Yea it’s too late to make fundamental changes like that. Re-balancing monster stats, xp, rep, item drop levels etc sounds like a nightmare.
Maybe an option to import quest progress from previous difficulties could work, the quest files are all in their savegame folders for normal elite and ultimate respectively, so in theory you can copy them over, they’d just have to be converted properly so it doesn’t mess with any quests in progress and whatnot.
That is a pretty solid appraisal, though over the decades they have been chipping away at the 3 times through paradigm with Merits in Forgotten Gods and the 1.2.0.0 changes where every difficulty can scale to level 100 now.
Maaaaaaaaaaaaaybe after Fangs of Asterkarn is out and the post-release Skeleton Key dungeons are out some smaller modifications might be looked at? I think the current number of Devotion Shrines in Normal/Veteran is 49, FoA might add a few, I don’t know if enough to get up to the full 55 which might help for a condensed experience.
Well there’s enough space for at least another 49 shrines 
At this size I doubt FoA will end up with just 6 or less shrines on Normal.
I’m not underestimating anything, I gave honest feedback based on my own playthroughs and what several other players and my friends experienced. Whether it’s feasible to change or not isn’t really for me to decide as a player, I also don’t prowl the forums often, so I wouldn’t know what has been said before about certain topics.
So you are telling me with 100% certainty there’s no room for any changes to the difficulty progression/pacing, ever? And why do you assume the imaginary rewards I suggested would automatically create a huge power spike and trivialize everything? Genuinely curious, and I am open to hearing flaws in my feedback but saying “this is not possible because things are designed around each other and any change breaks the game” doesn’t sound like a healthy discussion.
Now about the Merits, I want to apologise as I was under the wrong impression, you are correct, I got very confused over the whole Merit stuff as I never meddled much with it and I’ve heard conflicting info about it before, still repeating Act 1 is still tedious (considering the context of a player who just finished the base game and wants a higher difficulty) and doesn’t really change my core point.
I do have a question about the Merits if you would be kind to answer, I was also under the wrong impression that one could switch between Elite and Ultimate without resetting the world, so essentially a player would have to complete Act 1 3x times to obtain the Ultimate merit, unless he goes straight to ultimate which then would make 2x times? That is without taking consideration player skill and experience, as going from a lvl50 straight to ultimate into warden, I’d say can be quite frustrating…
| Region | Number of Shrines | Sq Km | Shrines per Sq Km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Grim Dawn | 32 | 7.17 | 4.46 |
| Ashes of Malmouth | 6 | 3.2 | 1.875 |
| Forgotten Gods | 11 | 2.5 | 4.4 |
| Fangs of Asterkarn | le question | 6.11 | unknown density of shrine |
Asterkarn probably won’t be the most shrine dense area 
That’s a good point and OP may be able to utilize this if nothing official comes out to support his request. I haven’t tried it myself but yeah it should work in theory. Or some sort of save game editor to adjust his quest progress may work also but i imagine that would be more work.
Yeah it’s always possible, they’ve surprised us before. And now that you mention the previous changes to the three time play through, it may make sense that they added enough shrines in Asterkarn to reach 55 in one go. That would certainly help some of the players not feel like the higher difficulties are necessary.
The quickest way to get Ultimate Merits so that any new character (provided you have the iron bits) is to beat Normal/Veteran Act 4 (Loghhorrean) which then unlocks BOTH Elite and Ultimate. Choose Ultimate, play through Act 1 on Ultimate, beat the Warden, then hop through the Forgotten Gods portal at Devil’s Crossing to purchase Ultimate Merits. So basically you have to go through 5 Acts, with Act 1 being done twice. If you want both Elite and Ultimate Merits, then you have to do Act 1 three times. (Unless do they sell both kinds of Merits in Ultimate mode?)
I haven’t tried it either but I would advise against it, it will probably mess with stuff like unlockable skill/attribute points. If anyone wanna try it anyway, make sure to backup the character first.
you cannot, i think the confusion/mixup in the thread might be stemming from thinking Elite/Ult works similar to veteran? which is functionally different.
Think of Elite/Ult as separate game “modes”, similar like HC/SC and MC/Custom is separate. Veteran is a dial "on"to Normal, nothing changes other than Enemies get more health/dmg/basic OG multiplier.
Elite/Ult is a separate game playthrough, with its own separate scripts and interactions (pulls different enemy/drop pools etc) on top of a basic stat multiplier, but it’s not just a stat tweak like Veteran. (you also have separate folders in your save file for it, as true proper separate progression, but not for Vet)
yes, but why would you go to act 1 on elite if all you care about is merit? or only care about Ult difficulty for that matter
Going to elite has no bearing on either unless you specifically want elite merit only (ult merit opens both elite and ult) or you specifically wanna clear Elite content. It’s for all intents and purposes irrelevant in all circumstances here
yet going from lvl 50 straight into ult AoM would not be ? - since that’s specifically your request here(and would be much harder than Warden)
from devs PoV i am in no place to state that with any definitive. All i can say is the game has had it’s progression and pacing designed around the system the game and engine uses, and it’s not entirely by accident you don’t max out on Normal base game.
From a personal player pov i wouldn’t want the progression or pacing messed with more than already has from powercreep or expansion features.
because skipping half the game means you now have to make up that, which is “doubling” rewards to put you in same place, but even just 1.5x reward wouldn’t feel great imo.
A way you can already clearly feel this impact is alts using merits/tokens/warrants vs SSF, and if just feels… different.
that’s not meant to shutdown discussion, but perhaps to curb expectations/“usual underestimate engine limitation feature request” type deal 
- no flying mounts etc even if it can be asked for/discussed doesn’t always mean every feature is equally likely to happen 
/what GiverofPain said
Thanks for the answer, honestly embarrassed that it took me this long to understand this system, I also had difficulties finding the Merit vendor in the past to much later finding out it was a normal shop tab mixed in with the others, I think having a better explanation in-game would avoid some confusion.
Absolutely solid advice. Never make changes in the character folders without backing the character up first.
Myself, I have 3 separate installs of the game, 2 of which are to test and break things but also back my characters up from the main install frequently. That being said, I think I am going to try this just to see what happens because now I’m curious
Edit: Well, at first glance, it seems to have worked as theorized however the way points are all still unobtained. So one would still need to run through all the acts to gather the way points.
The other issue that’s definitely game breaking is I didn’t grab the Devil’s Crossing way point on the new character before copying the quest files from a character that’s in the FG area, thus, leaving me with no way to teleport back to “mainland” Cairn.
So yeah, I can’t recommend this as workaround for multiple play throughs. But as stated before, if someone else wants to try it anyways, back the character up first
I’ve realised now I wasn’t aware of so many intricacies, largely due to being wrong about some important details, but I still wish something was changed to improve the experience or at least lessen confusion, If I’m not wrong I don’t think there’s any proper explanation in-game to the difficulty progression and how to obtain Merits, I think that at least would be a more feasible change?
there’s a whooole lotta stuff that could be explained or explained better in game i think, but that’s a whole other debate that’s probably also not likely to be changed now i guess.
It also doesn’t help that the game was originally designed around a full 3x playthrouhgs, and partial skips or boosts have been implemented to then make that both less necessary, but then at the same time creating confusion what’s the point of it existing. - and you’re also not the first to raise not wanting to repeat same campaign content (partially why Normal scales so high now albeit for different skip reasons/people only playing Normal 1x not caring about endgame)
Part of the reason(s) i don’t skip straight to Ult as lvl 1 is no dynamic XP means being lvl 30 in 5mins/clearing the first quest, which for me just feels “off”.
At the same time i’m not sure if the size of FoA means i’ll feel compelled to ditch my usual Vet->Ult playthrough or i’d “overlevel” Ult(stat/challenge wise) if clearing all of Vet now with that much extra content.
So i see the appeal in some dynamic options, even if i also see some drawbacks/don’t agree with everything.
Often the two big hurdles for changes are either “engine” or point of time in game’s lifespan, and like Giver said that’s probably the main obstacles here, too late for the degree of redesign (as it’s possibly not a small thing)
I often feel like the ingame log is underused, contra all the info avail on forum or the game guide, whether or not it would be sufficient here i couldn’t say.
No, there isn’t much about them ingame and they also were never mentioned here. Only in a dev stream which is why I transcribed it for future reference.
After clearing Acts 1–4 on Normal/Veteran, wanting to continue straight into Act 5+ on Ultimate difficulty is what this discussion is about, right?
With the current progression, by the time I finish Act 4 on Normal/Veteran, I’m usually around level 50 or so. Then, after going through Acts 1–4 again on Ultimate, I’m already at the point where armor augments become available at level 70, and the foundational parts of the build start feeling mostly settled.
By the time I enter AoM (and probably FoA as well), things like my mastery setup, Devotions, resistances, base stats, and core skills are already fairly established, and the feeling of “playing while the character is still growing” can start to fade a bit.
Of course, I also understand that Grim Dawn is fundamentally designed around repeated playthroughs, and that things like level 94 gear, SR/Nemesis farming, and FoA’s Ascendant Mode are intended to be the real endgame experience.
Still, I can understand the desire to carry that “still growing” feeling from Ultimate Acts 1–4 into the DLC areas instead.
This topic was automatically closed 90 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.