So about a year passed, an expansion was released, alongside terribly imbalanced design choices I thoroughly disagree with
However, there were some gems, including this lovely item:
![[Image: hhsXBBS.png]](https://i.imgur.com/hhsXBBS.png)
Since I finished another oddball project, a Skeleton Defiler (weakest pets on the weakest necromancer mastery combination, which directly leds to buffs both to skeletons and to defiler equipment), I was in the United States for the first time, meeting my girlfriend IRL, and one day I woke up with this odd bug that infests you when you stay away from a game you played for too long.
"What about Alkamos Warsword?" I kept thinking. It was for dervishes, so said the two skills it boosted. Vire's Might for Oathkeeper and Pneumatic Burst for Nightblade. But I was not interested in the Oathkeeper. Oathkeepers were boring to me. They were also the embodiment of all that was bad in the early months after the expansion was released. So I was thinking of how the fire to cold conversion on Pneumatic Burstcan be put to good use, and after making a semi-attractive setup for a Spellbreaker (Arcanist+Nightblade) using Callidor's Tempest (I had decent aether to cold conversion as well), I set my sights on Saboteur, the current weakest, worst mastery combination. To make things worse, I decided I wouldn't be autoattacking, and picked Canister and Grenado for my primary skills to convert. If I could get a cold prefix for my warsword, I would be set for life as I could convert both the fire/burn damage, and the physical/internal trauma to cold/frostburn. Adding even the common "Of Frostburn" cold suffix would also beef up my damage which is lacking in the sense that not even a droplet is given from the Demolitionist mastery.
After putting together something that looked half-decent, I decided to play along on my girlfriend's computer, figuring I'd just do normal, and maybe some elite, then scrap the project if something more interesting comes along. For the character name, my pick was Queen Elza. After all, the [meta-gaming] never bothered me anyways! (What's it with me and the disney characters? First Cinderella, and now Elza)
The short version is: nothing more interesting came.
As for the long version:
I started with nightblade. I picked up first Hevill's Longsword for some Amarasta's Blade Burst, then tried shadow striking with a pair of Olman's axes. Nothing to write home about, but I was experimenting with the ways to level. After level 10, I picked up my demolitionist, and respecced to Canister Bomb, figuring it'd be the skill I'd use in the endgame, so I better got used to it.
Playing with that, and some fire damage equipment i picked up along the way (A two hander with 30% fire damage, really), Queen Elza made her way down to the Warden's lab and put an end to that maniac once and for all
Dislaimer: The term "all" means the current session, and current difficulty. The boss may reoccur whenever a new session is started, and it's story significance returns in the next difficulty.
In Forgotten Gods, the new expansion, you can access the added content the moment you kill the warden and are level 1. This changes a few side extras in the story, but beyond that it's massively worth going there, as you can pick up movement skills (Like neutered versions of Leap and Teleport) to help you out. I did that and continued onto the main campaign.
Act 2 was nothing to write home about. I tossed grenades and canisters, Cronley's gang tossed blackwater cocktails and Thermite mines. I was still pumping Canister, Improved Casing, and then Grenado. Additionally, I was rushing for the Amatok constellation after picking up the very important Bat. Bat provides us with much needed life steal (called Attack Damage Converted to Health, adcth for short) and with the belt I could convert half the vitality to cold, increasing both it's damage and the health recovered. ADCTH is the top source of sustaining your healthbar, so stacking it to decent levels is as important as getting better damage.
At the tail end of the act I did a run through Steps of Torment, the first roguelike dungeon. It is called roguelike as you get one chance per session to enter. If you die, you can't use a riftgate to continue, so you need to start a new session. I got an Alkamos Warsword, Warped prefix (some physical is converted to aether) and "Of Celerity" suffix, which gave more cast speed. Castspeed is always nice, so I kept it. It was normal anyways and I would need to replace it after the end of this difficulty.
With this power bump of having my damage type align with the bonuses I stacked, the rest of normal was a cakewalk. I finished up my devotions (Attak Seru + Leviathan + Magi + Amatok + Bat + Elemental Storm, lots of secondary skills triggered) an went onto Elite.
As usual, cresting the power hill of level 50 hit me with a tiny hint of sadness. From there on I'd gain fewer skill points, most of my masteries have already been leveled up, and I'd have to rely more on items to gain strength. Luckily I was just over a dozen levels from the next item tier from faction vendors, so I powered on using the fumes of being at the top of the power curve to keep momentum. Slow and stationary foes died in seconds, but more mobile ones became a massive nuisance.
Level 65 came, some gear was upgraded, yet the feeling of the thrill from the level 50ish range doesn't come back. Unlike Cinderella, I'm no longer set on gear for the rest of the game, (yes, this mistake from Diablo 3 is also propagated into the game. Finding cool gear on lower levels just doesn't happen. Everything is a placeholder for at most a dozen levels.) have to upgrade and pray for good drops. Yet I power through. A change in devotions was required, and I got Ulzuin's Torch instead of Attak Seru.
In Elite, Ashes of Malmouth, I die to Bollag, Keeper of the Gates. That's pretty much the boss that epitomizes Crate's design for expansion enemies. Charges you, shoots you with a fast projectile,
or and straight up murders you in melee, unless you pass the defense + sustain treshold. While Duriel rooms have been a staple of Titan Quest's automatically closing doors, Grim Dawn took it to a wholly new level when it comes to invalidating skilled play. Also, forget regular resistances having meaning beyond checkmarks that need to be ticked. Most damage that comes is physical.
Beyond Bollag there isn't much else to do, so I get the riftgates and enter Forgotten Gods. Things go well until I hit Kymon (who is tough, but I know enough of his fight to position myself out of the flame pillars that just do % life reduction so your fire resistances are invalidated), and Korvaak. Now Korvaak is just... painful. I won, through lots of running, but I took too much damage, and the final part of the final boss phase took too long to be comfortable with. More on this later. There was also a death.
Going back to vanilla, Ultimate after this was a breath of fresh air. Despite the extra resistance penalty and increased enemy damage, vanilla is slow paced enough for the average player to thrive in. Mind me, this meant I still farmed up a Gargabol ring in Normal, and a Charged Alkamos Warsword of Spellweaving (minor physical conversion to lightning, but more cold damage). Life was going rough even then, the lack of armor upgrades hurting me the most, but at level 90 I could get the next tier of armor upgrades from the faction vendor, as well as augments (another upgrade socketed into equipment).
Here's what the build looked like:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YNn6yxpN
And in action against the endboss of vanilla (considered a giant pushover for any non-summoner setup). It was a stationary boss, so it was over in a minute.
My problem was with it's squishiness. In fact elite Korvaak at level 93 was handing me my behind on a silver platter.
And if I could not handle elite Korvaak, what hope did I have for Ultimate? Not much. After taking this issue to the forums, I was convinced to abandon the canister/grenado angle and focus on Amarasta's Blade Burst and Blackwater Cocktail. Drom Torch and Magi, get Blind Sage. Did some playing with it, damage was nicer and more consistent, with less contact needed with the enemy.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V0XR0rV
I did Steps of Torment on ultimate (Alkamos dropped his legendary rare drop: Soulrend. Bleh to that. I wanted the much more common Warsword!), ran into the undead nemesis Moosilauke the Chillwind, almost got wiped off the map in his first phase.
Luckily, his second form didn't aggro. (Nemesis bosses follow you to ridiculous lengths if they do) and I could do Alkamos before coming back to EXCRUCIATINGLY SLOWLY take him down with Thermite Mine and Blackwater Cocktail. The nemesis trove was definitely not worth it.
At that point, patch 1.1.5.0. dropped. It was suppossed to increase build variety and make epics more useful.
I lost the +1 to all skills on Empowered Essence of Beronath, so I had to make the swap to the Nightstalker Pendant. My goal was having the lower rarity (and cheaper) Runefather Gem, but I didn't have the blueprint for it.
So with nothing else to do, I entered the Shattered Realm on normal. Shattered Realm is an addition in Forgotten Gods, that is the game's equivalent to Nephalem Rifts in Diablo 3. In the Shattered Realm, you have to complete "Shards" to progress. Each shard contains four "chunks", of which the first three are randomly picked from a rotation of maps, with the goal of killing enough enemies and collecting shattered soul drops. Enemies only drop shattered souls in these chunks. The fourth and final chunk contains the shard bosses, in a special boss arena. At the end of each shard, after defeating the boss chunk you get the option of proceeding deeper, or claiming your reward. You get massively better rewards if you do at least two chunks in succession, and there is also a timer that adds a bonus chest.
Another neat thing about Shattered Realm is that it's always scaled to your level, and the difficulty you use to enter it (Normal, Elite, Ultimate) only increases or decreases the difficulty. Since 46-59 feature giant featureless sardine cans for boss rooms, bypassing them on normal is the default modus operandi for new players. Luckily it only needs to be done on one character, as reaching certain shards gives you blueprints for Waystones, which can be crafted, and handed to the Shattered Realm NPC to start at a pre-defined shard.
So of course, being a weak build, I went with normal. At around shard 40 things started getting lively, and I got roughly as much reward as from an Ultimate roguelike dungeon, but without the cost. At 45-46, I was roughly at my limit for the build, but I pushed to 50 with minor changes to chest and pants.
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NKdrdp2
After that however, it was time to drop the Warsword. It proved everything it had to, and I had one piece of gear to take the next step into the great beyond: Mythical Arcanum Frigus.
https://www.grimtools.com/db/items/12631
Fire AND physical to cold on Canister Bomb. I could finally go back to the build I intended to play on the start, and dropping Blackwater and Amarasta's was a fine sacrifice. Since I also needed a skill to support Canister Bomb, I picked Phantasmal Blades. Max Nether Edge and Heart Seeker, get the new and improved Mythical Dementia for vitality to cold conversion, and Voila!
![[Image: qGinyXh.jpg]](https://i.imgur.com/qGinyXh.jpg)
Final build:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNkOO4lN
Shard 60-61 run
