(WIP) [1.1.9.0] SSF Budget Bleed & Chaos Pet Conjurer (SR 65-66)

✹ Bleed & Chaos Pets Conjurer from scratch ✹

build journal and guide

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✹ Introduction and background

The goal with this build and guide is to present a way to level up a pet conjurer aiming to make one of AlkamosHaters specs here: [1.1.9.0] Beastcaller Conjurers - Bleeding and Chaos/Bleeding hybrid-> Crucible 4:49-5:20/ SR 115/ Callagadra 2:53-3:27 + Ravager 1:23 + Crate ~30 seconds . In particular, I aimed to make a kind of ”SSF & budget” version of his ”Hybrid – Lazy” version: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/YVWw8Q0V which is not a too crazy build to make gear-wise :slight_smile:

In the GD community, Maya is known for her dedication and knowledge regarding lazy summoner play style. A lot of good information regarding leveling and gearing up summoner builds from scratch can be found in her guide ”the carnival” located here The Carnival - A Guide to Pets .

As far as I know, Maya’s recommendation for a beginner is elemental pet conjurer focusing on Summon Familiar and converting Briarthorn damage to elemental/cold with any of these two faction weapons Bysmiel’s Mindweaver & Bysmiel’s Grasp . Thus, another idea with this present build & guide was also to explore the option to go with another ”flavor” of pet build as a beginner.

Note, this is a build guide - I will assume you know about basics of game, quests and some mechanics. If not, then feel free to ask :slight_smile: There are other guides and places of information how to do quests and such. I will focus on what is important for this particular build.

I played this char totally from scratch SSF (Self-Solo-Found) except for ONE thing - I used waystones for getting into deep Shattered Realm (SR). Just for me to save some time and sanity (my previous SSF builds did farm their own SR waystone blueprints).

Build is totally HC viable. The first time I RIP:ed was when I wanted to try SR 80 in ultimate with this budget setup :stuck_out_tongue:

I hope this will be at least of some help for a new-ish player to create a summoner build from scratch. I wish you all best in letting your pets bleed the life out of your foes! :scorv:

Much text are hidden inside spoilers, click them if you wanna read certain topic.
These are marked with a ► and Purple text.

✹ “Final” budget build that I made


GrimTools ►►► https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrdAM52◄◄◄

Gameplay video ►►► https://vimeo.com/533592336◄◄◄
(Ancient monster totem, Alkamos in SoT, Lokarr and SR 65 ultimate boss room).

Took me about 35 hours to make this, starting from scratch.
Build without affixes on the MIs (and no augments + using Nighttalon devotion): https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNkGKqDN (note we got plenty of spirit from our gear to wear off-hand).

Note: I wanted to play with as “basic” gear as possible: only faction items, target farmable monster infrequent (MI) and Epic (blue) items. The guide below will mention how and where to get items and also alternative gear.

Easy, but not fast, ultimate SR 65-66 farmer. Here is when we completed SR 65 for the first time:


Note that we got the SR 50 reward here, that is because I used a waystone getting to SR 65 directly.

More about performance of this setup is presented further down.

Name of the char is a tribute to the pet-queen!

Note: Grim Tools can not show pet resistances from auras (Blood of Dreeg, Emboldering presence) and not damage type specific percentages, only ”all damage”.

Note: In order to see actual points spent on skills, hold down ctrl + shift in Grim Tools. Sadly, this does not work in game…

✹ Basic information about the class and the pets

Click to read about conjurer class

Conjuer (Shaman + Occultist) is a fine class for summoner build since both masteries have plenty of pets and pet support skills. End-game builds often revolve around boosting the Summon Briarthorn with Beastcaller (Nature’s Call Regalia) set which makes you summon two of them, or Bysmiel set (Bysmiel’s Trinkets) which makes you summon two Ravens (birbs).

The other natural summoner classes are Ritualist (Shaman + Necromancer) and Cabalist (Occultist + Necromancer) since both masteries have pets and pet support skills.

Click to read about pets

There are two kinds of pets in Grim Dawn, player scaled pets (pseudopets) and … pets. How to tell the difference? Pseudopets are skills that scales with only player bonuses, such as Guardians of Empyrion, Inquisitor seal, Mortar traps, …

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In 99% of the cases, when we GD players refer to “pet builds” we are talking about those pets that scales with “pet bonuses”, such as Primal Spirit (Shaman pet)
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Thus in order to beef up this pet, we need skills, items and devotions that boost pets.
For instance Primal Bond shaman exclusive skill
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From an item
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Or from a devotion
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Furthermore, pets are considered “Allies” when you have aura skills, such as Blood of Dreeg (Occultist skill)
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Common to both pseudopets and “real” pets are that they follow the “Pet attack” command
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and count towards the steam acheivment “Pet Hoarder”.
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In the upper left corner of the screen, once you have summoned a pet, icon will appear. Here you can see what kinds of buffs and debuffs you pet(s) have on them. Note that not all pets get icons here. Currently, my briar is influenced by emboldering presence and blood of dreed.
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If you right click on the pet icon, you can select three “stances” and also to unsummon the pet (useful for doing the lokarr quest)
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This is what is written on https://grimdawn.fandom.com/wiki/Pets

  • Aggressive Stance allows the pet to roam and attack anything that comes within its line of sight. It will aggressively seek out targets, even ones that have not attacked the player.
  • Defensive Stance forces the pet to stay close to the player and causes it to attack anything that attacks the player.
  • Normal Stance is the default used when a pet is summoned. It is a balance between the Defensive and Aggressive states.

Pets have attack speed, OA, resistances etc, you can see them in your char window the 2nd tab:
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It should be noted that when you inspect a char in grim tools, aura buffs like blood of dreeg is not applied here for some reason. So you need to check these things in game.

Most pets you can inspect their initiate resistances etc in grim tools pet database. The values on the second char tab shown above is added to these stats.

You can find more pets here like the ones you can summon via the weapon proc. etc.

Pet health scales also with your level and they do not get difficulty resistance penalties like the player does.

A big advantage that “real” pets have over pseudo-pets is that they can aggro and taunt enemies. “Generate additional threat” is a good thing to get on your pets, like “ember claw” on the dog skill-line and “ground slam” on the briar skill-line. Taunt is much stronger aggro mechanic and is thus desirable for summoners. The “ground slam” skill changes to taunt at rank 17 and higher. It is therefore one priority of ours. The devotion “Ishtak, the spring maiden” (upper right corner of the devotion tree) has a proc that makes all your pets taunt targets. Now as with most CC stuff, bosses have some kind of resistance to it.

✹ Items for the budget build and how to get them

Note: these are just some suggestions. In particular, the Monster Infrequent items (MIs) drop with random affixes (though there is a thing called affix-bias :wink: ). I will give some advice what items I consider mandatory (worth farming for) and which are optional (like its good if you can get one but is not the end of the world if you don’t).

Amulet, Rings, Medal

Amulet - budget choice is Zaria’s Pendant which you should already have at least a decent one from leveling. Zaria is kinda easy to farm, and on the way to her you will get several off-hands Bloodsworn Codex (Zaria can also drop it). Zaria has 50% chance to drop amulet https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/159/skills and you of course want some defensive affixes for yourself like health, DA, resistances + some pet affix. But do not spend too much time farming her, the base amulet is good enough!

Amulet - endgame choice is Mythical Heart of the Sand King that is target-farmable from Gannar’vakkar https://www.grimtools.com/monsterdb/2121/items - a scorpion boss in Sunbane oasis. Only 4% drop chance, but since this is used in Alkamos Haters “goal build” we are gonna farm this eventually. Note, if you are high level enough you can actually farm this one in elite if you want… Also note, Gannar’vakkar has only one spawn point, but he sometimes run around so might be hard to spot him.

Medal - budget choice is Halion’s Crest and is easy to farm from Halion “the Rat” in Hannefy mines two spawn locations, 50% drop chance. As with Zaria amulet, you want defensive stuff for your self and perhaps one extra pet affix. The base item is good enough, do not spend crazy amount of time to get an insane one because alkamos haters goal build has another medal.

Rings - budget choices Bloodsworn Signet can be farmed from Thall’nosh the boss inside Darkvale gate. BUT the fastest way to get them is to run Bastion of Chaos. Inside bastion of chaos, there is a vendor that sells 1-4 of these. In order to make him sell other rings, you go to the final level in that dungeon, wait for like 20 seconds, then you go back to the previous level where the vendor is and voila he now sells new ones! This means you can get like more than 100 rings in less than one hour. All you need is some spare time, iron bits and dedication. Also note, you can do this dungeon in any difficulty because the level of items a vendor has scales with you! Here are some examples of rings, note they are quite expensive so only buy quite good ones (defensive stuff and pet affix). But again, base item is already dope and we will use other rings later in the alkamos hater build

Another good budget ring is Mythical Crimsonbriar Band which is Epic and is thus not super hard to get. Good boost for the bleeding damage part of your pets!

Off-hand

Bloodsworn Codex this one you will farm quite lot for. As mentioned above, it can drop from zaria and also from the bloodsworn monsters on the way to her. This item is used in the alkamos hater build. But, you do not need a crazy roll to enjoying the build. Get a decent one and progress in farming other things. Then if you feel you want more power, go back and farm an upgrade.

Weapon

WIP

Armor items

WIP

Relic

WIP

✹ Devotions

How to get the final builds devotion

Note: I did not follow this 100% when I leveled up.

Note: As mentioned, I did swap Nighttalon for Empty Throne to get some stun res on myself. This is not needed later when you have 2 briars etc. The devotion map here does use Nighttalon instead of Empty throne.

Note: When bound to a pet, the damage dealt by the devotion skill uses the pet’s damage etc.

  • Purple Crossroads

  • Shepherds Call (bind to Devouring swarm)

  • Refund Purple point from crossroad

  • Falcon (bind to a pet – I took Briarthorn)

  • Red crossroad

  • Fiend (bind to a pet - I took Primal Spirit)

  • Yellow crossroad

  • Panther

  • Typhos

  • Blue crossroad

  • Behemot (bind proc to a toggle skill)

  • Solael’s witchfire (bind proc to a pet - I took hellhound)

  • Refund red and yellow crossroad points

  • Huntress (bind proc to a pet - I took Summon familiar)

  • Nighttalon

  • Green crossroad

  • Mogdrogen (bind proc to cruse of fraility)

This is the map you should get by following steps above: https://www.grimtools.com/calc/vNQ47bXZ (build is not empty, go to devotions)

✹ Factions etc

  • Side with Bysmiel, to get access to their pet stuff ASAP.

  • Side with Barrowholm, they have good pet stuff and also makes you summon and fight the Ravager.

  • Side with Deaths vigil, also has decent pet stuff + I hate Kymons.

  • Ravager - which one to sacrifice https://grimdawn.fandom.com/wiki/Cast_Off_the_Flesh I took “Of Minds”.

✹ Leveling diary (with example build snap-shots)
Note: In order to see actual points spent on skills, hold down ctrl + shift in Grim Tools. Sadly, this does not work in game… I recommend you upload your char to Grim Tools now and then to see how you are doing. Remember that a skill can only be overcapped by 10 points, and game can not display this for you.

Level 15 (normal)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NKo6MpN
Start with Summon familiar (aka birb). Got birb to 13/16 (breakpoint) and 1 point in mastery bar every level up until we got dog (Summon Hellhound) at level 10.

The off-hand I am using is a “free” item: Conjuring bone:
https://www.grimtools.com/map/markers/chests/11124

Level 25 (normal)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/4ZDrbLp2

Killed Krieg at level 19.

Crafted and equipped Hell bane ammo at level 20. It is a toggle aura that provide some damage boost to pets.

Farmed Halion to get low level 18 version of medal (does not have primal spirit modifier) took me 5 runs to get one (drop chance is 50% according to Grim Tools). So not super lucky…

Level 35 (normal)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/0V005b1V

Started Shaman mastery bar at level 27 to get to briar.

Went to FG and started with Bysmiel quests.

Level 45 (normal)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/8NKoEaoN

Farmed Zaria and bloodsworns around level 36 to get amulet and off-hand.

Got totally normal bulwark for +1 occultist skill (can use at level 50).

Got friendly with homestead so crafted hysteria.

Grabbed some faction gear from Rovers.

Crafted imbued silver and purified salt for resistances.

Prep for Elite:

  • Hidden path – farm Bysmiel pants

  • Farm another Halion medal (higher tier version that has primal spirit mods)

  • Bought two decent Bloodsworn rings in BoC, costed like 300k together…

Level 53 (start of elite)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/62aQeAg2 (10h 15min game time)

Level 60 (elite)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/b28GlMKN

Ditched the extra skill points in birb just to focus on the other pet skills like emboldering presences. Dropped the empowered version of one of the goal weapons. Starting to use it now. Otherwise I would just continue with the ”shield/mace” thingy, or the Black Legion faction weapon Legion Voidcutter which has a nice proc. Many weapon options at this point tbh.

Level 70 (elite)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/lNkG1KBN

I hit honored with Bysmiel at level 62, so we could start to use their augments and faction gear.

Also hit revered with Coven + Black Legion+ Malmouth resistance, and honored with Barrowholm + Dreeg + Solael

When we got to Malmouth, we switched the imbued silver in the weapon for another purified salt to get more aether res.

Bought some experience potions. Will come in handy to speed up the process.

Level 81 (start of ultimate)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/d2jRO302 (21 h game time)

Bought augments for like 500k iron LOL.

Crafted ancestor relic.

New devotions, to fit the chaos + bleed damage hybrid. Because we have experience potions, they will level up in no time.

Wanna hit revered with barrowholm and bysmiel so we can buy and use their faction gear at level 90. This means we have to back to elite and kill some Chthonics and Eldritch horrors.

Level 90 (ultimate)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/bVAX87R2

Did not manage to get revered with barrowholm and bysmiel yet, gonna go back to elite once again and see if I am missing some side quests… (I did have bysmiel quests left). Gonna do some eldrich totems and void totems in elite, then buy faction gear, and after that move on with ultimate questing :slight_smile:

Level 91 (ultimate - major gear change)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/w26r9z72
Gonna try this helmet, see if skill recharge is needed. If yes, I will bite the bullet and farming these later.

Anyway, this is gonna be more or less enough to finish the campaign quests on ultimate I think. Since changing too much gear is a hassle, I am gonna try to maintain this as much as possible until it is time for the challenges :slight_smile: Not gonna do too many side quests, just the main stuff.

Skill wise, gonna focus a bit on the swarm and CoF now, and after that dogs hellfire skill.

Each session: farm for Halion crest, Bysmiel pants, Zaria amulet. Once we get a good one, we will stop farming for it since these items are not used in the goal build by AlkamosHater

Also went back to normal and elite to finish some Death Vigil quests so we could hit revered with them.

Level 100 (ultimate)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/a2EM8PJ2

Still lots of stuff to do: the entire AoM campaigns, FG campaign after vanguard of the three…

Goal gear wise now is to get a better lunal belt and helmet (perhaps we just use Fettan mask). But that is gonna take a while until we get to where these items can drop :slight_smile: So now we are just gonna enjoy the journey for a while.

Level 100 (ultimate - final budget build)

https://www.grimtools.com/calc/pZrdAM52 (about 35h game time)

Farmed for helmet a bit, also shopped BoC for some more nice rings, and a new pair of gloves and upgrade of weapon. I temporality switched devotion and got empty throne instead of nighttalon. As soon as I get more stun res elsewhere I will change back (or when I dont need it, i.e. when we have more pets from beastcaller set and relic used in final build by alkamoshater)

Also hit revered with Rovers to get their augment for pets.

From this point, it is basically just a matter of farming:
Totems, Sand king amulet, SR (note, do 2 shards to maximize loot / time like 60+61, 65+66 etc and try to do them in same game session for loot reroll), dungeons etc :slight_smile:

Also, do not forget that you need PLENTY of aether crystals and Ugdenbog blooms for crafting end-game all components.

The rings will be the hardest item to get, I suggest you go with Mythical Crimson Briar rings meanwhile to focus a bit more on the bleed side (AlkamosHater used those in the bleed focused build anyway so they are very good).

✹ Performance of the budget build

Click me
  • All main quests.

  • Grava’thul & Kuba nemesis

  • All skeleton key dungeons. Alkamos was pretty hard because he seemed to be hard to get aggro by the pets. Morgoneth was also hard because he could actually kill your pets and then comes after you…

  • SR 65-66 ultimate (not superfast but totally doable – good loot) (normal and elite are usually better for epic items though) (also remember, that it might be better to do lower shards at a quicker pace to maximize loot/timer)

  • Lokarr (similar to Alkamos - hard to make pet aggro him… had to kite for like 2 min)

  • Kravall (just for the lolz)


Korvaak down


Gargabol down


Kravall down


Kuba down


Lokarr down


Magi downs, nice drop!


Morgoneth down

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Morgoneth dropped his Nightbringer weapon :slight_smile:


Ravager of minds in Normal LOL


Very nice drops from the Sand king! Both the amulet and the gloves that are used in AlkamosHaters build :slight_smile:

✹ Conclusions
I had a blast making this build! I don’t think I have leveled a pet build SSF-style since AoM era so this was a very fun experience for me.

One of the hardest things was to control aggro – let pets tank for a while before you debuff with swarm and curse. Also knowing when to use blood of dreeg and movement skill was sometimes crucial.

I can certainty recommend playing and making a pet conjurer, especially if you are new / poor - even without say Beastcaller set you can do some serious end-game farming with it :slight_smile:

✹ End-game summoner conjurers builds

[1.1.9.0] Beastcaller Conjurers - Bleeding and Chaos/Bleeding hybrid-> Crucible 4:49-5:20/ SR 115/ Callagadra 2:53-3:27 + Ravager 1:23 + Crate ~30 seconds

[1.1.9.0] [HC] [Videos] Beastcaller Set | Physical & Bleeding Pet Conjurer | 0 Green

[1.1.9.0] KaosKats V2 Taking pets to the Darkside || 5.18 Cruci ||

[1.1.9.0] Chaos Birds Conjurer -> Crucible 5:15/ SR 110/ All Celestials/ 75-76 farmer

The Fluffy Squishy - Pet Conjurer

[1.1.9.0] Life of Briar - Physical Pets! 3,3xBriars (Calla, Ravager, SR90)

[1.1.9.0] Conjurer; physical pets; no green items; SR75-76 [still WIP]

19 Likes

Reserved post 1: For stuff

Thanks in particular to @AlkamosHater, @Maya and @Duskdeep86 for their awesome pet builds!

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Reserved post 2:

Exploration of a budget elemental pet conjurer ala Maya. Maybe one day :slight_smile:

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So I’m not the only one who went wonka mode from TPOM’s opinion that pets had been completely covered by Maya. :joy:

Good luck with your adventure!

Edit: oh right, you’ve finished the char already.

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I only cover pet builds that let you play with one hand while eating ice cream with another :3

2 Likes

Ice cream viable

Mogdrogen builds are too chaotic for me to combine with Ice Cream. I used to go for them back in my Pet Conjurer - Moggy the Puppy! days. But I was less lazy back then :woman_shrugging:

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I did the next logical step and watch people playing lazy pet builds on YouTube.

4 Likes

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Nice work. Just curious , have you tried taking Bysmiel Command for the Flat RR and Assasin’s blade instead of Flame Torrent and Fiend?

No because Bysmiel command would require one more active skill to proc. And, we wanna be lazy.

I guess you missed the point of getting a mini version of AlkamosHaters bleed and CHAOS damage pet build.

1 Like

When are you going to finish the guide? :slight_smile:

I got buried in work these weeks, that I did not anticipate :confused: I have plenty of time in 2 weeks so I should be able to finish it then.

Is there a particular section you feel like you want me to write first?

Yeah, devotions and itemization. Although devotions i could probably figure out myself following your snapshots, but what items i could consider in different slots would be very helpful, since i have some items stashed already.

Devotions is easy to write, I do that later today.
Itemization is the hardest section to write because I wanna write like where to get each MI etc

Something that would be very useful for me, but usually is not included in any guide, is random items epic or legendaries that would fit the slot very good. Nobody writes about them, because you can’t target farm them, but sometimes they drop randomly and they might be an upgrade, but newbies don’t use them.

Legendaries I kinda assume that if someone is lucky as hell if they drop such to look up proper end-game builds to see what items they use :slight_smile: Good epics will be included because I used them.

I think contrary, I have help many newbies on reddit and discord, and to me it seems that they think that any legandary is BiS and instead neglect good greens and epics.

I finished devotion tree, note not 100% as I played in my journal but its one way to get final build devotion map.

Well, there are some legendaries used in end builds that can’t be used by themselves, only in conjunction with others, so while they look powerful, they might gimp your build before you find other needed items.

But other legendaries, on the other hand, can be a straight upgrade to a certain beginner build. I like how Stupid_Dragon does with his guides, you can check it up. It’s really useful to have several potential upgrades for every slot with a brief description of them.

I dont have time to include all items that can be used. I also think the player should use their own judgment. I am kinda against too much hand holding.

i understand that. of course no one expects to have e full list, just a few notorious examples.