I got the relic that makes you transform into the Beaver from the hidden quest, and i thought it would be a funny idea to make a Beaver transform build. Didnt think it would be good, but it would be funny all the same. Was going to do a Beaver Ring of Steel/Jab build, however when i got to level 94 and put on the relic, i found out that unfortunately, for some reason, the Beaver is coded differently than either werewolf or wereraven.
For one, you cannot use ANY active abilities in Beaver form. That means you cannot use Ring of Steel or anything else. You can use active heals and buffs, but no abilities. This is bizzare and seems like an unnecessarily enormous nerf, but a thing you could in theory build around if you wanted to i guess.
But you can’t even do that, because even more bizzarely you cannot bind devotions to either jab or screen.
So in practice, a build is absolutely impossible to make with that manifest perfection relic. This is disappointing because normally Grim Dawn allows you to do silly stuff like this, even if it’s not a good idea.
I’m making a post to ask anyone who is on the team if this is an oversight, or if there was a targeted reason for this. It just seems very unusualy that the funny Beaver form is coded so much differently than the wolf or raven.
Not sure if it’s an oversight or not, but I’d bet 80% it’s well intended.
The relic (and a form) is a meme.
Just like the nerf medal: Mark of Nerf - Legendary Medal - Grim Dawn Item Database
Nobody in their right mind would put this on a real (even if meme) build.
I guess the same is for the form.
That doesnt really make any sense though. Why would intentionally make a meme build not possible? im not talking about good, obviously it probably sucks, but making someone not able to attempt it at all just seems antithetical to how Crate approaches GD, and it’s why I’m pretty dissapointed.
it just seems bizarre that Crate has a policy on letting people make mistakes, but bothers to go out of their way to code a transformation differently just this one time so that this one “mistake” can’t be made. You’re talking about the nerf medal, but you can still put that on! You can theoretically have that in your build! It’s obviously a bad idea but they dont stop you from making a mistake. Just seem very weird to have this one exception. At that point why not just make it so that the transformation has no attacks? Why even bait a player into trying to think about that?
There just doesnt seem to be a good argument for why making the beaver relic this way is actively better than simply letting players make a fun but probably bad meme build. Why go out of your way to take the time to code it differently just to deny someone the opportunity to have fun? That’s what i want an answer to, if it is indeed intentional.
I explained it in the post above, you cannot physically bind devotions to the Beaver skills, meaning in practice, it’s just not actually possible to build around the relic on any level because you cannot use any RR shred devotion, meaning your build just can’t function on an even basic level. Even not being able to use any other active skills (while also strange and very unnecessary) could in theory be played around if you can just utilize the pierce shred devotion at all. But you can’t so the build is impossible no matter what.
It has unique animations for its 2 skills (maybe not even unique, but shared with the enemy models). To be able to use all skills like the 2 main transformations, it would need unique animations for every skill animation type in the game (aether ray, primal strike, etc).
This is massive amount of work, and the reason why there are only 2 main transformations (rather than more given by items).
i agree with OP tbh - it is weird that the item isn’t even usable from a devotion perspective - it’s one thing to lock other abilitlies for animation / budget reasons but no devotion feels like mild oversight - it should at least enable that.
The secret quest items have always been memes with zero endgame use since time immemorial. The only one that saw utility was Lokarr and that’s for levelling. This dlc is actually an anomaly, with the poop set looking like a proper set and Huge Wood being an actual weapon.