XP pots are 40k, no?
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Oh my goodness gracious, I was robbed blind all that time!
But yeah, thanks for correcting me. Was probably thinking of something else (or just stupid).
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I agree the spirit guide should be completely free, but spec’ing out of a mastery shouldn’t be allowed (if that is such a big deal the player can just use a tool). It disproportionately affects players who are either new or don’t have much time to play/create more characters.
The respec function is too important to a new players experience to be restrictive. I’ve seen players not even realise respec costs iron until they blew all their iron only to then accidentally leave the menu and not be able to undo.
Faction gear is actually extremely cheap relative to a green item from a regular vendor, presumably purely to enhance new player experience. Perfect parity is not required, only a good reason to justify inconsistency, and there is one here imo.
Why should it be free? Sahdina’s gotta make a living too you know. And she gives her life to save DC. Least you can do is give her a few iron bits now and again so she can eat. 
And if you think buying back points is expensive in GD you should try TQ; ranks up into the millions with that game iirc. 
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Not the game’s fault. Should probably read the info provided on screen. But I see it’s a recurring problem nowadays, so maybe I’m asking too much ::shrugs::
it costs like nothing to respec in the beginning, how is this a hindrance for new players unless they respec too much compared to the amount they are looting?
first 20pts cost 25bits each
next 20pts cost 50bits each
next 20pts cost 100bits each
next 20pts cost 150bits each
next 20pts cost 200bits each
next 20pts cost 300bits each
next 20pts cost 400bits each
next 20pts cost 500bits each
next 20pts cost 750bits each
next 20pts cost 1000bits each
next 20pts cost 1250bits each
making a total respec of 200pts only cost 84500bits - which is less than a full kit of faction gear costs at lvl 35
please tell me how this is “too expensive” and “unreasonable” a cost to bear for a new player? - you can easily respec a lot and try every single skill and still have money left over
you have to respec an absurd degree, more than trying every skill in your class, to reach a point where the price is untenable - and that’s only if you don’t loot/sell stuff (or keep respeccing to an even more absurd degree after that)
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Make sure you understand what it can be like for a new player. Lots of things can be unintuitive in this game unless you have familiarity or experience; FoI being an energy hog but the intensify node being dirt cheap, cooldown skills like Horn of Gandarr being abysmal for damage, missing information like lightning tether hitting more than once per second etc.
It is quite easy for new players to fall into these various traps that are misleading or yield very small value, and feel frustrated when they realise afterwards.
And when a new player has close to 0 iron because they bought a green item from a vendor, or was crafting gear. It is too much.
Why is lvl 65 FG faction gear as cheap as a random lvl ~20 yellow item sold from a vendor? Lets not pretend like iron costs in this game are balanced or logical.
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Being new doesn’t mean you are blind and incapable of rationally reaching decisions. You can see what you can afford and can’t afford.
Furthermore, it is insanely easy to amass well over 100k-200k iron by the time you are around level 30.
Money is not an issue.
Have to agree with this.
Grim Dawn is not newbie friendly. Infact, I’d argue that it is one of the hardest games of its kind to get into. Hell, I have no idea how half the game works even now (though to be fair, running around not paying attention to what is happening onscreen isn’t the best way to learn how the game works…).
And while it can be rewarding once the player passes that initial stage of confusion and dare I say, frustration, it is also understandable that not everyone might want to bother with that and decide to simply quit.
Regarding the Spirit Guide, I have personally never had the problem mostly because I went straight to GDStash and downloaded it first before even installing the game after initially quitting back before AoM because I tried to make a Hybrid Pet Pyromancer with Rifle work and got frustrated because it didn’t, prompting me to decide to simply cheat my way through the thing instead.
Then… I fell in love with pet builds and yeah…
But, while I can understand people not wanting to have respec’ing come with a cost and wouldn’t mind if it was changed to be free, I would have considered not being able to choose a different mastery once you make your choice, to be more bothersome 
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Well, it was made clear in the Kickstarter that the game isn’t really for casual players.
“Finally, we have a long-standing passion and commitment to making this a hardcore ARPG for PC, guided by the best of old school design principles.”
That said, I think expectations have changed over the years and more people think they should be able to chop and change on one character rather than starting a new one to try out different things.
Agree, but new players can easily be overwhelmed by UI elements and features in a game. You can’t make a rational decision without awareness. Plenty of players also get tired and impatient by the time consuming process of buying/selling at the vendor, some leave it for later even if their inventory is full.
100k, sure. That can only buy 2-3 greens from a vendor though, so it isn’t too hard to lose it without realising. Even if the cost were to be noticed then 1 misclick outside the vendor window and then you find selling the bought item only restores 700-1000 iron.
Is the average player hardcore? I’m not so sure. The game also doesn’t need to have such hardcore aspects from the start, like the cost of greens from vendors I mention, better to introduce them more gradually instead imo. Perhaps the cost could be removed only for normal?
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You realize you are trying to justify noobies making noobie mistakes, right? Like misclicks, and trying to use this as the basis of your argument for… whatever it is you think you are arguing for?
This is part of playing a game and learning. If they fuck up, too bad. They’ve now learned to pay better attention. Good for them.
Crate can’t be expected to foresee and prevent or allow for all noob fuckups. It honestly sounds like you are nitpicking exceedingly minor and petty circumstances here. Honestly if I was Crate and this was the best argument that could be mustered to do away with respec costs, I wouldn’t be swayed at all.
If anything it would be more of an argument to have a confirmation button pop up before exiting any sales.
They’ve now learned to refund a game that isn’t very welcoming.
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that’s called choice and consequence: you chose to not loot enough and chose to buy too expensive an item so you couldn’t afford the miniscule respec cost
^this is not bad game design
gathering more than 85k is a trivial task even for a new SSF char or new player by that time; you just gotta loot enough
and the solution to running out of money from choosing to buy a too expensive item/not being able to afford respeccing again for a few minutes is the same: start looting
it baffles me anyone can look at the above respec prices and still have the gall to call them “too expensive” when it’s about the cheapest cost for anything in the entire game
this, so much this
given how simple it is to amass enough money, and how players can easily tell the cost of an item in a vendor,
it’s again not bad game design just because they make bad choices
who are all these new players you know that walk to spend 1-300k on a single vendor item during early game (no vendor has such items for sale that early) that it ruins their economy? - doubt i can recollect many post from beginners complaining about that specific expensive or unfortunate purchase
and either way we are back to this
^that amount of easily amassed money goes up along with your level, so by the time you are even reaching rare merchant vendors with MIs for sale at those prices you’d be looking at 500k or more in your total wallet
PS, any player, new/old, that would complain about looting/selling, in a ARPG… yea no, wrong argument wrong game 
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Yet amassing bits for respeccing is not really one of them. I can tell you for a fact I did not have this problem when I look back at old screenshots of my first playthrough and this was before the amount of bits dropped were buffed recently to make picking up and selling gear less of a necessity.
I also checked screenshots for a SSF 1 to 100 guide I wrote for beginners showing screenshots at every difficulty for just about every major story Boss and even with some heavy skill respecs at ~Level 30 and 60 and crafting for a Juggernaut did I still have a good amount of bits afterward.
And before you ask, Grim Dawn was my second ARPG/Diablo-style game in the genre with the first I played being Torchlight 2 where I only played enough to complete the story once and stopped there, I did not even make it to level cap. I did not have a lot of experience with the type of game Grim Dawn is going in. It just takes common sense to be able to manage your bits and not overspend so frivolously when you say a new player could spend all of their bits on gear from a vendor.
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The difference is that you and I know what we’re doing/how to save money trivially. Offloading greens/unused blue drops, getting multiple dynamite drops and using them to open troves, etc. Last time I did a SSF run I was far richer than any first timer on the Discord even when they were 10-20 levels above me.
Hell, I don’t have the fingers to count how many times I’ve seen a new player go broke from buying health potions because they’re taking too much damage/their build is trash (on account of being new) which is a death-spiral because they then can’t afford a respec and can’t farm the cash to change their situation.
No matter what you do, you will never again experience Grim Dawn from a fresh slate. You’ve learned too much about the game. So why support anything that inhibits that learning of others?
Man, you treat those “new players” as some kind of sissies. I mean, I was confused by Diablo 2’s mechanics (namely, the fact that the world respawns each time you leave the game and that all of your gear is left on your character’s corpse when you die) back in the day, and also was getting my ass handed to me by Duriel and Diablo. I was pumping Prayer + Cleansing thinking that free health regen is so cool! It fell down pretty quick, though. And I think I’ve spent the only respec at Akara long before facing Diablo, so I had to veeery slowly chip away his health with some crappy bow I happened to have in inventory. Took me a fuckton of arrows and health pots, but somehow I persevered?
Now it’s non-stop whining “gAeM tOo DiFficUlt, No QuEsT mArKeRs AnD sHiT!”
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That’s literally the entire trick to it. It isn’t some big brain secret - minimal attentiveness will reveal that popping off unused greens net the biggest return. but XandeRoot nailed it on the head:
…cut noobs a little slack. They aren’t all morons and can figure out basic crap. And I feel sure that most that do make “mistakes” are more than capable of learning from those mistakes without (laughably) needing to “refund”.
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All I did was sell greens and blues, did not explore every area or fully clear every enemy and did most but not all of the side quests. I don’t go after Trove spots in any playthroughs whether SSF or my usual with levelling gear unless I coincidentally come across one and I know there’s a nearby Dynamite spot or I had a Dynamite on me at a time from picking up a guaranteed spot earlier in the session.
Arguably, you could say a new player would be in a better position than me as most will explore every area, complete every quest and so on - it’s how I recommend new players experience Grim Dawn anyway as opposed to rushing through it all. While it isn’t time efficient, there will also be the mentality to pick up and sell yellows as well as everything else adding extra bits gained on top of what I was making. Hell, some players even do bounties that also reward chunks of bits that I didn’t opt for until towards end game for my final end set of faction pieces.
Like a lot of others have said here, we were all in that position at one point of playing with a fresh slate. If we had a problem with gathering bits and respeccing, we would have said all the way back then but none of us did. If it’s just a small minority that have the problem, then do we really need to make this change for that small minority when they can just as easily take some suggestions from us as seasoned players so that such a change becomes unnecessary?
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buying green items at level 30 is a bad idea to begin with and if on top of that you also do not pay attention to their price, you are no longer outside the ‘blind and incapable’ range we all agreed new players do not fall into…
tough shit, this scenario is so unlikely that it needs no protection from. Sure someone invariably will have done this, but first you agree that new players are not ‘blind and incapable’ and then your rationale is very much that they are. You cannot have it both ways
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