Need advice on finishing the game

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
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I’ll post uploads of some characters later, but right now I just need some help finishing the game out with a few characters. You see in my signature that I’ve had this game for quite a long time - since the first couple of months of Early Access on Steam, in fact. I’d level up a couple of characters, finish the content, put them down, come back a few months later to see what was new.

Somewhere in there I lost a HD and all my characters…

So I started again. Tweaks would be made, I’d delete obsolete characters and start new ones. And here’s a wrinkle; I play with my partner, and she’s even more of a casual player than I am (although she’s much better at actually finishing games). She’s casual in the sense that she doesn’t want to grind, finds the crafting system somewhat tedious, and really doesn’t want to get into all the fiddly bits. I do some of it for her, but she’s more into just opening the game up and killing shit for an hour or two than she is into optimizing/tweaking/gearing. That’s cool! She’s a super good gamer, with better eyesight and reflexes than me.

My problem is this - I’ve leveled up a good handful of characters, but they’ve gone obsolete with new versions. I’ve deleted several (which I probably shouldn’t have). Just like the sig says, I don’t have any high-level characters farming end-game equipment.

So here I am. I finally have a character who has solo beat Log (my other one was a MP with the girlfriend), and has started on AoM. Level 58, Jajaja’s electrocute Warder. Going swimmingly, I must say.

Question 1 - stay in normal and finish AoM, or go right to Elite?

Question 2 - Girlfriend and I are playing a campaign game together, and we are pretty close to Log. She has a gunslinging (Sorceress?), I have a Witchblade. We want to get through AoM together. I’m looking for easy builds for both of them that aren’t gear dependent, and just focused on MC content. The WB is a 2-hander right now, but I’d like to get back to S&B. Storm Spirit seems like a no-brainer, because it just JACKS her damage, esp w/IEE (right?). Should I forget Solael’s, and just stick to CoF, BoD, and pet buffs? She does DPS like mofo, I just need to draw aggro (CoF) and tank like a boss. I’m using Blade Arc, because I have enough other builds with Cadence, and trying to focus on bleeding damage (or maybe it’s internal trauma?). Even w/o a shield, you can make that WB into a damage soaking monster.

I have more questions, I’ll keep posting them here as I think of them. There are tons of casual(ish) plus GD players who visit this board. I’m thinking about starting a thread or two aimed at them (us).

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Finish it on Normal/Veteran to get a feel of how AoM is. It’d be major PITA for someone to tackle Ultimate AoM w/o ever having done AoM
As for any build advise you need to post a Grimtools of it (google is your friend)

P.S

Didn’t read the entire thread :stuck_out_tongue: (Sorry I have shit attention span when suffering from sleep deprivation)

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Thanks!

Looking through build guides is…

I love Witchblades, and really always have. But I got burned out on Cadence really early on. My first builds were a Commando (cadence), a Battlemage (cadence), and 3 different Witchblades (1 cadence,1 blade arc/forcewave, and a 2-pistol ranged cadence).

I’m ready to love cadence again. But I’ve really had a lot of totally self-inflicted problems with analyses paralyses and WB builds. I need to look at my builds, pick a damage type, and go to friggin’ town. Actually hanging out on the forums and reading builds has been both good and bad. Again, there’s not a lot of help for casual(ish) players.

Anyway, maybe I’ll have a chance to upload some builds tonight.

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  1. It’s honestly up to you. Jumping into Elite at 58 is fairly normal so you shouldn’t struggle too much and since you already completed the game a few times, you could rush the normal content and farm the bosses for some gear to outfit your other characters. Even Elite Warden can drop some really good legendary pieces and throw in some Cronely and Salazar runs into the mix and you could easily amass a small fortune of legendaries to have waiting for your next builds or your girlfriend’s character.

  2. From what I gathered, you’re asking what you should focus on to supplement her build. If you prefer S&B Witchblades, I would suggest focusing on internal trauma and go heavy into Soldier and leave Occultist for Blood of Dreeg and CoF - get rid of everything else on Occultist. Towards mid-game you will be the one to initiate combat and be the giant impassable tank which will leave your girlfriend to do whatever she wants while you facetank everything. Early to mid-game, you can probably keep Solael’s Witchfire if she has heavy Vit damage on her build, but if she isn’t utilizing Vit, then it’s just wasted points.

There’s a few really good S&B IT builds listed if you’d like a guideline to follow.

S&B by Zhuugus - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrEEzLV
S&B by actuanpanda - https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62a650DV

Hope this helps. I wrote a huge article on how you can tailor your Witch Hunter in various ways until I went back and read your post again and realized you were talking about Witchblades and not Witch Hunters… I don’t mess around with Soldier very much so my experience with those builds is limited.

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Thanks! I will take a look at our characters this weekend, and hopefully uploading them. As I’ve mentioned a few dozen times, I’ve been sick AF and just generally been too lightheaded and wiped out to do much thinking.

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I have reached the end…

of the wiki.

I’m at Barrowholm. I don’t like them. Luring me into story traps is really easy, actually.

‘Here’s a faction with questionable morals who probably won’t reward you for anything and they are vegans who won’t shut up about it and they prefer Star Wars I-II-III and they listen to disco and Annie Di’Franco nonstop’

Me - “Well, they sound unbearably awful. What’s the other choice?”

‘The other faction also has some questionable morals, and they are in charge’

Me - “:furious: authority! Call me Padme and fire up the tofurkey!”

Which is my roundabout way of saying that I’ll be siding with the witches, unless there is some compelling reason not to.

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Barrowholm has some of the best augments but from a role-playing perspective it makes sense to not side with them

Coven of Ugdenbog a.k.a the Witches are benign and highly misunderstood. They were power hungry at some point but that is all ancient history (way before the Grim Dawn happened)

They have no questionable morals and now if any inquisitor hates them it’s cause of the history the two factions share and nothing more.

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Thanks man!

I are they the top-tier faction augments? Because that sounds like something that can wait until Elite/Ultimate anyway. But yeah, I already feel bad enough having sided with Kymon with this character. I prefer Necromancers over True Believers. And yes, I let the aetherial witch in Fort (Ikon?) live.

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Didn’t want to start another thread for this, couldn’t find an answer on the board -

I have a Salazar bounty. The Iron Door is locked. I let Direni live. Do I need to kill cultists for another Strange Key? Or am I boned?

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What did you do with the key Direni gave you as a condition of letting him live? Otherwise, cultists should drop the key. Usually it’s the ones wearing the brimmed hats that tend to drop it the most.

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I used it to clear the Happy Funtime Palace (or WTF it’s called) back when I was finishing up Act 1. IIRC, in my other games, the Iron Door remained unlocked after that. I don’t know why it’s locked now? (I suspect it’s something to do with the AoM install, but I’m not sure).

Will the haberdasher guild drop another one?

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Not sure how far along you are in the story, but in AoM there’s tons of cultists in varios areas that drop the key.

You can also farm the ones right outside the iron door. Nowadays I have better luck with the fields outside Mourndale. Less boring too.

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Thanks! I’m in Malmouth now, haven’t had a key drop yet. I can’t seem to farm one off the other cultists either. I may go try the blood grove for a bit, see if I can get some bounties there.

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Your best shot is doing the way from the rift to the locked door.
I never needed more than 5 runs

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Usually I don’t either - but I’m on 11 locked door, 7 cottage and also halfway through malmouth.

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Thanks everyone! I cleared AoM with Faith, an electrocute/lightning/phys Warder. Yes, three damage types because I still haven’t found enough conversion=> electrocute/lightning gear :confused:

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/m23wy672

Anyway, leveling up one more solo (Chthon’s S&B Pierce BM), and then hopefully my SO will be done with Witcher 3 and we can resume our MP playthrough. I’ve respecced my Witchblade for that one, but accidentally specced out of my pets. Which, most of you are saying ‘well, duh, no pets!’ EXCEPT that the flat damage give the SO a huge flat damage boost.

So. I had a thought for another respec, using Mistborn (or something) for LMB and points in Hellfire for both the girlfriend and I, and then trying to go massive amounts of flat Chaos damage. Now that I’m writing this, I realize that my next respec may not be until after level 65, so a different relic/attack replacer will be more appropriate.

So yeah, theory is weird because it depends on multiplayer with a bunch of auras. But basically, getting flat Chaos damage by using the hellhound aura. If I can find phys=>chaos conversion, it will be perfect, because my phys damage is boosted through the SO’s auras.

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Sonnofabi…

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Hey!! Lemme borrow one of those. Lol

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