first-time player

This is my first time playing Grim Dawn, and I’m enjoying it immensely. However, I think I may have reached the end boss too early. I’m only level 47, and Loghorrean is like level 52 and keeps kicking my butt. I’m OK with doing other stuff to level up to 50 before taking on Loghorrean, but what should I do? I’ve explored every zone I’ve come across, even most of that horrendous area I got to via an aetherial rift.

Thanks in advance,
Wrayk

Level 47 is a normal level to defeat the Loghorrean. Gaining a few levels will not change the level offset - not sure what the level cap is for him, but I think he scales up at least to level 60 on the first difficulty. Maybe it is suffcient to increase health and / or resistance to prepare for him, which you can easily do by crafting a few new items. Otherwise do a few boss runs and / or revise your build.

The majority of the game scales to your level within huge bounds. You basically cannot be under leveled for the main storyline, and if you level up more, so will he. Until like 60 or something as stated above, but by no means do you need to be there to beat him. If enemies are about 3-5 levels up on you, that’s totally normal.

So if you are struggling with him, try to add components to your gear with chaos and vitality resistance. You could also craft some potions which give you those resists. Additionally, you might just not have enough hp. You can take some points out of damage abilities, and put them into one of your masteries to get some more.

Na, that isn’t too far off the mark. Log is the lock before you enter elite, he’s meant to be a bit of a check. Your build is probably fairly bad (Don’t feel too bad about that, there are a lot of things that are not intuitive for first time players, it’s generally expected you will fuck up at least your first character or 3 in GD).

If Log is owning you, it’s probably because your resistances are crap. If you are not ranged, you need pretty decent chaos, vitality, and acid resistances. His one Acid vomit attack is REALLY powerful, has a long windup though that you can watch for though. Some people have recorded on the highest difficulty, that it can pump out well over 10k Acid damage even to a max acid resistance character. It generally will 1 shot if you try to tank it.

If you are ranged, you instead need just Chaos and Vitality, and good dodging skills to avoid most of his projectile spells. You can’t really dodge the Doombolts, you just gotta take them like a man, but everything else Log throws at you is avoidable. Turn on the adds he spawns and clear them out, and so long as you avoid that one attack that shoots like 5 red balls at you, you should be good (Those orbs are what summons the adds after you clear them out the first time).

Oh, and just a warning. Get honored with Devil’s Crossing, and buy 3 of the Slith Venom ring augements, and put them on your rings/amulet. Or suffer in elite.

I’ve never seen Log do his acid vomit attack on Normal/Veteran.

Barf is 8 projectiles of Phy,psn and chaos mixed, you can get shotgunned

Wow, thanks bro. Maybe it happened before but I never remembered.

Wow, thanks for the help everyone. I definitely will increase those resistances!

Well, that was much better. Now that I’ve unlocked Elite mode, what should I do? Go back to Devil’s Crossing and start clearing out all the maps again? Is there any more questing?

Oh, I only have 20. I guess I need to do some more exploring… and there’s probably a few bridges I haven’t repaired yet.

If this is your first character, it would certainly help to do all the faction quests and rouge like dungeons before heading to elite. Once you are lv50, you can use much better gear which you will be finding now. You dont HAVE to be any level for elite, but it helps to be 45 to 50 since shortly into elite you can then use lv50 gear. If you dont care about spoilers, look up a list of all devotion shrines and get all of them from normal/elite.

You can also complete the first difficulty of crucible before doing elite. You can spend your “tribute points” from that on a couple more devotion points and this will get you some more gear and exp as well

Just dont spend TOO much time in normal/veteran because the legendary gear drop rate is ABYSMAL compared to the higher difficulties. It is possible to do the steps of torment 5 times and not get one

oh also, in general from now on your will need to build tanky. Defensive ability and resistances are absolutely key. If you ever get one shot by a boss, look up what types of damage they do and try to equip gear and components which address that.

If you ever run into a massive wall and feel like your gear just isnt good enough, you can instead of farming you could instead start a new guy and take him to the same point. They will find gear which the other might find better along the way, and you play whichever seems to be having an easier time until you find more gear for the other one

Hmm, I can only get to the mid-30’s on the crucible. And I keep getting wasted on the 3rd level of the Bastion of Chaos, trying to get the pulsating obsidian shard. I’m level 53 now, but failing at both of these 2 things is really getting me down… dying in the Bastion of Chaos is particularly rage-inducing, since you have to go SO FAR – and if you make a mistake and die, you have to make a skeleton key and do it all over again. Maybe it’s time to find a new game…

nah don’t get frustrated! post what you build is so far here and people will help. In general if you are dying a lot and feel weak, you need to look at your devotions and gear components and see if you can get more resistances out of them. Make sure you put most of your points on physique, almost regardless of your class and fighting style.

Also, the game difficulty is somewhat designed around people making multiple characters and having them share gear. All your recipes and components can be used across all your characters. So if you get another guy to lv50, he is almost certainly going to find a nice piece of gear for your first guy along the way. Or a recipe for something which could also help.

Here is a guide I wrote which might also help, it’s geared towards ultimate but everything applies to normal and elite just the same:

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=47588

What’s the best way to post my build?

Recreate it in GrimCalc, then post the GrimCalc link here.

Here’s the link, though the physique/cunning/spirit values are wrong. They should be 703/318/308, but when I tried to increase them, my level went higher than its current level of 56.

http://grimcalc.com/build/1007-JSVPyb

Thanks!

With only 35 points in the mastery bar you probably lack health. IMHO it’s only worth to have 10 points in Military Conditioning, if you have a lot of flat physique and health stats. I’d remove at least 5 points from the skill and put them in the bar.

What are you using as main attack skill?

  • If Blade Arc, then you do not benefit from Markovian’s Advantage. Get Laceration instead.
  • If Cadence, then unlearn Blade Arc (you already have Forcewave) and put more points in Cadence and activate its modifiers.

Put a point in Blitz and Blindside for utility.

As a shield bearer you should put some points in Shield Training and get shield related devotions like Anvil or Targo the Builder.

Ya i also suggest taking quite a few points of out your damage abilities and putting them into your mastery bar. You could also get an exclusive soldier skill, both are very good. This will get you a TON of hp and really help with your dying issues.

Next up, blade arc is NOT a basic weapon attack and CANNOT trigger weapon skills like markovians advantage. Blade arc is actually a spell which uses your casting speed. So to focus your build a bit, you have some choices:

  1. Use blade arc a lot and dont use weapon pool skills
  2. Use blade arc with the transmuter which gives it a cooldown, and use weapon pool skills still
  3. Remove all points from blade arc and use cadence and weapon pool skills

Cadence is a basic attack which CAN trigger weapon pool skills, except on the big 3rd hit

Oh and forcewave with the transmuter to remove its cooldown is like blade arc. It uses casting speed instead of attack speed and CANNOT trigger weapon pool skills. You dont have it that way right now but just so you know. Plus blade arc and forcewave are both aoe hits, having both is a bit redundant and you should probably choose only one and put the rest of your points in the mastery bar and an exclusive skill.

Last note, 16 points on the heal at less than %hp skill is really excessive. It doesnt do THAT much more with 16 compared to 3 to 6. Your points would be better off elsewhere, perhaps in another classes skill