Quest Skill Points and Merits!

Grim Dawn General Discussion
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Hi guys

I think we need a quick discussion on this topic based on the question: what is the best way to gather quest skill points when using merits?

I recently completed Ultimate FG on my highest lvl char, my pistol Tactician. I’m now gearing up to try my hand at all the challenging end-game content. However, I counted up my skill points and noticed I was a fair few short of the final number of 248.

So basically, you get a maximum of 237 from levelling, and a further 11 from quests. 2 in normal, 2 in elite, and 7 in ultimate.

I always thought that the quests that award skill points were part of the core storyline, and therefore unmissable, however that isn’t the case. I realized I have never completed “The Hidden Path” quest, which awards 1 point on each difficulty.

Realizing this, I thought, “oh God, I will have to go back and start running around Normal and Elite to pick up missed quests and skill points”, which is surely an annoyance (on my tactician, I have never used a merit, since it has always been my highest level, leading character. I completed all of Normal inc. AoM & FG, then just vanilla Elite, then moved into Ultimate).

Then I thought: can I just use an Ultimate merit to unlock those points?

Well it turns out, if you’ve already unlocked Ultimate via gameplay, you cannot retroactively use the Merit to obtain the points from lower difficulties. Which means I have no choice but to go back.

This also poses problems, and questions, for my other characters. I have now decided that it’s best to level through Normal, skip Elite, and go to Ultimate. If I complete Normal, which unlocks Elite, and then purchase and use an Ultimate Merit, will it give me all the points for both Normal/Elite? I’m assuming YES.

On some of my other characters, I started straight in Elite (skipping normal, using an Elite merit). If I complete Elite and move into Ultimate, I risk missing some of the Elite points. Therefore, I should just pick up an Ultimate merit and use it before completing Elite?

So coming back to the original Q, the best use of Merits is to use an ULTIMATE MERIT as soon as possible on a character in order to unlock the points of Normal/Elite, saving you the trouble of collecting them in those difficulties. That leaves only the points of Ultimate for you to collect.

Have I understood this correctly? And if so, maybe this idea should be pinned so everybody knows to use this time-saving trick?

Thank you!
ElP

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Well, it was pretty clear from the 7th December 2018 dev stream when Zantai showed off the Merit tokens, how they worked.

“So I’ve got a Champion’s Merit that unlocks Elite and I’ve got the Saviour’s Merit that unlocks Ultimate. And that means you immediately get access to new difficulties, you immediately get all of the attribute and skill point rewards that any quest on lower difficulties would have given you which means you don’t have to go back to Normal, you don’t have to go back to Elite, if you want to start on Ultimate you will immediately get those points. You will immediately get all of the inventory bags which you would have unlocked and you immediately get all of the riftgates on the lower difficulties.”

So yes, if you complete a difficulty then the tokens aren’t then going to give you any missed points because you haven’t skipped the difficulty. You went through that difficulty, you didn’t skip it.

Also yes, if you’ve unlocked Elite and/or Ultimate then use a token again, you’re not skipping and so won’t get quest point rewards.

And again yes, from what I can gather, most people use an Ultimate merit to skip up a low level character, get the attribute/skill points and then go back into Normal/Elite grabbing devotion points since all the riftgates are unlocked on those difficulties so it’s easier to get to many of the shrines.

The tokens were added because many people complained about having to do 3 difficulties all the time to level up their characters. This is also why the ratio of shrine numbers on difficulties changed - there are 59 on Ultimate so people skipping don’t have to go back to the lower difficulties to get 55 devotion points. It can be done with just the one playthrough. Just not the way most people are using the tokens though.

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Thanks for your response medea. I must confess I didn’t see that video, and I wasn’t playing in 2018 (I played back in 16/17 but stopped and came back this year).

For some reason I perceived the Merits’ primary purpose to be for SKIPPING DIFFICULTIES, and therefore used them to skip difficulties on some characters, and did not use them on others.

However, as we’ve established, they are just as important for the REWARDS, since some of the important quests that give +attribute/+skills are not part of the main storyline.

Therefore every new player, or player that isn’t aware, should be encouraged to use a Saviour’s Merit (ultimate merit) before they actually unlock ultimate through gameplay, if they want to save time.

I looked for tips, including making a new thread, when I returned to the game, and somebody helpfully told me about Merits, but this particular nugget of information was not passed on unfortunately. :relaxed: :relaxed:

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But new players won’t have access to the tokens until they get at least one character into either Elite Forgotten Gods content or Ultimate because you need a character in those to be able to buy the tokens to put in your transfer stash for your other characters to use.

And yes, their primary purpose is to allow players to skip difficulties. The fact that they give you those rewards as well is just Crate making sure players who do skip don’t miss out on them by doing so.

You can watch Zantai showing off the tokens in video of the dev stream here

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