Had a quick run through on normal with a high level character just to check it out. I lost more life just getting to Valbury than in it. I found Valbury very convoluted and kept getting lost and taking damage from the floor a lot of the time when I did. I cannot say I’m that impressed with the new dungeon, I like SoT a lot more. If it was easier to get to and less confusing inside I might like it more.
Just more of the same unfortunately. More zombies and more of the annoying green goo, which makes an area one I’ll visit once to see what it’s all about and then never go to again.
I love it, it’s my favourite of the three roguelike dungeons by far. I find the environment itself way more interesting than the other two (which basically felt like the same few similarly-shaped rooms and corridors repeated over and over), and the variety between the three main zones is great - it definitely feels more like a believable part of the Grim Dawn world than the others, especially with all the lore and ties back to the main campaign, upcoming expansion and other NPCs. It also helps that I’m a sucker for town/city environments, and I’ve been wanting one in GD for ages. 
I personally quite like the slightly confusing layout, the constant close-quarters ambushes and traps kept me on my toes quite a bit. The loot seems pretty nice too, though its a shame the new MIs aren’t a 100% drop rate considering we’re already paying Skeleton Keys for them (but I guess every other MI in the game is like that, so fair enough).
So yeah, definitely no big complaints on my end. 
Don’t like it very much. It’s too wide and dispersive and there are to much corruption on the floor to avoid and aether crystals all around. That is annoying. Besides, i don’t like the scenery that much.
I like the streets and building designs. Aesthetically it’s pleasing but it’s clusterfuck to navigate through this. I got cornered a lot in this entire dungeon. And i also didn’t bother exploring
My favorite place would be the aether cluster formation visible from Aldritch’s treasure room (You need to go up the stairs next to the note to see it). Before this i can’t remember the last time i had to use the map
From the technical level, it is more confusing then SoT and BoC.
Doorways, bridges, stairs, blocked path’s. I was circling around the place quite often on my first run, wondering if this is the right path (and looking if I found all the secret places, there is 3 I found in total, 1 for every area). But in the end it will always lead you in one direction, just takes a run or two to get used to the layout.
From the visual and lore side it’s great. You can feel the progress as the areas do differ from each other nicely, docks, old town, dump, new town. History of the fall, spreaded in notes all around the place.
SoT and BoC just fall flat in those terms.
SoT is one big dungeon, the bottom floors don’t really differ that much from the top ones, which is a shame as with some more ideas you could really make progress there more noticable. And maybe also add more lore about the place in general, history, people locked inside and finally about Uroboruuk, as I still am not sure that the hidden quest in ultimate is to be taken seriously lore-wise.
BoC is even more bland in that past the sealed obsidian spines. Bones, obsidian, red water (blood?) through all 3 levels. Nothing lore-wise can be said about it either.
Went through yesterday on Elite. I like it. Yes, player have to pay attention here and there because DOTs and lovely aether swirls and crystals. There is a lot of details and overall scene design is great. But it is good to have char capable to deal with aether damage and dots. I directly stepped in to “death room” and I noticed it a bit late. I was able to manage it. Again, it is good to have character with capability to deal with aether damage and also high aether resistance is a must. High movement speed is also very helpful.
The “dungeon” which I like the most:
- SoT
- Port of Valbury
- I never did a full run to BoC
And of course it just my opinion.
I enjoyed the lore and the progression through the different districts. Definitely a lot of hard hitters in there. Can’t say I am a big fan of ground damage - almost put me under a couple times before I noticed I was standing in it. It was fun to see a dungeon with some more story put into it, felt more like a mini-adventure than the others by far. The mob density was nice as well - I went through on Veteran and gained 3.5 levels.
Overall I say great job on it. I despise aether damage ground effects, so not sure how often I will run it. Going to try a few more runs before making my judgement. I honestly infrequently run BoC or SoT, gets too repetitive for me.
I love it by far it has the best drop rate and challenging, only the thing I hate that I cant go free as only 1-2 ways limited.
I thing I will have to wait for the hotfix, since my fav toon is super squishy now, due to no life leech and stuff.
Also: the reflect on the aether crystal thingies is totally fucked up.
:furious:
Loved it, was refreshing to actually have to pay attention while playing the campaign, but the enemy OA and ADCTH issues may have played a big role in that. Mob density was nice, boss interesting too even if the energy burn he seemed to have was a bit annoying.
Out-doors is a great idea, much more interesting than the boring SoT tunnels.
Lore was nice too, loved the “change of plans” note.
A bit too much aether floors and reflect crystals though, bit annoying to navigate through with a melee character.
The legendary drop from the boss is also interesting, can almost get 100% aether Devastation and AAR now.
i think it’s a fantastic dungeon. i like the guerilla fighting. and as soon as they fix OA and rampant map bugs it will be a lot more fun 
One of my favourite areas of the game.
Dear developers, did you try to reach the dungeon gates on ultimate difficulty? Do you know, how much time it takes to do it? If I decide to play fair and not to run through the mobs and not to die 10+ times, I reach the dungeon entrance in 1-1,5 hours. And at this point I’m tired and don’t have enough concentration to start this dungeon, that can definetely be beaten by me in 2 hours or so.
I’m sorry, but that large map with the only one way through before the player can enter the dungeon itself is a very stupid decision. Personally, I won’t go there anymore until the entrance is available to reach in a shorter time. Steps of Torment and Bastion of Chaos are good examples of what I mean.
Hard roguelikes are good, but not when they last 3+ hours.
I tried it on Ultimate with melee. I didnt have enough patience so I was killed by that lovely trio. It took really long time to get rid of Abominations, Hulks and Terraformers. Tuning them down a bit will be helpful. Also their resistances are IMO very high.
(Strange I’m quite sure I posted here yesterday)
Far away, difficult to reach, require skeleton key + 3 dynamites.
Too “hardcore” for me, I will not go.
This does not really answer the question, but it answers a more generic question about my feeling of rogue-like dungeon.
I hope there will also be something new for people like me who do not like them. And above all, that they won’t add a mandatory rogue-like dungeon, like POE did with Labyrinth. This made me quit POE.
As for reaching the dungeon, there have been debates on portals far away from some dungeon. A part of the community is happy with that, a part is not.
The dev are happy like this. You will not get a portal there.
From what I’ve read about it , getting there , what happens when there etc , I have decided to give that part of the game a miss . Who would intentionally want to run through a dungeon covered in ground effects ?
Not for me thanks , my new lvl 85 had no deaths until slay the herald of destruction , think I was lv 80 at the time , figured I would be okay , run through it potting like the immolation or conflagration whatever it’s called .
Touched one bit killed in ooh lets say around one second , okay come back grab Gravestone , immediately die , what !! I’m barely touching the ground I only want my gravestone sitting on the very edge , go back die , go back , get it , live , leave , never going to voluntarily touch that stuff again nevermind what resists I have .
Port Valbury , no thanks .
People are grossly exaggerating how common the ground damage is. It is not at all “covered” in it. Patches of it are strewn about and there is almost never even a point where you have to walk through it to begin with. Just about every single instance of it can be avoided. At worst you might take 1 tick of damage. Even conflagration is worse and immolation is significantly worse.
The only two instances where i hate aetherfire is the path to the entrance of Immolation. You have to run at least 5 seconds on it and 80% of the time it procs whatever circuit breaker i have. And i’m talking about the path from that little area with the manticores to the entrance of Immolation.
The other instance is when i’m fighting a Terraformer with a melee character. It’s kind of inconsistent in this case, sometimes i’m apparently not on aetherfire when i fighting this type of enemy. But other times it seems i am and suddenly i’m taking damage even though i’m in the same spot as i was when i wasn’t taking damage. Guess my issue is that is not very clear the exact aumont of aetherfire around Terraformers.
maybe you should give it a try rather than listening to a handful of whiners when there are many more players…
The ground effects are so easily avoidable, they hardly matter