More Feedback after 150 hours

Grim Dawn Ideas and Feedback
1

I made a thread after playing 40 hours here:

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70727

Now I have almost 150 hours invested so far with just one toon, my Level 76 S&B Commando. I’d like to offer some more feedback/suggestions, but let me clarify that in doing so I don’t mean to imply that GD isn’t extremely well done and deserves praise for doing so much right. Still, it could be even better for me. Probably everything that follows has been suggested by other players at some point, but just want to give my two cents. These are in no particular order of importance.

  1. Get Rid of Partial Components

I understand this has been suggested before. There are arguments for and against this. So I won’t say much about this other than put me in the camp that’s for removing partial components.

  1. Move Components and Crafting Mats to Infinite Soulbound Stash

Diablo 3 gets a lot of hate, but one of the best things they ever did in later patches is move crafting mats to their own menu and not take up storage/stash space anymore. I would love to see components and crafting materials be placed in a “Soulbound” stash that is accessible in the character menu somewhere.

  1. Drop Rates are Too Low

This is subjective, but IMO the drop rates for epics and legendaries are just too low. After playing the game nearly 300 hours between my wife and I, and both of us having characters at level 73 and 76, we’ve only found or can craft like 3 sets that are more than 2 pieces. And this is even with a mod that increases epic/legendary drop rate (Smash-N-Grab loot only version) that has been installed for at least over half of the play time, and I would estimate well north of 60% of our play time has been in Elite difficulty. Now maybe Crucible is the real place to get the better loot, and we haven’t bought it yet. It’s also true we haven’t ventured into Ultimate yet. But still, the drop rates are just too low in my opinion.

  1. Map Markers

Ability to add customer map markers would be handy sometimes.

  1. Quest Markers

Yes, hate me all you like - and I know it’s not “old school”, but I want quest markers viewable from any distance. Make it optional. Make it only available after you beat the main campaign once. Whatever. The quests for finding a random spawn are interesting the first time or two, but after that it’s just annoying IMO.

  1. Put a Forgemaster/Inventor/Spirit Guide in Every Town with a Smuggler

All the areas that have a Smuggler should have an Inventor, Forgemaster and Spirit Guide. Why not?

  1. Representative Vendors from All Unlocked Factions in Devil’s Crossing

I’m on a town run in Devil’s Crossing and I’ve discovered an item upgrade in one of my bags. Sweet! Alright what augment do I have on my current item…a Coven’s Refuge augment. But I’m playing Elite and haven’t started Ashes of Malmouth yet. Ok, quit the game, reload on Veteran, travel to Coven’s Refuge to buy the replacement augment. Quit game and restart back on Elite. Meh.

It’s less of a hassle if I can travel to the faction’s home with the current character/difficulty, but still bothersome. Why not just put all the vendors who sell the faction items in one place, such as Devil’s Crossing?

  1. If Single Player, Pause the Game when Viewing Local/World Map

What would be the argument against pausing the game when viewing the Local/World map? At least make it optional for single player.

  1. Option to Quit/Cancel Bounty Quests

I should be able to cancel a bounty quest. If that has to come with some small XP or reputation penalty, fine. Maybe make it -25 reputation and -10% XP. The percentage would be of the XP that would have been awarded if bounty was completed. So on Normal, the penalty would be -500 XP, and on Elite -900 XP. But there have been times where I would have gladly accepted such a penalty in exchange for canceling a bounty that I didn’t mean to accept or didn’t realize that it’s a thousand miles away in an area I haven’t discovered yet.

  1. Show Outcome or List of Potential Outcomes for Dismantle

I can understand the rationale behind trying to keep a sense of unexpectedness/RNG when dismantling at the Inventor. But could we at least get a list of possibilities?

  1. Roll for Stat Replacement on Items

For example, say you find that perfect piece of armor other than it has 35% vitality resistance, but you’re already good on vitality resistance and really need chaos resistance instead. It would be awesome if you could, for a cost of course, go to the Inventor and try to roll for chaos resistance. I think we’re getting something like this in the next expansion, but it sounds like you have to reforge the item entirely. Better than what we have now for sure. Still, it would be fantastic if we could replace at least one stat that is useless to your build.

2

All of these have been suggested countless times and i don’t see any of them happen any time soon. Specially the last one.

And drop rate too low? This is probably one of the most generous ARPGs when it comes to drops. Just in the main campaign i can get like 8 to 10 legendaries in around 30 minutes.

3

Well maybe if they keep getting suggested they’ll do some of them. Or put them in the next game. We’re getting teleport available for all characters in the next expansion, which based on my understanding is something a lot of people have asked about for years. So unless they have come right out and said, “We’ll never do that”…there’s hope.

10 legendaries in 30 minutes, eh? Admittedly I haven’t gotten into farming guides yet, since I haven’t completed the campaign on Elite and haven’t finished AoM at all. But I don’t even get 10 legendaries in a week, and neither does my wife.

4

This may go some way in helping with 3).

http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=70306

5
  1. is definitely not happening because the devs have said they want each town to be unique. As in, you have to go to each faction location for their augments.
6

There is a huge gap between farming with top-tier build and struggling to survive with some random combination of skills/items/devotion. A experienced player can farm 20-30 legs per hour, yet with a messy build is impossible. Try to farm with something like this https://www.grimtools.com/calc/w2695RxN >_> or check any of these 4khp glass “canons” in build section - every group of trash die painfully slow with these .

7

Yep, I heard about that. It’ll be welcomed for sure. But still the drops are painfully low for my tastes. Maybe I - and my wife - are just extraordinarily unlucky in this game. And again, I already have a mod installed that increased the rates.

I have noticed an uptick in the epic drops since I hit level 75 though, which is encouraging.

8

I wasn’t even reffering to rogue dungeons, just doing hive runs and Pine Barrens run. A subpar build can easily kill these guys.

But the OP seems to have not reached Ultimate yet, which has a higher drop rate than Elite.

9

Maybe I should just rush through and finish the main campaign on Elite and then study up on some farming guides. I really feel like I need some gear upgrades before I tackle Ultimate.

10

  1. unlikely to happen as well since the devs said long ago they don’t want the game to hold your hand. And if you’ve been over an area a few times you learn where the random spawn points are anyway.

  2. Why? So long as you’re in a safe area it doesn’t matter if the game pauses or not does it?

11

Right, but what if I’m not in a safe area and I’m trying to ignore trash mobs on my way to the next objective? I know killing things is a core concept to the game, but sometimes you don’t feel like dealing with trash when you’re trying to finish a quest.

On a side note, and this is some more feedback…just like Diablo 3, it would seem that GD reaches a point where killing common trash yields such a nominal amount of XP that it’s simply not worth it to engage them if you can evade. I know they can drop some gear and components, but you’re unlikely to get anything valuable by the time you reach that stage in your character’s progression. I’ve never really liked this, personally. I believe in games like this killing enemies - any enemies - should always be worthwhile or at least have decent chance to be worthwhile. I understand that trash shouldn’t give much XP when they die in one or two hits, but it just feels silly to run past them. It happens anyway though, because stopping to kill them offers almost no benefit compared to completing the next quest objective. But what if they did something like give an extra XP boost and a > 50% chance for a rare component or epic item for every 500 enemies killed. Something like that would give players an incentive to keep slaying all the baddies.

Anyway…I know it doesn’t make sense for our character to stop and look at a map with enemies trying to attack…but at the same time he/she can carry 30 shields in magic bags. Since you can’t move while the map is up anyway, then I can’t think of a good reason not to pause the game.

12

But you can move with the map up. Hold down mouse button, open map using hotkey, keep holding down button and you can walk while looking at the map. Multitasking, it works :slight_smile:

13
  1. agreed
  2. not soulbound but shared
  3. drop rates are relatively generous, so no
  4. nice to have but of limited use
  5. see 4, won’t happen though, they are the way they are for a reason
  6. see 4
  7. see 4
  8. definitely not, I frequently navigate with the map open
  9. agreed
  10. see 4
  11. no, use augments to fill the gaps
14

Shared. And a dozen other things to make item management more comfortable.

Every utility character in each town, please.

Yes.

15

You’re not unlucky at all. I’ve found far less than you have, also with my highest character at 75 (number of hours unknown - that’s one of the reasons I prefer GOG to Steam :)). I have access to one piece of one legendary set, and it’s not a useful set for that character either.

I think the generous drop rate applies primarily at level cap, when you start farming Crucible or dungeons in Ultimate. Getting a legendary drop while leveling is depressingly rare. Particularly when it’s some useless pet-build crap that gets dismantled for parts on the next trip to town… Epic drop rates seem fine even while leveling though, I get plenty of those.

Part of it also is that gear lasts for more levels in GD than in most RPGs, so “gear set is item level 75” does not imply “pieces of gear set should drop often enough to equip around level 75” like it would in most games. That’s vanilla-endgame gear, and requires time and farming accordingly. And there aren’t all that many level 50 legendaries, which explains why one doesn’t see them drop very often.

Anyway, short version, I see where you’re coming from but I think it’s working about right. :slight_smile:

16

Well, I play with an Xbox controller from my couch. I assume that you’re able to move with the map open because you open it after you’ve already clicked your mouse to make the character move. That is not possible with controller.

Like I said, make it an option then. Or make it function this way (pausing) if a controller is being used.

That doesn’t necessarily cut it though. My gear load out right now includes includes pants that don’t complement my build as well as others I’ve found, but they still have a good armor rating and most importantly 63% poison resistance, which is the only reason I still have them equipped. I’ve already used augments to “fill the gaps” for chaos resistance. So it would be very nice if I could take another pair of pants that complements my build much better and be able to trade one of the stats for poison resistance.

I guess I could equip the pants that synergize with my build better, and keep the poison resistance pants in my bag when I run into enemies/areas where acid/poison is prevalent. But IMO that’s a clunky solution - especially considering that stopping to open up the character menu and equip the other pair of pants could potentially get me killed.