There has been a lot of debate about the difficulty of Fangs of Asterkarn and whether certain bosses / features should be nerfed, including some criticism from people who haven’t even played the expansion. I don’t envy Zantai, who seems stuck between trying to make a game that a lot of people can enjoy and catering to the top one percent (or less) of the Grim Dawn community who is worried that ascendant difficulty isn’t scaled to SR40 or some similar level of challenge. Most of the changes that have happened since release have been very good changes. Making the Dread optional. Bravo. Making nemesis spawns a bit less ubiquitous in ascendant difficulty. Same. Reverting the 1.3 changes that buffed physical damage to some bosses and that caught a lot of players out. Well done.
Given the heat that these changes have generated on the forums, where complaining that a game one has spent thousands of hours on is too easy (ignoring the fact that it is probably too easy because they’ve spent thousands of hours on it to the point where they have no idea what a new player’s experience would be like) is an honored pastime, I’m glad to see Crate sticking to them. It is very true to the spirit of letting people play the game the way they want. The fun, wonky builds that would get wrecked in other ARPGs still get to be viable in Grim Dawn at least until you start to push endgame content. You don’t need build guides to have fun in this game. You might need a build guide or some good understanding of making builds to play in ascendant difficulty which, complaints notwithstanding, is a noticeable step up from ultimate even in its base form.
Personally, I’ve played thousands of hours and made hundreds of builds on hardcore, so I can appreciate the desire for challenge, but I also stream the game which means I talk to people who are newer to the game as well as some veterans who are not looking to turn Grim Dawn into Dark Souls. To be clear, I do not think that Grim Dawn has become Dark Souls or anything like that, but there have been comments supportive of games like Elden Ring in comments on various patch notes. This isn’t Elden Ring and that’s a very good thing. Even if you don’t care about hardcore balance, and I realize that many complaining about how easy the game is may not play hardcore (again, totally fine, play the game how you like, that’s the point), an ARPG and a souls-like are different genres. I’m also very glad Grim Dawn is not POE2. You have the option to play both without trying to push one game too far in a direction that it wasn’t meant to go.
There has always been a solution for people who say the game is too easy. The base campaign is something that people have been able to complete on ultimate with meme builds and all sorts of fun concepts that are sometimes kind of bad. That the game lets people play almost any way they want as long as they don’t want to ramp up the difficulty is a positive, not a negative. Much more fun than praying that the exalted orb actually gives you want you want so your damage can be serviceable in POE2. For people who want to play the campaign and be more challenged, Fangs of Asterkarn gave us ascendant difficulty which comes complete with tempest totems and the Dread. This never existed before. It is a net positive for anyone who wants a more challenging experience. And then you can customize it to make it as hard or easy as you like. Crate has given people more tools than they have ever had before to make the game harder and some are bothered by Crate not wanting to make the game harder for everyone, especially on something like normal difficulty (where the phys damage changes on some bosses were particularly noticeable).
There have always been options for veteran players to challenge themselves. Pushing deeper into SR, going for faster Crucible clears, etc. Now there’s a campaign mode that brings some of that possible challenge and it is completely customizable. Creating an experience that is new player friendly or just friendly to people who are happy Grim Dawn is not Dark Souls isn’t easy and Crate has done a great job of making the game accessible to a lot of people while still letting people make it harder for themselves. I still disagree with some decisions that Crate has made and I will say that some of the new content is overtuned with respect to difficulty compared to the rest of the game. This matters from an internal consistency perspective as now as easy boss room in SR basically means no FoA bosses. This will hopefully be sorted in time because we do typically want to see a somewhat consistent challenge, even if there is a bit of difficulty creep in each release. “A bit” being the key phrase.
The Dread or nemesis monsters spawning less often in ascended mode doesn’t make the content too easy. It just means you are doing one particular challenge less often. Not everyone wants to fight seven nemesis mobs in a dungeon. That’s not because the nemesis mobs are too difficult in most cases, but because we want to actually get through the dungeon. I don’t care if ascended difficulty is an endgame mode. I don’t need to fight five nemesis monsters in one dungeon. If you want to fight more nemesis monsters, you actually have an option to make that happen. So juice the altar and enjoy yourself. The game is too easy for you, so monsters doing more damage can’t be a problem, right? Have fun. The great thing about Grim Dawn is that nearly everyone can play the way they like without getting stomped by unfair content.
TLDR: Just remember this. If you think the game is too easy, you have many options to make it more difficult. It is much easier for you to do this than it is for someone just starting out or someone experienced who likes a more chill ARPG experience to just get good. I’m not immune to falling out of touch with what average or newer players experience. But let’s remember that one reason why there is an active community of very experienced, talented players here is because Crate first and foremost made a game that a lot of people enjoyed playing.
Logh not letting us finish base game on Ult even with FoA buffs and pots perhaps? or the Maneater as dangerous as Calla ? “how ridiculous would Beronath have been if the dev gloves had come off” 
