Guide - How to transition from POE to GD

Grim Dawn Guides and Tutorials
1

You just arrived from Wraeclast (POE) and you’re lost in Cairn (GD) ? Here’s the place to get more info and tips.

Intro

I realised that, since the launch of FG expansion, a lot more demands on guides with leveling tips appeared. Apparently this is a habit from POE guides, where leveling with your final build in mind is mandatory.

I’d like to make a guide with useful info and tips for new players from Wraeclast. I haven’t played POE in months (though I used to play a lot in 2014-2015 but that’s an eternity in the gaming world).

If you’re a former POE player, a GD player who knows POE a little or lost player who needs help, please write your thoughts, feelings and questions in this thread to get some material to improve this guide. What would you like to know or understand in GD ?

Ideas: crafting, leveling, guides, itemisation, defence, devotions, mechanics, etc.

FAQ

What is a “guide” in GD ?

Detailed Answer

Why don’t guides usually have a leveling guide ?

Detailed Answer

In POE, leveling is intertwined with your final build. This is not the case in GD, you can level your toon however you want because:

  • respec is cheap: it only costs gold (skill points) and aether crystals (devotions).
  • the power level of abilities is different low level/endgame. For instance, Word of Pain in Inquisitor is an incredibly strong leveling ability at low level but only useful for devotion proc’ in the endgame.

The only drawback (of having a leveling build completely different from what your aim at level 100) is the experience needed for Devotion Abilities but, at level 100, experience increases very quickly.

OK. So, where do I find real Beginner / Budget Guides ?

Detailed Answer

Apart from a forum search, Beginner Guides are stored in the “Builds for Beginners” section of any Build Compendium (stickied in the Classes, Skills and Builds Section of the forum)

GDC X (aka Grim Dawn Compendium #10)

GDC IX

What are the main differences between POE and GD (mechanics, crafting, game modes, …) ?

Detailed Answer

Have a look at this video series from malawiglenn: - YouTube

  • Crafting:

It’s straightforward in Grim Dawn. NPCs will combine materials into new items for you. You can’t use components/materials yourself to tweak items, but crafting large batches of items is easy and accomplishes much the same.

  • Bases:

Since crafting is different so are the bases/affixes used for magic/rare items. There are common bases that you will see drop from any source. There are also special crafted magic bases (yellow) that have additional stats compared to their common counterparts. There are also special dropped magic bases called Monster Infrequents that only come from certain sources. Since you can’t tweak these bases, getting the materials to craft them or killing mobs that drop the base you want is where you will be spending most of your time looking for upgrades.

  • Mob Durability:

The average GD mob is much more durable than the average PoE mob. You will still be exploding the screen with skill effects, but mobs usually live just long enough to sneak an attack or two in unless you’re well overgeared and min-maxed. Size up packs, expect to take some hits, and adjust playstyle accordingly.

  • Defenses:

Max life/ES stacking in PoE is simple, but effective because leech and most regeneration effects scale by % and additional damage reduction sources are scarce. In GD, stacking 2x health does not necessarily make you 2x tougher as additional damage reduction sources are much more common and potent.

  • Endgame Grinds:

Subjective, but in my honest opinion GD is far more lenient on the grind. By the time you hit Ultimate and level 100, you should be able to access everything the game has to offer. You don’t have to grind hundreds of maps to fight the superbosses of the game, just do some quests and prepare for some tough encounters.

Shattered Realms is similar to Delve as an infinite dungeon and farming location.
Dungeons are similar to boss maps like Breachstones or Sacrifice Fragments.
Crucible is like Coward’s Trial but more involved and rewarding i.e. fun.

  • Flasks:

GD does not have flasks, but it does have a wide variety of consumables that you can use. They don’t refill on kill, but they’re fairly easy to stock up on whether they are crafted, dropped, or bought.

  • Hardcore: SUPER IMPORTANT

Hardcore characters cannot be recovered upon death. They do not move to softcore on death. If the thought of losing a character permanently like that is too much for you then either Hardcore is not for you in GD or you will want to make backups of characters to import into Softcore.

  • Crowd Control:
    Hard CC (Stuns/Freeze) in GD has a base duration attached to skills. The game is balanced around having stun/freeze resistance in ultimate. Stuns and Freeze are not inherent to strong hits or crits.

Where do I learn the game mechanics ?

Detailed Answer

The official gameguide is a mine of useful information and very well done: https://www.grimdawn.com/guide/[/li]

For a beginner perspective, there is an exhaustive compendium: https://forums.crateentertainment.com/c/grimdawn/guides-and-tutorials/35[/li]

And for a PhD in advanced mechanics, this is paradise: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23720[/li]

And do not hesitate to ask. The community is always eager to help and dissipate any mind fog you may have on certain mechanics. No question is ever stupid, only answers can be.

I’m stuck in the Main Campaign. I can’t get past level XX because I take too much damage and/or I don’t do enough damage. What should I do ?

Detailed Answer

This is the Bible for leveling tips and what to look out for :

sir spanksalot 's leveling/farming guide: A how-to on getting loot efficiently on solo play + advice on levelling

I have a good grasp on the game, I am level 100 and finished Ultimate. What should I do to improve my character ?

Detailed Answer

If you want to polish your build, this guide is very thorough. It is meant for Crucible initially but it is useful in many ways for other aspects of the game:

Veretragna’s Gladiator Guide: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=75258&

Because time is money and you want loot, loot, loot, and only loot! There’s a “getting items” section in:

sir spanksalot 's leveling/farming guide: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81737

Conclusion

Did you find this guide useful ? If so, we’re glad; if not, write a post to tell us what is missing.

5 Likes
2

/reserved because I can.

3

Nice one mate!

Let me know if you need help with some FAQ’s

4

We really needed this since a long time ago. I hope this gets stickied since there’s apparently a large influx of POE players coming here and freaking out why the levelling guides aren’t there.

5

Nice one belzzzz. I’d like to suggest an addition to your definition of a guide - more specifically, end game guides.

I think most guides (which aren’t excessively reliant on greens) are more than just a showcase of what a build can do. I think it’s moreso a depiction of the author’s thought process.

Given the hundreds of various ways you can build the same class combination using the same core items, end game guides provide the reader valuable direction.

It’s also worth mentioning that the author probably spent a considerable amount of time testing the various build variants in the process of min/maxing.

By doing so, these guides can help the reader avoid the same pitfalls and mistakes made by the author.

6

If you find something is useful or should be added, just post a Question or a Question + Answer in the thread and I’ll copy it in the OP. I’ve already quoted you from Nadi’s thread (…without your consent …)

That was only a suspicion but was confirmed by other POE players.

I also quoted you in the guide.

7

Not sure if this is relevant because it isn’t about transitioning from PoE to GD, moreso than it’s about why guides are GUIDES and not MANUALS:

Anyhoo, it might be worth mentioning that it always pays to experiment with builds/skills - especially given how cheap respeccing a toon is.

I really don’t think any player (old or new) should level a toon with the end goal of having it be IDENTICAL to the one shown in the guide.

Minor things can really impact how a toon feels - e.g. devotion bindings/pathing, components, stat point distribution, augments (especially mobility runes), etc.

There are 2 reasons why I say this:

  1. Many crafters impose restrictions on themselves when making a build just to make it more challenging. For example, crafters like john smith, mad_lee and korsar try to avoid using greens entirely. I personally try to avoid using consumables and buffs/banners. All these things have massive ramifications - e.g. if you’re okay using energy consumables like royal jelly, then your build will no longer need to worry about energy sustain, and you might be able to alter your devotion pathing to something more offensive.

  2. People have different piloting preference. I like precision piloting, so I probably prioritise things like rune of displacement, and CC res moreso than other players (just read my signature :p).
    The reason why precision is important to me is because positioning is the only thing which cannot be affected by the RNG of crap like mutators. It doesn’t matter as much if you have -25% hp if you can constantly position yourself in a manner which minimizes incoming damage.

    This in turn allows you to go heavier on offence.

    Crafters like fluff, and ptir also tend to build things in such a manner (i.e. both of them are the only people I know of who have used fevered rage effectively). This means that their specs are less accessible to “noobier” players.

    For example, while fluff’s infamous belgo BM may have a 100 cunning dump, I don’t think most players (myself included) have the skill to pull it off to the level that he can.

    So funnelling some of that cunning into physique might be an option worth testing out.
8

Very interesting and it has been added. I love how this is almost a philosophy exam: “What is a guide?”

I do agree, you level a character with an idea in mind and it evolves during your tests, feelings, reactions in a long process. When I levelled my first toon in FG, I was sure it would end up to be an Aegis of Menhir with the Virtue Set. I finally made my beloved and gimmicky Auramancer and also fell in love with Vire’s Might on the way.

But for specific and unique mods (on weapon or off-hand), I don’t use green items either. Nor do I play with consumables. I consider this kinda cheating.

9

I did major in philosophy :stuck_out_tongue:

1 Like
10

Some important mechanical differences from the top of my head:

Conversion:

In Poe conversion can be applied multiple times and both the damagetype, wich is getting altered, as well as the resulting damage can be scaled. In GD conversion gets applied only once and you can only scale the final damage type.

Accuracy:

In PoE spells (skills wich don’t use the weapon) can never miss, therefore investing into accuracy is redundant. In GD however Offensive (OA) and Defensive Ability (DA) affect EVERYTHING and are therefore core stats of any character. OA is basically accuracy and critical strike chance in one stat combined, and the relation between the players OA and the DA of the mob also determines the base of the critical strike multiplier. ("% increased critical damage" then further scales the critical strike multiplier, but if you start with 1.2 or 1.4 or even higher is determined by the relation between OA and DA). Likewise DA can be understood as a combination of dodgechance and critical damage reduction (this isn’t 100% accurate in GD terms, but it should give a PoE player the right basic idea).

Multipliers:

PoE is all about multipliers and they are everywhere, wheras in GD multipliers are very rare. (“Damage modified by %” is the GD wording for a multiplier). Therefore damage is scaled best by investing into the stats that have a pseudo-multiplicative effect: Those are speedmodifiers (attackspeed/castspeed/cooldownreduction), resistancereduction (just like in POE the mob resistance can go below zero) and the aforementioned OA and critical damage. The “additive stack” (all the % increases to damagetype x) acts in total as a multiplier (just like in POE), but since % increased damage is everywhere, the diminishing returns of additive stacking can kick in pretty fast. (You can get over 2000% increased damage in the endgame quite easily and 3000% isn’t impossible either.)

Dots:

In PoE dot’s can’t crit, in GD they can. 'nuff said. Dots in GD are amazing, feel amazing and are more than viable.

In-game tooltip:

In PoE the tooltip tries to figure in things like the evasion of mobs of your character’s level, in GD the tooltip only calculates some numeric values of the character like % increases and attackspeed/castspeed. It is only a hint, an indication of the real damageoutput, and a well-built and wellgeared character usually does more damage than you see on the tooltip. But it is entirely possible to do less too, especially with low OA and/or lacking reduction to enemy resistance.

11

Thank you. It has been added to the guide.

12

In-game tooltip:

In PoE the tooltip tries to figure in things like the evasion of mobs of your character’s level, in GD the tooltip only calculates some numeric values of the character like % increases and attackspeed/castspeed. It is only a hint, an indication of the real damageoutput, and a well-built and wellgeared character usually does more damage than you see on the tooltip. But it is entirely possible to do less too, especially with low OA and/or lacking reduction to enemy resistance.

Not sure if I’m understanding you correctly - but you can actually see your %chance to hit & %chance to crit if you mouse over your OA values (with the converse also being true for DA).

You can then figure out your DPS by looking at your %crit damage.

13

That’s not what i meant, i was talking specifically about the dps number for your main ability. I should have probably made this more clear, i’m sorry. In Poe this dps-number would “guesstimate” the mob’s evasion (DA so to speak. It’s pretty different, but the closest we can get) and then figure in wich probability to hit/crit you would get with your given accuracy versus that guesstimated evasion. (It’s a VERY superficial guesstimation and oftentimes other mechanics get disregarded, but, well, that’s how they do it.) Hence in PoE the dps-number for your main ability would try to figure in hypothetic values for the mob stats, wheras in GD the dps-number for your main ability is simply calculating the result of your character’s stats. (Base damage of the skill x attack/castspeed x additive stack). It doesn’t figure in a hypothetic OA vs DA roll or resistance reduction. The character sheet in GD however is way more in-depth than the equivalent in PoE.

@Belzzz: Thx :). I hope it helps somebody.

14

In grim dawn it’s always using the DA of the last enemy you attacked actually. So you can get a Nemesis alone and check your chance to hit/crit vs them specifically in game. It’ll even figure in your DA shred into the figure if it’s active.

15

Oh wow, my bad then. I got to admit, that the last time i checked that was at some point in early access :D. I guess belzzz can safely delete that passage from the guide then. I apologize.

16

Done :slight_smile: :smiley:

17

In PoE dot’s can’t crit, in GD they can. 'nuff said. Dots in GD are amazing, feel amazing and are more than viable.

Not exactly true. All DoTs do benefit from crit in PoE, it’s just that the crit multiplier can’t be raised easily.

It would be better to change this to say that DoTs are like separate damage values/types from flat damage. Compare to PoE where most DoTs (bleed/poison/burning/ignite) are based on the base damage from a hit.

Some other important differences:
Crafting: It’s straightforward in Grim Dawn. NPCs will combine materials into new items for you. You can’t use components/materials yourself to tweak items, but crafting large batches of items is easy and accomplishes much the same.

Bases: Since crafting is different so are the bases/affixes used for magic/rare items. There are common bases that you will see drop from any source. There are also special crafted magic bases (yellow) that have additional stats compared to their common counterparts. There are also special dropped magic bases called Monster Infrequents that only come from certain sources. Since you can’t tweak these bases, getting the materials to craft them or killing mobs that drop the base you want is where you will be spending most of your time looking for upgrades.

Mob Durability: The average GD mob is much more durable than the average PoE mob. You will still be exploding the screen with skill effects, but mobs usually live just long enough to sneak an attack or two in unless you’re well overgeared and min-maxed. Size up packs, expect to take some hits, and adjust playstyle accordingly.

Defenses: Max life/ES stacking in PoE is simple, but effective because leech and most regeneration effects scale by % and additional damage reduction sources are scarce. In GD, stacking 2x health does not necessarily make you 2x tougher as additional damage reduction sources are much more common and potent.

Endgame Grinds: Subjective, but in my honest opinion GD is far more lenient on the grind. By the time you hit Ultimate and level 100, you should be able to access everything the game has to offer. You don’t have to grind hundreds of maps to fight the superbosses of the game, just do some quests and prepare for some tough encounters.

Shattered Realms is similar to Delve as an infinite dungeon and farming location.
Dungeons are similar to boss maps like Breachstones or Sacrifice Fragments.
Crucible is like Coward’s Trial but more involved and rewarding i.e. fun.

Flasks: GD does not have flasks, but it does have a wide variety of consumables that you can use. They don’t refill on kill, but they’re fairly easy to stock up on whether they are crafted, dropped, or bought.

Hardcore: SUPER IMPORTANT - Hardcore characters cannot be recovered upon death. They do not move to softcore on death. If the thought of losing a character permanently like that is too much for you then either Hardcore is not for you in GD or you will want to make backups of characters to import into Softcore.

Crowd Control: Hard CC (Stuns/Freeze) in GD has a base duration attached to skills. The game is balanced around having stun/freeze resistance in ultimate. Stuns and Freeze are not inherent to strong hits or crits.

18

Thank you for the detailed answers. Added to the guide.

19

I think my series “Grim Dawn from Diablo II perspective” can be useful source of learning basic mechanics in GD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TIt8UTFgxas&list=PLBTx32nCTZ2D0765CmtikkxtuqHfERUKP in particular episodes 2,3 and 4 I talk about the mechanics. Though the main focus is comparing with Diablo II, I do mention Diablo 3 and PoE here and there.

Another thing I might want to add to the OP (I did not seem to find in the the OP) is that when playing melee (or targeting in general) GD is much smoother compared to PoE. In GD you can hold down mouse button and just move mouse cursor and it will auto attack if locked on target (hence the concept of “auto attack” imo). If one does no like this, one has the “classic” targeting in the options menu. I do not think PoE has this feature, at least not when I played it (3y ago).

1 Like
20

Thanks. Added to the guide :slight_smile: