A month or two ago, I did a lot of theorycrafting for the new expansion and made a few posts here, but alas, i didn’t have time to play. I was especially interested in the new Dranghoul Blade. Finally, I had a free week to blast a fresh SSF run of Pierce Phantasmal Blades (PB) Reaver.
I really enjoyed the build, so I wanted to share my progression journey. This guide focuses on the mid-to-endgame progression, including specific farming routes and crafting strategies. My goal was to build a character with a great balance of high clearing damage and reliable tankiness. I have not done everything perfectly but it turned out to be pretty great.
Pros & Cons
Pros:
- 100% SSF Friendly: Clear target-farming path
- High Clear Speed & Juicy Crits: Excellent mob clearing with Phantasmal Blades.
- Above average to solid Defensive Layering: Very safe against standard mob packs, with reliable emergency tools.
- Extremely Mobile: High uptime across multiple movement skills.
- Easy Stat gain: Straightforward to stack high OA, DA.
Cons:
- Active Playstyle: Requires active piloting (timing Evade, repositioning, and kiting).
- Hard Boss Spikes: Can be burst down in hard boss fights/ tempest totems/ super large packs if you stand still.
- Target Farming Required: Requires dedicated route farming for specific MIs and crafting materials.
- You will also need a lot of iron bits for rerolling later in the game.
- This version is not most suited for HC, but it can definitely be with more defensive setup.
Early Leveling References
- Early Mana Tip: Slot Ectoplasm into your jewelry/helm as soon as you find it, and grab an energy regeneration relic from The Lost Elder quest. Later you can use mana mods for potion and get battle surge proc from berserker class.
- For a comprehensive early leveling breakdown, check out S.E.P_Ralf’s guide: The Soulpiercer - HCSSF Beginner Pierce PB Blademaster.
- Another great version of this build and reference using a slightly different approach. Just found it before posting the guide xd: Stymphalian Raven - Pierce Phantasmal Blades Reaver.
Gameplay Loop
You cycle between three mobility skills (Medal teleport skill, Shadow Strike, and Leap) to move around map and spam Phantasmal Blades to kill mobs. Don’t forget to press pneumatic burst, rallying cry, bone chilling cry. You have turtle and untamed rage procs so usually, if you are in a tough spot you will have a few seconds to run away from danger. If you feel that you can tank the mob you shotgun phantasmal blade in close range, if not you just kite and spam phantasmal blades from a distance.
Progression & Grimtools Snapshots
1. Ready for Ultimate (Level 71)
- Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/ZR9nGYrV
- Completed Normal campaign (all acts), parts of Elite, and did some reputation farming. Focus here is capping resistances, high health pool, armor, and a bit of OA/DA. This setup carries smoothly until ~level 84, where it starts falling off.
2. Level 90 Faction Respec
- Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/NYPRXYAZ
- First major respec using faction gear (ensure reputation is farmed). Crafted pants, gloves, belt with okayish defensive affixes. Damage and survivability jump significantly here. OA is a bit low tho.
3. Level 98 Transition (The Spite)
- Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/2pJn7jjZ
- Swapped to The Spite 2H sword for a substantial temporary power spike. No devotion tree changes are required for this phase.
- I actually forgot to put point in wereraven here lol(.
4. Ultimate Campaign Clear & SR 15
- Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/ZR9nkO0V
- Finished the Ultimate quests and cleared SR 15 for points to begin targeted endgame gear farming.
- Finally put some points into wereraven and form of the beast.
Endgame Farming and upgrade Routes
Step 1: Crafting the Aurora Relic
- Target: Aurora Relic (+1 to All Skills and substantial survivability). Recipe can be farmed from these bosses. Igron Worldbreaker - Grim Dawn Monster Database and Ulderthorm Tempestborn - Grim Dawn Monster Database
- Materials (Bloodbound Totems): Quest rewards won’t provide enough. Ironeye Hideout and Black Citadel are deadly and have low drop rates, but they are still worth running for Kurn reputation and the Bloodbound Chest Armor.
- Alternative Farming Route: Run the Gloomwald Treasure Trove route they are pretty good for random materials (detailed by @RSnoomak in this video guide).
Step 2: Monster Infrequent (MI) Route
Combine the following route for maximum efficiency:
- Gloomwald: Run Troves + Totems, and kill Packla, the Visage Thief for the Helm.
- Ugdenbog: Teleport to Ugdenbog and kill Kravall for Kravall’s Shoulders. Be careful, this is pretty tough fight!
- Eldritch Gate: Farm Gargoyles before Korvaak for the Gargoyle belt.
- Medal Boss: Farm Gutworm for the medal.
- Ancient Grove: Run for Vine Ring vendor rolls and drops.
Intermediate Gear Upgrade. Ready for Ascendant mode.
- Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/26M9KKAN
I got lucky with legendary belt and rings, so i decided to use them for now. But using good vine ring and belt is about the same. Also the medal and chest armor will usually drop with good affixes. The build is ready to handle SR 30–31 (though not smoothly). Before going Ascendant mode:
- Farm Chthonian Nemesis reputation in Bastion of Chaos.
- Farm Eldritch Nemesis reputation running from the City of Korvaak to Korvaak.
- Farm your baseline Dranghoul blades in the beginning portion of Tyran hold Grim Dawn Interactive World Map and endgame off-hand from this boss Jarinthor the Sandstorm - Grim Dawn Monster Database.
- Farm potion modifier for Armor from Yuda Moonwhisper - Grim Dawn Monster Database .
My potion setup is following: Damage absorption barrier and damage reduction modifiers on my life flask with minus seconds on recharge, Max movement speed and Armor on my mana flask with increased potency.
Transition to Ascendant Mode & Endgame Crafting
Ascendant difficulty adds significant lethality (especially Tempest Totems), but unlocks Ashes of Awakening for affix rerolling.
- Material Farming: Run Gloomwald for Totems, Voidmarked Chests, and Ascendant Troves until you accumulate ~150 Ashes of Awakening.
- Nemesis Hunting: It’s very dangerous, but if you kite them it’s pretty doable, they spawn really fast on ascendant mode
- Grava’Thul: Target-farm for pants. i usually go to mourndale / cinder wastes to farm it.
- Eldritch Nemesis: i usually run from korvak city till korvak to farm them. We can actually use 2 amulets from kaisan and 1 amulet from other nemesis.
-
Blacksmith Crafting: Craft boots and gloves at the Devil’s Crossing blacksmith (imo best bonus is % physique because we can put more points into cunning then)
-
Affix Rolling: Well, it’s casino time! By this point I had more than 160 ashes, a ton of iron bits (about 8 million), and plenty of MI’s saved up (unfortunately only 4 pairs of Grava pants, sadge).
- Gloves & Boots Strategy:
- I crafted 9 pairs of gloves and 9 pairs of boots.
- Roll for 1 ash on the prefix or suffix; if I didn’t hit something remotely decent, I didn’t try to go for more.
- If I found a usable affix, I continued rolling for 2 ashes. If nothing good hit, I moved on to a new base.
- If a glove or boot naturally had a really good prefix or suffix already, then I was willing to roll it many times.
- If you hit something pretty good but not perfect, stop and move to the next piece.
- By using this method I got these super funny gloves (
) and decent boots. (sorry my pc for some reason wouldn’t let me screenshot)
- Other Gear & MIs:
- Vine Rings, Medal, Armor, Sword: Pretty easy to roll since these items usually drop with good pierce affixes naturally. I used about 6-7 Vine Rings to get good rings.
- Grava Pants, Helm, Shoulders: Spent the rest of my ashes and money here. Shoulders turned out really good, and the rest are okayish.
- My general thoughts on rerolling:
- You can reliably get one decent rare affix + one good magic affix on each piece of gear if you have like 5 items.
- You can get double rares with a reasonable amount of money if one affix is already the one you wanted from the drop.
- Spend bits and ashes aiming for at least 1 Rare affix + 1 useful Magic suffix per slot.
Phew, that was really fun and a bit exhausting. Time for the big respec into the endgame build.
Final Endgame Setup
- Grimtools: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/VWPqzqGZ
- Performance: Smoothly clears SR 30–31 and Roguelike Dungeons. High-end celestial bosses are doable with active kiting (not the best build for bossess)
Approximate Min max setup (exist only in grim tools xd).
grimtoolsminmax
Possible quesitons
Q: Why not switch to the Dranghoul Blade earlier?
The off-hand has a steep Spirit requirement. Respeccing attribute points away from Cunning into Spirit too early significantly hurts your OA before endgame gear fixes your stat pool.
Q: Why not take Kraken with The Spite 2H sword?
While Kraken provides nice bonuses, it does not make enough difference to bother in my opinion, but it’s a perfectly viable option overall.
Q: Why use Vine Rings instead of Pierce RR rings?
** I found that pierce rr rings works great only on enemies with really high pierce res. But in 95% of cases more pierce damage and cunning from vine rings will be much better than pierce rr + we can cover more resists with them.**
Q: Which Ascended affixes are best for us?
Honestly, just more cast speed on jewellery/weapon/offhand and more hp/physique on other equipment.
Q: Why not take Living Shadow from the Unknown Soldier devotion?
The proc condition is inconsistent for this playstyle, and the damage reduction it provides has unreliable uptime. I tried using it and did not like it. I decided to use potion for dr and took turtle instead.
Q: Why not more points in form of the beast. ?
I think it is a bit more damage than bloodboorne. It’s ok to put more points into it. I just don’t like that we can’t take full advantage of max casting speed bonuses
Q: Why do you use these potions. ?
** The armor pot and speed pot just feel great overall and make you very tanky + you can kite more easily with movespeed. Barrier as health mod is basically free turrtle proc every health pot. We do not have damage reduction so i tried to use pot for this****
Q: What is the total time investment?
For intermediate ascension ready setup, i farmed for 25-30 hours. When i finished my character (Endgame Setup) i played around 48 hours. (i think i am about average player in terms of speed)
–
P.S. Grimtools for some reason doesn’t account for seal of blades buff.
