Hello there. I played latest version through Veteran with a lot of exloration and grinding, got some thoughts if you would like feedback. Resulted in a text wall of sort. Excuse me if there are any mistakes(be it grammar, typos or my poor wording/vocabulary).
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World is beautiful, exploration is encouraged, but some areas are too clunky or pixelhunty(regular world, like Crypt waypoint path or some bridges, not secrets) and running gets old even at capped speed.
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Devotion area is refreshing alternative to collecting shrines 1 by 1, but it has some problems. Most of all, component-requiring shrines deep inside no waypoints areas. Finding out shrine requires craftable only component you dont have prepared in your stash(why would you?) is just annoying, feels not like challenge or interesting problem to solve, but rather hindrance for the sake of it. Other than this, I realy liked the idea: getting several points at once but on rarer ocasion made for a more meaningful sense of upgrade.
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Text based content! I loved it! Probably the best time I had in this mod was spent in the text based devotion dungeon. If only it was possible to change a room/arenas the fights take place on. I hope you develop this into more than just one devotion path challenge.
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Dungeons are cool. Monsters to kill, puzzles to solve, secrets to explore, everything is there. I liked that devotion access is locked behind dungeons, doing challenging content rewards even more content that is uniquely rewarding(devotion system).
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There is a lot of no teleport out content and its great in my opinion. Not as cruel as in HC(where you can lose hours of progress not by your mistake, but rarely to just outer bullshit), but still makes you think about overall balanced meaningful playthrough and building instead of charging in.
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Story part has potential but is lacking. I like little stories I found on my journey(like sidequests) but failed to immerse in greater picture if there was supposed to be any. Monsters, factions and so on everything uses original Grim Dawn names, info etc. Hideout-like base area, faction related area, bounty system and some other stuff do feel like placeholders. It wasnt problem for me cos I was having fun, but if you are trying to tell the world of Nydiamar story, such things(even as little as monster or faction names) prevent immersion. Just an example from another GD mod I played: in Reign of Terror(diablo2 in GD) they have GD items, original masteries and devotions(you read it once when you put point) refer to original GD stuff, but simple things like renaming Chtonics to Demons and Aether to Magic(you see this things often enough) did a trick for me, it felt a lot more diablo-like than GD-mod-like.
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Loot system is good. Maybe a bit too rewarding because its a mod, after all, but anyway. Components drop as full items without annoying leftover parts you hold onto, different loot-type chests and spheres makes the grind feel more deterministic. Getting items both from natural drops and from spheres also changes pace nicely. You get some upgrades in the field and some when you go though the spoils after taking teleport out or finding new waypoint, like identifying stuff of some sort.
I had a lot of entertainment with your mod, a whole crate one could say.
