First Adventure in Cairn

Grim Dawn General Discussion
1

Intro
I’m new here in GD and am overly excited to experience the game. On the other hand, I am an aerospace engineer with a disgusting amount of time spent at a desk 3D modeling and reading these forums. The purpose of this thread, is to share my experiences while adventuring through the game for the first time and hopefully learn a few things from anyone who cares enough to share their thoughts and insight.

The Character
I started a few characters and ran them to approximately level 20 before I found one that felt right. I didn’t follow a build, I’d like to figure out what I can before delving into numbers, best viability and similarly stressful things. What I ended up with, was a Shaman/Occultist after somehow selecting hardcore as well. Likely out of habit from previous games.

My Combat
Currently, I’m using Devouring Swarm and Bloody Pox as my main attack while dropping Grasping Vines and Curse of Frailty on larger groups. The Briarthorn with ground slam and the Hellhound help keep things at bay. I’ve got an offhand weapon that summons a reptile pet as well but I think that is being replaced very soon.

Standing
So far, I have played up to and defeated the Warden at level 22 (iirc). I have also killed Gutworm and completed a dungeon from a random key that I found, finishing it by killing Salazar I believe. Both encounters warned me it was not a good idea and both went down very easy. This set up is working very well for me. I think both were a good five levels ahead of me.

Final Thoughts
I have a few pieces of armor that seem to have large defensive properties, mainly chest and legs, at least for the ones I’ve found. I replace those with bigger versions that have solid +health/DA or armor/resists. My offensive minded gear, I am trying to keep with either pet damage or bleed/vitality damage. However, replacing a weapon does not seem to raise my damage. My ‘build’ if you want to call it that, is loosely based around pets. My thought is to snare/debuff/dot a group while my pets fight and I can pay attention to ground effects and the like. In that case, I don’t really have any idea where I am going build-wise or what I should strive for. When I level, I simply see if there’s something I need or want… if nothing is intriguing, I put a point or two in each mastery level of sha/occ. As far as devotions go, I don’t have a lot yet… mostly taking bleed/vitality damage and pet damage stuff. The one skill I have from devotion, Twin Fangs I believe, I have attached to Bloody Pox. Again, unsure if that is a good idea or not.

Questions

  • Should I be maxing skills or trying to level the mastery to get later skills and stat points first?
  • What stat might I look for on a weapon in order to noticeably boost my damage?
  • I can just vendor all the loot I don’t want for coin right? I don’t need to salvage it somehow somewhere?

If you’ve read this far, thank you for sharing this first run through with me. Again, I am not trying to be annoying, I simply have a lot of time on my hands in which I can not play and I’d like to share my first adventure with like minded folk. Tonight, I repair the bridge leading northwest and see what awesome dangers wait ahead.

~~Pariias

2

Sounds like you have a good handle on how to play the game. Most newcomers have troubles, particularly with Salazar if they chance upon him.

Your build sounds well thought out.

I’d say that if you feel like you are doing enough damage to keep things relatively easy then by all means keep opening up your masteries and putting points as needed.

Due to the ranged nature of your setup your weapons will increase your damage better if you specifically look for +% bonuses attached to them that favor your primary skills.

Otherwise it seems like you have a good head on your shoulders for it.

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3

Thank you. The damage seems, okay… the Salazar fight did take a little while but he didn’t even kill my Briarthorn pet. Which reminds me, I did just get the Wendigo totem, so maybe that helped keep the pet alive. I got some really killer weapons in that dungeon, but it seemed some little old dagger I had with +bleed% on it did just as well.

I was really wondering if a damage% isn’t the way to go yet, since I don’t do a lot of damage… and rather, if a weapon with say +2-5 arcane damage would help more. If that 2-5 damage was added to my dots, I imagine that would be a much larger boost in damage. But. Don’t know.

Without throwing any spoilers out there, since every new area is a mystery to me…

Feel free to post how long you think I make it before I die a terrible, horrible, character deleting death :smiley:

4

Well nothing in your build favors arcane damage so in the long run I can’t see it helping much unless you specifically intend to stack it.

The next area you will be heading into will probably highlight your defenses a bit more than before so you may wish to consider advancing Occultist up and grabbing Blood of Dreeg to give you an extra healing boost, plus it also benefits your pets.

As for death, since you managed all the hardest bits of Act 1, well I’d wager you going down somewhere in Act 3 tho it is entirely possible that you will bite the dust in Act 2.

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5

Excellent! How exciting!

Defense wise, since I’m not relying on a shield… are resists and defense ability stats the best way to give myself a fighting chance?

6

On Normal/Vet difficulty, resistances won’t be all that important to you until basically the end of Act 4. If you can squeeze em in tho then by all means. Resistances become much more important once you move onto Elite difficulty.

Your build is actually fairly defensive minded as it is right now what with the crowd control / slowing aspects of your primary skills. Plus you also have blockers in the form of pets. The only thing lacking would be a quick heal besides health pots, which you can get in the form of Blood of Dreeg.

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7

Got ya… I was taking resists whenever they were paired on armor. I considered taking blood of dreeg since I noticed I picked up a few items with bonuses to that on them. I have way too many health pots right now, I’m not sure where I got it… but I have a fair amount of life leech (if that’s what it is called here) so if I hit a big group, I really heal faster than I take damage.

One hour until the adventure continues. Thanks so much for all the advice I really appreciate it!

8

No prob. If you don’t feel it is vital to take it yet you could always focus on other things but just advance the mastery and have it available at least.

Pots are pretty easy to build up in GD and you likely won’t find you need to use them that much with a good ranged build until later anyway.

You may find yourself in situations from time to time where having both pots and a healing skill handy to alternate between cool downs and since you’re on hardcore you may wish to play “better safe than sorry”.

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