, but in many cases heavy diminishing returns past the default cap made spending points elsewhere a better deal). Life was 2700-ish, Energy about 2600 with about 300 reserved, so about 2300 for use.

This toon totally DESTROYS trash mobs. Totally. Utterly wipes them out. Shoot-shoot-shoot, missiles pass through first target 60% of time, stun targets 10% of time, proc strong zodiac AoE that lasts 4 secs 25% of time, shatters in to about 8 missiles that scatter and hit other mobs, EACH NEW HIT procing all of the above all over again. Most stuff dies off screen.

However, as the game wears on, the enemies get more and more travel speed, and there are always the ones with the soldier or nightblade teleport (fast charge) skills. Even with this DPS buzzsaw of the shattering missiles and all their immense damages, dots, and procs, some quick movers slip through and nab a quick hit on me more times than I can count. When that's a boss with a 1-shot capability or a long stun plus a 2- or 3-shot capability... Yeah. That's about 65% of my deaths, the rest dying in poison cloud blind alleys I was exploring just to check for secrets -- which I will never have to check again. (Some of them had secrets, mind you, but those offer you a way to make it through the bad stuff without dying, IF you know where you're going before you go in).

The flash freeze got me through 98% of the late game. Radius on it is an amazing 16.5 yards. It freezes almost everything on the screen. Only cold-immune mobs with super speed (charge or regular movement) thus pose a threat to this toon in open space, unless you have a distraction (like a toddler underfoot) that causes you to take your eye off the game at the wrong moment.

LOT of bosses are immune to the freeze, though. Lots. Those are the ones I got the mitigation aura and the 3-sec invuln for.


Strategies for this toon in dealing with intense threats:

1) If you are stuck in a sardine can, there's nothing for it. You run in circles, dodge stuff on the floor, get off a shot when it won't kill you, and hit the 3-sec invuln every 15 secs, stand and fire for a couple secs, then run again. Rinse and repeat, and don't make a mistake because you can be dropped by a single mis-step. (Died more in sardine can act boss fights than any other single source of non-poison-cloud exploration).

2) If you are NOT stuck in a sardine can, but you are fighting a mob that has no leash (never gives up on chasing you, no matter where you run), it's pretty much like #1 above except you are less likely to make a mistake but more likely to pick up adds if large sections of nearby terrain were not previously cleared by you.

3) If you are NOT stuck in a sardine can and NOT being chased by no-leash boss, then you can simply run out of leash range whenever you need to, reset the fight, rest a moment, let dots expire, use constitution to restore lost health (to conserve heal pots), then go back in for the next round. If the boss is especially nasty (like 1 or 2 above, but leashed) you can get in a few shots up front before aggro takes, then hit the 3-sec invuln and fire away, then move out of leash range. Rinse and repeat. (I only actually did this once, although I did lesser versions of it a few times. Used this as a last resort short of having to do the labor intensive plans for #1 and #2 above, which are basically the same plan but without the risk-reducing reset of the leash.)

4) Anything else: blow it away and remember to move out of fire on the ground and to watch for charging mobs of high speed that managed to dodge the wave motion gun. (If you get that reference, you are old my friend. Very old! Or very sadly addicted to anime. Or both.)


I trust this answers how (at least one version of) a pure ranged toon could solve the challenges of which you speak.

On the other hand, even trash mobs at the start of Elite difficulty (the ponderous zombies' still-ponderous upper selves) can knock you for 1200+ health from a single regular melee hit. The kind of hit that was no big deal on Vet. If my toon can be 2shot by anything on the board, and that isn't even the HIGH difficulty level yet, then there might be something bad from D2 in the game as well: too much need to keep one's distance from from the mobs. However, if that only applies to glass cannons, then it woudln't be like D2 (where even the tanks are made of glass by the middle of Nightmare).

It's fair to say that this game isn't a cakewalk. Exploits like the monster leash can eat in to it some, but a lot of the easy escapes from D2 don't apply here, because of the high prevalence of very high speed and teleporting and charging mobs, and because for a number of other obscure reasons as well.

My arcanist hit level 54 in the same time Rowain hit 48 because I did plenty of the bounty missions. In nearly all cases, though, the enemies of the late game scaled up with me, so they may have been harder (relatively speaking) in some cases. I would have to do a similar run with same build minus the bounty action to investigate, and I don't have that kind of time these years.


This game has been out for a year and a half. We are coming to it late, here on RB. But it is a gem not to be missed by anybody who got their money's worth out of any version of Diablo.


- Sirian

[Rowain]

I can relate to the death in green goo while looking for specials. Had my share of those.

What lvl had the 2 end bosses for you? For me they were 4 lvls higher than me (51 to 47 then).

I can say that so far my soldier survives well during elite. (Just cleared the burrwitch rift).

[Sirian]

Stole this from the Diablo forum (the thread to which this one was originally attached):

I stopped my D2 romps since Sirian introduced me to Grim Dawn. The thread now moved to the Gaming Table forum. I have also stopped playing Grim Dawn after a week or so because it was getting good and I was getting too involved.

It was getting good? There, there.

Note to everybody else: KoP says it was getting good.


- Sirian

[Kylearan]

Oh curse you Sirian... Once or twice per year, I get nostalgic and take a look at Realms Beyond, which used to be my digital home for so long, to see what RB is up to these days and if there are still names I recognize.

...oh look, Sirian is still (again?) posting! Let's see what about!

This game is definitely scratching my Diablo 2 itch

...damn it! I didn't even realize I had a Diablo 2 itch! But I do. A big one in fact.

Oh no... I have so little spare time these days! Cannot afford yet another thing to do. Must... resist...

And of course I failed. I bought the game, and I'm loving it so far.

-Kylearan

P.S.: I hope all is well with you, your wife and your growing family! I wish you all the best.

[Sirian]

I died five times on Warden Krieg, Elite. Five!

That jumped my Arcanist death total from 20 to 25. It's doubled since I arrived on the new difficulty level in just one Act.

I feel like that Warden Krieg body count ought to be reducible, perhaps with resistances and defense gear, like worked on the Diablo 2 Act 1 boss, Andariel. (Not quite as easy to figure out tho, because Krieg is not a one trick demonpony.)


Kylearan: Congrats on finding such a fun game. (Or: condolences. Take your pick!)

I finally got my outer-ring zodiac ability in to play. Wow it hits hard. (Yet it has a hole, unlike my medium ring skill. Cold immunes just walk right through it and laugh at me). I don't even have it leveled up yet and it hits harder than my nearly-maxed middle skill.

At lvl 61 and having gone back to do some optional things in Veteran difficulty, I have still not full-cleared the first difficulty level yet. The amount of side and optional content is more than I have seen in any ARPG. And some stuff from that difficulty level is STILL scaling up with me. (I have a killed a lvl 65 boss there!) But of course, without the resistances reduction from Elite difficulty, that stuff seems pretty tame to me, above my level or not. Now the Elite difficulty stuff, some of that hits HARD. And there's another difficulty level above that.

Yeah. Poor Kylearan. Somebody go check on him, make sure he comes up for air. Teehee!


- Sirian