Idea to incentivize killing non-heroes: repeatable quest for a random Leg every X kills

Hi,

One of the biggest flaws in GD in my opinion, is that it’s too easy to reach a state where you don’t get anything for killing normal monsters anymore, compared to other ARPGs.
Having leveled probably over 15 characters to 85, I feel this issue every time and it lowers the incentive to continue playing that character.
Sure, many people say, “in GD, the end game is to create new characters” and I like doing that, but I like playing the same character for a long time, too.
But the way the game is currently set up, it indirectly works against you to do so. I’ll explain why below.

Remember how it used to be a feat to reach level 99 in D2? Even if the 92-99 stretch barely gave you anything (it was the same old 5 stat, 1 skill point and a level advantage), it preserved the feeling of getting something for every kill.
You were working toward the next level, and you also had an incentive not to die, because it would literally set you back hours, days or even a week of effort.

Now simply upping the level cap isn’t a good idea since it would change the power balance, and I’m sure Crate wants to save that for expansions.
It could be an idea to increase the XP required from lv. 80+ onward though. Modders? :wink:

But back to the original point, a huge flaw in GD is that there is no point in killing normal monsters after some point.
To dissect this statement, what does killing them net you in the 1-84 portion of the game?
[b]

  1. Experience:[/b] this goes to zero, so you don’t get any more of it, period.
    2) Faction reputation: this is maxed eventually too, and the Rep required was even lowered in a recent patch, plus there are Writs to make it even faster on new characters. So you don’t get this anymore, either.
    3) Components: these have no use once you’ve crafted your Mythical Relic and potentially your helm (which is another issue, but not for this thread), so there is no reason to pick these up either on an 85 character with the above, outside of Skeleton Key components.
    4) Loot: the other major flaw of normal monsters currently— their drop rate of Legendary items is so low that the best way of farming is to simply run past everything except heroes and bosses, rather than stopping to kill them. I find this to be true even when you have humongous amounts of DPS and AoE (think 60K+).
    I’m sure someone will say “but I found this one super rare Leg off a normal once, it’s fine!” but that is the exception to the rule.

Do you see what these points have in common?
The first three are rendered 100% obsolete after some point, a point in time which comes too early IMO.
#1 and 2 could be relatively easily solved by simply raising the numbers, #3 takes more effort to solve to keep Components useful (hint: more Skeleton Key type of crafts or higher tier craftable components would give them a purpose).

#4 is what I want to talk about here. Of course, the easy way out is to simply increase drop rates on normal monsters, another way is to create a quest that grants you a random Legendary item (or another good reward) for every X kills.
It could be given by Harmond for example. The guy already gives you similar quests to kill Aetherials.
There could even be different types of quests from different NPCs. For example:

-Kill 2000 Undead enemies
-Kill 2000 Chthonic enemies
-Kill 3000 enemies

In short, it would be like a super bounty quest that is repeatable, with each completion the quests would require more kills to complete again. Perhaps to cap at some point so the amount doesn’t grow ridiculously large after many repeats.

The thing about end game farming in GD, is that the lack of incentives to kill normal monsters and the relatively low drop rates makes the player want to play less, the opposite of what a game should do.

A typical scenario is that you’re maxed out in level and did all quests, so factors 1, 2 and 3 above don’t give you anything, and you’re running around skipping most monsters running to heroes or trying to find Nemeses.
You do a couple boss runs like this, the drops are highly variable, and once you’ve played for a while and nothing worthwhile dropped, you feel like stopping.
Or you feel like making a new character, just to experience the fun of finding drops that can be useful, cleansing Desecrated Shrines and to open the Exalted chests again.

Because even if your character is maxed in level, rep and craftable items (helm, relic, medal), you often have weak items in your other slots since you simply can’t find the Legs you want, unless you trade or cheat.
And when you can’t find them, the char feels stagnant which makes the player want to look somewhere else (other character, other game, etc.)

That’s what my idea is meant to counteract: if you were guaranteed a Legendary item every X kills and you could visibly see the counter move up with each kill, that is a carrot that keeps the mule running.

Thanks for reading, if you got this far.

Hi.

I must say very interesting point you are making. I do agree, seeing that I am one of those nuts that want to cleanse the world every time I start playing and that feeling has left. I love the game but the stuff you are suggesting would be insanely awesome. I hope some important person reads this!

Anyway thanks for the read and enjoy playing Grim Dawn!:stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks for reading, and yeah, I hope something like this will be implemented in the game eventually.
It doesn’t have to be exactly this, it’s just an idea, but there needs to be something to give the player a reason to engage big packs of monsters.

Mowing down large groups with a strong build can be one of the most satisfying feelings in an ARPG, but in Grim Dawn as a powergamer, you’re almost forced to run past them, which is a shame.

i agree with your post. trash is not worth the time unless they are on your way to a boss or nemesis and you can blow them up instantly with a blitz.

there are so many options to make them relevent. i’m sure crate can figure something out.

While it’s definitely a problem that should be addressed, and Kill 5000 X quests would grant another thing to do, they don’t actually solve the problem because eventually you’ll reach a point at which getting another Legendary item isn’t as weighty of a reward, due to the limited list of items, and the relatively low deviation values on them. If this were to be implemented, perhaps alongside getting a good gear drop like a Legendary, we could get something along the lines of, “Essence of (Monster Name Here)” as a reward, and that could be utilized in a crafting system.

The problem is; you will meet up legendaries on the way to 2000 kills eventually. But still it gives you a different focus/way to play the game which is better than nothing

^what do you mean by that?

Bringing this thread back: recently I’ve been dabbling a bit in the Grimarillion mod, and I noticed how much more fun I find the game with the increased spawns and the extra challenge and rewards they confer.

The original suggestion in the OP was just an idea, but the core issues I had with farming past level 85 in GD has two factors that make it unappealing.
To quote from the OP:

First:

It’s too easy to reach a state where you don’t get anything for killing normal monsters anymore, compared to other ARPGs.
And second:
Your character is maxed in level, rep and craftable items (helm, relic, medal), but you often have weak items in your other slots since you simply can’t find the Legs you want, unless you trade or cheat.
And when you can’t find them, the char feels stagnant which makes the player want to look somewhere else (other character, other game, etc.)

The increased spawns in the mod addresses both of these issues through brute force: by killing so many targets, something is bound to drop eventually.
Many people liked the “xmax” mod in TQ so clearly a portion of the playerbase enjoys increased spawns, it would be nice if it was made part of the official game.

It could be a “Veteran mode” but for Ultimate, most of the functionality should already be there so I don’t think it’s too unrealistic or impossible to implement despite the engine limitations that are often brought up.
And like Veteran it’d be entirely optional, so those who don’t enjoy that kind of playstyle could leave it off.

Thoughts?

It does not address the first issue at all and does not really address the second issue either. You still have to kill the same number of mobs to get the same average drops, it’s just that you do kill a lot more without resetting the game.

I am ok with a Veteran mode for any difficulty though :wink:

^Yeah, it doesn’t address it directly, but due to the extra spawns you have a better chance of finding something you can use.
A lot of the time you spend in GD is loading and traveling through areas to get someplace lucrative, extra spawns means you spend less time traveling and more on fighting. I can’t say no to that. :slight_smile:

But you’re right, I would really like it if killing normal monsters had a more significant role in the end game.
It could be as simple as raising the rep required to reach Revered/Nemesis or if a reason to use components was created (past crafting your end game medal/relic).

Since the random completion bonuses were removed, once you have a component in every slot you don’t need any extra which makes the spares meaningless.

I would agree with this, but many of my legendaries come from normal trash mobs

anecdotal.

compared to other arpgs, trash mobs in grim dawn are exactly that: trash. they are just there to slow you down on your way to a boss (or speed you up, as you use them to blitz or shadow strike)

self fulfilling prophecy :wink: if you never kill them, of course non of your legendaries are from them. If you clear all areas entirely, I assume that about 50% will be from trash mobs

i clear most of the trash in 1 blitz in ultimate, i’ve been doing so for so many hours I lost count. from that, I can safely say not even 10% of my legendaries are from trash. probably around 5%. it’s really that bad.

not only that, the same can be said about iron. in fact the only good thing about trash mobs are components, and you end up having so many of them at one point you don’t even bother picking them up.

Around 30% of my legendaries are from trash mobs and a big chunk of that are endgame legendary set items. I even laughed when i Shadow Striked a Voidfiend and a Trozan Starkeeper dropped from it.

So just because you had bad luck with trash mobs drop rate, it doesn’t mean others had the same experience.

Completely agree with the OP.

I reached level 85 for the first time a couple of days ago, and have started farming Ultimate for the stuff I need. It’s a lot of fun, and I still have a long way to go before my char is complete. But I found myself skipping trash mobs (nearly d2 style but without teleport :wink: ) and went through the exact same reasoning as OP.

In path of Exile, getting to lvl100 is insanely long so you’re always milking as much xp as possible + trash mobs drop a lot of currency items (which are never useless).
In D3 you had the paragon levels which kept an incentive to kill mobs. (Don’t know what state that game’s in now, haven’t played for a couple of years).

But what bugs me the most in Grim Dawn is that when you hit 85, dying (on sc) has no negative impact (a part from being like “oh no i died”). So for people who don’t want to play hardcore but still want death to be “scary”, there’s no real adrenaline buzz from taking the risk to kill such and such dangerous boss.

Anyway if trash mobs had more carrots, the game would be even better.

Hi,

Welcome to the forums.
You’re right about the lack of death penalty at 85, the player should have a reason not to die on softcore.

I meant to bring this up in another thread but hadn’t gotten to it.
A fear of death (and its consequences) would definitely spice things up, since you would have to actually try to stay alive.

For the expansion, it could be as simple as making the last ~5 levels with the new level cap much harder to attain, so you need a build that can stay alive consistently to level, otherwise you lose more XP than you gain.
Currently even very flawed builds can reach 85 and often before they even finish all the Ultimate quests, because of how much XP those give.

IMO reaching the level cap should mean that you have a character that is able to kill a lot of monsters to get the XP required, and one who is also able to stay alive while doing so.
Or it should mean that you’re extremely good at the game so you can get there even with a difficult build.
It should not be given to you “free of charge” while you’re still playing the regular game.

It should be a feat to reach 85, rather something that happens with every char you play and finish Ult with.
That way you could also compare the progress of your own characters to gauge how well-rounded they are, for example.