Most people I talked to who play GD level on Normal because Veteran takes more time than the 10% experience bonus makes up for. In my opinion it should be more challenging and also more rewarding. I have felt this way for some time now but did not make a post.
What do you think about Veteran XP bonus? Should it be buffed?
I played Veteran for more difficulty and didn’t care about XP or other rewards. I consider XP gain in GD too fast anyway. 
Veteran felt fine.
I like veteran the way it is because its a good way to see how your build will hold up before Elite. It will show you your builds weak spots early on.
It could be more challenging but IMO an XP buff is not the way to do it. If anything, you gain XP too fast in Veteran. If you complete the map you’ll easily pass lvl. 75. It turns you into a living god who never fears for his life by the end. Sometime around Act 3/level 45 is where the challenge in Veteran falls away, at least for most characters I’ve made.
If only I could switch to Elite mid-campaign, it would be amazing, but alas it’s not possible.
Merit Tokens - job done. Skip up to Elite then go back to Veteran then change back to Elite when you feel like it.
I never level on normal. It’s boring. You don’t even need to be careful and if they change %10 exp bonus to more then it would be too much. Normal is for beginners imo. With lokarr set and xp potions I can easily reach level 50 before I arrive to Sorrow’s Bastion and I kill most of the monster I saw on the road to gain reputation faster. I also restore every shrine on veteran. By the time I finish the veteran if my resistances well enough I jump right through the ultimate with merits. I think there is nothing to be changed here.
Wouldn’t that start me over at the beginning of the campaign in Elite though?
Yes, unless you skip to Ultimate then you could just go to the riftgate you want in Elite and carry on from there.
With Lokarr set and XP potions it’s redundant I guess. I was talking from the perspective of not having these things (recently wiped my save files).
Not necessarily. It’s worth noting that Veteran’s +10% gain is separate from the amount Lokarr and Tonics provide. So if Lokarr and a Tonic give you +140% experience gained, the Veteran bonus stacks directly ontop boosting you to +154%.
Considering how rare and in small amounts it comes elsewhere (e.g. Leovinus rings, Ribbon medal, Explorer pants etc.), 14% is sizable. And the difference goes up as you accrue more experience gained from gear.
On topic, I think Veteran is in a fine place where it’s at. For the people who thought Normal wasn’t challenging before and old Veteran was just Normal with bulky enemies, it’s actually a notable step above now without crossing into Elite territory, and as others have mentioned, it prepares you for Elite a hell of a lot more than Normal. If you can deal with Veteran’s difficulty and your resistances are up to par, then you should be able to handle Elite without many problems I’d say.
Yeah, that’s… workable I guess.
What I would love is a way to just play through the entire map once, with a steady challenge throughout. Right now my options are to rush through Veteran, skipping a lot of content in order to reach Elite, or else play through half of Veteran until the challenge vanishes, then use merit token to skip to Elite and replay that same content before continuing on.
Hmm, unless… could I just START on Elite from level 1? Would a level 1 character get slaughtered that way, or is there a chance? 
People have done level 1 Ultimate runs and it’s doable. Pretty hard, but doable. All you need is to put a ultimate merit token in the transfer stash and have a level 1 character use it.
From my experience I would say that veteran is nice for new players learn the game properly early on. For 2nd+ char leveling both normal and veteran are redundant. You just level in elite instead.
I’ve played Veteran thousands of hours. Can’t say I’ve ever had issue with it not feeling “rewarding”.
XP? Could care less. The increased number of Hero mobs and the increase in loot chances as a result more than makes up for it. It fattens both my character’s bank account and quality of gear worn.
Try not to care so much about what other people say and play whatever you like. Some people don’t like Vet because it can slow you down a little compared to Normal - if you’re a rusher and want to get to the higher difficulties faster, that’s fine, go you.
Yes, with a token that allows you to skip up to Elite. Again just need a character in FG Elite Conclave to be able to buy the tokens and put in the transfer stash for L1 characters to get hold of. You’d need to make a new character, leap into Crucible to get the token there and then back into the main campaign otherwise you wouldn’t be able to get the token until you do the Burial Hill quest in Elite so would be a few levels higher. That’s the whole point of the tokens; people can skip up to whatever difficulty they want to play in be it Elite or Ultimate.
Yeah, I got that. In my mind it was for people who had already built up characters to a degree and wanted to skip ahead. I didn’t know if it was feasible to start a brand new fresh character and build them up from level 1 starting in Elite.
In light of merit tokens I’m of the camp that dismisses normal/vet entirely for successive play throughs.
Vet is an option, but honestly what are you expecting? It can’t give endgame relevant items by definition. It can’t give things that are unobtainable elsewhere.
HC is an option that at face value is not rewarding, yet it exists and people choose to play it because they see merit in the restrictions. Just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean it has to be changed to conform to your view of the world.
i think people play veteran for the challenge coming from increased monster density and more frequent hero mobs. its also like a warm up session before tackling elite and seeing how well your build matter for elite.
ultimate oriented players who already got the BiS for their new build and planned everything will most likely just use merit tokens and skip straight to ultimate.
it can be said that veteran is for intermediate loot arpg players who haven’t mastered build theories yet and haven’t got top gears for their end level farming, but they want to enjoy grim dawn in a semi-elite difficulty without focusing too much on resists and rr like how it does in elite, and don’t want to steamroll everything in normal difficulty.
don’t focus too much on the +xp bonus… people can level up quickly in all difficulty by doing several repetitive xp farming session with aoe skills in heavily crowded maps like the area before port valbury and bastion of chaos skeleton key gate for example.
The problem is that you still need to farm faction reputation for augments, and you can’t even start doing that for Coven, Malmouth etc., who have the best ones when you start ultimate. And then you have to be at level 70 at least, and then 90 for the best ones. It is just too much of a pain to start at level 1 in ultimate, when your resists will be so low.
It’s possible, but will be slower because enemies are more durable so take longer to kill.
Go 14 minutes into this dev stream video to see Zantai skipping up to Ultimate.