I’ve played a bit of Grim Dawn on and off for years now, but have never really progressed passed the beginning of elite. The thing that has been holding me back from really getting into it over other games has been my lack of goal for the game. I enjoyed playing it, but I always had goals for other games that I really wanted to accomplish. I think its about time that I finally get really into this game.
So, goals:
Every Class Combination leveled to 100
Originally I was planning on just going for the 36 dual classes, and maybe also going for the single class completion once I finished that out, but I’ve been inspired by the journeys of @adoomgod@Contragor and @CaiusMartius in this thread Playtesters' plea for help - Zantai's Last Secret, so of course Classless is included and because I can’t just do the dual classes and Classless, all of the Monoclasses are also included. That’s, what, 46 characters? That doesn’t seem so bad…
Filling out a Grim Dawn Holy Grail
At one point I stumbled across MrLlamaSC streaming D2 and his farm for the grail, at the time I wasn’t sure what it was so I looked into it. Basically, it’s one of every item in the game. I’m not sure if there’s a list accepted by this community as to what constitutes a Grail, and a brief search didn’t seem to show anything.
Yesterday, on his stream, there was a bit of a chat with @MikeFic_YT about what might be in the Grail. We were kinda thinking every 82+ Epic and Legendary and all of the high level Relics. Generally speaking, it probably won’t include Badge of Perseverance, but some Grails will be better than others.
As far as goals go, these seem pretty straight forward and completely achievable given enough time. For full transparency, I will be playing hardcore from a completely fresh save (just deleted all previous data as of writing this), I will be using Grim Internals because I can’t live without that info panel and the custom HP bars (and I guess the larger auto-pickup range? Is that a thing or is that base game now? I don’t know anymore…), any screenshots might look more awesome than normal thanks to @JMD’s wonderfully gorgeous GrimUI (seriously though, go check it out if you haven’t!), and the most controversial of the bunch, I’ll be using GDStash to keep track of my collection. As far as I can tell there’s no better way to keep track of such a thing (yet…).
Rules for GDStash: NO CRAFTING ALLOWED
Items are set to Move from DB to Stash, not to Copy. This means that if I die with a piece of my collection on me, I must farm it again.
Alas, the purpose of this thread becomes clear! It is to catalog my journey, and to keep me honest.
tl;dr:
leveling all 46 classes to 100
collecting lots of items (seriously though, input on the Grail goal is appreciated! Let’s make this a thing!)
grim internals
grim ui
gdstash extra stash space and collection tab
gdstash editing anythingbesides character name (if i mess that bit up)
Darklighter had a similar quest for Titan Quest many years ago, i.e. to complete the game with all masteries/classes. I sort of aim to do it, but I’ve only completed the game with 7 different classes in 11 years so …
As for your Grail, well GDStash is the only thing I know of which has every item in the game listed in its collection section - and that includes all the base items most of us chuck away asap. Maybe you could use Grimtools, but I don’t know if it’s as complete as the Stash and how easy it would be to keep track since it’s not storage.
Good luck on the journey though, you’ll need it for HC and classless.
There are also different builds with different damage types and setups of every class combo notice that with that it takes more than 150 characters(Just guessing) to be played with every character in the game. And some of them probably can’t finish HC ultimate. Good luck
The classes are definitely a good goal for anyone to work towards, even if it does take a while it gives you a reason to keep playing!
As far as the Grail, so far I’m just doing a GDStash Collection search with the criteria: All Items (except Notes and Quest items), Epic, Legendary, Min Level 82.
It spits out a list of 1335 items, which seems like a good place to start. It may expand to include rare items in the far future, but for now it’ll work. And honestly, I might just learn how to program to make a tool specifically for Grails at some point down the line.
True, there are many more builds I could do if I were to make a character for ever damage type possible for a class, but that seems a bit much even to me. Especially when you consider how cheap it is to respec a character. Not much need for 4 different Apostates when you can change what it does.
That’s part of the reason I never made it past Elite. I figure limiting myself to only these characters is a good way to force myself to experience more of the game.
Any challenges of similar magnitude completed in other games?
Btw I recommend you to learn speed leveling. RektByProtoss has a video guide for that on YT.
This is the most glorious of goals! I wish you great speed, the blessings of Empyrion and really really really really good RNG.
I have not leveled to 100 single masteries. Maybe I should take that on. Also, I have move to HC so I’m actually re-doing all of my classes. I think I"m at about 13 or 14 of them currently.
As to the classless journey, I actually decided to do that as my second HC character, so it was very close to being a completely new, I did share stash from my first character though as we all know, that first character doesn’t really amass much. It took me roughly about 4 months to complete, I think? And I lost two of the classless characters along the way. But it was well worth it. Taught me so much about the game and @Contragor, @adoomgod were immeasurably helpful in the journey as well as advice from the forums.
Most of all, have a blast. If you’ve found the fun in the game with this then you’ve got a lot of hours of fun to look forward to!
@tqFan Nothing of this magnitude completed in other games (yet…) but I do have a decent chunk of playtime in Path of Exile (looks to be around 6k hours) and Diablo 3(probably around 1.5k hours?). Probably my closest achievement in scope to this one was a Terraria playthrough using only traps in which I eventually built arenas to AFK every boss in the game.
@CaiusMartius I’ve started my classless journey already, I figure get the most challenging character out of the way first while also learning a whole lot about the game as a whole. Act 1 at least is pretty similar to how I normally level, after that should be an interesting problem to solve though.
Running through the Flooded Passage right now, it honestly doesn’t feel too bad. It reminds me of one of my first characters, an Arcanist that was using Panetti’s with only 2 or 3 points in it until after I killed Krieg and switched to Trozan’s. Just a lot of scoot and shoot.
The healers in Burrwitch Outskirts are not at all an issue, an unexpected side effect to finding a mutagenic ichor before a searing ember is that I get to lob a poison bomb over top the swarm of dudes between me and the healer.
Let me tell you, when I first saw the heal I was scared. I was thinking I’d be stuck there for a while trying to kite around a pack to get to the healer, slowly aggroing more dudes until I had a giant ball of death following me.
Thank you mutagenic ichor, I thought you were bad earlier. Oh how wrong I was.
Classless Act 1 complete!
Krieg honestly wasn’t too bad, mostly just a test of if I was ready with my potions on cooldown. The Molten Walkers were acquired from a Monster Totem on the way to the Laboratory Rift, and they definitely made getting to Krieg and the fight itself a whole lot easier.
Classless Act 2 complete!
Cronley felt pretty normal, just run around and keep the adds clear so you have room to maneuver. The largest issue was running out of energy, but even so, that’s what potions are for.
Upgraded from Mutagenic Ichor to Flintcore Bolts just before the Cronley fight; for some reason I thought it required level 26 and I never thought to check. Makes me feel a bit silly for fighting Krieg with the Ichor. Oh well, lesson learned.
Classless is currently farming troves in the Mountain Deeps as well as Monster Totems from across Act 1 (although primarily in the Warden’s Cellar). Health and resistances are lower than I would like for further progression, so a farming break is needed.
In other news, I am already cheating on my Classless.
No no no, it’s not you Classless, it’s me and those other 45 characters that I need to level for my quest! It was going to happen eventually and you knew that! You can’t be the only one I level!
So yeah, with my goals being what they are, Classless was never going to be leveling in isolation as @Contragor did (and I don’t care about not twinking, so swapping out saves folders seems like far too much work). I like to have multiple projects going so that if I need to take a break from one I can. Even just the short hour and a bit that I did on my Ritualist to clear Act 1 really hammered home just how much I’ll need to prepare for just about everything on Classless; I don’t want to burn myself out on this project, so I’m going to be taking it step by step with plenty of breaks.
All that being said, leveling with any class is pretty straight forward, so progress updates for all of the classes will largely just be in the progress tracker unless I deem it a significant milestone in that character’s progression (for example hitting 100, killing a celestial, etc.). I imagine that when I deem a character complete, I’ll make a post about why I made a character the way I did with relevant GrimTools links and screenshots turning this thread into my own little build compendium.
It took me roughly about 4 months to complete, I think? And I lost two of the classless characters along the way. But it was well worth it. Taught me so much about the game and 
