hi! looking for a beginner guide for a person who likes to take their time going through the game. in all of the beginner guides i see by the time you hit level 20 to 30 you already have 4 to 6 shrines unlocked and most of the way through normal. by time i hit level 24 i am ready to kill the warden in the first area. any good guides to follow to help out a player like me?
thanks,
also, with most guides when you click on the grimtools link it shows the character at level 100 with all the gear on. when you go to see where to put your points in most of the points are over the limit. is there a way to show on how high to put the points in before the gear is on?
You need to hold Ctrl + Shift in Grim Tools
thanks for the info!
In general, I don’t think the beginner guides on the forums are written with progression at the pace you describe*. That’s not to say you can’t use them as resources, though— although your devotion points may not be progressing at the same pace, you should still be accumulating skill and attribute points according to your level (and eventually the number of devotion points you can accumulate will plateau at 55 points anyway).
The one thing that might give you some trouble when using the guides is the gear— there may be times when the recommended gear at a particular level is not accessible until further ahead in the game than you are. That’s okay, though. You’ll get to it eventually, and in the meantime, you can make due with slightly higher level versions of whatever monster infrequent item the guide had you farm earlier, plus whatever else you might pick up along the way.
I’d also look at the beginner guides more broadly as sketches of a game plan for leveling. There’s no need to get caught up in the idea of following them strictly. Instead, you can pick a guide with a build idea you like, follow it loosely, and remember that you can always deviate a bit. If your build starts to struggle, maybe take a quick look at the differences between the guide and what you have and use the “compass” of the guide to lead you back to a build that might be a bit stronger than what you had before.
You might also be interested in this playlist by @RektbyProtoss:
It does a really nice job going through one way of leveling each mastery, sketching out skill point allocation, some gear and devotion options, and also how your first mastery choice might lead into your choice of a second mastery.
*EDIT: the way I initially read your wording, I guess I imagined your progress to be somewhat slower relative to your level than maybe it really is. Actually, as @medea_fleecestealer noted below, your level is around where you’d expect relative to your progress, especially if you’ve done a little extra exploring. That being said, the idea I was trying to communicate above still stands— you can use the guides you find as helpful references regardless of the pace you choose to progress at.
All the beginner guides I have read on this forum are very detailed already from the beginning and I aim my guides too so be so detailed 
Just adjust the pace in which you get devotion points, there is no must like “at level 30 you NEED to have these 3 devotions finished” or so.
btw how do you get to kill Krieg at level 24? What areas and extra quests are you taking? Are you using lokarr set and experience potions?
Welcome to the forum. 
Remember that guides are just that - guides. For a first time playthrough you should be exploring everywhere and breaking anything breakable so you find all the hidden stuff the game has. And killing the Warden is the end of Act 1 so you’re just about right. It’s possible to get 7 shrines in the Act so the guides are spot on with that as well.
I doubt it since they want beginner guides. It’s very easy to be around L24 if you explore everywhere you can in Act 1. I usually reach the Warden at L20 and that’s just doing main and side quests without any extra exploration.
So like entering every single dungeon, killing every boss, clearing every shrine?
It is just 4 levels, no big deal
Yes, effectively. I grab all shrines available, but only do main/side quests otherwise so I’m leaving a fair amount of the Act untouched. The groble hero in Mud Fields, Gutworm, etc, I don’t bother with as examples.
Can you even show me ONE such guide where this is true? In particular, that you are most of the way through normal? (and if you are most of the way trough normal, you would have way more devotion points)
i clear out entire map areas, turn over or break everything open and kill everything. by time i get to warden’s door i am at 23 1/2. by time i kill him i am at 24. i do every side quest there is.
I like to play this game at the pace of a turtle. Perhaps whenever I make my first beginner build post, I will likely design it with this slower pace in mind, to appeal to players such as yourself who are like me and move slow and steady through the game.
I feel the reason this is not done often in most guides is due to the fact that the average player will likely only have questions about the things you mentioned on their first or second playthrough. A game like this has nearly unlimited replay value since build depth is so vast, that the majority of focus gets diverted to the player questions and guidance regarding the build specific factors you see in most guides, because the time it invests most players to discover and learn about the content in the guides far outweighs the time it will take you to learn how to breeze through normal. If you look at it from a perspective through this lens of relativity, it can help make sense out of why many build guides (including beginner guides) skim over a lot of things in the beginning.
I know for me personally I have played through the MC probably at least 100 times so things that seem obvious to me arent going to seem that way to a newer player, and it may be easy for me to overlook explaining certain things as a result. Im going to make a point to focus a lot of attention on these things whenever I get around to posting a beginner build because I felt the same way you did when I first joined the forums and it took me asking lots and lots of questions and reading lots and lots of beginner guides to figure things out. I should also say not all guides are assembled with the same level of detail. Some of the best ones ive ever read, when I was feeling similar to how you feel, were these (examples);
@Nery’s Vitality Caster Conjurer
@Ulvar1’s Uroboruuk (work in progress).
Also welcome to the family!
Also that’s a challenge in making these beginner’s builds. You are so accustomed with mechanics and knows what makes sense, so it’s hard to predict where new player might struggle and give detail explanation.
But besides that best guides contains lot’s of useful information, there’s also tutorials if players are interested. And if you’re forum member following a guide, you can always ask question, post author can help or some other player too.
Also for new player is always recommended to start their first build on their own, test few stuff and find what they are looking for, explore areas and such. And if player is interested in sticking with game and want to reach higher levels, they can follow beginner’s guide. Also these topics will immensely help players that have less time to do trial/errors runs.
You can use almost anything for leveling, just need to watch the balance of defense especially resistance and damage, but focusing on maxing all resistance gives you better survivability for leveling, for damage go with aoe skill and focus only on one or two damage, preferably one that both of your chosen mastery support, don’t go for many damage type in leveling as it will only limit your damage potential and slow yourself.
For equipment, anything that supports your skill/damage is fine as long as it also supports your resistance. You don’t need to change equipment with each level up as most item upgrades come between the next 15-20 level, for level 1-35 you can use whichever stronger item that you found. That being said the best time to change equipment is at level 35, 50, 60-70, 82-84, 90-94. If you don’t have better equipment at that level, go to faction vendor and use what they sell to you as faction gear is finely tuned for leveling use.