Yes it is needed. I don’t want to be playing a caster char and get melee oriented random effect on my CASTER relic that I spent an obscene amount of time and materials on…period…NUFF SAID…
I have herps
Hi there,
after cafting a relic that required 14 more relics in the recipe, I dont want to bother with that anymore. Never ever. :rolleyes:
Im no crafting addict, so no, i would like to get them dropped.
Having several max level characters that finished ultimate, there are definately some good ones and some not so good ones.
Drop rate seems fine, without too much farming I have already every relic recipe I think. It could even be lowered by some amount.
Variety in effects exists, even though most relics are not too generic and aimed at specific builds. General rule is that you will usually find something to suit your build.
As far as the actual crafting goes, I do understand the need for making higher grade ones far more expensive to craft, but the actual procedure is sort of a logistic nightmare not a procedure one would enjoy I think.
One thing to be noted here is that because higher grade ones use lower grade relics as materials, you can actually be locked out of crafting a cool relic that fits perfectly on your build because a lower grade recipe has not dropped yet which can be a bit frustrating.
Do you recall the orb system in TQ? I remember that some of them were good for many different builds, and some you never used. You had to build everything regardless to see which ones, you as the player could depend on every time.
In most cases you will find that Poison and Pierce Resistance and +1, were the big draw. Even though the Orb system started at Level 5, it wasn’t until Level 15 or 20 before an Orb could be built and used. In TQ during the course of a character’s life you might use upwards of 10 to 12 Orbs, the last one being at Level 60 – a red skull one.
It may not be nice to see that you have carried on that tradition, in Grim Dawn. But there is a problem, during the life of a character build you will only use three relics. The first one at Level 18, Level 35, and then Level 70.
First off, I think there are too many of them. Lower Level Relics? Under-powered. A relic should bring something to the uniform – a bonus, that would make my character more of who my character is – otherwise why use Relics at all?
That bonus needs to be in the form of a completion bonus, on the relic, such as, an attribute or a +1, but you have already fallen into a trap. I noticed that on a lot of items, where you use +1’s, are in most cases, items I don’t waste skill points in. For instance, anything involving a Shield.
Far as I’m concerned Armour and Shield, are doing double duty, if you have Armour, you don’t need a shield. You need to free up your arm to carry a second weapon, or a really large two-handed weapon.
This game, like Titan Quest, progresses based upon the amount of damage you can rack up while fighting enemies; it is how the little slider at the bottom moves.
No shield that I have seen so far in this game, can provide me with the same level of confidence that an additional weapon can provide.
But there is another problem with Grim Dawn relics. Can a character created in the game, play through the game, to its completion, without accessing any Relics? If so? Are relics obsolete?
I don’t see how more choices can ever be a bad thing.
As well, for a dual wielding melee Warlock like myself…without my relic, my build would be impossible (save for a medal that I’ve not seen drop yet).
I have a question about relics, I wanna get Belgothian’s Carnage but I dont have the Juggernaut blueprint. Can the Juggernaut blueprint drop from like Moosi or do I have to make a new character and farm mobs around 20-40?
Just farm in normal, at the appropriate monster levels.
Having more choices is never a bad thing.
Having bad choices that you’d never use kind of is, though.
There are some glaring holes, and then there are levels brilliance shining through, like the mid-tier Fortress, which is arguably best in slot for a Retaliation build.
This is where I’m at right now. I’m fine with needing to craft ABC to make D to combine with E etc. to make a thing, but for the love of god and all that is holy, give me access to everything I need to make the damned thing! There’s already a vendor that sells recipes in Blood Grove, just code him so that if you need recipe X to make recipe Y and Y has dropped for you but not X, he has it for sale instead of the stupid skeleton key recipe that you earn by getting halfway through normal. Or maybe have a blacksmith style interface that creates random recipes you don’t have by putting a rare crafting mat and/or some number of components into the metaphorical blender.
I’m sure there’s going to be someone who will make the “earn your fun” argument against this, but for me (and plenty of others) my fun is earned by having a definite path, however long and difficult, towards a goal and making progress towards it. Having to run around to a million and one hero mobs in the off chance that not only any blueprint but the one I specifically need will drop isn’t terribly engaging. It’s why I don’t play slot machines when I go to the casino.
I actually don’t really like the fact that some mythical relics need other mythical relics in order to be crafted. In Titan Quest every legendary artifact asked for two epic artifacts and an epic artifact asked for two normal artifacts.
I prefer the way it was handled in Titan Quest. Also, there are some builds that really need a good relic. I know it’s difficult to make a relic for every possible build, but i think some more relics wouldn’t hurt.
To me they are interesting in one sense and boring in another. There is a joy to anything I discover which can make one of my existing characters (or one I had strongly in mind to create) more powerful.
However, some of the joy is killed the moment I realize that every single aether-focused Arcanist/X caster is probably just going to use Agrivix’s Malice, that every single dual-wielding nightblade line is probably just going to use Belgothian’s Carnage, that every single lightning-bashing shaman line is probably just going to use Eye of the Storm, that every single fire-focused demolitionist is going to use Ulzuin’s Pyroclasm. What else are they going to use? There isn’t a healthy range of relics to choose from to diversify two builds very similar to each other.
At that moment I realize all the meticulous work I did to craft Agrivix’s Malice one relic at a time for my CT sorceress is just the same identical grind that everyone else went through for all sensible aether-based casters. The game just made me jump through a whole lot of hoops to converge to the same gear choice as every single endgame arcanist out there, which actually makes that relic slot meaningless as nothing more than the same power up every other build like mine needed to have. It almost starts to feel like I just slayed Lutra again to get an attribute point, a grind and a quest necessary to just power up my character the same way as everyone else. All it did was put that build on even footing with all other endgame builds like it by doing the exact same tedious thing of making and crafting the exact same relic. My build would have been nothing more than underpowered if I didn’t craft and equip the exact same relic that everyone else was using given my mastery/skill choices. There is a slightly healthier feeling of variety for empowered and transcendent relics, but mythical relics scream out to me as a grind that just gets players converging to the exact same gear choice to the point where I almost wish the relic slot didn’t exist if there isn’t going to be rich gear diversity once we’ve chosen a particular mastery and skillset.
What’s the point of a relic slot that allows substituting one thing for another, giving this illusion of choice and variety, if everyone that has any sense is ultimately just going to converge to using the exact same thing for that slot? “Would you like sugar or ketchup with your coffee?”
There aren’t enough viable choices for gear in general, but relics (particularly mythical ones) especially highlight the issue to me. The “viable-item-to-build” ratio is way too small to the point of sometimes being one-to-one for some slots. This game allows a ton of mastery/skill/devotion choices so it either needs the most insane number of relics (like number of general build ideas multiplied by at least 3) to offer a healthy variety of choices or it needs more generalized relics that suit more builds (or a combo of both).
That’s the difference to me with items from Diablo 2, e.g., where I felt like I experienced a much healthier range of choices for a particular slot for many builds and a joy of item discovery and allowing that discovery to guide my gear choices without feeling like I needed to equip the same damned thing everyone else equipped for a slot to be on even footing.
Diablo 2 had far fewer character build possibilities combined with far more generalized items that fit a wider range of builds. That gives a feeling of exponentially higher diversity of gear choices for a specific build (far from perfect, of course) with the most massive item database that was a joy to sample with each unique discovery. Grim Dawn has far, far more character build possibilities combined with far more specialized items that fit the smallest range of builds. That gives an exponentially higher feeling of limited diversity and the teeniest item database filled mostly with stuff our characters don’t even need or want when it comes to gear.
Does the rate at which you are discovering new Blueprints feel rewarding?
Fairly so, but even after pouring in hours and hours with many characters, I only had 75% or so of the ones completed. Exacerbated by the problem mentioned above where I realized I needed relics like Agrivix for my casters or Belgothian for my blademaster and saboteur, I ended up just repeatedly visiting the treasure trove in Mountain Depths over and over until I had all the mythical relics.
And farming treasure troves wasn’t a joyless experience at all, the only part that sucked out the joy to me was that sense that I was just linearly progressing (not branching) my characters to use the one and only relic that made sense to their build. It ceases to become a meaningful slot choice when there isn’t really a choice, when only one mythical relic screams out as suitable for that build the moment we start to research a given character’s choices there. Collecting is fun when combined with the feeling of choice and discovery. It’s not fun when we seem forced to collect the one and only specific thing that makes sense to collect for that character whether it’s the very last piece of a set the character absolutely needs to even be on an even level with others like it, or the one and only mythical relic blueprint that even makes any sense to use for that character.
For example, if I was using my CT sorceress and I collected a brand new mythical blueprint that seemed just as good as Agrivix but using a different line of thought (ex: one that doubled casting speed and halved cooldowns and huge energy regen or whatever seems balanced with Agrivix’s appeal where players who own both have a difficult time choosing), that’s a wonderful feeling of joy and discovery and I might use that instead of Agrivix, happy to use what I discovered. The deviation from the boatload of arcanists out there using Agrivix would not have been totally by choice and guided by the discovery, but I could start coming up with ideas on how to really milk that discovery and try to make it just as effective if not more than the endless army of aether casters using Agrivix.
Are you finding the cost of crafting Relics to be an appropriate challenge? Are Tier 2 (Transcendent) Relics an appropriate cost for the power they provide?
I think it’s appropriate but incredibly annoying. The hoop-jumping involved in crafting even when we have all the necessary components in advance is painfully slow, especially if you aren’t doing it in small chunks as you go to work towards a mythical relic – if you discovered the blueprint late and then realize you have to craft empowered and transcendent relics… then in the process of crafting these sub-relics, you then realize you need to craft like a radiant gem… and in the process of doing that you realize you have to craft some other component, and in the process of doing that you realize you have to craft some other component. We could have everything we need to create a mythical relic in a single click if that were possible, but instead we are hunting and scrolling through lists and getting lost.
That’s the part that’s a bit unpleasant to me, and it just has to do with the crafting user interface and the lack of shortcuts there are even when we possess everything we need to create something.
The Relics are hardest pieces to obtain in this game both in terms of spent-time and resources. On the other hand, the bonuses a relic offrers are most of the time avarege and sometimes less than a legendary item. They are not rewarding enough both in defensive and offensive terms.
Not sure if this has been said already, since I’ve only registered - however I’m pointing that out.
The drop rate does indeed feel as it should. But it’s frustrating to obtain a recipe for a relic, that I already know.
I am not sure if the drop rate of a recipe already known to the player is the same as always, but if so - I think the drop rate for a known recipe should be about 3 times lower, since it will serve no purpouse to the player.
I also think that it doesn’t mean that a known recipe shouldn’t drop at all, since it can be nice to give the recipe away to friends, which have not learned it yet. 
- Uli
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What source did you get your game from exactly? Known relic recipes haven’t dropped in AGES.
The only time I’ve ever had a duplicate recipe was from the quest turn ins that give you one…otherwise once you learn a recipe, monsters and chests won’t drop that recipe again.
This is incorrect, the recipes will still drop but be invisible, the difference being that you can still pick up the invisible recipes with the pickup key (along with lots of trash).
You can test this by killing any of the non-human nemeses and then mash the pickup key until there’s nothing more appearing and your character doesn’t do the animation anymore. There will be a recipe in your inventory. It works the same as the lore notes, you can easily try for these at fort Ikon near the bounty table.
i miss the big fat flashy relics from titan quest :rolleyes:
love the gd version though… miles better and more reliable!
I think Crate makes better games than Relic.
now that i’m a little more advanced in the game, with my first char in Ultimate and a couple in Elite, i think the gap in power between lvl 60 relics and lvl 70 isn’t on par with their respective crafting cost.
as it turns out, most of my chars will probably make use of lvl 60 (which are already awesome and game changing - tried Aegis and Nemesis for now), and i’m really glad for that because they were already hard to complete 
considering that a lvl 70 needs you to craft a lvl 60 first i think they could be even more powerful. apart from that i really love Mythical Relics, they’re worth the investment
The relic system is really interesting and quite balanced i must say. Maybe 1 or 2 relics are a bit op or underpowered, but it is quite fun. My favorite relic would be Conflagration - why ? - because it has a super cool active ability that it gives. Now this is a genius idea for a relic, IMO there are too many proc abilities for relics and I understand the reason for it, but im just saying in my experience cool skills like conflagration added to relics are super fun. Im sure that other players would agree on implementing more cool active abilities on relics.