Grim Dawn Impressions So Far

I did play in the extended development portion of the game, but didn’t get too much into it. Finally getting back into it now that the game is released. Just wanted to give my impressions of what’s good and bad in the game so far, in no particular order. I have not reached the endgame yet - currently playing an Arcanist (level 41) and just starting Act 4. Also starting a Shaman.

Good

  1. Aesthetics. Graphics, feel, spell effects, music, etc. Basically, all the aesthetics are great. Maybe a little darker and grittier than I prefer, but it goes with the story well.

  2. Combat, hit detection, spells and abilities in general, damage numbers, etc. It’s fluid, easy to grasp, works well. Constitution is a nice new thing, potions and things to restore Constitution don’t seem overly rare or costly, and it doesn’t seem like the caster classes are overly screwed by the system. The enemies are somewhat varied, and enemy heroes appear at a good clip even though I’m not on Veteran. And I haven’t gotten to Nemesis and such yet, so looking forward to that.

  3. Items. Love the variety, and the rarity seems good. There’s a lot of rare/epic drops, even on Normal, and after playing with Diablo III’s restrictive 4/2 system, items with a plethora of stats are very nice indeed. The sheer amount of damage modifiers is a bit daunting, but hopefully the scaling isn’t too out of control. There’s plenty of item slots, as well.

  4. Crafting. I haven’t delved much into the crafting system yet, but it looks good. I’m throwing the components here too. The component effects are varied and there’s a lot of them (though, once again the game seems to want me to use shields). You can augment your character in various ways, and craft slots that have been elusive.

  5. Multiplayer, when I can find players, is fun. Difficulty doesn’t scale too high with additional players and the synergy you can get going with group effects, spells, and buffs is nice.

  6. Story - even though post-apocalyptic stuff in pretty much every time period has been done to death, I think Grim Dawn is original enough. I like the story and am eager to discover more about it as I play.

  7. Class/Skill system is great. Mastery bar is a nice way of dividing things and adding stats, and I like the additional effects and modifications to earlier skills. And the fact that I can undo my choices (though I don’t know the cost of undoing more than a couple points) is also huge. I like that part of our character’s power comes from the investment into Mastery and our chosen skills. Supported dual classing is a nice option as well, although I haven’t used it yet.

Bad

  1. Multiplayer. I don’t mean that multiplayer itself is bad, I mean getting to multiplayer is bad. There’s no clan/guild system, which is probably the biggest letdown for me overall. Nobody ever joins my games, 90% of games are locked on the server screen, and the ones I join are either behind or ahead of me in questing. I hope this gets better as I get closer to the endgame on the higher difficulties, but the interface is just atrocious. I know, I know - it calls back to Diablo I, scroll down and find a game you like (with more options!), but I hate it. I feel that both PoE and Diablo III have much better multiplayer search options. Which leads me into 2) on this list…

  2. Chat. I feel so alone in the game, and I can’t talk to anyone who isn’t in my game (as far as I know). There needs to be some sort of universal chat so it’s easier to find people and find games. I play games like these mostly for multiplayer experiences, and it’s been pretty frustrating so far. I’m willing to push levels for now and hope for the best at the end.

  3. Spells. Certain spells seem worthless. Thus far, Grim Dawn appears to be largely like Diablo III in terms of combat. That is, you want to be moving and avoiding the crapstorm of bullets, spells, effects, and monsters that come your way. The combination of groups of monsters plus movement means that spells which rely on you standing in 1 spot seem… very bad. For example, I love the concept of the Arcanist’s Aether Ray. But I can never use it effectively… unless I’m in a multiplayer game and others are keeping the monsters occupied. At the moment, though, I’m solo 95% of the time and the spell is basically dead weight. Makes me sad.

3a) Also on the subject of spells - sometimes the environmental interactions can be very annoying. If I cast Sky Shards, sometimes 2 or 3 will hit a tree or whatever and expire in midair. Or if I’m inside, they’ll hit the top of a doorway or something. As much as I laud the graphics and interaction with scenery and such, this just sucks. What’s the explanation with the top of the doorway - the ceiling doesn’t exist except when it’s part of a doorway? Come on. Either let me make full use of the spell indoors or don’t let it be used inside buildings.

  1. Items. Items are both good and bad, as I said above. The problem is with desirable items. As in, I’m not finding much. Everything is the wrong weapon type (I get a metric ton of shields, for instance), the wrong damage type (IE large amounts of Vitality and/or Poison damage when I’m Lightning/Cold/Elemental with a splash of Fire), or has the wrong stats. Not that I’m entirely sure what stats I should be going for in the first place, which is another problem, but I assume I can do more about that in the endgame and I don’t care too much about it for leveling.

  2. Leveling. Leveling seems to take just a tad too long, or maybe I’m just not used to the pace yet. It seems like I’m falling slowly further and further behind the enemies, even though I’m exploring a lot and doing all the sidequests I can find. The bright side of that is mobs appear to be dying just the same, although it feels a little weird to be able to kill a boss 4 or so levels above me.

  3. Story. Once again, good and bad. Bad that a lot of my questions about it are still unanswered, but then I haven’t finished it yet. I was a little disappointed about the 2 factions in Act 3. Given the nature of the game’s world at the moment, it doesn’t seem like a smart idea to effectively declare genocide on the faction you didn’t choose. For me, this is the only part where the story doesn’t mesh so well with what’s been established so far.

Worst Experience - Was in a group of 3 and we killed the high priest that drops the skeleton key that opens the dungeon behind him. One of us opened it, and one of us went to sell in town. Me and the other guy went in a little ways, got the message that we couldn’t make rifts, and then thought it’d be a good idea to go back and sell and wait for our other guy before we went down there.

Turns out the gate locked behind us, shutting the 3rd guy out and forcing the 2 of us to go through that special dungeon with basically full inventories and no preparation. Bottom line: It sucked, and the game needs to do a better job of notifying the player(s) when these dungeons are happening. 3rd guy ended up leaving since he couldn’t join us, and the other guy left after he died. Also, the dungeon doesn’t seem to modify itself based on who is left alive… soloing a 1-life dungeon with other players in the game isn’t fun either.


All in all it’s a good experience, and naturally some things that still need work.

yeah multi player is bad cause this is really a single player game.

After D3 its been hard to play single player games when I was young I played SP games a lot but today I hate it.

There are some worth its weight in gold like Stalker SOC thats stunning in SP any century you are in.

While I accept your assessment, one must always keep in mind the size of the Crate development team and the resources at their disposal.

Having said that, a universal chat system in game would mean the game need to have an internet connectivity to enjoy all of the features.

I do agree with your observation that some spells/skills in the mastery bar rarely gets incorporated into most builds.

e.g. the notoriously underwhelming Cadence.

But I think overtime, the Dev Team and Modders can make their own tweaks.

Good points overall :slight_smile:

Couple of notes that may make a difference to your perception of the issues you identified.

Leveling: the bosses tend to always be higher level than you, the end boss is always set at your level +4 (I think its +4), regardless of difficulty. If you compare yourself to the trash mobs, you’ll probably find you are about the right level :slight_smile:

Gear: Sounds like you are doing end game picky on early game gear :wink: Crate have actually made the loot get better and better as you go up through levels, and then into elite and ultimate. Personally I find upgrades regularly till about lvl 45, and then you really are just wanting RNGesus to give you what you want :slight_smile: but playing more than one character means all my toons are quite well equipped :smiley:

Your worst experience: this is purely due to playing mp… if you were playing sp, you would have spent more time talking to the guy that gave you the key, who would have told you about the gate locking… and the only way out is through death or the end boss (Alkamos for SoT).

Spells(your bad). AAR is exceptional in SP. keep in mind what it is designed to do… kill single targets REALLY FAST! :slight_smile: pair it with cc and trash clear and you’ll have a ball of a time :smiley: I know I am, just pushed my guy into ultimate HC at lvl 68 :smiley: literally super fun to play… GIANT BEAM OF DEATH!! :smiley:

The rest of your comments around multiplayer and such are due to it being a SP game first, with MP tacked on for those that want to (which I do as well, and very much enjoy). But all the lore, story, loot drops, are all geared to SP.

Hope you continue to enjoy and thrive in Cairn! :smiley:

This is true, however it was their decision to include multiplayer and if you are going to create a polished Singleplayer, Multiplayer should be at the same standard. Whether you choose to participate in Multiplayer or not it was included in the price we paid for the game.

I can agree that MP needs work. Less people are using the MP option because it is so frustrating to find games. Maybe Crate can start with updating the browser.

Join the discord Grim Dawn Chatroom, download the app and use the overlay. Voila. The more people we get the more the chatroom will be populated.

Well, it occasionally happens outside of bosses as well. Cronley’s Lair, for example, has a lot of 35-38 mobs… I was in there at 33-34.

Gear: Sounds like you are doing end game picky on early game gear :wink: Crate have actually made the loot get better and better as you go up through levels, and then into elite and ultimate. Personally I find upgrades regularly till about lvl 45, and then you really are just wanting RNGesus to give you what you want :slight_smile: but playing more than one character means all my toons are quite well equipped :smiley:

I keep items for other characters in my stash, but I don’t want to level 3 or 4 characters at once.

Your worst experience: this is purely due to playing mp… if you were playing sp, you would have spent more time talking to the guy that gave you the key, who would have told you about the gate locking… and the only way out is through death or the end boss (Alkamos for SoT).

Right, but would it have been that hard to have a notification appear to the group before the gate opened?

Spells(your bad). AAR is exceptional in SP. keep in mind what it is designed to do… kill single targets REALLY FAST! :slight_smile: pair it with cc and trash clear and you’ll have a ball of a time :smiley: I know I am, just pushed my guy into ultimate HC at lvl 68 :smiley: literally super fun to play… GIANT BEAM OF DEATH!! :smiley:

When I get higher I might have the freedom to do that, but at the moment it’s more constant movement, and Sky Shards + Elemental Fragments wins the day. If I stand there and spam AAR, I’m gonna die. On the bright side, I really like Sky Shards. Too bad it has a short cooldown, but whatever, still cool.

The rest of your comments around multiplayer and such are due to it being a SP game first, with MP tacked on for those that want to (which I do as well, and very much enjoy). But all the lore, story, loot drops, are all geared to SP.

Hope you continue to enjoy and thrive in Cairn! :smiley:

I realize that, but it’s feedback. It’s the single area where I think they could improve things a hell of a lot.

:slight_smile: feedback is always useful :slight_smile:

interesting that you had to kite lots with your AAR early on… I rushed it and found i didn’t have to kite at all till Elite act 3 (where bosses don’t die in 3 seoncds… yet). and when I say I rushed it… I mean rushed getting to it, but not maxing it, as it is too energy intensive and you only need enough point in it to clear trash in one tick (.3 of a second).

I believe there’s been discussions on the whole popup thing previously… and it was a resounding no… except for very limited circumstances. The way SoT is done is away more immersive :smiley: imo :slight_smile:

I would say you are about the right level if you are only one level below the trash mob (champions and heroes will be higher than the trashy trash). so hopefully it’s providing good but not unfair challenge :slight_smile:

Hope you’re enjoying the game :slight_smile: