I was wondering if there has been any talk of an “Adventure Mode” (akin to Diablo 3’s), where you can make new characters, and travel anywhere and the story mode and quests are turned off?
Hopefully something like this will come in the future, if not already planned.
Not sure what the point of this is, unless you mean everything is immediately accessible to a new character.
Even then I wonder how that would work with balance… how does it work in D3 when you can meet an act boss at level 5 or so ?
Once you beat the game on Ultimate, everything is obviously accessible but also everything scales to your level, which to me sounds more like the point of adventure mode, allowing to grind / farm everywhere once you are max level…
That’s nice that the game scales with you after you beat the final act, but that doesn’t help you when making a new character.
In Diablo 3, the adventure mode allows a new character to skip doing the drudgery of repeating quests over and over again, which you’ve likely already done before on multiple characters. Personally, I don’t want to repeat the quests after my first character, as it’s the only weak part of the game I don’t care for.
Secondly, adventure mode allows every act, enemy, and boss etc to scale with you as you level. So you can go anywhere and do anything, without repeating the same exact path throughout the game, and you can jump around where you like, which is great for playing a arpg long term.
Like Diablo 3, Grim Dawn already has a “bounty” system, and this could work well with a new “Adventure mode”, just as it does with D3.
I played D3 before, so I guess what you mean.
In D3, when I started a new character and played Adventure mode, was because in that mode was faster to level up. Because for me, D3 fun part started after you reach max level.
In GD you level up faster doing quest. And the fun part, for me, is level up and after max level.
Beside this, there is a way to get “adventure mode” in GD seting all the portals on, using this tool, I guess. Never try, but it should work.
In GD, this won’t work, because of the Faction choices. Kymon/Order, and the Outcast living/dying, alter your character significantly, because that affects your augments, your access to Faction gear, your nemesis spawns, and a few items you can’t get without specific choices. Malkadarr’s Dreadblade, Outcast’s Secret…
You can’t skip the quests in Grim Dawn without reordering the Faction system, or completely invalidating by allowing players to skip past it. Doesn’t sort out, and supposedly we’re getting a new faction choice in the expansion.
I would prefer to have some kind of survival mode instead, where you have to eat, drink etc. not to die or not to get some nasty debuffs etc… 
You can still get those faction-specific items by farming Crucible (i’ve god Outcast Secret that way).
As for augments, you can stick with one faction on normal, max out reputation, buy 100x of each augment they offer (or even 300), and then chose another faction in Elite and so have access to all augments.
And although skipping quests is silly, i dont like completing them 3 times per character, that’s too much actually.
Crucible is a DLC. This suggestion would be part of the main game.
As for your augments suggestion… As far as I can see, the point of this suggestion is that you don’t do quests AT ALL. So that wouldn’t actually sort out, because you wouldn’t be doing any of the quests for any faction, and thus have nothing.
If you DID do the quests, then you’ve kinda defeated the point of asking for a mode to bypass the quests.