Beginner Questions for First Character

Hi,
I just got the game and that’s my first Grim Dawn character:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YZe673XN

Having seen and read almost every druid guide, I still have no idea what I’m doing.
My problems are that I get too much DMG to a point that i get onshoted by Things. On top im Always out of Energy.
When I read guides, I feel that even the “beginner” guides are not even close to beginner-friendly, as they show me tons of purple lvl100 gear and level 100 ultimate skill trees that I don’t even know how to get there.
I want to know what Items etc. I need to look out for, because for now I just had a very big focus on ele damage and I don’t even know if that’s what I Need. I have no clue how important def and off ability from items and so on are. if anyone could answer me these few questions and look at my build, I would be very happy.

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First of all, there are lots of leveling guides on the forum, which guide you to what skills, devotions and items to choose while leveling. Secondly, you should really start applying components to your items: those help you to max your resistances, which are VERY important in this game for your survivability.
Lastly, the devotions especially need to be changed. You’re focusing on an elemental type build, you should get elemental focused devotions. A very huge improvement to your damage, and thus survivability (mobs die faster, you live longer), are resistance reductions. An eccellent example is Rhowa’s Crown, which give you a proc that not only reduces enemies’ resistances but also does damage.
Use the website called grimtools to plan your builds and devotions, it’s very useful.
These are the tips that I can think of right now :smiley:

First of all: Welcome to the forums!

Some basics first: Resistances are very important in Grim Dawn. That’s one of the reasons you’re struggling with your character. Try to get as close as possible to the cap of 80% with every resistance type. Later on, you even want to “overcap” resistances. Stun res can be lower - depending on your build and playstyle. But everything else should be as close to 80% as possible.

Having for example 17% Aether res (Im using the value for Elite difficulty here) will get you killed by practically anything that does Aether damage. So you should definitely look for gear with more resistances on it.

You should also start using components in your gear. Look at the components you have in your stash or at the recipes your Blacksmith has learned. You’ll pretty sure find something to improve your character. To get better Aether res, you could for example use “purified salt” on your weapon or on an offhand item. A “silk swatch” will get that super low pierce resistance up. “Antivenom salve” gives Acid/Poison resistance. And so on. If you got problems with energy regen, look for “Ectoplasm”. You can put it on rings, medals, necklaces and helmets. It helps a lot. Use those components - they are meant to be used.

Regarding gear: Your main damage source is lightning. So anything with lightning or elemental damage will be useful. Also boni for skills you use are nice. Looking at your GT, you’re already going in the right direction regarding damage stats. But you need more resistances. Blue items may be tempting, but especially during leveling, they come with rather few resistances.

Currently, you’re definitely wearing too much blue without sufficient resistances. Green items can roll lots of resistances. That’s what you should be looking for. I’d also recommend replacing that yellow shield with a proper caster off hand. Among other things, they usually have energy regen on them - something that would definitely help you.

Unfortunately, I can’t help you much with skills and devotions. I don’t play Druid myself and I never leveled one. But maybe someone else can help out.

EDIT: Some of my points were already mentioned. Sorry. I should learn to type faster then…

Thank you very much for your answer!
I wasn’t aware that resistances are THIS important and seemed hard to come by because there are so many of them. I will continue to look into the devotions and will try to replace some into more Fitting ones. You mentioned that resistance reduction - does this mean every mob have a certain amount of resistance and armor that you can shred?

Thank you for your answer, it helps a lot!
Your assumption of Aether Res is absolutely correct, I basically get stomped in every rift and or certain types of monsters. For some reason I just thought some big mobs are just stronger and im a caster so they just hit hard.
How important is armor in this regard? Do I also need a certain amount of armor and def abilities because they increase my chance to dodge and what not.
The part about components is GOLD and I will definitely use this tip. I immediately thought that these would be used in the endgame and collect them further. I really like the items you mentioned to get as components !Wasn’t aware that there are also some with resistance.

You say that my main source of damage is lightning im a little confused on this arent my wind devils phys dmg and my sky shards cold dmg ? i thought it’s a good idea to also mention all these, how important offensive ability is here since they give crit and general combat values?

Yes, that’s exactly the case. Every mob in the game has basically the same main stats as you, and you can shred those stats with skills and devotions.
For a better overlook for each mob stat, check grim tools site. There’sa section called “monster database”, where you can find every mobs’ stats in details. This is especially useful for bosses :slight_smile:
Glad to be of help, and feel free to ask any other question.

Edit: also, about the components, when leveling, feel free to apply any component you like to your gear, you can salvage any component from those pieces of gear at the inventor npc in devil’s crossing (near the rift), at the cost of the item you’re salvaging from.

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Today I have tried to implement all the tips you have told me and I introduce :
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lV77q7wV

Note that I’m still playing normal veteran.

I also tried to remove a component from the armor today but for some reason the third lower option was grayed out. I’m not quite sure if this is the right option or if I’m just doing something wrong.

Would be happy about further feedback.

If you mean the augments then if you don’t have any on the item I guess it would be greyed out. Doesn’t make any difference to removing the component though. You can still do that.

Yes. Everything looks much better :smiley: You should have a much easier life now! Good job.
BTW, veteran isn’t necessary for normal difficulty, unless you like the challenge. I play on hardcore, and recently I resetted my account, I lvled my first character not on veteran, it’s just too dangerous for my taste as first character.
You could swap the devotion bounds in my opinion, put trozan on rhowan’s crown and totem on ultos. In my experience, trozan has almost 100% chance of proccing the elemental storm from rowans, and the totem has higher chance of critting (and proccing ultos) since it attacks more often the trozan (cause of the cooldown). I don’t know if I explained myself xD Lastly you could also rush to maximum on shaman and get stormcaller’s pact, the exclusive skill, which would boost your damage significantly.

Again nice improvements.

Best of luck, and ask away if you have more questions!

Also…welcome to the forum. <3

P.S: Pro tip - your first 6 or so characters are going to be throwaways, because you ARE going to FUBAR them. Don’t let that discourage you, just take the time to learn how/why it failed and try again. :slight_smile:

Regarding your spec:
https://www.grimtools.com/calc/p2573dyZ

This is what I’d do in terms of skill point distributions.

You are focusing way too much on attack spells, and not enough on stats like OA/DA.

Thanks again for your feedback!
I can already say that my character feels much stronger! I really enjoy theory crafting and thinking about builds and equipment.
I will definitely look further into the devotion bounds,since i spend it in a way that made probably no sense, thank you for the hint!

I mentioned that both my main dmg skills Winddevil and Totems have 0 dps in the character window, why is that ?

Btw: Today i killed the last boss of Forgotten Gods,means i will enter Elite at around 68.

First of all a lot of thanks for the links exactly what I needed.

A lot of questions have been answered by the links alone e.g. the question if farming sets and legendary equipment on my lvl makes sense or not.

The general question about equipment was also answered and I love the suggested farm routes.

I also found the section “Skills & debuffs that do not work on most bosses” very interesting.

I have another question I haven’t been able to answer yet.
I have the feeling that my crit value is constantly decreasing with the same equipment. I had 13% crit before now I have 8%. Can someone explain me how Crit works and what makes it rise and why it sinks ?

I will take definitly test your Build suggestions, but i dont fully understand it for now.
Why do you skill melee skills like Savagery ? Don’t I have to attack with my melee weapon to activate it ? Or did you level it because of the following skills?
Also you have completely abandoned Sky Shards dosnt it make up for a lot of my damage?

I also see that you have only used one or a few skill points for certain skills, even those that I thought were mandatory to go all the way like wind devils. What is the exact Reason to go skill this way or is it just because of the lack of skillpoints at this Point ?

Crit is a mechanic which is intricately linked to what’s called “Offensive Ability” (abbreviated as OA).

And OA, in turn, is intricately linked to what’s called “Defensive ability” (DA).

Simply put, 3 things are more likely to happen the greater your OA value is relative to your target’s DA:

  1. the more likely you are to hit the target
  2. The more likely you are to crit the target
  3. The stronger your crits become

Let’s ignore point 3 for now as it is excessively complicated, and immensely difficult for end game builds to do so consistently, nevermind your druid. :stuck_out_tongue:

The reverse is also true - the lower your DA is relative to your target’s OA, the more likely they will be able to crit you.

To understand how crits work, it’s easiest to first assume you have a 100% chance to crit.

10% crit damage with 100% chance to crit will essentially increase your damage output by 10% (i.e. you’ll deal 110% damage per crit).

So if I have a 10% chance to crit, and have 10% crit damage, I’m essentially gaining a 1% increase in DPS.

Which is, meh. Whatever.

Because your chance to crit is determined by your OA, how much one should focus on stacking OA depends very much so on the amount of crit damage that you have, with the converse also being true.

For example, if you look at the Shattered star (the third node of trozan sky shard - TSS), you’ll see that s. star actually gives TSS a whooping amount of crit damage. 75% at 22/12 actually.

So, if you are playing a build focused on TSS, OA now becomes immensely important because you’re chasing after those crits.

Here, having an OA value of 3.1 - 3.2k would be awesome, with more obviously being better.

But before you worry about fancy stuff like crits, you gotta first get sufficient amounts of OA to even land your attacks on enemies - in fact, if your OA is too low, attacks which do hit the target will deal reduced damage.

As a general rule of thumb, you want a minimum of ~2.6 - 2.7k OA and DA by the time you get to level 100.

Likewise, you want enough DA so that you don’t get your butt crit into oblivion.

This is why I think you should use savagery. Tenacity of the boar gives you much needed OA and DA.

Are complicated things.

Simply put, the base damage from multiple wind devils do not stack. Conversely, the damage from maelstrom (WD’s third node) stacks with multiple wind devils.

Which is why maelstrom is more important than WD.

Raging tempest also gives much needed RR which is why it’s hardcapped.

And the damage from multiple Storm totems also stacks.

A general rule of thumb in GD - you want to focus on as few skills as possible, but make each skill as powerful as they can be.

A good example would be TSS - in all honesty, most of TSS damage is derived from shattered star (because of the crit value), and not the base skill itself.

So spreading yourself thin but trying to take as many offensive spells and neglecting vital stats and resists will cripple your spec.

hey People, it’s me again,

i have not only managed veteran difficulty but also elite at this Point . at the moment i am on ultimate in 3rd addon.

I dinged level100 a few minutes ago and now I’m wondering how to farm legandaries?
Somehow it all looks very random to me I found some at leveling but none what I can really use also my equipment looks very modest for lvl 100. ( i still wear lvl 50 gear)

Should i try to craft Legendaries and reroll sets till i get something i Need at the Inventor or rather just farm something like crucibles ? but even than im not sure whats the best way to Play crucibles do i Always start at wave one and go as high i can go or does the loot becomes better when i buy wave 150 instantly and just do “20” waves instead of 150 or even 170 at once ?

When you reach finally level 100 it could be tempting to use every good legendary items you have but better don’t. Stash unusable and see the skill mods and sets, maybe you can use something. Also green MI(with mods or dropped by Nemesis) are very good, blue and faction greens can cover your weaknesses as well.

For farm you can start with dungeons and later transition to SR or Crucible.

Hey again!

Excited to say i managed to get my first toon to lvl 100!
What exactly you mean by “MI” items ? According to Google it means “Monster Infrequents”, but i cant really think of what this really means ?


this Site say they are certain Items drop by Mobs but how are they any better than other lvl 94 items i drop of Mobs?

You addressed dungeons, which one exactly do you mean? The skeleton key ones ? Because i dont think i can do those on my own atm.
I generally feel very weak, maybe it’s my class, but I can die in a second and take forever to kill stuff.
If we assume that I crudible farms (which I quite manage on the first difficulty) whats the best way to do ? doing wave 150-170 over and over or something else ?
I also got my Hands on a craftable set helmet i would like to have is it worth to craft it 5 times and reroll it till i got all the set or is there a better way to get the full set ?

I also thoght About leveling another toon to farm the warden krieg set to than do more difficult Content with ?

Monster Infrequent items already have some fixed mods on them, and on top of that can get any other random mods, so some of them can get relly valuable.
If your character feels very weak, try to farm on lower difficulty, or level up another character that is easier to gear up, for example a Blademaster is very popular for beginners, and with very good gear it can get very powerful. But even with not very good gear, you can probably farm some of the skeleton key dungeons or crucible easier. Or search the forum for other beginner builds, there are some with very detailed explanations for all levels when leveling up as first character.

At this point I would not bother to try to craft a full set from one helmet recipe because it can cost a lot of resources and they are maybe better spent elsewhere. But it depends what recipe dropped.

On crucible, if you can, it is maybe best to farm second difficulty 100-150 if you can beat that, if not, you can farm the lowest difficulty.

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Thanks for the tip with the Skeleton key dungeons. Would it mean I have to make a key every time and would risk dying and possibly not getting anything? The blood is also rare or am I wrong ?
Are the skeleton key dungeons meant by rogue like dungeons ? and do they give good rewards compared to other possibilities ?

Im trying to get to this [1.1.4.1] Trozan's Comet - Trozan's Skybreach, Lightning/Cold Caster Druid

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/q2M76bbZ

I also feel like I made a terrible choice with Druid as my first character. I’m not completely sure because it seems he needs a lot of equipment to be effective and sucks ass on my gear Level i might also be doing something wrong and dont see the obvious :confused:

edit: oh ! About crucible : do different difficult Levels drop different legenaries ? For example am i more likely to drop certain stuff on Gladiator than on the first Level ?

Yes, rogues are win or die situations and can only be entered once per play session. You’d need to craft another key to enter again.

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I don’t think you can go wrong with Druid character but your DA might be difficult to get.

For gear Eastern set is possible to get fairly easy. Also there are few faction gear that can help you. So doubt that you will stuck. But you gain knowledge with experience, so just play… :slightly_smiling_face: