Since its available right after act 1 im a bit conflicted on when to start it.
It’s a lot of fun to do right after the Warden. It can be a bit tough but its fun and challenging to go straight to FG. You can stop at any time and level up and explore elsewhere and come back as you like.
It depends. If you’ve never played before do the main story first if you’ve finished it then jump into forgotten gods
How do you start it?
After defeating Warden Krieg and portal back, there is an NPC called The Emissary outside the south entrance of Devil’s Crossing which begins the FG content.
How high do the monsters scale in the new areas?
For example, when I first finish the core game and AoM in normal (e.g. char level 55), will the monsters have level 55 then? And how high do they scale? Up to level 60?
I stopped FG content once I ran across the black legion guys at the first waypoint outside of town and went back to the main campaign. I could be wrong but my assumption was I needed more rep with them to get a quest or something there. We’ll see if my assumption was correct.
FG content is definitely harder than vanilla content, so IMO it depends on your tolerance for pain 
Let me preface this by saying that I’m a pretty casual player. Others are gonna tell you “everything is trivial up to ultimate regardless”, but you can decide for yourself Also, I was playing on Veteran with a new character but I’m not new to the game; have a shared stash packed with blues and purples.
I started a new Shieldbreaker and went to FG right after Act I. It was fine for a while but boss packs and challenge dungeons started getting tough. When I got to the last area (lava zone), I was level 30ish but I had three deaths in a row so I decided to go back to vanilla Act II for a while and return later. Breezed through everything in Act II including Steps of Torment, even though all the enemies level to you in both FG and Vanilla now (based on what devs said pre-release I believe everything everywhere scales all the way up now, but I can’t confirm that yet).
So, it’s your call but there’s no problem moving back and forth between acts. To Paavo about quests: it’s possible some sidequests in FG won’t open up till you finish the vanilla story, but you can definitely get through the main FG questline right after Act I; there might be some more stuff you need to go back for later, don’t know. I’m kinda wondering what will happen with Death’s Vigil/Kymon’s Chosen in Act III, due to … some stuff in FG I won’t mention because spoilers
Another consideration: you don’t get any new pack tabs in FG, so you might want to pick up the first two before you go in just to avoid endless trips to town
TLDR: you can go in right away but FG is harder, and you can also pingpong back and forth between FG and vanilla with no issues.
Is AoM considered vanilla now or? Just asking because I dont know
Thanks for your responses, I think I will first finish the core game and AoM content before doing the FG areas, they should scale high enough, I think.
I started FG on Elite after completing the main campaign (without AoM, did it only on Veteran). My Petmaster/Firecaster is currently at lvl 83, and I was immediately facing monsters/bosses between lvl 86 and 91 which I found at some points extremely challenging.
It was actually the first time I died on a shrine enemy wave (2nd shrine in the dungeon that leads to the first story boss). Then on this boss… well I needed three attempts and some luck that my pets catch the aggro of the boss, otherwise the heavy lightning/electrocute attacks really did critical damage to my tune.
There have been like 3 threads started with this topic since FG was released.
care to point me to them? I am very interested in the discussion but couldn’t find anything like that when scrolling through the threadlist here.
Okay I see this seems to be another beginner thread which went dead very quickly without satisfying replies. Hope all pros have fun enjoying the game with their 27 lvl100 polished HC chars.
Sorry I forgot about your question I have been busy with my own threads:
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=82762
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=81210
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=79103
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=80822
all of them aimed towards beginners, I have spend around 100 hours on those guides above so forgive me if I forgot about you
I spend around 1-2 hours per day planning and documenting beginner friendly content for this forum.
I suggest you start the FG campaigns after you have beaten AoM campaigns and have your defenses prioritized. There is really no answer “do this at level x” it is all relative to how durable your char is.
Thanks a lot for the hints - I was looking in the gameplay forum and didn’t realize you are doing such awesome work in the builds section. I will carefully read it.
I am currently a level 86 pyromancer in Elite at the beginning of the Malmouth chapter (after Gloomwald/Ugendbod/the whole scary void thing).
Reading that you are doing budget builds is very nice, I am wondering if there is also a guide that allows to start with craftable/shopable items and later on has options to change to epic/legendary items that are found on the way. Often here it is considered unrealistic to find all required blues/purples that a build relies on, however in the 86 levels that I progressed so far I have already found 2 blue and 1 purple item that are required for my build, for the legend relic to craft I am only missing two very basic blueprints (unfortunately however the build was designed for base game only back in the time).
Sorry for being harsh, it was however not really targeted at you but more towards my general feeling here that the most threads are from pros that complain about super bosses that are too weak while people like me are looking for advice on how to handle them. I have already reached Nemesis reputation with two enemy factions and I am quite scared to encounter them 
You mean like “transition builds”? From vendor-based build to fully decked?
It would take too much effort for anyone to create such guide, there are simply too many variables. My goal is that the person who are following my guides should be active in the char creation process and thus learn when it is a good idea to upgrade/change an item or not.
My general advice is to wait to equip blue/purples until you can buy armor augments from almost all faction vendors and can craft higher tier components (like living armor, ugdenbog leather, spellscourge platning etc). In early end-game, I do think that green items can provide much more “bang for the buck” in terms of defenses.
I hope you understand why it is hard to make such “transition guides” and that I could help you with at least something.
You must also understand that most of the veterans here have been waiting for FG for a looong time and are now very exited in playing and discussing our builds. We do not work here at this forum, this is our hobby you know.
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Just started playing this for this first time and bought the “Definitive Edition” and seem to be getting a bit confused with the dlc content. I believe I finished the first part of the campaign story since I was visited by that emissary. I am a lvl 24 Soldier atm. Wondering if I should hop on over and check out the dlc or just stay with the main story for the time being?
On the first time playing or if you play for the storytelling, I suggest to just follow the main story, AoM xpac story, then the FG storyline. You can go to FG immediately, though the mob there are far tankier and hit harder.
Actually from experience the mobs in FG aren’t really that much tankier than base game mobs if you go to FG early. That’s because the devs balanced the difficulty to be more even between the base game and the expansions.