Tips I Wish I Knew Before Playing

Grim Dawn Guides and Tutorials
9

Ok, done that, topic in OP now.

Build Compendium V does that, people just need to put in a little effort to understand the literature and fill the gaps.
They can’t expect everything be spoon fed to them as the expac literally doubled the work of almost all build posters so vanilla dedicated guides are a hard

You are right, having to update every build for both expansion and non-expansion might be a big hassle. But at least they can do as you sometimes do: Put old Grimtools link for 85 cap along with the 100 cap. usually Grimtools gives a solid ground for the build to expand upon.

Gear might be similar if the 100 lvl build only upgraded to Mythical versions, but say Devotions for example? That’s harder to figure.

10

Nice guide. Increasing OA and reducing resistances of the monsters would be good advices, too.

11

Want to add several tips:

  1. If you’re possibly going to spend 100s of hours playing this game, this - http://www.grimdawn.com/guide/gameplay/combat.php - deserves a thorough read.

Understand the importance of OA, DA, armor, armor absorption, HP, resists, flat damage, % damage, etc. IN RELATION TO THE BUILD YOU’RE DOING.

Stacking DA because that’s what the kool kids are doing isn’t necessarily the smartest thing to do. Ignoring armor for +200hp regen may not be effective as well.

I personally favor toons with MULTIPLE layers of defense. E.g. HP pool, DA, Dodge, fumble, resists, armor, damage absorption, etc. That way, debuffs (and the almighty nerfhammer) will not cripple your toon.

  1. Don’t be afraid to post questions on this forum. My toons shot up to a whole new level the moment I mustered the courage to expose my ignorance/stupidity to the world.

  2. Mats. Do not leave them behind because a shiny blue just dropped. As a person who’s chucked aside 500+ scraps, and 200+ seals of bindings to make room for a NON mythical divinesteel hauberk, believe me when I say I know what I’m talking about. :stuck_out_tongue:

4) DO NOT SELL ALL YOUR LEVEL 94 GREENS. Greens can be, and often are, better than purps. Go to grimtools, and look up the affixes/base properties of monster infrequents.

  1. Do not let veteran lull you into a false sense of security. GD IS a game best described by 2 words - tough titties.

Aleks’ meteor has dropped toons with 25k hp, grava’thul (or grafuckyou as I call him) defecates on the most seasoned of GD players.

Prioritize defense over offence, and then slowly dial up the DPS-o’-meter to find your happy spot.

The advice I give all new players: GD is a game of balance. You need to kill fast enough to not get killed, and stay alive long enough to kill.

  1. The way I see it, the game is best played as such:

a. 1st toon = Item independent toon used to build itempool
b. 2nd toon = Item dependent toon used to effectively farm crucible
c. 3rd toon = do w/e the fuck you want with it :stuck_out_tongue:

  1. Plan your devotion path. This is best done by working BACKWARDS. Look at the tier 3’s you want to get, and puzzle out the best way of getting there, while snagging as many tasty constellations as you can along the way.

  2. THIS PHILOSOPHY APPLIES TO RELICS AS WELL.. Don’t look at what you can currently craft, and sink all your mats into them for instant gratification! As you level, relics get exuberantly expensive. Look up the IDEAL relic you want in the end game on grim tools. And craft the relics needed to build up to it.

  3. Experiment! Guides are just that - GUIDES! The items the author uses in his build will be different from the one you use. Even the exact same item may roll differently. Don’t be afraid of deviating away (a little, of course) from the tried and true.

You may just stumble across something which works better for YOUR playstyle.

  1. Ugdenblooms are the bane and love of my life in GD. Crafting that sweet, sweet sacred plating to bolster your defense is however, extremely taxing on your resources - and rightly so. Be EXTREMELY cautious when you slap it on an item slot.

  2. Leveling gear helps, but they are not important. Do NOT waste time fixating over them, and mats to craft/buy/trade for them. They WILL become obsolete in 10-15 levels. Keep your eye on the prize, muhfucka - and that’s the endgame.

12

I’ve added more Tips to OP , regarding leveling v.s endgame. It also seems the OP will get really long soon, anybody have a suggestion to make it more readable?

@sir spanksalot , thanks for your contribution. I put a link to your post in OP.

I can’t stress enough about #8 , I might write down a whole chapter on it. Making something your own is very very very important. Not only for your own sense of pride and accomplishment! But for efficiency as well.

I keep hearing people suggest binding Whirlpool into Inquisitor Seal if you play Inquisitor. I thought that was good too, on paper. But when I got my Inq. over level 70 and my build started to come together, it was very apparent that Inquisitor Seal is very bad on Whirlpool, because of my play style.

I recently got expansion and playing an elemental Infiltrator, and I use the seal for adding important defense layer. I don’t necessarily drop it under the boss feet, but rather in the start of the fight, I drop few meters ahead, between me and the mobs. While it’s on Cooldown, I cast my word of pain and other long range stuff, all while mobs move towards me. I don’t wait until they catch up, I shadow strike to them when they are by the seal, to get my short range aura to them as well. I put Whirlpool to Shadow Strike, because it hits where I exactly want the mobs, while Inq Seal hits flat floor. My second Inq Seal I put somewhere nearby to have safer retreat, at the feet of the boss if I’m confident of the situation, or further ahead if it’s only trash and they are already dead. So it’s very situational.

In my leveling setup, I used it on Demon’s Breath , back when every small mob would die from 1 hit of word of pain, the slower animation of demon’s Breath means mobs will die before it hits them, so it continue travel, triggering whirlpool only when it hits a mob that’s still alive (Boss, hero, etc). I didn’t need to shadow strike into them, because my ranged array was just enough, and I’d better make few casts and move on to another group…

See, these possibilities with just one devotion binding in a single build. So how much difference can be between two players playing same build!

13

What IS OP?

I mean, besides my good self of course. :stuck_out_tongue:

P.S. @ Devs - can we lower the incredibly expensive refund cost for devotions and skill points? It really really really dissuades players from experimenting in the endgame.

14

Issues like these make me think that GD leans on mods a bit too much. Any quality of life issue that’s bad enough to make me seriously consider cheating (which is how I think of mods that let you edit character stats, create gear, or reveal crafting blueprints) is a significant problem, at least for me. And both of these qualify.

My first character is level 71, about to start Ultimate, and has been using the same relic since 25. I have blueprints for upgrades, but not the blueprints for the ingredients for the upgrades. If that remains true when the character hits cap (85 for me), I will bloody well put an Oleron’s Wrath into the save file because I am sick of this nonsense. Particularly after completing three quests with a relic blueprint as the reward (Origin of the Slith twice, Black Heart of the Void once) and all three times the reward was a duplicate. Literally the least they could do would be to make those quests give a non-duplicate if one exists. :mad: Forum search shows that this has been brought up multiple times in years past, unfortunately to no effect.

Respec costs - it stifles experimentation at all levels. In a game with sensible respec costs, I would have done a lot more experimenting than I have.

15

Relics are hard to get if you’re starting out, but at least now you can buy all the mid level ones at the Steelcap vendor after you rescue him.

Another thing to keep in mind is that Sacred Talisman is good now before level 75 or if you don’t have a better one at hand.
If you’re just starting out you probably don’t have many items and that 500% damage buff on the skill could give you around a 40-80% total damage boost for its duration and it gives you unlimited energy during it.

You just have to cheat and lie and deny a guy’s dying wish to get it but after that it’s cha-ching!

16

True, but first of all, this is just another vendor, if know one told you, that the guy sells blueprints, you might just miss it. And he is at the ass end of the game, he should be in Fort Ikon.

17

I’m fine with the rarity of relics tbh. Given that they are recipes, and stay with you forever, I think it kinda makes sense?

The word relic itself sort of implies the rarity no?

What they SHOULD do, however, is get rid of Kirilan’s shattered soul.

Ain’t nobody got time for dat.

I will literally drop 1mil for 5 kirilians.

EDIT: Let’s shift this conversation to another section on the forum (should we want to continue it) so we don’t go off tangent here. :slight_smile:

18

OP [In game] = Overpowered.
OP [In forums] = “Original Post” , or sometimes “Original poster”

It’s basically the first post in a topic.

Is it really expensive? I always redone my skills without even looking at how much gold I have before or after. For devotion I would just need some Aether crystals, there are good places to farm these. (Perhaps I should put it in the guide?)

19

Is it really expensive?

15k for 1 skill point. If I wanted to test out say DEE on a predominantly Shadowstriking witch hunter, speccing out of nightfall alone would cost me 180,000 bits.

And the worst thing about it all, is that you can’t even check how these changes will affect your sheet data.

This has forced me to invest and refund the same skill multiple times because I have the memory span of a mentally impaired goldfish.

The same goes with devotions. It’s 15k for one AND a crystal if the iron bits wasn’t a hard enough kick to the gonads.

Again! I can’t even check my resists, etc. when I’m changing it up! So I’m forced to either use grimtools (which isn’t as accurate as the items I have due to roll differences), or to freaking invest/refund the same thing again.

Perhaps I should put it in the guide?

It’s your guide, you can do what you want with it mate. But personally, I wouldn’t. I think centering this guide around gameplay mechanics and gameplay advice (e.g. microkiting) will lend it some focus.

Another example of gameplay advice - In naked crucible runs, I’ve developed the habit of quickly opening my sheet data whenever I start seeing a scary amount of debuffs collect on my status bar. This allows me to glance at my OA, DA values, my debuffed resists, and my armor value. If they are low, I will stay tf away from enemies (even if I’m at full health) till the debuffs run their course, or use nullification on them.

20

The costs for this is deliberate and will not likely to be changing. This is designed purely to enable players to make MINOR adjustments to their build, NOT to rebuild and try other builds with a high level char. If you want a different build then start a new char is the game philosophy :wink:

Or use mod tools :smiley:

21

The min/maxing stage itself results in a continuous series of minor adjustments. These addup.

EDIT: Furthermore, new players have no real idea on how they want their end game toon to look like (no offence to any who might be reading this :P). After all, it’s a continuous process of finding a playstyle you’re good at/enjoy as well as the items you self-find.

Restricting their ability to explore the lovely mechanics GD has to offer IMO restricts them from understanding the real depth of the game. Perhaps the cost should not be lowered insofar as the rate at which the cost increases.

22

That’s true, especially with the fact that you can’t change mastery choice. You will need to adjust just some few skills to try different things.

And the cost is trivial, almost none-existent when you make your first changes. I had to double check, and it’s 25 Iron Bits at start, then 50 after some good changes, then 100, then 200… etc

The character I modified many times, changing entire skills have that 200 cost… So I imagine 15000 is unrealistic cost, you must have made a thousand change or something to reach this. If you need that many adjustment and still can’t be satisfied, then something is obviously wrong, just start another character already! (As I did)

23

What actually happens is that you end up with players having a single high level char they simply re-spec into whatever build they want to try at that moment and thus they miss any depth of the game and building a char from scratch instead of creating max level char xzy.

Not only that but if re-spec is too cheap then players will be able to change their build to suit the boss they are about to attack and thus the game will have to be balanced around players being able to re-spec to the most advantageous build to suit each encounter and that’s totally against the idea of the game…which is that all classes can clear the game, not that you have to be this build for this boss and the swap to that build for that boss.

Grim Dawn isn’t about having a single max level char and simply swapping from possible build to build on the fly. :wink:

24

Believe you me, in the process to make my unorthodox breaker beat gladiator 170 with no buffs, etc. - I did change things at least a thousand times.

Say I equip an item, and I want to compare maxed maivens vs maxed ABB. I do crucible once with maxed maivens. I then move those same 10 points back into maiven and do curcible again.

But something feels a little off. Ok. Perhaps my devotions. So I tweak it there (which btw involves me removing points from my tier 3s first. I can’t willy nilly shift points how I want to - and that’s fine in my book, it’s just pricey). This process can therefore take maybe 15 - 20 refunds.

Day 2. I think I’m onto something, but want to compare this new devotion path I have with my previous gear. This process repeats itself.

Yes, I think I can quite easily achieve 100s if not a thousand refunds in the min max process given my objective to beat crucy ‘naked.’

And you know what? That’s totally fine. That’s on me. I can accept that cost.

But it’s not fair to new players who don’t have a large item pool or resources.

Wanting to try crazy (and perhaps even inefficient builds) is all part and parcel of the learning curve. I just don’t think the rate at which this refund cost increases is fair.

Jaknet, Elnawawi and me - we are all seasoned players.

Just take the word of worblehat who’s relatively new to the game. Surely his perspective must count for something.

25

Playing in Crucible (an optional dlc) isn’t the same as the campaign which is what the re-specs costs are balanced for :wink:

26

And you know what? That’s totally fine. That’s on me. I can accept that cost.

I’ve acknowledged that. I’m not making this about me mate.

27

That’s completely backwards, but then again as a long-time Borderlands 2 player of course I’d say that. :slight_smile: Huge respec costs mean that I miss out on much of the depth of GD. I’m not going to level two characters of the same class - I don’t have that kind of time. So if a particular class has multiple potentially interesting build setups, I’ll do one and that’s it. If respec costs were sensible, at some point I’d move a ton of points around and try another.

For example, my first character is a S&B cadence commando. From what I see in the Build Compendiums, forcewave commando is also a thing and might be interesting, but it’s not worth thousands of iron to find out, and many more thousands to switch back if I prefer the S&B build (which I probably would).

I’m assuming here that money is actually an important resource. I’ve seen multiple posts along the lines of “I had a ton of money, then I did some crafting and now I’m broke again”, so that’s why my impression is that burning a ton of bits on respecs is to be avoided as much as possible. If that’s not the case and money is a mostly meaningless number, objection withdrawn. :slight_smile:

I think the UI would do a lot to discourage the kind of encounter-specific respecs you’re talking about. :slight_smile: It would be worth it (cost permitting) to try a new skill or experiment to see how things actually work, but not IMO to get a slight advantage over That Boss Right There.

My preference would be for the cost to scale with level only, with no cumulative lifetime respec cost increase (I’ve never seen this before in other games, but cost proportional to level is quite standard). Let low level characters move their skill points all over the place as much as they like to experiment, see what works, how it works, etc. And high level characters could do a major respec but the cost would not be completely negligible (but also not punitively extreme). I’d consider c*level to be pretty reasonable, with the constant c somewhere between 1-10.

Speaking of things that aren’t going to happen with respecs, it would also be nice if the AoM ability to respec points out of the mastery bar would be retrofitted into the base game. That screwed me a bit on one of my characters for a few levels…

28

Strongly disagree with this. Studying up on mechanics and stuff is fine, sure, but if from the very start of the game you follow in the footsteps of someone else, you’ll never make the mistakes they did and will not have the opportunity to learn from them as they did. Very often do I see people who’ve been at the game for dozens or even hundreds of hours who do not know how to craft their own characters because they’ve simply been looking at build guides from the instant they bought the game.

It’s perfectly fine to muck up your first character. My first seven characters were abysmally bad. But there was more to learn from leveling them than can be gleamed from any guide published to these forums, my guides included.

Failure is progress.