Lets talk about epics

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

I don’t like their design.

The current ARPG standard seems to be: rare items provide general stats, legendary(or unique) items provide focused power for specific builds. You decide what build you want to do, find the best uniques and fill up the holes(if there are any ) with rares. Then Grim Dawn also adds monster infriquents which act as uniques with bigger tables of possible affixes which is a brilliant decision and enriches the game for sure.

Then there are the epics. Their role is to be replacements for the inevitable legendary items you’ll fill your character with and thats all. They are placeholders with as much worth as the yellow items you use in the beginning only to replace them with greens after level 10 or so.

But unlike them they are not a simple combination of a prefix and suffix, they are actual items which also have 2 higher versions. You see, they appear to be special but once you get deep enough into the game you realize they are not. The game eventually drops them by the dozens every time you play to the point where you simply ignore them and wish they were purple.

The logical question comes: why are they even in the game? They don’t change it in any meaningful way and with some tweaks to affixes and drop rate green items can comfortably take their place. As it stands even with the bloated number of special items you can hunt in the end you kinda wish the game stops giving you all these worthless duplicate epics.

Feels like fodder, man, feels like a waste of time to keep designing new ones when you have no intention for them to be powerful.

2

Are you using GD stash and “crafting” items?

I just ask because it has been my experience that epics are the backbone of most any character until you can start farming Nemesis. Some may have more or less faction/MI gear but I can’t think of ANY character I’ve leveled that wasn’t using multiple epics from the low 20s all the way up. I’m really not seeing how you don’t like epics, sure a few are lackluster and you need to find the right epic, but overall their power level is spot on.

3

Because they are not unique in any way. Their only role in this already bloated loot table is to serve as needless filler. You can say they are great early on but so is respec. You can simply beat the game by spamming powerful early game skills until you reach level 50 and then swap gear+respec.

The only reason you’ll ever care about them is when you make your very first character.

4

Not sure if you picked up on it, but i do think it’s odd that blue items are NOT better than purple items in this game. In fact many epics are VASTLY superior to comparable purples the same level.

That said you go by prefix more than by color, MYTHIC is where you want everything super late game, so yeah, the colors seem a little arbitrary by that point.

I was hoping with MYTHIC they would put in red items :slight_smile: like they have in many other games, but still blue/purple which means nothing because it’s all about the stats. Legendary isn’t legendary at all; Mythic/Empowered prefixes are far more important.