Hi All. This is a guide made for anyone who needs direction to make their character stronger to complete ultimate (or even elite). I am writing this guide as a general list of suggestions and strategies, making it completely independent of class and playstyle. Its purpose is to help YOUR character complete the game in YOUR way, not to just follow a cookie cutter build that we know already works easily.
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Build Reputations
Buy the reputation “writs” to increase the rate you build positive reputation with your chosen factions as soon as you can. Doing so early will make it so you are revered with no grinding by the time you really need to buy the best items in ultimate (mainly augments) from them. -
Augment Everything
In veteran and elite, I didn’t even know what augments were or how they worked. In ultimate, I spent lots of time reading them over to maximize my resistances. They are an absolute necessity to getting your resistances up, and since many require a revered reputation, this emphasizes point #1 if you don’t want to grind. Augments are like components, except you can change them at any time and it simply removes (and deletes) the previous augment. This is a convenient way to boost resistances for particularly hard fights, where you totally stack up the damage type the boss does. Alternatively you can just spread you augment types out to just raise your average or worst resistance. -
Add Components to Everything
Like augments they are essential to getting resistances high enough, but also can give you some spectacular aura’s and abilities. For example, aether ward from purified salt gives a massive 20% aether resistance. Look at your character and see if there is anything truly lacking and potentially an ability from a component can round you out. Another example: some class combinations cannot get a basic attack replacement. Simply replacing your basic attack with slam from a very common chipped claw can substantially increase your dps. -
Fully complete Previous Difficulties
You do not have to kill every creature in every corner, however it makes the game much easier later if you get every single shrine and complete every quest line on the way. It gets you a ton of experience, but more importantly: reputation, skill points, attribute points, inventory pages and devotion points. It is especially nice to complete the hidden path quest line, as this gives you permanent stats for your character. Most devotion shrines in ultimate require quite ridiculous items to give, like relics you must craft such as a gunslingers taliman. It is very likely you will not have the items on hand to give to every shrine on ultimate, so get everything on veteran and elite. There are actually more than 50 shrines in the game, so this saves you some hard to get stuff to give to the ultimate shrines too. -
Pick Up Everything, Yellow+ and Common Components
For a good while I was too lazy to pick up yellows and even green rarity items. This was saved me time going back to town and sorting out gear, but turned out to be a mistake. It’s very important to understand that lower rarity gear can have way better base stats and resistances if it is of a higher level than your epic or even legendary gear. Still keeping that special lv50 legendary item around at lv75 can be a massive hole in your stats (500+ armor, 500+ health or lots of resistances). Additionally, as annoying as it may be to walk around picking up your 300th chipped claw, a lot of crafting requires common components in huge numbers. If you do not pick up scrap and common components, you can EASILY run out when wanting to craft stuff (or even repair bridges and such) in ultimate. To unlock the Bastion of Chaos in Ultimate for the first time, I actually had to grind for 30 scrap of all things because earlier in the game I wasn’t always picking them up if they weren’t right on my path! A side note: you can create mule characters to store more items which you don’t wish to part with. However items below level 50, even from sets, are not really worth keeping unless you simply enjoy collecting them. -
Get Some Defensive Devotions and Skills
Don’t fall into that pure damage trap from veteran. On easier difficulties, there is FAR less guaranteed damage to your character and you can melt the entire game with pure dps. On ultimate, outside of some very specific builds, it is not possible to avoid almost all damage and just kill stuff before it hits you. You MUST be able to take some hits, even as a dps mage or gunner. This gives you the challenge of getting a good defense with the fewest resources possible. The best defensive skills are: Menhir’s Will, Overguard, Blast Shield, Blood of Dreeg, Blade Barrier, Pneumatic Burst, Mirror of Ereoctes, Maiven’s Sphere of Protection, and Mogdrogen’s Pact. Additionally, some devotions give huge resists or “triggers at x% hp” shields. You cannot (within reason) build absolutely pure dps to complete ultimate. -
Remember What’s Permanent about your Build
There are only three things that are permanent on your character. The choice between softcore and hardcore, your attribute points and your mastery points (the x/50 bar for the class). This means you should put the most thought into these, specifically your attribute points. It is reasonably common for gunners/mages to put all their points into cunning/spirit and melt veteran and elite. Then with only 4500 health, they get literally 100-0 one shot on ultimate. Spend these points wisely, the most common mistake by far being putting too few points in physique. A good rule of thumb is that all characters need to be able to choose from all armor and all rings. So if you can’t wear some gear you want to, put some more points into your mastery bar. If you still can’t wear it, look into devotions which reduce the requirements to wear armor or rings. Then finally, you could chose to put attribute points into something your class doesn’t otherwise “need”, like spirit as a fighter. Just remember to put points into the mastery bar first, before utterly wasting 15 points in spirit as a face-tank fighter just to wear some rings. Be so so careful with those attribute points. It is the only real way in this game to truly ruin a character beyond repair, as almost everything else can be shuffled around! -
Know When to Use Consumables, and Use Them
Some players here seem to think consumables are of poor style for whatever reason. I say use every tool available! There are a ton of potions and (correct me if I’m wrong) they all stack with each other except for 2 of the exact same potion. This can give you almost every stat in the game, from resistances, max hp, lifesteal, damage, health regen and even 100% damage absorption. The bosses in my opinion you should save consumables for, and then use 1 of everything you have, are as follows: Warden Krieg, Cronley, Loghorrean, The Mad Queen, The Sentinel, and Shar’Zul, Harbinger of Chaos. A reduction in time frozen and frost resist can be nice for Alkamos, Lord Executioner too but he is arguably not that tough. Potions can make that difference to break though the toughest bosses to continue on through ultimate to complete the game (by any means necessary!!). If you are struggling heavily with bosses weaker than these, look at the other steps and consider changing your build up before wasting all your consumables and crafting materials. -
Resources
Use these links to plan builds, find shrines and complete quests (spoilers)
Quests Rewards: http://grimdawn.gamepedia.com/Quests#Rewards
Quests: http://grimchecklist.com/
Item Database: http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=25596
Shrines: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=562989376
Hidden Path: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=699395816
Grimcalc: http://grimcalc.com/
In general, pointing to the possible use of mule characters or other tools for inventory management might be helpful, too. Actually “Don’t waste too much time managing inventory” may be worth being a separate point.