so I’ve played Grim Dawn on and off since the closed Beta and played a whole lot a while ago, but stopped after I stupidly lost the character that I was playing to reformatting the pc and apparently not having cloud saving enabled? (Character is gone for good is all I’m saying). The salt was real.
So now I’ve seen and tested the crucible a little bit with a really low level character (Level 7) and was wondering: Would creating a new character and only playing the crucible be a viable way to get to “end game”? Or would it be possible to do that but leveling through the main campaing be way more efficient (time wise)?
you dont get exp in crucible, do you?
I played the crucible lots of time(but never collected my rewards because I didn’t care) and I didn’t get any exp, at all? Maybe my game is bugged or theres something I am missing, because you can buy devotion points, but can you buy exp points?
You do get experience every time you complete a set of waves (10, 20 etc) and when you complete a run - it was about 3/4 of a level each time for me. But considering that it took me about 7ish minutes to complete the first 10 waves, it might not be a very good way of doing it
It’s fun to start out as a first level character. The first 10 waves are painful with your shiv and your wooden shield. (There’s a body on the ground in front of Lokarr that will give you a few potions. You will need every one of them.)
I want it to be a good way to level a new character but it does not appear to be. I have not quite given up on that idea yet.
You don’t get loot bags in the Crucible and this is sort of a problem. It also seems that you will lag behind in Devotion points. You also wouldn’t get credit for competing Normal and Elite.
I think it would be better to rush 2 loot bags in the main quest and grab some devotion points and basic gear. Then level from there in the crucible, maybe up to 70. Then use GDStash to enable Ultimate for the character.
That probably turns out to be excruciatingly boring. Not sure.
I think you get experience each time you finish 10 waves. Then you get bonus experience when you cash in your loot.
With a first level character, you get to level 3 after 10 waves. Then you have to cash in right away because you have no gear at all. The bonus gave me level 6. After making a second attempt - don’t remember whether I did 10 or 20 waves the second time - I was level 9.
I think if you were to quickly get to level 2 for some AoE skills to help take out waves faster - it may be a decent alternative. Simply grab the lore before heading across the Devil’s Crossing bridge and then kill a few enemies for level 2 and you’re good.
Starting at level 1 in the Crucible is a bit difficult but more of a tedious experience until you get the levels/items. Also Devotion points only cost 3 Tribute each at the start.
I have a HC Nightblade character in Crucible at the moment who is level 9 with 3 Devotion Points with 43 minutes played as 1 example.
The odds of you finishing the 1st ten with a new guy are extremely low. So considering that, you would definitely need the xp for deeds committed prior to death to even have any hope of continuing on.
Unless they changed it since I was last only ever able to get to wave 4 or 5 before having to die. I would usually ding up to around level 4 or 5 I think.
Yes you always get the pots if you are paying attention at the start. That’s the primary reason they added the corpse there (for new characters). They may have made it easier to finish all ten with a level one since I last played it. Kinda sounds like they must have if you have beat it.
I had to use the first potion around wave 5. I did use them all but it’s enough. The hardest wave is the one with the Cold Ones, maybe wave 6? I couldn’t beat the time limit on that one. But you don’t care about time with a first level.
I do also play fairly well. You have to constantly reposition so that only 1 monster is attacking you at a time.
Ya I guess you could kite it out I suppose but I found it much easier in testing to simply die and get my levels than waste all that time trying to make it.
I suppose if you were going hardcore tho you would have no choice but that’s a different story entirely.
How many pots is it giving you? Originally it only gave like 2. I might need to hop in and give it a go again soon.
Ok, they made it ALOT easier now. I used no pots whatsoever until Wave 10 (I wasn’t being very careful either, only repositioning if I absolutely had to). My constitution was out at that point so I popped one because I was getting pelted with arrows and the Mossy Shambler had just a tossed a boulder at me that I couldn’t avoid. I cleared out the riff raff then began on the Shambler where I had to use one more pot.
Upon defeating him I dinged to level 6 and collected my reward. Got a buncha whites and yellows and just under 2k iron from the chests (plus whatever gear I sold, minus any extra gear I needed to buy and then the rest went to pots).
It’s definitely doable to start a fresh guy (HC or SC). I’ll try to make this guy do only the cruc to see how grindy it is to level now.
Doing those 10 waves probably took somewhere between 5 to 10 minutes so it is actually beneficial to start your guy in the Cruc, do the ten and level and then hop over to Main if you really wanted to.
It’s definitely doable though I’m quite sure you’ll run out of time eventually going back to 1 multiplier which is understandable.
As for the challenges in starting at level 1:
-Cold ones definitely especially if you have an aura of some sort which will proc their freeze aoe skills a lot (restarted to wave 1 after completing it and choosing Nightblade with his aura debuff).
-3 or so Zombie Soldier guys can be a bit tough what with their charges and hard hits though it’s rather quite possible to back off when they swing at you and then poke them some more.
-Mossy Shamber is merely tedious since he has a lot of health and armor. Again quite possible to move back and forth to avoid all of this attacks though it’s best to take out the other enemies before finishing up with him.
In general there are also some enemies with high health that will make retaining the multiple difficult if not impossible.
