Ultimate Guide To Crucible Speedrunning - CoD 3b/VB Edition

Grim Dawn Guides and Tutorials
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17

Maya, I think you’re describing normal pet crucible strategy more than speedrun strategy, even if that strategy yields the best (or close) results with most pet builds.

I agree with most of the points you listed. I do a few things slightly different so I’ll list those here for completeness:

  • wave 154: I start with the trash mobs in the lower right because the FG mobs include a couple of healers. They typically die around the same time Kuba leaves his starting postion and comes into range of the banner anyway.
  • wave 167: I start with the lower left and then move to the middle. As soon as Karroz comes into banner range (sometimes before I get to the middle) I switch focus to him and kill him.
  • wave 169: I start with the lower left. You can usually kill Kreig/Dravos before anything else gets into banner range. I then go for whoever is in range, prioritizing Theodin, Ana, Korvaak.

The above is for general play though, not speedrunning (meaning builds that can hope to get 5:30 or below). Optimal pet piloting strategy changes as your clear speed increases. I suspect as you get closer to 5 minute runs, that stategy converges with non-pet builds, because at that point you’re killing things very very quickly and the biggest time difference is how quickly you can get to everything.

Here are a few of the things that change for me as clear times increase:

  • When builds get typical clear speeds faster than ~6:30, I start rush Aleks on wave 161 instead of starting with the healers.
  • When builds get typical clear speeds faster than ~5:30, I start to focus my player efforts on drawing enemies to the center as fast as possible. I make sure my pets are always doing something, but I try to move around a bit, getting a little closer to each spawn location to ensure they come at me as fast as possible.
  • When builds get typical clear times faster than ~5:00, I start drawing nems to the center on 160/170 to kill them all at once instead of trying to take out the lower left nem before everything else engages.

As for usage of “pet attack”, it varies from build to build, based on both pets and power. Pets tend to naturally spread out and attack a lot of different targets. This can be useful because it acts like AoE and it does a good job killing trash that is spread out. Using “Pet attack” can cause your pets to spend time running to a new location instead of attacking, which is not what you want. That said, you don’t want them to waste time attacking the targets that you don’t need to kill to end the wave, like the Carnivous plants that Ugdenbog Overgrowths spawn. It’s worth using pet attack to get them focused on real targets again.

I also use it a bit to focus on specific high value targets, and on waves with a lot of trash I generally rush my pets to the center at the beginning of the wave so AoE can hit as many things as possible.

There are a lot of other pet attack subtleties that you sort of pick up over time. Like it’s often best to target them at something in the middle or back of a pack. If you go for ones in the front you lose out on a lot of your AoE.

But yeah, overuse of pet attack will lower your clear times. Optimal use will shave a couple of seconds here or there, but the difference is not enormous.

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18

Lol, back in the day when 95% pet builds had double Familiars and Skeletons felt naked without Flame Torrent, ground->enemy double pet attack routine was a must. In crucible, as pointed out by Sigatrev, it’s better not to use it outside priority targets.

  1. He has Mindcontrol. Dangerous for pet builds.

Right. I forgot. Sentinel, too.

  1. I often find that Korvaak skips into 170 simply because of how long his death animations are. I hate it :cry:

Which is why I suggest eliminating Ana quickly before anyone is in range and then turning all your cannons against Korvaak so that he doen’t have time to turn. He turns = no record.

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Yes, makes sense :smiley: (And I forgot Dravis, he is kind of annoying in 169 compared to Krieg imo)

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Thx. I edited the guide a little to include advice from the comments.

I hoped for pet players to contribute because pets have almost always been the one to own crucible speedrunning.

21

with the new patch. What curcible map is the best?

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Crucible of Dead is usually the fastest and most convenient for speed farming. I haven’t heard anything, that changes the situation.

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only ask. cause after the patch you can choose your start map :))

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Yeah, that saves me lot of time trying to hit CoD. But Deeps is also decent. I don’t have much experience with others.

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Legion is best for beginners if you don’t care for speed followed by Deeps. Sands has a good range of tricks you can use but it’s weird. Death is most popular among the elite because 1) it’s fast, 2) still has some tricks and 3) people basically learned to play it by heart (like I would have no idea how to play Deeps right now). Actually, Void offers potentially faster runs, and I’ve seen some people use it to showcase, but it’s just dark and you can’t see anything.

Also, I’d like to point out that in the last patch many strategies in this guide were rendered obsolete for all but the most op builds. You should focus on isolating, blocking off and positioning instead of hoarding. Zantai evidently does not want the game to be played like I described here.

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Ui. What changed? Crucible got harder? Or what?

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Yes. As a sum of individual buffs to certain enemies (especially Fabius and other vanilla nemeses) as well as a few nerfs to many builds across the spectrum (Bloodied Crystal nerf, oathkeeper and nightblade mastery nerfs, etc.) and many individual builds previously holding records (Venomblade, Deathmarked, Ulzuin, Pyran) crucible got harder. With some exceptions of course as - ironically - sorcerers started to beat all time records this patch.

So for many builds the strategy of greedily hoarding enemies into one spot to maximize your AoE - as described here - need to make way for more conservative strategies of isolating enemies and dealing with the biggest threats first.

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Btw on 154 you need to switch Larria and Janaxxia. Larria is in bottom left and Jana is in top left.

I often confused them myself :sweat:

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Just stumbled across this gem. Looking forward to learning about speedruns from the best. Great guide!

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Well thx! Sadly, most of this stuff is out of date. Look 3 posts above for explanation.

Besides, I watched some vids of Shoot who is one of the best, and he plays things a bit differently (I based my guide on Venomblade and Shoot is best with demo based casters - the fastest builds ever). He leaves the banner a lot. And throws BwC, Canister or Stormfire into spawn zones whenever he can.

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Was just wondering if I was going to have to figure out and type up a spawn guide as I dive into the land of crucible running, but here it is already!

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I know most of the Crucible players are simply destroying Crucible of Death, but for players who aren’t in the know and want to get into the Crucible scene, I would like to update the Crucible spawn list as it’s very likely there aren’t going to be any major changes with the last patch out:

The aggro problem got fixed, so no one has to worry about having to manually aggro potential targets anymore. For the most part, this is a good thing, but it will lead to some newer strategies on who to target first.

Wave 152
Boss enemies are the same, the crabs have disruption pools which were mentioned in the OP.

Wave 153
Not much to mention that hasn’t been already posted except that the bottom left area is all Skeletons with an un-named Death Revenant who likes to chill in the back and spawn more Skeletons. There’s a slight chance that there’s a named Death Revenant on the top right who does the same.

Wave 156
Since most people are doing the storm beacons, I wanted to mention that Janaxxia doesn’t really blink towards the player, but Larria does, so you can get lucky and have Larria teleport right to you so you can AoE both witches.

Wave 157
Boss on the top left is either Plagius the Decrepit, Packla the Turning, or Blugrug the Living Plague
Both Plagius and Blugrug have stackable OA / DA debuffs which could be a problem if some of the other trash have additional debuffs.

Also, the bottom right is composed of either Ugdenbog crawlers or Skeletal Monstrosities who move slow and can use their trap abilities on you.

Wave 159
Strategy here looks to be the same; since I play pets, I have to rush Sentinel first because he has the mind control ability which effectively OHKO’s pets if you don’t rush him. If Alvris is on the bottom right, he likes to attack from range, so make sure you catch him in your AoE abilities.

Wave 161
Handarroth is no longer on the bottom-right: it’s either a bunch of Ugdenbog Heroes (like the bottom left in Wave 151) or a bunch of Griffon Heroes who can make targeting the named Heroes tougher. Additionally, there’s a chance that the top left contains a bunch of Ch’tonian Insects which include multiple healers to assist the named Heroes in the top right.

Since the aggro fix, Alex drops the meteor very quickly (essentially right after you reach the Healers in the top right) and then blink to you and drop his crystals. The crystals grant everyone 40% damage absorption, so make sure you prioritize killing them.

Wave 162
The stuff about Amalgation could be removed because it’s been Mad Queen only for over a year now. Mad Queen likes to go red very early if you approach her, so I try to focus on all the remaining trash while waiting for the red aura to go out.

Wave 163
The top left corner has a chance of spawning a dozen Korvaak champions who each spawn 5 different adds. The amount of adds could really pile up if you don’t start the wave by bombing it to whittle the herd before dealing with the Trio.

Wave 164
Ternox / Brother Sagarius on the top left, Valaxteria / Sister Crimson / Astros the Sun Herald on the top-right

The Kymon siblings strategy applies here as Sister Crimson loves to fight from range and then disengage when you approach her.

Wave 165
Bargoll / Korvan Titanavore on the top-left, and Namadea the Screecher / Durg the Stormborn / Father Abbadoth on the top-right

Father Abbadoth’s projectile attack gives a 420 DA debuff to the player - that’s worse than Father Kymon’s Leap Attack. As such I focus on the top right to burst him before the Nemeses have a chance to hurt me.

Wave 166
I always focus on nuking Shar’Zul first because if you let him live too long, he summons those flame spirals that last forever.

Wave 167
First-form Karroz can mind-control pets as well, so if I’m running pets, I end Wave 166 so that I can start the wave by bursting him. There’s a ton of Heroes in Waves 167-168, and there are multiple Healers in both of them. Sometimes, the healers can start healing Karroz 1-2 seconds into the wave, so if I can’t destroy him, I go to the bottom right and focus on everyone else so that I save him for last.

Last thing you want to do if you’re playing pets is to have Karroz near your pets and surrounded by Heroes because you’re certain to have your pets mind-controlled.

Wave 168
The Heroes that spawn in the center are either the Aetherial Colossus Heroes or Gargoyle Heroes, and the Gargoyles tend to have pretty nasty AoE pools.

Wave 169
Largely depends on how much DPS you can dish out. I love bursting down the first form of Theodin and Korvaak first, but Dravis is a massive pain if you allow him to summon lots of thralls and put multiple fissures under your feet. Korvaak has very long animations when he changes forms, and it’s a lot harder to survive fighting Wave 170 with Korvaak as well. Players much better than me can discuss the finer details.

I’m not nearly as skilled in Crucible as our illustrious cohort, but I hope that me adding the names of the new enemies helps as least a little bit to contribute to the discussion.

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33

Is this information still relevant? If so could you break it down to me as I’ve NEVER once tried a CR speedrun and have NO idea how one would set it up.

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Not relevant at all. Much information here is outdated or was never true to begin with but I didn’t know it at the time. Current world records were made by using different strategies and different blessing/beacon setups. The consensus is that the cost of blessings/beacons should not exceed what you regain after 4 runs.

If you’re interested in Crucible speedruns, I recommend to look up Banana Peel and other people who contributed on this thread ⭐ Top 20 builds in Grim Dawn on YouTube and watch their runs, paying attention to where they go first and which enemies they prioritize on each wave as well as what mutators they never have (some muts make it impossible to speedrun).

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Here are all these YT channels if needed

banana is the most productive for sure

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Like what @ya1 said, it’s not relevant anymore. The guide was made for 3 buffs + vanguard banner setup. The current setups for speedrunning are either (a) all 4 buffs + 3 level 1 storm beacons or (b) 3 buffs (skip the last buff on the list) + 4 level 1 storm beacons. On option (a) the side you don’t put storm beacons depend on your preference but it’s commonly either top left or bottom right. Option (b) should be used if you think the 4th buff is cheesing because it can trivialize energy management for some builds. I recommend trying out both on the same build and see for yourself what you think about the 4th buff.

I don’t have much time to discuss wave by wave strategies but the general gist is that while the old method described in the OP mainly revolved around luring mobs to the banner side so you have permanent buff from the banner, the current strategies are about (1) gathering mobs towards the center and (2) dealing with priority targets* first. You switch between those two strategies depending on the wave and as you gain more experience you become a better judge of what to do each wave.

*Priority targets mean whoever threatens your timers, not necessarily your life. Glassier builds kill the most dangerous targets first while tankier builds kill the slowest targets first since that slows down timers a lot.

Buffs last for 25 mins (in game time) and beacons reset after 4 consecutive successful runs so a good timer to aim for first if you’re just starting is 6 mins from starting wave 151 to killing the last boss in 170. You have a few secs of leeway for talking to lokarr, or 6-7 mins of examining loot if you’re actually farming (reset after 3 runs if you’re farming tho. Looking at items might cost too much time for 4 runs)

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