I am curious how you start a ‘self found’ in Ultimate. Don’t you need a merit to even ‘start’ in Ultimate? That means that any character starting in Ultimate is at least the 2nd character on the account. And that means that many blueprints have already been found meaning ‘self found’ is out the window - unless you are doing some save file manipulations?
you can just delete the stash/blueprint file or cut it out of the folder when you wish to
Blueprints don’t really matter. Just don’t take a bunch of gear and materials from the transfer stash. If you’ve got a full set of midgame gear ready to go, there’s no point in finding items anymore. And then game’s boring.
Blue prints do matter quite a bit… There’s lots of stuff you can craft with blue prints that you don’t have access to when doing a true self found character. (Can also be a bit annoying at times 
)
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Your suggestion advises me to remove round wheels and replace them with square ones.
Why should I start with the ultimate difficulty right away? To beat every group of mobs at the exit of the devil’s crossroads for 20-30 minutes? And will items of level 10-20-30 allow me to close huge negative resistances? And will I be able to assemble a build for bleeding (for example) until level 94? (The bloodrager set requires level 94, the guillotine requires level 84.)
The problem with the game is that it is pointless after level 94. Items cannot be improved, farming items becomes useless, farming improvements does not exist in the game.
I want a character in the game to be able to be improved after level 100 by farming essences and corruptions, since the developers did not make affixes for legendary items.
Again, I do not want to play mods like grimleague or grimarillion or some other. I would like to see this in the base game. Let the game be final, but this ending should be well after level 94.
Devs don’t want your characters to keep improving forever. They want them to be finished. We get a few extra skill/attribute points from quests, but that’s it.
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The entire point after getting level 94 and getting your top gear is to test in Crucible, SR, superbosses and so on. Then you move on to the next character.
You stubbornly do not notice or do not want to notice what I specifically wrote about, namely - the game should be complete, but the “complete” needs to be moved a little further.
Why do you think that upgrading items with essences/corrupts that could be farmed in the storyline/dungeons/crucible/SR or farming the necessary affixes are “endless”?
A casual player will collect the basic items needed for the build, complete the endgame and start a new character. Let’s say this takes 50 hours.
A hardcore player will collect the items needed for the build and start farming upgrades for items to complete the crucible more quickly or go deeper into SR. When he has upgraded the character to the maximum, he will also complete endgame activities and start a new character. Only this will take 100 hours, not 50.
I’m just asking for these additional, but OPTIONAL, hours to upgrade the character.
The game will have an “end” in both cases. One sooner, the other a little later. And not like now.
If it’s an upgrade, it’s not optional.
Builds will be made, written, and shared with the peak of performance in mind. All your suggestion serves to do is raise the barrier to entry of playing the game at its height.
And…for what? Is enemy difficulty supposed to remain the same as it is now, while our player power skyrockets from affixed Legendaries or Essences/Corruptions (whatever those are)? If so, then you further enforce the necessity of this enhanced equipment, such that players can continue to enjoy the entirety of the game’s content. If not, then…what’s the point? To farm SR even faster, to remove the possibility of enemies ever threatening the player?
It’s also wildly disingenuous to suggest that you will have your finished character at level 94 in the current scope of the game. If that is the case for you, then you probably have 3-5,000 hours of farming in the game. At which point…I mean…do you actually want to be farming more? Is the grind itself really feeding you that much dopamine?
I have roughly 3,000 hours in Grim Dawn, and there are still triple-rares I’m hunting for. A new expansion will probably add enough uniques to give me another few hundred hours of farming just to round out my collection thereof while further expanding on the triple-rare pursuit. I’m not really sure what more can be asked for.
And…suppose it did take longer to max out a character. When you had, is there a reason you wouldn’t then delete them?
I keep my maxed out characters because I enjoy playing them. I’m not farming when I boot them up, I’m playing.
And isn’t that what games should provide?
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FOA with affix rerolls should allow you to relatively quickly get those triple rares correct?
Depends on how easily you can get the supplies needed to reroll… 
Yeah - the devil will be in the details. And the triple rares might be very much needed in Ascendent Mode.
I think I can sort of understand their viewpoint and the scope at which they’re aiming.
With gear being level 84/94 by the time you get it, you’re basically done with the game (In terms of progressing that character)
It’s sort of like classic Final Fantasy games, where you get your final end-game equipment… During the very last area of the game so you get to be peak performance for a single battle with the last boss and then it’s over.
If there was say, a optional level 100 area where you can progress through and get further upgrades. A place that was tuned at minimum for your full build of level 84/94 gear (As opposed to current content that you farm in order to OBTAIN that gear in the first place). This would allow those who wished to push their character further to have that option (Even more so if said upgrades were character specific, so you couldn’t just hoard them all in your stash for future characters to grab when they leveled up)
Of course, the concerns about something like this are worth considering as you mentioned:
- How optional is optional?
Given people’s penchant for making full builds and sharing full builds, it’s quite likely that this “Optional” content ends up not being optional and is a basis for character builds as a whole.
Of course, even this can be mitigated somewhat depending on how much investment is required to grind out upgrades in this special area (As in several other games that have some sort of end-game that is investment heavy people simply exclude it from build discussions. For example, Anarchy Online’s final 10 Shadow Levels are excessively grindy and time consuming (Each one requiring more experience than all prior 200 regular levels and up to 9 Shadow Levels combined) and so builds were “Finished” at just level 200 and any SL’s were simply gravy.
- The end is still the same. The goalpost has just been artificially shifted.
If someone only cares about playing a character for progression. Then they will still feel the same way once they get to this new improved complete build.
The only difference is that it can be more character involved to reach this point. Given that shared stash and drops while leveling can mitigate the need to play a character to level 100 to obtain a full build’s worth of gear. While if this new progression was character locked and could only begin after reaching the prior max build (Level 100. Fully geared build) it would ensure that said characters HAD to be played for some length of time after reaching max level/full gear.
Still, for someone who’s only interested for playing for character progression, the end result will continue to be “Delete the character upon achieving that final upgrade” (Such is this particular side of the “Content to acquire gear” vs “Gear to enable content” design. The former means that a player is only happy when they’re progressing their character. The latter means that a fully progressed character is a means to the end of actually engaging with difficult content)
Here after dropping LE. Love the passion and thankful yall did not become “forgotten gods”. I am totally okay with taking as long as you need on this expansion because this way – all the creativity will have been fleshed out to your teams’ hearts’ content. I mean… look at BG3 – they went by their own schedule and shattered the ceiling of gaming standards and I think you will, too. GL;HF!
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I’m really looking forward to this! Thank you very much for the update!
No objections on the timeline from me. Take as much time as necessary to get it right and continue to be transparent :).
I somehow amassed over 2000 hours in Grim Dawn. 
So obviously, i eagerly await Fangs of Asterkan’s release.
There’s just one thing, that i consider an absolutely necessary task:
Two handed weapon animations must be overhauled, because those aged poorly, in my opinion.
Keep it up, and thank you for making one of my favourite games!
Welcome to the forum. 
While I’m eager to make my arcanist/berserker blizzard wizzard, I’m in no hurry.
And it’s good Crate isn’t either…! They’ve been consistent in putting out solid work, and it’s clear they care about what they’re producing. Quality takes time, and patience is an important skill to cultivate.
I have no doubt this expansion will be absolutely worth it when it’s finally released.
Cant wait for this to drop. Take as long as you need to make it great. Day one purchase for me.